#the character arc from worst to best babysitter is so real

[hekateinhell]

The Three Moods of Armand vis-à-vis Lestat's fledglings:

"I will fuck you up, I don't care if you're Lestat's baby... haven't you heard what I do to his children?"

"I will fuck you up, I don't care if you're Lestat's baby... haven't you heard what I do to his children?"

"I will fuck you up, I don't care if because you're Lestat's baby... haven't you heard what I do to his children?"

[es-mentiras]

I Can't Stop Watching Contagion | Folding Ideas

Coping with crisis in the real world by confronting it in fiction

[O]ne purpose of fiction is that it allows us a space to practice intense emotions and states without exposing us to the complexities or harms of those states in reality. ... Watching a disaster film in a disaster, particularly one as sociologically driven as Contagion, is an extension of this. Rather than practicing intense emotional states before they happen, this instinct of exposing ourselves to what we’re already experiencing, amplifying existing emotional states, it works as a form of emotional inoculation. I am scared and anxious and uncertain, and so I will make myself more scared and more anxious and more uncertain, because it’s still fiction, it’s still safe, it still has an end. It is bounded. Things will get bad, things will then get worse, people will die. The world is unfair, it is unbalanced, it is unjust, and catastrophe will bring out both the best and worst of all of us. And then it will end.

...

There is an escapism to a story about horrible things, because that story is complete. It is bounded. It provides a framework to horror that doesn’t exist in the real present. Our future is uncertain, beset on all sides by devils, and we can come out better or we can come out worse or we can die and none of us knows which it will be and we’re all screaming at those in power to make the moral choice, to choose better.

...

On one hand I am deeply privileged to be in a position where I am and can remain isolated. On the other hand I can’t even think about the other hand.

Disease does not have a narrative meaning, it does not have an eye for poetry or twists or closure. The only meaning is in how we respond. So I watch Contagion over and over and over again. Because I need to practice emotions, and I need to live in a bounded world, and I need to believe we can choose better.

full video transcript under the cut:

[video is Dan Olson of Folding ideas lying on his couch, staring unmoving into the camera. scenes from Contagion are projected over him.]

VOICEOVER: This video is not an essay, it is a raw nerve.

Contagion is a 2011 film directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring an ensemble cast including Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. The film revolves around the origin, contraction, spread, and cure of the fictional MEV-1 virus, a highly contagious, aggressive, and fatal strain of hybrid bat and pig flu.

The initial patient, Beth Emhoff, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, contracts the virus in Macau after shaking hands with a casino chef who has recently handled an infected pig. She spreads the virus to several other people in the casino after they handle objects that she’s touched, such as gambling chips, a martini glass, and her cell phone. An important aspect of the film is that the fictional virus is highly transmissible via fomites, which are objects that an infected person has touched after touching their mouth or nose, coughing or sneezing on the object, or otherwise leaving infectious residue on an otherwise inert, non-biological object. A local waiter who handled her glass returns home, infecting members of his family before wandering into traffic in a fever-induced delirium where he is struck by a vehicle and killed. A Japanese businessman who shared chips with her returns to Tokyo where he falls ill rapidly, dying suddenly of a seizure on a crowded bus, infecting several bystanders who touch him or handrails that he touched. A Ukranian model who handled Beth’s phone flies to London where her symptoms also escalate rapidly while she transmits the disease to others via handling portfolios and riding in a cab.

Beth returns to America where she infects several people in Chicago, first her ex lover Jon who contracts it when they have sex while she is on layover, and a bartender at the airport who handles her credit card, before flying to Minneapolis where she infects the coworker who drives her home from the airport and her son Clark. A day or two later Beth’s husband, Mitch, played by Matt Damon, picks up Clark from school after Clark begins to exhibit a fever. While Beth and Mitch are talking in the kitchen Beth suddenly has a seizure. Mitch rushes her to the hospital, leaving Clark with a babysitter, but Beth’s condition continues to worsen, she fails to respond to treatment, and she dies. As a stunned Mitch is driving home he gets a call from the babysitter that Clark has possibly had a seizure and might not be breathing. Mitch tells her to call 911 immediately, but before anyone can get there Clark is already dead.

From there the story expands to encompass the doctors, politicians, reporters, hucksters, and ordinary people who are swept up in an all-encompassing pandemic that threatens to kill a quarter of the global population. The movie is an incredibly tense hundred minutes of society pushed to its breaking points, not as a fantastical disintegration into wastelands of leather-clad murder gangs or a zombie apocalypse, but one rooted in the historical reality of epidemics.

And I can’t stop watching it.

I have watched Contagion over fifteen times in the last two weeks. Several days I’ve just watched it on repeat two or three times. And I'm not alone. According to Netflix it is, at the time of writing, the second most watched thing in Canada. For weeks it has sat in the top ten.

Unlike many similar films, such as the 1995 film Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman, the film is not about any one person, and there is no singular twist of victory. Rather it is an example of sociological storytelling. It’s about the systems and networks that these characters exist within, and how they both influence and are influenced by those systems, and what happens when those systems are placed under tremendous strain. Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, a front line worker for the CDC who is sent to Wisconsin to track the transmission of the virus and contain its spread. Half way through the film she catches the virus herself, and then her condition worsens, and then she dies. It is unceremonious. It is not foreshadowed  or paid off because it is not poetic, because pandemics are not poetic and don’t have a tight arc or an eye for narrative fulfillment. It doesn’t have meaning, the only meaning is in how we choose to respond.

Because this is sociological the movie doesn’t end when doctor Ally Hextall develops a vaccine. What would be the singular victory moment in most films is instead the beginning of a slow, painful march back to stability as first the vaccine needs to be mass produced, and then distributed to billions of people worldwide. It is a dangerous task that needs to be tightly controlled as it requires access to the isolated virus and thus is very slow to ramp up. The film trudges through the immense societal tension that is created when there is a cure, but it will take over a year to make and distribute enough for everyone, a situation that lays bare every societal privilege. Dr. Orantes, played by Marion Cotillard, is kidnapped and held ransom for the vaccine by Chinese villagers who are keenly aware that in the priority of global politics the poor, the rural, and the non-white are at the very back of the line. They are terrorists, but they’re not wrong, just desperate. They are at the back of the line, and the government throws them under the bus anyway. Despite the existence of a vaccine Mitch continues to keep his teenage daughter, Jory, under aggressive quarantine out of legitimate fear of the disease that has been amplified to paranoia by the trauma of losing Beth and Clark, the survivor’s guilt of being naturally immune, and the uncertainty of whether his daughter would share that immunity or not.

In December 2019 the coronavirus COVID-19 was identified by doctors in the city of Wuhan. Over the course of January and February the spread of the virus began to be identified in South Korea, Japan, and Italy and, gradually, most of the rest of the world. The disease itself is not exceptionally lethal when compared to epidemics such as the Black Death in the mid 14th century or the spread of Smallpox through indigenous populations following contact with Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, but, first of all, “better than the black death” is a pretty bad standard, and second on a global scale a mortality rate of 1-2 percent in an unchecked pandemic still means, in absolute terms, millions and millions of preventable deaths. This is compounded by the strain that mass illness, even one that is not terribly lethal, inherently places on an already strained society: crowding healthcare systems, disrupting infrastructure, and forcing people to choose between working while ill, and thus infecting others, or losing their jobs. A low mortality rate is often the result of adequate care, but the quality of care goes down as the number of severely ill goes up, as the number of infected healthcare workers reduces the number of people qualified and capable of administering that care. This, in turn, has a knock on effect where unrelated illnesses and injuries become more dangerous. A heart attack or broken leg that would be easily managed under normal circumstances becomes that much worse when there aren’t enough people to help, aren’t enough beds to go around. The more people who are exposed, the more need to roll the dice against that one to two percent, and the more are going to lose.

As of March 2020 most of the United States and Canada have entered a period of uncertain quarantining. Non-essential businesses are closed, events are canceled, workers are being sent home or laid off, borders are being shut down,and the economy is in freefall. Every existing societal problem, from income inequality to housing inequality to healthcare, is being stressed and amplified by not only the virus but the complicity of our governments. News comes out hourly about warnings the people in charge received months ago, and the ways in which they were either ignored or exploited for personal gain. Several American politicians were briefed on the security risks of COVID 19 in late January, and then took to Twitter to decry public fear as a partisan hoax while they dumped their stocks in preparation for a crash that they knew was coming. People in government, their corporate donors, and their pundit allies are getting anxious, debating breaking quarantine and telling everyone to go back to work and roll the dice on whether or not they’re going to die for the economy. We are standing on the precipice of a very uncertain future, and we don’t know if that future is days, weeks, months, or years away. This could be the new normal for a very long time.

So why do I keep watching Contagion?

A dimension of narrative that I like to bring up pretty regularly is the idea that one purpose of fiction is that it allows us a space to practice intense emotions and states without exposing us to the complexities or harms of those states in reality. This is typically in the context of the fanciful: reckless stunts, wild sex, gun fights, or general risky behaviour. We talked about this with Fifty Shades and the idea of non-consent as a fantasy subject.

Watching a disaster film in a disaster, particularly one as sociologically driven as Contagion, is an extension of this. Rather than practicing intense emotional states before they happen, this instinct of exposing ourselves to what we’re already experiencing, amplifying existing emotional states, it works as a form of emotional inoculation. I am scared and anxious and uncertain, and so I will make  myself more scared and more anxious and more uncertain, because it’s still fiction, it’s still safe, it still has an end. It is bounded. Things will get bad, things will then get worse, people will die. The world is unfair, it is unbalanced, it is unjust, and catastrophe will bring out both the best and worst of all of us. And then it will end.

Is there looting, and arson, and murder? Yeah. But it is, ultimately, out of the ordinary. People get paranoid, people get desperate, they riot under stress, but even when food supply lines break down, the world isn’t summarily turned over to those with the bullets and the willingness to use them. There is no Mad Max dystopia, no Fallout post-apocalypse, because at the end of the day humans are pro-social. The cooperative survive.

In 1349, in the midst of the black death, it must have looked like the end of the world. Entire households, entire villages, dying a gross, horrifying, pain ful death, month after month after month. Then for generations, every year wondering if this was the year the plague returned. Was this the year there would be no one left to bury the dead. But people survived. The working class, who bore the brunt of the disease and saw the bodies of their families, clans, and communities piled like cord wood, fought back against the aristocrats who isolated themselves in their towers and remote estates. It was messy, and bloody, and it took decades, but in the end serfdom was abolished. Europe lost upwards of sixty percent of its population over the course of five years, but it wasn’t Armageddon. Things kept going, people kept going, and Europe would go on to be absolute bastards to the rest of the world.

The disease in Contagion is not unrealistic, real diseases have been as deadly, or worse, but it is dramatic. It moves very, very quickly, is highly contagious, and kills a huge number of those who are infected. In reality this aggressiveness would kinda work against the disease, and, morbidly, would help responders limit the spread. It moves so fast and kills so quickly that there’s little question of who has it, and within a couple days everyone who has it is either recovered or dead. This was the aspect of the SARS epidemic that allowed response teams to effectively quarantine the virus where it burnt itself out. That said it’s not impossible that something could spread so aggressively, be so incredibly contagious, that it could spread like wildfire and become almost impossible to contain before anyone even knows what’s going on. But it’s undeniably dramatic and emotionally effective.

48 hours. We can contain two days in our head. A situation where things will get materially worse literally tomorrow or the day after if nothing is done right this second, that’s a comprehensible timeline. Forty eight hours is short enough that in a catastrophe, driven by adrenaline and stress and necessity, you can stay awake that long without even realizing it. COVID’s life cycle is closer to a month. By the time you get sick you’ve already been sick for two weeks, and now you’re in for hell for another two to four weeks. It’s just past the range where it really feels real. Two weeks isn’t long, but it’s still over the line into the indeterminate “future”.

This problem extends in both directions. There’ s only so much space in the mind for time. As the news ramps up, as things get worse, the present crowds out history. The distance between the irrelevant past and the now contracts. ’Days ago’ becomes distant. ‘Months ago’ is irrelevant. Years ago is ancient. By evening even earlier the same day is suspect in its relevance to the Now. We remember January but it has as much presence in the mind as childhood. Our lives become superliminal, displaced from time, as we wrestle with our own minds and how they try to process the chronology of our own existence. By Sunday, Friday no longer feels real, and yet every day’s news is the consequence of decisions made fourteen, twenty one, twenty eight days ago. Today’s responses won’t yield results until well into next month. This flaw in our meat is a gap into which charlatans, hucksters, and conmen can drive a wedge and pry us open, and pry they will try.

When I first saw Contagion in 2012 I thought the weakest element was what I considered at the time to be the demonization of online media. Jude Law’s character plays an online pundit and conspiracy theorist who preaches to an audience of millions about an herbal tincture of forsythia that he claims is the cure, a cure he just-so-happens to be selling. It is, in 2020, the realest element of the film. Herbal cures, hydrogen water, steam treatment, teas, magnets, suspensions of silver, tinctures, and tonics. We’ve got pastors standing at the pulpit telling their congregation it's all a hoax, that there’s no reason to suspend services, that their nebulous enemies are just trying to shut them down. We now live in a world where the US president told people based on a rumour that chloroquine, a drug used for treating malaria and lupus, was the cure, so a man in Arizona ate a packet of fish tank cleaner containing the chemical. He’s dead now. And that is, again, all part of it.

There is an escapism to a story about horrible things, because that story is complete. It is bounded. It provides a framework to horror that doesn’t exist in the real present. Our future is uncertain, beset on all sides by devils, and we can come out better or we can come out worse or we can die and none of us knows which it will be and we’re all screaming at those in power to make the moral choice, to choose better.

And I am in an absolute haze. My daily life has not much been impacted, overtly. I’m already an agoraphobic shut-in wh o worksonline and has a bad sleep schedule. But it’s too much. I’m tired all the time. I can’t pay attention to the news and  Ican’t not pay attention to the news. Working is difficult.  I have a long history of respiratory illness. I am at risk.

On one hand I am deeply privileged to be in a position where I am and can remain isolated. On the other hand I can’t even think about the other hand.

Disease does not have a narrative meaning, it does not have an eye for poetry or twists or closure. The only meaning is in how we respond. So I watch Contagion over and over and over again. Because I need to practice emotions, and I need to live in a bounded world, and I need to believe we can choose better.

[end transcript]

[tuxiedjabberwock]

Please - Gintama one-shot

Title:

Please

Category: Anime/Manga » Gintama

Author: Sqydd

Language: English, Rating: Rated: K+

Genre: General

Published: 02-13-19, Updated: 02-13-19

Chapters: 1, Words: 1,446

(Takes place during episode 263.)

"Alright, men!" Hijikata folded his hands behind his back and raised his head, facing the ranks of the Shinsengumi. "We're going to comb this city and leave no stone unturned! We'll find this beam cannon and destroy it before the night is over! If we don't, you don't have to worry about Planet Beam being your death—just worry about your final wishes before seppuku."

"Yes, sir!" they chorused, although some now seemed a bit pale in the moonlight. Sogo maintained an impassive look at the rallying, but Hijikata noticed he was white-knuckling his sword a bit.

"Kondo-san said our target's name is Obi-one Hajime. A male with a blond ponytail and glowing red eyes, also with the ability to shoot and wield beams as weapons. He's extremely dangerous if taken lightly, so remember your training and keep your guards up at all times."

"Except now, amiright?"

Every pair of eyes save for Hijikata's, seeing as they were squeezed shut in blatant frustration, turned to the source of the unholy noise: Odd Jobs himself lounging in the entranceway. Hijikata had to count to ten and back before he was any semblance of calm. "What are you doing here?" he asked, hoping Gintoki would deflect the question as he was so good at doing. It would give him a reason to warm up before the real fight.

"Just watching for now." He pushed off from the wood and sauntered over, one hand set in the folds of his kimono. As he came closer, Hijikata noticed two handles sticking out of his obi: one being his usual Lake Toya wooden sword, the other wrapped with clothes and appearing very unfamiliar. The vice-chief smirked maliciously and lowered himself into more of a battle-ready stance.

"I don't need to repeat the sword-carrying laws to you." Gintoki's eyes went to his new sword for a moment as if he was surprised at the fact.

"This? This is a loaner. Pretty crappy blacksmithing work too—it's nothing I'd personally own," he said absently, picking his nose at the same time.

"Doesn't change the fact you're carrying it." Hijikata now had his hand on his own sword and was fully prepared to draw it in threat of arrest before Kondo stepped forward, catching his attention.

"Toshi, we have more important things to focus on right now, huh? You can arrest Odd Jobs after Planet Beam's neutralized." Gintoki, who'd gotten somewhat of a shit-eating grin earlier, returned to his usual dead-eyed unreadable expression. Why was he there anyway? He was lazy on the best of days, insufferable on the worst, but when the Kabuki district or all of Edo was in danger, he and his brood usually beat the Shinsengumi to the punch. Though he seriously didn't deserve it, Hijikata decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe Gintoki was there on honest business.

"Men, move out!" he said to the assembled squads. "Find Obi-one!"

"Wait." Gintoki's voice wasn't any louder, but something about his tone stopped everyone in their tracks. He gripped the handle of his katana as he stepped closer, close enough he was within blade's reach of Hijikata, Kondo, and Sogo. "It won't do if the side characters beat the main character to the punch. You know, the big bad of the arc has to be taken down by me else our ratings will drop? Then Gorilla-san—no, not you Kondo, the author—will be forced to add in cute but pointless characters to fish fresh interest and the whole thing will go down the toilet faster than that Jump ninja with his hemorrhoids flaring up."

"Boss, it's a serious arc, you can't go breaking the fourth wall like that," Sogo said.

"I just had to make my point. In fact, the kids and Otae might get some bright ideas too—d'ya mind keepin' an eye on them? It's bad enough if side characters beat the villain, but secondary protagonists—"

"What do you think we are, babysitters?" Hijikata interrupted, bringing Gintoki's eyes back to him. "It's bad enough you're telling us to sit this out. Even seppuku isn't enough for this. We're the Shinsengumi and it's our job to beat the shit out of any threats to Edo's safety. You and your main character bullshit aren't worth our name."

"He's their big brother," Gintoki said when Hijikata expected another stupid response. Sogo stiffened slightly at that, probably getting flashes of his sister. Hijikata's stance relaxed from his surprise. He untangled both his wooden sword and the katana from his obi as he spoke. "Shinpachi and Otae's, I mean. So I can't let them kill him, no way in hell. And if any of you do it, they'll hate you for it, and you're about as far removed from this situation as they come. Not Tsukuyo, Sacchan, Kyuubei, or Zura either—they're all good people. Me? I'm used to being a villain." He crouched down and set his weapons on the grass next to him. "My motivation is shit and I know it. Can't say much about saving the world from these masked copyright infringements, but if I can protect these few people in the Kabuki district…" He chuckled a little as he rested on folded knees.

"Boss…" Sogo's voice was low and there was an odd note of concern in there. Kondo couldn't form words past the little shocked noises he kept making. Hijikata, meanwhile, had stopped computing entirely, cigarette falling from his lip to the ground. The man was never so blunt, usually speaking in a very roundabout way to disguise his true feelings and intent, whether from pride or fear or whatever the case may be. This time, however, he told them in no uncertain terms: Obi-one is the Shimura's brother, so they harbor feelings for him. Therefore, Gintoki won't let them be the cause of his death, nor will the Shinsengumi or the rest of their friends. He would be the one to take the burden.

He processed all of that in time to see his naturally-permed silver head fold to the ground.

The headquarters fell silent. Such was a novel sight, a samurai such as him prostrating, and nobody dared breathe too loud at the sight of it. Gintoki's voice was like a beam in itself, slicing through the tension: "I'll find a way to bring Obi-one back alive, so, please, stay put until then. Watch over my friends until I come back."

The silence was broken by a camera's shutters. Hijikata looked over to see Sogo holding his cellphone. "Don't worry, Boss," he said, pocketing the device. "This photo won't circulate outside of the Shinsengumi network." Hijikata, without taking his eyes from Gintoki, raised his hand and calmly brained Sogo.

"Get up, you idiot. Your laziness will infect the ground." Hijikata kicked Gintoki's shoulder, making it look a lot rougher than it actually was, and Gintoki raised himself to his knees again. Nothing was different about his expression, but his eyes were a bit more open; Hijikata didn't stare too hard at the emotion in those red depths. "Like hell we'll take orders from you. But," he added, crushing the fallen cigarette underfoot and lighting a new one. He took a long drag and said, "Since you mentioned Obi-one being the Shimura's brother, it wouldn't hurt to do an extensive search at their dojo, see if we can get some info on his location there."

We'll give you the time you need. Gintoki wasn't the only one who could do loaded dialogue, and his eyes widened slightly as he read between the lines. Maybe he didn't expect Hijikata to agree so readily, even though they'd been through more than enough together for common sense to have sunk through his sugar-addled brain. Then again, Gintoki could be denser than Kondo at times.

"Alright, Shinsengumi! Next stop: the Shimura dojo!" Kondo called. The troops bellowed an agreement before marching past Gintoki and through the entryway. Sogo lingered a moment, giving Gintoki a determined nod before following, leaving the samurai and the vice chief. Gintoki lowered his head to collect his belongings; a broken word that might have been "thank you" fell from his lips.

"Hurry up, before he gets too far." Hijikata gave Gintoki one last look before following the troops. He learned something knew about that guy today, that he would cast himself aside in every conceivable way to protect those close to him. Not for the first time, he wondered what happened to Gintoki in the past to have driven him to this point now.

No use wondering about it now, anyway. He would make Odd Jobs all the time he needed.