#the john lewis effect

[wingsoverlagos]

I've found the absolute worst part of Tune In:

John Lennon, well-known abuser, wrote a cute little story about a man who beats his wife to death. I could see why a biographer might want to mention it. John wrote lyrics that centered on the physical abuse of women ("Run For Your Life", "Getting Better"). Perhaps there's something to learn here: is this silly bit of prose in the style of Lewis Carroll a bizarre manifestation of guilt? Or, conversely, does it demonstrate a lack of remorse? Maybe it simply stems from his urge to shock readers?

Mark Lewisohn does not have time to discuss such things! Instead, he confidently asserts that John's wife, Cynthia, who he beat, found John's creative writing exercise about a man beating his wife to death to be "one of the few bright spots in her increasingly hemmed-in life."

This is tremendously fucked up. It would be one thing if Cyn said she enjoyed John's fictional accounts of spousal homicide, but Lewisohn offers no source, and there's certainly no passage to that effect in either of Cynthia's autobiographies.

Maybe she said as much in an interview somewhere, but I really think not. Lewisohn himself thought John's "Jabberwocky, but make it about intimate partner violence" was cute and clever, so surely Cynthia must have found it to be a ray of sunshine in her life. Great take, Mark!

[l-ultimo-squalo]

Meet the Hollowheads (1989) dir. Tom Burman

[braddersbangerz]

+bonus

[operafantomet]

Hi there. Idk if this question has been asked before, but where do they find the fabric for the mandarin coat?

I'd say there are as many answers as there are versions of the costume. But some pointers:

Many of the early versions were made with partly antique embroidered textiles from the Qing dynasty. These were a popular collector's item in the 19th and 20th century, to the point where some of them were never intended for use in China, they were made as souvenirs. The original design by Maria Bjørnson suggests antique Chinese fabrics, with a hem showing the classic water-and-mountain motif, the collar being a cloud collar usually seen in women's attires, and the hat a decorated winter hat.

Even if all these costumes are made from scratch rather than bought, I thought it could be interesting to compare it to a similar authentic Chinese robe - without the collar - dated to the 1890s and sold by Augusta Auctions some years ago:

This robe has a badge - an insignia of rank and position of a Mandarin official in the Qing dynasty. These were used both on the chest and back, and the bird or otherwise animal told onlookers all they needed to know, if the person was a civil or military employee, and how high up in the system they were. The badge is not featured in Bjørnson's design, but it has showed up in a few costumes. Maybe most proninently in Michael Crawford's original West End costume, which Bjørnson would have supervised:

To my eye it looks like many of the elder costumes (up until c. 2005) used a lot of antique or vintage fabrics, but used on a new base. Details to look for is distinct gold couching, re-used badges, special dragon embroideres, antique collars and tabards, fringework etc. I am quite convinced some of these are antique or vintage details, like the China blue tabard with water and mountain motif used by John Owen-Jones in West End c. 2002:

The cuff and details on one of the original Australian robes, and continued to shine in the World Tour up until 2015 or so:

The tabard of the Swedish/Danish version, first made in 1989 and still in use in 2019 (maybe not too visible in the stage photo, but definitely when seen up close backstage!):

As a contrast, newer costumes tends to be brassier and bigger, with less embroidery and more appliquées and trims. It looks to me like they mostly rely on new fabrics and materials, maybe with some elements of elder embroidery. This collar made for Ben Lewis in West End is a good example:

And the recent German version, here seen on Mathias Edenborn in Hamburg. It's a costume I got to study up close and I couldn't spot any particular details that looked old:

And this Broadway robe with what looks like a very new firefly pattern brocade and embroidered gold trims appliquéed on:

So why this change? I guess it depends on what is available. Qing textiles has become more rare on the open market, and more expensive. Elder textiles are also more fragile, while new textiles will handle wear and tear, dry cleaning etc. better. Some of these costumes are used on stage up to eight times a week, after all.

Due to the fragility of elder textiles, they may have to cover the embroidery with fine mesh. This dulls down the effect and makes the costume heavier, so it's not always ideal. Better then to use new stuff. Here's an early 1990 West End one covered with mesh, to protect the embroidery:

A last aspect is of course that by using elder textiles you may put specific meaning-bearing motifs on which ideally shouldn't be there. The beautiful embroidered Indian fabric with elephants and swastikas - in India a symbol of the sun and good luck - which appeared in an unfortunate Danish Elissa skirt is a good example. Luckilly the costume crew knew what they were doing by including the five bats - for good luck - on this Broadway Mandarin robe:

If you plan on making your own costume, I would say: Create the base of a Chinese brocade (silk or synthetic) with predominantely black or dark blue base and polychrome pattern. As an inspiration, here's the robe, collar and tabard - fairly undecorated - in making for Scott Davies (top) and Ben Lewis (bottom) in West End, with photos generously shared by head-of-costume Ceris Donovan:

For the back: Go for a main motif, and build everything around that. And layer! Gems upon trims upon embroideries upon fabrics. The more structure, embroidery, couching and details the various materials has, the better. And then add some on top of that.

Note that it varies if a production do both the robe, cloud collar and tabard. Some production only do two of these, some do all three. But whatever the case, the costume with hat should create angles, texture and lines that makes him stand out from the previous scene, where he wore black and white and tight-fitting clothes.

In West End I think they source it in the many amazing fabric shops in Brixton and Soho, including Borovicks, as well as antique dealers. For Broadway I know a lot was bought in the fabric district in NYC. Other productions may be equipped with fabrics and trims from these, or they may source their own materials locally. I also noticed that the Chinese (left) and Japanese (right) productions tend to use more red and purple fabrics for their versions, which I would think was also locally sourced:

So yeah. As many answers as there are versions out there...

[gorgeousundertow]

@riddlersboyfriend Hi Luke, it's your summer exchange fic!! xoxoxoxo

Don't give it a hand, offer it a soul

Cross-posting on A03 since it's, ya know, long.

First Battalion

CO: Lt Col. Billy Turner. West Point. Demands fawning attention. Shouts. 3/10.

Charlie Company

Capt. Albert Hassenzahl. 

From Cincinnati, Ohio. Worked in steel mill.

27 years old

Sometimes brash or impetuous, leading to friction within the unit. 

Sufficient. 6/10

Sgt. Roy Speake Jr.

From Birmingham, Alabama. Foreman in cotton mill. 

30 years old, yet willing to take orders from younger men.

7/10

Sgt. Mariano Sanchez. 

From El Paso, Texas. Family owned a small grocery.

28 years old, difficulty conforming to protocol. Falls behind on runs.

5/10

T/5 John Davis. 

From Detroit, Michigan. Janitor.

20 years old, works hard but talks too much. 

6/10

Cpl. Harvey White. 

From a small town in rural Kansas, farmer. 

Age: 19. Inept and unreliable. Poor aim, shirks duties. But could improve if properly motivated.

4/10

Pfc. Paul Devoe. 

From New Orleans, Louisiana. Line cook. 

Age: 24. Charismatic and optimistic. Keeps spirits up, though impulsivity is an issue.

7/10

Schedule

0600 Reveille                                                                        

0610 Formation                                              

0630 Tidy barracks                                                    

0700 Calisthenics     

0800 Wash up                                                                      

0900 Barracks Inspection                                                   

0930 Currahee or obstacle course                       

1045 PT drills                              

1115 Outside lecture                                                           

​1200 Lunch                                  

1330 Mail Call                

1345 Lecture/Classroom 

1500 Parachute training                       

1700 Drill

1800 Supper

1900 Lecture/Classroom

2100 Return to barracks            

2300 TAPS

Notes September 1942

Dislike Lt. Col. Turner intensely.

Training is more difficult than anticipated.

Seems that what was true in Boston remains true here. Cannot seem to join conversations with the other men, continue to make them uncomfortable. Thought it would be different here than it was back home.

Notes October 1942

Lt. Col Turner is incompetent, stupid, and worthless.

Perhaps other companies have it better; consider orchestrating a change? Investigate.

Notes November 1942

Chose E Company, 2nd Platoon at random, for observation.

Capt. Herbert Sobel

From Chicago, Illinois. Attending University of Illinois.

30 years old

Would be a close friend of Lt. Col. Turner.

2/10

1/Lt. Richard Winters

From Lancaster, Pennsylvania

26 years old, effective. Has the respect of his men. Commands from the front.

8/10

Sgt. Carwood Lipton

From Huntington, West Virginia. Worked in mother’s boarding house.

22 years old, quiet. And yet the men listen.

8/10

Cpl. Donald Hoobler

From Manchester, Ohio, three siblings, joined National Guard.

Age: 20. Young, but works hard.

6/10

Pfc. Joseph Liebgott

Born in Michigan, moved to San Francisco

Age: 27. Cab driver. Speaks German. Easily angered, needs focus.

7/10

Pvt. David Webster

From New York City. Harvard grad. Writer

Age: 20. Lazy, whiny, as bad at talking to others as I am, in a different way.

5/10

Will continue to observe

Notes December 1942

Col. Sink insisted we march 118 miles, from Toccoa to Atlanta. It snowed. It served no function but to boost the egos of men who did not march alongside us.

Companies became disorderly, and by the end we were not marching in our own battalions. As such, I was marching mostly with E Company.

I spoke with Winters, as he was willing to speak with me. For some reason, he does not seem put off by me as others are–perhaps that is because, apart from Lt. Lewis Nixon III of Nixon, NJ, of HQ Company, no one wants to talk to him, either. Nixon certainly does; he made his way all the way over to E Company from the very beginning of the march, and stayed there, right at Winters’ side. By that token, I spoke with Nixon, as well. The march was miserable, but I believe I enjoyed it more than I have enjoyed any other time here.

We did not talk about much of anything of consequence–Nixon ensured that. I think the man is incapable of serious conversation. You would think someone as thoughtful as Winters would dislike him for that, but clearly he does not. It is odd. They are odd.

I observed the other members of E Company as we marched. They are a tight-knit group, more so than C Company by far. It is not because of their CO, that’s certain; he does everything he can to drive them apart, and clearly loathes Winters. 

Winters does what he can, but his resources are limited serving under a tyrant, an experience I can sympathize with. In truth, it is the NCOs that hold the Company together. To a man, they work tirelessly to keep spirits up, assisting those who are exhausted, making sure they eat and drink and sleep when they can.

Sgt. Lipton in particular has an interesting way about him. He doesn’t lead like the others, shouting at them to haul ass like Sgts. Guarnere and Martin do, in the time-honored tradition of NCOs. He gives orders, but he does so in a way that is almost friendly. I can’t wrap my head around it.

Notes January 1943

Continuing to observe Sgt. Lipton. 

Pvt. Webster is improving, partly because of Sgt. Lipton. (It seems that Pfc. Liebgott has an influence as well, though I can’t fully understand it. To a casual observer–which I do not believe I am–Liebgott bullies him, but in such a way that it almost seems affectionate. It is puzzling). Sgt. Lipton’s approach is different. He encourages Webster (and others, I do not mean to suggest that his efforts are limited to one man–he supports the entire Platoon. Hell, the entire Company) in subtle ways, walking with him to help him keep the pace up, but letting Webster think it’s because he really wants to hear him talk about Impressionist painters or Romantic poets. Perhaps he does. It is difficult to tell; he seems so genuinely engaged.

Capt. Sobel chewed him out for an imaginary offense (a not unusual occurrence in Easy Company) and Sgt. Lipton accepted it with stoicism. But when Sobel turned his back, Sgt. Lipton smirked. He rolled his eyes. There is steel in him.

Notes February 1943

Went for a run with Winters this morning, came across Sgt. Lipton. Winters invited him to join us. Winters runs like a maniac; running with him allows me to push myself, now that we are now longer running Currahee. I expected Sgt. Lipton to decline, particularly given my presence–no NCO has ever wanted to socialize with me–but he did not. He kept pace with Winters easily. He runs very well.

When we finished, we headed for the showers before Reveille, and Sgt. Lipton grabbed towels for each of us, even though it was unnecessary.

Notes March 1943

Have continued to run with Winters every morning. We have not encountered Sgt. Lipton again.

Notes June 1943

Have ceased running with Winters, as it’s too hot and I have concluded that Winters is a lunatic. We have plenty of PT; there’s no need to add on more. I don’t know why I bothered.

Notes August 1943

Couldn’t sleep, as usual. Went out walking through Fort Benning, found myself by the NCO barracks. Stood and smoked for a while. Went back to bed.

Notes September 1943

The S.S. Samaria is miserable. Am crammed into a cabin with Winters, Nixon, Lt. Harry Welsh, Lt. Heyliger, Lt. Roush, and Lt. Meehan from Baker Company. We have to wear life jackets at all times, and Nixon won’t stop talking about how the Titanic didn’t have enough lifeboats, and the Samaria definitely doesn’t.

Sleep is impossible, so have taken to walking the deck at night. Came across Sgt. Lipton, offered him a cigarette even though I know he doesn’t smoke. He described the racks the enlisted men have, and I decided to shut up about my sleeping situation. 

He was there the next night, and the next. He didn’t seem to mind my smoking. If he wasn’t on deck in the same place, I would have left him alone–I wouldn’t have gone looking for him. But he was always there, as if he was waiting for me. He didn’t say much, though neither did I, I suppose. We just looked out at the black sea.

Notes November 1943

Sgt. Lipton–and the other Sgts from Easy Company, I suppose–have mutinied on Winters’ behalf. It was brave. It was the right thing to do. It could force Sink’s hand, push him to realize how incompetent Sobel is. (We should try it in First Battalion). 

But I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. To him.

Notes December 1943

It’s all right. Two Sgts. were punished, neither of them were him.

It is clear that my interest in Easy Company is not beneficial, and no longer necessary. I am not gaining anything. I should not be more informed on the goings on in a Company that isn’t my own–that isn’t even in my Battalion. I’m going to stop taking notes altogether, anyway–loose lips and all.

Notes May 1944

Have been transferred to Dog Company. If I see Lt. Col. Turner in combat, I’ll kill him.

This is all pointless, anyway. In all likelihood, I am going to die. We are all going to die. Even…even he is going to die.

Notes June 1944

Sgt. Lipton was injured at Carentan, I do not know how badly.

I was also injured. I will recover. 

There were some incidents at Normandy. I shot an NCO; he was drunk and endangering the men. I shot six POWs. They were my first kills. I have killed more, since.

The looks men gave me, before we came, as if they weren’t sure what I was capable of. 

They know, now. I know, too.

Notes July 1944

Sgt. Lipton was wounded in the groin and on the face. He is in the hospital here in Aldbourne, recovering. He is several beds down from me. He receives visitors throughout the day.

Now that he is up and about, he comes to say hello sometimes, as I am not yet able to walk. He does not avoid me, as the other men do. 

He ought to; it would be better if he did. It’s useful that they fear me. It will make me a better leader.

Notes August 1944

Have been transferred to HQ Company, working alongside Nixon. It’s for the best.

Notes December 1944

Have been transferred back to Dog Company, as they are short on officers. We will be needed, I am told, for what’s coming in Belgium.

Notes January 1945

I couldn’t stop watching 1st Sgt. Lipton. With Winters leading the battalion and Lt. Dike as the empty shirt they’ve put in his place, Lipton has been the Company together. He is exhausted–we all are, of course, but it hurts somehow to see it on him. His eyes are shadowed, I could see it even from a distance. I patrolled the lines of Dog Company often, to catch a glimpse of him. I insisted that our medics share supplies, food. I wanted him to eat. To be safe. I was at the edge of the line when German artillery rained down, and I swear I heard him laughing. It was beautiful.

I would have gone across that field at Foy even if Winters hadn’t sent me. Someone had to go, and I was glad it was me. It was the easiest decision I ever made–it wasn’t even a decision, my feet were going before I even had the thought, as soon as they had Winters’ permission to do so. 

And now, I’m in command of Easy Company. It feels…right. Like I should have been with them all along. I know these men. I know what they need.

I knew what 1st Sgt. Lipton needed–he needed to know that someone had watched him, had seen what he had done. Had seen the man he is. And so I told him, in a church, while a choir of girls sang in golden light. It was…a risk, because letting him know that allowed him to see me, as well. To an extent. 

He still does not seem frightened of me. If anything, he seems a little amused. I don’t know what to make of it, exactly. But I don’t dislike it.

Notes February 1945

I’ve been promoted to Captain. One would think this would be welcome, but it is not. I couldn’t stop thinking of the men who have died, while I’m still here. I tried getting drunk–it’s what everyone else does, Nixon, Welsh, all of them. I’ve never really seen the point, but last night I thought, what the hell, it’s worth a shot.

I’m sharing quarters with 1st. Sgt. Lipton (he should be Lt. Lipton, but it hasn’t come through yet. Promotion won’t ruin him as it has me). I stumbled there, and I was…I couldn’t…I wasn’t as in control of myself as I would have liked to be. 

In truth, I wasn’t anything close to control. I came into the tent so drunk I couldn’t see straight, and I was crying. I hadn’t cried before, not once in the entire war. Not with all the deaths. Not for the men who died or the men I killed. But I cried when I got my fucking captaincy. 

Lipton was in bed, and I sat down on his cot. Aren’t you supposed to forget things that happen when you’re drunk? Why do I remember all of this? 

I remember I tried to kiss him. At least, I think that’s what happened. It is a little fuzzy. All I know is that I was sitting there on his cot and he was in bed, lying down and listening to me, and then I was half on top of him. I think I remember my mouth on his…fuck, you’d think if I’d gone and done something so colossally stupid I would have the decency to be sure about it. You’d think it would be seared into my brain, something I could go back to sometimes, in the privacy of my own thoughts. But there’s nothing, really. Just a vague sense of closeness, of Lipton, right there.

I got to my own bed, somehow. He must have put me there–by that point, I was too drunk to know my own name. And in the morning he greeted me with his usual smile and a cup of extra strong coffee. As though nothing at all had happened. So I guess nothing did.

Notes February 1945

Lipton is sick. He’s been sick for a week or so, but he’s getting worse. It won’t stop. He won’t stop–just keeps acting like he’s fine, even though his fever is running so hot Doc Roe keeps trying to get him off the line. It’s pneumonia, and we’re out here in the cold, and he still won’t go. I’m so furious with him I don’t know what to do. 

I can’t watch over him every minute, so I’ve put Luz on him. Luz has the right approach–firm, but with a smile. Lipton doesn’t respond to direct orders; I’ve tried that.

He remains infuriatingly competent, even when he coughs so hard I worry he’s going to drop a lung on my jump boots. Easy is running on fumes, and yet Lipton has it as organized as can be. And I can’t help coming to him for advice, to discuss options, even when he should be resting–because his advice is invaluable to me.

This town, Hagenau, has been blown to pieces. Is still being blown to pieces. We barely have roofs over our heads, though of course that’s practically a luxury, considering some of the places we’ve been. Easy CP is in a building with only one bed, and I’ve put Lipton there. It took some doing–I thought I was going to have to carry him there, and frankly he’s bigger and stronger than I am. Well, maybe not stronger, with pneumonia. 

I could sleep in another room, of course, but I’ll be sleeping on the floor, in the same room. I want to be able to hear him if he needs anything, if he takes a turn for the worse. 

Notes February 1945

Something happened last night. I don’t…I’m going to write it down, to see if that way I’ll understand it.

At 0230 I went to bed. The patrol did not go well. Two prisoners is not a fair exchange for Jackson. I was…upset. But I still moved quietly, so as not to disturb Lipton–only he was awake. He called me over, asked how the patrol went. I told him. 

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“It should never have happened,” I said.

He shrugged, his muscled shoulders moving in the low light from the fire I’d had Luz light in the hearth, and the cooler light from the moon.The room was warm, and he wore only his undershirt. “Lots of things have happened in this war that shouldn’t have, sir.”

I couldn’t argue with that. He slid to the side, gesturing for me to sit down on his bed, as I’d sat a couple of weeks ago, drunk off my head. I obeyed, but I frowned at him, unsure. “What are you doing awake? Can’t sleep? Should I get Roe?”

Lipton shook his head, a little smile on his face. “No. I’m feeling much better, sir. I wanted to see how you are.” 

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “I…I’m fine?” It sounded like I was asking him for the right answer, but how I was wasn’t something I’d considered in…well, in years, I suppose. Since well before Normandy. 

“Good,” Lipton said, taking me at my word. “Would you like some of this?” He held up a bottle and I blinked at it. It was schnapps–I’d taken it from a German couple next door, along with some kind of pastry. Apfelstrudel, they’d called it. 

“I don’t really drink,” I said warily, thinking of that other night. 

Lipton grinned. “Neither do I, but I figure you got this for me for a reason, right, sir?”

“The woman said it would cure you.” 

Lipton held out the bottle to me expectantly, so I took a small sip. It burned going down, too sweet. I handed it back to him, and he took a sip himself, placing his mouth where mine had been. I watched his throat as he swallowed. I was so close to him, I could hear the sound his lips made as they left the bottle. “Another?” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t understand what was happening–maybe nothing was happening, maybe this was all perfectly ordinary–but I sure as hell wanted to remember it clearly tomorrow. Lipton took another sip, made a face, and closed the bottle, setting it down on the floor. “Have you had a lot of that?” I asked.

Lipton shrugged, loose. “Some.”

“Enough to cure you then,” I said, and he laughed. 

“I guess so.”

I could feel his hip against my leg, and the room got a little brighter with the light of an explosion from a couple of blocks away, and I could only hope it hadn’t done any more damage than we’d already sustained tonight. His eyes are so soft. “I should let you sleep.”

I didn’t stand up, though. I meant to, I meant to get up and go sleep on the floor like I’d insisted I would. I was going to, any second, but I hadn’t yet when Lipton said, “You could sleep here with me.”

I try not to let my emotions show on my face, but I must have looked surprised (I was more than surprised), because Lipton added, “We’ve all slept in tighter quarters than this, in Bastogne. There’s no need for you to sleep on the floor, sir.”

And it’s true. I slept as close as I could to other men in foxholes, because otherwise we would have frozen to death. But this room had a warm fire. There was no reason to. And yet, Lipton slid to the side, making a little more room for me–there wasn’t a lot, it was a small bed–and so I…lay down. 

I didn’t take off my boots, or my jacket or anything. I didn’t want to risk taking the time, in case he changed his mind. I lay on my back, but that didn’t quite work, it was too close, so I turned onto my side. I should probably have faced away from him. I didn’t.

His face was right there. I could have kissed him again (did I even kiss him, before? I’ve never been certain). He blinked at me in the darkness, but I didn’t move. Eventually, his eyes closed, but I lay there for a long time, long enough to feel him relax and curl into me. I pressed my lips to his shoulder, and I thought I felt his breath against my hair, but I couldn’t be sure. 

When I woke up in the morning, he was gone.

Notes February 1945

I haven’t known what to do with myself all day. Lipton has been hard to pin down–now that he is feeling better, he is working harder than ever. Winters canceled the second patrol, but we still need to act as though it is going forward, which means the same amount of work, plus I needed to make sure Lt. Jones is squared away. 

I had Liebgott and the others firing across the river, while Webster and Sgt. Martin hid in the house. By the time I got back to the CP, it was 0300.

Lipton wasn’t in the bedroom waiting for me. He was awake and working with Luz, sorting through the supply delivery. I stopped in to say goodnight and when he said goodnight back, he…well, he smiled at me. But Lipton smiles at everyone. 

I don’t like this. I don’t like being uncertain. 

Notes February 1945

It’s Lieutenant Lipton now, at long last. Welsh caught up with us, and he had Lipton’s bars with him. I was there when Winters pinned them on, when Lipton shook his hand. There were so many of us there–Nixon, along with Luz and Webster in the other room. Hell, even Lt. Jones was standing there. What felt like it ought to have been a close moment, something for just me and him, wasn’t, couldn’t have been, with so many men around. But of course it wasn’t just for him and me–why would it have been? I’ve only been his CO for a month. Of course he would want to share this with men he’s known for years. He’s earned that and more.

But I was impatient. I couldn’t…after spending yesterday so uncertain, I didn’t want to spend another moment that way. And we were equals now, or almost. We were both officers, at least.

So I took him by the arm and brought him into the other room. It wasn’t private, by any means–they were all still right there, Harry and Nixon drinking from Nixon’s flask, Winters watching them in that amused way he has. And we were going to be heading out soon–I’m writing this in the back of a jeep as Winters drives, in fact. But I couldn’t wait.

“Yes, sir?” he said, expectantly.

I had absolutely no idea what to say. “Um. Yes. Congratulations, Lieutenant.”

He smiled, wide and sincere, that smile that spreads so far across his face that it lifts the downturned corners of his eyes. “Thank you, sir.”

I had to think of something else, some reason to keep him here away from everyone else while I thought of a way to ask what I needed to ask him. “And you’re sure you’re feeling better? Because we could go to an aid station.”

He reached out and squeezed my arm, just below the elbow. It was a little thing, something I’d seen the men do all the time. Hell, Winters and Nixon were never not touching, it seemed. “I promise, I’m fine, sir.”

Just a little thing, but it seemed like I could feel his hand on my skin, even through my coat. No one ever really touches me. “I…” I cleared my throat. “I’m glad to hear that.” His hand slid down, so that his fingers touched the bare skin of my wrist, just resting there. From the other room, it wouldn’t have looked like anything, but it felt like everything. “Lieutenant Lipton…”

“You can call me Lip, you know, sir,” he said. “Everyone else does.”

“Lip,” I repeated, quietly. It probably came out as a whisper. I don’t think I will call him Lip, in front of other people. I think I’ll keep that close.

“Sparky!” Nixon called from the other room. “We’re moving out in an hour, think you can manage that?” 

Lipton’s fingers tightened on my wrist before letting go. “Yes,” I said, without looking away from him. I heard the sounds of the other men leaving, of Winters talking to Jones, of Luz giving Webster a hard time, of Welsh and Nixon bantering back and forth. Lipton stepped back, and I felt the moment slipping away, as if this was my only chance, and if I didn’t say something right then–though I still didn’t know what I should say–I would never get another try.

So I reached out and grabbed the back of his neck. His mouth was warm and soft, tasting of coffee and stale bread. He kissed me back, and the relief in that was enough to make me dizzy.

We broke away to catch our breath, and he smiled against my mouth. “Ron,” he whispered. 

We had to leave that room, then, and that house full of broken walls and rubble, to gather the men and move on to another house in another town. But he’ll call me Ron again, I believe, when we’re alone. And I’ll call him Lip. And maybe there isn’t anything else that needs to be said, for now.

[veliseraptor]

March Reading Recap

Juliet: The Life and Afterlives of Shakespeare's First Tragic Heroine by Sophie Duncan. I actually really liked this one! It was an interesting look at several different lenses that have been used over time to look at Juliet (specifically Juliet, not the play), including the relationship between fascism and Juliet in Verona, Italy and the development of West Side Story (didn't know Juliet was Jewish in an early version). I enjoy sort of niche/specific books focusing on a very particular subject, and this book scratched that itch well.

The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It by Helen Scales. I read this book too soon after The Underworld by Susan Casey which, while not necessarily a better book, covered a lot of the same terrain. The trouble with a keen interest in a niche topic is, I suppose, that the books on it can start to get repetitive sometimes. It was still good, though, and this one focused a bit less on the history of human exploration than Casey did and a bit more on the ecosystems themselves, which I did welcome.

Blood of the Chosen and Emperor of Ruin by Django Wexler. The second and third books in the series that started with Ashes of the Sun - both continued the trend of "I don't know that I'd call these particularly good works of literature but they were very enjoyable and propulsive." The second book was stronger than the third - I ended up feeling like the conclusion of the trilogy was weaker and a little rushed, but I still enjoyed the experience as a whole and would offer at least a tentative, general recommendation of the series for those looking for a fantasy series that's not particularly innovative or serious but is an exciting ride.

The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis. This book reminded me a little bit of Such Desperate Glory but wasn't quite as well done, I don't think. The back compared it to Mass Effect but I don't really see that as a reasonable comparison. Possibly one of my favorite things about it was the cover design, which fucks. I still liked it, though, and I'm going to read the sequel.

The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper. Sometimes when I read things I feel like a snot because I go "this is interesting information but the writing feels a little amateurish" and that was my situation with this book. It was good analysis and interesting to read, though sometimes the "and this is how this is modern-ly relevant! q-anon mention" felt a little bit...ehhh, unnecessary, but the writing itself was...yeah. It felt amateurish. Which might just be a result of the book itself being targeted at a particular audience that's less academically-minded than I am, that's certainly possible, but it did affect my enjoyment of the book.

Last Days by Adam Nevill. Mostly this was good spooky fun, though it lost me with the "the ultimate bad guy is an overweight bisexual actor with AIDS" (it's a little more complicated than that, but not enough). Too bad, because conceptually and in terms of imagery it could've been very good. Between this and my last Nevill, I might have to give future books a pass. My search for horror that isn't playing on bigoted tropes apparently continues, since I'm on a bit of a streak there with this and Ring.

China: A History by John Keay. I'd call this one a solid overview despite the choice to use "bureaux" for the plural. However, I'm taking a lot of it with a grain of salt since as far as I can tell he didn't use many or possibly any Chinese secondary sources, and relied primarily for quotations/analysis on English secondary sources. I would've liked to see more of a balance. Still, as far as background information and a general broad history goes, it feels like it was worth reading for me to get a little more background/grounding in history I don't have a lot of familiarity with. (Also, holy shit did Ken Liu crib hard on Liu Bang and Xiang Yu for The Grace of Kings and now I know that.)

Remnants of Filth: vol. 3 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou. I continue to really enjoy this book and this volume might be my favorite yet - the flashbacks were satisfying to fill in some of the gaps in mysteries as yet unrevealed, and having Gu Mang fully "back" (more or less) is a fun development that is already having consequences changing the dynamic between him and Mo Xi in delightfully angsty ways. Of the cnovels I'm currently in the middle of this one is close to LHJC as far as my favorite.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi. This one is what I think people would call a "romp" which is all well and good and I probably should've known what I was getting into, but I think I am just not much of a "romp" reader. It was fun, I guess? But I don't know that I felt like it was good, and I'm probably not going to go around recommending it. My first Scalzi, and I don't know if that's typical of him, but I probably won't be in a hurry to pick up another one anytime soon.

Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation ed./trans. by Ken Liu. Short story collections are really hit and miss for me, but this was actually a collection that was pretty hit all the way through! Very interesting stories, a couple I'm still thinking about. I'm looking forward to reading my other collection of short stories in translation, which includes some fantasy - some of these actually felt somewhere between fantasy and science fiction in a very interesting way that I liked.

--

phew. I read a lot last month! Currently I'm reading Medea by Eilish Quin (we'll see how that goes); I have on my docket The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (recommended to me) and I think I might reread She Who Became the Sun so I can read He Who Drowned the World. I've been on more of a fiction than a nonfiction kick of late, but I am eyeing Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn and might make that part of my rotation. we shall see!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Underground Empire: Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman's must-read account of "How America Weaponized the World Economy."

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

At the end of Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman's new book Underground Empire, they cite the work of John Lewis Gaddis, "preeminent historian of the Cold War," who dubbed that perilous period "The Long Peace":

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840554/undergroundempire

Despite several harrowing near-misses, neither of the two hair-trigger, nuclear-tipped arsenals were ever loosed. When the Cold War ended, the world breathed a sigh of relief and set about refashioning itself, braiding together economic and social interdependencies that were supposed to make future war unthinkable. Nations that depend on one another couldn't afford to go to war, because they couldn't hurt the other without hurting themselves.

The standard account of the Cold War's "Long Peace" is that the game theorists who invented Mutually Assured Destruction set up a game where "the only way to win was not to play" (to quote the Matthew Broderick documentary War Games). The interdependency strategy of the post-Cold War, neoliberal, "flat" world was built on the same fundamentals: make war more costly than peace, victory worse than the status quo, and war would be over – if we wanted it.

But Gaddis has a different idea. Any effect Mutually Assured Destruction had on keeping fingers from pushing the buttons was downstream of a much more important factor: independence. For the most part, the US and the USSR had nonintersecting spheres of influence. Each of these spheres was self-sufficient. That meant that they didn't compete with one another for the use of the same resource or territory, and neither could put the other in check by seizing some asset they both relied on. The exceptions to this – proxy wars in Latin America and Southeast Asia – were the disastrous exceptions that proved the rule.

But the past forty years rejected this theory. From Thomas Friedman's "World Is Flat" to Fukyama's "End of History," the modern road to peace is paved with networks whose nodes can be found in every country. These networks – shipping routes, money-clearing systems, supply chains, the internet itself – weave together nearly every nation on Earth into a single web of interdependencies that make war impossible.

War, you may have noticed, has become very, very possible. Even countries with their own McDonald's franchises are willing to take up arms against one another.

That's where Farrell and Newman's book comes in. The two political scientists tell the story of how these global networks were built through accidents of history, mostly by American corporations and/or the American state. The web was built by accident, but the spider at its center was always the USA.

At various junctures since the Cold War, American presidents, spies and military leaders have noticed this web and tugged at it. A tariff here, a sanction there, then an embargo. The NSA turns the internet into a surveillance grid and a weapon of war. The SWIFT system is turned into a way to project American political goals around the world – first by blocking transactions for things the US government disfavors, then to cut off access for people who do business with people who do things that the US wants stopped.

Networks tend to centralization, to hubs. These central points are efficient, but (as we learned during the covid lockdown) brittle. One factory fails and an entire category of goods can no longer be made – anywhere. When it comes to global resiliency, these bottlenecks are are a bug; but when it comes to US foreign policy, these chokepoints are a feature.

Farrell and Newman skillfully weave a tale of individuals, powers, circumstances and forces, showing how the rise and rise of world-is-flat rah-rah globalism created a series of irresistable opportunities for "weaponized interdependence." Some players of the game wield these weapons like a scalpel; others (like Trump) use them like a club.

This is a chronicle of the dawning realization – among US power-players and their foreign adversaries, particularly in China – that the US lured its trading partners into entrusting it with financial clearing, IP enforcement, fiber landings, and other chokepoints, on the grounds that American wouldn't risk the wealth these systems generated by turning them into engines of coercion.

But then, of course, that's exactly what America did, from the War on Terror to economic sanctions on Iran, from seizing Argentinian reserves to freezing Russia's cash. Sometimes, the US did this for reasons that I sympathize with, other times, for reasons I am aghast at. But they did it, and did it, and did it.

America's adversaries (and frenemies, like the EU) have tried to build alternative "underground empires" to offset the risk of having their interdependencies weaponized (or to escape from an ongoing situation). But therein lies a conundrum: world-is-flat-ism has ended the age of indepedence. Countries really do need each other – for energy, materials, and finished goods. Independence is a long way off.

To create new interdependency networks, it's not enough for countries to agree that they don't trust America as neutral maintainer of their strategic chokepoints. They also have to agree to trust one of their own to operate those chokepoints. Lots of countries have come to mistrust US dollar-clearing and the SWIFT system – but few are willing to allow, say, China to run an alternative system that carries out settlements in Renminbi. The EU might be able to suck in some "friendly" countries for a Euro-clearing system, but would China trust them? How about Iran?

Farrell and Newman make a good case that US's position at the center of the web is a historical accident, and possibly a one-off, contingent on the ascendant post-Cold War ideology that said that markets and the interdependencies they create would neutralize the threat of handing a rival nation that much power.

Which leaves us in a world of interdependency in conflict. If Gaddis is right and the Long Peace was the result of independence, then this bodes very ill. The only thing worse than a world where no one can depend on anyone is a world where we must depend on entities that are hostile to us, and vice-versa. That way lies a widening gyre of conflict that felt eerily palpable as world events unfolded while I read this excellent, incisive book.

Political science, done right, has the power to reframe your whole understanding of events around you. Farrell and Newman set out a compelling thesis, defend it well, and tell a fascinating tale. And when they finish, they leave you with a way to make sense of things that seem senseless and terrible. This may not make those things less terrible, but at least they're comprehensible.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#the-other-swifties

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[tyrannosaurus-maxy]

Not Mercedes trying to only offer Lewis a 1 year deal when he wanted 3! Or: how to lose your WDC on the F1 Nation podcast

Lewis become friends with John Elkann, the chairman and they've hung out socially. So you can imagine that topic came up. And even as recently as last May, around the Monaco Grand Prix, when John Elkann called him again and said, "Lewis come to Ferrari. We want you here. We'll offer you the world". Lewis said no, but it was that was the last time in which it was only an informal chat. John gave him another call as autumn turned to winter and he was like, "Lewis, this is what we can offer you. A multi year deal. A long term deal". At that time, Lewis had signed a 1+1 with Mercedes, so he had gone to Mercedes and he had said, before he signed the deal for 24 and 25, "I'd like a three year deal". And they'd come back initially and said, "we can only offer you a one year deal". And they compromised, at effectively a 2 year deal, but 1+1 with options. And I imagine at that point in time, Lewis felt a bit disappointed by the way that the team had dealt with him. And then John called and John really wants him and everyone loves to be loved, don't they? And kind of like what Roberto was talking about, about the last dance. Lewis thought, "Well, you know what, Mercedes and Ferrari; they're probably on par at the minute. Ferrari love me, they want me. They're gonna offer me the long term deal" and this is what they've offered him. A long term deal.

[taocc-updates]

”Oh, you like Taocc? Name every character.”

BET.

edit: I added the vague number of total characters listed. We’re at about 270, and I’m still adding characters.

(*By technicality

**formerly/no longer active/no longer acknowledged by the narrative as existing

***exist as of like ten seconds ago

I will only be including characters recognized as part of Taocc by more than one person. Characters will be vaguely grouped together however the frick I feel like and with only the vague suggestion of transitions. A character must have a tangible role that still has effects at the time of posting to be counted. I’m not counting all the deactivated characters from OG Taocc, for example. I am referencing the updates blog list as well as my following for this, because the challenge is to name them all, not to name them all by memory. Animals barely count sometimes when I feel like it.)

Gangle, Ragatha**, Pomni**, Kinger**, Zooble**, Caine*, Bubble**, S-Gangle, Shadow, Kaufmo, Sproingle, Unnamed Abtractions*, Easton West, Northa West, Lonn Gitud, Lattia Tudor, Felicia, Caleb, Zachariah Woods, Zombie anon, Simon Mallory/Silhouette/Aleksander, Isaac Brennan/Mix, Elida Doyle, Alice Mallory, Nikolai Harrison/Carbine, Artemis/Kepler, Calamity/Cassandra, Remnant, Sami Harrison, Yelena, Daniel, Artem, Charles/Plague Doctor Anon, Dialtone/Drias, Ilas/Amalgam, Trevor***, Archie***, Abigail***, Stella***, Paisley***, Espresso the Cat, Edward/Pharaoh, Abayomi, Clown Anon, Colorbine, Helpful Anon, Waffle Anon, Sparkler Anon, Kumo, Kopi, Violet, Stitch, Chance, Nightmare, Arthur Pendragon, Verie Pendragon, Mercutio, Juliet/Assassin Anon, Aokigahara, Dunite, Rocky, Rusty, Ryan, Dunite’s Parents, Deedee, Usagi/Usa, Icia/Ice anon, Fred, Odette/Odysseys, Samuel, Mytha, Celio, Basso, Vaga, Nova, Hexe, Slynn, Yume, Yume’s Mother and Father, the Protector, Ramona/Rae, Mirobelle, Ramiro, Achilles, Dime, Aklatan, Latte, Alexander (kingdom edition), Mocha, Switchboard, Ace Zeppelin, Damsel, Levi, Nathan, Myau, Nya, Mynou, Dusk, Jessy, Amelia, Jessy’s mother, Fynn, Joy, Ciana, Apollo, Virgo, Aster, Lance, Raina, Flare, Citrina, Citrina’s sisters (the only named one is “Jade”), Nymn, Nymn’s ex, Fae anon, Clara, Chip, Alpen, Unnamed Zodiac Angels, Kade, Feris, Pixel, Vanessa, Unnamed Arcade Worker 2/Mike, Conny, Shairo (deceased permanently), Hans, “John Smith”, Gun Pirate (lol), Unnamed Drunk Pirate, Unnamed Jar Lady, Unnamed third pirate with a gun, Dalia, Mikey, Anderson, Toga, Abstraction Anon, Quin, Blaze (Squiffer edition)/Zephyr, Skeleton anon, Mage Anon/Tanya, Camara, Avian, Sign Anon/Steven, Origami Anon/Octavia, Tea Anon/Kitsune/Katrina, Simon (Bookend), Seer anon/Sarah, Umbra, Arrows anon, Bow Anon, (Other) Bow Anon, Hex, Sun, Moon*, Sigil, Insanity, Dusty, Lantern/Eternal Flame, Eternity, Darkis, Infinity, Entity, Ember, Unknown, Juko, Lilo, Bob, Hammer, Mallet, Fox anon, Teleporting anon, Nuffle, Pyxel, Thanatos, Tiger, Siam, Sabrina (Sun’s daughter), Taika, Sisu, Quest, Tip, Stranger, Radio, Shelly, Astrion, Gaia, Aella, Electricity anon, Conspiracy anon, Bap Anon, Eve.chr, Phoenix*, The Dragon of Abyss, The Dragoness of Sky, Lemonade/Lewis, Reverie/Guidance anon, Unnamed Autumn Season, Unnamed Winter Season, Neb, Cardlan, Minimi, Entity (Backrooms edition), Casper, Manna, Pamela, Eden*, Grif, Trudy, Pen, Paper, Sophronius, Acacius, Milo, Drunk anon (deceased), Scissors anon, Thief Anon, Void anon, Cupcake anon, Chaos Enjoyer Anon, Thyme, Angst anon, villain anon, “Lucy”, Simp anon, Comax, Pickle gifter anon, pickle stealer anon, fish anon, deus ex machinanon, mail anon, foundation anon, lost anon, dropkick anon, Bug anon, Paranoia Anon, Rocket launcher anon, Kyubey, Mimic, Rodger, Ludvic, sunshine anon, anger anon, Frazzle, Wade, Loyal anon, Loyal Servant anon, the cookie run cookies lol, Felicia (top hat edition), Tophat, Greenie, Red(?), The Polygon Bees (TM), Eepy anon, Ethan, Dark, Void/Ollie, DJ, Star, Mercury/Marcus, Elysia/Evangeline Elizabeth Ambrosia, Blaze (Planetquest edition)/Brandon, Jasper, Callista/Leilani, Ursula, Ari, Lumiel/Lark, uhhh…I think that’s it

did I do it do I freaking win

Someone please count how many characters there are (there should be one comma per character if that helps)

Edit: Nevermind, I did it for you.

This is a vague number, the actual number is higher than this, maybe about 270-300

[beguines]

Union activities and correspondence from 1930 until 1933 clearly suggest that union leaders did not want to commit themselves to new organizing, especially in the South. They felt that anti-​union repression was so strong and labor market conditions so deplorable that it would be a waste of the dwindling resources of the union to make such an attempt. In 1930, as southern miners, particularly in Alabama, began to hold meetings and organize, District 20 (Alabama) director George Hargrove and President Lewis agreed that there would be no "bread wagon" (i.e., financial support) from the UMWA and no help for those discharged in such campaigns. They also agreed that organizing would have no positive effect at this time and would only result in discharges. As Lewis wrote to John Lillich of Carbon Hill, Alabama, "Under present circumstances the International Union is disinclined to spend any money in Alabama." Instead, union leaders' strategy in the early 1930s was to put their efforts into lobbying for support of the Davis-​Kelly coal bill, which they believed might make organizing coal miners easier. In attempting to mobilize such support, they also made appeals, and exposed the highly repressive conditions, to other AFL unions, which generally supported, at least on paper, the UMWA's legislative efforts. Lewis's lobbying emphasis switched, first in late 1932, to strengthening the labor provisions of the Black Bill, then to including 7(a) in the NIRA.

But a strange thing happened while the UMWA leaders were lobbying for their provisions. Miners throughout the country began to organize and form vibrant locals on their own. On May 27, 1933, Lewis appointed his loyal follower Van Bittner as the new president of District 17 (West Virginia), as well as other new districts in West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. Lewis regularly informed Bittner of the progress of the NIRA and occasionally asked, almost incidentally, how things were going. At one point, Bittner replies that the miners have been organizing on their own, and there are no organizers to help and service them. Lewis telegrams back to say that he is reassigning organizers and that money is on the way. Van Bittner replies that miners have already organized a local in Ethel, the "heart of Logan County" (the most notoriously repressive of West Virginia counties). While Lewis was telling his officials that they would be in good stead to organize once the NIRA and 7(a) passed, the miners had already organized. Bittner describes this process in a report to Lewis on June 17. By June 22, 1933, Bittner writes to Lewis: "As I have reported to you heretofore, the work of organizing the miners in West Virginia is progressing more rapidly than I had ever dreamed of. The entire Northern field, as well as the New River, Winding Gulf, Kanawha field, Mingo and Logan are all completely organized. We will finish up in McDowell, Mercer and Wyoming counties this week." The same was true for Maryland and Virginia. "I feel that by the end of the week we can report a complete organization of these fields."

Michael Goldfield, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s

[greendreamer]

Torchwood: Up Close master list

Torchwood: Up Close was a series of 2-minute-long shorts released during S2 via the Torchwood Website. All shorts centre around different behind-the-scenes elements (some include the cast goofing around) This is a master list of all known shorts* **

*Currently there is no list of all shorts made. The ones in this list are all I have found or have found evidence that they once existed.

** I think some of these might have been their own series/individual short on the website) aka no apart of Up Close

Sneak peek

KKBB - The New Hub

KKBB - Up Close with James Marsters

KKBB - Up Close with the Blowfish

KKBB - Up Close with the Stuntman

KKBB - Captain's Vlog

Sleeper - Special Effects

Sleeper - Up Close in the Hub

Sleeper - Studio Tour

Sleeper - Up Close with the Writer

Sleeper - Captain's Vlog

To the Last Man - Up Close with Anthony Lewis (WW1 look)

To the Last Man - Up Close with Anthony Lewis (location filming)

To the Last Man - Up Close with Naoko Mori & Anthony Lewis

To the Last Man - Studio Tour

To the Last Man - Captain's Vlog

Meat - Up Close with Kai Owen

Meat - Up Close with Barney Curnow (SFX)

Meat - Up Close with John Barrowman & Naoko Mori

Adam - Up Close with Naoko Mori & Bryan Dick

Adam - Up Close with John Barrowman & Bryan Dick

Adam - Up Close with the Photograph

Adam - Captain's Vlog

Something Borrowed - Up Close with Eve Myles

Something Borrowed - Up Close at the Wedding [Source - Wikipedia page]

Something Borrowed - Up Close with the Nostrovite [Source - Wikipedia page]

Adrift - Up Close with Ruth Jones [Source - Wikipedia page]

Adrift - Up Close at the Recce [Source - Wikipedia page]

???? - Shooting the Trails

???? - Up Close Fun on Set

???? - Untitled up close with GDL [source - sneak peek]

Here's all viewable shorts in a handy playlist [Link]

[erelavent]

My bestie and I have been parsing out what Lewis' move to Ferrari means for the future of both Mercedes and Ferrari and we have come up with some thoughts.

Lewis moving to Ferrari has made it open season at Mercedes. Not only does his move signal a lack of confidence in the team, but it also splits allegiances. Employees may be on the fence about what direction Merc is moving in and may be inclined to jump ship. Other employees may just straight up be Lewis loyalists and move to Ferrari. This is a perfect opportunity for other teams to poach Merc staff.

This leads to point #2. Toto has got to take stock of who is staying and who is leaving Mercedes. Not only to prevent them taking info about the development of the car with them, but also to ensure that the team can still effectively function and produce a decent car in the following years. The last thing he wants, is to have gaping holes in his team that will shoot them back down to a back marker team.

Speaking of holes, Toto needs to lock down an experienced driver to fill that 2nd Mercedes seat ASAP. Like yesterday. So many teams are concerned that they're going to lose their drivers and are announcing early contract renewals without divulging their end dates. Even Redbull is reportedly trying to sign Alex Albon. If Toto waits too long, he's going to be caught with his pants down without an experienced driver to fill the 2nd seat and boost team morale.

If possible, Toto needs to get Lewis on actual video saying that there's no bad blood between them. As it stands, Mercedes' image has taken a major hit. The longer Lewis stays silent, the longer the rumors fester, and the more fans turn against Mercedes. Idk if what Toto claims is true, but if it is, he needs Lewis to verbally and physically confirm it.

As for Ferrari, I think signing Lewis is part of a really big rebrand for them. I think Fred Vasseur and John Elkann have decided to stop riding the wings of legacy and revamp Ferrari's image. The first part of that is looking (who knows if they actually will be) more progressive. The image that has historically accompanied Ferrari has been rich, old, white, cis, heterosexual, male. But that isn't cutting it anymore. The sport is expanding and the buying power of young women and POC is gaining larger market share. Ferrari has to adapt or die. What better way to do this than to sign on Lewis, a biracial man from humble beginnings who champions DEI and environmental initiatives and happens to have a young core audience? I mean, Ferrari stock literally skyrocketed with the announcement yesterday (and no, you will not convince me that stock gap came from Ferrari publishing their annual report). The proof is in the pudding.

The rebrand also includes their internal operations. Both Fred and John need someone who can inspire devotion and reinvigorate the team. They've been flopping since 2008 and desperately need to recenter. They need to convince new blood to join the team and signing Lewis does that. I'm guessing they're also hoping Lewis can steer development into the right direction and launch them into the stratosphere like he did with Merc.

These moves are all very calculated, and honestly, I'm impressed that Lewis and the Ferrari team kept it all under wraps. We'll see if it pans out like they hope.

[bracketsoffear]

Spiral Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Spiral Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Abbott, Edwin Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Amato, Mary: The Word Eater

Barker, Clive: Abarat Basye, Dale E.: Fibble Borges, Jorge Luis: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Calvino, Italo: If on a winter’s night a traveler Carroll, Emily: A Guest in the House Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there Chambers, Robert W.: The King in Yellow Coltrane, John: Giant Steps Cortázar, Julio: Rayuela (Hopscotch) Cutter, Nick: The Deep

Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote DeLaney, Samuel R.: Babel-17

Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land Ewing, Frederick R.: I, Libertine

Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: The Yellow Wallpaper

Hall, Steven: The Raw Shark Texts Hamilton, Patrick: Angel Street/Gas Light Hawke, Marcus: Grey Noise Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderlands Hunter, Erin: Warriors

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth

Kte'pi, Bill: The Cheshire

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Color Out of Space Lyons, Steve: The Stealers of Dreams

Mathers, Edward Powys: Cain’s Jawbone Mearns, William Hughes: Antigonish Miles, Lawrence et. al.: The Book of the War Morrison, Grant: Doom Patrol Moore, Christopher: Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art Muir, Tamsyn: Harrow the Ninth

National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers: Common Core Math Textbook Nikolson, Adam: Life between the tides

O’Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman Ogawa, Yoko: The Memory Police Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelevin, Victor: The Helmet of Horror Pratchett, Terry: Moving Pictures Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49

Ryukishi07: higurashi no naku koro ni (When The Evening Cicadas Cry)

Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Is Falling Down Schwartz, Alvin: "Maybe You Will Remember" (short story from Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones) Serafini, Luigi: Codex Seraphinianus Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare, William: King Lear Shakespeare, William: The Winter's Tale Silberescher: SCP-1425: Star Signals Stine, R.L.: Don't Go to Sleep!

Unknown, Voynich Manuscript

Wells, H.G.: The Door in the Wall West, A.J.: The Spirit Engineer Whorf, Benjamin Lee: Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language Wyspiański, Stanisław: The Wedding

Abbott, Edwin Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Both a satire on Victorian hierarchies and a mathematical examination of lower and higher dimensions, Flatland's narrator has strange dreams of a one-dimensional Lineland where he can only be seen as a series of points on a line. Following this, he meets A. Sphere, whom he in turn can only see as a circle, and is exposed to the three-dimensional space of Spaceland. When he returns home to try and explain what he has seen, he is thrown into an insane asylum.

Amato, Mary: The Word Eater

The titular Word Eater is a worm born with eyes and the magical ability to eat words instead of dirt, named Fip. Whenever Fip eats a word, the object or subject that word was referring to vanishes, at one point accidentally erasing a recently discovered star. When used on a subject, erasure removes any ontological effects, as when used on a torturous dog training method the dogs it was used on all suddenly become docile instead of vicious. The conflict of the story comes in the fact that words are the only thing Fip can eat, so keeping anything else from being erased becomes a matter of starving him. There's also some disgruntled students who almost use him to erase their school, with the protagonist worrying that the effect could abstractly extend to the staff and students, necessitating their thwarting.

Barker, Clive: Abarat

Candy lives in Chickentown USA: the most boring place in the world, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future may hold. She is soon to find out: swept out of our world by a giant wave, she finds herself in another place entirely...

The Abarat: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of the island of Midnight, ruled by Christopher Carrion. (...)

Abarat is an extremely Spiral coded place working so differently from the real world and being extremely nonsensical that I think this book deserves to be the Spiral Leitner.

Basye, Dale E.: Fibble

"When Marlo Fauster claims she has switched souls with her brother, she gets sent straight to Fibble, the circle of Heck reserved for liars. But it’s true—Milton and Marlo have switched places, and Marlo finds herself trapped in Milton’s gross, gangly body. She also finds herself trapped in Fibble, a three-ring media circus run by none other than P. T. Barnum, an insane ringmaster with grandiose plans and giant, flaming pants. Meanwhile Milton, as Marlo, is working at the devil’s new television network, T.H.E.E.N.D. But there’s something strange about these new shows. Why do they all air at the same time? And are they really broadcasting to the Surface? Soon Milton and Marlo realize that they need each other to sort through the lies and possibly prevent the end of the world—if Bea “Elsa” Bubb doesn’t catch them first."

The Fauster twins are caught up in yet another apocalyptic scheme as hellish figures plot to stoke a ratings war into a holy war, using elaborate lies and propaganda to provoke the end of humanity itself.

Borges, Jorge Luis: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

A short story concerning the author and his friend stumbling upon a mention of the Uqbar region in an encyclopedia, a place which is found in no other literature. One of the myths of Uqbar concerns Tlön, a fantastical place where people do not believe in the reality of the material world, and only the most outre scholars would dare suggest that objects have permanence. Objects there "grow vague or sketchy and lose detail" when they begin to be forgotten, culminating in their disappearance when they are completely forgotten. One year later, Tlönian objects begin to appear in the real world. Then a complete encyclopedia of the world turns up, transforming the human understanding of science and philosophy. As the author writes his postscript, the world is transforming entirely into Tlön.

Calvino, Italo: If on a winter’s night a traveler

The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones.

Carroll, Emily: A Guest in the House

"After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband—a recently widowed dentist—when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up. And Abby starts to wonder . . . was Sheila’s death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life"

While most riffs on the Bluebeard story are probably slaughter, buried, or eye aligned, much of the horror in this story is the uncertainty and loss of a clear sense of reality. Also the art of Sheila feels very spiral.

Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there

Both books have a similar structure and are spiral for the same reasons: little Victorian child Alice founds herself in a strange world with rules vastly different from hers (for example, there’s no real geography and the scenery changes suddenly from one place to another very much like in a dream). The characters she crosses constantly defy her understanding of the world and applies logics she struggles to understand. Even though she ends up going with the flow most of the time she never ceases to question whether she’s experiencing real life or a dream; sanity is brought up a few times, and there’s also the popular quote "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad", delivered by the grinning cat that appears and disappears like a slippery distortion. Lastly I may add that the TMA episode whose title references the book (Mag 177, Wonderland) is a spiral episode.

Chambers, Robert W.: The King in Yellow

A collection of short stories, most of which revolve around a fictional two-act play of the same title: The King in Yellow. Although the play is never described in any great detail, anyone who reads it is driven to madness.

Coltrane, John: Giant Steps

At first a reader simply sees the rapid changes, seemingly random and discordant. Further investigation will begin to reveal patterns, the chords begin to outline other chords, that in turn outline further chords, only to loop back to the beginning. A master or his craft, the creator can seemingly effortlessly navigate this fractal of potential sound. You, can only hope to keep up as the endless, rapidly twisting patterns give you no time to comprehend the page in front of you.

This is specifically against tournament rules, but I still wanted to at least give it a submission.

Cortázar, Julio: Rayuela (Hopscotch)

The story of two young writers whose lives are playing themselves out in Buenos Aires and Paris to the sounds of jazz and brilliant talk, Hopscotch, written in 1963, was the first hypertext novel. Anticipating the age of the web with a non-structure that allows readers to take the chapters in any order they wish, Hopscotch invites them to be the architects of the novel themselves.

Cutter, Nick: The Deep

A strange plague called the ‘Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget— Small things at first and eventually their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure.

But far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a universal healer hailed as “ambrosia” has been discovered. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But when the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths."

At first glance you might think this book is much more aligned to The Buried than The Spiral and while it does have a lot of claustrophobic elements, the true horror the protagonist (Luke) faces, comes from slowly losing your perception of reality. The relatively small laboratory soon becomes a labyrinth, as he moves from room to room he also moves through memories that become more and more vivid as time goes by. He has hallucinations, falls asleep and dreams of being awake while sleepwalks, he is chased by monsters that are very real and some that are just his own demons.

(spoilers) At the end we find out he and all the other people in the laboratory were lured by two ancient creatures trapped both at the bottom of the sea and another dimension and needed Luke's body to be free. The Figmen are tricksters, they enjoy doing "experiments" seeing how much a body can twist and what it takes to break a mind. The people inside the laboratory were little more that mice they wanted to see run around for their amusement before being freed

Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I want off Mr. Wonka's wild ride. Why the fuck is this man dragging children through his acid trip pun-tastical Saw movie. OSHA get his ass

Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves

The novel is written as a work of epistolary fiction and metafiction focusing on a fictional documentary film titled the Navidson Record, presented as a story within a story discussed in a handwritten monograph recovered by the primary narrator, Johnny Truant. The narrative makes heavy use of multiperspectivity as Truant's footnotes chronicle his efforts to transcribe the manuscript, which itself reveals the Navidson Record's supposed narrative through transcriptions and analysis depicting a story of a family who discovers a larger-on-the-inside labyrinth in their house.

***

Come on, its the book that gaslights you. Some pages are literally typed in spirals. Its about a beautiful new house that breaks the laws of physics and also eats some people- Helen Richardson would be PROUD. Its a story in a story IN A STORY. The introduction of the book is about how the man annotating the manuscript of the documentary and his friend used to pick up girls by telling fantastical and false stories about their lives. Everyone in the books universe thinks the documentary was faked. What can i say that hasn't been said before? The “M” in Mark Z. Danielowki stands for “Mr. Michael Distortion”

***

I mean, look at the book. Look at it. I feel like I'm going mad every time I see its pages.

de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote

After reading too many courtly romances, Quixote's perception of reality is warped, and he seeks to become a knight and restore the courtly chivalric graces. Also he thinks windmills are evil giants.

DeLaney, Samuel R.: Babel-17

Rydra Wong is a top linguist, acclaimed poet, and former military cryptologist. When the Alliance military come across a new code used by the enemy, which is beyond their ability to crack, they come to her for help. She informs them that it is not a mere code, but an actual language, and agrees to accept the challenge.

Quickly assembling a crew, Wong heads to the Alliance War Yards to study the raw data on this new language, which the military calls Babel-17. However, shortly after she arrives, an enemy attack forces her to flee in disarray, and she falls in with a privateer, who is, fortunately, on the Alliance side.

Or mostly so. On board the privateer's ship, she begins to learn more about Babel-17, and the surprising benefits and dangers it offers to someone who learns to speak it. The language literally twists the thought pattern of its speakers, making it easier to conceptualize certain ideas, but more difficult to translate your thoughts into anything others can understand.

Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land

Here's a link to the text if anyone is curious

The Waste Land is a poem that describes a...place? state of mind? an arc of history?...in a series of fragments. It weaves together fractured dialogue, mythology, language, and popular culture of its day into a bizarre but beautiful landscape that defies easy explanation.

Ewing, Frederick R.: I, Libertine

New York Times Best Selling novel by acclaimed author, Frederick R. Ewing, “I, Libertine” tells the story of a social climber who styles himself as Lance Courtney.

I highly recommend those voting seek out the book to read for themselves, as it is truly one of the great works of modern American literature.

Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere

"Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. "Neverwhere" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks. Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train. (...)"

Extremely weird world that unsuspecting civilian can be stuck in, and there is a door motive. This is a Spiral Leitner if I ever saw one.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: The Yellow Wallpaper

Link

From Wikipedia: "The story is written as a collection of journal entries narrated in the first person. The journal was written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the journal writer from working or writing, and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time. As the reader continues through the journal entries, they experience the writer's gradual descent into madness with nothing better to do than observe the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room.”

***

Epistolary novel about a woman who's being made to live in a single room to treat her post-partum depression. Over the course of the story, she becomes increasingly obsessed with the patterns of the room's wallpaper, spending hours gazing at it and trying to make sense of it. By the end of the story, she believes that there's a woman trapped in the wallpaper, or perhaps that she is the women trapped in the wallpaper. Throughout the story, she's also gaslit by her husband.

***

It's a short story and I highly recommend that you read it. Spoilers (of course) are ahead, so if you want an unspoiled experience, skip past.

This story follows the narrator, as she is locked up by her husband who cares for her and ultimately makes all decisions for her. He makes her doubt her state of mind as she suffers from a nervious disorder. As she stays in the ex-nursery attic, she writes of the horrendous yellow wallpaper. She becomes obsessive of it, watching it night and day amd watching as the colours change with the lighting of the room. She begins seeing a woman locked behind the twisting patterns, and in the end she becomes it - or it becomes her, and she has a hysteric breakdown.

Hall, Steven: The Raw Shark Texts

Eric Sanderson wakes up with no memory of who he is or any past experiences. He is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue but a trail of written clues purporting to be from his pre-amnesiac self describe a more fantastic and sinister explanation for his lack of memories. According to these, he has activated a conceptual shark called a Ludovician which "feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self" and is relentlessly pursuing him and will eventually erase his personality completely.

Also at one point there's about 30 pages of an ASCII shark moving towards the reader. Could easily be interpreted as the Ludovician actually approaching the reader in a Leitner-ized version.

[SPOILERS] When the Ludovician attacks Eric, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, identified by the letters from his previous self, in the hope he may be able to help to explain what happened to him and how to defeat the shark. Eric travels through Britain in search of clues and is contacted by a mysterious figure called Mr. Nobody, who is part of a megalomaniac network intelligence called Mycroft Ward. Mr. Nobody attempts to subdue and control Eric but Eric manages to escape with the help of an associate of Fidorous named Scout. Scout takes Eric to meet Fidorous, travelling through un-space (an underground network of empty warehouses and unused cellars). They begin a romantic relationship during the journey but Eric feels betrayed when he discovers that Scout has brought him to Fidorous to use him as bait for the shark in the hope of destroying Ward.

With their help Fidorous builds a conceptual shark-hunting boat and they sail out on a conceptual ocean. After a battle with the shark they throw a laptop hooked up to the Mycroft Ward database into its mouth, destroying both Ward and the shark. Eric and Scout remain in the conceptual universe while Eric's dead body is discovered back in the real world.

Hamilton, Patrick: Angel Street/Gas Light

Under the guise of kindness, Jack Manningham is slowly torturing his fragile wife Bella into insanity in his efforts to cover his search for treasure from his diabolical past. He makes her think she is forgetting things and rattles her nerves with the flickering gaslight, which he controls from another room. One day, when Jack is out, Bella has an unexpected caller: kindly Inspector Rough from Scotland Yard. Rough is convinced that Jack is a homicidal maniac wanted for a murder committed fifteen years earlier in this very house. Gradually the Inspector restores Bella's confidence in herself and as the evidence against Jack unfolds.

The play that inspired the movie 1994 "Gaslight" which brought the term "gaslighting" into the public eye.

***

The literal origins of the term "gaslighting," the play follows the recently-married protagonist as her husband tries to convince her that she's going mad.

Hawke, Marcus: Grey Noise

Evan is just trying to get his store, REWIND VIDEO, up and running. Fate, unfortunately, often has other plans. Then he finds something that would be the perfect touch, an old vacuum tube TV. One that keeps turning to static. And it too has other plans. It follows you. Drives you. It’s already inside you. Lose yourself in...GREY NOISE.

Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderlands

Fishing buddies Tonnison and Berreggnog didn't bargain for what they found while on holiday near the remote Irish village of Kraighten. While walking along the riverbank, they're astonished to see that the river abruptly ends. It reappears as a surge from a chasm some 100 feet below the edge of an abyss, where also stand the remains of an oddly shaped house, half-swallowed by the pit.

Exploring the ruins, the friends discover the moldering journal of an unidentified man--the Recluse--who had lived in the house with his sister and faithful dog years ago. Its pages reveal the man's apparent descent into madness--how else to account for his chronicles of otherworldly visions, trips to other dimensions, and attacks by swine-like humanoid creatures that seem to have followed him home? After one particular vision in which he witnesses the end of the earth and time itself, the Recluse awakens in his study to find nothing has changed--except that his dog Pepper is dead, dissolved into a pile of dust. And then the "swine things" return...

Hunter, Erin: Warriors

Can you keep track of who the fuck is related to who and who died when and what these cats look like and what they're named? No you fucking can't, there's four writers all sharing a pen name and metric shit ton of books in the main series alone, let alone the spinoffs. Continuity is dead and these cats murdered it.

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Uzumaki follows a high-school teenager, Kirie Goshima (五島桐絵); her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito (斎藤秀一); and the citizens of the small, quiet Japanese town of Kurouzu-cho (黒渦町, Black Vortex Town), which is enveloped by supernatural events involving spirals.

As the story progresses, Kirie and Shuichi witness how the spiral curse affects the people around them, causing the citizens to become either obsessed or paranoid about spirals. Shuichi becomes reclusive after both of his parents die from the horrific psychological and physical powers of the spirals, but also gains the ability to detect when the spiral curse is taking place, although he is often dismissed until the next paranormal effects of the curse become obvious. Eventually, Kirie is affected by the curse as well, when her hair begins to curl into an unnatural spiral pattern, drains her life energy to hypnotize the citizens, and chokes her whenever she attempts to cut it off. Shuichi is able to cut her hair and save her. The curse continues to plague the town until a series of typhoons conjured by the curse destroys most of its structures. The only remaining buildings are ancient abandoned terraced houses, which the citizens are forced first to move into, and then begin expanding as they grow more and more crowded.

As a series of increasingly powerful earthquakes and additional destruction from delinquents able to utilize strong winds strike the town, Kirie and Shuichi devise a plan to escape Kurouzu-cho, but when they attempt to escape, their efforts are unsuccessful. After returning to the town, they discover that several years have passed since they left, as time speeds up away from the spiral. The other citizens have expanded the terraced houses until they connected into a single structure forming a labyrinthine spiral pattern, but have become mutated as a consequence of overcrowding, their limbs twisting and warping into spirals. Kirie and Shuichi decide to search for Kirie's parents, which brings them to the center after many days of walking through the labyrinth.

At the center, Shuichi is hurled down a pit leading deep beneath the earth by a mutated citizen, with Kirie herself descending via a colossal spiral staircase to find him. She falls but is saved by countless bodies making up the ground of a vast, ancient city consisting entirely of spiral patterns in various arrangements. As Kirie looks for Shuichi, she finds her parents twisted and petrified, resembling stone statues, along with many other citizens of Kurouzu-cho who have met the same fate. Then, she hears Shuichi call for her and goes to him. Both are overwhelmed by the ancient spirals surrounding them and Shuichi points out how it seems as though the spiral ruins have a will of their own. Noticing that the petrified citizens of Kurouzu-cho are all facing the spiral city, Shuichi theorizes that this is the source of the curse; the city expands on its own periodically and has cursed the land above out of jealousy from having no one to view it.

Shuichi urges Kirie to leave without him as he can no longer walk, and that the curse should be over soon, but she replies that she does not have the strength and wishes to stay with him. The two embrace with their bodies twisting and intertwining together, signifying their acceptance into the never-ending curse. At the same time, a stone tower in the shape of a drill bit rises out of the city, and breaches the surface, forming the centerpiece of the abandoned town. As Shuichi and Kirie lie together, Kirie notes that the curse ended at the same time it began, for just as time speeds up away from the center, it freezes at the center. The spiral's curse is eternal, and all the events will repeat when a new Kurouzu-cho is built where the previous one lay.

***

I was debating if I should just do the first volume but three in one horrors sounded great to me. So Uzumaki is largely about spirals, to put the most obvious reasoning first. That's that Uzumaki translates to, after all. Spirals begin enveloping this small town, causing supernatural events. But the madness side of things comes as quickly as the spirals are there. You see it first in completely opposite ways with Shuichi's father and mother, with one becoming obsessed with spirals to the point of madness and eventually becoming one himself and the other being so terrified of spirals that it turns into its own psychological torment as she tries to remove spirals from her life and eventually realizes that those spirals are part of her naturally, causing her to try to take apart those aspects of her as well. Over chapters, characters become warped and characters succumb to the madness of spirals. Some fear the spirals, while others embrace them. Escaping the spirals is proven futile, and through that, it is also proven how out of sync the town is from reality as a whole, with time being sped up. Also, it has a labyrinth at this point, built by those suffering from the curse, so I think the Spiral would love that. In the end, the spirals are proven inescapable, and the two main characters warp together into a spiral of their own. The curse seems to end here, but really, it's a never ending cycle, and a curse which will never go away. The curse and the madness it brings won't fade.

***

Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world.

***

Plot is about a town cursed by spirals which make you go insane

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake

Considered to be one of the great literary mindscrews. The plot is covered in about a tenth of the chapters in the book. The rest tell a series of unconnected vignettes, describe minor characters in excessive detail, give allegories for the main plot, and teach you geometry. One chapter was described by Joyce as "A chattering dialogue across a river by two washerwomen who, as night falls, become a tree and stone." Some chapters feature random doodles in the margins. The first sentence is the ending part of the last sentence, making the book circular. Finally, it's written in a combination of five dozen or so different languages, random puns that you need a doctorate in ancient mythology and the aforementioned languages to understand, and general stream of consciousness. In short, it makes no sense. Which is awesome. Joyce stated that it was supposed to be a dream-like "night book" in comparison to his "day-book", Ulysses, which described a day in the life of some ordinary Dubliners but whose style and construction was almost as weird.

***

Finnegan's Wake is one of the most experimental novels of the twentieth century. Rather than write using conventions of novels--or of the English language--Joyce structured his book on language itself. The result is surreal, dense, and famously difficult. To get a sense of just how strange and dreamlike the whole thing is, even its Wikipedia page compares it to Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" before pointing out the the book begins with the second half of a sentence, which it gives the first half of at its end. Tl;dr Finnegan's Wake is so unsettlingly experimental that Joyce had to break the English language down to its components to get his vision down on the page.

Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth

Milo receives a package one day, from an unknown source. The package takes him on a journey where he meets the judge jury and executioner, the princesses rhyme and reason, and more

Kte'pi, Bill: The Cheshire

If you don't want to read this whole summary, here's a song based on the story

Alice Little came out of a showing of Disney's Alice in Wonderland sixteen years ago with nothing but a blue gingham dress, a faded daguerrotype of cats, and jumbled memories of being Alice Liddell. Specifically the fictional character: "she'd never thought of herself as the 'real' Alice, the one Charles Dodgson wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for - she had no memories of that Alice's life, only of the life chronicled by Lewis Carroll - madness and tea parties and talking animals. Worse, her memories conflicted, as she remembered Alice's Adventures Underground, Wonderland's first draft, as vividly as she did the two published novels." After years of attempting to return to Wonderland failed--she'd "tried every drug she could, hallucinogenic and otherwise [...] meditation, trances, pain rituals, sweat lodges, prayers and madness and hypnosis and psychotherapy"--Alice tells herself that her memories are merely symptomatic of a dissociative disorder and tries to go clean. But she puts an ad in the paper asking "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" (which includes a coded message saying "SAVE ME"), searching for answers despite herself, and eventually gets an answer. She meets a grinning man "in a purple-striped turtleneck, with odd-shaped nails and a tattoo of a mushroom on one of his knuckles" at a bar and they talk about her struggles, with him eventually getting her to ask what she really wants to know--if he can take her back. The man replies, "'There's no back to take you. You never left [...] Maybe we recognise each other because you're Alice and I'm the Cheshire Cat. Maybe we're descendents of the originals. Maybe we're brother and sister, separated after our parents' deaths and so traumatised we sought refuge in the books Father read to us as children. Maybe we're simply mad.'" After giving her LSD, the man tells her that a raven isn't like a writing desk at all, "And he faded away, leaving nothing but a grinnnnnnnnnn."

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Color Out of Space

An indescribable color leaches the life out of a patch of farmland and everyone on it.

Lyons, Steve: The Stealers of Dreams

Synopsis: "In the far future, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack find a world on which fiction has been outlawed. A world where it's a crime to tell stories, a crime to lie, a crime to hope, and a crime to dream.

But now somebody is challenging the status quo. A pirate TV station urges people to fight back. And the Doctor wants to help -- until he sees how easily dreams can turn into nightmares.

With one of his companions stalked by shadows and the other committed to an asylum, the Doctor is forced to admit that fiction can be dangerous after all. Though perhaps it is not as deadly as the truth... "

Why it's Spiral: A society where lies and fictions are forbidden is, evidently, a society that will fall for anything. The repression of any untruth -- by threat of violence and by invasive brain surgery to paralyze the region that dreams -- means that people are more desperate than ever to believe in anything. Fiction has consequences on this planet. And what could be a more obvious lie than the time-traveling man in his blue box...?

Mathers, Edward Powys: Cain’s Jawbone

I'm just going to quote an article from The Independent: "Cain’s Jawbone, originally published in 1934, is a murder mystery puzzle composed of 100 pages – all assembled in the wrong order. The only way to solve all six murders in the prose narrative is to reorder the pages and correctly identify the crimes, their victims, and who perpetrated them."

Here's the link to the article

Mearns, William Hughes: Antigonish

It's all pretty much all in the TMA episode (Upon the stairs). The little man who "wasn't there" in the stairs.

Miles, Lawrence et. al.: The Book of the War

Synopsis: "The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past."

Propaganda: A text which purports to be a constantly shifting and updating guide to The War, a conflict so overarching and complete that every other conflict is but a pale shadow thereof; the Time War. Of course, since it would shift retroactively with the changing timelines, there is no way to prove or disprove this claim. Notable entries include cities built from days stolen from shifting calendars, the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere, Grandfather Paradox, the location of the exact centre of history, how to weaponize banality, and Parablox.

Oh, and there's something else in there. Something that seems to be talking to you...

Morrison, Grant: Doom Patrol

The series in general could easily fit in the Spiral, but I'll focus on a certain arc. A great new evil emerges! The Brotherhood of Dada! Its members: a woman that has super strength when she's asleep, a man that is made of fog and swallows his victims(and then has to put up with their voices inside his brain forever), a woman that has every super power you haven't thought of and is deathly afraid of dirt and an illiterate man that can turn into a hurricane. And their intrepid leader! Mr Nobody! He used to be a boring, average man. With the help of a very criminal doctor he tried to turn into a new man...but he went so insane he's always slightly left of reality and 2D. He doesn't mind though, he rather enjoys the meaninglessness of it all, which is a bit Vast of him. He also calls cops fascists.

The bad guys steal a painting that swallows everything and anything and they put Paris inside it. One of the funniest panels ever is various super heroes sitting around a painting wandering what they're supposed to do. Thankfully, Doom Patrol knows how to deal with the weird stuff. They go into the painting, get separated in different artstyles and beaten up.

But the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse is coming, so they cooperate and put him in the dadaist section, making him lose all meaning and turning into a wooden horse.

A big part of the arc is also narrated by the illiterate hurricane guy, which makes it harder to understand since he writes phonetically.

The whole thing is absurdity, the first bad guys are absurd and the second bad guy gets beaten by the absurd. After a few more arcs Mr Nobody runs for president(with some members of the Doom Patrol endorsing him) and gets killed by the CIA in a similar manner to Jesus. For his campaign he drove a bus that made everyone behind it feel like they've taken lsd.

Moore, Christopher: Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art

The story surrounds the mysterious suicide of Vincent van Gogh, who famously shot himself in a French wheat field only to walk a mile to a doctor’s house. The mystery, which is slowly but cleverly revealed through the course of the book, is blue: specifically the exclusive ultramarine pigment that accents pictures created by the likes of Michelangelo and van Gogh. To find the origin of the hue, Moore brings on Lucien Lessard, a baker, aspiring artist and lover of Juliette, the brunette beauty who breaks his heart. After van Gogh’s death, Lucien joins up with the diminutive force of nature Henri Toulouse-Lautrec to track down the inspiration behind the Sacré Bleu. In the shadows, lurking for centuries, is a perverse paint dealer dubbed The Colorman, who tempts the world’s great artists with his unique hues and a mysterious female companion who brings revelation—and often syphilis (it is Moore, after all). Into the palette, Moore throws a dizzying array of characters, all expertly portrayed, from the oft-drunk “little gentleman” to a host of artists including Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Muir, Tamsyn: Harrow the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth is, above all, really fucking confusing. Roughly every third chapter is actively gaslighting the reader about what happened in the last book. The main character is fucking struggling to maintain any sort of grip on reality all throughout the story, and more often than not, she fails miserably. This is due to several factors, including, but not limited to - sleep deprivation, latent schizophrenia, ruthless emotional manipulation from everyone around her, being full of a frankly alarming number of ghosts from several entirely unrelated sources, childhood parental and religious trauma, and a self-inflicted amateur lobotomy.

***

Takes place post(sometimes pre) DIY lobotomy; leaving our protag, who already struggles identifying between reality and hallucination, a paranoid, constantly questioning wreck. It's written in second person and does not follow events chronologically, leaving the reader questioning everything almost as much as the protag.

National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers: Common Core Math Textbook

Drives me up the damn wall insane. This is mostly a joke suggestion but also I think there’s something to be said about fractals’ place in mathematics, and the widespread range of common core math’s influence. To be honest, submitting this is a gut feeling of dread to me.

Nikolson, Adam: Life between the tides

Look this probably shouldn’t even make it into the bracket and this is mostly a very dull book about shoreline ecosystems but there’s this one chapter where the dude gets positively poetic about I think?? winkles?? (a kind of snail) and it absolutely reads like a statement like we are talking fractal winkles-all-the-way-down insanity. I need to tell someone about it bc it was like suddenly reading another book. A better and also worse book. I’m pretty sure he quoted philosophers in it. I wish I had taken notes. He would get along with Ivo Lensik’s dad.

O’Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman

Synopsis from Goodreads: "The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him."

Ogawa, Yoko: The Memory Police

The story is set in an alternate Japan where people's memories of certain things and concepts (e.g. birds, hats, winter, books, seasons, even their sense of self) are slowly taken away from their collective minds for 'their safety' by the titular Memory Police, a government force of sorts. This forced forgetting goes to the point where they can't physically perceive that concept; birds are weird creatures because no one remembers what a bird is like, and it's always winter because no one remembers what spring is. The story even ends with the unnamed protagonist (along with several others) eventually fading away from existence (read: forgetting) as memories of certain body parts and finally the concept of the human body is taken away by the Memory Police. It's like if the vase from MAG 38 formed and entire task force to do its job.

This one has narrative potential too; imagine a statement where someone slowly lose memories of certain things after reading this Leitner, gradually becoming an unreliable narrator as reality slips away from their conscious.

Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelevin, Victor: The Helmet of Horror

Eight people find themselves in eight different rooms with a labyrinth behind them and a computer in front of them. They try to communicate via the computer that allows them to chat with one another, but has nicknames set for them(IsoldA, UGLI 666, Ariane...) and blocks their personal information. They(and us) can't know if they are lying. When two of them try to see each other by visiting a spot in the labyrinths that should be the same they each then recount a completely different experience and accuse each other of lying. Another character claims they all must be figments of his imagination, he must be very drunk. And they're all afraid of the minotaur. It is a book where no one, even the reader knows what's real, everyone is afraid of what might appear if they turn a corner and no one knows what's going on.

Pratchett, Terry: Moving Pictures

"‘HOLY WOOD IS A DIFFERENT SORT OF PLACE . . . HERE, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO BE IMPORTANT.’

A new phenomenon is taking over the Discworld: moving pictures. Created by the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork, the growing ‘clicks’ industry moves to the sandy land of Holy Wood, attracted by the light of the sun and some strange calling no one can quite put their finger on…

Also drawn to Holy Wood are aspiring young stars Victor Tugelbend, a wizarding student dropout, and Theda ‘Ginger’ Withel, a small-town girl with big dreams. But behind the glitz and glamour of the clicks, a sinister presence lurks. Because belief is powerful in the Discworld, and sometimes downright dangerous…

The magic of movies might just unravel reality itself."

Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49

Oedipa Maas spends the whole book trying to figure out if the conspiracy she’s trying to unravel about the US postal service and a conter-postal service via plays, signs/images, and history is real or if she’s being gaslit by her ex, who just died and made her executor of his will.

Ryukishi07: higurashi no naku koro ni (When The Evening Cicadas Cry)

The series explores paranoia and deceit among friends. It uses its POVs incredibly well, limiting your view of the situation so much that it is genuinely incredibly hard to figure out what happened or why (until you read the answer arcs ofc). Several key plot points involve characters getting so consumed by their own madness that they cannot see reality for what it is and wildly assume false things. This madness repeats and repeats and repeats, consuming the friends group over and over and over, leading them to do horrific things to each other. Many a character become so consumed by suspicion and fear that the world distorts and details change in their mind to match what they think is happening. I am desperately trying to describe the series without spoilers rn

Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Is Falling Down

Obviously all of Wayside School is a little Spirally -- the weird architecture, the cow invasions, occasional hypnosis, and more -- but this one tells a story of the nineteenth floor. Wayside School has no nineteenth floor. There is one teacher on the nineteenth floor, and only one class, who learn about how to alphabetize every number. Sometimes, new students arrive...

Schwartz, Alvin: "Maybe You Will Remember" (short story from Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones)

A girl, Rosemary, and her mother are on vacation in Paris. Rosemary's mother is ill, so Rosemary is sent to get medicine, but ultimately has her time wasted by the driver on the way back, and when she returns to the hotel, nobody recognizes her, telling her she has the wrong place. Her mother is gone, too, and when Rosemary asks to see the room they stayed in as proof they were there, the clerk shows her a completely unfamiliar setup, making Rosemary wonder what happened to her.

In the appendix of the book, the scenario is explained. Rosemary's mother was sick with the plague, and the doctor, recognizing it, knew she would be dead very quickly. Rosemary was put on a wild goose chase for the medicine and given a driver who would delay her, with the doctor and hotel staff working to dispose of her mother's body and re-decorate the hotel room while Rosemary was away. With Rosemary unable to verify that she was in the hotel, and unknowing that her mother died of plague, the hotel avoided any negative publicity that would have occurred if anyone were to find out a guest had the plague. The hotel's PR was saved, but Rosemary was left doubting her sanity.

Serafini, Luigi: Codex Seraphinianus

The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed

***

It's an encyclopedia for a universe that doesn't exist, treated as if it does exist in another universe while being written in a nonsense, impossible to understand language. The things it depict doesn't make sense either, ranging from swimming trees and eye-shaped fishes to absolutely bizarre creatures and technology, like a rainbow-making cloud shaped like Da Vinci's aerial screw. The entire thing comes off as surreal nonsense because it's meant to symbolise the feeling of trying to understand something that you can't understand, but finds cool because of the visuals. It's a book that you aren't meant to read understand, but simply look at, because trying to understand it just... doesn't work.

***

The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. It has been compared to the still undeciphered Voynich manuscript, the story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, and the artwork of M. C. Escher and Hieronymus Bosch. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed.

The false writing system appears modeled on Western writing systems, with left-to-right writing in rows and an alphabet with uppercase and lowercase letters, some of which double as numerals. Some letters appear only at the beginning or end of words, similar to Semitic writing systems. The curvilinear letters are rope- or thread-like, with loops and even knots, and are somewhat reminiscent of Sinhala script. In a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles [...] Serafini stated that there is no meaning behind the Codex's script, which is asemic; that his experience in writing it was similar to automatic writing; and that what he wanted his alphabet to convey was the sensation children feel with books they cannot yet understand, although they see that the writing makes sense for adults. Take a look for yourself:

Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night's Dream

The way the fey play with the perceptions and emotions of the wandering youths in the woods is peak Spiral, as their loves and disdains change with the machinations of Oberon and Puck.

Shakespeare, William: King Lear

The play has everything: real descents into madness, fake descents into madness, betrayal by trusted loved ones, loyalty from betrayed loved ones, and would-be wise men who turn out to be fools.

Shakespeare, William: The Winter's Tale

Imagine that you are absolutely, completely, 100 percent certain that your wife is cheating on you with your best friend. Now imagine you're the king, and your best friend is the king of a far-off kingdom. Now imagine that the consequences of your actions spiral outward: your wife and son die, one of your trusted advisors has disappeared with daughter on your orders to kill her.

This first half of this deeply underappreciated play explores the consequences of one man's fear of betrayal. Coincidentally, it is one Shakespeare's more surreal works. It's the origin of the infamous "Exit pursued by a bear," a stage direction that concludes a scene set on the coast of a kingdom that in real life was landlocked. And--spoiler alert--the play concludes with a statute coming back to life.

Anyway, it's a surprisingly Spiral-like play with a dream-like atmosphere, fairy-tale logic, and a Distortion-esque look at the fear of betrayal.

Silberescher: SCP-1425: Star Signals

Stine, R.L.: Don't Go to Sleep!

"Matt hates his tiny bedroom. It's so small it's practically a closet! Still, Matt's mom refuses to let him sleep in the guest room. After all, they might have guests. Some day. Or year. Then Matt does it. Late one night. When everyone's in bed. He sneaks into the guest room and falls asleep. Poor Matt. He should have listened to his mom. Because when Matt wakes up, his whole life has changed. For the worse. And every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new nightmare... "

Inception, for kids! Whenever Matt falls asleep, he changes reality -- and a group of special agents want to stop him by putting him to sleep, permanently.

Unknown, Voynich Manuscript

Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. It's a strange code describing alchemical formulae and unknown life forms, and no one understands it. It's a mystery waiting for you to lose yourself in its pages.

Wells, H.G.: The Door in the Wall

This short story is about Lionel Wallace, who at the age of 5 encountered and entered a weird door. Behind it he found a beautiful and peaceful garden and felt such happiness and bliss, that when he was transported back on the street and escorted back to his home, he was very upset. He would see the door again many times later in life, but every time he will refuse to enter it due to his responsibilities (for example, to not be late to class, to catch a train, to be on time for an appointment). He grew up and became a successful politician, but the perfect world behind the door haunted him, and his success felt dull and boring. The book ends with people finding his lifeless body at the bottom of a pit, and that he had in poor light walked through a small doorway that led onto it. The narrator then speculates that maybe Lionel saw the perfect garden behind the doorway and was finally able to find happiness.

West, A.J.: The Spirit Engineer

Based on a real story about a guy who was convinced that one particular medium was the real deal. He completely upended his career for it, and wrote a paper on the science of the ghostly plane.

He did several shows, and got relatively famous. Eventually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [someone who wanted to believe] and Harry Houdini [An avid non-believer] invite him over to convince them that séances were real. In the process, Houdini completely disproves him, and outs the medium he thought was real as a fraud.

It turns out his wife and coworker had convinced the 'medium' and their family to run a prank on him. In his fury, he kills everyone involved, and then drinks Poison to try - one final time - to proove his theory.

Tldr: A real story who unknowingly changed his life and ruined his reputation because of the lies of the ones he trusted. When he realises, he looses his sanity and kills everyone around him, including himself.

 Whorf, Benjamin Lee: Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language

The famous text about language as a symbol that can never truly reflect reality can kinda fuck with your perceptions about how our language serves to construct our own realities. We're programmed to experience the world in different ways according to the way we interpret language.

Wyspiański, Stanisław: The Wedding

Relevant parts from Wikipedia

"The play's action takes place at the wedding of a member of the Kraków intelligentsia (the Bridegroom) and his peasant Bride. Their crossclass union follows a then fashionable trend of chłopomaństwo ("peasant-mania") among some Polish intelligentsia, who were often scions of the historic Polish szlachta (nobility). (...) Among the live guests are ghosts of personae from Polish history and culture, representing the guilty consciences of the living. The two groups engage in dialogues. The wedding guests are hypnotized by a rosebush straw-wrap (Chochoł) from the garden which comes to life and joins the party. (Offending a chochoł, according to folk beliefs, could provoke the thing to play tricks).The "Poet" is visited successively by the "Black Knight" (a symbol of the nation's past military glory); the "Journalist"; the court jester Stańczyk, a conservative political sage; and the "Ghost of Wernyhora" (a paradigm of leadership for Poland). (...)Thus the wedding guests, symbolizing the nation, waste their chance at national freedom. They keep on dancing a "chocholi taniec" (a "straw-wrap's dance") "the way it's played for them" (a Polish folk saying), failing in their mission." This play is as if patriotically motivated Spiral avatars crashed somebody's wedding, and I think it deserves consideration as Spiral Leitner.

[operafantomet]

Hi Anea! I was searching for "antique" chinese fabrics on the web and found there were many cheap brocade/embordered fabric on TaoBao that is similar to the fabric in the mandarin coat. Would it be a good idea to remake the mandarin coat using the fabrics? (0 experience first timer)

I mean, why not? I think the main thing about the costume is that it needs texture, surface, embroidery, fringes, details. And using brocades and embroidered fabrics will add to that. But I would make sure the base is made of solid fabrics. Chinese brocades are good in this aspect. Fragile, flimsy materials can be saved for the decorations, where they are put on another surface.

Apart from rich Chinese brocades and embroideries, you can also cut out motifs from suitable fabrics and apply them on to your robe / tabard. Add trims around it, maybe some sequins, and it's a super effective and sometimes money-saving feature.

The costume itself consists of four main features:

The main robe, straight, with long wide cuffs and a standing collar. This is often made of Chinese brocades, with some additional details on the cuffs and maybe collar.

The tabard, the sleeveless overgarment reminding of a long, loose waistcoat. This one can be straight or pointed, it may or may not have a collar, it can be open + tied at the sides, or sewn together, and the back is usually richly ornamented. Many versions also do a fringe or tassel trim at the hem. Sometimes the main robe and tabard is merged into one, or at least it's hard to tell where one ends and the other starts.

The cloud collar, a pointed, rounded and decorated collar. This is not done in all versions, as for example the US costumes only tend to indicate it with trims.

The round, pointed hat (which I won't really address here).

When they built a new costume for Ben Lewis in West End the base of the robe, tabard and collar was various Chinese brocades, but then slowly adding texture to the collar and the back of the tabard, using trims, embroidery, fringes, appliquees etc. The main robe itself doesn't need much decorations apart from the pattern and colours of the fabric. With the exception of the cuffs, of course. They are usually made of different rows of fabrics and trims.

Here's the Ben Lewis costume in making:

I didn't think that costume turned out super textured on stage. I would have liked to see a dash more surface to the collar. But I do like the various blue shades, especially that reminding of peacock blue. Here it is worn by David Thaxton some time later:

A new costume they made for Scott Davies and Tim Howar around the same time also had a base of chinese brocades, and with various structured trims, appliquees, embroideries etc. Again I don't think the collar is the most textured one in West End, but it is still cool to see it in process from costume workshop to stage.

The one they made for Marcus Lovett was more textured. Especially with that embroidered dragon back, but also the ornamentation of the collar. Here it is in making:

And as it appeared on stage, here worn by Ben Lewis:

I would also say the same logic can be applied to other versions of the costume around the world: Chinese brocades as a base, and various embroideries, trims, tassels and appliquees adding structure and bling to make it rich-looking.

Here's the Danish one, as worn by Tomas Ambt Kofod and John Martin Bengtsson. I love the bold blue nerve in the collar, cuffs and lining. It's also not super visible, but there is a lot of antique embroideries in the back and inner collar.

Many versions follow this composition, though with different colours, fabrics and details. Some will have a separate cloud collar, while others indicate a collar by the use of trims. The US is a good example. They do various trims around the neck and tabard, or the trims illuded a cloud collar that is an integrated part of the tabard. Here's Laird Mackintosh on Broadway:

And the back of what I think is the same costume, as worn by Hugh Panaro on Broadway:

The cloud collar shape is even less present - or rather, not at all - in the 1990s versions of the costume. Here's Michael Lackey and John Cudia in US Tour runs. Even if we're not talking the same costume, they are both made of a black and gold Chinese brocade for the main robe, and blue Chinese brocade with large, round ornaments for the tabard. The standing collar is accentuated by trims.

Same goes for the Australian and early World Tour ones. They did the main robe and tabard, but rarely the cloud collar. They did however do amazing vintage gold embroideries and silk-painted details. Here's one worn by Jonathan Roxmouth in his South African run. I love the wing pattern coming to view in the collar and back:

Same also goes for the Japanese ones. They do a main robe with a tabard on top, and the tabard has trims and details denoting a collar rather than a separate cloud collar. They have used many types of fabrics and colours throughout the years, but this recent purple one will forever remain a favourite. The first photo is Yuta Iwaki in Tokyo. I wanna say the second photo shows Osamu Takai, but don't quote me on that...

A final version I will post is this elder German one. Again, the cloud collar shape is only indicated by trims. But they have also added frog fatening in front, which I think is a nice detail. Depicted is Thomas Schulze in Hamburg:

I hope this at least gave you some inspirations on materials used, possible shapes, colours etc. :)

[firemaster1992]

I'll be frank, even with Lily Orchard's true color, I personally don't care about the conflict between her and Joshscorcher because I don't like Josh either. I still feel iffy about how he handled the ToonKriticy2k situation, he made some questionable takes too like on Flurry Heart, defended Scott Cawthon for donating his money to those problematic Republicans like Mitch McConnell (who opposed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act—a bill that seeks to expand voting access and to stop states like Georgia and Florida from imposing voter restrictions that predominantly affect people of color, and also responsible for the confirmation of a number of anti-LGBTQIA+ judicial nominees), Tulsi Gabbard (who introduced a bill that would effectively ban trans women and girls from participation in high school or college sports just like Ron DeSantis and his colleagues did in Florida on the first day of Pride Month in 2021. Yes, I'm aware she was a Democrat until she turned independent in 2022 but she is still a scum who used her party affiliation to give weight to the cudgel of "both sides are bad." I'm glad she hasn't been in the office since 2021 after people wouldn't dare to vote for her again) Ben Carson (who, along with Trump, tried to impose a rule critics said could have prohibited trans women from seeking refuge federally funded women’s homeless shelters), and even DONALD F**KING TRUMP (Nuff said) which Scott himself even stated he didn't regret it right after the Jan 6 riot (While I do agree with Josh that sending death threats to him and doxxed him are wrong and those people should have known better not to take some extreme level, but it won't help Cawthon for what he has done to the LGBT community after he gave his support to those who are trying to revoke the human rights of innocent people because they were different) and attacking Limited Run Game over firing their employees for following those problematic people with at best, AT BEST, their questionable beliefs like Blaire White and Ian Miles Cheung aka who called Hitler his "idol." Yes, Josh can make really good videos at times, but I still don't feel comfortable with his ignorance and refusal to understand actions have consequences that would affect other people.

[letters-to-rosie]

okay,,,,, hypothetically,,,,,, if one wanted to get into black power lit where would recommend they start 👀

the way I screamed lmao

first off, I wanna give a disclaimer: I am not the most well-read person in the world on Black Power. I read this sort of stuff as a hobby, and it's not the subject of my own academic work, even though I do write about race a LOT. I just like Black Power lol.

with that said, let's go through some hits!

Huey P. Newton

Newton, along with Bobby Seale, was co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. he was murdered in 1989 and has a bit of a contentious legacy. however, while I recognize that many of Newton's personal issues got in the way of him being the most effective leader he could be, that shouldn't stop us from reading him! we never require perfection of, say, Lenin to consider him important, lol

Newton's Revolutionary Suicide is a powerful but very difficult book. I actually have yet to finish it because of the way he describes his time in solitary confinement. the conditions are literally sickening. but I want to get back to it someday. I also know there's a relatively recent reader on him that might be helpful, but I have yet to find a pdf copy of it :(

Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael

now for one of Newton's archnemeses! lol. Ture was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which hosted other famous figures such as John Lewis. he worked closely with MLK during the Civil Rights movement and was on the ground in many very difficult struggles. he would later become affiliated with the Black Panthers while Newton was in jail, and one of his most famous speeches is from the Free Huey movement. but they wound up not liking each other, mostly because Ture was firmer about not allying with other progressive movements. this caused tension with other Panthers such as Newton and Fred Hampton, who felt like allying themselves with international and local organizations was important, even if those orgs included non-black people. Ture eventually fled the US and lived most of the rest of his life in Guinea. I have a copy of a book of his speeches in the collection and highly recommend it. even when I disagree with Ture, I find him so engaging. he always makes me think. AND! if you're up for it, I'd recommend checking out some of his speeches. he was a very compelling speaker, and a bunch of his talks are uploaded on the youtube channel AfroMarxist

Angela Davis

Davis is perhaps one of the most recognizable names out of the Black Power era, probably because she's still alive, lol. Davis grew up in Alabama, and her church was famously bombed by white supremacists in 1963, killing 4 young girls. Davis would become famous a decade later when she represented herself at trial when accused of having weapons others used to kill cops. her imprisonment sparked an international movement. later on, she'd go on to become a professor, and she's still active as a public intellectual today. of her work, I've read part of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, but I also have Women, Race, and Class and Are Prisons Obsolete? for your perusal! Davis is a leading figure in prison abolition thought, which is very very cool

Assata Shakur

Assata Shakur is known for many things, including: being the first woman on the FBI's most wanted list; being Tupac's godmother; and, most famously, being put in prison after a string of crimes she maybe did but maybe not, being freed by comrades, fleeing to Cuba, and hanging out there until the present (Newton also fled to Cuba at one point; that was a time). her autobiography is really great, though she doesn't tell you how she got out of prison. the writing is really engaging, and I think she does a great job of showing just how fucked up the surveillance of these groups was. she left the Panthers to join the Black Liberation Army, which was a very loose collective of smaller groups, but I'll let her tell the story lol

George Jackson

Jackson is the author of my current read, Blood in My Eye. he was also a member of the Panthers (there's a theme here), but he started his own group, the Black Guerilla Family, while in prison. one of the members ironically killed Newton! what a story lol. but Jackson spent the last years of his life in prison. he maintained a very militant outlook with clear principles. I really like the way he writes and his analysis, even though I'm slowly working my way through the book. he also has a famous collection of letters, Soledad Brother, which I hope to get into someday

Frantz Fanon

Fanon isn't part of the Black Power movement proper, but his writing is so influential to it it doesn't make much sense not to mention him. his main two works are Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth (which is in the collection). Fanon was from Martinique, moved to France, and eventually became part of the Algerian anti-colonial struggle against France. he died in his 30s!!! (Jackson died at 29, and Newton in his 40s; there's a theme here). but anyway, Fanon's brief life has powerful resonances to this day. in Wretched of the Earth he uses his background as a psychiatrist to give a really interesting analysis of the effects of violence on the colonized. Paulo Freire's famous Pedagogy of the Oppressed was actually written in response. and so were a lot of other things lol

Audre Lorde

Lorde was a big figure in the Black Arts Movement, which is associated with Black Power. her writing, along with Davis's, brings much-needed feminist (and queer! both are lesbians) analysis to the table. I've included two of her books, a poetry collection, and a collection of essays and speeches. I loveeeeeee Audre Lorde, and I highly recommend her work

Amiri Baraka

Baraka was the person who coined the term "Black Arts Movement." he wrote on a number of black art forms, but I have only so far engaged with his poetry. I have a collection here I haven't finished (full transparency, haven't finished the Lorde collection either; I kinda like to just go in there and grab a poem or two from time to time) called Transbluency. I would say that compared to Lorde, Baraka's poetry shows signs of its age more. it can get slightly toxic lol. but I find a lot of that resonates with me in it, and Baraka was so prolific that you can see how he shifts over time. someday I will find a digital copy of Un Poco Low Coup, I swear!

also gotta read Elaine Brown, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton, but I have yet to. hopefully I have plenty of time to!

um okay this is a lot of reading!!! good luck!!! lemme know if you have questions!!

click here for pdf copies of most of the mentioned books!