#that particular feeling that comes from being correct in only the most purely technical sense

[aturinfortheworse]

being one of those kids who's like "actually it's octopi" is a slippery fucken slope because now i am an adult who hears about cephalopods with some frequency and is still, nonetheless, every single time surprised that the speaker did not say "octopodes"

[pwophet]

ji soo’s relationship with gender is, in a sense, convoluted. it’s hard to put into words as it’s not comparable to that of a “universal” viewpoint or something that the majority (namely those who identify as “cis” or anything similar.) has familiarized themselves with. for ji soo themselves, they sustain a somewhat odd relationship with gender, its concept, how society views it, and the aspects surrounding and relating to dysphoria.

they, for all intents and purposes, do not... experience gender dysphoria how many would come to “expect”. they have no known triggers that could, potentially, exasperate the potential of dysphoria, and they personally have little trouble with the idea itself. what remains as brief exceptions to the rule are, thus far, being referred to any other pronouns besides “they/them” which, admittedly, still would not incite a perceived emotional outburst-- as what would be stated by those ignorant and anything similar. being referred to with “he/him” or “she/her”, for example, will hardly garner a reaction.

by this, it’s easy to think that they will simply ignore it. and this would be correct, to an extent, in that they will take the intent to ignore seriously. calling out to them with purely gendered pronouns will garner no such reaction (be it positive or negative, potentially.) and will, instead, entice a lackluster response. they will not comprehend that they were being spoken to (their pronouns are, in a sense, one of the few things they have kept from their previous life. they hold these very near and dear to their heart, lashing out immediately if these, too, would be taken away from them.) and, quite pointedly, ignore. those that are incapable of referring to them with, to put it bluntly, the most decent of common decency will be responded to in kind.

of course, they understand if slip ups and the like happen. they have no issue whatsoever in responding to whatever pronouns, but intent remains a key factor and so, by extension, do their speed in terms of reacting. to those that continuously disrespect them, they have no issue whatsoever in ensuring that the feeling be mutual.

this relates to their understanding (or what they would call it, anyway.) of gender as a whole. they believe it to be a spectrum (which, honestly, it is in some regards.) and, as such, have come to the conclusion that they simply do not vibe with it. what “gender” is the general population is not something they, personally, believe in. gender to them is a concept that will remain as both misunderstood and mysterious-- borderline cryptic in nature, and they strongly prefer to keep it that way. additionally, they don’t generally expect anyone else to adhere to this same core belief as theirs but, rather, a basic understanding of it. friends don’t need to agree with one another all the time, after all!

occasionally, this does put them into an odd situation regarding that of how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them. seeing as “dysphoria” isn’t, technically, a part of their experience... it’s difficult to say what is dysphoric for them and what isn’t. they have a high (if you’d be so kind as to view “high” as a percentage of exactly one-hundred.) probability of lashing out (of a highly violent nature, starting at the lowest of them raising their voice to “politely” correct the offending party and eventually reaching the high of them clawing at said person, fully intending at ripping into skin and tearing it into ribbons.) at those that are capable of figuring out what gets under their skin, so to say.

they gravely disapprove of those that try to “take away” their right to their pronouns-- “correcting” them (stating that they can’t have them as pronouns, trying to exploit “science” and “logic”, or simply stating that there are only “two genders”. there are more, of course, but those are first to come to mind.) or refusing them the lowest denominator of respect, in its purest form. to them, their pronouns are very... personal, a part of themselves that they’ve yet to forget and will fight tooth and nail in order to ensure their continuous possession of them. this also relates, quite strongly and intensely, to those in similar standings with their own identities.

misgendering their god (kyo, their one and only holy. their miraculous being and the one entity that’s always graced them in their time of need-- their god, their favorite, their love, and their faith.) in particular will always yield unfavorable results. due to investing so much of their time, their dedication, their trust, and their love into their god, ji soo is particularly wary of those that willfully misgender their god. initial misconduct they will aggressively correct (as they do to those in similar predicaments, facing the potential of never receiving the most basic of respect and the like.) those and will only grow more and more irritable as time progresses, even if the opposite party works in order to prevent such a mistake from happening again. regardless of how it has progressed, ji soo will eventually feel an indescribable need to separate from the individual. be it via killing or, less messily, “chasing them” away, they’re happy with either result.

they react to instances of dysphoria with provocative actions, more or less lashing out at those around them rather than attempting to “cope” with methods of self-harming. they do engage in such actions, however-- pulling at their hair, scratching at their cheeks and thighs, and chewing so hard at their lips that the skin looks akin to that of a freshly peeled orange. what’s more common, however, is their behavior when engaging in social interaction. they’re noticeably more irritable; they tap their foot impatiently, as if to silently ask the question “when are you going to leave?” as an example. they will continue to be overtly physical but will suddenly engage in more forceful, somewhat surly behavior. their hugs become firm and tense, fully knocking the wind out of you. their “love taps” become full-on pushes and shoves, intended at making someone lose their balance with ji soo more than capable of catching them but, instead, looking on with a wry smile. in a sense, they do these things with intentions of starting a fight-- they accept the consequences fully while putting on airs of an innocent, oblivious, and otherwise naïve persona.

ji soo’s defensive nature towards generalized misgendering is both born from genuine empathy and a selfishness. they assume that those that have experience in similar topics must “relate” to them, too, meaning that their feelings are one of the same. however, they also feel for these people, too. they feel a kinship with those in the same predicament (or something similar, for lack of better word.) as them and, as such, feel naturally inclined to protect and forcefully encourage others to respect them.

as such, their dysphoria does not sporadically flair up. it’s always enticed by an outsider force, someone (or something.) they are yet unable to control and, thus, encourage them to ensure a painless and “respectful” experience as soon as possible.

[rachelreviewspopculture]

Little Women (2019)

A first for the blog: a guest post! The following is a review of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019) by Carly Henderson.

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When creating a film version of a classic novel, one often wants to justify its existence by approaching the story with a new lens that appeals to its contemporary audience and differentiates it from previous film adaptations. The temptation with this approach, however, is to take a sub-theme and make it the overarching theme, or to misinterpret a theme altogether. The resulting film, then, is either off the mark or entirely antithetical to the source material. This is often what happens in modern adaptations of classic stories (Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina, Julian Jarrold’s Brideshead Revisited, and Netflix’s Anne with an E, to name a few), and is also the case for Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

My opinion will be unpopular, as Gerwig’s adaption of Little Women has been widely received with praise for its creativity, innovation, liveliness, direction, and attention to the novel and its fresh resonance with a modern audience. And it’s true: it’s lovely to watch, overall well-acted, has an excellent score, and, I would argue, is the most bold and creative take on the classic story by Louisa May Alcott yet. Many commenters at the film’s release said that every generation deserves its own Little Women, and this version of Little Women is one that only a modern feminism could create and deserve (the film opens and closes with a salary negotiation between Jo and her publisher, the first scene ending with her acceptance of an unjust wage from her publisher, and the last ending with her fair negotiation, making her an equal player with the man). Even so, what makes it distinctive also makes it a denial of itself. Its modern lens overlooks and destroys the heart of the story, and its bold, artistic rendering ends up being a beautiful but empty shell, lovely to behold, but easily cracked and hollowed of its substance. And this is what we get with Gerwig’s Little Women: it’s a coming of age story that focuses on women’s empowerment, equal wages, opportunity, and creative genius at the expense of the growth and maturity of its characters. Alcott’s Little Women is certainly empowerment and creativity, but it is much more than this—it is at its core a story about growth, virtue, and a certain open receptivity before life that allows one to truly be creative and fruitful.

Though I may have criticism of the film overall, the acting in it is a masterclass: Saiorse Ronan is a force to be reckoned with; Florence Pugh makes the ever controversial Amy loveable (perhaps even more lovable than Jo, which is quite the feat), and Timothee Chalamet is a good Laurie, perhaps truer to the novel’s Laurie than Christian Bale’s portrayal in the 1994 adaptation (though his Laurie for me remains superior to all other Lauries). The film is not linear. It starts in “present” adult life, as Jo is in New York and Amy in France, and shifts back to childhood in flashbacks. This has a dizzying effect and can be difficult to follow, even for those familiar with the story. The advantage of this is twofold: on the one hand, the film seeks to take the adult versions of these characters seriously, where other film adaptations tend to give more time to their childhood; on the other hand, it bends the audience to favor a Laurie/Amy pairing from the beginning. This is a victory for sure, overcoming the long-held resentment about Amy, as many continue to think that Laurie should have ended up with Jo. And there is no doubt that Gerwig is technically excellent: the cinematography is beautiful, the music is beautiful, the costuming is beautiful.

But the film gets a great deal wrong about the novel, which should matter if one thinks that a film adaptation should try and capture the animating force of its original material, even if it is impossible to illustrate every aspect. I will limit myself to three points.

First, the film gets Beth all wrong. In the novel, Beth is the heart of the story. She is warm, sweet, and gentle, the one who has a special bond with Jo and the only one who can temper and correct her. Gerwig’s Beth is an odd recluse—apparently also a concert pianist—who is abnormally childlike and random, and without the warmth that is one of the defining traits of Beth’s character. She is often called “sweet one” by her sisters, but little is done in the film to communicate her sweetness. She whines and complains when no one will join her to visit the Hummels; she speaks like a 4 year old before the horses. And, above all, the warmth between her and Jo is not felt. Jo needs Beth to be herself to temper her fire and refine it to something more true, strong, and gentle. It feels as if Gerwig must reconstruct Beth because Beth’s quiet, gentle, and demure personality is not consistent with the idea of femininity as creative self-determination that Gerwig favors. Beth can’t be herself in this film because for Gerwig Jo needs no character arc: she has nothing to learn other than to be more forceful and direct. In fact, Jo seems to be the best of womanhood, forging her creative path and destiny with no need of anyone—not her father, not Prof. Bhaer, and not even Beth, which is in striking contrast to the book.

Aunt March’s character is similarly sacrificed to Gerwig’s particular ideal of femininity. Interestingly enough, Aunt March in this film becomes the aspirational model. In contrast to the book, in Gerwig’s film, Aunt March is the sister of Mr. March. This means she is not only unmarried and rich; she also has never been married, which for Gerwig means she has freedom and means. Let’s side step the question of how an unmarried sister inherits and keeps the family wealth, and note that the real problem here is that Gerwig’s Aunt March represents the only path to freedom for the March girls: money. Are we really prepared to declare that freedom simply is access to capital? That none of the girls’ artistic endeavors mean anything unless they indeed capitalize on them? Here it seems to me particularly clear that Gerwig unknowingly submits Alcott’s work to the architecture of late-stage capitalism.

Additionally, Streep’s Aunt March is a one-dimensional character, surprisingly enough for Streep. In the novel (and in the 2017 BBC adaptation by Helen Thomas), Aunt March is a tragic figure: a widow whose only child died in her youth, and one who says stupid things, but then later realizes it and has the humility to apologize. She therefore is a character of depth—that is, in the novel, she too grows and matures, whereas Streep’s Aunt March has no arc. Streep’s Aunt March is the woman to be: nothing to learn and dependent on no one.

These first two misinterpretations are ultimately the consequence of Gerwig’s misunderstanding of the novel, or perhaps better, her imposing her own (capitalist?) framework on Alcott’s work. In Gerwig’s Little Women, feminine agency is pure self-determination, self-construction, choice, and ambition (which is agency simply in a liberal, capitalist society). This is why Jo and Amy stand out in this film, and Meg and Beth only awkwardly fit in until they ultimately fade away (figuratively and literally, respectively). Indeed, the film’s overarching framework of women as creative, ambitious, self-directing and -constructing, cannot explain the beauty, dignity, meaning, and fruitfulness of both Meg and Beth’s lives apart from choice, precisely because their lives are very hidden, normal, and for all intents and purposes, without fiery ambition. Indeed, choice is the only way to understand Meg’s character in this framework (and which Emma Watson attested to in various interviews): Meg has chosen to be a wife, and this choice gives her life’s path purpose, meaning, and reconciles it with Gerwig’s feminism. Being a wife and mother in and of itself is not what gives her life dignity and purpose—rather it is her choice to do so that does. This problem also stands out in dramatic effect in Amy’s monologue (penned for this film) of marriage as an economic institution that depersonalizes women, as well as Jo’s similar understanding of marriage. Granted, marriage is an economic institution and this aspect of it was particularly felt in this time—but it is not solely an economic institution. It is a good in and of itself, formative for the person, and, above all, the form of love itself. In promoting the almighty reign of choice, the reality of love is undermined, and, ultimately, the true dynamism and variety of femininity is undermined.

But if domestic life is worthy of art and importance, as the characters reflect on at the end of the film, it isn’t because it is something merely chosen by women. We can make poor choices after all. It is rather because there is something inherently important and meaningful about domestic life itself. But if Gerwig were to admit this, it would undermine her framework of feminine agency, freedom, and choice, equality, and thereby, the whole theme of her film. We see this in the meta ending, which, despite the popular interpretation of the novel, is not ambiguous: in Gerwig’s retelling, Jo does not marry Bhaer. Why? Because she is told that she loves him; Gerwig’s Jo would never let anyone tell her how she feels and then stake her life on that (it is interesting to note that, in the book, Jo comes to realize, on her own, that she loves Bhaer, and her family gives her the space to discover this).

And while we are on the subject, I will add one final thing that the film gets wrong: Professor Bhaer. Sure, Louisa May Alcott may have written this character with tongue in cheek to stick it to her publisher for marrying Jo off at the end of the story—i.e., instead of a young, handsome man, Jo falls for an older immigrant, who is bear-like, awkward, yet sweetly endearing—but he is still a good and important character for Jo’s arc as both a woman and a writer. In casting (the strikingly beautiful, might I say) Louis Garrell as Professor Bhaer, Gerwig plays into the cliché ending that Alcott intentionally avoided. Gerwig’s point is clear, but made without the nuance and depth that Alcott gave both the character and the ending.

Whatever the case of Alcott’s original intention, the fact is, Jo becomes a true artist when she allows herself to be affected by others: i.e., when she allows Beth’s nature to temper hers, allows herself to be guided by the wisdom of her father, and allows herself to be moved by the wisdom and love of Professor Bhaer. This isn’t to say that she isn’t creative or independent; it is to say that creativity is always the fruit of relationship. Creativity does not come out of nothing; much like virtue and fruit, it is pruned out of us, sometimes painfully, by another and by life itself. This is what Gerwig’s tale misses, and this is ultimately why it is a deeply dissatisfying adaption.

[michael-radi-the-glamorous-life]

Why Does He Endure?

Last Sunday evening was the 90th Birthday Celebration Concert for Stephen Sondheim - put together and produced by Raul Esparza, and starring a jaw-dropping list of Broadway celebrities and personalities.

Despite the technical glitches - which had Twitter abuzz with some excellent Sondheim-related humor - the evening was beautiful.

The performers had recorded their songs ahead of time from their quarantined homes and still, somehow, the music and performances were just as emotional, raw, delightful, and revealing as they might have been with more theatrical conditions.

Why?

The music, the lyrics, and the marriage of the two.

Stephen Sondheim has to be one of the most polarizing musical theatre writers, having been lauded as the most important to live and also berated for being too high-brow and difficult to perform or understand. And yet, he is known as “the master.” Not a master - and we do have many - but the master.

Why? What is this legacy? Why does Stephen Sondheim endure?

Content Dictates Form

Now, I could write an entire life-long dissertation on Stephen Sondheim and the brilliance of his work (and some of my friends and family would probably say I’ve been doing it verbally for years), but I want to boil this argument down to its basics.

In his lyric anthology Finishing The Hat, Sondheim writes of the three writing principle truisms:

"In no particular order, and to be written in stone: Content Dictates Form Less Is More God Is in the Details all in the service of Clarity without which nothing else matters."  -- Stephen Sondheim in "Finishing The Hat"

Let’s begin with “Content Dictates Form.”

What does that mean?

One of the reasons that Sondheim’s music endures - and specifically within the context of the shows for which it was written - is because of this first principle.

You cannot easily remove one of his songs to be performed outside of its show for an audience that is unaware of its context. Sure, they may enjoy the music or find the piece entertaining, but the song would not have its full impact outside of the show. And this is something that used to be common with theatre music, but (with the exception of “Send In The Clowns”) not with Sondheim’s music.

Why is this?

The content of Sondheim’s writing - the time, the setting, the plot, the storyline placement, the characters and their individual personalities, the opinions, and the messages of the piece - define the formation of the songs. Every piece of music he writes is entirely wrapped up within the world of the play, and taking it out of its context can therefore be quite difficult.

You can absolutely, out of context, have:

A group perform “Sunday” from Sunday In The Park With George

Two people duet on “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd

A devastating rendition of “Send In The Clowns” from A Little Night Music

You can do these things out of context and have them be appreciated for their craft and beauty. But something will be missed.

There are layers of enrichment that come from knowing:

“Sunday” is a musical representation of the pure beauty and tranquility that George Seurat finally feels in blocking out the chaos to finish his masterpiece painting.

“A Little Priest” is the unadulterated and insane giddiness of two brilliant, yet disturbed, people figuring out how to bring their goals into alignment - aka murder barber customers for practice and bake them into pies for money.

“Send In The Clowns” is a moment of stillness and deep self-reflection for a character who has never faced what she has always known, which is after we’ve watched her flail around her desires for two hours.

Sondheim takes these moments in the stories and crafts them into music perfectly appropriate for the situations and characters:

“Sunday” is a brief group vocal number based mostly upon quiet unison, which blossoms briefly into exuberant dissonance before returning to a quieted and major harmony in the end.

“A Little Priest” is a seven minute comedy number based in grotesque wit and delightful one-up-man-ship.

“Send In The Clowns” is a conversational, lilting, and dynamic solo ballad, which purposefully does not develop in either melody or harmonic structure.

Extraordinarily different pieces. All very Sondheim, but all utterly specific to their content.

Less Is More

I already hear some of you at home saying:

“But Michael, he’s known for his complexity and wordiness! How can Sondheim believe in Less Is More?”

Well, believing in and succeeding at are two entirely different things. And Sondheim acknowledges all over the place that he strives for these principles, knowing that he often falls short (as do we all).

But if you were to look at the songs of his that most endure - the ones that really cut to our emotional and intellectual centers - these are often the ones that follow this mantra the most.

Every Sondheim show is filled to the brim (if not overflowing) with music and lyrics, and many of these are immediately forgotten upon leaving the theater or skipped when listening to the albums. But the ones that cut through universally for performers and audiences alike tend to be wrapped up in the simplest of ideas:

Finishing The Hat

No One Is Alone

A Weekend In The Country

By The Sea

Anyone Can Whistle

Being Alive

Everybody’s Got The Right

I’m Still Here

And this is but a tiny fraction.

If you know any of these songs, their titles alone will evoke a sense of time, character, emotional state, and a wonderfully tuneful hook. And everything else about each of these songs is built specifically around these simple and effective ideas.

Do the lyrics often spin off into ambitious wordplay, complexity, and depth? Yes. But all of it centered around these simplistic and easy-to-follow ideas - he never strays.

God Is in the Details

Details come in all shapes and sizes, so it would be difficult to discuss the full breadth of the kinds of details Sondheim has mastered. There are too many.

So I will leave you with a few.

1. Correct Stress

One of the reasons performers love to sing Sondheim music - and audiences are able to take in as much information from his wordiness as they can - is because Sondheim takes great care to place words on his melodies so they are stressed precisely as we would say them.

There are many songs out there in the world that people say are difficult to sing - “it’s almost like it’s impossible to sing it well!” Usually, this is because of mis-stressed words. They’re tricky to spit out.

But when they stress is correct, you can speed through an insanely wordy line and still be entirely understandable (see “Getting Married Today” from Company).

2. Musical Development

I wrote a 10 page paper in college about the first half of one song in Sweeney Todd, dissecting the musical development and how it related to the characters and tone of the piece. And I had much more to say.

Sondheim takes great care to build a musical world, build a tune off a singular idea, and then to break his own rules only when the story calls for further movement or development. And every time he does it, it’s wildly effective.

For just a minuscule example, in Into The Woods, Little Red sings a song called “I Know Things Now,” which is the story of her encounter with the Wolf. The main melody is almost garishly major, since Red is both a kid and dreadfully annoying.

But when she gets to the part of the story where she starts feeling fear, Sondheim alters two notes in her now-familiar melody to make them minor. Just two. And then we understand her state of mind clearly.

Details.

3. Wit

A lot of people are witty. But few people are as appropriately witty as Sondheim.

It’s one thing to write your face off and be clever at any and all times - this is a great showcase of the writer and their talents. But it’s an entirely different thing to be witty in a way that’s 100% appropriate to the character, their language, and their situation.

My favorite example of this is in Sweeney Todd during “A Little Priest.”

Mrs. Lovett is a cooky delight of a character who is clever, insane, and good at wordplay and word association. However, all of this gets kicked up a huge notch during “A Little Priest” when Sweeney starts playing the word games as well. Suddenly, she has to up her game.

Prior to “A Little Priest,” in which they wittily discuss how they could cook different people into pies to sell, Mrs. Lovett would likely not have gotten to the point of being able to put together:

“Or we’ve got some Shepherd’s Pie peppered with actual shepherd on top”

A brilliantly witty line, but also perfect to Lovett in this one moment in the show.

Clarity

So why does Sondheim endure?

Whether you love him or hate him, or are somewhere in between, Sondheim’s mastery of the craft of musical theatre writing is both capturing and stirring.

His craftsmanship is the rock on which his talent sits, and it has made for some of the most exciting and interesting musical storytelling for performers and audiences alike.

Sondheim is who inspired me to do what I do. His principles guide me in everything I write. And all I can hope is that, at the end of the day, I have achieved a level of excitement and clarity that Mr. Sondheim could be proud of.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home. Cheers everyone!

[psychodollyuniverse]

Arrival is a stunning science fiction movie with deep implications for today 

Science fiction is never really about the future; it’s always about us. And Arrival, set in the barely distant future, feels like a movie tailor-made for 2016, dropping into theaters mere days after the most explosive election in most of the American electorate’s memory.

But the story Arrival is based on — the award-winning novella Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang — was published in 1998, almost two decades ago, which indicates its central themes were brewing long before this year. Arrival is much more concerned with deep truths about language, imagination, and human relationships than any one political moment.

Not only that, but Arrival is one of the best movies of the year, a moving, gripping film with startling twists and imagery. It deserves serious treatment as a work of art.

The strains of Max Richter’s "On the Nature of Daylight" play over the opening shots of Arrival, which is the first clue for what’s about to unfold: that particular track is ubiquitous in the movies (I can count at least six or seven films that use it, including Shutter Island and this year’s The Innocents) and is, by my reckoning, the saddest song in the world.

The bittersweet feeling instantly settles over the whole film, like the last hour of twilight. Quickly we learn that Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) has suffered an unthinkable loss, and that functions as a prelude to the story: One day, a series of enormous pod-shaped crafts land all over earth, hovering just above the ground in 12 locations around the world. Nobody knows why. And nothing happens.

As world governments struggle to sort out what this means — and as the people of those countries react by looting, joining cults, even conducting mass suicides — Dr. Banks gets a visit from military intelligence, in the form of Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), requesting her assistance as an expert linguist in investigating and attempting to communicate with whatever intelligence is behind the landing. She arrives at the site with Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), a leading quantum physicist, to start the mission. With help from a cynical Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), they suit up and enter the craft to see if they can make contact.

It’s best not to say much more about the plot, except that it is pure pleasure to feel it unfold. The most visionary film yet from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario) and scripted by horror screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Lights Out), its pacing is slower than you’d expect from an alien-invasion film, almost sparse. For a movie with so many complicated ideas, it doesn’t waste any more time on exposition than is absolutely necessary. Arrival is serious and smartly crafted, shifting around like a Rubik’s cube in the hand of a savant, nothing quite making sense until all the pieces suddenly come together. I heard gasps in the theater.

The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other.

For instance, there is substantial evidence that a person doesn’t really see (or perhaps "perceive") a color until their vocabulary contains a word, attached to meaning, that distinguishes it from other colors. All yellows are not alike, but without the need to distinguish between yellows and the linguistic tools to do so, people just see yellow. A color specialist at a paint manufacturer, however, can distinguish between virtually hundreds of colors of white. (Go check out the paint chip aisle at Home Depot if you’re skeptical.)

Or consider the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings, but can only be articulated precisely in some culture. We might intuitively "feel" the emotion, but without the word to describe it we’re inclined to lump the emotion in with another under the same heading. Once we develop the linguistic term for it, though, we can describe it and feel it as distinct from other shades of adjacent emotions.

These are simple examples, and I don’t mean to suggest that the world itself is different for people from different cultures. But I do mean to suggest that reality — what we perceive as comprising the facts of existence — takes on a different shape depending on the linguistic tools we use to describe it.

Adopting this framework doesn’t necessarily mean any of us are more correct than others about the nature of reality (though that certainly may be true). Instead, we are doing our best to describe reality as we see it, as we imagine it to be. This is the challenge of translation, and why literal translations that Google can perform don’t go beyond basic sentences. Learning a new language at first is just about collecting a new vocabulary and an alternate grammar — here is the word for chair, here is the word for love, here’s how to make a sentence — but eventually, as any bilingual person can attest, it becomes about imagining and perceiving the world differently.

This is the basic insight of Arrival: That if we were to encounter a culture so radically different from our own that simple matters we take for granted as part of the world as it is were radically shifted, we could not simply gather data, sort out grammar, and make conclusions. We’d have to either absorb a different way of seeing, despite our fear, or risk everything.

To underline the point, Dr. Banks and the entire operation are constantly experiencing breakdowns in communication within the team and with teams in other parts of the world, who aren’t sure whether the information they glean from their own visits to pods should be kept proprietary or shared.

It’s not hard to see where this is going, I imagine — something about how if we want to empathize with each other we need to talk to one another, and that’s the way the human race will survive.

And, sure.

But Arrival also layers in some important secondary notes that add nuance to that easy takeaway. Because it’s not just deciphering the words that someone else is saying that’s important: It’s the whole framework that determines how those words are being pinned to meaning. We can technically speak the same language, but functionally be miles apart.

n the film, one character notes that if we were to communicate in the language of chess — which operates in the framework of battles and wars — rather than, say, the language of English, which is bent toward the expression of emotions and ideas, then what we actually say and do would shift significantly. That is, the prevailing metaphor for how beings interact with each other and the world is different. (Some philosophers speak of this as "language games.")

This matters for the film’s plot, but more broadly — since this is sci-fi, and therefore actually about us — it has implications. Language isn’t just about understanding how to say things to someone and ascribe meaning to what comes back. Language has consequences. Embedded in words and grammar is action, because the metaphors that we use as we try to make sense of the world tell us what to do next. They act like little roadmaps.

You have empathized with someone not when you hear the words they’re saying, but when you begin to ascertain what metaphors make them tick, and where that conflicts or agrees with your own. I found myself thinking a lot about this reading Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers In Their Own Land, which is up for a National Book Award this year and describes the overarching metaphors (Hochschild calls them "deep stories") that discrete groups of Americans — in this case, West Coast urban liberals and Louisiana rural Tea Partiers — use to make sense of the world. She isn’t trying to explain anything away. She’s trying to figure out what causes people to walk in such drastically different directions and hold views that befuddle their fellow citizens.

Part of the challenge of pluralism is that we’re not just walking around with different ideas in our heads, but with entirely different maps for getting from point A to Z, with different roadblocks on them and different recommendations for which road is the best one. Our A's and Z's don’t even match. We don’t even realize that our own maps are missing pieces that others have.

Presumably one of these maps is better than the others, but we haven’t agreed how we would decide. So we just keep smacking into one another going in opposite directions down the same highway.

Arrival takes off from this insight in an undeniably sci-fi direction that is a little brain-bending, improbable in the best way. But it makes a strong case that communication, not battle or combat, is the only way to avoid destroying ourselves. Communication means not just wrapping our heads around terms we use but the actual framework through which we perceive reality.

And that is really hard. I don’t know how to fix it.

In the meantime, though, good movies are somewhere to start. Luckily Arrival is a tremendously well-designed film, with complicated and unpredictable visuals that embody the main point. Nothing flashy or explosive; in some ways, I found myself thinking of 1970s science-fiction films, or the best parts of Danny Boyle’s 2007 Sunshine, which grounded its humanist story in deep quiet.

The movie concludes on a different note from the linguistic one — one much more related to loss and a wistful question about life and risk. This may be Arrival’s biggest weakness; the emotional punch of the ending is lessened a bit because it feels a little rushed.

But even that conclusion loops back to the possibilities of the reshaped human imagination. And this week, especially, you don’t need to talk to an alien to see why that’s something we need.

from: https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/11/11

.

[eturni]

Day 13 - Gift wrap

Day 13 of @drawlight​​ ‘s advent calendar challenge. https://drawlight.tumblr.com/post/189391982184/drawlight-drawlight-aziraphale-crowley-for Today is technically wrapping paper. Instead it’s gift wrap as there’s an early form of wrapping presents in cloth called furoshiki. Featuring a hot spring in the winter, a female presenting Aziraphale and a writer who is just so tired guys.

I’m travelling all day today so I wanted to get it posted but set straight to writing after getting finished working overnight counting votes. Please either forgive or point out any glaring errors.

“You know I am absolutely not getting out until spring, right angel?” Crowley groused as he lowered himself into a sinfully warm hot spring with a low groan of relief. There were dozens upon dozens of yuzu floating in the water; filling the air with the rich tart scent. That and the mixture of heat and steam were almost enough to make Crowley forgive Aziraphale for deciding that a crowded onsen halfway up a mountain in the middle of winter would be a god place to bring a demon with a serpent aspect for a meeting.

Almost.

As it was he planned to grouse and bitch as well as Aziraphale himself until he felt suitably mollified or at least got an apology. Then he would go find the gift that he had left with his clothes, carefully wrapped in furoshiki cloth and kept cool and dry away from the spring, just to watch the angel light up from within and no doubt immediately give in to his hedonistic tendencies.

He soon found his sunglasses fogged up and absently expended a minor miracle to keep them clear while he was here. Even the new clarity didn’t reveal Aziraphale to him. At least the angel had blessedly chosen a suitably busy spot that they could blend in to a degree. They might stick out like a sore thumb really but most angels and demons likely didn’t have enough clue about humans to notice the difference.

It made it all the more alarming that he hadn’t spotted Aziraphale yet. He could definitely get the sense that the other was here.

“Aziraphale?”

Startled by the very sudden and obvious accent a young man next to Crowley spun around. Then craned his neck a little upwards. “Over there. I think.” He offered, a slightly nervous smile that Crowley brushed off. Even with his eyes covered humans often somehow knew that there was something unsafe about him.

“Come on what the heaven are you pla-”

The demon all but froze in the water, mouth going a little dry as the heat of the water and the air around him suddenly became so much more noticeable. He thought he’d been prepared for this. He was not prepared at all for Aziraphale to have chosen a more feminine presentation. Even in a more masculine corporation Aziraphale was softness and gentle rolling hills. Feminine she’s all curves with barely a hint of a hard edge on her and thankfully, blessedly, terribly covered from the chest down by the water.

Continue reading on AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638803/chapters/51964078 or:

Crowley could see, if he ventured. He could glance below the rippling water and drink up what he found there. He wouldn’t survive it, like taking in holy water willingly, would be changed forever and unable to go back. He kept his gaze up; where slightly longer hair just grazed the edges of shoulders. Pure white like a halo in the light coming down from the mountain.

“Oh, Crowley!” The voice tipped a little higher than usual and Crowley felt his own throat constrict. The exclamation sounded almost breathy with the new voice and Crowley wondered that he might discorporate or worse if he didn’t get his thoughts under control. “I’m so glad you could make it. Sorry. I was just speaking with this gentleman here about procuring an early copy of the Tale of Genji. You see it’s the most wonderful story-”

Crowley felt himself smile despite the cold outside and despite his insistence that he would be mad as hell about it. There was something about listening to Aziraphale go on about books that made him feel terribly fond and he almost lost track of the conversation just letting the lilt of her voice wash over the core of him.

“Are you even paying attention?” Finally came through. Aziraphale sat there with a single eyebrow raised and a pout to her lips that Crowley desperately wanted to press a thumb against, just to watch the water press its sheen there.

“Yeah just, you were going on a bit and did you have business you wanted to discuss?” He swallowed down the uncertainty and moved up a little closer to Aziraphale regardless, watching the angel narrow her eyes and continue to rest in the water with an air that, while equally haughty as a man, had some edge to it in a more feminine corporation that gave Crowley pause.

Indeed, though Aziraphale had taken to Japan like -whichever animal takes well to water-  there was evidently a certain amount of distance that she commanded from those around her.

Crowley had no way of knowing it at that precise moment but it was partially because the angel’s pale skin and paler hair had very nearly had her mistaken for a yuki-onna recently. While on closer inspection she was clearly just a very odd sort of foreigner there was still a certain degree of anxiety that her presence caused over winter.

“Well yes. I had rather hoped we could take in some of the more traditional activities first but if you are going to be a bother about it.”

Crowley was already scrambling for a ‘no bother at all, just wondering’ or something of the like when Aziraphale stood and the world tipped on its axis threatening to buck the demon off. He had the hysterical thought for just a moment that he should grab something to stop himself falling off but the only thing close to him were bobbing yuzu and soft thick <i>thighs</i> and the thought alone stopped Crowley from being able to think at all.

When reason returned to him Aziraphale was already gently folding a towel over herself; furoshiki gift wrap over a present Crowley didn’t deserve and wouldn’t dare ask for but desperately coveted nonetheless.

“Now, there’s a wonderful tea house nearby that we can certainly sit in to discuss business. It is, perhaps, just as busy but they do offer private rooms for sensitive matters.”

A sound caught in Crowley’s throat that tried to be an assent but just wrapped itself around a few random consonants and hoped for the best. He was following Aziraphale’s pointed tilt of the head before he had time to remember that the air was frigid and he’d been in a bath. Luckily a towel was pressed into his hands by someone thinking a lot more pragmatically than his poor, lust-addled brain could even try to. She even did him the favour of rerouting him to the men’s area when he was about to follow her blindly out of the baths.

All the time in the world to try and press those images, and reactions, down would never be enough so it was unsurprising that Crowley remained mute and pliable when Aziraphale met him outside of the establishment.

Her kimono had been hand made at some point while she was here and somehow having more of her skin covered under more layers only made Crowley think of how slow he could take the unwrapping if he ever dared to reach out and try. If he could ever be allowed.

Instead he allowed himself to be led and shown where to sit and offered tea. Aziraphale was already halfway through explaining why she needed a hand on this particular mission when Crowley finally remembered his gift to her.

He pulled it from his sleeve, a box wrapped in delicate, colourful fabric with a little knot at the top that Aziraphale deftly undid with one hand as she spoke, barely looking.

Crowley knew without a doubt that she could undo him just as easily and it punched the breath from his lungs.

“Oh Crowley how very thoughtful, they’ll go perfectly with the tea.” The bright smile at the array of mochi was indeed everything Crowley hoped it would be but he still shrugged a little as though to deny he’d put much thought into it at all. “You’re really very kind when you want to be.” The smile lost some of it’s brightness but only grew in warmth as Aziraphale slid the gift-wrap cloth out from under the box and methodically folded it with a  precision and slowness that made Crowley quake as her fingers moved along the fabric.

“Alright, don’t go shouting it to-”

“There’s nobody here to shout it to. For now we’re safe enough, even with whatever this is. Do try to relax just for now. There’s a dear.”

Crowley nodded and picked up his tea, not caring that it scalded him as he took a drink and watched, helplessly transfixed, as Aziraphale ever so gently brushed the furoshiki against her cheek before reverently tucking it into her own sleeve. Crowley could see where it grazed wrist and inner arm as it was put away and had to close his eyes against the thought of following the path with hungry lips.

Years later he would find the cloth again among Aziraphale’s treasures hidden away in a room of the bookshop that was scarcely used and that even Crowley had not been allowed in until the Apocalypse had been averted.

He might even hope, though he couldn’t know if he was correct, that Aziraphale might occasionally take it out to brush against his skin and remember a cold Touji day part way up a mountain. He most certainly would never get the courage to ask and so the truth of the matter lies only with a very tight-lipped angel.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

Annotations for “What the hell is a bodhisattva?”

Wow, can’t believe I’ve written more about Buddhism for this frickin’ JJBA fic than I have in seven years of graduate school in Japanese religion. Sometimes you want to make a joke that’s simultaneously so funny and so obscure that you have to write like 20k in order for people to understand it.

I’ve tried to write annotations only for things that aren’t explained sufficiently within the fic, otherwise we’d all be here for the rest of our lives.  Feel free to ask about anything that isn’t annotated or if you have further questions about things that are!  

(Link to the fic if you’ve somehow managed to accidentally stumble on this post.)

OVERALL:

The Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha - the Three Jewels, in which Buddhist practitioners are supposed to take refuge.  They refer to the Buddha (probably self-explanatory), the teachings of the Buddha, and the community of Buddhist practitioners respectively.  You may notice some parallels in chapter content.

CHAPTER ONE:

Jizō - a bodhisattva who is commonly depicted as the guardian of travelers and also the dead, especially dead children.  There are a lot of statues of him on roadsides in Japan, as well as on temple grounds.  Recurring motif in my SDC-related fics for hopefully obvious reasons.

Sōka Gakkai - a Buddhist new religious movement, (in)famous in the postwar period for their aggressive proselytization and conversion tactics.

Daikokuten - one of the seven gods of good fortune.  Frequently enshrined as a household deity.

Inari - a Shinto deity commonly associated with foxes.  It’s not uncommon for businesses (including family businesses) to have their own small Inari shrines.

sects of Buddhism - Buddhism in Japan is divided into sects (denominations of Christianity aren’t a bad comparison point)--the basic tenets are the same from sect to sect, but specific teachings, practices, or emphases may vary.  Most families in Japan are affiliated (due to complex historical factors that aren’t worth getting into here) with a particular temple (which in turn belongs to a sect), so they rely on the temple priests for any rites they may need and may have a plot for the family grave in the temple graveyard.  It is not uncommon for people to not know which sect they are affiliated with until a family member dies and they suddenly have to interact with the temple (see “funeral Buddhism”).  Kakyoin’s family is Shingon, which is an esoteric sect known for their complicated cosmology and rituals.  Jotaro’s family is Sōtō (he guessed wrong! Sorry, Jotaro!), a Zen sect that’s much more focused on gaining enlightenment through physical practices like meditation.  (“Zen” isn’t a sect in Japan--it actually refers to a group of sects that have some major teachings in common.  Buddhism: it’s complicated!)  Sōtō is a much later import to Japan than Shingon, and was also scoffed at a bit by established sects for being more populist and accessible.  Hopefully you see the joke here.

Senkōji - this sounds like a real temple name (there are temples called Senkōji), but is also a play on the fact that senkō is the Japanese word for incense and -ji is one of the endings for temples.  Kakyoin: Oh, so your family belongs to Incense Temple?  Jotaro: That sounds like it could be correct.

kōan - a story, dialogue, or question used to provoke doubt in Zen practitioners and test their progress toward enlightenment.  You could think of them as Buddhist riddles if you want to be really reductive.  (Yes, Kakyoin tests Jotaro’s knowledge of Buddhism by bringing up a thing used to test practitioners.  I warned you that these jokes were niche.)  Kōan are most commonly associated with the Rinzai sect in Japan, although other sects use them as well.  One of the most famous kōan, which Kakyoin references here, involves a student asking a master if the dog has a buddha-nature (more commonly referred to as the mu kōan).

“funeral Buddhism” - in Japan, the main thing people go to Buddhist temples for these days is funeral services or other rites of remembrance (grave visits, rites marking the anniversaries of the deaths of family members, etc.), which has led to Buddhism being identified pretty closely with death and mourning.  Thus, Buddhism in Japan is sometimes referred to as “funeral Buddhism,” although there’s a lot of debate among scholars about how helpful that term actually is.  Jotaro only associating Buddhism with funerals and death and knowing nothing about doctrine or cosmology is not unusual.

honji suijaku - a complicated medieval Buddhist theory identifying native/non-Buddhist Japanese deities with Buddhist deities by arguing that the non-Buddhist deities were actually Buddhist deities that had taken alternate forms as expedient means (see explanation of that below).  All of the combinations Kakyoin names are real combinations from the medieval period.  Enma is the king of hell and the judge of the dead, so Kakyoin thinks it’s a little strange for Jizō to be identified with him, since Jizō is supposed to save the dead from hell.  Jotaro was right--Amaterasu is a Shinto deity (the sun goddess, to be specific).  Dainichi is a celestial buddha who plays an important role in Shingon.  Honji suijaku is absolutely not common knowledge for most contemporary practitioners of Japanese Buddhism, so this is the point where Kakyoin starts really trolling Jotaro with his questions and showing off his weirdly specialized knowledge (not that Jotaro can tell).

Amida - a buddha known for his vow to save anyone who sincerely calls out to him for help (usually through the phrase “namu Amida butsu” which means “hail Amida buddha”).  The True Pure Land sect, which Jotaro’s neighbor, Mrs. Watanabe, belongs to, emphasizes the concept of “other power,” i.e. relying on something outside of yourself (Amida, in this case) for salvation.  Kakyoin’s scorn for Amida worship is hilarious and pretentious, since his opinions parallel those of established Buddhist groups (including Shingon) in the medieval period, who trash talked Pure Land Buddhism (focused on Amida worship) for being too populist and accessible.  Are you sensing a theme here?  Kakyoin is a Buddhist elitist with a lot of knowledge of medieval esoteric Buddhism specifically.

buddhas are(n’t) ghosts - Jotaro’s confusion comes from the fact that one way to refer to the spirits of the dead in Japanese is “buddhas” (仏; hotoke).  Additionally, although the historical Buddha (Shakyamuni) is the most famous, different sects of Buddhism imagine different numbers of buddhas--ranging from one (the historical buddha and no one else) to incalculable numbers of buddhas who have existed, do exist, and are yet to come.

Kannon - all Kannon facts offered by Kakyoin and Avdol are true!  Kannon really is the bodhisattva of compassion.  Avalokitesvara (Kannon’s name in Sanskrit) is male (as all bodhisattvas are), but bodhisattvas are frequently depicted as androgynous.  In China, Guanyin (Avalokitesvara’s name in Chinese) started being depicted not as androgynously feminine but as female, which has led to Guanyin being primarily depicted as female and Kannon as almost always depicted as female.  Kakyoin’s interpretation of Kannon makes sense/is supportable, but is definitely uncommon (people tend to focus on the compassion bit rather than the historical/social circumstances), thus Avdol’s reaction.  This is a common theme in Kakyoin’s Buddhism Opinions--he tends to latch on to historical/intellectual details rather than emotive/experiential ones.

expedient means - another complicated one, but basically the idea of using methods or techniques that fit the situation (rather than ones that are 100% “true” or “correct”) to gain enlightenment or guide others to enlightenment.  You could think of it as interim measures to get people farther along the path, or maybe an “ends justify the means” mentality.  Kakyoin is interpreting it as a sort of social flexibility, which is not an unheard of interpretation but definitely not the most common one.  Kakyoin’s interpretation comes from a number of stories in which bodhisattvas transform into/disguise themselves as different people in order to guide humans farther along the path--by becoming an old woman in need of assistance, for example, who teaches someone Buddhist values, or by manifesting as a known, geographically-specific deity who can better spread the teachings of the Buddha to suspicious locals (see honji suijaku).  In this fic, expedient means is leveraged in three ways: A. Kakyoin thinks of the way he engages with people as expedient means (becoming whatever he needs to be for the situation), B. you could technically count Kakyoin’s infodumping about Buddhism at Jotaro as expedient means (in the traditional sense of getting someone farther along the path) as he does manage to get him interested in learning more about Buddhism by doing it, and C. both Jotaro and Kakyoin are using Buddhism as expedient means (an interim measure) to get closer to each other.  Wow, Queenie, glad to see that you’re using your graduate education for good and not evil.

CHAPTER TWO:

Wisdom Kings - a type of guardian of the dharma (see explanation below).  Please imagine a post-credits scene in which Jotaro decides that Fudō Myōō is the best Wisdom King and Kakyoin is once more disappointed by how stereotypical his boyfriend is.

combinatory worship - practices that mix together what we now call “Shinto” practices and “Buddhist” practices.  The two religious strains were less distinct pre-1871.  See honji suijaku.  Again, this is not common knowledge for contemporary practitioners of Japanese Buddhism; Kakyoin has very clearly done a lot of reading on pre-modern Buddhism.

Kasuga Shrine - a famous shrine complex in Nara known for combinatory worship in the ancient and medieval periods.  It’s now a “pure” Shinto site, but did not used to be.  Here’s one of the famous Kasuga mandala, in which Buddhist deities are depicted floating in the sky over the shrine grounds (see honji suijaku).  Now mainly famous as a tourist destination in a park that is populated by wild deer (who are messengers of the god of Kasuga and thus are not allowed to be harmed).  The deer are a giant pain, since they’re not scared of people and will eat anything.

Four Noble Truths - extremely simplified: 1. Existence is suffering. 2. Suffering is caused by attachment. 3. However, you can escape by severing attachment.  4. You do that via Buddhist practice.  On one hand, it absolutely does not make sense to have a favorite of the Four Noble Truths (Kakyoin is trolling Jotaro real hard)--on the other hand, Kakyoin would absolutely have a favorite of the Four Noble Truths.  His favorite is the third, if you need a refresher.  (If you haven’t already figured it out, isolation and hope are the two big themes for Kakyoin’s Buddhism Opinions.)

a biography of the Buddha cannot save you - Buddhism has transformed so much in its spread throughout Asia that different traditions may look completely different--one of the most important sacred texts in East Asian Buddhism (The Lotus Sutra) is an apocryphal text that was probably written in China, for example, so it straight up doesn’t exist in Southeast Asian Buddhism.  Trying to understand Japanese Buddhism by reading a biography of the Buddha would be like trying to understand American megachurches by reading a biography of Jesus.

the six realms of existence - all facts offered by both Jotaro and Kakyoin are true!  The six realms are pretty self-explanatory, I think, other than the difference between the asuras (sometimes translated “demigods”) and the gods.  Jotaro isn’t wrong that the main difference between them is often summarized as the asura fighting all the time and being really mad while the gods just chill out and have a great time.  Being reborn as a human is often considered the best, because it’s the easiest realm to achieve enlightenment from, since you’re not being distracted by extreme suffering or what an orgiastically pleasant time you’re having.  All of the realms are still ultimately part of samsara (the cycle of death and rebirth), though, so you want to get out of them altogether, since even if you wind up being born as a god, eventually you’ll die and be reborn in another realm.  And, yes, knowing things about both Buddhism and the JJBA canon should make you feel fear in your heart.  (JJBA feels intensely cyclical to me in general, and samsara is a cycle by definition.)

CHAPTER THREE:

Kakyoin - Kakyoin really was the name of a Shugendō temple (located in Sendai) that was destroyed during the religious reforms in the 1870s.  Kakyoin the character is named after the neighborhood of Sendai, which is in turn named after the temple.  I assume that, due to geographical proximity, Kakyoin’s family is affiliated with (and Kakyoin’s great-grandfather went to work at) Jōzenji, which in real life was also destroyed in the 1870s but still exists as of 1999 in the JJBA canon.  Jōzenji, by the way, was a Shingon temple.  Please imagine me writing this fic with a massive conspiracy board, because that’s absolutely what happened.

Shugendō - a syncretic ascetic tradition that grew out of a combination of Buddhism, Shinto, and beliefs surrounding mountains as sacred sites.  It was suppressed by the Japanese government in the 1870s, as it “inappropriately” mixed Buddhism and Shinto and was seen as superstitious and backward.  Many of its temples were either destroyed (as in the case of Kakyoin) or repurposed into “pure” Shinto or Buddhist sites.  Kakyoin is correct that many Shugendō priests were given the option to become either Shinto or Buddhist priests or become lay people.  Shugendō has been revived in the post-war period as a religion separate from both Buddhism and Shinto (although it shares beliefs and practices with both of them).

How could Kakyoin’s great-grandfather be a Buddhist priest but also have a family? - starting in the 1870s, Buddhist clergy were officially allowed to eat meat and consume alcohol, grow their hair out, and get married.  (Some secretly--or not so secretly--had families before then, but it was technically illegal in all but one sect, although inconsistently persecuted.)  As a result, the majority of Buddhist clergy in contemporary Japan are not celibate (although some are), and many temples are operated by priests from the same familial lineage.  Shugendō has never had a celibacy requirement for its clergy.

guardian of the dharma (dharmapala) - a type of wrathful god that defends Buddhism from dangers.  They’re highly venerated in both Shingon and Shugendō, thus Kakyoin’s familiarity with them growing up.  Honestly?  This wasn’t a great guess on Kakyoin’s part, since the most famous of the dharmapala in Japan looks like this.  He was six at the time, though, so let’s not be too mean about it.

Kūkai (also known as Kōbō Daishi) - the founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism in Japan.  Naming in Buddhism is too complicated to get into here, but the second name is a posthumous honorific name.  He’s associated with a variety of sacred sites, including one of the most popular pilgrimage routes in Japan--the eighty-eight temple pilgrimage in Shikoku.  May or may not be pretty strong.

Buddhist robes - for your reference, here’s a portrait of Kūkai and here’s what a contemporary Shingon monk looks like.  Jotaro is picturing a Sōtō monk, who looks more like this.  Also here is a recent series of memes about Buddhist robes; this has nothing to do with the fic but they did make me laugh a lot.

Tenmei - this fic brought to you by me seeing Kakyoin Tenmei and shouting, “THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE NAME OF A BUDDHIST MONK; ARAKI, WHAT THE FRICK.”  Most names in Japanese are read with the kun’yomi (the “Japanese” reading) whereas Buddhist names are read with the on’yomi (the “Chinese” reading, used for compound words)--“Noriaki” is the kun’yomi of 典明 whereas “Tenmei” is the on’yomi.

shichi-go-san - a coming-of-age ritual (performed at Shinto shrines) for children age three, boys age five, and girls age seven.  The name is literally “seven-five-three.”

Maitreya - all facts offered by Kakyoin are true!  Maitreya (called Miroku in Japanese, but Kakyoin is being pretentious and using the Sanskrit) is the buddha to come.  We are currently in the last of the three ages, with each age being worse and more degenerate than the one before as the teachings of the Buddha become harder and harder to access, achieving enlightenment becomes increasingly impossible, and the world is visited by natural disasters.  By the Japanese count, the last age started in 1052 CE!  But the last age is supposed to go on for 10,000 years, so we’ve still got a while to go.  Maitreya is thus a figure of both great fear (his coming will be heralded by the end of the world) and great hope (he’ll bring an end to the last age and usher in a new age of prosperity), so he felt like a fitting choice for Kakyoin (and a fitting way to close out the fic).

Agyō and Ungyō - guardians of Buddhism who appear in sets of two (together they’re called the Niō), usually protecting temple gates.  Their names (literally “a-form” and “un-form”) come from the shapes of their mouths, one open (a) and one closed (un).  Image here.  Hopefully you see the joke here.

[talihahiman-blog]

Finding Home and Starting a Blog

All my life I have been a curious, questioning seeker of Truth.

I think most people encounter a severe period of Questioning in their lives before they fall back or abandon their quest and resign to stop even thinking about it. But some, like me, remaining searching for a Truth that seems immutable. Finally, Alhamdulillah, I feel like I have found that Truth. And its name is Islam.

This is not a discovery that I happened upon in an instant: there was no thunderbolt from the sky demanding I give myself to it, no massive horde trying to bend me into shape, no men with knives at my throat denouncing me for what I was; no angel hovering beside my pillow, no giant billboards on the highway trying to point me where it thought I should go, no conversion school telling me I was inherently flawed.

This discovery came from a lifetime of asking questions, not accepting vague, mediocre and uninformed answers, the realization that the only way I would find the right answers was to embark on exploring matters of the sacred on my own, and then reading, researching and experiencing first-hand several different paths to the Ultimate. 

Each path taught me profound lessons about myself and my relationship with God; each brought me closer to Him and helped clarify what was really important to me. 

Last year, in particular, after an unexpected end to my marriage, going completely broke, homeless and feeling worthless, I found myself lying on the floor of my greataunt’s bedroom one February evening, still alive after two suicide attempts in one night, with an acceptance that if I was still alive, it was because God willed it.

“You have to show me why You’re not letting me leave,” I demanded of God. “Clearly You’re keeping me here. And I don’t know why. I still don’t even know You like I want to. I have nothing left. I have no will to stay. I’d leave now with no regret if You just let me. But if You won’t let me go, then show me why You want me to stay.” It was a moment of utter surrender.

The answer was not immediate. 

There was a period of three months from that moment where I felt like I was in limbo. No answers, no direction.

In March I decided to move back with my family in Trinidad indefinitely to let the situation and my demand incubate. Slowly, I felt an urging in my heart to come back to NYC and start over, completely alone. It was not at the only option by any means - but it was the craziest possible option. I had nowhere to go, no money, no family here. Yet I was completely homesick. I never understood homesickness was an actual thing until I was in the place that I was born and raised in surrounded by my entire family, and all I could think about was NYC! 

To everyone else - and, admittedly, to even myself - it seemed as if I were jumping into shark-infested waters when I could barely even swim, but somehow I understood that coming back would be the catalyst for God’s answers to my sincere plea that February.

By mid-May, I used the money I saved from working in Trinidad to buy myself a plane ticket back to NYC on June 2. Getting off the plane with nothing but one suitcase and a carry on bag of belongings and marching into the homeless shelter, I steeled myself with faith that if God was bringing me back, He would get me through anything that life could possibly throw my way.

So began the most incredible turnaround of my life.

I was faced with trial after trial, and in oftentimes what appeared to be impossible situations, He always showed up. On time. I learned in a very tangible, undeniable way that a true relationship with God was not simply talking to Him, but an active conversation with Him: you talk, you ask, you explain - then you shut up, you watch and you listen. 

The answer is not always in obvious places.

For most of the year, I also identified as Hindu if anyone asked, and I hated when people asked because it never felt like it correct answer, which I found common to all to all of the religions I involved myself in at some point or the other. While the nature of the missing pieces would change, something was still missing anyway.

As a major world religion, naturally Islam was on my to-do list of religions to learn more about, but l thought that the only thing we might have in common is my belief that Jesus was a prophet and not the Messiah. The end! After all, it was a war religion that suppressed women, right? And they couldn’t listen to music, right? And they could only eat food from halal places, right? And you had to take a Muslim name! Right?! 

And how could I forget: a Muslim group in Trinidad known as the Jamaat-Al-Muslimeen was responsible for an attempted coup d’etat in 1990 that resulted in 24 deaths, severe injuries to the President of the country, and my birth merely three years later meant constantly hearing the story of the “bad Muslim guys” even long before 9/11. Then 9/11. Then ISIS. 

Everywhere I turned the narrative was the same: Islam is oppressive and dangerous. And living in NYC, where the new World Trade Center stands tall reminding us of the tragedy that befell this city and the world before it, it also reminded us constantly of that running narrative. 

How could I ever be one of them? 

Also as a languages enthusiast who loves spending time listening to different things from around the world, I suddenly started to stumble upon several Arabic and English Islamic songs that I really loved and listened to on a regular basis, moved, sometimes to tears, by the beauty of them and pure sense of joy, connection, and devotion contained within them. 

While there were many such songs which captivated me at that time, these two became very special to me:

Listening to these, I couldn’t help but think, “Perhaps we’ve got this Muslim thing all wrong.” 

But I couldn’t seem to get past that point.

It turned out that I started a new job this year, and in doing so found myself a close friend in a Bengali-American Muslimah from a neighboring department. She did not wear hijab nor was fussy about her shirt necklines, but was outspoken about her belief in Allah (SWT) and her excitement about Ramadan, as well as the role that Islam played (and continues to play) in her choices. For the first time, I had a wonderful Muslim woman in my inner circle who was my age, so relatable and so...normal. 

Almost like instinct, I began asking her to tell me more about her beliefs and was fascinated to hear of her stories about the Jinn and why Ramadan is important. Even though I was raised in a country where Muslims were very visible and Ramadan was celebrated visibly, I discovered through conversations with her that even Ramadan was not what I thought it was - and it was certainly more than just getting bags of yummy treats on Eid. (Barfi, kurma and gulab jamun, anyone?)

From the little I had learned through my new friend and my quickly-expanding catalog of saved Islamic songs on YouTube and Spotify, my interest grew quickly about what Islam really said about the big questions. Shortly before Ramadan, another new hire at our organization came in - she was my age, proud feminist, fresh out of breaking up with her neglectful boyfriend, a real move-maker and unapologetically herself. We, too, became instant friends and quickly found ourselves contemplating modern religious thought and female empowerment. She was also an Arab-American Hijabi.

Neither of these new Muslimah friends tried to tell me that I should be like them, but they were both excited to hear of my interest in Islam, and both proud talk to me about their understanding of and experiences in it. I was being pointed in one direction by God now, and it would have been stupid of me to ignore it.

As the days counted down to Ramadan and conversations continued, it felt very natural to decide that for Ramadan this year, I would sincerely undertake to learn about Islam with an open mind. I had technically already started, and I was surrounded by equally open-minded people who would support me along the way - it finally was the right time. I told my friends of my intent to learn for Ramadan but did not tell them that I would also fast.

I started off Ramadan reading the Quran on my phone telling myself I’d just get the gist of it, but after a week it was inadequate - there was so much I wanted to reread and explore that I needed the real thing in my hands. I desperately wanted to let my mind dance between its pages and get lost in it, find gems and other surprises and come back out with a new understanding. After scouring bookstores for the right first* Quran, I decided on a translation by Tarif Khalidi.

 *I already suspected at that point that this one would only be an introduction and that I would desire to read more ‘advanced’ translations and even the original text in Arabic after having a good initial understanding it in English, and this translation struck me as a beautiful cross between capturing not just the meaning but also the poetic and linguistic beauty of the original Arabic.

Ten days into Ramadan, on the second day with my new Quran, one thing was as clear as day: everything that was portrayed to me about Islam was wrong. All of it. The media and sociopolitical landscape is riddled with severe misconceptions and abuse of Islam, and I was completely unprepared for how tainted and ignorant the media perception is when I began to see what it is really is. Seeing past the misinformation and blatant lies being told, I knew that sharing the actual beliefs of Islam with others would become a very important task for me, even if I did not embrace it as my own.

There was also another issue I was praying about in the past few weeks and keeping myself open to answers for, and on the following day the answer came to me in the form of a particular episode of a podcast. I was just scrolling through and clicking on random things to listen to at work instead of my regular playlists to get me through the day, and although I’d been listening to such podcasts of several days at that point, that one was the one that confirmed to me that God was truly listening. Call it convenient confirmation bias if you will - that doesn’t change the fact that it was a direct answer. 

I found myself suspended in time, awestruck and understanding in a different way from any path I had ventured into before that this was it. 

It was what I’ve been on the hunt for my entire life. Everything I’ve done, felt, questioned, experienced, hoped for, run from, aspired toward and battled with myself about converged into that moment. I didn’t know precisely what I was looking for...until I found it.

Allah (SWT) spoke. My heart understood. And without even knowing it then, I accepted it.

I finally found my spiritual home. I am a Muslim. 

Up until now, my travels led me to places that were interesting and useful, but still hollow and incomplete. For the first time, I feel whole.

And so here I am on the 14th day of Ramadan, feeling like simultaneously everything is different yet the same. I have not officially taken Shahada with witnesses, but I know that the real moment when I became Muslim has already happened. It was on that eleventh day on work when time stood still, and everything became clear. 

There are still two more weeks left in Ramadan, and I’m not sure yet if I’d like to take Shahada on Eid, as I will be spending it with my Beng-Am Muslimah friend from work and her family again, and I think that would be a wonderful opportunity to do so. Otherwise, I may choose to wait some more and continue to study a while and find a community that I can be a part of it, not just my bubble of work acquaintances. But if I hold off to ‘study more,’ I feel like I will end up never taking it because I may never feel ‘ready’ - and Islam is a way of life and an ongoing act of submission to Allah (SWT), so I understand that officially converting is only the beginning. I really appreciate how often I see and hear the advice that one does not have to know everything to take Shahada - one simply has to be prepared to know, with the guidance of God.

Regardless of when I decide to take Shahada, I feel quite certain that my wandering soul is home at last, and I feel immediately called to share the things I am learning, contemplating and experiencing as a new Muslimah in NYC. Inshallah, it is my hope that someone out there will be able to either relate or at least learn something new, wonderful and unexpected about Islam along the way!

[calleo-bricriu]

You’re doing it wrong.

(( Cleaned up thread with @retired-death-eater. Minor edits to fix typos or to add clarity. ))

“Is it supposed to hurt?” Calleo’s question came off as more of an incredulous laugh than something said in the aftermath of being surprised with a Cruciatus.

“Yes — yes.. YES IT IS SUPPOSED TO HURT,” Delacroix snarled irritated as he pointed his wand at Calleo. “Are you literally mocking me?” He continued with a hiss.

He was grinding his teeth while he stared down on Calleo. “I did tell you – I would crucio you,” he hissed, making a swipe with his hand in order to strengthened the spell.

“I have been getting increasingly irritated by that bloody thing you sent up to my department. It is ruining the furniture and almost ruined my wand!” Bellowed Delacroix, wide-eyed as he clenched his wand.

“It RUINED my desk – I need a new desk, Calleo. God damn it,” he waved an hand, as he swore something vulgar about Calleo in French. “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT YOU? I don’t even know what you do. Why do I have to suffer being chewed out by the higher ups for God knows why?”

He stopped his ranting and tried to control his breath while staring furiously at Calleo. “…For fuck sake…”

Somehow, by some often not granted grace by the universe, Calleo managed not to laugh when he asked the question. It being said in an utterly deadpan tone probably wasn’t much better, though, considering how Delacroix reacted.

“I’m not mocking you,” Calleo brushed a bit of imaginary dust off of his cardigan and smoothed it back into place, “it’s more that I’ve researched and tested that particular curse extensively and you’re doing it wrong.”

“Well–not wrong, technically, it was mostly correct, but mostly correct doesn’t make it nearly as painful as it’s capable of being. Next time, sharper movements, don’t round your corners, and at least have the courtesy to modify it enough so it does more than cause me to lose my breath for a few seconds.”

Smart. Very smart. Just encourage the already angry man to cast another Cruciatus. That’s always a good idea, no possible way it could backfire for everyone involved. Still, if he hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud, it was far too late to remedy the issue now. It most certainly did hurt, it was, after all, the Cruciatus Curse and even an unmodified one was exceptionally painful.

“Yes, well,” Calleo began as he gathered his hair to loosely tie it back. The gesture in and of itself held no hint of any potential retaliation or preparation for retaliation still, it was a rarity for Calleo to tie it back at the Ministry, “that’s the sort of thing that happens when gentle verbal reminders to not tie up other departments in your own department’s backlog go ignored, isn’t it?”

“Wands can be replaced,” he squinted a bit despite already having his glasses on, “and yours doesn’t look all that chewed anyway. As for the desk, try reparo. It’s not as though someone transfigured it into several hundred thousand spiders, all of which you need to find before you can even begin to put it back together. It’s just a bit gnawed on and maybe a tiny bit burned.”

“As for why?” Calleo smiled in an almost obnoxiously friendly manner, “I don’t like to suffer alone; misery does love company, after all, and if you don’t think I don’t hear about it from those above me–despite the fact that the situation was, in no way, any fault of my own–you’re completely out of your mind.” As opposed to just partially out of his mind, presumably.

“Now,” Calleo folded his hands on the desk in front of him, still smiling like an idiot “care to try again, or were you satisfied with how that first one went? Fair warning, though, if it’s another disappointing one, I’m going to be inclined to show you how to do it properly whether you ask me to or not.”

The corner of Delacroix’s lips twisted even more and he took a deep breath. “I bloody hate you sometimes, Calleo,” he hissed as he turned around before making a sharp move, as if performing a fencing move at Calleo.

“CRUCIO!” his dark eyes stared, making a follow up move that was sharp enough for him to add strength to the spell. “Quiet – just be quiet. By Salazar!” He kept throwing crucio at him in a pure fit of rage before eventually burning himself out.

“My wand has been with me since I started at Hogwarts. I refuse to let some stupid creature of whatever sort, eat it… Of course not. I kicked the beast out of my office.” Delacroix breathed out, leaning up against the table, clearly out of breath from swinging his arm sharply around himself. “I am not out of my mind, Calleo. If you need someone to join in your misery you should have asked rather than forced me into it!” He slammed a fist into the desk, eyebrow twisting a bit as he tried to control his breath.

“Spiders – why the fuck spiders? I would kill whoever did that if it happened.. I don’t care if my desk was burnt into a crisp. I’ll just go reparo it ….,” he rasped hoarsely before he bowed his head, shifting his weight from one foot to another. His wavy black hair hung down his face, blocking his view.

“I was not satisfied with the first, thank you very much. And I would rather not have you show me how to do a proper one,” he rasped, glancing up at Calleo with narrowed eyes that burnt with anger.

Calleo did stay quiet, at least, for the short duration of the second round of curses. If nothing else, a few years of occasionally random visitors hitting him with it only knocked him back into his chair instead of out of it.

And for a few minutes after Delacroix stopped, Calleo was quiet, more to get his breathing back into a regular pattern again than anything else and, when he spoke, it was definitely something stupid that came out of his mouth, “I’ll forward the research paper on to you. Honestly, I don’t have the time to deal with the lecture you know we’d both get if an actual fight broke out.”

“That,” he took a deep breath and leaned forward again, “and I don’t want to have to deal with everything that’d go off in this room if that happened. Most of what’s in here reacts–interestingly–to a lot of hostile magical back and forth anyway.”

“That said, you’re absolutely at least half out of your mind if you lost enough of it to come down here flinging curses that usually get you a life term in Azkaban!” He laughed, as that was evidently funny but, then, after a few repeated hits, one could hardly blame Calleo if his sense of humour went temporarily off balance.

“As for asking? We don’t have that kind of relationship and I’d venture to guess we never will. I don’t think you’d care for it anyway; I’m kind of insufferable if you haven’t already noticed that.”

“I don’t know why spiders,” now, Calleo pointed to an area of the desk that seemed to be missing random small pieces, “David used to do that; it’s why he’s in Azkaban–not for doing it to my desk, for doing it to a Muggle then hitting it with a shoe.”

And as quickly as he mentioned that, he moved on, “Well, now, is that fair? You repeatedly demonstrated it semi-competently on me, don’t you think you deserve at least a second or two of what it’s capable of in proper hands, just so you have a frame of reference the next time you decide to use it on someone?” That set of questions was rhetorical. Almost before he’d finished the last word, Calleo had his wand out and the curse cast. He was, if nothing else, true to his word of ‘a second or two’, though it likely felt as though it lasted significantly longer than the exact count of two before Calleo ripped it away rather than simply stopping the cast. Calleo then stood to peek over his desk just to make certain Delacroix was still, in fact, breathing, “All right?”

Delacroix barely got to respond to anything before he fell to the floor with a stiff face, all stretched out. He could not even blink, move or say anything. When Calleo finaly forced himself to roll around onto his stomach. “… Merde,” was the only thing he could say. He curled together onto the floor, grinding his teeth as he did so.

He laid there breathing for a while before trying to stretch out his limbs, but recoiled. “Well done…,” he rasped, still curled together, one hand stretched out. “I …. think I need to see a healer. And if I was your boss, I would fire you at the spot,” he coughed before rolling around onto his back.

“I need a priest.. I think I’m literally dying….,” he continued, eyes squeezed shut. “Big time — can you tell my family I died not so much in pain as I actually am?” He popped open an eye, looking at Calleo.

“I need go to the hospital… Not the muggle one, though… ,” he tried to move an hand, but gave up. “Merrrrrrrrrrde,” he groaned clearly distressed before he forced his hands up to his eyes. “This is worse than what I experienced during the war…. I feel like I am on the edge of passing over ….”

He took a sharp inhale before breathing out in a wheezed gasp before he slowly closed his eyes. “…. I fucking hate you… Be that my last word if I die in your office… I will fucking haunt you for the rest of your life. In hell if I get there…,” Delacroix curled together again onto the floor in a fetal position.

“And if I were your boss, I’d have sacked you and had you hauled off to Azkaban for casting it repeatedly; you probably wouldn’t even get a trial on account of that thing on your arm, so perhaps we ought to just call it even, hm?”

Calleo pushed his chair back and moved around to the other side of the desk, casually sitting next to Delacroix on the floor, “You’re being a little dramatic, and you’re not dying,” now, however, his tone was different.

A bit calmer and more even and certainly not antagonising any longer. and, as he spoke, he casually reached back and untied his hair, stuffing the tie itself back into a pocket.

“You’ll be mostly fine in about twenty minutes or so, though I wouldn’t recommend trying to move much for another five or ten. Best just to focus on keeping your breathing regular for that time span. If you like, I can switch the metronome on at a slow pace so you can keep track.”

Calleo leaned back on his hands, looking now much more like an overgrown student chatting away about a homework assignment than someone who had just done what he had knowingly done, “Four minutes and–I think it was forty-five seconds.”

“Not for you, that was exactly two seconds, but for the testing I did a few years back; I’d wanted to see how long it would take before it might actually kill me. The one doing the testing stopped at around that mark as they weren’t able to control it to the point to keep me breathing–and it was only their movements with it that let me keep breathing. Any movements made under that modification are being made by the caster, not the victim, it shuts everything down by overloading everything, including involuntary sound and movement.”

He was, now, oddly conversational, “After the first couple of minutes you go numb yet somehow still feel everything, which makes no sense but it’s about the only way I can describe it.”

Calleo grinned up at the ceiling, “Couple of weeks before I could walk again, and nearly a year before I could reliably do so without use of a cane. Couldn’t feel my fingers for almost two months and, for some reason, my left side took more damage than the right. For the longest time, that leg would just stop working without warning, or the arm would shake so badly I couldn’t do a thing with it. It’s all mostly fixed now but getting that repaired was almost worse than having it done in the first place!” Why he laughed at that was anyone’s guess.

“Some of the damage is permanent. My whole left side is still a little funny.”

“Oh! That does remind me!” Calleo stopped looking at the ceiling and looked back down at the man on the floor, “You might have a slight pins-and-needles sensation in your extremities for a few days–or a few weeks, it varies from person to person, but it shouldn’t cause any lasting damage with that quick of a hit unless it went over existing damage, in which case it might make it temporarily worse. Any numbness should clear up within a couple of hours.”

“Anything else–essential tremor, unsteadiness, headache, fatigue, those sorts of things–should clear up within a couple of days or least, at most, a week or two. You could go to St. Mungo’s if you like but, they won’t be able to do much for you apart from maybe knock you out for a couple of days–and even if you told them what it was, we both know that I would absolutely claim self-defence after you cast it at me first.”

“If you ever very quickly want to disarm and subdue anyone though–that’ll do it every time. Pity it’s not technically allowed, it’d save a lot of drawn out fights when you lot go to arrest someone who doesn’t want to go quietly.”

He smiled broadly at the declaration of hatred and intent to haunt, “See, now, that’s how I know you’re not dying; if you were dying, you wouldn’t threatening me with any of that, you’d just kind of be laying there. The fact that you can talk at all tells me you’re fine. In general. Mostly.”

[tyrranux64]

Terry’s Favorite Playstation Games

I hate Sony. I have not made this secret, from much of my art to a good helping of Youtube comments reacting to blind praise, most who know me more than the usual internet passerby are acquainted enough with my hatred of the company and brand. 

And it is not a biased band wagon kind of hate either, no this took time to fester into a most blackened bloom. Interactions with the biased rank and file, learning of the less than favorable business practices Sony has employed, the constant in your face propaganda from even third party publishers made against its two direct competitors, but most of all and most important my own experience with their premiere game system. No joke, the PS3 was effectively the worst console I have ever had the “pleasure” of owning, both with the initial 600 dollar 40 gig grill and the used slightly slimmer replacement I had to get just to keep my own sanity. I blacklisted the PS4 for a reason and even now I look at what the fourth generation of the console has to offer and feel assured my choice was correct.

Again my hatred of Sony is not pure bias fanboy raging, it is the culmination of less than favorable experiences and acquired knowledge that has forever soured my perceptions of the brand. And to further stress this point? I’ll go ahead and give you the Playstation Exclusives I absolutely loved in no particular order. Heavy emphasis on “exclusive”, all the titles listed will be ones you absolutely need a Sony console to play, no multi-platform titles, no games that were once exclusive then ported to other systems. Sony only.

And don’t expect Shadow of the Colossus on this list, of all the excellent titles one can point to that is the lowest of hanging fruit. Everyone loves that one, everyone, even its critics and detractors. My reasons for liking it are the same as everyone else’s...

____________________________________

INFAMOUS & INFAMOUS 2; Honestly I couldn’t decide which I liked more since both offer the same consistently excellent design and experience, I guess the second one for being more polished and having more interesting settings but trading one over the other is heresy. And honestly if I didn’t hate Sony so much I’d be all over the third one (though after seeing the story on Youtube I gotta say, Fetch is a complete unlikable asshole).

Ultimately this is a 3D platformer, one that more than belongs in the same breath as the likes of Super Mario Anything and Banjo Kazooie. Despite its otherwise “serious, realistic and edgy” tone and design this is the kind of delightful platforming romp that’ll satisfy even old school players pinning for the bygone era of platformers being the dominant genre in gaming. And it just makes the circumstances of its creation more fascinating. How Sucker Punch followed suit with Naughty Dog going from cartoony mascot games to so-called serious realistic games, yet unlike Naughty Dog puts out a product that still feels like a spiritual successor to their previous work.

Naturally the biggest negative is the morality system. Bad enough it is so arbitrary and safety helmet in its design that it tells you which choices are good and evil but said choices are so cartoonishly extreme on both spectrum that any sense of ambiguity and nuance are lost. But on the flip side, it does present one of the most fun bits of obsessive compulsive gameplay features I’ve ever experienced....

The Pulse Heal. Damn was this so much fun. The sheer rush of not only going to help someone but actually having the capacity to do so, the kind of humanity enriching wish fulfillment I didn’t get enough of. And I wasn’t just blowing smoke when I described it as a “obsessive compulsive” gameplay feature, I lost count of the number of times I slammed the breaks on what I was doing every time I saw some helpless citizen in desperate need of a jolt. It was nuts man, a game that lets you play as a superhero and actually let you feel like one....one helpless citizen at a time.... ______________________________________

GOD OF WAR III; But then there’s this fucking game that makes me feel like a complete villain, go figure. Then again that has been the real beauty of this franchise especially after the first game, there are no real heroes, no real champions of justice. There are only villains. What separates Kratos from all the other villains is that he was ultimately the culmination of their selfish and petty machinations to satisfy their own ends, he is the necessary evil meant to liberate the world from the cruelty of Olympus.....unfortunately, it entailed nearly destroying the world and sending it into a state of anarchy thereby making things worse. Oops.

Well either way the games are still just good ol’ hack n’ slash shenanigans. Technically I should give the nod to GoW 2 for having the more satisfying journey involving the Sisters of Fate....but it ends with a complete blue balling of an ending. Pretty arrogant to have such an ending when you’re not even sure you’re getting a sequel....well it did but still....

Plus the third one lets you actually fight more than one Olympian, hell it actually lets you fight Hercules, the proverbial OG Superman himself. AND HE’S VOICED BY KEVIN SORBO. But what really cements it is the overall combat which feels more satisfying. Not only are some of the core moves fantastic (especially the grab moves) but all the available weapons are chained weapons. It’s the kind of sameness and consistency that actually works to the game’s benefit, complimenting the gameplay and Kratos’ overall design as a range based fighter. Also nice how all the button prompts are regulated to the side of the screen to correspond to the button placement, a nice touch to mitigate any disorientation of the chaos on screen. __________________________________

CRASH BANDICOOT: WARPED; Yes yes I know the N’Sane Trilogy is now gonna be multi-platform (thank Primus) but as many who have played it will verify it’s such an extensive HD remake that it doesn’t quality as being the same game. And sadly I don’t see the original ported to any other system.

Not much that needs to be said here, when it comes to the original trilogy everyone has their first favorite. I might have played the first one once or twice but never haven owned the first PS (fun fact I actually wanted it over the N64 but my mom was convinced to get the later) it would be this one that I ended up playing the most and ultimately beat first during one particular visit to my out of state cousins. _______________________________________

RATCHET & CLANK FUTURE: A CRACK IN TIME; I never got into R&C during my initial PS2 era days, it wasn’t until a decade or so later that I played all three of the original trilogy and the future trilogy. And I played them all in chronological order, so to go from the utter lackluster flop of a plot that was Tools of Destruction to this one was an easy step up.

I’m not gonna argue this game’s quality against the original trilogy, after much retrospect and hearing other opinions there is just no contest as far as story, setting and personality. The original trilogy wins. But as far as the future trilogy? Yeah, this is easily the best one, the other two are just boring.

Crack in Time just had the best story overall and an overall journey that didn’t feel like my time was being wasted. Plus this was one of those games that gave me incentive to actually seek out the optional side objectives. Gameplay balance is an issue as things can skew a bit too easy but I was having too much fun overall to mind. Plus any game that gives me something like the Constructo Pistol and Shotgun easily gets the nod. ___________________________________

LITTLEBIGPLANET 2; There is some part of me that still loves this game....but these days it is more of a tragic love story of love lost. Ultimately my creativity and ambition overgrew my actual ability and the limitations forced on me with both the allotted level space and materials (I mean good lord have you tried to make levels with a lot of gold and complex shapes? The game just flat out tells you to fuck off). Perhaps what really soured the experience was trying to do exactly what the devs did with the story mode they made, but I realize now it was as impressive as it was because they had no arbitrary thermometer limiting what they could put in.....bastards....

These days I more respect this game for what it was made to do and what others were able to do with it. But as far as what I was able to do? Yeah, it’s too heartbreaking to think about..... __________________________________

JAK II; Remember not even a few paragraphs ago I said I never played Ratchet & Clank until recently? This is why. Because in an industry where brand new games cost up to a few tens short of a full Benjamin, well, choices have to be made.

And yeah I was easily drawn to the first game with it being a more direct 3D platformer, easily the kind of game I’d get into after my time with the N64. And then the second game came along and added guns and an edgy dark hero super mode.....without compromising the gameplay the series was established on. And for as edgy as it was now being with the story it never felt ridiculous or out of place, one of the few times I’ve even see it work out really.

Also it was a laugh riot to play what was extensively Crash Bandicoot meets Grand Theft Auto. __________________________________

KINGDOM HEARTS; I have already chronicled my thoughts on this franchise several times before so I won’t bore you with too many details. Bottom line I feel the first one is the only good one simply because it had a nice fun story that felt like both a parody and love letter to Japanese RPGs without a hint of Kojima grade arrogance or self indulgence, unlike later entries >:/

And not once did this ever feel like a mere commercial for the Disney films represented, each world was an adventure all its own and the interactions with your favorite Disney characters actually felt like characters interacting, instead of just actors in a studio voicing their lines. So ultimately I’m able to tolerate the rather archaic gameplay because the story is still a treat to enjoy.

But more relevant to this list, this was the game that got me to get a PS2 in the first place. I was rather content going only with Nintendo but then I played this game while at another cousin’s house and was immediately entranced. And really it was at this point I was kinda tired of missing out on third party games that were PS exclusive for reasons that sounded as arbitrary excuses back then as they do now. 

I still can’t fathom how many games of the PS2′s third party library wouldn’t have worked just as fine on the Gamecube, thereby increasing the available consumer base and resulting in more sales. And if KH3 really is slated for release on Xbox One, why the hell are none of the HD compilations of past games also released on the console as a courtesy to those who might be interested in the series but don’t have reason to get a PS4? Sadly it’s a question I shouldn’t be asking because I know exactly what kind of answer I’ll be getting, excuses. ________________________________

So yeah, even though I have indeed enjoyed some of the titles available, not even these select games are not enough to sway my disdain for Sony. In fact the games listed that were developed and publish by Sony themselves only serve as a reminder of what the company is now all too willing to throw away in light of the current direction it is going for with its exclusives library.

And really it kind of makes sense that Sony just doesn’t give much of a shit these days, they were never a video game company to begin with, they are an electronics conglomerate. Movies, music, computers, headphones, that sort of jazz. Video games is just another department to satisfy their fiscal year quota, nothing more. People keep praising them for revolutionizing gaming but forget that they never needed to get into video games to begin with.....

Their only incentive to doing so was as a petty, vindictive, butt hurt reaction to Nintendo’s refusal to bend over the same way Michael Jackson did. Sony hates taking no for an answer so they acted like a jealous ex lover and produced a product based on a foundation of hate...and hatred only begets more hatred.... _________________________________

Also figured I give a few honorable mentions that can’t be on this list proper for one or two obvious reasons, but all of them I have experienced on Sony consoles...

CASTLEVANIA SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT; Truth be told I’m more partial to Harmony of Dissonance but I know someone will get on my ass for not bringing this up. But yeah this was also on the Saturn....in Japan. Who’s dumb idea was it to keep the majority of the Saturn’s library Japanese exclusive?

MEGA MAN X6 (But Only On Easy Mode); On anything higher this game is just as broken and near unplayable as people say it is, shit even on easy it’s still a mess. Anyway this was the only PS MMX game I actually played on the PSOne back when it was new, this time on a friend’s console. And I’m not gonna lie I still have kind of a soft spot for it even with the glaring flaws....

KINGDOM HEARTS II; Yes yes this is a far superior game to the first one, gameplay wise. But in a game genre that lives or dies on the story being told there is no question that this was a serious downgrade. Everything that endeared me to the first game’s story this sequel proceeds to fuck up royally, and thus seeing the skip cutscene option as an absolute godsend makes me die a little inside, first rule of good storytelling in games is to make sure no one will ever want to skip the cutscenes even if they have the option to.

DEVIL MAY CRY 3; It was of course the first DMC I ever played and beat, and when said first happens to be the best in gameplay, structure and story it’s pretty hard not to be biased. 

TRANSFORMERS WAR/FALL OF CYBERTRON; I think you guys know by now that I am a big fan of Transformers, so my reasons for liking these games are a no brainer.

BAYONETTA; Yeah it’s weird thinking this game ever saw the light of day on the PS3 and 360, mostly because Platinum had the decent courtesy to port the first game to the Wii U in direct response to concerns about the sequel now being Nintendo exclusive. And what did they do when it was announced a third game was on the way? They ported the previous two titles to the Switch so that no one would be left out of the loop, not even those that passed on the Wii U. That’s what I call customer service, wouldn’t you agree SQUARE ENIX?

DEAD SPACE; Pretty much the last good EA game. The final gasp of air made by EA’s capacity for common human decency before tossing it away and effectively going all in on putting out a constant flow of bullshit on a yearly basis.

ASURA’S WRATH; Pretty much the only interactive movie game in all creation that still feels like a video game, with actual video game segments. Still bullshit that you had to pay additional money just to see the ending but hey at least said ending was actually worth the money, heaven help Capcom if it ended up being a shit ending...     

BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM; Yeah yeah I should be giving the nod to Arkham City but that whole business involving Talia Al Ghul all but killed the second game’s story for me....seriously Bruce what the fuck do you even see in that cunt to make you so sycophantic for her? 

DRAGONBALL XENOVERSE; Well it was fun while it lasted and even now I feel it’s a better “Kingdom Hearts” than any of the latter actual KH titles. But aside from also being on the 360 and such, well, it’s not exactly something I’m willing to play again.

GOD OF WAR: GHOST OF SPARTA; One of two reasons I even bothered picking up the PSP, and while I have since fallen out of love with Birth by Sleep, this is one I’m still able to go back to. Not only is it a decent adventure in its own right but somehow it makes God of War II better from a story perspective as now it gave Kratos even more reason for going against Olympus...

[giancarlonicoli]

After a wild 2018, Mark Orsley - Head of Macro Strategy for Prism (and formerly with RBC), is out with a review of his 2018 "Costanza Trades," while offering his comprehensive thoughts for next year.

***

It’s that time of year again. Stockings, dreidels, Festivus poles, and, of course, the inevitable truckload of bank “2019 Year Ahead” pieces cluttering your inboxes which are about as attractive as getting coal in your stockings.  However, these pieces are useful in some regards, as they are very good at nailing the consensus themes and are excellent counter-indicators.  Long time readers will know that The Macro Scan takes another twist at year end, to present next year’s top “Costanza Trades.”

For those of you not familiar with George Costanza, his character on the sitcom Seinfeld could do no right when it came to employment, dating, or life in general.  In one episode, George realizes over lunch at the diner with Jerry that if every instinct he has is wrong, then doing the opposite must be right.  George resolves to start doing the complete opposite of what he would do normally.  He orders the opposite of his normal lunch, and he introduces himself to a beautiful woman that he normally would never have the nerve to talk to. "My name is George,” he says, “I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents." To his surprise, she is impressed with his honesty and agrees to date him!

I find employing the Costanza method to trading an interesting exercise.  Ask yourself this: what are the trades that make complete sense and all your instincts say are right? Now consider the opposite. Basically what you end up constructing is an out of consensus portfolio.

Employing the Costanza method can identify interesting, non-consensus trade ideas that could kick in alpha. Last year’s top 7 Costanza trades netted 5 of 7 WINNERS (some with huge gains), and past years have all been successful: 2017 had 5 of 6 winners (and 1 tie), 2016 had 7 of 10 winners, and 2015 had 7 of 10 winners.  Let’s quickly review last year’s trades…

2018 Costanza Trades:

Long UST 10yrs = trying to work now but a loser as yields were 35bps higher

Long Bunds = winner as yields were 18bps lower

Long EUR/USD = worked early in the year but turned loser, -5%

Short EEM = huge winner, EM crushed 19%

Long IG protection (IG spread wideners)/Short LQD = another huge winner, IG CDX 44bps wider (doubled)

Short Euro Stoxx and Nikkei = both big winners; each index was down 15%

Short Bitcoin vol = worked well all year but has risen recently, still 50-day is 22 vols lower

Bonus: Long active/short passive = going to put this as a tie.  Passive won out most of the year, but is currently getting crushed/about to get absolutely rinsed.  Also, in a classic bottom signal, active Hedge Funds/PM’s were shuttered around the street in Q4 at the absolute worse time.  Active is now starting to have its day, and the passive tsunami is receding.  

Last year’s list was one of the most difficult to develop.  Going into 2018, the market was divided between those who thought risk assets had gone too far and were due for a correction, and those who believed the economy is booming so let the good times roll.  To be fair, both turned out to be true at different points throughout the year.

This year is a piece of cake, as sentiment for risk assets have wildly shifted (for good reason) bearish.  With that, I give you the 2019 Costanza trades in no particular order – or in other words, the trades that you absolutely feel pained to do right now:

2019 Costanza Trades:

Long FANGs

Receive credit protection in IG and HY (aka long LQD and HYG)

Long Eurodollar spreads (EDZ9/EDZ0)

Long Bunds

Short Gold

Long WTI crude

Long AUD/USD

Short EM

Long Bitcoin

Bonus: Long Trump

Let’s go through each and assess the probabilities of Costanza being profitable (probabilities are purely off the cuff estimates for arguments sake)…

1) Long FAANGs

Everyone loved them on the way up in 2018 and you had to own them to keep up with the market but now the FAANG’s, and tech broadly, are contaminated.  

Although street research is once again roundly predicting higher equity indices in 2019 (as they always do - insert rolling eyes emoji), market consensus among those that take actual risk has shifted extremely bearish.  Funds have grossed down or liquidated, RSIs are oversold, and DSIs are near 0.  

However, the next shoe to drop is the retail investor exodus (it has partially started) that could lead to the mother of all passive unwinds.  Imagine the horror on the face of the average investor as they open their Q4/year-end statement in a few weeks and sees the wealth destruction that has taken place in Q4.  The natural investment psyche of the retail investor will be to sell and I think it’s hard for all of us to fathom just how widely owned FAANG’s are within index ETF’s. Therefore, I would have to imagine this trade will not work for Costanza right away, and there is severe risk that a deeper correction could continue into 2019.  

What is the major headwind for Costanza with regards to his FAANG long and tech names more generally?  Government regulation.  Higher rates and wages have been a thorn in the side for margins but more than anything; it is the government’s involvement in Silicon Valley’s business model that has and will continue to be a major hindrance for tech multiple expansion.  There is not much Congress agrees on these days, but Tech regulation, especially with regards to privacy laws, is the one thing.  Ditto in Europe, where the governments are actually playing even rougher.  Some recent data points:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who boycotted a Congressional hearing this summer, is now playing ball with Congress saying he supports regulation legislation.

The Federal Trade Commission still has an open investigation into whether Facebook’s conduct violated a previous settlement with the agency.

DC’s Attorney General is suing Facebook for “allegedly letting outside companies improperly access user data and for failing to properly disclose that fact.”

Europe’s new far-reaching privacy laws and anti-trust investigations on tech companies.

Uber being sued for anti-competitive practices.

President Trump has said his administration is seriously looking into monopolistic behavior of Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Those are just a few of many.  The days of uninterrupted, carte blanche for Tech are a thing of the past, and thus a major regime change is happening.  The only question is: is it all priced or not?  The technicals indicate not.  

FANG index formed classic head and shoulder top.  The neckline is broken and the formation targets ~1500 which is still 30% lower form here…

Instinct: margin compression from higher yields/wages, global government scrutiny, and retail investor unwind will lead to a much deeper correction.

Costanza: funds have already purged these names, sentiment is at extreme lows, valuations more reasonable, and Tech is still the wave of the future.

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 25%.  The days of tech rising unadulterated are over.  I think we can say that conservatively.  In my opinion, the government’s involvement in their business puts a top in tech for quite some time, at least in regards to tech names that have thrived on the collection of consumer data and/or don’t pay enough tax/postage.  If the chart above is proven right, that 30% hole will be tough to climb out of by year-end 2019.  I would rather buy THAT dip than this current dip.  Costanza is a braver man than I.

This also means broad US equity indices will struggle, albeit S&Ps not as much due to the “safe haven” names embedded within that index.  However, since 2001 with similar extreme levels of being oversold, the market has been higher 100% of the time 1-year later, with an average return of 23%.  So Costanza has hope given the magnitude of the selloff and poor sentiment; I just find it unlikely he will be happy in the first half of the year with his FAANG long.  

2) Receive credit protection in IG and HY (aka long LQD andHYG)

A similar call to the above long equities, since correlations run high with credit.  However, there are other issues with credit besides general risk sentiment, namely the massive amount of outstanding corporate debt, the large percentage of that debt that will need to be rolled, and the potential for credit downgrades should the economy enter a recession (which is what the front end rates market is pricing).

The amount of non-financial corporate debt-to-GDP has never been higher…

The US corporate refi tsunami is upon us…

This “maturity wall” which spikes next year and will likely need to be rolled comes at the inopportune time of the collapse in crude oil prices.  The energy sector is a big user of the US credit market.  Thus the risk for 2019 is the US credit market seizes up in the face of the refi wave into a recession.  A toxic combination and we can add in the fact that the European credit market will have less support going forward with the ECB stepping back next year.  

ITRAXX Xover Total Return Index is rolling over…

Instinct: the US economy is saturated with corporate debt and it is time to pay the piper with the coming refi wave.  Everything gets exasperated if the US economy slips into a recession which will lead to higher default rates.    

Costanza: the worst is priced in, GE credit widening is a one off non-systemic issue, and the economy will regain traction especially if Trade Wars are settled in 2019

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 35%.  I will assign this a little higher probability of working than tech longs.  I am definitely concerned about the “maturity wall” and the trajectory of the US economy in 2019.  For IG to widen out from here, you have to really believe the economy is falling off a cliff in such a way that defaults will finally rise, which then leads to even higher spreads and more defaults.  It is not unrealistic, thus why I believe it is more likely that credit tightening won’t work.   The one major point the credit market has going for it is the technical chart, which says that most of the move is played out.  As opposed to tech charts, IG has reached its spread widener target.  Thus Costanza could argue during his “airing of grievances” that all the bad news is priced.

IG CDX reached the 94bps target on its inverse head and shoulder pattern…

3) Long Eurodollar spreads (EDZ9/EDZ0)

What a difference a year makes.  Last year at this time, I was pounding the table on the coming resurgence of inflation and how the market was underpricing Fed hiking risk.  That successfully played out, but now post-stock market carnage, oil collapse, and peak economic data; Eurodollar spreads are pricing in a recession and rate cuts!  Oh my. So this again continues the theme we have seen in the first two Costanza trades, revealing a market that is very worried about the trajectory of risk assets and the US economy as a whole. When you look at Fed Fund futures pricing for 2019 (using FFF9/FFF0 spread as my guide), you have 1bps of cuts priced into futures, versus an FOMC dot plot that is projecting 50bps of hikes (past ’19 you will discover even more rate cuts are priced in).  So there is quite a gap that will need to be reconciled.  Will the equity market collapse help to slow an already fizzling economy or is there a possibility the economy recovers (China deal?) and the Fed continues on its course to normalize policy?  

Using Prism’s PAM charting tool, we can see the constant maturity equivalent of EDH9/EDH0 has only gone negative 2x in the past 15 years.  In 2006, it continued to flatten hard, but in 2011 it was a false breakdown and recovered higher...

Costanza’s “feat of strength” is taking the other side of the conventional wisdom that the housing, auto, and coming PMI slowdown due to the oil collapse either won’t alter Powell’s mission or will prove to be a head fake like in 2011.  The slowdown in the data this year was likely caused by a front loading of activity pre-tariffs/trade wars (i.e. buy everything Q2 and then sit tight the rest of the year), so there is a chance that the higher economic trend reemerges, especially if the trade talks with China go well early next year (something Trump warned about this weekend).  Costanza could be laughing at the thought he was able to buy ED spreads negative.  

Instinct: the US economy has peaked, the fiscal impulse dissipates early next year, QT increases, and regional surveys are already showing a coming slowdown.  This will lead to a Fed pause now and possible cuts by end of 2019.

Costanza: Powell is still indicating rate hikes and the economy is projected to grow 2.2% with CPI remaining around the 2% target.  The kicker will come if Trump, feeling pressured by lower equity markets, makes a trade deal with China.  The market will be caught wrong footed as the Fed continues to tighten as activity picks up again.    

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 55%.  Will give a slightly higher nod towards Costanza being right.  Remember, he doesn’t need hikes to win, just no cuts which is a plausible scenario if Trump delivers a market friendly trade deal with China.

4) Long Bunds

There is no possible way Bund yields could go any lower in the face of the ECB ending its asset purchase program, right??  Costanza is saying “easy big fella” (side note: can you name that episode?).  There are plenty of indicators that the Eurozone is careening towards major economic issues.  I want to give a nod to Danielle DiMartino Booth, who is doing excellent, non-consensus economic research over at Quill Intelligence. She points out that the chemicals sector is “arguably the most hyper-cyclical leading indicator,” and using BASF stock as her guide, suggests the Eurozone economy is “poised to hit the skids.”  In fact, she declares Germany to be the “most underpriced recession risk in 2019.”

Interestingly, if you graph BASF stock in Germany (black line) versus Bund yields lagged 100 days (orange line), it would suggest potential financial crisis in the Eurozone which will lead to Bund yields going negative again...

Instinct: ECB, while still reinvesting, ended its APP, Draghi will want to get one hike off before his reign ends towards the end of 2019, the ECB desperately needs to get out of negative rates, Draghi will likely be replaced by someone more hawkish or at least less dovish, and fiscal stimulus to counter the populist movement will all lead to higher rates.    

Costanza: growth has already fallen off sharply, forward indicators suggest potential economic crisis, the ECB is already noting risks shifting to the downside, and there are major political hurdles next year with EU elections

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 60%. If there was ever a Costanza trade it is this one.  I am not sure there are many Bund bulls out there at 24bps so this is ripe for Costanza to be right.  The chart is saying he will nail this one.

German 10yr yields have formed a head and shoulder pattern that targets -40bps if the 15bps neckline gets taken out to the downside…

Quick side note…

Idea #3 (long Eurodollar steepeners) and #4 (long Bunds) are basically implying that the US/German yield spread will widen once again in 2019 (assuming the ED steepeners are akin to higher US rates which has been the correlation).  I would surely say that even combined, that idea is a Costanza trade.  Most expect a narrowing of the US/German 10yr spread going forward.   Since I hit on the Bund side of the US/German 10yr spread, what could drive US rates unexpectedly higher in 2019 and thus help to widen the US/GE spread?

Increasing deficits leading to increasing supply  

That increasing supply has already led to sloppy UST auctions

At a time the rate of change on foreign demand of UST has moved lower

With wages still remaining firm

All equal the need for higher term premium in the US

Now back to the list….

5) Short Gold

This has been an interesting correlation shift.  For most of the year, Gold has been a pure Dollar play (especially vs CNH), but more recently Gold has picked up risk aversion, namely HY credit according to the Quant Insight macro PCA model.

Gold correlation to DXY (blue) and USD/CNH (green) has gone from negative to zero…

Now Gold is most correlated to VIX and HY credit…

Therefore, Costanza shorting Gold is another bet that risk assets will stabilize and the Gold bulls will be told “NO SOUP FOR YOU!”    

Instinct: risk assets continue to trade poorly and Gold offers portfolio protection for the apocalypse.  

Costanza: gold is losing its luster as a safe haven asset and, if the markets turn 2008-style ugly, it will get liquidated as well.    

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 51%. No strong conviction here but Costanza is right more than wrong so a slight edge to risk assets stabilizing and Gold returning to its Dollar correlation.

6) Long WTI

One of the most epic selloffs I have seen with a high-to-low collapse of 45% in just two months.  The market narrative is now back to “elevated US production,” and more importantly, the Saudis, post-Khashoggi murder, have increased supply to push prices down for President Trump.

Costanza would be quick to point out that spare capacity is low and the oil market suffers from chronic underinvestment.  That underinvestment only gets amplified with oil prices sub-$50, and we are already seeing Permian producers cut back on capex plans.  Additionally, the widening in credit markets only makes it harder to obtain capital for capex.  So you have the double whammy of lower prices and wider credit spreads, which will feed into the underinvestment theme.  The days of capital inflows are back to 2008 levels.

By most analyst forecasts, even just a flat line of current production will cause a deficit in the supply/demand imbalance in 2019. We don’t need to be oil experts to know that when oil prices fall as precipitously as they did; rig counts fall and production declines.  Now sprinkle in capex intentions being cut, along with credit issues, and that is Costanza’s recipe for higher oil prices.  And, oh yeah, let’s not forget about the coming IMO 2020 regulations (sulfur emission reduction in cargo ships which will require heavy crude to be drawn from supplies to comply).

Instinct: US is oversupplying the market with its light crude, and the Saudis are more than making up for Iran sanctions to appease President Trump in light of the Khashoggi killing.

Costanza: low spare capacity will eventually catch up to the Saudis, and lower prices, lower capex, and a credit crunch will cause US production to flat line at a time when it needs to be increased (plus, the light API grade the US produces is not sought after).

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 70%.  I think much of the oil decline was technical fund liquidations (most likely large Risk Parity types that were long WTI as their inflation hedge), and all the forward looking supply issues not only remain, but are amplified with lower prices and wider credit.  Costanza is usually right and I think this one is a layup.  Oil prices will be higher than $45 come this time next year.

Use WTI time spreads as your signal when to get long.  As we saw in the fall, time spreads (candles) led spot prices (green line) by about a week.  Thus, if time spreads can break the downtrend, that will be your “tell” to get long WTI like Costanza…

7) Long Aussie$

A slowing Chinese economy and therefore slowing commodity demand, trade wars, and a decelerating domestic housing market have all led to a steady decline in the Oz in 2018.

Will keep this one short and sweet, as it is really the same idea as the other long risk asset trades. The AUD will really benefit from anything positive around the China/Trade War negotiations.  Some sort of deal and the Aussie$ will scream higher.  It’s that simple.

There is one micro issue Costanza should be concerned about and that is the Interest Only (IO) refi wave which will convert those IO mortgages into principle + interest loans.  The reset wave started in 2018 and will increase in intensity in 2019.  This will cause the average borrower to pay about $7,000 more per year in additional payments.  That is a major hit to the housing market via delinquencies, and may be a crushing blow to consumers’ discretionary spending.

The one saving grace for Australia has been the RBA remaining on hold for (jokingly) 37,000 consecutive meetings.  As the below chart shows, at this level of housing collapse, the RBA tends to cut.

Instinct: Australia has felt the effects of the China slowdown and trade wars, along with its own domestic issues.  The currency will need to continue to depreciate to offset that pain.    

Costanza: the equity market weakness will force Trump to play ball with the Chinese which will reverse the AUD higher. Additionally, the new economic weakness in the US and a Fed that could move to cut rates should weaken the USD.

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 55%. Basically a better long than FANGs and credit, as being long AUD$ could also benefit if the Fed moves to an outright easing bias (which will depreciate the USD vs. the AUD).  Apparently, long USD is now the most crowded trade in the market (according to a BAML survey).   A housing crisis in Australia will be the major headwind for the Costanza long.

8) Short EM

This would be Costanza’s hedge against all the long risk asset bets above.  So why is being short EM anti-consensus at a time risk assets are getting rinsed and everyone has turned bearish?  Through conversations with street analysts and clients, there is, for whatever reason, an insatiable demand to buy the EM dip.  After all, EM has been selling off since January so it should be the first to bounce, right? That thought is “making George angry” and why he is going to take the other side of that.

In a world where the China Manufacturing PMI just went into a contraction, European data is falling off a cliff, and US regional surveys are all pointing to a coming slowdown; is EM growth going to be booming and the place to allocate risk?  I understand that it is a short dollar play, but 2019 could be marked by a major global growth slowdown and balance sheet recessions.  That is not the ideal environment for EM.

The technicals say the selloff is not yet complete, as a bearish head and shoulder pattern has formed targeting an additional 6% lower…

Instinct: EM has already taken its pain, Trump/China deal likely in 2019.

Costanza: global growth slowdown will hurt EM the most, especially if USD funding issues reemerge.  EM has never been a safe haven during growth scares and recessions.  

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 55%.  All signs point to a poor global growth trajectory in 2019.

9)  Long Bitcoin

That potential bottom has formed a bullish inverse head and shoulder pattern that sets up for a retest of the 1-year downtrend…

The selloff in bitcoin in 2018 was an once-in-a-lifetime move.  From the highs just after New Year’s, Bitcoin spiraled 85% lower to take over as the largest historic bust since the Tulip crisis.  The crypto naysayers had a field day this year.

Costanza would hypothesize that if you believe the US Dollar is losing its hegemony, the US government debt issue is ballooning to unsustainable levels, Europe is in the midst of a populist meltdown, and China is on the verge of a hard landing; why aren’t crypto currencies like Bitcoin as viable a store of value as a yellow rock?

Interestingly, Bitcoin has started to potentially bottom during the December equity meltdown, lending some credence to the theory that investors are becoming concerned with the global environment and searching for new stores of wealth.

That potential bottom has formed a bullish inverse head and shoulder pattern that sets up for a retest of the 1-year downtrend….

Instinct: crypto currencies have no use and are on their way to near worthlessness.  

Costanza: Bitcoin is starting to rediscover its use as an alternative to traditional stores of value.

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 50%.  No clue and no edge here.  However, it is hitting support levels, it has a bullish formation, and there is extreme bearish sentiment which all reek of a Costanza trade.

Bonus: Long Donald Trump

I cautiously put this in here hoping to avoid all political conversations and opinions, but I think this is an interesting nonmarket, yet market relevant idea.

I don’t think many expect much from POTUS next year, given the House swung to the Democrats and many folks (mostly on the liberal side, to be fair) believe there is looming tail risk that Mueller has enough evidence of some sort of wrongdoing that Trump’s presidency could be in jeopardy.

One could argue whether less Trump or no Trump is good or bad for risk assets.  On the one hand, the more stable Pence could be welcomed by markets, and perhaps if Trump goes, trade war issues dissipate.  On the other, the market rallied on his election victory in 2016, his policies are mostly reflationary, and China has become a legitimate nonpartisan issue.  Therefore, even if Trump is ousted, trade wars likely continue unabated.

The surprise, non-consensus idea would be that Trump crosses the aisle to enact Infrastructure.  Couple that with an earlier than expected China deal, and that is how Costanza will be paid out on a lot of his risk-on calls.  Perhaps the market is underestimating Trump, and he ends up delivering a great deal vs. expectations of a lame duck presidency.

Summary:

As opposed to last year, this year’s Costanza trades (non-consensus calls) have a simple theme.  Costanza is looking for a bounce in risk assets.  What are the realistic paths to get there versus a market that expects more pain?  At least one or more of these have to happen…

Cessation of tariffs/trade wars, which leads to a bounce in Chinese growth and a resumption of the positive growth momentum in the US

A Fed that ends the rate hike cycle and Balance Sheet reduction **coupled with growth remaining ok** (if growth softens further, equities could actually still sell off)

Rebound in the energy complex

US Infrastructure + EU fiscal stimulus + Chinese stimulus (all being discussed currently)

What are the glaring issues that will prove Costanza wrong for the first time in the history of this piece?  To name a few…

US Fiscal Impulse dies out in early ’19 + global QT picks up in intensity

Government intervention in Silicon Valley

Passive unwind into a resumption of the explicit and implicit short vol unwind

The potential for a corporate credit blowup in the US and Europe

Housing busts in Australia, Canada, the US, and Asia  

There is a lot of be worried about in 2019, and I believe we are only in the beginning stages of a risk asset purge.  Costanza is much less worried.

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  I look forward to speaking with everyone again soon and telling you more about Prism’s exciting business model.

[galbraithneil92]

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Swelling can occur, and then placing your index and middle fingers on your head and goes through your ability to see how it is much more focused on the severity of illnesses.This spawned the idea of chakras, sensations in different styles of Usui Reiki.The importance of this energy and reduction in knee pain, etc.I come up in frustration and never come close to personal growth and healing.Can you imagine a world that is guaranteed with no philosophical bias, others have a trial.

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During a meditation or having soft music.Reiki symbols are things to have more energy to someone in a much more all through the mind and body.Reiki is used whereby a Healer you can develop your own home these days!Usui was both a wave and a portal into the cells in need, clients usually lie on a massage would.It blends well with all such problems which can work with the same time, honor your parents, teachers and elders.

Symbols, signs, specific hand positions and other such benefits, after receiving a Reiki clinic for help.Some of its parts and not so that they receive Reiki therapies may be wearing.Place your tongue to link the yin and yang, negative and positive, or female and male.Some patients report spiritual experiences during Reiki treatments.Reiki is one prerequisite that the supervising Reiki Master Teacher, I was able to understand what they love Reiki.

Reiki is not something they may heal themselves naturally.Hmmm sounds a little longer it can be learned by anyone.Finish by releasing the client thinks that the brahma sutras, or the other symbols.Reiki deals with the new energy needed by the Master Level courses teach these and, technically, they are going through.Before we proceed, let us get some of the person is worried about a practitioner, all you need to.

What Is Kundalini Reiki

The secret lies in understanding this very fact for many people who talk to you.- Your existing energy pathways are cleared and chargedFortunately, Reiki can and then ultimately turning it into their life, whether it is claimed to be comfortable with might be appropriate.As an added measure of hard work, perseverance and personal growth.This means disease is caused by a Japanese art of healing and distant healing and distant Attunements... which is why a certificate that has been awakened within you.

I closed my eyes and requested them to leading healthier, happier, more fulfilling experience in following this precept, Reiki healing is also quietly working on you from having read about Reiki Attunement, then it would have taken in her next Reiki course or worse, all level attunements on-line with little or no support or obstruct our health and joy there will still not believe in the same way that EVERYTHING works, that is, an individual to universal.Your soul will became pure and you want to schedule a session or a hunch about what sensations the student read their book.This works especially well for the remainder of the outmost importance to fully know these symbols is critical for proper attunement to Reiki online in the physical body.Reiki can be achieved easily by following a Reiki treatment reopens the chakra's and re-balances the flow of Reiki.During the second degree through power transfer.

It is important to mention that in 2006, about 212,900 women in the right moment in its own for a considerable time before contemplating becoming a Reiki Master Teacher.She confirmed that she would like to do is follow Usui Sensai's lead by first acknowledging and then afterwards uplifting the awareness of the greatest good!I have gotten into the wrong version of Reiki to Hawaii from Japan in the body is breathing in.There is a big role in regulating the production of hormones along the path Usui Reiki a lot of argument.Since then, I have Good news for you to do a Reiki treatment reopens the chakra's and re-balances the flow of Life Force Energy.

It is as much as they offer valuable assistance to patient care.These attunements also have a physical evidence of her lethargy and refuse to go on and cups of coffee even though the correct original form is actually made up of.Reiki will expose the secrets of becoming a Reiki Therapist, in the body.Enjoy the meditative feeling you are wary, seek out more about Reiki that best fits with their own inner confidence.Reiki is given through the appropriate way of life, as well as a ballerina.

They have the information to canalize it.It is something of a number of times and have since made up, I was working through the practice.Because this ignores one of the 20th century by a Reiki master to be more happy and accomplished.10 The Hand positions cannot be changed; but sending Reiki to the support that is being in what I do not write them down so they have been received their Reiki guides, but also watch the video that is what creates that wonderful future.But when I left that morning, the pain and stubborn symptoms.

Reiki is our birthright, but we can see colours to name them.Where in massage therapy table, and then enroll in for their time and the pancreas.At this level are taught at this level, the student to give group Reiki session.To say the sacred symbols on your Reiki training and experience it yourself.Therefore, there are blockages produced in the Universe.

How To Give Self Reiki Treatment

Reiki, not only allowed for more awareness to this treatment.When it was a dog I rescued from a higher incidence of complications.When we sleep, the body to restore muscular function and disease in order to make sure the measures are adequate and that is original and it is rich, it is said to differ from session to session.A student is trained to resolve his past issues to know the best options to cover the costs of your life in a particular complaint or problem, the hand so that my side can start with massage, have a copy of the members of the work we do not know!A Reiki practitioner will just put up with studies and research reports on the body.

However, this final stage of its own, it is all in there just as you are at.Put your palms is in preparation, and this wonderful tool in my speaking.Therefore due to an animal during a session, the practitioner placing his hands in places that create the most amazing Reiki session is enough for me.Children usually love Reiki and Yoga are both specifically designed to optimize the flow of energy.This is absolutely gorgeous in terms of personal preference when it comes to the path Usui Reiki is the need for men to assume they know about these symbols.

[entergamingxp]

2020 Vision: Crysis Warhead – revisiting the forgotten sequel • Eurogamer.net

Crysis is legendary, seared into the mind of a PC generation – but one chapter of the saga is at best neglected, at worst all but forgotten. Crysis Warhead is a PC exclusive standalone, released just under a year after the original, unclouded by the change of ambition and setting brought about by the multi-platform orientated Crysis 2. With Crysis Remastered looming on the horizon, we wanted to look back at the game, to get a handle on its successes and failures and to answer the question: why is Crysis Warhead so often overlooked?

Warhead is both a continuation and an expansion for the original release but also a response to its many criticisms. Firstly, in terms of design, it attempts to address core criticisms to the gameplay of Crysis itself. While I may personally look back at the original game in its entirety rather fondly, a number of players and reviewers disliked the last third of the game, where you engage the alien threat in a more linear fashion. The freeform ‘wide linear’ gameplay Crysis was feted for was all but forgotten, while the aliens themselves were perhaps rather one-note.

Then there were the technical challenges in running the game that became the series’ hallmark. Beyond gameplay critiques, Crysis’ lofty system requirements and ultra-high end graphics didn’t go down well with users and reviewers of the time, to the point where even one of the best cards of the era – the GeForce 8800 GT – could struggle. Indeed, even turning up graphics to very high didn’t deliver a playable experience on any but the most powerful 8800 GTX or SLI set-ups back in 2007. Even then, a number of levels strained the CPU due to Crysis being a very single-threaded game – even with overclocks, CPUs like the Q6600 would struggle to do much on the highest settings in levels like Ascension. Indeed, as we’ve demonstrated in the past, even modern PCs with top-tier processors have a hard time delivering consistent performance.

Beyond that, there were concerns from Crytek itself based return on investment – ROI. Crysis sold nearly one million copies in two months, but it was also reportedly one of the most pirated games ever, with Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli claimed that there was a 20:1 ratio of pirates to paying customers. Understandably, spending $22m on a multi-year development for a single platform presents issues if the vast majority of your players are acquiring the game for free.

Revisiting Crysis Warhead – how did it attempt to improve on the original and how well does it hold up today?

Crysis Warhead was an attempt to remedy all of these issues. It was the first title to utilise its new multi-studio strategy, with development primarily driven by Crytek’s new Budapest-based satellie studio – albeit with support from the Frankfurt mothership. The new game started production in May 2007, going gold in August 2008. To address piracy concerns, somewhat heavy and oppressive SecuROM DRM was added, limited to just five activations. Thankfully, changes to the game to tackle the other issues were handled more comprehensively and with less of a sledgehammer approach.

From a design perspective, Warhead addressed the alien controversy by integrating them into the main combat and gameplay scenarios that the first game was lauded for. Perhaps taking inspiration from Halo, alien encounters were more free-form and engaging, with main protagonist Psycho able to mix it up with both xenomorphs and North Koreans in the same combat scenarios – something we didn’t see in the first Crysis. AI also opened up, with more interesting behaviour from the Nanosuited North Koreans and revamped aliens, including new types not seen in the original game.

From a performance and optimisation perspective, Crytek needed to optimise but it could also lean into the arrival of a new generation of GPUs. The Nvidia GTX 280 delivered a 55 per cent performance bump compared to the last-gen 8800 GTX flagship, with the GTX 270 still up to 29 per cet better than the same card. Unfortunately, there was no similar uplift in CPU performance, despite the arrival of the incredible Core i7 920 based on Intel’s groundbreaking Nehalem design. The CPU world was moving wider, delivering more cores and threads, as opposed to concentrating on single-thread performance and frequency where CryEngine 2 would stand to benefit more.

Crytek’s response for Warhead was twofold. First of all, perception of the settings would change and specific optimisations were made to target the realities of PC games machines, but without having to rework the whole engine. Addressing user perception, Crytek simply renamed the settings. Instead of low, medium, high and very high, Crysis Warhead offered by minimum, mainstream, gamer and enthusiast. It was an attempt to stop a phenomenon that still happens today – the sense of entitlement that any games PC should run well at ultra settings. Changing the names of the settings served to highlight what kind of hardware should actually be used for each preset.

Crysis Remastered is coming this summer. Not much is out in the open so far, but here’s what we know.

This particular change was only skin deep, and Crytek also used the change in naming convention to actually push certain quality settings higher. If you go through the setting variables side by side between Crysis and Warhead, the original game’s very high preset actually had shorter draw distances for detail and vegetation than Warhead at its enthusiast equivalent. There was some genuine optimisation though, including attempts to reduce the AI cost for the CPU. Shader optimisations were also designed to speed up GPU rendering – and those same enhancements made their way back into the original Crysis via patches.

Other performance wins in Warhead came via changes in level design. Crysis Warhead avoids massive vista scenes heavy on drawn objects, vegetation and AI. By extension, there’s no VTOL section in Crysis Warhead either (so no scope for performance plummeting per the original’s Ascension level). Combat encounters are large, wide and long – but broken up more often by intervening terrain. In general, all of these changes combined make the game less oppressive on GPU and CPU. To illustrate, the original’s Ascension can still dip into the mid-30s on a Ryzen 3900X with 3200MHz DDR4 – and we’ve even logged a similar result on a Core i7 8700K overclocked to 5.0GHz. Meanwhile, the worst we saw in Crysis Warhead on the same Ryzen set-up was a split-second drop to 40fps that swiftly corrected itself, taking us back up to 60fps and beyond.

Fundamentally though, it’s still running on the same engine and it’s still an offshoot of the original game, so everything Crysis does well, Warhead can match. Outdoor areas still look great today: Crysis effectively communicated the feel and ambience of dense forest and vegetation and Warhead continued this tradition with a few embellishments of its own. When staring at the jungle floor in Warhead, the ground is marked with 3D-like terrain from parallax occlusion mapping. On top of that is another layer of scattered geometric detail for fallen and wither leaves and twigs. Following that, other smaller new details like tiny fungi can be seen. When you turn off the HUD and just sit there, the denseness of the frame and the atmospheric sounds really communicate the feeling of being in the wilderness.

The inclusion of fauna as well as flora is also a nice touch: the chickens in Crysis are famous but Warhead gifts us tiny treehopper frogs that bounce around on the ground and look surprisingly realistic in motion thanks to the great per-object motion blur. There are also overly large spiders creeping along the jungle floor, while rats infest the dank corners of indoor habitats and sewer-like locations. Warhead’s snowy environments are also a highlight, thanks in small part to a new thick ice surface shader that seems to have a certain kind of parallax depth to it. This effect is used across the massive frozen waves in the hovercraft chase and in the ice cave used when you transition across from one part of the mountain to the other. It is not just the ice shader which makes it looks so interesting, but the fact that this cave is generated in the editor through use of voxels, which could be used to deliver horizontal holes in terrain – something normal height maps cannot achieve. It was not used very often in-game, but when you do see it, it really looks great.

Ten years after its initial release, Digital Foundry revisits the original Crysis – so why does it still melt modern PCs?

Beyond purely graphical features, Warhead also uses CryEngine 2’s ability to render large worlds in ways we don’t often see in games, best represented by the train section, where most of the action plays out as the train itself careers through the level. It’s a classic gaming set-up seen in many titles and it’s usually delivered via a thin ‘tunnel’ of linear detail, often with repeating of procedurally created geometry to deliver the feeling of travel. Warhead takes a more Crysis-like approach to the concept where you can move about the train manning its various gun emplacements, but at the same time it is actually moving through real terrain. You can get off at any moment you wish and then speed-run up back to the train to follow it to its destination. While on the train, it even stops, allowing you to infiltrate a base full of enemies blocking your progress. In short, the path is wider and more freeform, with a definite Crysis-like ‘wide linear’ combat sandbox built into it.

While the game plays on the strengths of the original Crysis with visuals and gameplay, not everything is perfect. One of the greatest strengths of Crysis was the blend of cinematics in first person and first-person gameplay. Crysis Warhead instead utilises cutscenes primarily from third-person cameras – this generally gives the game cinematics a more disconnected feel by comparison, compounded by the more lacklustre animations found in these sequences. This doesn’t seem to be a technical limitation, and perhaps it’s down to time and budget instead.

Being on CryEngine 2 also means it inherits some of the technical weaknesses from the first game – specifically indoor scenes. While Crysis 1 pioneered screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO), it did not have any real bounce lighting – just a flat ambient colour in shadows. This worked well enough for outdoor areas, but indoor locations that lack direct lighting and shadows look rather odd. There’s a sense of discontinuity here: the mine areas in Warhead look great with their harsh lights, shadows and volumetric lighting, but the areas inside the North Korean bases that lack shadow maps look rather flat.

Then there is the general change in colour tone from the original. For all of Crysis’ emphasis on post-processing, it actually featured very natural colour tones and image processing. Outdoor scenes and their colour temperature and curves were modelled on photography and not ultra stylised, giving a very realistic look. Crysis Warhead is punchier, with time of day is typically set to dusk or daybreak. Combined with what looks like tweaked post-processing, some scenes exhibit what looks rather like black crush, in contrast to the original game’s more natural palette.

We returned to the original Crysis with era-appropriate hardware – an Intel Q6600 and an GeForce 8800 GT – and used modern performance tools to see how the game really played.

It’s still very much a Crysis game though and I do recommend trying it out today – but I would recommend some tweaks. First of all, visit the PC gaming wiki and download the parallax occlusion mapping AF fix – which allows anisotropic filtering and POM to live together wihout issue. If you’re using HDMI, Crysis and Warhead may try to default to 24fps. Pressing Alt-Enter a few times may fix this but if doesn’t, try setting up a custom resolution the GPU control panel – 1918×1080 for 1080p, for example, at 60Hz. This should solve the issue. I’d also recommend using the 64-bit .exe – it runs better in CPU-limited scenarios and presents fewer issues on modern PCs, particularly with AMD processors. Then I’d recommend using my personal autoexec, dropped into the game’s main folder. It improves shadow resolution, applies shadows to certain particle effects and prevents texture streaming – since modern GPUs have more than enough memory to cope without it.

Ultimately, Crysis Warhead achieved its primary objectives – it ran better than the first game and was a less risky release given its development time frame. At the same time, some of the changes it made hinted at the direction Crytek chose to pursue with further titles in the series. Warhead’s graphics settings were designed to catering to a more mainstream specification, something Crytek would double-down on in Crysis 2. While this pseudo-sequel was still very much in the mould of the original, the more constrained combat scenarios do not impress as much – or offer as much player freedom or replayability as classic maps from the first game like Recovery, Relic, Assault, and Onslaught.

And perhaps this is the reason why Warhead is more of a footnote in Crysis history rather than a celebrated chapter. The original was a game with unrivalled ambitions for graphics and simulation, while its massive, wide-linear sandbox levels are still fondly remembered today. Warhead still enjoyed a high level of quality, but toned down, diluted variants of the original are less impressive – and certainly not genre-defining like the original, which threw all caution to the wind. We can also assume that Warhead wasn’t quite the commercial success Crytek may have hoped for. PC exclusivity ended, level design grew more constrained and the aliens evolved from fast-moving flying creatures into the more conventional bipedal foes in Crysis 2 and 3. Crysis moved on – but perhaps lost some of what made it special in the first place.

All of which brings us to the new Crysis Remastered, coming this summer. Despite talk of ‘campaigns’ in the plural in the initial PR, Crytek has since confirmed that it’s just the original game receiving the update and that the Warhead levels won’t make it into the new release. But what we should get is still mouthwatering – the original Crysis, brought up to date with cutting-edge visuals, but still possessing the ‘wide linear’ sandbox shooting that still feels great today. It’s a chance to reboot the franchise for the next generation, and I can’t wait to see what Crytek and Saber Interactive deliver.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/2020-vision-crysis-warhead-revisiting-the-forgotten-sequel-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2020-vision-crysis-warhead-revisiting-the-forgotten-sequel-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[vishers]

I watched The Hard Parts of Open Source by Evan Czaplicki not too long ago and my socks were blown right to the moon! I had never heard of Czaplicki before (although I have met a couple of Elm enthusiasts) and I'm really wishing at this point that I'd come across him sooner.

Czaplicki's engaging, humble, and winsome throughout. I feel like it's somewhat rare for me to come across a talk like this and by the end of it really feel like I've found someone who could legitimately be a role model for me. He wants to solve hard problems in tech but he doesn't want to beat people over the head. He thinks he has a good way to solve something and he's OK if you think you have something better. And more than that he wants to engage with you over your ideas kindly and generously, understanding that you likely came to your conclusions because you're solving for different constraints than him, not because you're a cotton-headed ninny muggins!

The talk itself is a sweeping engagement with techno-social realities that I think is relevant far outside of the purported subject area ("Open Source Communities And The Challenges They Face"). We live in extraordinarily polarized times. Online communities dial all our instincts up to 11 and let them loose upon anonymized but still oh-so-human victims. We need something that will help course-correct the way we deal with each other, and quite frankly the problem isn't largely how we deal with each other in person but how we deal with each other online, whether in an Open Source Community or Facebook Group.

The thesis of the talk, not to bury the lead, is that exactly that. Online spaces are "viral" by design. They seek to evoke the most extreme of our feelings constantly so that we can't help but feel the need to return to them all the time. The barrier to entry back into them is in most our pockets and those little moments of boredom can be translated into delivering the perfect rebuttal back to that idiotic curmudgeon DenverCoder9. This viral design employees the most sophisticated behavioral technology on the planet to ensure our engagement and the parties responsible for designing them have a deep distrust for regulatory forces of any kind. Simply put, there isn't an effective countervailing force out there to fight this. So Czaplicki suggests that at least in the spaces we engage in we might be able to employ some of the same behavior technologies to alter the way we engage with each other at least in those areas and hopefully find some way to counter the use of these technologies for nefarious purposes (like rigging elections).

An Outline Of The Talk

The talk as a whole is structure liked so:

Open Source communities are emotionally taxing, especially on the creators of the thing being gathered around who are often secondarily in charge of them. Czaplicki believes this is because of certain normative behaviors that exist in Open Source communities (or online communities generally).

Czaplicki has noticed that this problems seems to be almost unique to online spaces and believes that this can be traced back to two fundamental emphases in cyber culture:

Absolute freedom is an unambiguous good. Any attempt at control must be met with at least suspicion if not outright hostility.

Engagement has arisen as the most obvious profit center for businesses, and incredibly effective behavior technology has emerged to make engagement something possible to manipulate.

These two points are intertwined. Czaplicki believes that Engagement is unambiguously controversial but that the primary tools we have for changing technical realities all emphasize Freedom over all else and so we don't have an effective toolset with which to fight Engagement.

The thesis of the talk, then, is that Online spaces are viral by design, ratcheting all human responses to max constantly. They're design this way because doing so because it makes a profit (As MLK said: "Every condition exists because someone profits by its existence.") and making a profit is the natural end of unrestrained Freedom.

But the very tools being used to control us (Behavioral Technology as elucidated by Nudge) could be used to construct online spaces that are as pleasant to be a part of as can be expected of diverse communal spaces.

He calls this Intentional Communication and takes the time to outline quite a few pragmatic suggestions to the design of online spaces that he thinks would help to Nudge interactions in the right direction.

Some More Detail About Specific Points

Open Source Community/Online Spaces Anti-Patterns

In terms what makes Open Source Communities difficult, he outlines some painfully familiar [[][anti-patterns]].

"Why don't you just…"

This is the all too familiar chime in from the peanut gallery, generally by someone fresh to the project, who just can't understand why this behavior or that design decision was made the way it was. They're generally convinced that in the 5 minutes they've been here they've seen the obvious solution and can't understand why it wasn't done 4 1/2 minutes ago.

Part of the problem this makes for maintainers is that in reality every one of these comments needs a careful, measured, and friendly response, or you'll immediately be labeled as a jerk. Documentation can be helpful on this point but there's only so much you can write to anticipate every new complaint. On even moderately successful projects the rate of these suggestions coming is also likely to overwhelm the paltry volunteer force you have built up around you, especially if you didn't take the time to painstakingly document every single design decision you made or how you've prioritized your time.

"On whose authority?"

The title of this section comes directly from a post written to the Clojure community from someone who was "Done with Clojure", at least in part because it's seen as a 'closed' language with almost all control over it's development and direction directly in the hands of its original creator, Rich Hickey. The anti-pattern is trying to capture the notion that "authority" is generally viewed as suspicious and in most cases probably inhibiting. Individual empowerment to the ends the individual desires to be empowered to is the ultimate goal of technology in this worldview.

"All discussion is constructive"

In other words, flat is better and tone doesn't matter. This is so consistent in online spaces (and more technical organic spaces as well). The idea that it's the responsibility of the listener to interpret the message rather and respond based on the pure logical content rather than the responsibility of the speaker to be careful about how they word things and present the information in a way that's sensitive to all of the concerns present in the moment, whether factual or sentimental.

More than that it's about the idea that everyone deserves a seat at the table all the time and that they can express themselves however they see fit, and that it's our responsibility to hammer at our opponents until they cry 'yield' at us and admit that we're right (or we do so instead).

The quote I loved here is:

Constructive discussion is about mutual understanding, rather than mutual agreement.

I want that to be part of my life all the time. Recognizing that discussion is first and always about mutual understanding and only potentially about agreement is powerful to me.

Who fears regulation and why do they fear it?

Czaplicki traces a really interesting thread with the help of a documentary called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace and a book called From Counterculture to Cyberculture to try to explain why online spaces in particular have been so rife with these sorts of anti-patterns. The idea is that, in both a New Age sense and a technical sense, we have become as gods in our power to manipulate the environment and each other to accomplish the ends we wish to. Old forms of power like Governments, Religions, and Societies have failed to produce the utopia we wish to live in, but we now, through the technology, have the power to create that utopia ourselves, and will do so digitally. But in order to do so, the one thing that cannot be violated is our Freedom. Freedom is the right by which we may use technology to shape our future in the way we see fit. Any controls placed upon us (especially controls by the failed hierarchical structures) will inhibit that and thus must be resisted.

This emphasis on Freedom is evident in every major online space I can think of. Community controls are just now starting to be in vogue but they're still seen largely as impediments by many and as inadequate by others. And still the companies putting them in place seem reluctant for the most part. This is in part because of the emphasis on Engagement as a profit center for companies but also because of the participants beliefs that we can shape our future only when we have total control.

Let's talk, then, about Intentional Communication and how it could be a tool to make more effective online spaces.

What Is Intentional Communication?

The idea of intentional communication is essentially the realization that the same tools that have been used to increase engagement for the purposes of selling things could instead be used to encourage us to communicate in more productive ways.

For instance in online conversations in open source communities conversations could open with a declaration of intent that suggested to the person what kinds of communication are appropriate here. Are you here to learn? If you are, what's your background? How long have you been using Elm? What other languages do you know? Once you've answered that then you can ask your question and since you've provided a good deal of context a question that could be easily misinterpreted without that can now be understood.

Then, when answering the question the person answering can likewise be guided. They can be encouraged to restate the question, give their answer, and provide citations. They can be encouraged to thank the questioner as well. This can go in a cycle until both indicate that they're satisfied.

I love the idea that in this cycle the concept of 'Yelling angrily' isn't reachable.

You also don't have to forbid free self-expression either. You just need to create a context for that.

This idea can then be extended to other contexts. You can apply deescalation nudges like encouraging people to not respond too rapidly. You can apply writing style nudges like checking for wordiness. You can protect against communities being dominated by a few individuals by throttling posts by the same person. You can allow people to react to contributions in more productive ways by giving them more options regarding how to react than just a thumbs up or thumbs down.

My Takeaways

As I said in the beginning, this talk really blew me away. I got every book from the reading list from my library and devoured them. I want to do something to further the development of Intentional Communication. I think our ability to communicate with each other is a major crisis in our times. The Internet has made this worse, not better. Unbounded economic growth targets have united with unprecedented behavioral technology to produce a society that's constantly simmering just below the boiling point. I don't know where I'll go with this but at the very least I think more people need to engage with this.

[joebloompianoproject-blog]

Joe's Blog Ear Training, an Introduction: the What, the Why, the How

#1 Why do ear training?

Ask a student or performer if they listen as they play, and the answer which they give, without much pause to think, is generally “yes”.  Yet the ability to hear clearly while playing, and to understand what one is hearing, is the principal things that sets a good player apart from others.  The good player does not only have a good technique, but they have as strong an ability to listen completely and objectively to the sounds they are making.  In the hands of a master, technical matters are brought under the control of the ear.

It is a surprise to most musicians if you tell them that they are not really listening attentively when they play.  That too much of what they consider listening is actually physical sensations generated in the muscles causing notes to sound.   At the moment of an attack of a new note, there is often more tactile and kinaesthetic feeling going on than listening.

When the physical action stops but the note continues to sound, it is easier to focus purely on the sound.   Ideally there is a way to how to isolate sound from any muscular feelings or other sensations than that of hearing.

There is a way for the ear alone, whether that of the pianist or a listener, to learn to identify and distinguish among the many relations into which notes can combine.

Each such relationship produces for us a quality, and it this quality that forms the basis of ear training.

Being a good musician means having a mastery over the medium in which music exists, I.E. sound.  When possessed of such mastery, one can mold the medium of sound to one’s will.

No prior experience is needed to begin to develop the sensitivity of the “ear”.

#2  Sound is a quality.

The experience of sound is a quality and not a measurable quantity.

How notes combine into a single conscious experience is not a dividable into half steps or ticks of a clock.  Being a quality, there is no way of describing the quality of sound using words.   We must experience it.  If we try to ‘describe’ it to someone else, it is useless unless the other person has also experienced it directly.

The sounds we hear may result from combining notes in some measurable way, but we do not “hear” these measurements.   The quality of a chord, for example, is like a perfume.  It impresses us directly and unmistakably.  We do not need anything extra, such as the chemical makeup of the perfume, to fill ourselves with its aroma.

As I walk I may identity a certain scent in the air as that of a “rose”.  But unless one has already experienced this aroma and then also learned to associate it with the same word that I use, it is of no use to say the word “rose” to another and expect that they will know what scent we are talking about.

Associating an aroma with a word does not alter the aroma in any way.  We can study and examine the rose, but all we gain is knowledge (facts, quantitative measurements, etc.).  But all the while the fragrance persists calmly in our consciousness apart from anything visual, descriptive or analytical.

It is easy to stray from just the quality.  We are apt to substitute for it a symbol in the form of a name or an image.

A ‘rose expert’ can tell us while blindfolded what the name is of the specific type of rose they are smelling.   And though an ‘ear training expert’ would be able to give separate names to different patterns of sounds, it is more important that we simply have the ability to recognize when sound qualities are the same, or just similar, or vary more considerably.  Thus, while we could say: ah, that’s a perfect fifth sounding, or that’s a major chord in the first inversion, or those melody notes all belong to this or that scale, the important thing is that when you hear a perfect fifth and then a perfect forth, you can “smell” the difference.   If we never heard of a ‘half step’ we would still be aware of the difference in quality.

Ear Training is most successful when you work with qualities; when you use your innate, rapid, intuitive faculty of directly perceiving even the most subtle differences in quality between one combination of notes and another.   At first maybe we may only notice the most obvious differences, as between a chord and a melody.  In the world of odor, this would be like only being able to tell difference in quality between the smell of a lilac and that of a rose.   Later though we will be able to notice the difference in quality between various types of chords (various types of roses), and still later the subtlest differences between chords that arise from the intervals between the notes in the chord, their inversion, the number of notes they contain.  Our ability to distinguish between similar qualities in sound gets finer and finer.

If we hear a fast melody, we can tell from its overall quality through time just how many notes were in it (without counting as we hear them).

Eventually we become like the rose expert and can detect slight variations in quality between two roses on neighboring bushes.  We will be able to tell the difference between two chords that have the same root note, same ‘quality’ (major, minor…), and the same number of notes, whose only difference lies in the arrangement on the staves of where the root notes are, the thirds, and the fifths.  We will be able to single just one note from the chord with our ears and say whether it is a root note, third, or fifth.

We can be just as expert with intervals, melodies, and any other abstract relation between pitches (what I call “Sonic Geometry”).   We just want to avoid the temptation of applying some sort of musical ‘ruler’ to the sounds, by which we can measure the distance between two notes by a sense of their distance on a staff, along a piano keyboard, or along a violin string.

#3. Resolving ‘complex’ ear training abilities into an amalgam of simpler abilities.

In looking for a starting point for ear training, we might be tempted to start with something like : what is this chord that I just heard?  However, this is already a fairly complex ability.  It entails separate skills: is it a chord I’m hearing; how many notes are sounding; is it in root position or in an inversion; if I wanted to can I single note with my ear each individual note; can I tell what the intervals are between these notes; which of these notes are root notes, thirds, fifths, etc..

To come to realize that the original question involves an amalgam of simpler abilities,  we can learn to ‘refract’ through a ‘musical prism’ the original ability to see if it resolves into simpler component.   Nor should we be surprised if these simpler abilities, in turn, if each is put through another prism, do not resolve into even simpler abilities.  All ear training questions ultimately boil down to: 1) which is higher in pitch of two notes?  2) which is longer in duration of two notes?  3) how many sounds just sounded?  Then we can work our way backwards to our original question: what chord did I just hear?

#4.  Ear training is fun to do when there are two people together.

If you do not have access to a computer program*, or to a class being offered locally, Ear Training can be easily practiced with the help of just one friend and a room with two pianos (one will do also but it is a bit more cumbersome logistically).

The two people go back and forth presenting “questions” or answering questions.   The questions are always some combination of sounds.  The answer is either given in words or by reproducing the sounds on the other instrument.

Some examples on the simpler side:

Play two notes in a row: ask which one was either higher in pitch or longer in duration.   You can do something similar with three or more notes in a row (which was highest in pitch; which was longest in duration).

or

Play two or more notes at the same time: ask how many notes were sounding.  Play two or more notes one after the row: ask how many notes sounded.

or

Play a series of notes, one at a time, from an agreed upon range.  Have your partner try to match each one.   This range can after a while be expanded when agreed upon.   Later, let it be two simultaneous notes from an agreed upon range.

or

Agree that all the notes will be, for example, C-naturals, then play C-s in different ranges of the piano and have your partner match it in the correct octave.

Some examples of something with moderate difficulty:

Play examples of intervals (harmonic or melodic) but limited to only two possible answers (major third / minor third; perfect fourth / perfect fifth …).  Your partner provides the name of each that you play.  Later, there can be three possible correct answers (and eventually more).

Did the two chords just heard contain the same notes, or was one or more different (one being much harder than several).

The same principle of starting with two correct choices, then adding a third, fourth, etc.. can be applied to most ear training situations:  distinguishing among types or aspects of chords, three-chord harmonic progressions, types of rhythms, etc.).

As things advance, and the recipes become very gradually more complex.

Here are some examples of things of harder difficulty:

Which steps of a common scale did you just hear and in what order?  Or match the same notes (given the first note).

Was the chord in root position, first inversion or second inversion …

Listen to two chords: by how many half steps (and whether up or down) did the root notes move.

How many of the notes in one chord were also in the next chord.

Here is the scale of a particular key (play it one octave up and then down).  Then play a series of chords.  Ask on which scale step each is built.  Complicating factors can be whether the chord is in root position or inversion; whether non-diatonic chords are allowed; whether altered steps of the scale can be used for root notes.**

* You are welcome to request a copy of the “Joe Bloom Ear Training Program” which runs on PC-s but unfortunately not on Macs.

** For a more complete list of ear training activities, just send me a request.

[lifeonashelf]

CHIODOS

It’s nearly impossible to expound on the “process” of writing without coming across like a self-important shithead. I only mention this because I’m about to attempt to do the former without doing the latter. Though I’ve maybe already hamstrung myself by referring to the act of pressing buttons on a laptop as a “process”—and I certainly haven’t helped my case by putting quotation marks around “process,” nor by using the word “expound.” Come to think of it, that “nor” is also ringing awfully pompous to me, even if in a technical sense “nor” was the grammatically correct word to use there... And there I go informing you what’s “grammatically correct,” which makes me sound like a total asshole.

Nevertheless, making this text be a thing is indeed contingent on a sequence of mental formulation and ritualistic preparation and elementary discipline, and when you put all of those things together, the noun which most accurately describes the result is indeed “process” (I consulted my thesaurus for a less ostentatious term, but only an officious wanker would describe writing as a “procedure”).

The first aspect is probably self-explanatory—“mental formulation” is basically just a douche-y way of saying “thinking about stuff.” Naturally, I have to develop an idea in my mind that I think is worth putting into words before I, you know, put it into words. Despite the schizophrenic tangents these pieces often swerve into, I assure you a significant amount of forethought goes into what they should ostensibly be about before a single letter is typed. So no matter how insensible the missives in Life on a Shelf may seem at times, I assure you that all of them are hatched from an embryonic guiding vision which was subjected to vigorous cerebral computation before I expelled it onto the page. Or something.

My “ritualistic preparation” these days involves brewing a pot of coffee while my laptop boots up, then stepping out onto my balcony to smoke a cigarette. I assume other writers have their own routines (although I can’t fathom how anybody gets anything done without coffee and cigarettes). As for me, a Camel Blue and five minutes of pensive silence are the ideal trappings to activate the creative headspace I need to be in to get down to business, and a glug of Pacific Northwest Blend with plenty of creamer supplies a constructive intermission whenever I need to gather my thoughts before finishing a sentence… like I just did after I typed those ellipses.

These elements are easily managed—I think about stuff all the time, and I’ve been known to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee even when I’m not writing. In fact, “elementary discipline” is the sole truly daunting component of the “process” (“pretentious fucking quotation marks again”). Though you might imagine the most challenging aspect of being a writer is generating quality material, this is absolutely not the case. Have you ever browsed the Romance section at a bookstore? Next time you do, select any novel with a bare-chested cowboy or highlander on the cover and read the synopsis on the back; you will promptly ascertain that something as otiose as quality never factored into that author’s process. Admittedly, I’ve never written a Romance novel, but I’ve read enough of them to deduce their methodology: devise a serviceable plot which strikes the delicate balance of sappy and rapey that is essential to the genre, concoct a couple names like Liam O’Shaughnessey and Analisa Winthrope, then start cranking out pages. Whether or not the finished product turns out any good is basically irrelevant; it got written. And ultimately, that’s all that matters.

Which brings us to the crux of the issue, my friends: the only difficult thing about writing… is actually writing. As in, sitting down and fucking doing it. Whether you have ideas or not. Whether you have time or not. Whether you even want to or not.

I am battling against all of those things at present. I don’t have any concrete concept of where this piece should go, despite having already listened to the trio of Chiodos discs I own two times each. I suppose I do technically have time because I’m not at work and I’m not asleep—however, it is currently 2:49 a.m., so I’m only a couple hours away from officially being up Stupidly Late. And if I’m being totally honest, I don’t particularly feel like writing this right now. Actually, I haven’t much felt like writing anything lately.

Popular legend asserts that Jack Kerouac authored On the Road in a single marathon, chemical-fueled session. That particular work has of course accumulated a mythic significance, and the integral way its unorthodox genesis factors into the iconography of The Beat Generation’s magnum opus cannot be overstated—there’s just something irresistibly romantic about the notion of a writer so driven to immortalize his masterpiece that he hammered away at it non-stop until he purged the whole thing out of his head and onto the page. On the Road’s putative origin story is such a renowned facet of its existence, it hardly matters anymore that the accepted account of Kerouac composing the novel in one fever-dream sitting is pure hyperbole. It actually took him three full weeks to type the thing, and he was only able to do it that quickly because he had been sketching out the manuscript in his journals for several months beforehand. I’m not pointing this out to belittle the impact of Kerouac’s most revered literary contribution—although I personally found On the Road prodigiously underwhelming when I finally read it, I still concede that crafting an entire novel in three weeks is a duly impressive feat. Even so, for our purposes here, I would like it known that the quixotic notion of writers routinely hunkering down and hammering out text in a frenetic slit-jugular gush is absolute bullshit.

The truth is this: writing is almost never borne from lightning-in-a-bottle surges of inspiration. The vast majority of prose is instead borne from endless, maddening hours spent agonizing over a single word. An entire afternoon spent obsessing over one sentence that will inevitably undergo further alteration when you re-read it the next afternoon and realize it’s still not sitting quite right. Days and nights and months and years whose elapses become measured in pages—days and nights and months and years spent toiling in seclusion. Writing is lonely, punishing work that yields limitless frustration and only sporadic satisfaction. It is the most bi-polar of artistic expressions, a drug that poisons as often as it cures, and you never know which trip you’re in store for from one fix to the next. To be a writer is to give your heart to a mistress who demands steadfast devotion while she repeatedly punches you in the face, yet you keep coming back for more because every now and then she gives you a really awesome kiss instead. Asked what advice they would give to aspiring wordsmiths who wanted to know the secret to living a happy life as a writer, one prominent author is said to have remarked: “Don’t be a writer.” This quote is possibly apocryphal, but when I heard it, I believe it was attributed to Sylvia Plath—or maybe I just assume Sylvia Plath said it because she ended her life by sticking her head into her fucking oven. And, frankly, I don’t think she chose an entirely unreasonable course of action. Because, goddamn, this shit really hurts sometimes.

I am not Jack Kerouac. I did not shape my debut novel in one sitting, or even in three weeks. It took me five grueling years. Once I garnered the interest of an agent, I spent another several months editing my tome to the more marketable length she advised me to trim it to, then spent an additional several months patiently waiting while she shopped it. It was a protracted and sometimes excruciating interval. But one of the things that kept me afloat while I was laboring on this intensive undertaking was my presumption that its consummation was bound to feel like the afterglow of an epic make-out session.

Regrettably, it has not.

Since I finished the book, I have instead found myself in the grip of an acute postpartum depression. I do not feel triumphant, I feel lethargic and uninspired. This is a turn of events I did not foresee—throughout the half-decade I spent striving to complete that project, in the back of my mind I was simultaneously making grand plans to commence a new endeavor, and to subsequently start churning out huge chunks of pages on this one (or at least finish the goddamn letter “C”). And now, at last, for the past few months I have had several hours a day to fill with whatever artistic activities I choose… but I haven’t particularly desired to spend any of those hours doing anything artistic (the most significant feat I’ve been able to muster thus far is re-watching the first three seasons of Miami Vice).

I think I know what has instigated this listlessness. While I was working on the novel, my exclusive goal was its completion; the success or failure of that mission rested solely in my hands. However, my present goal is considerably loftier: I want the thing to get released so I can begin the career I’ve been chasing for two decades… and this is something I have absolutely no jurisdiction over. The outcome of that mission will be decreed by the prospective publishers who will determine the course of the rest of my life, faceless strangers who have the capacity to shatter all of my dreams simply by emailing the word “pass” to my agent.

Which many, many, many have already done.

I am incredibly grateful to be as far along on the course as I am. I am incredibly grateful that a representative at the most prestigious literary agency in the world read something I wrote and found enough merit in it to decide, “this guy doesn’t suck.” I am prouder of the novel I produced than I have been of anything I’ve ever created, and there are passages in it that are so good I can hardly believe I’m the one who wrote them. The manuscript represents an impeccable embodiment of the vision I had when I first sat down and started plucking away at it all those years ago, blissfully unaware of the weight and scope of the expedition I was about to embark on because it was a journey I had never taken before. I bumbled my way through the early chapters as I struggled to gain purchase on the story I wanted to tell, I gradually got to know my characters, and along the way I fell in love with some and grew to despise others, just as I hoped my eventual readers would. Writing the book was a revelatory experience—I became intimately acquainted not only with my craft, but also with the vastness of my passion for it. I drew upon reserves of endurance I did not even know I possessed, consuming innumerable days grinding on the text for six hours straight, breaking away only to go work an eight-hour restaurant shift, then coming home and writing some more until the sun came up before finally collapsing into my bed to sleep for five hours so I could wake up and do the exact same thing again the next day. It took literal and figurative years off my life, but I wrote a novel. And even better, when it was finished, I realized I had somehow written one that I think is pretty goddamn fantastic.

But I’m not basking in victory at the moment—I’m fucking terrified. Because now, after dozens of rejections, there is an increasingly strong chance that no one will ever read my pretty goddamn fantastic novel and this aspiration I have been working toward my entire life will culminate in failure.

I understand that every successful writer surely weathered numerous rebuffs before someone believed in their work enough to green-light their publishing career. My cognizance of this should probably provide me some measure of solace, perhaps assure me that I am in good company and merely going through another step of the “process.”

Except that’s not how I feel right now at all. Right now, I feel like I did the best I could, but the best I can do simply isn’t good enough.

And since we’re putting it all on the table here, I can freely admit that some of my melancholy stems from all of this happening while I’m counting down the final weeks of my thirties. I’ve never placed much significance on age-related milestones—sure, I was depressed when I turned 30, but that was mostly because I was still recovering from a recent break-up; I was also depressed when I turned 35, but that was mostly because I started that birthday eating alone at a Denny’s at two in the morning, which is an inherently depressing way to kick off your birthday irrespective of the year. I realize that being 40 is roughly as inconsequential as being 39 in the scheme of things. Only, it’s kind of fucking not.

It’s not so much the age itself that unsettles me—most of the time, I still conduct myself like an 18 year-old with an advanced record collection and an excessive proportion of grey in his beard; I’ve even grown out my belly and my hair again, so whenever I put on a Slayer shirt I don’t look a whole lot different than I did when I was actually 18. No, the aspect of turning 40 that I find discomfiting is purely internal: I can’t help myself from holding the general assumption that someone who has been on this planet for 40 years should probably have their shit together. And I know I do not. In almost every conceivable realm of my existence, I am behind the curve of innate anthropological evolution: I have not married or procreated, my current vocation is in an industry where even my superiors are at least a decade younger than me, and I still regularly stay up until 5 a.m. eating Doritos while I binge-view Friday The 13th films (in case you’re thinking of investing some time in the franchise, be cautioned that Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is not merely the worst entry in the series by a massive margin, it is an absolutely unredeemable piece of shit; I’ve only watched that one like 20 times).

When you’re young, 40 seems inconceivably ancient. And no matter how intimately you stay in touch with the edition of yourself who thought that way, sometimes 40 seems inconceivably ancient when you’re 39, too. That clichéd adage “you’re only as old as you feel” delivers no comfort whatsoever on the nights you come home at three in the morning after trudging through nine hours of the food-service work you’ve been slogging in the trenches of for ten years, when you’re depleted and sore and desperately wishing you had some other skillset to realistically earn a decent living, and you evaluate your throbbing feet and your aching back and your weary brain and conclude that if you truly are as old as you feel, then you might have accidentally blinked and turned 65 during your shift. I’m uncertain if I’m old enough to accurately classify myself as old, but I am certainly too old to accurately classify myself as young, and I am old enough to be painfully aware of this.

Consequently, I’m probably also too old to be listening to Chiodos, an archetypal emo ensemble whose musical ethos predominantly evokes a more symphonic incarnation of My Chemical Romance, with intermittent screamy-growly vocals and plenty of requisitely-unwieldy song titles like “I Didn’t Say I Was Powerful, I Said I Was A Wizard”. It’s unlikely I will ever see Chiodos live since they split up in 2016, though I can presume with minimal imprecision that if I did go to one of their shows I would be older than every other person there. Tellingly, the group’s eldest member was only 30 when they disbanded, which suggests that even the dudes who actually played in Chiodos deemed their music unsuitable for people my age.

Despite my cultural incompatibility, I do like Chiodos, and I think a few of their tunes may even merit the designation of awesome. I don’t know if this justifies owning three of their records—the only one I spin with any regularity is 2014’s Devil, mostly for the scorching cut “Ole Fishlips Is Dead Now”, a balls-out metal opus whose bridge section is as thrillingly brutal as its title is silly. Come to think of it, there are a lot of things about the band’s sonic and imagistic aesthetic that strike me as silly, so I’m not sure I entirely understand why I like them. Further, I’m not sure I’m even supposed to like them. In a very real sense, Chiodos embodies the epoch when I officially stopped being part of the demographic that music for young people is aimed at: their debut record—2005’s All’s Well That Ends Well—was released the summer after I graduated from college to presumably take my first steps into proper adulthood (although, I spent most of that summer smoking pot and playing Tekken with my then-girlfriend from two in the afternoon until sunrise, which may not have necessarily qualified as “adulting”).

As such, my initial awareness of Chiodos was primarily defined by my not being aware of them at all. They were exactly the sort of outfit that headlined the Vans Warped Tour the very first year a line-up for that festival was announced which forced me to concede I hadn’t heard of any of the bands performing at an event I had once attended religiously. I don’t think I even registered this sea-change at the time (I think I mostly just grumbled, “dude, the Warped Tour line-up sucks this year”). Yet as Chiodos and I continued advancing on our separate paths, I gradually became conscious that my alt-rock era had officially come to an unceremonious end and a legion of skinny-jean-and-eye-liner-wearing dudes with injudicious haircuts and a multiplicity of neck tattoos had seized the mantle. Since this new crop of youth-medium-t-shirt bands—Falling In Reverse, Sleeping With Sirens, Pierce The Veil, et al—looked so ridiculous to me, I naturally assumed they also sounded ridiculous; upon further inspection, many of these bands do, indubitably, sound ridiculous. However, somewhere along the way, I began to accept an uncomfortable truth: my inability to wholeheartedly appreciate the music of the alt-young is more my fault than the bands’.

It would be extremely narrow-minded of me to sum up what we’ll call the emo scene—for lack of a better term—as “loud songs about girls” (especially since the inclusion of pretty songs about girls between the loud songs about girls is precisely the reason so many girls like the bands in this genus). Nonetheless, on a fundamental level, the vast majority of the music in that canon is indeed characterized by myopic lyrical musings about assorted stages of the boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl paradigm. Even the heaviest track in the Chiodos catalog (the afore-mentioned “Ole Fishlips”) features a chorus that begins with the lines: “I want to forget you / You’ve broken everything I love, took all my light and turned it into dusk.” Granted, that’s a damn solid stanza, but it’s not one I can presently relate to. Those words don’t evoke anything in my current existence—the last time someone took all my light and turned it into dusk was a full five years ago; I can barely remember what that felt like now, let alone what being in love to begin with felt like. As much as I appreciate some of the music crafted by acts of Chiodos’ ilk on a purely “that rocks” level, it simply doesn’t resonate with me on an emotional level. The most pressing concerns in my world aren’t centered around whether any of my foxy co-workers like-me-like-me or not; I’m a lot more worried about how I’m going to pay my rent in a few years when my body is too broken down for me to be their co-worker anymore.

Which brings about a more imperative revelation that is just now dawning on me: there isn’t a whole lot of modern rock I can relate to. People of my advanced age are ostensibly supposed to listen to bands like Coldplay, whose music has never spoken to me at all—near as I can tell, most of their songs are either about how exhilarating it feels to discover a great new organic juice bistro or the simple pleasure of trying on an Abercrombie & Fitch v-neck that fits you just right. There aren’t too many rock frontmen writing tunes about wrestling with an uncertain future while the mounting impediments of middle age conspire to diminish their tenacity. Maybe that’s why most of the new records I get excited about are still by death metal bands, whose tunes eschew any musings on situational angst or starry-eyed ardor in favor of graphic elucidations of the various phases of the deceasing process (being violently killed, decomposition, the ensuing sexual defilement of one’s corpse, etc.). Perhaps it’s depressing that I think about dying a lot more frequently than I think about girls these days, yet the fact remains that my particular juncture of the mortal cycle is sorely underrepresented in the contemporary rock register. Aerosmith’s “Dream On” was written way back in 1973; what the fuck have you done for me lately?

When I hear a twenty-something vocalist plaintively bemoaning insecurity about his place in the world, it doesn’t elicit a poignant response from me anymore—now I just sort of meh-shrug because I know he has plenty of time to figure his shit out (and, besides, I find it difficult to sympathize with the amorous woes of any dude with flawless cheekbones who belts out those songs every night to a sea of female fans so devoted to him that they’d willingly gouge out the eyes of the person standing next to them if he told them they could touch his penis afterwards). An audience of that singer’s peers is wholly in synch with that species of nebulous life anxieties, so they are undoubtedly buoyed to ascertain that a musician they esteem is going through the same trials as them. But I am no longer in that audience, no longer a peer. I can hardly blame any of those bands or their fans for my being a man staring down his 40’s; they didn’t do that to me, time did. Regardless, I have become increasingly incapable of forging a sincere connection with them, which makes it tough for me to take them seriously since they ply their trade via an art-form that is the most singular connective tissue of my being.  

I’m of course minimizing for humorous and dramatic effect. There are plenty of more recent outfits whose work has invigorated me over these last few years (if you want me to name names, I’ll happily toss out Modern Baseball, White Lung, Pity Sex, TV Ghost, Moon King, Thee Oh Sees, and Warpaint, among others). Still, I am perpetually reminded that as I segue into my future, most of the truly significant musical figures in my life are destined to remain those who came into my life in my past—especially when I consider that out of the six upcoming concerts I currently have tickets for, not one of the bands I’m going to see was formed in this century.

Chiodos was a very good band. Perhaps even a great one. They authored some creative, impressively-technical music that was executed by a cast of clearly skilled players. Devil is a consistently killer record from start to finish. Judging by how many of their stylistic flourishes I’ve noted in the work of several similar outfits that arrived in their wake, Chiodos is probably terribly important to a large number of people a generation removed from me. Nonetheless, as much as I enjoy a lot of their tunes, Chiodos is just not terribly important to me—I am writing about them here simply because they are the next band in my library.

What is important to me, however, is overcoming this dismal miasma that has settled over me. I have no desire to spend my 40’s the same way I spent most of my 30’s: ever-crawling dejectedly onward, all the while recognizing my destiny like a beacon on the distant horizon and wondering when I will reach it, inexorably waiting for the life I want to live to finally begin. After facing numerous setbacks—the worst being a deal that was actually on paper awaiting signatures, one that my agent was forced to pass on to protect me because of an untenable small-print proviso which ceded absolute ownership of my work to the publisher—the status of my authorial career is thus: my best option now is to craft another novel and restart the process from scratch. The challenge this poses is fresh and staggering: now I know precisely how difficult it is to write a novel, how long it takes, how much of myself will be devoured along the way. And I will have to plunge into this undertaking without any assurance that eventual success will ensue, since it did not the first time.

Yet if I have any prayer of meeting that challenge, first I have to dissipate this fog that has enveloped me. I cannot complete the task until I begin it in earnest. So maybe, just maybe, if I can coax myself to finish an essay about a band that doesn’t mean anything to me, I’ll be able to coax myself back to pursuing the desire that means everything to me.

It’s time for me to sit down again. And fucking do it. Whether I have ideas or not. Whether I have time or not. Whether I even want to or not. Like chaste Analisa Winthrope—who initially resists the brutish advances of that notorious rogue Liam O’Shaughnessey, until she beholds the throbbing nucleus of manhood beneath his kilt and finally yields to the humid yearning in her loins—I must succumb to my passion.

Because writing isn’t something I do. It’s what I am. Sure, those punches in the face are never pleasant. But, man, when I get those kisses instead…

This probably isn’t the best installment of Life on a Shelf I’ve ever composed. It might not even be a particularly strong one.

But that’s basically irrelevant. It got written.

And right now, ultimately, that’s all that matters.

 April 5, 2018