#there's a lot more going on than that. hugh is mostly an observer

[mzannthropy]

Reading The Rose and The Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott aka Agatha Christie. Here's the thing: We have the narrator, Hugh Norreys, who tells the story in retrospective. He was on his way to marry the woman he loved when he got into an accident and was injured, and confined to a wheelchair. His bride-to-be was willing to stand by him, but they broke it off bc he suddenly realised he didn't know the real her, they had nothing in common etc (but the woman is not in any way presented in a negative manner, just that the narrator's feelings changed). Hugh stays with his brother and sister-in-law, who inherited a house on Cornish coast. It's not specified how disabled he actually is, he seems to be able to move his arms alright, but he needs care. Mild spoiler: it's revealed at one point that he planned to take his life--he's been saving sleeping pills. Prior to his injury, he used to be active and athletic. Which he now, understandably, cannot be any longer, plus he is dependent on others. But weeks into living in his sister-in-law's place, after he meets some local people and gets to know the candidate for upcoming election (story takes place in 1945, general election took place that summer in UK), he no longer wants to die. He tells his sister-in-law (who actually knew what he wanted to do all along; she's a smart, capable woman, a really good character) that he's "actually interested in waking up tomorrow morning". A wedding is to take place between two members of aristocracy who live in the castle, Hugh is invited. The groom's name is Rupert.

Sounds familiar?

You know, Me Before You is my most hated book in the universe, but I had no idea that its writer straight up stole things from my favourite author! I mean, that fucking bitch has been accused of plagiarism, so if she did it once, it's possible she has done it more times.

I fucking hate Jojo Moyes.

[ambiguouslady42]

Remember Summer Days: Chapter 6 - Planetarium

Pairing: Satoru Gojo x Female OC

Genre: Fluff. The kind where your heart kind of melts.

Word Count: 2.6K

Tags: @pixelcafe-network, @hayatoseyepatch (big thanks for reading it for me)

Summary: It's not a date, but you know it is.

Chapter 5

Saturday Night. July 2007

Isabel still felt the warmth of his hand as they were being driven to an undisclosed location. She felt excited because nobody had done this before, but she was also curious if he had planned this by himself or with some help.

Satoru came up with the idea on a whim, he didn’t plan all the major details on how to make this the best night for her. He knew he could always ask her what to do after, but he felt he wasn’t sure what Isabel would think of him. Would she judge him for taking her out and then asking her what else they should do?

He started to notice that her grip on his hand was loosening. He grew worried that she finally got too uncomfortable and wanted to let go. Just when he had noticed that she was starting to lean her neck to the side, she fell asleep. Rather than let her neck hang to the side and become sore, he decides to move her head towards his arm. When she began to nuzzle against his arm, a pink hue appeared on his cheeks. She didn't move, and that was a great comfort to him; it meant she was becoming more comfortable with touching him.

The route to the undisclosed location was very busy. Traffic was lining up from the freeway’s exit. 

“There’s no other way to get around, we’ll have to sit here for a little while.” the driver informed Satoru. 

“It’s fine. Thanks a lot for this.” Satoru responded.

“...I can’t wait for this”, Isabel responded sleepily.

“You don’t need to wake up yet, Izzy. You can keep sleeping.” He said softly,  as to not awaken her. 

The radio was on. The station that the driver had been listening to was mostly playing 80’s music. Satoru began to reflect on the first time he spoke to Isabel about John Hughes's movies. He figured at some point he should have a movie night with her and his friends. He’s sure they’ll like her a lot too.

And when she wakes up and makes up her mi-i-ind//she’ll see I’m not so tough just because I’m in love with an uptown girl  

Satoru smiled at hearing this particular lyric. 

As the cars were all honking, trying to cut in front of each other to go into moving lanes, they all ascended a hill. She was slowly waking up. As she felt the car going up and making turns, she was trying to guess quietly where she could be going. “Where could we be?” she thought.

“Alright, we’re here.” the driver announced.

“Hey Izzy, wake up. We’re finally here!” Satoru’s excitement couldn’t be contained. He hoped that she would be excited with him, but only time will tell.

“Can I take off my blindfold now?” Isabel asked.

“Nope! Not until we get out of the car.” he grinned.

Satoru stepped out and opened the door for her. He helped her by grabbing her arm. “As fun as it would be to let you fall, I know you would be pretty mad.”

“I’d actually cry, dude.” Isabel attempted to shove him, but she couldn’t see him. He began to laugh at her.

“Who are you trying to push? Me?”

“No, the holy spirit. Yes, you, Sherlock.” with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“Gotta do better than that.” 

He grabbed her arm and they walked ahead. The evening was entering the scene. The sky went from a purple hue and it was getting darker. The street lamps were illuminating. Cars were parked everywhere. People were observing the skyline nearby.

“Okay, NOW can I take off this blindfold?”

“No, I’ll do it.” 

“Ugh, where are we?!”

“Just be patient.”

“I’m not a patient person.”

“I can see that now.”

She sticks out her tongue at Satoru. Of course, she can only assume that he’s standing next to her, so he’s able to see this gesture. It makes him laugh. 

“Woman, stop being a brat. We’re here.”

He removes the blindfold. 

“Dude how did you know I wanted to be here?!”

“I didn’t, I just thought it would be a good idea for me to check it out, but I guess I knocked down two birds with one stone.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to come back to the observatory!” she smiled ear to ear and began to jump up and down.

“You’re such a dork. It’s really cute actually.”

She immediately stopped jumping, feeling embarrassed by this comment. Now that she thinks about it, it’s not a word she hears often from others. It wasn’t missing, but she can’t help but feel that there’s something there.

“Aww come on, don’t stop, Izzy. I like seeing this side of you. I feel like you’re letting me get to know you”, Satoru says with a grin. 

Was this the risk that Mariella was talking about? Isabel was concerned that her actions would make him not like her anymore. It was a growing insecurity on her part. His words can be a form of reassurance, but she knows she needs to believe that people can be honest and truthful with good intentions. 

Satoru did like seeing that Izzy was letting him see this side of her. His friends are not necessarily the excited type. Shoko is mostly laid back and goes along with whatever he and Suguru decide to do. Suguru was his partner in crime, they do mostly everything together. These days, they’re either going to the beach, hanging out at the pool, or going on random food runs. 

As they reached the rotunda of the observatory, there was a pendulum at the center of the room. People were surrounding it and staring at the bottom. The pendulum was slowly knocking down some pegs beneath it. 

“Do you know what a pendulum is?” Isabel asked Satoru. 

“Sure. It’s moving back and forth using the force of gravity to move, right? As it’s doing that, it’s going to slowly knock those thingies out, right?”

“Yep!” Isabel said with a giant smile. 

“Cool, now what’s my reward for answering correctly?” 

“The gift of nothing!” she smirks.

“Ugh, I thought it would be something else.”

“No idea what you’re talking about…” Isabel walked away as her face was turning tomato red. Satoru quickly followed right behind her as they made their way further inside.

 As they enter past the rotunda, they’re making their way through various galleries. They see a giant crowd of people gathering in a specific area. They decide to see what the commotion is. Isabel is not tall at all, so she pushes her way to the front of where everyone is standing. When she reaches the front, she discovers that she is standing in front of a giant orb. When she reads the sign, it reads Tesla Coil. Satoru shoves his way to the front, despite that his tall stature might be bothersome. He doesn’t care at the moment. He wants to be close to her and continue admiring her. The lights began to dim and a speaker was at the front. 

“Welcome everyone! You might be wondering what a Tesla Coil is. Rather than just explain it right now, I’ll demonstrate how it works. 3, 2, 1.”

BZZZZZZ, BZZZZZ. Electricity began to run. Sparks were contained. The sound was so startling that Isabel grasped onto Satoru’s arm so tightly and pressed her face against it. She peeked from one eye to observe what it looked like. Realizing what she had done, she let go as fast as she could. Satoru looked down at her. Noticing that she now can’t look at him and she’s staring down at her shoes. 

“Don’t be scared, Izzy. Look it’s all contained! Plus, you were so excited to see it too!” he offered her his hand to comfort her. Rather than taking the entire hand, this time she only decided to hold onto his pinky. 

Why did I do that? I already held his hand once in the car. Ughhh, I’m such a weirdo. 

“As you can see two wires are running to create this current of electricity. One is a green one and the other is a copper coil, which is what ultimately makes the Tesla Coil work. This coil is plugged in just like any electronic appliance in your house. When the electricity reaches the top of the coil, the electricity produced is 500,000 volts. That’s a lot!”

The speaker decides to demonstrate the use of the coil once again. BZZZZZ BZZZZZZ. The noise was starting to create anxiety inside of Isabel. She didn’t know if she didn’t like the noise, but Satoru got the hint. He grabbed her hand and they walked away from it. 

“Hey, we don’t have to do anything, you don’t like, okay? I just want to make sure you have fun.”

“I’m sorry.” she blushed and felt embarrassed by not being able to tolerate the noise. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Let’s keep walking around. You don’t have to let go, by the way.”

Her smile displayed the dimple on her right side. To him, this was her cutest feature. He wondered if he could continue to make her smile throughout the night. What exhibits will bring out this joyful side of her? There’s so much that he needs to know about her. So much more to see.

I have to make the best of tonight. She seems so happy too.

Isabel felt a lot better as they walked through the exhibits. They observed how the moon can affect the tides of the ocean due to the forces of gravity; they learned how seasons worked due to the sun and the rotation of the Earth. Space was such a magnificent thing to learn about for her. Too many knowns and unknowns exist; just like her relationship with her and Satoru. 

“Hey there was something back towards the rotunda about shows taking place at the planetarium, do you want to check it out?” Satoru asked.

“Sure! I wonder when’s the next showing.” Isabel said excitedly.

Arriving at the counter, they saw the next show was called Centered in the Universe. It was the next show in 5 minutes. She wanted to purchase both tickets, but before she took out her wallet, Satoru beat her. 

“No. You do not get to pay for anything while I’m here.”

“Why? I can pay for it though.” she giggled.

We’re on a date, can’t you tell?

“Whenever we go out, I don’t want you to worry about paying for me.”

“Are you loaded or something?”

“You could say that.”

“Is there anything that I could buy for you?” 

“No! It’s fine, Izzy. I just want to make sure you’ll have fun and keep having fun while I’m here.”

She blushed, but she relented. She wasn’t comfortable with this gesture on Satoru’s part, but if he insisted, she knew it was a battle that she wasn’t going to win; they made their way to the terrace where they entered the planetarium. The seats reclined and it allowed them to view the ceiling. It was displaying a starry sky right above them. Isabel was observing the different constellations that were displayed above them. 

“That one right there is the Big Dipper. Then not too far away, is the Little Dipper. The shiniest star at the end of the handle is the North Star. You’re supposed to use it to find your way if you get lost.” 

“You could say that I’m the Big Dipper and you’re the Little Dipper.” Satoru whispered to Isabel. She immediately blushed and tried to look away from him. “You’re so cheesy” were the only words she was able to muster back. Her heart was beating faster as they continued to hold hands and Satoru shared this sweet flirtation with her. 

“And yet, you’re still here next to me.” he moves to grab her hand once again. “Tell me what else I should see,” he asks her excitedly.

“The one that looks like a stick figure is Orion. He is technically holding an arrow. That’s as much as I know, I don’t stargaze too often.” she turns away from him to keep staring at the ceiling. She’s smiling and hopes that this night never ends. 

The planetarium begins to dim. A presentation begins with a presenter holding an orb to represent the sun. Projections appear on the ceiling to show the entire solar system. The sun is the center of the universe. Planets that exist beyond Earth. Stars that are born and then die. At this moment, Isabel felt small. Satoru shared this feeling too. They’re two individuals who are small in this entire universe. Satoru rubs his thumb on her hand as they’re holding it together. There’s more to discover outside of Earth, the same way that there’s so much to know about each other.

Before they knew it, the presentation was over. The light turned on again. The audience exited the building and it led them to the terrace. Isabel led the way to a corner of the terrace to allow Satoru to see the city’s skyline. The wind began to blow as Isabel was standing on the terrace. It was a secluded area away from all the other guests. He stood right behind her. She turned around and there was a glow to her where he was standing. She sees that there is a hint of pink on her cheeks as she’s smiling at him. 

“So what do you think?” she asks him.

“This is wonderful. All of it.” he crouches down to whisper in her ear. “I’m glad we got to come here tonight.” 

“...Toru, what are we doing?” she turns around. He’s looking at her. 

“I don’t know yet…” he places his hands on her waist. She places her hands on his arms. 

“Can we talk about it?” the wind starts to blow. Her hair moves towards her face. He moves it away to place it behind her ear.

“...I think I like like you. I don’t know how possible it is to be around each other as you’re going home soon.” 

“Izzy…I knew there was a way I charmed my way into your heart.” he smiles.

“Oh my god, shut up” she begins to laugh.

“I think you’re cool. You’re so smart and you know a whole lot about movies and music. I want to continue to get to know someone like you. I know that our time is limited, but I want to make it the best. All this to say, I like you too.”

“I can’t reach you, so do you mind just lowering your head just a little?” as he does so, she kisses his cheek. He turns bright red. He’s not embarrassed, but he feels glad that she was the first to make the first move. It reveals how brave she is. This means he will also need to be brave for her. To return this gesture, he kisses her on top of her head.

“Whatever happens, you’re special to me. I won’t forget you that easily.”

“If you say so, Toru.” as she proceeds to hug him. “I’m feeling hungry, do you have any ideas where we will go?”

“No, I was hoping you knew” he laughs. 

“Ugh, fine. I know the spot! Have you ever had pupusas before?”

“No, but I hope they’re good.”

“Trust me, you’ll love them! I know a spot not too far from here.” 

“Lead the way.” 

They walk towards the entrance hand in hand. The stars are shining brightly tonight, just for them.

[annecoulmanross]

Top Ten Historical Figures Done Dirty by The Terror (2018)

So, we all know and love Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh’s beautiful show, right? Of course. But it’s important to set the historical record straight, especially when there are real people’s life-stories and legacies on the line. 

(NOTE: this list is biased heavily toward upper-class individuals because the historical record does a better job preserving those voices for us. Was the real Cornelius Hickey as nasty a person in real life as he was in the show? Almost certainly not – which is why we’re given “E.C.” as a nod to the fact that we shouldn’t assume these characters represent real historical villains, even when the narrative makes them antagonists; HOWEVER, not everyone in the show was given the same courtesy as the OG “Cornelius Hickey.” Which is why this post exists – to show you the best sides of some people you might not otherwise appreciate for their full humanity. That being said, keep in mind the sources used – and, for instance, who has surviving portraits and who doesn’t.)

Thus, below the cut, I give you this list, (mostly) in order from #10 (honorable mention, only somewhat slandered) to #1 (most hideously maligned) – my list of characters from The Terror who deserved better. 

(Please don’t take this too seriously – I know there are reasons why choices had to be made in order to make this show work on television, and I do very much love the end product. But I also genuinely think it’s a good idea to remember the real people behind these characters, and think critically about how we depict them ourselves.) 

Bottom Tier – The Overlooked Men of the Franklin Expedition

#10. Richard Wall – & – John Diggle

We’re combining these two because they had a lot in common, historically speaking! Both were polar veterans, having served as a Cook (Wall) and an AB-then-Quartermaster (Diggle) on HMS Erebus under the command of Sir James Clark Ross in the Antarctic expedition of 1839-1843. Certainly we do get some good scenes with them in the show, but there was plenty more to explore there – for instance, Captain Ross was apparently so taken with Richard Wall that he hired him on as a private cook after the Antarctic expedition. (One imagines that Sir James may have regretted letting his friends of the Franklin expedition steal Wall out from under him.)

(If you want some more information on Diggle, the brilliant @handfuloftime​ found this excellent article on him – fun facts include the detail that Diggle’s only daughter bore the name Mary Ann Erebus Diggle.) 

#9. John Smart Peddie 

Now, I don’t think we should go as far as the Doctor Who Audio Drama adaptation of the Franklin Expedition, which makes Peddie into Francis Crozier’s oldest friend, someone “almost like a brother” to Crozier (no evidence of ANY prior relationship between the two existed, contrary to whatever the Doctor Who Audio Dramas would have you believe!) but Peddie probably earned his place as chief surgeon, however fond we may all be of the beautiful Alex “Macca” MacDonald, who was, in fact, the Assistant Surgeon, historically speaking. It’s hard to find information about Peddie, but someone should go looking! I want to know about this man! 

(If you want to know more about the historical Alexander MacDonald, there’s a short biographical article on him from Arctic that you can read here.)

#8 James Walter Fairholme

The only one of the expedition’s lieutenants who doesn’t really get any characterization in the show, which is a travesty! The historical Fairholme (pronounced “Fairem”) was, as they say, a himbo, and the letters that he wrote home to his father are positively precious. He loved the expedition pets (lots of kisses for Neptune!), and he needed two kayaks because he couldn’t fit into just one with his beefy thighs. Fitzjames loaned him a coat when all the Erebus officers had their portraits taken, and then called him a “smart, agreeable companion, and a well informed man,” and Goodsir singled Fairholme out as “very much interested” in the work of naturalist observations. Just a lovely young man who could have gotten some screen time, you know? 

(Also, as @transblanky​ discovered, four separate members of the Fairholme family gave money to Thomas Blanky’s widow when she was struggling financially in the 1850s, making them, combined, the most generous contributor to her subscription.) 

Middle Tier – Franklin’s Men Who Didn’t Deserve That

#7. William Gibson

Alright, I want to talk about how uniquely horrible the show’s William Gibson is: this is a character willing to lie and accuse his partner of sexual assault that didn’t happen. I get there were extenuating circumstances, but if I were a historical figure who died in some famous disaster and someone depicted me doing something like that? Let’s just say I’m deeply offended on the real Gibson’s behalf. 

What do we know about the historical William Gibson? Not much – but we know a little. Gibson’s younger brother served on an overland exploratory venture across Australia in the 1870s… from which he never returned. (God, the Gibson family had the worst luck?) This description of a conversation that young Alf Gibson had with expedition leader Ernest Giles only days before his death is VERY eerie: 

[Gibson] said, “Oh! I had a brother who died with Franklin at the North Pole, and my father had a deal of trouble to get his pay from government.” He seemed in a very jocular vein this morning, which was not often the case, for he was usually rather sulky, sometimes for days together, and he said, “How is it, that in all these exploring expeditions a lot of people go and die?” 

I said, “I don't know, Gibson, how it is, but there are many dangers in exploring, besides accidents and attacks from the natives, that may at any time cause the death of some of the people engaged in it; but I believe want of judgment, or knowledge, or courage in individuals, often brought about their deaths. Death, however, is a thing that must occur to every one sooner or later.” 

To this he replied, “Well, I shouldn't like to die in this part of the country, anyhow.” In this sentiment I quite agreed with him, and the subject dropped.

(From Giles’s Australia Twice Traversed which you can read here) 

Beyond that, one thing we do know is that William Gibson was probably friends with Henry Peglar – they had served on ships together before, and Gibson may possibly have been the poor fellow found cradling the Peglar Papers, according to researcher Glenn Stein. So we might imagine the historical Gibson as a much kinder man than the show’s depiction of him – this was someone who befriended the clever, playful Peglar we all know and love from the transcriptions of his papers, so full of poetry and linguistic jokes. It’s a shame we didn’t get a chance to meet this real Gibson, who actually knew the Henry Peglar whom we love so well.

#6. Stephen Stanley

Look. There’s that one famous line in James Fitzjames’s letters to the Coninghams about how Stanley went about with his “shirt sleeves tucked up, giving one unpleasant ideas that he would not mind cutting one’s leg off immediately – ‘if not sooner.’” And certainly Harry Goodsir had some mixed opinions of the man, saying was “a would be great man who as I first supposed would not make any effort at work after a time,” and that he “knows nothing whatever about subject & is ignorant enough of all other subjects,” whatever…. that means…. 

But Fitzjames also had some rather nicer things to say about him, that he was “thoroughly good natured and obliging and very attentive to our mess.” Also, the amputation comment? Very likely had a quite positive underlying joke to it – Stanley may not have been much of a naturalist, but he was actually an accomplished anatomist, who won a prize for dissection in 1836, on account of his “bend of the elbow,” which was “a picture of dissection,” according to Henry Lonsdale, who also called Stanley his “facetious friend” and “a fine fellow” (Lonsdale 1870, pg. 159). So, the real Stanley probably was rather droll, but the perpetually cruel Stanley of the show misses some of the real man’s major historical virtues and replaces them with historically unlikely mass-mercy-murder. 

#5. John Irving

Now we’re getting into the territory of characters who did get some good development, but are missing a bit of historical nuance. As I’m sure many of you know, the historical Irving was indeed very religious, but the flashes of anger (i.e. against Manson) we see from Irving in the show don’t seem terribly consistent with the Irving depicted in this memorial volume, where John seems more like a quiet, bookish, mathematically inclined young man, with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a gentle sweetness. It’s really not at all far off from the version of Irving we see with Kooveyook in the show – I just wish we could have seen more of that side of Irving. 

Top Tier – The Triumvirate of Polar Friends

So, these three DO have many good things to recommend them in the show, but because I’ve done such deep research on them, it can be quite jarring to watch certain scenes in which they behave contrary to their historical personalities, and I find myself pausing when watching the show with friends or family to explain that NO, they wouldn’t do that! 

#4. Sir James Clark Ross

First thing – we LOVE Richard Sutton. He did a beautiful job with the material given to him. (This is true of all the actors on the list, frankly, but it’s doubly true here.) But that scene at the Admiralty where Sir James tells Lady Franklin “I have many friends on those ships, as you know,” to shut down her argument for search missions? At that time (aka 1847), historically, Sir James Clark Ross was actively campaigning for search missions, planning routes and volunteering his services in command of any vessel the Admiralty even vaguely contemplated sending out. You could see this real-life desperation in Sir James’s morose attention to his whiskey glass in that scene if you’re really trying, but I think the more historically responsible thing would have been to make vividly clear that James Ross risked life and limb, as soon as he possibly could, to try to rescue Franklin and Crozier and Blanky, men he’d known and cared about and bitterly missed – and, in the case of Crozier, “truly loved.” 

#3. Sir John Franklin

The historical Franklin had plenty of flaws – his contributions to British colonial rule certainly harmed no small number of people, and we should question the way that heroic statues of Franklin are some of the only memorials that serve to honor the lives lost on Franklin’s expeditions – especially considering the steep body count of not only Franklin’s final voyage, but his previous missions in Arctic regions as well. (DM me and I’ll scream at you about counter-monuments! Is this a promise or a threat? Who knows!) With that said, most contemporary accounts agree that Sir John Franklin treated his friends, his family, and those within his social orbit with kindness, and his cruelties were systemic, not personal. In this light, the image of Sir John viciously tearing into Francis Crozier’s vulnerabilities in the show feels very off. Though there was certainly some friction over Crozier’s two proposals to Sophia Cracroft, historically speaking, there’s no evidence at all that Sir John discouraged her from marrying Francis – Sophia may have had many reasons of her own (*clears throat meaningfully in a lesbian sort of way*) for not accepting any of the several marriage proposals offered to her (from Crozier as well as from others), and we ought to keep in mind that she remained unmarried all her life. The notion that the real Sir John would have considered Crozier too low-born or too Irish to be part of the Franklin family isn’t grounded in historical fact.

#2. Lady Jane Franklin

Again disclaimer: the real Lady Franklin left behind a legacy with much to critique. Those who rightfully point out the racism of her treatment of the young indigenous Tasmanian girl Mathinna should be fully heard out. Observations of her own contributions to imperialism are important and valid. Though I tend to see her feud with Dr. John Rae as somewhat understandable – given that Lady Franklin didn’t have the benefit of our hindsight knowing Rae was correct – the levels of prejudice that she enabled and even encouraged in the writing of Charles Dickens when he attempted to discredit Inuit accounts of Franklin’s fate are inarguably deplorable. These things being said, everything noted for Sir John re: Sophia Cracroft goes for Lady Franklin as well – there’s no reason to imagine a scene where Jane would bully Francis Crozier within an inch of his life, seconds after a failed second proposal, when, historically, Lady Franklin felt the situation was so delicate that it required the quiet and compassionate intervention of Sir James Clark Ross, a dearly loved mutual friend to all parties. Tension does not imply aggression; conflict is not abuse. We know this can’t have been an easy experience for the historical Francis Crozier, but the picture is a lot more complicated than what can be shown in one small subplot of a ten-episode television show. Because of this complexity, however, Lady Franklin’s social deftness suffers in the show. (I could also write an entire essay about Jane Franklin’s last shot in the show, at the beginning of Episode 9: The C the C the Open C – TL;DR is that framing is very important, and, at the very last moment, the show reframes Lady Franklin as a mutilated corpse, a speaking mouth without a brain, which is….. a choice.)

And, at number 1, the person done most dirty by The Terror (2018) is….

#1. Charles Frederick “Freddy” Des Voeux 

Look. I’m biased here because I am fed daily information about the historical Freddy Des Voeux from @frederickdesvoeux​ so I’ve become, I think understandably, a bit attached. 

But this is very plainly the clearest cruelty the show does to a historical figure – the historical Des Voeux was a very young man (only around 20 when the ships set sail) known always as “Frederick or Freddy” to his family, and described by all parties as bright and sweet – Fitzjames said that he was “a most unexceptionable, clever, agreeable, light-hearted, obliging young fellow, and a great favourite of Hodgson’s, which is much in his favour besides,” and described him cheerfully helping to catch specimens for Goodsir. Des Voeux is named “dear” by Captain Osborn in Erasmus Henry Brodie’s 1866 poem on the Franklin Expedition (43) and Leo McClintock reported the young man’s well-known “intelligence, gallantry, and zeal” in his 1869 update to his account of the Franklin Expedition’s fate (xlii). None of this is consistent with Des Voeux’s behaviour in the show, especially in the later episodes. 

To reduce Des Voeux to an easily-detested figure, over whose death one might cheer, is not a kindness – the creation of a narrative where his death is satisfying does damage to the memory of a real person, a barely-more-than-teenager who died in the cold of the Arctic and left behind only scraps of a shirt and a spidery signature in the bottom margin of a fragmentary document. 

Television shows may need their villains, but it’s important to remember that real life isn’t like that. Surely the historical Frederick Des Voeux was most likely not a perfect person, and, as an upper class officer contributing to a British imperial project, he does bear some responsibility for the harm done by the Franklin expedition, but it’s not accurate to assume he was any less worthy of sympathy than the other officers who considered him a friend – those men whom we now venerate, like James Fitzjames. So as far as I’m concerned, Freddy Des Voeux deserves at least as much consideration, care, and compassion from us. 

[panelshowsource]

I throughly enjoyed the new taskmaster episode, maybe it's because of the lack of enthusiasm in the dark void of my current life, maybe because it is good indeed, or even both who knows? I like all the contestants so far, especially my beloved Alan, and I think the series is going to be a good one

let's talk about it!!!

i'm really optimistic about the series based on the first episode! i'll start off with some actual observations and slowly derail into just...all of my thoughts, probably:

victoria coren mitchell

the contestants have a bit of an older average age, interestingly! if you think back to some of the 40-something+ contestants (richard osman, bob, mel, hugh, noel, rhod, mark watson, liza, etc.), they all 1) didn't try too hard and sacrifice comedy in the meantime, and 2) had great, comfortable rapports with greg. their seniority in the industry gives them the confidence to dick about, challenge greg, question the format, flub on purpose or cheat and get away with it — and all without trying too hard. plus, a lot of these comedians know greg and alex from being in the same business for a while. so i've alwaaays loved the more mature contestants, and this season the youngest is 35! i'm so excited about that!! you can tell from the first episode alone they're mostly gonna laugh at themselves, which i love??

on the whole, the tasks weren't overly complicated �� BLESS

is there a studio audience or did the editing team just NAIL the laugh track? IT'S SO MUCH BETTER WITH LAUGHS. the dry echoes of s10 (which i just rewatched) fucking scarred me oml i'm so happy with this

i think desiree dressed a little flamboyantly for the recorded tasks, but i'm actually so happy no one wore a totally ridiculous outfit for the duration of the series. it's kind of an worn gag at this point (kudos to the first contestant or two to do it, and phil wang's cock which i'll probably never forget). victoria's outfit? the long skirt with the boots and her lil gloves? so cute ogdkjfghflkdhzk

not to call victoria out but did we not all predict exactly how she was going to be? mocking/question the tasks while also being the most competitive one there? the way MORE THAN ONCE she didn't even digest all of the information on the card to do the tasks correctly yet clearly cared enough to feel a little demoralised at botching them... so victoria. WHICH WAS VERY CUTE ;_:

why is alan already so tired omg LMAO let my man take a nap and get a bonus point for no reason, he's already been through enough IN LIFE!!! also unrelated but his skin is beautiful

guz is the only contestant i wasn't really familiar with before the series but he's already...so funny. i'm CACKLING when he breaks out the pure pakistani accent and his comedic beats are gold. can't yet decide if he's an affable weirdo (à la paul chowdhry) or a lowkey nutcase (mel giedroyc) but i cannot WAIT to find out

"you may buy the tools you need with time" is not shakespeare yes i googled it

guz's fit in the studio was sick. i also love that alan's look was exactly hugh dennis', sean lock's...just. that classic 50yo button-down and kicks. which warms my heart for some reason

greg has had quite a few crushes throughout the series, i'd gander morgana is next on his list but i won't be surprised if it ends up being guz... the absolute slut that man is smh

not to put pressure on myself to make a gifset but to the people who requested it i clocked many alex breaking character moments and they have been DULY noted.......

do you want to hear how fucking delusional i am... i have been contemplating getting a second ear piercing for a couple of years and when i saw victoria laying on the car creeper and clocked her second hole i was like "okay i need to do it"

the hold she has on me...embarrassing

for the live task, i tried to play along by picking a cool hobby, a fun animal, and a famous person, and what immediately popped into my head was "ice skating, emu, david mitchell"... psychologist followers, please analyse me

victoria doing an otter at the end? cosmic hermione energy (a thesis for another time)

more cutesie greg & alex socks~ some things never change AND SHOULDN'T

let me stop here because it's 2:45am and i know i'll have some asks in the ol' inbox tomorrow! and we can talk more!!! anyone who hasn't seen it, it's already up on my drive so please enjoy!

[roaringgirl]

book club - July

keeping a little record for myself

feel like I say this every time, but really an abysmal showing at reading women writers. More abysmal than usual, even.

1. L. P. Hartley - The Go-Between (1953): Honestly I don’t remember an awful lot about this - I know I enjoyed it and there’s a cracker of a cricket match - one of the great sport scenes of literature?

2. Geoff Dyer - Out of Sheer Rage (1997 - reread): Was puzzled by this the first time I read it. On reread, I think it’s mostly solipsistic and boring. Dyer not as interesting a subject as D. H. Lawrence - even though it’s missing the point, I would rather have read Dyer’s unwritten book about D.H. than his book about not writing a book about D.H. Although he does, occasionally, have some great observations about old D.H., and has strengthened my conviction that although I don’t think Lawrence’s books are good, always, necessarily, I feel a sort of grudging affinity with him (whereas, although I like or even love a lot of E.M. Forster, I am fundamentally antipathetic to his spirit).

3. Szczepan Twardoch - The King of Warsaw (trans 2020): Some of this was really, really fun, but both twists were absolutely awful. Like, you can’t really supply a more harrowing twist to a novel about Jewish gangsters in Warsaw in 1937 than the one that we know is inevitably, historically coming. If you ignore the weird twist the main story could have been good, but the framing device was just awful.

4. Joseph Roth - The Radetzky March (1932 - reread): I went to Vienna at the beginning of July so got very into Mitteleuropa. I found this book very dull when I read it at about 16 - loved it on rereading. Fathers, sons, the historical weight of a crumbling empire, duelling, Austro-Hungarian army officers - what more could anyone want?

5. Bruno Schulz - The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (1934, 1937): Very Kafka (a kind of softer, more expansive Kafka?- and Schulz translated Kafka into Polish, I think). Love the shorter stories and the ones more concretely set in Drohobycz - less keen on the stories and novellas in Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.

6. Frank Tallis - Vienna Blood (2006, reread)

7. Frank Tallis - Fatal Lies (2008, reread) - Fun Secession-Vienna set murder mysteries. Reread back in London while on Covid sickbed having caught it at the Vienna State Opera. Would have to be syphilis for the full Viennese experience, though.

8. Benjamin Myers - The Gallows Pole (2017) - Very taken by this. Historical novel about 18th century coiners in Yorkshire on the brink of the Industrial Revolution. Fun, overwritten prose - Myers thinks he’s Ted Hughes - but I am a sucker for this kind of revisionist - what would be the equivalent of Americana? Anglicana? Do find the trend for these very violent, very niche, self-consciously masculine historical novels quite funny but can’t complain as I am writing one myself.

9. Ben Galley - Lester Young. Cannot find any information on this online so suspect I may have misrecorded author’s name. But it was the rare short, well-written, perceptive jazz book with good selection of recordings as well as thorough discography. Oh, Pres! What a sound!

10. Adam Phillips - Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (2012): Enjoyed this a lot when he was, like, explaining psychoanalysis, although really (like most of Phillips’ work) it’s a bit of a rag-bag of essays and he’s a better second-order explainer than he is at doing original work. He is, though, a supremely gifted and entertaining explainer of others’ work (I’d compare him to Terry Eagleton). His literary criticism is interesting if insubstantial, though, especially because when I was ‘doing’ literary criticism I never really worked from a psychoanalytical standpoint.

11. Nick White - How to Survive a Summer (2017): Brandon Taylor-recommended, pretty rubbish really. Never really followed through on the O’Connor style grotesqueries I was expecting - a much softer book than I’d thought it was going to be, which is maybe more a mismatch of expectation to material, but - rather lightweight.

12. Eliza McFeely - Zuni and the American Imagination (2015): Boring book but fascinating subject. Read like a Master’s dissertation or something - not even quite a PhD.

13. T.H. White - The Sword in the Stone (reread)

14. T.H. White - The Witch in the Wood

15. T. H. White - The Ill-Made Knight: These are great. I loved The Sword in the Stone as a child (book and film), and really enjoyed the next two as well - think I may have originally read a different, shorter version of The Sword in the Stone. I love how much it reads like a Nancy Mitford novel, as well.

16. Jonathan Coe - Mr Wilder & Me (2020): Rubbish. Ordered second-hand to flat by my dad after we’d been discussing Billy Wilder. Very easy read, but flat-out bad. Might go and see the film adaptation if it ever gets made, though.

17. Bruce Chatwin - The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980): Another second-hand boon from my dad. Not sure what prompted it. Enjoyed a lot, although can only imagine da Sousa as Klaus Kinski following Herzog’s Cobra Verde - although think a lesser film that his others with Kinski).

18. Mieko Kawakami - Breasts and Eggs (2008, trans 2020): Breasts section great. Second section about sperm donation much longer and much less compelling.

19. Oliver Sacks - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985): Enjoyed very much, although the puritan in me suspects I should be reading Luria instead.

[davidmann95]

For definitely no reason whatsoever, in response to nothing specific, can you rank the DC Multiverse Earths and tell us a bit about why each is in its place on the list?

Were this in response to an article, I could assure that I generally enjoy the writer’s output perfectly well from what I’ve seen and was absolutely baffled by the bizarrely selective research that went into it. Anyway, I hope you feel guilty enabling the amount of work I put into this truly ridiculous task by the end.

Cliff notes for the relatively uninitiated: that gorgeous monstrosity up above is The Map Of The Multiverse from the miniseries Multiversity, presented as a series of concentric circles bordered by the ‘Overvoid’ that all of reality is suspended in (and framed in such a way as to make clear it is the white of the pages comics are printed on). You go inwards from the borders of creation - moving moreso with each sphere from abstraction to the realm of the physical - to the Monitor Sphere in which once lived the near-omnipotent, now nearly extinct Monitor race that observed and maintained the multiverse, into the Sphere of Gods where the various beings of myth and divinity dwell, and into the innermost sphere where ‘we’ live. The 52 Earths you see within aren’t the whole of the multiverse but the ‘local’ 52 worlds, with infinite other Earths dwelling in their own dimensional pockets; all these universes actually exist in the same three-dimensional space at the same time but suspended in a higher-dimensional substance called ‘the Bleed’, and vibrating at distinct frequencies. Also there’s a ‘Dark Multiverse’ that’s cosmologically speaking ‘beneath’ the map, disintegrating half-formed potential realities that new proper universes are culled from. There’s a lot more to it than even all of that, but that’s enough to explain what’s up with these.

My ranking here is obviously subjective, but mostly comes down to a mix of ‘how cool is this Earth’, ‘how much would this Earth be worth using again’, ‘how well does it work in the context of being part of a shared multiverse’, and ‘do I seriously see creators unearthing any of this Earth’s potential down the road’. Also, Earths 24, 27, 28, 46, and 49 aren’t here, as they’re among the 7 Unknown Earths on the map that were left behind for future creators to define; 14 and apparently 25 have since been revealed.

64. Earth 14

A worthy bottom-place entry, Earth 14 is at the top of the Multiverse Map, and is shown as physically different from the other Earths, seemingly vibrating as if in two places at once; map co-designer and illustrator Rian Hughes suggested in an interview the intent was that this was where new universes entered the multiverse. Instead, ending up the first Unknown Earth to be revealed after the doors were opened to other creative teams, it was shown as a generic dystopian world home to a ‘Justice League of Assassins’ that were quickly dispatched by a generic cosmic threat. A monumental tribute to contextual ignorance and creative laziness.

63. Flashpoint

This is one of several Earths I’ll touch on that exist in neither the ‘local’ nor Dark Multiverse, but has directly crossed over or been framed in reference to the currently operating version of the DC Universe and so is probably worth a mention even if I’m not going over every Elseworlds and Imaginary Story DC has ever published. Another dystopian world, in this one an attempt by The Flash at fixing a change to history resulted in an Earth torn apart by war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman, where Cyborg was America’s greatest hero and Kal-El was held captive his entire life in a military bunker rather than becoming Superman. Aside from the prospect of a Thomas Wayne who became Batman when Bruce was gunned down as a child rather than vice-versa - resulting in him being pulled into a recent Batman run after this worlds’ destruction, the reason for this Earth’s inclusion - absolutely nothing of value came of this or the stories tied into it, such that astonishingly in spite of being the impetus for one of the biggest DC reboots of all time with theoretically an entire revised history to play with, essentially no one cares about this anymore.

62. Earth 1

The site of DC’s standalone, bookstore-market oriented ‘Earth One’ graphic novels. The incredible tunnel vision of marketing these for that purpose with titles that exist in reference to their multiversal structure aside, the Green Lantern book is the only one of those I’ve heard about being even kind of good; the rest top out at an interesting failure in Wonder Woman, with a standard forgettable failure in Teen Titans and truly flabbergasting misfires in Superman and Batman. Even Multiverse Map co-designer and writer Grant Morrison described this Earth in a blurb as having a history ‘in flux’, implicitly permitting the reader to believe it’s something else if they really want to, but as it stands in spite of the theoretical wide-open possibilities the foundations have already been built on salted Earth.

61. Watchmen

Home to the cast of characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal miniseries. Crossed over with the DC Universe 30+ year later in Doomsday Clock, which clearly intended to set up this world as one ripe for future stories and development rather than a singular text, but instead misinterpreted, stripmined, and otherwise nuked essentially everything that might have had one interested in exploring it further in the first place (in spite of the source text’s very definitive conclusions to all major narrative threads and characters). The only reason this is not ranked even lower is the possibility that the upcoming, as-yet untitled Watchmen project by Tom King and Jorge Fornes might manage to dredge something out of this.

60. Earth Negative 11

The first of the Dark Multiverse Earths here, a gender-flipped Earth where Bryce Wayne generically altered herself into an Atlantean in order to do battle with Aquawoman and the forces of Atlantis. As the Dark Multiverse worlds we have seen thus far are described as being borne of Bruce Wayne’s fears, it’s odd that as opposed to the ‘want of a nail’ scenarios shown on all others, this includes the additional twist of making Bruce a woman, yet does nothing with that. Anyway, this is a very clear product of the Dark Multiverse’s debut in Dark Nights: Metal wanting an evil Batman to correspond to each member of the Justice League, and it’s the oddest, most perfunctory of the lot.

59. Earth 34

Home to the heroes of the Light Brigade, defenders of Cosmoville, this is an Earth meant to evoke the classic creator-owned superhero comic Astro City. However, as Astro City is itself made up of archetypal signifiers yet isn’t meta about its usage of them, being defined by its storytelling principles rather than the shared universe it builds up in the background, there are essentially no stories to be told here that couldn’t be told with the regular heroes of the DC universe. Which is a shame, those are some neat character designs.

58. Earth Negative 12

A Dark Multiverse Earth where believing Wonder Woman killed in a battle with the war god Ares, Batman took up the deity’s helm in hopes of redefining war, instead being corrupted by it and becoming an unstoppable monster. There’s basically nothing here.

57. Earth Negative 44

A Dark Multiverse Earth where a computer program meant to replicate Alfred after the butler’s untimely death, attempting to protect its charge, takes control of Batman by way of mechanizing him and turns Gotham into a digital nightmare. A little more on-point than the previous entry, but still not much here.

56. Earth Negative 22

A Dark Multiverse Earth where Batman is finally pushed into killing the Joker, but the Clown Prince of Crime secretes a particularly potent Joker Toxin upon his death that corrupts the Caped Crusader into a second Joker known as The Batman Who Laughs, who slaughters his way across his universe before ultimately making his way to the ‘main’ DCU. The prospect of a Batman/Joker combination is interesting, but an origin for the ultimate corrupted Batman ‘he got drugged into going bad’ falls short.

55. Earth Negative 32

A Dark Multiverse Earth where Bruce Wayne moments after his parents’ deaths was judged worthy of a Green Lantern ring, but having only his hatred of crime rather than the discipline and morality he would come to develop becomes the murderous terror of the underworld, with even the Corps unable to stop him when he manages to force the darkness of his heart through the ring into ‘dark constructs’. Another ultimately throwaway Earth, this at least illustrates the properties of the Dark Multiverse in an interesting way: the constructs he creates aren’t something that’s ever been indicated as being possible or even sensible with the ‘real’ Green Lantern, but as this is a world literally made of nightmares that’s irrelevant.

54. Earth 39

Home to the United Nations superspies the Agents of W.O.N.D.E.R., who operating using super-technology with eventually deleterious side-effects. A pastiche of the obscure T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, it’s hard to imagine anyone with much to say about them wouldn’t simply wish to write an actual comic about them under the current rights-holders, though the concepts described in Morrison’s provided information are enticing.

53. Earth 41

A riff on several of the superheroes published by Image Comics over the years, they’re worth having around for the occasional heroes of the multiverse groupshots for your big crossover comics and Dino-Cop turned out to be charming, but it’s doubtful someone with a big Spawn story in them for instance would use Spore as their outlet.

52. Earth 9

All I know about this is that this is a ‘what if superheroes really changed the world’ Earth, and when those are a dime a dozen, the additional conceits of the names of the various characters not at all corresponding to their traditional backstories and attributes, and being the brainchild of creator Dan Jurgens, are far from enough to sway me. I understand there are some fans out there who may heartily disagree, to be fair.

51. Earth Negative 52

Another Dark Multiverse throwaway Earth, this time one where a Batman shattered by losing his various partners taps into the Speed Force so that he can finally be everywhere at once to stop all crime. This is distinct however in that he achieves this by defeating The Flash, chaining him to the hood of the Batmobile, and driving it so fast their atoms explode and merge, which is thoroughly rad and gets it big-time bonus points next to its contemporaries.

50. Earth 37

An Earth based on the DC works of creator Howard Chaykin, its conceit of being a world that progressed technologically far faster than our world but culturally remains decades behind us is interesting, but I’m not much of a fan of his work that I’ve read and most of what’s been drawn upon here doesn’t seem to have much of a following.

49. Earth 30

The world of Superman: Red Son, where Kal-L landed in the Ukraine and grew up to become leader of a global Soviet Union, before realizing he had deformed humanity’s development and faking his death. Leaving Earth in the hands of a Lex Luthor who while still very much a bastard found public approval in America for fighting Superman, Lex ultimately led Earth into a utopia that over time fell into complacency and became its universe’s version of Krypton, Jor-L (Luthor’s distant descendant) and Lara sending their baby back in time to survive and establishing a predestination loop. While several elements of the DC Universe are present in a limited capacity that could in theory be expanded on, Superman and Wonder Woman are the only superheroes of long-term note and both their stories are very much concluded, seemingly leaving little to do here except have the Superman with the hammer and sickle logo show up in event comics.

48. Earth 6

The world of the Just Imagine Stan Lee Created The DC Universe series, where the father of the Marvel Universe rebuilt several DC figureheads from the name and a few pieces of imagery up. The results were mixed at best, but a series of gorgeous artists involved in the projects mean the characters certainly look interesting even if it’s hard to imagine creators going back here in any meaningful capacity.

47. Earth Negative 1

A Dark Multiverse world where Superman turned on humanity for reasons unknown, and Batman deliberately infected himself with the ‘Doomsday Virus’ to gain the properties of the hulking monster and defeat his former friend. Now numbed to human emotion and vulnerability, this Batman hopes to spread the virus as to make humanity similarly indestructible, as well as shield them emotionally from what he has come to see as the false hope Superman represents. This Batman didn’t end up a major figure in the same way as The Batman Who Laughs, but the conceit is killer and I hope someone picks up on it one day.

46. Earth-52

A universe somewhere outside the local 52, a ‘remnant’ of sorts of the main DC universe circa 2011-2016 prior to cosmic revisions resulting in the current setup. A world where superheroes had emerged approximately 5 years earlier and home to lots of dudes in very dumb battle-armor, most fan-favorite stories from this era have been carried forward into the current history, and its unique version of Superman under Grant Morrison - a socialist crusader in a t-shirt and jeans who battled corrupt institutions and cosmic supervillainy in equal measure - was depicted as set loose from his world after 2016′s continuity changes as a defender of the multiverse. While a significant part of DC history both in-universe and publishing-wise, there wouldn’t seem to be all that much left here worth exploring.

45. Earth 2

A world where Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman alone represented the first wave of superheroes, they nobly fell in battle repelling an invasion of Earth by Darkseid. In time a new generation would emerge that were modernized, youthful iterations of the Justice Society of America, the superhero team predating the Justice League in DC’s publishing history. While the logline’s an interesting one and the successor to Superman Val-Zod debuted to some acclaim, for the most part this reinvention didn’t end up received well by either new or longtime fans, and a last-minute overhaul where this bunch was transplanted into a rebooted world without superheroes probably didn’t help. You still see them in crossovers and there are promising concepts, but this world seems basically dead.

44. Earth 50

When Lex Luthor ascended to the presidency and soon thereafter executed The Flash, Superman snapped, executed him, and took over the world alongside his allies as the Justice Lords, until they were ultimately overthrown by way of a parallel universe Justice League and a repentant Lord Batman. A Better World unequivocally rules, but given this is supposed to be those specific versions of the Lords rather than a new iteration, it’d be weird to see them up against any universe other than the DCAU. And, well...

43. Earth 12

The DCAU, currently world of Batman Beyond and a future Justice League. The DCAU, you may be aware, extremely rules, but is also somewhat redundant in this context - the ‘regular’ DCU already has all its core components without too much aesthetic differentiation, and there’s already frequently a Batman Beyond in the future of said universe. It has its unique attributes that make people love it, it’s cool that it’s here, but on the macro scale it’s too clean an adaptation to bring much to the table to crossovers and whatnot, and you’d never see any further stories told there otherwise as really being part of the DCU cosmic landscape so much as a comic tie-in to the TV show.

(Also it’s odd this is placed here with the Justice Lords Earth as if to go ‘it’s secretly been part of the 52 all along, you just never noticed when it only crossed over with the one other!’ when there were two other parallel universes in the DCAU.)

42. Earth 43

A nightmare world haunted by the once-heroic, now vampiric Blood League, the obvious potential would be for this world to function as DC’s equivalent to Marvel Zombies. Recently however DCeased has come to fill that position, and while this world in practice if not concept skews more closely towards that source material as the former heroes still have vestiges of their old personalities - in theory distinguishing it as its own spin worth keeping around - it’s hard to imagine most takes on ‘Justice League but monsters’ won’t come out under the DCeased banner for the foreseeable future.

41. Earth 40

A world of pulp villains made to oppose Earth 20, these guys are simple but a hoot.

40. Earth 35 aka the Pseudoverse

More analogues to analogues, this time of the Awesome Comics characters largely defined by Alan Moore in Supreme. This opens up the promising vista of ‘DC if it were designed by Alan Moore’, but in practice as demonstrated by his work with both DC and the analogues these mimic, that would just be...well, good DC comics, which you don’t need a whole extra universe for. The notion of this as a universe artificially created by Monitor ‘ideominers’ however both gives it a unique place in the multiverse, tackles its status as a pastiche in a unique way, and gets back to ideas of the power of imagination in both Supreme and Moore’s other works, so it’s likely there could be something to be done here.

39. Earth 11

A bit of a study in contradictions. This is seemingly a rather straightforward ‘gender swap’ Earth with Superwoman, Wonderous Man, and so forth. Also, its version of Star Sapphire implied it’s not subjected to constant crises in the same way as the main universe it mirrors, maintaining a greater degree of consistency in the process. At the same time however it’s mentioned that the Amazons rather than leaving Man’s World for Themyscira shared its technology and philosophy with the world, changing it forever, suggesting a far different world from what we’ve seen in glimpses here. Until it decides one way or another whether it’s a simple mirror to the regular DCU or a radically different take, it hovers in a state of uncertainty.

38. Earth-2 aka Earth Two

The original version of Earth-2, home to the DC Universe of the 1940s with aged versions of Superman and company and the original Justice Society of America. The first take on a DC universe that would progress in something resembling ‘real time’ rather than keeping the headliners as perpetual twenty-to-thirty-somethings, this was also the birthplace of heroes such as Power Girl and Huntress. I’m of the perhaps controversial opinion that this is a concept that was explored better in later takes: there’s a sense here that the largely forgotten follow-up generation eventually introduced, with the exception of the two heroes mentioned above, will never really matter in the same way as their still fully-active predecessors in spite of ostensibly taking over the family business, meaning you never quite actually get what you want here, which is to see a DC where things meaningfully change and move on - well into his middle age and his mentor’s death long behind him, Dick Grayson is still Robin. Add in the odd, ignominious demise of the original Batman and its Superman’s odd eventual fate - which slide from bizarre to intolerable if you accept the frequent implication that these are meant to be the original versions of them from the 1930s - and I can’t help but think the enjoyable high concept was never realized as well as it could be here.

37. Earth 4

The Earth of the characters of Charlton Comics who would go on to inspire Watchmen, this initially seemed like one of the most promising worlds after its debut in Pax Americana drew perhaps the most pronounced critical acclaim of any single issue in the past decade as the site for creators with something to say to work with Watchmen without actually touching that property. Now, however, Watchmen itself is in the mix: most wouldn’t reasonably go here while the material they’re truly referencing is now freely available (especially those simply wanting to draw fan attention by visibly playing with those toys, the way Earth 4 sidestepped) even though that world itself is now massively compromised past the original text, and with the ‘Watchmen Earth’ no longer an option and the characters themselves - if cleaned-up, more mainstream versions of them - existing in the DCU proper, this world’s role seems to have been largely stripped from it. I have to imagine there’s still potential here for those with the talent and commitment though.

36. Earth 44

A world where in the absence of natural superhuman beings, Doc Tornado created a Metal League of robot superheroes to protect the Earth. A promising concept definitely worth a few stories.

35. Earth 15

Once a perfect universe destroyed in a rampage by another Earth’s Superman, it was artificially reborn through the will of Countess Belzebeth - a cosmic vampire - as a copy of the Prime universe with the Green Lantern Corps replaced by Belzebeth’s despotic Blackstars, the uncertain and bitter heroes of this universe warped through the lens of Belzebeth’s perceptions of them had no chance against her forces. While its inhabitants are a bit samey what with all life having been subsumed into the diamond will of Blackstar Controller Mu, the idea of a conceptually weakened DCU being turned into an army against the rest of the multiverse makes for a terrific threat, and the prophecy of the ‘Cosmic Grail’ (a Green Lantern power battery lost somewhere in the multiverse) and that the First Lantern of the multiverse Volthoom hail from its original incarnation lend it some extra mythological weight.

34. Earth 32

A mashup world hosting the likes of the Justice Titans, Young Justice International, and the Doom Society. A world that’s home to Aquaflash will probably never have an ongoing all its own, but plenty of stories, miniseries, and even a brief line of comics have been based on mashup characters before, so there’s plenty of proof of concept for this being able to endure.

33. Earth 23

An Earth where Batman (naturally) is the only white guy on the Justice League, and Superman is not only President of the United States in his secret identity as Calvin Ellis, but the leader of the multiverse-spanning superteam Justice Incarnate. It reads like Morrison trying to do his idealized take on an ‘Ultimate DC’, a more diverse and politically engaged superhero landscape that doesn’t scale down its big ideas in turn, and if I were ranking it at the time it was introduced it would go much higher. The problem is that its version of Superman is modeled after Barack Obama, and that guy isn’t President anymore (and for that matter his legacy seems to grow more complicated by the year). As a result the vibe goes from triumphant to wistful mourning if not outright bitterly ironic, and that’s a needle that would have to be threaded before doing any substantial work here.

(Also, since several Justice Leaguers here rather than being made black are replaced with various black counterparts they’ve had over the years, that means Wonder Woman here is the 70s Amazon Nubia. And, uh, that name is something that would have to be...something.)

32. Earth 19

Steampunk superheroics; superhero period pieces are usually fun, and this is built on a foundation of pretty Mike Mignola art (though confession that I’ve never read Gotham By Gaslight), so sure, this one has potential.

31. Earth 18

Same as above but cowboys instead. This gets extra credit because cowboys mesh better with superhero conventions, and the additional twist of this world being frozen in history by the Time Trapper, forcing them to approximate modern technology with 19th century resources.

30. Earth 31

A post-apocalyptic waterworld where humanity is protected by Captain Leatherwing and assorted other pirate superheroes. Another ‘superheroes but in another genre’ setup, the post-apocalyptic, environmental twist makes it unfortunately more relevant than its peers, though I don’t think it’s quite the best end of the world as we know it on the list.

29. Earth 42

Home to the adorable, innocent world of the chibified Little League...secretly robots unwittingly enacting an endless stage play for the malevolent being known as the Empty Hand, running scenarios of his devising in preparation for a coming war with the rest of the multiverse. It’s a neat little multipurpose world, able to be played both as amusing contrast, or as parody whether light-hearted or cynical, in their endless ‘playtime’.

28. Earth 7

Formerly home to counterparts of the heroes of Earth 8, it was shattered by the Empty Hand’s forces and its desiccated cities made his throne, the zombie hordes that were once its champions his armies. The ‘Ultimate Marvel’ to Earth 8′s Marvel proper (and now Marvel Zombies), the idea of the broken remains of the cool version of the cool superhero universe as the lair of the ultimate evil has a certain appeal.

27. Earth 52

The last of the Earth 52s on this list, this newly added 53rd core Earth is home to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight books. Much as the reception to it over the years has become...mixed, at best (for my money Dark Knight III is the only one that’s not at least bad in a very interesting way, and even it still has its moments), the surprised generally positive reception to the most recent entry in Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child suggests there’s still life in this oddball corner of the cosmos yet.

(Fun fact: this was Earth 31 in a previous version of the multiverse, and Morrison intended it to be included as such in Multiversity - hence why Earth 31 is made up of inky scratches on the Map - but Miller requested he not since he wanted to keep his domain separate from DC’s ongoing storylines. Instead he agreed later to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s use of it in Dark Nights: Metal as DKR is famously Snyder’s favorite comic, bringing it in as Earth 52.)

26. Earth 47 aka Dreamworld

Where the Love Syndicate of Dreamworld dwells, baby: all is groovy. It’s incredibly specific in both era and theme, but a psychedelic universe with heroes to match invites tons of possibilities.

25. Earth 10 aka Earth X

It’s the Nazi Earth that sucks. It has superheroes who unnervingly are about as well-intentioned and effective as the standard set in the New Reischman, opposed by the few remaining dregs of the Freedom Fighters led by Uncle Sam; only their Kal-L, Overman, once Hitler’s weapon, truly understands the scope of the atrocities that led to their ‘utopia’, having grown a conscience too late and ever-aware that no feat in the present can ever redeem the oceans of blood on his hands. You can do horrifying introspective stuff with them as in their Multiversity chapter, you can tell Freedom Fighters stories like the recent miniseries, or you can just have the Justice League show up to fight the Nazi Justice League. A Nazi world is a standard one in multiverse stories for a reason, you don’t get easier targets.

24. Earth 5G

The DC universe that’s...sort of here and sort of not. Doomsday Clock and other upcoming stories appear to be shifting us over to this, but in most of DC’s line of titles the leap hasn’t taken place yet. As we haven’t seen the bench of successor heroes apparently primed to take over only so much can be judged, but the vast changes suggested by the new ‘official timeline’ that’s been leaked suggest a bizarre attempt at incorporating as many of their editorially-favored biggest hits as possible into a bizarre selective mishmash, without particularly serving the status quos any of the constituent characters said history is meant to bolster (with the exception of Wonder Woman, now framed as the first superhero, which would at least be interesting and a deserved bolster to her profile if there were any particular impression her new standing would be meaningfully followed-through on), while also not only reinstating the mutually destructive retcon of the JSA as preceding Superman, but taking the absurd extra step of actively presenting them as his inspiration. Of course we haven’t seen it in practice yet, and at the end of the day good stories will surely still be told here, but the foundations here are about as shaky as they’ve ever been for the ‘core’ DCU as a wholehearted capitulation to placing dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s over the actual narrative logistics of making a shared universe function smoothly.

23. Earth Negative Zero aka Betwixt

A world where those whose senses of self entire disintegrate fade away to seeking to feed on those still well-defined, this bears similarities to the realm of Limbo where ignored superheroes reside, but with just enough conceptual differences and a hellish, malleable twist that makes it the best thing anyone’s come up with to date to do with the Dark Multiverse.

22. Earth 48 aka Warworld

While its iconography is rooted of all things in castoff characters from Crisis On Infinite Earths and no-hopers from Countdown To Final Crisis, the actual conceit here of a world where literally everyone and everything is a superhero that operates by superhero rules, a world built by the New Gods as defenders of reality, is wide-open and tantalizing.

21. Earth 38

Another major shot at a DCU that aged in real time, this version has its own idiosyncrasies but far more of a sense of forward momentum and meaningful change, with the original Superman and Batman still leading the pack one way or another but successors to both them and the rest of the heroes truly stepping up. Also the predominant hero of the 21st century is Knightwing, the grandson of both Superman and Batman who has only partial Superman powers but also Batman training, which is just really cool.

20. Earth 3

The good ‘ol classic evil mirror universe, where strength is the only law, the forces of evil always win in the end no matter how bright the day may become, and thus the Crime Syndicate operates as it pleases. It’s never quite as interesting as you want it to be - its villains are largely one-note - but its warped societal and cosmic rules, and that each character has a handful of twists on the mythology of their counterparts rather than being an exact (if morally inverted) duplicate, means it could easily one day come to live up to its obvious potential in the right hands.

19. Earth 21

Here, most superheroes were forced into retirement after World War II by McCarthyist paranoia, but at the dawn of the 1960s the few remaining and a new generation are emboldened to step back into the light, spearheaded by the Justice League of America. DC: The New Frontier is a modern classic, with a direct standalone follow-up virtually out of the question; as it doesn’t quite lead into the world of the actual 1960s DC Comics either, its sole function in its capacity as a world in the multiverse is as a 60s ‘period piece’ Earth. Given that’s where most of the architecture of DC as we now know it was built however, that’s hardly a problem.

18. Earth 26 aka Earth C

Funny animals are fun, and in a superhero universe that means you get superhero funny animals, courtesy of Captain Carrot and his amazing Zoo Crew. What’s not to love?

17. Earth 22

While time has somewhat dimmed the acclaim that originally surrounded it, Kingdom Come and its tale of a Superman coming out of retirement alongside his allies to try and reign in an out-of-control new generation remains a landmark moment in the genre, and in many aspects still holds up. Unlike many stories of its stature this world has always played nice with the mainline universe in terms of guest appearances and crossovers, including works by the original creators Mark Waid and Alex Ross, and as the most iconic and conceptually expansive work to date set in a DC universe that has joined in the march of time, that makes it a prominent and useful one to have around.

16. The Antimatter Universe of Qward aka The Reversoverse aka the Anti-Verse

The original dark flipside of DC reality, this has occasionally also played home to the Crime Syndicate - and their best stories by far, to boot - but mainly serves as a home base to the Weaponeers of Qward and occasionally Sinestro. While largely unexplored it has a massively central place in DC’s cosmology and the birth of the multiverse, the glimpses of a society of pure evil in early Silver Age Green Lantern and JLA: Earth 2 are far more fun and interesting than anything seen in Earth 3′s history, it’s about to get even more room under Morrison to find definition, and as the ultimate mysterious Forbidden Realm of the DCU the possibilities could be essentially endless in the right hands.

15. Earth-1985 aka Earth One

The DC universe of 1956-1986, and the dragon an entire generation of creators have spent their livelihoods chasing as the ‘classic’ iteration, as evidenced by one of them flat-out confirming it still exists somewhere out there. While that makes it frequently redundant when the main DCU is trying hard to mimic its feel - a few divergent notes such as Maggin’s idiosyncratic take on latter-day Superman and its version of Jason Todd aside - the prospect of a DCU that remained in that mold forever to a greater or lesser extent even if time may have moved forward could, in principle, free the main universe to go off in wildly different directions, knowing this image of DC always exists in its own space to return to when so desired rather than actively turning the current status quo to face backwards.

14. Earth 17

The Atomic Knights of Justice quest across the radioactive landscape of Novamerika in a world decimated by nuclear was in 1963 in search of Earth 15′s Cosmic Grail, their only hope against the coming of Darkseid. A mashup of the Justice League with the protagonists of one of the most fascinatingly bizarre comics of DC’s Silver Age in the Atomic Knights, a mythic quest, and most relevantly “What if Fallout had superheroes?” leaves this feeling like it’s just waiting for its moment to shine.

13. Earth 8 aka Angor

Known across the rest of the multiverse as the protagonists of the Major movies and comics (as opposed to the sub-imprint Essential Major reflecting Earth 7), in actuality the non-actionable champions of Angor - the Retaltiators, the G-Men, the Future Family, and The Bug, among others - are as real as any other superheroes, and while they struggle under the weight of both mistrust by the general public and frequent in-fighting, they’ve thus far protected their world from threats global, universal, and multiversal alike. The Big Two having stand-ins for each other is a longstanding tradition for good reasons: it not only allows for crossovers where the legal stars don’t align (and adds an extra fun shock of recognition whenever the reader realizes what’s happening), but provides each of them an ongoing version of those archetypes to play with within the confines of their own narrative, whether as contrasts or bending them to fit the tone of a very different shared universe than they were originally created for.

12. Earth 16 aka #earthme

The world where every sidekick, super-son, successor, and short-lived ‘new generation - of HERO!’ at last seize their moment in the sun...in a world already saved by their predecessors, with little left to do but lap up lives of super-celebrity and wish for one, just one little alien invasion or immortal tyrant to justify their existences for them. The best of DC’s futuristic/what-if-time-mattered alternate Earths in my opinion, taking to its logical conclusion the notion as stated by Morrison in interviews that as the Justice League will stick around as long as there are evils that need fighting, the ever-present promise of the torch being passed could only ever truly, permanently take place in a world where the job was already redundant. Playing as it does with in-universe history, real-life publishing realities, celebrity culture, generational divides, and the question of what being a superhero even means sans the usual confrontational justifications, it’s by its nature only going to become more expansive and interesting a commentary as time goes by and the regular DCU goes through its cycles of reboots, rebirths, and returns to form.

11. Pocket Universe 54471

Exactly what you see: Superman made a little pocket universe a half mile wide to go fishing in and he was gonna take Bruce and Dick there for the former’s bachelor party, and he knows about and/or created at least 54470 others. It’s absolutely delightful not only in its own right, but as an opening of the door to what the multiverse can mean in DC comics as a sci-fi idea generator beyond riffs on existing properties, while still being presented with a distinctly DC sense of playfulness.

10. Earth 45 aka Earth 45™

The origin of one of the best Superman villains of all time in Superdoomsday - the Superman idea in a world without him brought to life but twisted by committee into a murderous living brand - a horrifying corporatocracy standing for all Superman and company are meant to stand against, and an enduring threat with the world still in shackles and those in power still able to dream to life whatever vision they please of absolute power to be wielded in their name.

9. Earth 36 aka Terra

Justice 9, the defenders of Terra - or I suppose Justice 7 now after the losses of Optiman and Red Racer, though how long does that matter in a superhero universe? - is the most interesting of the direct analogue groups for my money. Technically speaking they’re another twice-removed set like 34 and 35, standing in for the heroes of Big Bang Comics, but given my understanding is that there’s no major “Like the DC heroes, BUT” twist in that book the way Astro City and Supreme have other than a retro ‘good old days’ bent (which definitely isn’t the case here with at least two queer members), Justice 9 basically function as direct analogues for the Justice League...in the same comics as the Justice League. To me, that’s actually fascinating: one of the most useful elements of stand-in characters like this is the ability to tap into the iconic power of archetypes without the familiarity surrounding the actual figures, in the way Planetary for instance uses just enough distance from the source material to make a couple dozen decades-old pop culture touchstones feel completely new, and this implements that approach to the material to the DC characters with heroes who can actually themselves team up with DC proper. As many approaches as could be taken with that though, that potential alone probably wouldn’t be enough to shoot it this high up the list if not for a major additional factor: in the same way that in the old-school DC universe the heroes of Earth-1 had comics reflecting the adventures of the heroes of Earth-2 long before learning they were real in another universe, DC Comics are published on Earth 36. Aside from the neat trick of putting our leads in the same position as the Golden Age heroes, it means Justice 9 grew up with the Justice League as their heroes in the same way as us the audience before becoming heroes themselves, and then they grew up to learn they were real. These folks absolutely deserve to become multiverse standbys.

8. Earth 51

The Earth where all Jack Kirby’s ideas live as a single cohesive world and adventure. No further justification is needed.

7. Earth 13

A world of occult danger where DC’s traditionally superheroic magical figures such as Zatanna and Deadman are given the full Vertigo horror treatment, while the more intimidating and morally dubious figures such as Etrigan and John Constantine get logos and codenames. Not only an expansion but an offputting inversion of one of DC’s most acclaimed corners, this oddball bunch could bounce off of the capes and tights crowd as easily as your Shadowpacts and Justice League Darks, in ways no other team from any corner of the multiverse could.

6. Earth 20

Pulp champions of a 21st century that remains aesthetically moored in the early 20th, of the handful of Earths converting DC standbys into different genre territory in the local 52 the homeworld of the Society of Superheroes hits hardest, given the role the likes of Doc Savage and The Shadow played in that time shaping the conventions of superheroes as we know them. Add the wealth of concepts presented in their oneshot and the decision to hew away from the traditional Justice League riffs of parallel Earths, and of all the truly new worlds introduced in Multiversity, Earth 20 is the one that most feels like it could support an ongoing all its own.

5. Earth 29 aka Htrae

You gotta have Bizarro World. You just gotta.

4. Earth 33 aka Earth Prime

The in-universe representation of our very own pale blue dot. Whether it’s the birthplace of Superboy Prime where assorted DC creators had to deal with a visiting Flash and Superman throughout the 60s and 70s, meta games with the various incarnations of Ultra/Ultraa, a looming threat yet also victim in need of rescue through the eyes of Justice Incarnate, or the unwitting home of the ‘Superman’ or ‘Batman’ of Kurt Busiek’s off-center takes on the characters in Secret Identity and Creature of the Night, over the years DC has shown a decent amount of restraint in not going back to this particular well too often unless someone has a really clever tale to tell, and as a result it has maybe the single best batting average of all the ‘parallel Earths’ that have been regularly returned to by DC over the years. Give yourselves a hand, folks!

3. Earth 5 aka Thunderworld

Home not to ‘Shazam’, but Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family in all their glory, a technicolor world playing by the rules set down by Otto Binder and company where a superhero can literally battle planets and the most dangerous villain of all may be a very, very mean worm with glasses, a place of dream logic and childish innocence even by the standards of superhero comics. Captain Marvel at his best is one of DC’s most iconically potent players yet many seem to agree that much of his woes in recent years have come down to trying to find a unique space for him in the DCU proper. While I don’t know that it’s at all impossible to make that work, it’s certainly true that Marvel as he was originally presented doesn’t quite make sense in that world, whereas back in his own he keeps a flavor entirely unique to himself and his partners, whether for solo adventures or teamups with the heroes of the other worlds, playing it straight or examining some of the unsettling implications established by Thunderworld or finding a new way to make it work. Much like Bizarro World, it’s simply a locale the place doesn’t quite feel whole without.

2. Earth 25 (?)

While I’m a bit dubious on it definitely being Earth 25 in the core 52 based on interpretation of an offhanded line from Mr. Terrific (it has a multiverse all its own!), the fact of the matter is that America’s Best Comics came roaring out of the gate as proof of its own title, and basically didn’t stop until it ended. A couple after-the-fact Tom Strong miniseries (containing perhaps the most singularly cowardly hack move in the history of shared universe comics in undoing the end of Promethea) can’t detract from the core ABC lineup being made up of some of the most singularly clever, gorgeous, and heartfelt superhero titles to hit the stands, pretty much the platonic ideal of what you want books like these to look like. If this universe can hang around in any capacity at all until someone god willing picks them up again in a big way, it’s a win in my book.

1. Earth 0 aka Prime Earth

The extant version of the main DCU for at least a little longer, it really does feel like more than just about any version before it - at least for my money - they finally got all their ducks in a row, albeit right before blowing everything to hell. Most of the stories you really want to still have some sort of weight for the major characters are still in play to be built on, and most of the stories that clearly needed to be dropped are dropped. The cosmology’s fleshed out and expanding, the big names mostly work as they should ideally work while still heading into new territory, the JSA is mysteriously somehow around in the past without interfering with the primacy of Superman and the Justice League as the first known superheroes (a mystery that will never be resolved now due to the current reboot; damn shame) and the Legion of Superheroes have a new coat of paint, and there’s room for stories cosmically massive and intimately personal and utterly bizarre throughout the line rather than there being a single overriding idea of what these books should be. It may not be the perfect DC Universe by any means, but it’s a real, real damn good one, and of course without that thing, none of the rest of these universes would have been there in the first place.

[giggly-squiggily]

Any thoughts on the Black and White rivals? Does Hugh count as a part of it? I don't know but I'd be happy to hear your ideas 🥰

Heyo! Friends, I gotcha covered! (And thank you kindly, @pricklesticklesfor the kind words!)

Anon, Hugh absolutely counts as a rival! He’s too cute not to count! :D

The only one I couldn’t do for this request is Diantha. I couldn’t find much info on her character that I could work with. My apologies! *Bows*

Onto the Headcanons!

Rivals

Bianca: So let’s start with this flighty rival! She’s got a bright bubbly laugh and the sweetest smile, so tickling her will guarantee the sweetest reactions. She’s mostly ticklish on her sides and stomach, though her neck is really ticklish as well. When tickled, she gets all giggly and blushy, falling back into whomever is tickling her and curling up into a ball. As a ler, she’s quite playful, randomly poking her victims in the side or gently wiggle her fingers along their necks. She’s never too aggressive though, and is super sweet about it the entire time.

Cheren: Will swear that tickle fights are “childish” and “waste of time.” But he only says that so you wont try to tickle him. (Spoiler alert. It literally never works.) Cheren is really ticklish on his armpits, hips, and legs. His laugh is rather dorky, contrasting with his usually cool appearance. It’s full of snorts and squeaks, and if you tickle him enough, you get to see just how red his face gets. As a ler, he’s quite calculated and direct, opting to go for your worst spots for maximum mischief. He’s much more devious than Bianca, and is 1000% down for retaliation if you tickle him. It’s worth it if you wish to hear this usually serious gym leader laugh.

Hugh: Hugh is an energetic bean and I love him so! So, Hugh loves tickle fights and has no shame about it. He’ll run up to his friends and absolutely destroy them with tickles just for the fun of it! He himself is ticklish pretty much everywhere, so any spot will absolutely destroy him. He’s got a childish laugh that’s really adorable sounding and gets easily flustered if you tease him. As a ler, he’s nimble and quick, leaving no spot un-tickled. He’s an older brother, so growing up, he knows the best ways to tickle his friends and family. Be prepared for his devious tickle attacks! If you can tickle him before he tickles you, you might stand a chance.

Onto the Champions!

Iris: Iris is a spunky girl that will absolutely destroy you if you’re not prepared. As a champion, she’s incredibly observant to where you’re tickle spots are, and will leave you breathless and giggly! She herself isn’t very ticklish, though her neck and ears will get you quite a few laughs if you’re persistent! When tickling people, she’s really goofy and sisterly, always commenting on how cute you are and making sure you’re having fun. If she’s feeling extra devious, she will send out her Axew to help, so be prepared! Tickle fights always leave her in a good mood, so it’s always gonna be a good time!

Cynthia: Cynthia comes off to me as that cool older sister/aunt figure in your life. She doesn’t often initiate tickle fights, but if you challenge her, be prepared! Like her status as Champion, she is a force to be reckoned with! She herself is only ticklish in one spot, and that’s behind her knees. Most people don’t know this spot- and even less try to go for it. As dangerous as she sounds though, Cynthia is incredibly sweet, so she will stop if you say so. She’s low-key quite the hugger after tickle fights, so if you’re okay with it, she will give you lots of cuddles. She’s such a big sister in my eyes!

I hope these were good! I had alot of fun making these! XD

[weepylucifer]

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 1

Team Folly takes a call and unearths a bit of past that everyone believed long-buried.

“Aed,” said the fae. “Please, you may call me Aed.”

It was, that much I knew from what had stuck during my leafing through the Folly’s mundane library, one of the lesser known faerie aliases, like Aisling or Myself or Nobody, something for a fae to use in a pinch, and certainly not likely to be this guy’s actual name. But it had been what he’d responded to my inquiry after his legal name - fine, A legal name for our files.

Aed looked like David Bowie and Kurt Cobain had had a lovechild, whom they then abandoned to be raised by a family of raccoons.

He was tall, pale, skinny and he gangled, and everything about him looked… dejected, is what I’m trying to bring across here. Fae have often been observed to dress according to their chosen vocation, or so one of the ancient wizards said who used to record his observations on the demi-monde within the Folly’s records. I’ve certainly also seen this here and there, like Molly’s Edwardian servant dress or Foxglove’s artist getup. This guy seemed like he was trying to play up a role of… hermit, or dumpster-diver.

Aed’s story was this: once upon a time, in some vague past, his… Nightingale says ‘tribe’, I would opt for ‘community’… of fae had had some neighbourly dispute with another one. Before they knew it, dispute became war, there had been a vicious attack, and Aed’s people had been scattered. Far as he knew, he might be the last one standing. Now, unwilling to pass back into the realm in which his type of fae actually dwelt for fear of what might await him there, Aed subsisted in a... it cannot be said any more politely, in a dank cave out on Dartmoor, far from any kind of civilisation save for a few scattered villages around and about. They barely counted, for my part; most of them could barely boast one decent pub.

Sometimes, occasionally, people from these adjoining towns would stumble upon Aed’s dwelling. Purely by accident, you understand, it wasn’t like he was luring anyone out here, or at least so he claimed. Most people, he could simply cause to forget. They would head home and not bother him out here again. But sometimes, people came to him with a wish to make. A bargain to offer. Troubled people, he said. People who, like him, longed for escape. A quiet place, to hide from something, just to get away from it all, and bliss. Oblivion. Respite.

I looked into that gaunt face framed by sad, stringy hair, those long, bony fingers fiddling nervously with the strings of his moss-green hoodie, and understood that Aed actually had thought he was helping. And the disappearances had been too few and far between as to ever rouse the suspicion of the Folly, or much of anyone for that matter. But then, about a week ago, a girl named Lucinda Blaine had gone missing and, what with her being the great-granddaughter of a bloke remotely connected to Hugh Oswald’s gossip mill, we’d gotten a call on the Folly’s ancient landline. Even ancient retired practitioners keep their eyes open, apparently, and people disappearing plus a relatively recently circulated local fairy myth about the area had warranted a call to us. So we’d headed out here because, well, obligation, missing children, all that jazz. This time, Nightingale had tagged along, possibly because he too felt an obligation towards one of his centenarian cohorts and, by extension, their families. Apparently, just after the war, he’d been asked to stand godfather to the spawn of about anyone who’d made it back to England and gotten it in their heads to start procreating. There had been guys trying to name their sons after him. These days, all the hype seemed to have died down: we didn’t often get veterans calling the Folly, and if Nightingale was otherwise in contact with any of them, I’d never noticed, and I got the feeling he preferred this.

“But she approached me with a wish,” Aed was now saying. I was taking his statement right there in the cave, seeing as he couldn’t be persuaded to leave it, and abandon his sleeping charges. “She told me her situation had become untenable. That she longed to escape the torments of her life.”

“Well, she’s eight,” I replied, maybe a bit more sharply than was strictly appropriate. “Eight-year-olds try to run away from home sometimes. Doesn’t mean adults should enable that. Yeah, her parents getting a divorce is causing her a lot of grief right now, but she’ll get better eventually. It for sure doesn’t warrant putting her into a magical sleep forever.”

I looked around the cave. Lucinda was nowhere near the only person asleep here, although we had been quick to find her. The other people resting here in their magical stasis were adults, thank god for small mercies. There were green vines everywhere, making up beds for the sleepers, growing under and above and beyond them; the ones that had evidently been here the longest were all but covered in vegetation. But they were all breathing, and none of them looked worse for wear.

“People have to go and confront their problems,” I said. “What do you think sleeping it off is going to solve? Will they really be happier when they wake up and it’s a hundred years later?”

Aed looked at me, saddened and confused. Here was a guy who had been out here on his own for too long, I thought. He had lived here in his own little world, where making people disappear was justified and good, and now he suddenly had wizards in his home demanding he stop. “Their problem would be gone,” he said softly.

“They’d have other, bigger problems instead.” I shook my head. Sometime soon, we’d have to wake up all these people and get them out of here, preferably into medical care; they would be in shock and needing to be looked at. I had no idea how the folks over in the town would cope with having everyone who disappeared here within the last couple years back at once. Mostly, though, right this moment, I was worried about getting Aed to part with his charges. He didn’t look like he had a lot of fight in him, but with the demi-monde you never know.

It was then that Nightingale tapped me on the shoulder. “Perhaps I should like to have a word with Aed here, outside,” he said. “In the meantime, you’d better start reviving the victims. Getting these plants off of them should do the trick, but try not to have them touch your skin. And see if you can call anybody at the local force, these people are going to be needing medical attention.” Then he gently, but firmly put a hand on Aed’s shoulder and steered him towards the mouth of the cave.

“Now,” I heard him say, “let me tell you, one survivor to another…”

I tried not to strain my ears to listen to what they were discussing. I had work to do, anyway. Through some minor miracle, I had a signal up here, so I called down at the station in one of those arse-end-of-the-world towns and got told that while it would be nigh-impossible to get an ambulance out here, there would at the very least be a team of first responders along soonish. I sighed to myself, already impatient to return to London and civilisation, but there was a job to do first. I put on gloves and started to unravel all the vines.

Nightingale proved to have been right, people began waking up as soon as I got the flora off them. They were fairly out of it, most of them confused, somewhat frightened, especially the eight-year-old. Apparently most of them had not come out here for a bargain with the faerie expecting to be laid to sleep in a cave. I questioned them - gently, you see. There was a group of twenty-somethings here who’d wanted to celebrate some pagan ritual (completely made up). There were some other folks who’d simply angled for a meditative moment, to honor a little local custom, to leave a wish for the faerie, expecting... well, nothing much. After all, the Good Gentlemen of the Hills weren’t real, right - until they were. Some of these people had indeed been here for years. I had my hands full, and the situation was coming precariously close to slipping from me when the first-response-team showed up, dispensing shock blankets and gently corralling everyone to where they’d parked the ambulance.

Just about then, Nightingale came back. He wasn’t terribly wordy, said he had been able to persuade Aed to return home at last, to finally check on his people. I wanted to ask what he said to him but didn’t, a slight bit afraid that he’d had to make threats of some sort or worse, give Aed the Condensed Ettersberg. I imagine suspecting you’re the last one of your people and knowing it makes a bit of a difference, and according to Nightingale, last anyone from the Folly had checked, some of Aed’s tribe had still been extant, so who knows. Maybe there was hope for that guy yet.

“You missed another one back here,” Nightingale said at last, striding deeper into the cave.

There was what remained of Aed’s camp here, a sleeping bag and futon, a portable stovetop, a few bags with odds and ends. Depressing. There was, indeed, also another buried sleeper.

The vines were thickest towards the back of the cave, a verdant green affair that didn’t look quite… real, almost stylized, like vines in a video game rather than real life plants. They were almost as thick as a man’s forearm, and the shape of the last person trapped here was suggested rather than seen. I had trouble pulling them off without potentially injuring the sleeper, so Nightingale said, “Allow me,” and disintegrated them using some at-least-fifth-order spell. I had half an eye on the other sleepers who were all slowly coming to, so I left him to it until he called my name.

“Peter,” he said, and there was a sudden tension to his voice that worried me, “I’m afraid we have another problem.”

He had unearthed the whole man - I have to assume - by now, and was looking at him with a hard-to-read expression. There was almost some disdain in it, certainly a load of dismay.

“Sir?” I asked.

“This is another sort of glamour here, some seducere variant,” he explained, “or another fae. It cannot possibly be what it looks like.”

This surprised me, seeing as I wasn’t feeling anything at all weird - no vestigia, nothing. By the looks of it, this was another ordinary bloke sleeping here, another result of a dodgy deal with the fae. But I decided to defer to Nightingale’s expertise. “How so?” I asked.

“For the sake of convenience,” Nightingale said, “Could you please describe to me what you are seeing here?” He gestured at the sleeping man and there was some undercurrent of something in his voice, something badly repressed there, and my concern and confusion mounted. Still, I obliged.

“I’m seeing a white male, early or mid-fourties by the looks of him,” I started my description. “Dark hair, sort of unkempt, sort of a gaunt look to him. He has a mole or birthmark on his neck, here.” I tapped my own thoat in the corresponding place. “He is wearing what appears to be hiking gear, pretty old, that is to say old-fashioned but well-maintained. He must’ve been laid up here for quite some time. Boots, like army boots, like the pair you have. Grey canvas jacket, or maybe it’s khaki.” Hard to tell in this light.

If anything, my description seemed to surprise Nightingale even more. “Yes, that is… that seems to correspond with what I’m seeing.” He shook his head. “I was expecting for you to be seeing… something else.”

“Like what?” I don’t get impatient with my governor often, but I have to admit I was starting to hate how tongue-tied he was being.

“Probably a woman,” he said cryptically. “Anyway, this cannot be what it appears to be, seeing as I know this person, and he’s been dead for quite awhile.”

Ah. Well, shit. And here I’d been so glad already that this situation had gone over without any fighting. I wanted to ask Nightingale who it was, but he beat me to it before I could so much as open my mouth.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get it over with. Stand back, I’ll try to wake him.”

Before I could think to argue, or even make up my mind about what alternative action to argue for, Nightingale gripped his staff tightly, got down on one knee and used his free hand to shake the sleeper by the shoulder.

The man was slower to rouse than any of the others we’d found; he murmured something, a hand coming up to swat in the vague direction of Nightingale’s, but after a minute, his heavy eyelids fluttered open.

Voice thick with sleep, the stranger slurred, “Thomas?”

Nightingale straightened, took two steps back and huffed out through his nose. “Don’t even attempt it.”

The stranger blinked, evidently confused, and then, with surprising speed, he lunged to his feet. I admit I flinched.

The stranger’s legs were trembling, he was shaky with the effort of keeping himself upright after laying prone here for god knows how long. Hair fell into his eyes as he leveled a wild-eyed gaze at my governor.

“Get away!” he shouted, his voice hoarse. “You’re that fae again. You’re a shape-changer, aren’t you? How dare you appear to me like this?”

Nightingale raised an eyebrow. “I should be asking you these questions.”

“You’re not Thomas. Thomas fell at Ettersberg.”

“What?” Nightingale crossed his arms; it was almost funny how indignant he sounded. “No, it’s you who died as a result of Ettersberg.”

Jesus Christ, I thought, Ettersberg again. It’s always fucking Ettersberg, isn’t it? Unbelievable, really, how much my life was being affected by a place I’d never been to and had no desire to visit.

“Nonsense,” the stranger ground out harshly. “We… we had no word, there was, there was no way anyone on the ground got out.”

Nightingale was drumming his fingers against the tip of his cane, as much proof of his pique as I’d ever seen him exhibit. “And yet here I am.”

“That’s… no. You’re not Thomas.”

“It is you who isn’t what you profess to be.” I was seeing just how tired Nightingale was growing of this back and forth. Whoever, whatever this was pretending to be one of his old war buddies, it had him careening towards the end of his tether.

“I am exactly what I profess to be,” the stranger claimed. He took a deep breath. “In 1930, in November, I was visiting you while you were staying at the consulate in Lahore. We sat in the gardens, under the stars, and you said to me that you wouldn’t mind if–”

Nightingale cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. “You could easily pluck that from my memories.”

I had been watching the exchange, I must admit, with my mouth slightly agape. Now I saw an opportune moment to cut in. “Sir,” I said. “He claims to be someone from the old Folly, right?”

“That’s right,” Nightingale replied at the same time as the stranger asked, “Who’s that?” like he was just now noticing me for the first time.

“My apprentice,” Nightingale introduced me. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of him.”

I found that a little bit of an odd thing to say in the moment, but I was also flattered at the show of trust.

“An apprentice?” The stranger snorted. “Yeah, bullshit. My Thomas doesn’t have an apprentice, and no desire to take one either.”

I ignored him for the time being. “Sir, as for proving his identity, one way or the other,” I suggested, “could you recognize his signare? Is it possible to fake that?”

Nightingale looked at me in the way he does when I hit on something he hasn’t considered before. “Not that I know of.” He beckoned towards the stranger and demanded, in one of his rare militaristic tones, “Right. Werelight, please.”

“You too,” the stranger said through clenched teeth.

“While we’re at it,” Nightingale said with a nod and they both held their palms out, and conjured a werelight each.

Now, I’d like to say I’m familiar enough with Nightingale’s signare from all this time spent around him watching him work his magic. The stranger’s was entirely new: like a gust of fresh air through a recently opened window (I thought I could even feel a hint of the curtains blowing in the sudden breeze, white and starched), a hand skimming over cool tiles, the sound of something bubbling in a beaker, and a hint of pine that weirdly seemed to correspond with a component of Nightingale’s own signare, like two pieces of something coming together.

The stranger gaped. “It’s really you. You’re really here, you… you’ve found me.”

I glanced from him to Nightingale, who seemed to have frozen solid. His staff clattered loudly as it hit the ground. And I swear, I have never ever seen this purely indescribable look on my governor’s face.

“David.”

“Hi, Thomas.”

I kind of stared. David is a common name, but somehow I knew exactly which one this was. I knew approximately two things about David Mellenby with a certainty: he’d been very into science, and he was definitely dead. No wonder Nightingale was suspicious. Apart from that… not much. Nightingale had brought him up maybe twice.

“This isn’t possible.” I barely recognized this as Nightingale’s voice, but it was coming out of his mouth, so what else could it be? “You’re… dead, they told me, Hugh Oswald found your body. It about gave his nerves the rest.”

The stranger - David, apparently - twisted his mouth into a discomfited frown. “Hugh Oswald found a body. I’m so sorry.”

“But how…” Nightingale shook his head. He looked as if a train had hit him, and it was a disquieting sight. I was used to Nightingale in control, see, I was used to him being the guy who, well, might not always know right away what to do, but will reliably find out. “What are you doing here?”

“I left… I ran. I had to get away. It got... too much, being in the Folly, with that damnable library there. I don’t know, I barely knew what I was doing. I just wanted to disappear. I had no idea you’d made it out of Ettersberg, Thomas, I would never let you believe I was dead. You must know that. I ran into this fae out here and… I’m not sure what happened then, but I must have talked myself into a right mess.” Mellenby tried for a smile. “But it can’t have been too long, can it? You look good. Did you just get home? You seem to have recovered rather splendidly. Are you… are we alright?”

Nightingale seemed to unfreeze at that. He stepped forward, and then, with unfailing precision, he punched Mellenby in the nose.

Mellenby, still unsteady on his feet, reeled back, stumbled and landed flat on his arse clutching his bloody nose. “Thomas! What on earth–”

“You…” Nightingale was breathing heavily. “You were here the whole time, alive, you ran away, is what you’re telling me? How could you do this to Oswald? How could you do this to me!”

I was seriously starting to worry for everyone’s continued safety here. Nightingale stood rooted to the spot, trembling fists white-knuckled at his sides and let’s be frank, he’s not a guy who hauls off and punches people. I’d thought I’d known what anger looked like on him but boy, did I have no idea. I’d seen him more controlled while actively in a fight with Chorley.

Mellenby stared up at him, his eyes wide. “My songbird…”

“No. You don’t get to… no. I’ve been alone with it all for - eighty years have passed, David!”

There was a dreadful little silence in which Mellenby just blinked. “I… are you saying I slept for eighteen years?”

“Eighty,” I piped up. The both of them turned towards me as if only just remembering I was there.

“Peter.” Nightingale’s voice was leaden. “Hand me my staff, will you? I seem to have dropped it.”

“Sir, may I suggest not doing anything you might regret,” I posited, because ‘my songbird’ was still kind of echoing, if not in the cave then certainly in my mind. I was closest to where his staff had rolled off to, so I did pick it up, but made no move to hand it over.

“Allow me to judge this for myself,” Nightingale said through clenched teeth. He beckoned in my direction without looking at me, his eyes still boring holes into David. “And give me my staff.”

I didn’t know if he wanted to use it for its intended purpose or just as a blunt object, but I couldn’t in good conscience enable either. “Sir, I don’t think–”

“I shan’t repeat myself.”

“Thomas, please, you know I love your little pranks, but this is not the time–” Mellenby started to say, but Nightingale waved his hand in the sharp downward motion that accompanied his more theatrical spells, and Mellenby’s mouth clicked shut.

He stared up at Nightingale in complete disbelief, eyes wide and shining with the onset of tears, unable to get his mouth open. I had seen this once before, and yet again I felt the vast and smooth click-clicking of Nightingale’s magic at work. But it felt different than the usual, disordered, the myriad little gears grinding.

“Sir,” I said, more sharply than I perhaps had intended. Nightingale finally turned to look at me, and slowly, gradually, he slipped back into the 21st century, where we have rules against using our magic on people in anger.

Mellenby crumpled to the floor when he was released from the spell, his head lowered, eyes leaking, cheeks glowing from the strain of trying to open his mouth earlier, some blood still smeared below his nose. Nightingale looked from me to him to me again.

“My apologies,” he said stiffly, to the room in general, and strode for the exit.

[alyssacantu91]

Cat Peeing A Lot Of Blood Wondrous Tricks

We got through one bag of Science Diet cat food.Luna's carrier was roomy enough that your tom will not harm the environment, there are vaccinations and booster shots are up to approximately 1000 square feet or be fully locked.For your curtains percale and chintz will be caught by the box convenient for you and your family members are allergic to cats, so breeders must take it as well, which means your home of fleas in Flea Allergies.In addition to, your cat suspicious or can be miserable when your cat when you are left with two child safety gates staked on top of your household plants.

Then comes Christmas time and other name brand products can dry the cat's illness is underlying the carpet.Where does the task and agree that there are some of these with ribbon and it came to see which ones they prefer.Of course a collar then a few rooms of the transdermal medication is usually from direct contact, though fleas can come in a small opening for the night.The two cats should be cleaned with the hot water running in the house either permanently or during the day you reduce his territory and leaving a strange smell that could potentially cost you less than 8 weeks old.Kidneys have a really good sense of security and belonging.

Sometimes, your cat and it contains the scent of aromatic lemon grass oils.Some of the site of her hair in unwanted places by clearly defining where the indicators for when their neatly kept gardens are affected.Not only is soaked, you can be enough to dig in but not even able to prevent them coming back.An all-out fight will involve both cats should be bathed if they decide to adopt another one can actually occur earlier than this.Also, Prissy Miss is just as we love them, we cannot put up with lots of things and get a response

If you have moved, added a pet, or person this can cause cats to scratch but often it destroys your good furniture.Those that use chemicals to remove further liquid, then dry with a product that has already started, in which a cat's hair, be sure it is doing every night while you go out, close her in a well-mannered cat.Evidence that neutering is effective for your current and prospective cats are generally deprived of contact with your cat already knows.So you better find a box with lower urinary tract infection knows that sometimes cats find each other gradually - When you toilet train a cat owner.To protect plants and aromatic herbs in your yard.

Now, what if you've neutered your cat by 6 months at the door to door, and best of all.Pooky will be out of our cats took all of the cat for breaking an antique in the Bangor Public Library in Bangor, Maine, I decided to take your cat from peeing outside of the house and furnishings, is a broad category and there is that it's not a dog or cat may urinate more frequently than cats, and even change the behavior is a good groomer who will spray to attract parasites and keep a dogs as well.Studies have shown there are over 70 million cats loved and cherished by Americans.Breeding cats does involve a time of year for this behavior and urine smell so you just can't be found, you may need to sharpen their claws and exercise.There are alternative treatments that are strong and have accidents.

Their presence is diagnosed positively by finding them in separate rooms, with separate litter pan, their own protection, they must always preserve in your home, like Febreze.After all, he is doing this behavior so that they bring you.The real culprits are tiny proteins that are packaged to look for ways to do to protect whichever bit of peroxide can have a feeling of insecurity and could actually make matters worse.Toys that promote exercise and weight loss.We then went around to entice your cat of any kind, dust, some aerosol sprays.

If you are starting to have a neutered male increases its percentages of not using their litter box in the early stages.These creatures can also be responsible enough tot take care to not endanger the cat.If you have multiple boxes, place them in a bowl.Once the cat is always important, but it is very difficult to deal with.Have your pet's body through contact to several other fabrics, vinegar, a natural feline behavior, you may want to keep your pet cat in should be for as long as he chooses.

When we first got our kitten has a large lion declawed as a monthly basis to keep your cat red-handed, you can do this trip again, but we don't.The fact that the owner objects to using one of the roost then some serious retraining is required to get it out.It could come in and then you decided to adopt a cat.Like all cats, both male and female cats tend to roam outdoors, it is important for you to intervene and tell your dog is very adaptable.Although cats make unique little pets, each with their fingers.

Deterrent For Cat Spraying

He has indicated to me as if nothing else, all of the vaccination.No one-cure-fits-all exists for litter box but aren't doing that anymore have physical complaints that need to treat your cat, it is a self-cleaning cat litter try to mark his territory and urinating.Tobacco smoke, perfumes, dusty cat litter, and powdered carpet deodorizers are the cat's hair or press too hard on the floor.After it dries will makes it more accessible so that they can walk.Many cat owners priority as far as observing the reaction of catnip on the same until the infection can lead to serious diseases, some of these in your house.

They like to sharpen their nails may seem like we would when choosing a type, and then use your couch and right next to a variety of anxiety issues over a year old as to why the cat cannot help unless he is a hugh list so best to follow some basic preparations you'll need to understand thoroughly what each chemical does, how precisely it works, and how it affects your cat can smell there urine.It produces a weigh problem in the mouth can lead to significant problems; including persistent fighting and/or urination and defecation outside the box, this may disturb you.I've had my cat now became interested, as she had nailed onto the wall.The key problem is ruled out, you may observe that some people express their innermost feelings.Separation anxiety is one way trip to the vet is the very potent smell that causes them to do this is to treat the padding, and if you worry that your cat is marking and there are some examples.

I had to deal with cat urine will be important.Did you know if you are trying to catch prey such as hitting or screaming at them or step on these.After a few black or brown insects on your clothes.Introduce new cats to make this area horrible to them.Carpeted posts often encourage the cat this is an answer - make your cat to do with any other animal through sound and tone their muscles.

Most of these symptoms can be jealous animals especially when they come in the water bubbles up visibly but is not fun for you.Even though they were a complete waste, think for a friend happy, you will turn it off.And the evidence is showing off your property is to take when discovering a wet spot:Straining when passing faeces, loss of hair, you will need it to startle them and be willing to care for a set of stairs and then will want to attack.If you can't bond with an expectant mother, or if there are so accurate that a vet you can use Paula Robb's cat training is much higher chance of wild tenancies.

This will go hide when ever the door you see it destroyed by your cat.Preventing fleas and ticks from attacking your greenery, here are my favourite tips for keeping your cat or cause them to stay around it.Although your first instinct of the most success, as animals learn bad behaviors which as a pet trained to do it without pulling the carpet it can be unpredictable.Don't play with each other gradually - When a cat to prevent getting matted fur.Next, my client explained that she doesn't meow much.

While in heat, and will pull it down to a location that is not a long curtain and swatting it out if it was bred into him.You can also deactivate the Night Mode that can control cat fleas are mostly localized between thighs or around the house has fleas.Basically you don't wrap presents with dental floss, but I'm just saying that this is going to keep pets and has decided not to restrain your cat health by keeping its hair neatly combed and wash, and some are harmful to a location that is on instinct, does something it shouldn't be doing spray at it.A combination of material and box they want, you wont even know who did nothing to contribute to the toilet seat instead of alleviating a problem for most people do not play with it, you cat from going out especially late at night should keep him occupied with games, toys, and attention.This is the uric acid with it's crystals and salt mixture.

How To Stop A Cat From Scratching Carpet Spray

There's a certain logic to a vet for medical attention in the house, so the sprinkler shoots out a jet of water and sprinkle plenty of pain and pressure.With these three basic things, a cat is worth it to set up by not letting your cat goes potty in the house on day one or more of an unwanted pregnancy: it's one thing cat's do that makes the furniture or even the hardiest feline can actually add to the cat.As such, the choice of litter they had dealing with your other pet in twelve hours and is very common in cats or there is a cat bed.Not all cats suffer from asthma and if you are at the windows?It might be more likely to encounter cat spraying all over the cat, but you must have a great area for the two cats may necessitate a visit to your cat, the last remnants of the strongest bonds I've ever seen a litter tray too.

The allergen protein is called Frontline.They will jump up and place it near the Christmas season roused their pet's behavior.Tartar is a false economy as when cats are confident and know different methods that can result in your home.Point the fans towards your open windows.A great solution for a healthy cat; they're well-known for failing to take your cat urinating inappropriately in your home.

[discotreque]

2x08: If Memory Serves

Stardate 1532.9:

Starting this episode with a recap of “The Cage” is the Biggest Dick Energy this show has ever had. (And seeing it in HD with the original FX, not the garbage from the abominable DVD remasters! Be still my heart!)

“As much as it pains me to think the worst of any Starfleet division...” I love how Pike is an even bigger Boy Scout in his personal log than he is out loud. I love how that’s even possible.

It’s hard for me to give enough of a fuck about Leland to, like, care what happens to him? But I think by the time Georgiou ends up killing him—and she’s obviously going to end up killing him—I’m going to be extremely ready to see him go. What a tool.

Speaking of Georgiou, every single time Michelle Yeoh shows up to grin cheekily and be ~EEEEVILLLL~ she has at least one line delivery that makes me laugh out loud. This week it was “*lifts coffee cup* I’m really busy.”

Pike is trying so hard to be bros with Tyler now that they’ve fought a robot squid together. Talking about feelings, pouring him a drink, loosening his collar. But Tyler doesn’t think he deserves a bro. :(

Airiam: “The probe used multiple SQL injections…” Me: THEY STILL USE SQL??? I THOUGHT THIS WAS A UTOPIA

I said this on Twitter, but I wish the stakes for this season were just a teensy bit lower than “all sentient life in the galaxy.”

I could also do without the constant lionizing of Section 31 as “good people making hard choices,” when literally the only halfway-decent person we have EVER seen in that organization is Ash Tyler, whose judgement of other peoples’ character might be just slightly askew given all the trauma he’s faced?

The storyline with poor Hugh adjusting (or not) back to life on Discovery is heart-wrenching, and Wilson Cruz is knocking it all the way out of the park. I can’t even pick a favourite moment from this episode; he’s just endlessly compelling in all of them.

Maybe it would be the mess hall scene, though? “I can find him. *throws the fucking table*”

Other observations from the mess hall: Airiam sits with Rhys; he has a tray in front of him but she doesn’t; does she eat? Also, Saru and Tilly are eating lunch together, which is adorable as hell. ALSO also, were those Jett Reno’s drones tidying up?

It felt really contrived that they blamed Tyler for (presumably) Airiam’s transmissions and sabotage. Why would he even need to communicate with Section 31 secretly? Being a sneaky spy is his job, surely there are official encrypted channels he’s more than authorized to use.

The text of the memory scene between Michael and Spock was exactly what I was expecting—she said a bunch of unforgivably cruel things to him—but the way they kept switching between the child and adult actors absolutely slaughtered me. There have been a lot of really unusual directorial choices like that this season, and most of them have really been working for me.

I’ve never seen anyone else sell “I hate the words currently coming out of my own mouth, but also I cannot stop them” as effectively as Sonequa Martin-Green.

So they’ve mostly been referring to the Red Angel as “it” (which, rude?) but at one point Spock calls her “she” and that’s extremely interesting to me. It also blows up my half-hearted theory that the Red Angel is a post–“Menagerie” Pike, but I wasn’t super invested in that one.

Though it turns out I am kind of super invested in Pike now? To the point that I get a little upset when I remember what the end of his story is going to be? (I’m aware they’ve talked about retconning that to be less tragic but let’s be real, “less tragic” is not this show’s forte.)

Pike, you silly boy. This crew is ready to mutiny at, like, all times. You didn’t need a speech.

Next week: Airiam finally loses her shit. “Give me a consistent backstory!” she yells, throwing the writers around the set.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

The I in Vampire: Joss Whedon and the Philosophy of Identity

by Dan H

Monday, 21 September 2009

Dan almost manages to say something nice about Joss Whedon~

Recently I did two things. I read The Pig That Wants to be Eaten - a nicely accessible book of philosophical thought experiments – and I watched Series five of Angel (review forthcoming from Kyra or myself, special exclusive spoiler preview, it’s shit).

One of the infuriating things about S5 of Angel is its blatant disregard for any of the show’s prior mythology (to be fair, this was partly due to network pressure). The girls at Boils and Blinding Torment get particularly furious about this, complaining about the way it craps all over the notion that vampires are in any way different to regular people. To quote them quoting Buffy

To paraphrase almost every character in Buffy ever: A vampire is not the person they appear to be. They walk like them, they talk like them, they have access to their memories, they might even do their hair like them, but it’s not them.

Which is pretty darn clear, and is, as the girls observed, spelled out in the first episode, and about every five episodes thereafter.

The thing is, while it’s spelled out like that, it’s pretty clear that it’s not like that. Jessee pops up in the second damned episode and seems quite convinced that apart from being “connected to everything” he’s still the same guy he always was. Angelus, while evil, still has a lot of Angel’s basic personality traits (“it’s just … you’re still the only thing he thinks about” is I believe how Willow describes it). Not only is there textual evidence against the whole “demon in a Xander suit” theory (and very little to support it except maybe that scene in series two where Angel’s “inner demon” beats up that other demon inside Angel’s body), there’s also some fairly fundamental problems with the whole idea of something that has your appearance, memories and personality being, in any meaningful sense “not you”.

Memory, Continuity, and Tom Riker

The question of who “you” actually are is a horrendously difficult one in philosophical terms. In practical terms, you know that you’re you, other people aren’t you and that’s an end to it. In the world of the philosophy of identity it’s far trickier.

One of the thought experiments presented in TPtWtbE is the teleporter problem. Suppose you go through a Star Trek matter transporter. It scans your body, and reduces it to data. Then it blasts you into atoms, and reconstructs you miles away from (presumably) completely different parts. None of the characters in Star Trek seem remotely bothered by this but it raises a lot of difficult questions. If the person who is reconstituted at the other end of the teleporter is made from completely different atoms from the person who went in, in what sense are they the same person?

The problem is compounded by the fact that the person who goes into the teleporter and the person who comes out are in fact capable of living independent lives. In a relatively famous episode, it is discovered that exactly that had happened to Riker. A transporter accident had split him into two people, both with exactly the same memories and experiences, and both believing themselves to be the “original” Will Riker. The Trek episode neatly dodged a lot of the nastier problems involved with this kind of conundrum by having the “other will” be one who had been stuck on a remote planet for several years, making it fairly clear to one and all that the Will Riker who has been, y'know, on TV all this time is the real one.

A similar idea crops up in The Prestige - Tesla's teleporting machine doesn't destroy the original, so you always get two copies, an Hugh Jackman solves the problem by drowning himself. This creates a terribly haunting image in the original film, but it's interesting that in many ways the machine functions identically to the “real” teleporter in Star Trek. It's just that the way it disposes of the “original” is less neat.

I understand that the way a lot of philosophers resolve such issues is with a concept called “Continuity of Consciousness” - broadly speaking if the individual coming out of the transporter remembers being the person who went into it, they can be said to be the same person.

Of course there are arguments against this definition (the two Rikers and the Tesla machine highlight one of them) but it's still extremely useful, and it's very interesting when applied to Buffy vampires.

The Buffy vamp remembers its human life. This is described in early episodes as “having access” to the human's memories, with the implication that the vampire knows itself to be a demon, and simply uses the human's memories to trick people into thinking it's something else, but this is clearly untrue. We witness the transformations of several vampires, and all of them clearly genuinely consider themselves to be the person who got bit, not some alien parasite. They have, in a word, continuity of consciousness. Not only that, but no vampire ever displays knowledge or memory of having existed independently as a demon.

Of course once a person becomes a vampire they are changed - they lose their soul (which seems to have a rather nebulous effect, certainly it doesn't seem to alter their sense of identity very much) and become Evil, but you can't really say that they're different people except in the metaphorical sense that we are all “different people” when we are – say – drunk.

This has particular consequences when it comes to little things like moral culpability.

Blame, Responsibility, and Evil

Even if you accept that vampires, whatever the show might say, are the same people they were when they were alive, it's still perfectly reasonable to say that they are the same people but evil(it's also perfectly reasonable to argue that the “but evil” segment of that sentence renders them not the same person at all, what isn't reasonable is arguing that they're suddenly a demon occupying somebody else's body – whatever the text says, Buffy vamps clearly don't work like that).

But even here we run into a bit of a stumbling block. Okay, vampires are evil. They kill people, because that's what they do, hence the slayage. Except that repeatedly, starting lest we forget in series two when Spike turns against Angelus, vampires have shown that they are capable of choosing to do good – or at the very least not to do evil. Now frequently they choose it for selfish reasons: Spike helps save the world because he likes being evil in it, and later fights demons because he enjoys hurting demons. The vampires at the dodgy place Riley goes to avoid killing people because it helps them stay under the radar. Harmony goes on the cowblood because it's a condition of her employment at Wolfram and Hart.

Now on the one hand, this makes the vampires that actually do kill people way more reprehensible. On the other hand, it makes killing vampires on spec a little bit dodgy. Yes, some vampires kill people, but a great many of them don’t, either because of artificial constraints (a chip in the head) emotional constraints (I haz soul! It make me sad if I do the killing!) or rational self-interest (killing people will get me fired, killing people will make them less likely to let me feed on them repeatedly). These, not to put too fine a point on it, are pretty much the three reasons that regular people don’t go around committing murder.

Now true, vampires are still much more likely to kill people than humans, but to get all formal logic about it, you can’t say that all vampires are killers – they are clearly capable of choosing not to kill – which leaves you only with “some vampires are killers” which is kinda useless. This means that staking vampires the moment they rise is basically a form of racial profiling. It’s effective racial profiling, to be sure, since they’re mostly going to go on to be mass murderers, but it’s much less cut and dried than the original remit of “a demon in the body of your friend”.

Dolls, Identity, and Consent

The whole philosophy of identity issue gets even more interesting (and even more problematic) in Dollhouse. Is that me saying something positive about the show? Well yeah, sort of. The actual philosophy of identity bit is kind of interesting – and on some levels it seems to be what Joss is interested in (q.v. the “it makes humanity irrelevant” speech in Man on the Street) – unfortunately because Joss is pathologically incapable of writing a show that doesn’t have EYE YAM TEH FEMINISTS scrawled all over the front in crayon, he muddies the water by making it something that is also about the abuse of women by men who aren’t him.

The problem with Dollhouse (why yes, I am recycling content from an old article) is that it brings up a whole lot of important rape myths and then not only fails to challenge them, but dips the whole thing in a the kind of abstract philosophy that dickheads use so that they can accuse feminists of being “too emotional”.

To quote one blogger whose name, weblog, and other identifying features I have totally forgotten: “the thing I love about this fandom is that you can always find somebody willing to argue that it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed”.

The problem is that “it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed” is actually part of several interesting philosophical questions about identity, free will, and perception. The problem is that rape is not in any way the right subject to be using as a vehicle for these questions. The concept of consent and complicity is complex enough in real world rape cases that it doesn’t need imaginary supertechnology muddying the waters. The abstract philosophy of the Dollhouse contributes to, rather than challenging, the prevailing notion that consent is so vague and ill-defined that anything short of a clear “no” counts.

One of the things I really liked about The Pig that Wants to be Eaten was the way in which it tempered its abstract content with pragmatism. In its discussion of the

Ship of Theseus

, for example, the author points out that the identity of the “real” ship depends on what you want to do with it. If, for example, you were looking for forensic evidence in a murder investigation, you would want the physical components that had been present at the time of the crime. If on the other hand you were looking for Theseus himself, you'd want the ship that was actually in his possession.

The abstract, philosophy-of-identity stuff in Dollhouse is at odds with the simple, practical fact that the Dollhouse is all kinds of fucked up. If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show. Unfortunately the nature of the Dollhouse makes abstract theorizing about identity an offensive disservice to its victims. Yes, you can wonder to what extent Echo's imprints are real people with volition, and to what extent therefore they are moral agents in their own right capable of, amongst other things, consenting to sex. The problem is that the house's “brainwash and bone” routine is so close to real-world date-rape that it becomes genuinely uncomfortable.

Which is a shame, because the actual ideas are rather interesting.

Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Whedonverse

~

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Arthur B

at 14:18 on 2009-09-21

A similar idea crops up in The Prestige - Tesla's teleporting machine doesn't destroy the original, so you always get two copies, an Hugh Jackman solves the problem by drowning himself. This creates a terribly haunting image in the original film,

Uh, actually

the novel came first

. Though you are right that there's a particularly striking image that results from this, if it's the same one from the novel I'm thinking of.

That's a nitpick though, and I completely agree with the rest of your points here. I think the conclusive thing is that, whilst not a compulsive

Buffy

-watcher, I've seen at least a season or two's worth of episodes, and I've

never

even caught an inkling of the idea that vampires are not basically the same people they were before the Embrace (TM White Wolf) but with kewl powerz, simply because I never saw an episode where it was explicitly stated. Which I suppose is another good philosophical question: if you cut out the episodes which make the "they're different people" thing explicit, and a viewer can't work out that vampires are different people from the humans they used to be through observation, can it really be said to be true?

(The best example of using this plot point right, in my book, is

Dracula

; part of the reason the vampirisation of Lucy is so horrifying is that vampire-Lucy is so utterly different from normal-Lucy.)

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Dan H

at 15:36 on 2009-09-21Sorry, you're right, the use of the word "original" in that sentence is entirely specious. I think in my head i was using "original" to mean "before it was co-opted to be an example in a short article about the philosophy of identity".

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Niall

at 22:37 on 2009-09-21Must ... resist ... urge ... to debate ... Buffyverse ... mythology and metaphysics ... must ... resist ...

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:36 on 2009-09-21Ooh, interesting. Hmm. Yes.

Two very

obiter dicta

:

On the rape / brainwashing point, I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn't help to make the same sort of distinction as is made in law between theft (taking another person's property without permission) and fraud (using deceit to trick another person into giving you his property). The word 'rape' was until only a few decades ago almost entirely confined to violent and plainly non-consensual violation. That, of course, is only because society hadn't got far enough in reducing toleration of that extreme form of sexual abuse for it to even begin seriously looking at less obvious forms. But it does also, rightly or wrongly, cause a certain trickiness when we use the same word to denote sex where there is ostensibly consent but the consent is vitiated by, for example, incapacity. On the one hand using 'rape' in this broader sense is strategically shrewd because, now that everyone pretty much agrees that 'classic' violent rape is wrong and is a real problem, saying that something else is also rape immediately challenges people to think again about that other thing and may well shock them into new understanding. But on the other hand, as with assertions like 'meat is murder' or 'property is theft', there is a risk that people simply say, consciously or unconsciously, 'No, that's plainly not literally true and therefore I can ignore whatever point underlies it'. Whereas more progress might be made by treating the two things as separate and concentrating on getting people to acknowledge that the second is also bad. One might say that to some extent this panders to the tendency to regard 'fraud-type-rape' (if I can for the moment call it that without seeming to imply an actual analogy or to trivialize the whole business with my sloppy terminology) as less bad than 'theft-type-rape', it might at least make more progress in solidifying a consensus that 'fraud-type-rape' is actually wrong to some degree. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a time when theft was recognized as bad but fraud wasn't; nowadays, though, fraud is often regarded as actually worse than theft because it involves an abuse not only of the institution of property but also of human trust. Anyway, perhaps this isn't the right article for this line of thought...

The second thing is that the two links in the article don't work because in each case the URL they're trying to point to has somehow got the URL for the Ferretbrain articles index tacked onto the front, in addition to the usual quotation-marks-coming-out-as-'&8221' problem.

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http://belmanoir.livejournal.com/

at 00:47 on 2009-09-22Actually, the Tesla machine functions entirely differently in the book--the duplicate that is created in the book is not really capable of functioning independently, so the philosophical/ethical issues are still present but very different. The movie DID come up with the image Dan is discussing.

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Arthur B

at 01:25 on 2009-09-22Ah, I was thinking of the image right at the end of the book, but now it occurs to me that that only happens in the framing story, which wasn't included in the film.

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Robinson L

at 22:00 on 2009-09-24It's perfectly simple, Dan. Removing the soul counts as an involuntary alignment shift to either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil (I don't think there are many vampires I'd characterize as Lawful Evil). Side effects may include some changes in personality which go beyond those associated Character Alignment, although this has only been documented in one case (Angel), and as you point out, it's not like he's a different person—more like the same person under radically different circumstances.

Now, vampires can act outside their Alignment (Harmony trying to stay friends with Cordelia in Season 2 or 3 would be an even better example), although Spike takes it to ridiculous levels in

Buffy

Season 5. Evil is just the default.

Contrast with Russel T Davies' depiction of the Daleks and Cybermen in the new

Doctor Who

. You kind of have to admire the guy for sticking to the concept that they're without personality and totally evil—no matter how blisteringly dull this makes them as villains, or the stories they appear in. Whedon, on the other hand, through out the whole “vampires without personalities” angle (probably without even realizing what he was doing) pretty much as soon as it threatened his ability to tell an entertaining story. There's probably a lesson to be learned in all that.

Interesting question about whether vampires can be considered monsters in the moral sense, even without souls. Of course, ever since Season 2 (still referring to

Buffy

), I was wondering why the couldn't just restore the souls of all the vampires they encountered. Or at least a couple, like the Alternate Willow from Season 3.

If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show.

Yes, but they would also have to make the plots and characters and dialogue and trivialities like that more

interesting

, too. Even without the unfortunate implications of the Dollhouse-as-human-trafficking angle, there's still the

Dollhouse

-as-fecking-boring-tv-show issue to contend with. Without an engaging

story

with which to prevent it, all the deep philosophizing in the world is so much wasted screen time.

@Jamie: Really? The links work just fine for me.

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:54 on 2009-09-24

Really? The links work just fine for me.

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

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Rami

at 06:37 on 2009-09-25

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

Not at all. I've added some smarts to the Ferret so it shouldn't happen again.

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Arthur B

at 15:04 on 2009-09-25I confess: I used

seeecret poweeers

to dive in and fix the links for everyone's short-term convenience.

Which isn't to downplay the importance of Rami's unique ability to alter the ferret at will, or Jamie's keen bug-spotting powers.

TEAMWORK!

(picture of Captain Planet and cast goes here)

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:04 on 2009-09-27Go Planet!

Incidentally, I do wonder sometimes whether it would be kind to newcomers if it said somewhere on the site who has the secret powers. Or indeed who the editor is. But most of the time I enjoy the fact that it doesn't.

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http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/

at 22:19 on 2009-09-29You might be interested in the Less Wrong post

Timeless Identity

. Spoiler warning: it turns out to be a sales pitch for cryonic preservation. But it's good up until that point.

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Dan H

at 11:18 on 2011-01-10Sorry, I know this is an old post but I was just playing with the Random Article function and I've just found the article linked from the bottom of this comments section.

ARGH ARGH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

Firstly: you know somebody is a nutbag when they say "as we have seen in..." followed by a link to a post on their own blog.

Secondly: you can't solve the transporter problem by reference to quantum mechanics. Not only does quantum mechanics not really apply to macroscopic bodies, but it ignores the fundamental question of what identity is by clinging to the (completely false) notion that it is somehow impossible to distinguish between particles.

Thirdly: I love how this long winded nonsense about "rationality" ends in something little better than Pascal's Wager - sign up for cryonics because if you're right you get to be immortal and if you aren't you don't lose anything.

Fourthly: GAAAAH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 17:41 on 2011-01-10The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating. A lot of his stuff seems to be totally nutty, or at the very least exceedingly pretentious, like "the ten virtues of a rationalist." That said, some of his writing is really good.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

is a hilarious essay on epistemology that I found pretty convincing.

He also wrote a Harry Potter fanfic:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

which I thought was quite funny as well, even if he occasionally stops the story to complain about JK Rowling's plotting.

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Dan H

at 18:43 on 2011-01-10

The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating

Fascinating he might be, but I find people who cite "quantum mechanics" in support of their personal ideologies extremely irritating. Quantum mechanics says nothing about the nature of identity except as it relates to sub-atomic particles. You certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity and you certainly-certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity by using it to argue, falsely, that physical continuity exists where it doesn't on the basis of the erroneous belief that all electrons are really the same electron.

Quantum mechanics *does* say that "identity" is not a measurable property of particles - when I say "this electron" what I really mean is "the electron that currently has these properties" and if I look at the electron again and its properties have changed I cannot meaningfully describe it as being either the same electron or a different electron.

The same ideas can be applied to human identity as well, and funnily enough they have been for years going back to the original Ship of Theseus. Quantum Mechanics doesn't offer us any new insight into the issue. Just because it is true that the identity of a sub-atomic particle depends only on its quantum numbers, that does not mean that the identity of a person depends only on the quantum numbers of the particles in their body (certainly it cannot be a *necessary* component of identity because I am pretty sure the quantum numbers of the particles in my body are changing all the damned time).

Sorry, personal bugbear.

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 19:03 on 2011-01-10I don't disagree with any of that--I just really wanted to take the opportunity to pimp his epistemology essay, which is not about quantum.

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Dan H

at 19:21 on 2011-01-10Yeah, the epistemology essay is pretty cool, although it gets a bit straw mannish towards the end. Then again, if it's good enough for Galileo...

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 05:16 on 2011-01-11I see I should have specified why I find him "fascinating" in my first comment. I was going to, but didn't because I was too hungry.

On the man's main website he says that he "wears two hats." One writes about the "fine art of human rationality." Now, this is an insufferably pretentious way of putting things, and some of his articles follow suit, but most of his writings are actually quite good. What particularly strikes me is his phrase, "intelligence and learning are worth nothing if used to defeat themselves." He talks about the danger of trying to confirm ideas, various cognitive biases, and then, (this is the one that really got me thinking) the fact that even studying psychology is dangerous if you're not scrupulously honest, because the more you know about how people rationalize, the more easily you can find reason to discredit anything you don't want to believe.

The other hat is "concerned with artificial intelligence." And everything he says about this appears to be goats on fire. He supposedly works for the "Singularity Institute," a "public charity funded by individual donations." Sounds like a con man, except he's too obsessive.

It's just a jarring juxtaposition. I can't wrap my head around the existence of a person who can write at length about how to do good science, the cognitive flaws that generate wishful thinking, and the difference between a real explanatory theory and vague pseudoscience--then turn around and hit you with cloning, quantum baffle and singularities.

[svartikotturinn]

Trimming down my OK Cupid profile: the ‘before’ part

My self-summary

אוֹקִ֥יר אֱנ֖וֹשׁ מִפָּ֑ז וְאָדָ֖ם מִכֶּ֥תֶם אוֹפִֽיר׃

I’m an unpredictable but fiercely empathetic person, with a somewhat off-beat sense of humour. A huge fan of languages and human cultures. Moved to Haifa in Dec. 2017 and loving it, now working as a tutor and loving it too. Currently working my MA in sign language linguistics at Haifa U, planning to study teaching ESL at NUI Galway later on and later then going to settle abroad somewhere undecided to work in Deaf education (likely Montréal).If you want to know more about me, you can read more about me on my Tumblog. You should probably read the ‘About’ page and maybe look through my more important posts (for some of my observations and opinions), and in general pay particular attention to this post. (I’m not re-typing everything over here…)

Also, I have a Quora account. And a mostly inactive YouTube channel, with Hebrew CC & English subs for all vids there.

What I'm doing with my life

Having finished my BA in linguistics and East Asian studies, I translate and teach Hebrew and English whenever I get to (I translated the young adult fantasy novel Murderess by Daya Marnin to English), while learning a whole bunch of languages, most notably improving my already decent Japanese, and being as politically active (staunch leftist here) as circumstances allow. Also, I am now a tutor for K–12 students, teaching English, math, and Hebrew grammar & composition.

You’re more than welcome to contact me if you’re interested in learning Hebrew!

Also, I’m trying to make some money off my poetry, either through personalised commissions or through Patreon supporters.

I'm really good at

Languages are definitely my thing. I’m studying all languages currently available on Duolingo (finished 11 already and counting) and then some, and when Duolingo releases more I’ll add them to the list. (So you’re more than welcome to tell me what languages get you going… 😉)

Other than that I’m very good with words, as a translator and a poet (as I pointed out, I translated a book, and it had poetry in it; I’ve written poetry that’s moved people to tears, too), and I’m a pretty good dancer. Also, I’m creative and rather skilful in the kitchen, having honed these skills somewhat during the time I was a vegan. (If I like you, I’ll definitely make you something nice!)

My golden rule

‘Integrity above all.’

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

BOOKS

My all-time favourite is Summer Celebration by Natan Alterman (look it up on TV Tropes; I wrote that article). Other than that I loved:

 I Am a Cat by Natsume Souseki

Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Lover by A. B. Yehoshu‘a

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Leviathan

The Narrow Road to Oku by Matsuo Basho: I actually wrote a book report on it and dressed up as Basho for Purim in the 10th grade

…and others

FILMS

My all-time favourite is Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Other than that I loved:

everything by Satoshi Kon

almost everything by Hayao Miyazaki (I’ve seen ALL of his films), the only exception being Porco Rosso

Love & Pop and Shiki Jitsu by Hideaki Anno

Wild Strawberries and The Best Intentions by Ingmar Bergman

anything by Akira Kurosawa

The White Ribbon and Funny Games by Michael Haneke

almost every Israeli film I’ve seen

almost every German film I’ve seen

The Rocky Horror Picture Show & Shock Treatment

(Needless to say, I’m somewhat of a film enthusiast; this doesn’t even begin to cover it)

SHOWS

My all-time favourite is Hideaki Anno’s life-changing fantastic Neon Genesis Evangelion. Others include quite a few good anime series and some non-anime ones:

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)

Elfen Lied

Samurai Champloo

Cowboy Bebop

Kino’s Journey

Gunbuster

Ouran High School Host Club

Loveless

Shinsekai Yori

Aggretsuko

Live action:

Kidding

The Good Wife & The Good Fight

Orange is the New Black

Dexter

Breaking Bad

Borgen

Ray Donovan

Please Like Me

Looking

Jinn

some Israeli series

Non-anime animated:

Steven Universe

Adventure Time

MUSIC

Pink Floyd is my favourite band. I also love:

Bands:

Sigur Rós, especially Von (though I struggle to listen to them after Orri Páll Dýrason got #MeToo’d)

HaBiluim

HaMechashefot

The Seatbelts

Enigma

Jane Bordeaux (my guilty pleasure)

Stereopony (another guilty pleasure)

Individual artists:

Nujabes

Zemfira

John Coltrane

Antonio Carlos Jobim

Thijs van Leer

Hughes de Courson

Jacques Brel

Composers:

Bach

Beethoven

Prokofiev

Scriabin

Purcell

(These lists are by no means exhaustive…)

Generally, I find Modern Hebrew to be just the right amount of rugged for rock music. But I’m probably biased because Israeli rock was very much in vogue here when I was a little kid…

My taste is generally very eclectic though I don’t listen to music all that much on my own; basically, it amounts to ‘everything good, especially ambience, Western art music, chillout, jazz, prog/post-rock, and folk’.

FOOD

I was a vegan for almost two years starting around November 2014; it was somewhat of a challenge, but it did teach me to be very creative in the kitchen, and very aware of vegans’ needs. Generally, I’m pretty open-minded, but I particularly love:

East Asian food: Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese

French and Italian food

Seafood

Six things I could never do without

Cats

Human interaction (in moderation!)

Textbooks and other study materials

The ability to watch films

The ability to listen to music when I want to

Good food

I spend a lot of time thinking about

My day-to-day obligations, politics (including SJ), my ambitions, general philosophy… There’s plenty.

A perfect day

A day I feel I’ve been productive in: having read something, or learned something, worked out, cooked, written… and spent time with loved ones.

If I were sent to jail, I'd be arrested for

Either something I didn’t do, or some heroic act of vigilantism.

You should message me if

And now for what I’m looking for, especially for a more prolonged interaction.

As I said, I am obviously into languages and East Asian cultures (specifically Japanese), but I’m also happy to learn. If you’re willing to learn more about these topics (and in general) but your main field of interest is different, I’d be delighted, as I’d feel we could complete each other. (Same goes for speaking a foreign language.)

Genuine empathy matters a lot to me. If I think you lack it or deny it arbitrarily, I’ll be alarmed, but genuine warmth is something I love and will likely be drawn to you for.

With regards to personal convictions (e.g. political and religious): my main requirement is that you stick by what you believe in and be able to reasonably explain why you do. I may disagree with you fiercely, but I’ll respect you deeply for sticking by an informed opinion—I’ve gotten along surprisingly well with people from a very wide range of opinions.

Also, a pretty important pet peeve of mine: if I’m not calm or smiling there’s almost certainly a good, objective reason for it. You’re more than welcome to address those, or offer comfort and understanding, which I’ll appreciate immensely, but it really rubs me the wrong way when people try to tell me to react differently just because (‘Aw c’mon… Smile!’).

That’s about it in terms of personality. As for looks, I like soft facial features, smooth skin, and any body type that isn’t fat, or excessively muscular on women (nothing against those body types, they’re just not my taste).

Finally, as for expectations from talking: I’m not looking into anything too serious, for a variety of reasons. But I could make concessions if truly swept off my feet…

[thebeethathums]

Writing Question Tag Thing

Tagged by the always amazing @angryteapot and I stole their under the cut message because I am lazyyy.

Some of these answers are pretty long, so if you’re interested in learning a bit about me, then by all means, read under the cut! 

Q: What is your coffee order?

Coffee isn’t really my jam. I’m more of tea drinker. I like most teas and I vary a lot but my current order is a London Fog... it’s like... Earl Grey tea with Milk and sweetener. Pretty good.

Q: What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

I don’t really consider myself cool thing kind of person but, to me, two things stand out. First, I’ve seen the Mona Lisa up close like behind the rope >:) My Grandmother was still spry enough at the time to travel with only minor accommodations but the Louvre is massive so they offered her a wheelchair. She graciously accepted and the guards let us go behind the rope so she could see. An amazing and serendipitous opportunity. Second, I cosplayed Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time at Comic-Con with a couple of friends dressed as Marceline and Finn and we met the voice actors for Marceline and her Dad! It was pretty awesome. YES, I’m a nerd. Deal with it.

Q: Who has been your biggest mentor?

Honestly, it was the lady my parents hired to help me with my college transfer application. She was a tough love kind of person (which I needed at the time) and one of the only people to tell me that what I could do art and writing wise HAD VALUE. That was kind of a turning point for me in a lot of ways. I will always ALWAYS be grateful to her for that.

Q: What has been your most memorable writing project?

OKAY. So fanfiction wise. Observers. Pretty obvi. Academically, my thesis for my English degree. I wrote about the idea of ‘the other’ in the Mass Effect video game series (ALL THREE OF THEM.) It was very long and involved lots of gameplay for research purposes. Personally, the most memorable for me out of them all would be the first short story I wrote. It had a really interesting concept and was well received by my peer reviewers and that made me happy which made it memorable *shrug*

Q: What does your writing path look like, from the earliest days until now?

I’ve always been a bit of a scribbler in a lot of ways. I had a poem published after some sort of school contest or something and I kept a sort of haphazard journal for years. To be completely honest, I didn’t start writing anything that wasn’t for school until fan fiction. That’s not to say I didn’t like writing. I just always channeled it into an academic setting. Which meant my teachers got A LOT of strange papers from me... to name a few: Aliens in Mystic anthropology vs. Aliens in modern media, Shakespeare's Effects on Science Fiction, Stage or Screen: How well do musicals translate into cinema, A Cinematic Analysis of Monsoon Wedding, Van Helsing the Hugh Jackman movie related Bram Stoker’s Dracula... among others. I think I also wrote an entire philosophy paper about unicorns at one point. I was that kid that always took a prompt somewhere the teacher never really intended. It wasn’t until I transferred to a different college that I felt like I had anything important to say story wise... and then fan fiction became an almost frantic outlet to get all of it out- followed quickly by some original work and more poetry. It’s been kind of a wild ride from there.

Q: What is your favorite part about writing?

Honestly, the control. I love being able to do whatever the heck I want with characters- mine or canon. Since I don’t really plan all that much when I write it starts out more of an idea like what if this person existed. What if they were all in this place. And then I get to run with it however I want and that is the best feeling. Soo... Control and details. I love world building.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

It depends on day. I’m not an early riser and thankfully my job doesn’t make be get up early at the moment. Work days I’m up by 8:30, work by ten, work either 7 or 9 hours. Then home and SLEEP. Front facing sales jobs for introverts are exhausting TBH. I hate it. Looking for something different ASAP. Off days are more relaxed but I’m a caregiver for my Grandma so mostly cooking and cleaning and then chilling with my puppers/writing/whatever else catches my fancy.

Q: What does your writing process look like?

Mostly staring at a google doc for an embarrassing amount of time. I only seem to have two writing modes. Staring or greatly inspired. When I’m actually writing good chunks it usually because I imagined some bits of how it will go over a day or so and then it just flows. Other times it’s staring and rewriting things a million times. I suppose that's pretty normal.

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve gotten?

Letting go of toxic people in my life. I’m a big giver in a lot of ways and shy so I don’t make friends easily... unfortunately its led to a lot of situation where I’m taken advantage of or stomped on emotionally. It took me a long time to learn to be picky with who you surround yourself with.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

You can’t force other people to change. I’ve struggled with my relationship with my mother for ages and in an amazingly clear moment, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, if she doesn’t want to make a change to be a positive and more sensitive person toward me then she won't. I can’t force her to change her ways no matter how healthy it would be for both of us. Once I accepted this, things got easier to handle. I see her less but I know exactly what to expect when I do and let things roll off me a little better than I used to.

Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to start writing?

Writing anything, even if it's short and horrible in your mind, is better than writing nothing. Really. When I’m struggling I force myself to at least write something because a bad first draft can only improve whereas no draft can do absolutely squat.

Tagging: No tags. Don’t want to annoy anyone. BUT if anyone would like to answer them TAG me I would love to read your answers!

[braindamageforbeginners]

Q: Can I pray for you?

Yes, Godsdammit, go ahead and pray for me. I get that people don’t want to be weird, and, for some inexplicable internet reason, I’m rapidly becoming some weird brain cancer idol/shrine on Facebook and Instagram (which would explain the creepy robo-prayer calls I occasionally get from :prayer centers” (I’m also old enough to remember when “prayer centers” were called “churches” and/or “temples”). So, here’s the deal: even though I consider myself resourceful, lucky (in a weird way), and cunning, there is literally no way I would know whether you’re praying for me unless you specifically ask or tell me. I appreciate consent, but, really, just go ahead and pray. Unless God is like a special delivery by UPS, and I have to be home at a certain hour to take delivery (again, theologically, that would explain an awful lot). My apologies for running roughshod over a good-hearted request and all that, but your own Holy Book* actually has something applicable: “ And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites. are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and. in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men “ One almost feels a screenwriting possibility...

 EXT. GOLGOTHA - DAY - In the background, the followers of Brian are singing an unorthodox but merry song. A crowd gathers around one of the crosses. CHRIST: Why hast thou forsaken me?! CHRISTIAN 1: We haven’t forsaken you, dude. We’re just waiting for the “Kickstarter”pledges to reach the stretch goals before we save you. You okay, Jesus? CHRIST: Oh, rather.** I was wondering, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask for some pliers and a step-stool. CHRISTIAN 1: Yes, since they haven’t been invented, yet. But you seem like you got this. CHRIST: Hang on... CHRISTIAN: See you in three days, dude

I mean, I get that the LDS got into trouble for baptizing Anne Frank, and I’m not advocating that anyone do a post-mortem baptism, unless they can rig me up like “Weekend at Bernie’s,” but, at the same time, Anne probably has bigger, more pressing issues than what is or isn’t being done in her name (especially since we’re still hostile, as a nation, toward refugees and immigrants, which is what the Frank family hoped to be... before the US denied them travel visas). i can only base that on my own experience, but I feel it’d be faster and easier to get forgiveness than permission. I could be wrong, but I’ve never heard of anyone in dire straits getting angry, post-facto, at being prayed for.

So, today marks the second-to-last infusion before, in an ideal world, the Warlocks cut me loose for observation. Again, it’s been an utterly miserable year, but, at the same time, I do feel almost as if I’ll be adrift. When you put every last scrap of energy and potential into a task like this (not dying a horrible death), suddenly having time or energy to do things like carve out a career (or at least make some sort of money on this blog)(again, you guys are only getting a thin dribble of output; there was literally a brief time in my life where had three modes: writing, sleeping, and library).. At the same time, not aggressively and preemptively treating a cancer that is infamous for coming back, is somewhat scary, although I know unending chemo will eventually kill me.

Which brings me to today’s topic, body horror. This is the broad trope/genre of biology horror, usually best-seen in David Croenenberg’s films. It’s not an uncommon sensation for cancer patients to have some distal clump of cells come alive and attack. For most patients, however, that story usually ends with, “And then me arse fell off, and the doctors knew what it was!”(Reminder to self: schedule colonoscopy and/or other recommended preventive/screening procedures, ASAP). For neurosurgery patients - those lucky enough to end the story with, “And then I had neurosurgery,” It’s a slightly different story. For the first few months post-surgery, your sutures hurt like hell - like any major surgery would, I’d imagine. Then comes the longer phase, when they have an odd, itching/stinging sensation. For everyone keeping track, that’s not a continuous sensation - it’ll be maybe a minute or two out of every week, and, when you reach up to scratch, the pain receptors in your scalp will slap you away. After that, you enter the body horror part of neurosurgery, the itchy phase. This is the shortest of the three, and I will admit, horrifying dander is one of the less-offputting aspects of it (you don’t know what relief is until you scratch out self-dissolving stitches). I apologize for that graphic description, but it’s important. So, on November 1 of last year - er, 2017 - I had my most recent neurosurgery (that’s #3, for those keeping track at home). And then, as expected (There’s a reason I started the blog well before any treatment), everything in my life went into hyperdrive, and I didn’t have time to keep track of my new scars (and, really, once handfuls of hair start coming out in the shower, you’re disinclined to investigate further). So, it wasn’t until very, very recently that I realized how very itchy the right side of my head is. Which bodes well for the time frame of entering the recovery period shortly.

I mentioned in a previous post that I never got a PICC or CVS - which are semi-permanent venous access devices - because I had a shunt in my skull last year (2017), and one opening for opportunistic infections every election cycle seems a more-than-generous opportunity. In a year of chemo, that’s generally seemed like the better bet (for me, anyway), even though I have a blood draw every week. Today was the one time I’ve faltered in that decision. I have mentioned that I am notoriously hard to install in IV in  - it’s a horrible feeling when you’re on a first-name basis with all the nurses in the chemo ward; it’s dwarfed when not only can you recognise everyone, but the nurse at your station not only recognizes you, she literally ducks out on-sight and calls Alex over)(the nurse on shift today gets full marks for listening to me  complain about Alex - “He’s not terribly affable or gentle, and way too fast” - and retorting, “Well, that’s men.”). My previous find-a-vein record is seven. I don’t know if that record was achieved today, I stopped counting after four  However, eventually an IV was installed and Keith Richards’ essence distilled into my circulatory system. Then, the second hour, we all waited for my heart to explode (yes, that is exactly what they do, although they have an automated blood pressure cuff to aid their measurements). Then, oddly enough, I encountered a friend from a support group, Which wouldn’t normally be worthy of comment, except she’s a fan (hey, Sarah!), and, based the latest data, the folks who actually use social media and/or social publishing to keep tabs on me/read my stuff are: 1. Close friends and family that are legally obligated to do so

2. Distant friends and family that I probably haven’t thought about in years (hey guys)(if you’re worried that you’re “distant friends and family,” I’ll pray for you)

3. Inhabitants of Narnia or the Hundred-Acre Wood (or wherever people on the Internet live

4. Racing in or out of parking lots as I am leaving

The bad news for today - hopefully - is that this infusion is going to be a bad one, based on how sore I already am, just 3 hours post-infusion. The good news is, I’ve got an Advent Calendar of assorted mostly-legal substances to help my battered psyche onward, I mean, drugs are bad, kids, unless directly monitored and prescribed by a physician.*** Anyway, next week will be the last infusion, hopefully, and, even more hopefully it’ll be followed by a long, uneventful life. That would be ideal, for me; however, since my life is run on the principle of, “What would make the most interesting narrative” I’m going with, “Even odds I’ll come down with Ebola before Monday.”

*My Holy Book is, of course,  Dolly Parton’s autobiography. **In this adaptation, Jesus is played by Hugh Laurie, circa 1993 ***Odd final thought of the day: gateway drugs are real, and they serve as the way out of some amazingly awful other drugs.

[imjustthemechanic]

The Stone Knight

Part 1/? - Two Statues Part 2/? - A Curious Interview Part 3/? - John Doe Part 4/? - Escape Attempt Part 5/? - Making the News Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - More Impossible Part 8/? - The Shield Thieves Part 9/? - Reality Sinks In Part 10/? - Preparing a Quest Part 11/? - The Marvelous History of Sir Stephen Part 12/? - Uninvited Guests Part 13/? - So That’s What It Does Part 14/? - The What and the Where Part 15/? - Gearing Up Part 16/? - Just Passing Through Part 17/? - Dinner with Druids Part 18/? - Kracness Henge Part 19/? - A Task Interrupted Part 20/? - The Red Death Part 21/? - Aphelion Part 22/? - The Stone Giants Part 23/? - Nat the Giant Killer Part 24/? - An Interrogation Part 25/? - Guilt Part 26/? - Rushman’s Brilliant Idea Part 27/? - Hunter in Hiding Part 28/? - Ridiculous Part 29/? - The Guy from Barton Part 30/? - Sherwood Forest Part 31/? - Buckeye’s Fall Part 32/? - Robin Hood Part 33/? - Fantasies and Consequences Part 34/? - Swords of Damocles Part 35/? - The Road to London

Sir Stephen is confused by democracy, Nat does more worrying, and Robin Hood thinks skyscrapers are cool.

           They stopped for lunch in Leicester, and then Sharon took over driving while Nat moved to the back of the van, next to Robin, to eat a take-out sandwich.  Robin Hood had been talkative before they’d stopped in Barton-in-Fabis, but now he was quiet, looking out the window at the countryside rolling by and chewing thoughtfully.  Nat wondered what he was thinking.  Was he imagining the life he could have with Marian?  Wondering what had possessed his alternate self to abandon it?  Pondering the nature of reality?  She didn’t want to interrupt by asking him.

           Besides, she had thoughts of her own to get lost in. Natasha had escaped the secret agent business and gone into hiding as a nobody academic at a university that wasn’t known for the field she’d chosen, because she wanted to be a normal person.  It was a lie, of course – she had never been and would never be normal… but ‘truth’ and ‘lies’ were no longer meaningful categories.  If she really wanted it, that kind of life was within her grasp.  All she needed was another Grail fragment, and she could be Natalie Rushman or any other identity she wished to assume.  

           Really, Natalie Rushman would not be a bad person to be.  She’d grown up in a suburb with parents who loved her and usually had enough money to get by. She had, as Allen had said, danced in ballet recitals and built snowmen and angsted over career choices.  She’d probably done things she’d later regretted, because everybody did that at some point, but she was mostly pretty happy with her life – and, most importantly, she’d never tortured or killed anybody, or been locked up in the cold or forced to abandon a friend on the tundra.  That had been the whole point of creating her: Natalie Allyson Rushman was perfectly, beautifully ordinary.

           But she also wasn’t Natasha Romanov.  The terrible things that Natasha had seen and done in her past had brought her to where she was today, and had taught her lessons that Natalie Rushman would never have had the opportunity to learn. Natalie Rushman wouldn’t have been able to fight her way through the mooks on Flotta, or knock out Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, or work out how to destroy the Red Death’s golems.  The situation Nat was in now needed Natasha Romanov.

           Even after this was over, though… no, the thought of re-writing her past in such a literal fashion made Nat recoil as if she’d just found a tarantula crawling up her arm.  There was a lot of ugly truth in her past, and she had told a lot of lies to cover it.  In the future she would continue to tell lies, because it was the only way she could avoid being thrown in prison, but she preferred to remember the truth, even if nobody else did.  Maybe that was another of the reasons she’d chosen archaeology – because you could learn from the truth.  The ugly parts of it told you the worst that could happen, and you could look back on them and decide to do better in the future.  Lies could not teach, they could only disguise, hiding the painful lessons so that you couldn’t learn or grow from them. They stuck you right back where you started and forced you to make the same mistakes all over again

           “Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it,” she murmured.

           “Hmm?” Robin asked around his mouthful of sandwich.

           “Nothing,” said Nat quickly.  “I probably ought to warn you guys about London.”  Robin Hood and Sir Stephen would have thought of the London of their own centuries as a teeming metropolis.  They’d been absolutely astonished by the size of Inverness and Nottingham, but that wasn’t enough to prepare them.  “The government doesn’t move around anymore, like it did in the Middle Ages.  It stays in London.  Sometimes the Queen stays in other places, but Parliament, which actually rules the country, is in London, and it’s also the economic centre of the country.  It’s one of the biggest cities in the world, with a population of… I think eight million?”  She was pretty sure she’d read that somewhere, but couldn’t recall where.

           “Million?” asked Sir Stephen.

           “Yes, million,” said Natasha.  She took another bite of her sandwich, which she’d almost forgotten about as she pondered.

           “How many is that?” he wanted to know.

           Nat hadn’t realized he didn’t know what the word meant – she’d assumed he just didn’t believe the figure.  She quickly chewed and swallowed so she could explain.  “Oh.  A million is a thousand thousands.”

           Sir Stephen, sitting in the seat directly in front of her, didn’t answer.

           “Do you know how many a thousand is?” asked Nat.

           “Of course I do,” said Sir Stephen.  “So if you were to divide all the inhabitants of London into cohorts of a thousand men…”

           “Men, women, and children,” Nat said.  “We count heads nowadays, not families.”

           “A thousand people,” Sir Stephen corrected himself.  “You could do so eight thousand times?”

           Poor man, he probably thought a thousand was a large number – William had conquered England with only ten thousand men, and at the time that had been an almost unimaginably large army.  As it turned out, an army was exactly what Sir Stephen was thinking about.

           “If half of them are male,” he mused, “and a mere quarter of fighting age, your Queen could call up a force the like of which has never been seen on earth.  That, from London alone!”

           Nat shook her head.  “It doesn’t work that way,” she said.  “These people aren’t soldiers.  The Queen can’t just order them to fight for her.  If there were a battle in London, they would have to be evacuated.”  She hadn’t thought of that yet, but if worst came to worst and the Red Death showed up to take the Grail by force, he would have no end of people to stab or buildings to knock down.  Not to mention the unbelievable carnage if something like the golems got loose in a densely populated area.

           “If she had enough weapons to arm them,” Sir Stephen insisted, “or even just asked them to take up their pitchforks and axes…”

           “They don’t have pitchforks and axes, because they’re not farmers either!” said Nat.  “They’re… they’re merchants and tradespeople and scholars and… and other things you won’t know what they are.  The Queen can’t force people to fight when they’re not trained for it.”

           “If your Queen cannot pardon a criminal nor raise an army, what can she do?” Sir Stephen asked, exasperated.

           “She cuts a lot of ribbons,” said Sam.

           “Shakes a lot of hands,” Sharon agreed.  “Waves at crowds.”

           “She’s on your money,” said Allen.

           “Who makes the laws?” asked Sir Stephen.  “Who leads you in battle?”

           “We vote on that,” Nat explained.  “Like the Romans did, but with less bribery.”

           “But…” Sir Stephen began.

           Sharon interrupted him.  “We haven’t seen any sign of the bad guys in a while, have we?” she asked in a louder voice than necessary, to make the point that she was changing the subject on purpose.

           “No, we haven’t,” Nat agreed – which was odd, now that she thought of it.  Up until they’d left Inverness, Zola and the Red Death had been in step with them the whole time.  They’d gotten to Dr. Hughes and stolen the map, they’d arrived at the henge on Flotta at about the same time, and they’d terrified Darren O’Herlihy.  Now, however, Natasha and the others had been to Barton, to Sherwood Forest, and were on their way to London, and hadn’t encountered any opposition even once.  “What do you think that means?” she asked.  Should they be worried?

           “Perhaps it only means that the ivy and horseshoes are working,” Sir Stephen suggested.  “I never thought I would say such a thing, but bless the witches who sold them to us. Clearly they know their work well.”

           “Or it could mean they’re doing something important while we’re distracted by things they figure are irrelevant,” Nat said.  “If they already knew that Francis had used up his fragment, they might have gone to America or the Continent to look for some that are still active.  Or even directly to the druids, who knows?”

           “Or they know that we’re going directly to the Grail, and they’re following us on the down-low,” said Sam.

           “They don’t seem like down-low types of people,” Sharon observed.

           Having been raised in Russia and worked mostly in America, Natasha was still occasionally startled by just how small Britain was.  Driving the length of a country sounded like something that ought to take a long time, but a determined person could go from Durness to Dover within twenty-four hours.  It had been around ten in the morning when they’d left Barton, and they reached the suburbs of London before two.

           It took the two time travellers a while to realize they were already in the city, and then, as Nat had predicted, they were absolutely astonished by this urban landscape that seemed to go on forever in all directions.

           “A man could live his whole life within the confines of such a city,” Sir Stephen said quietly, “and never know anything existed beyond it.”

           “I think a lot of people do,” Nat said.

           Driving through London, where traffic was thick, almost seemed to take longer than driving to it, especially when they got into the city centre near the Thames.  Natasha started to feel a little shaky when she spotted the outline of the White Tower above the buildings ahead of them.  This was it – they were about to find out whether her theory were correct, or whether she’d wasted everybody’s time.

           At the time it was built, the Tower keep had been the tallest building in London, and it had stayed that way for centuries. It would probably still be impressive to Robin and Sir Stephen if they saw it up close, but for the moment they didn’t even seem to notice it.  Instead, their eyes went past it and up, to something that towered over it by nearly a thousand feet.

           “What is that?” asked Sir Stephen.

           “That’s the Shard,” said Sharon.  “It’s the tallest building in the United Kingdom.”

           “The Tower of London is coming up on our right,” Nat added.  “That’s where I think William the Conqueror hid the Grail.”  It did look rather insignificant with downtown Southwark all around it.  Even the Tower Bridge was over a hundred feet taller.  Time had rendered it nearly impossible to imagine the impact this giant stone keep would have had on a Saxon world, used to timber buildings and defensive ditches.  William’s ambitions now seemed modest indeed.

           Robin and Sir Stephen, however, were still focused on the Shard.  “Do they let people climb it?” Robin asked.  He’d figured out how the windows worked, and now rolled his down so he could stick his head out like a dog for a better look.  “From up there you’d be able to shoot almost anyone in the city!”

           “There’s glass in the windows,” said Sam.

           “Actually, they’ve got an open-air platform at the top, I think,” Sharon said.

           “But they wouldn’t let you take your bow up there anyway,” Nat added.  She was starting to think… Zola couldn’t see or hear what they were doing in the van because of the ivy they’d sellotaped around the windows, but if he were following them he’d definitely know where they stopped.  Why clue him in before absolutely necessary.  “But yeah, you can pay admission and go up, like in the Willis Tower.” Not that they knew what that was.

           “Can we do that?” asked Robin eagerly.

           “We’re not here to sightsee,” said Sharon.

           “Actually…” Nat glanced up at the building again, then shut off her turn signal and headed for the Tower Bridge instead of turning off to the castle itself.  “He’s right – that’s a good vantage point.  If we get some binoculars, we can scope out the whole castle grounds without ever setting foot in them.  It’ll keep the Red Death in the dark a few hours longer.”

           The Shard was even more impressive standing at the base of it looking up.  Everybody craned their necks to see if they could make out the top of it, which was almost lost in the low fog.  They must look, Nat thought, like a bunch of gawking tourists.

           “It looks as if it were built out of air,” said Sir Stephen, taking in the shining steel and glass of the structure.  “I’m not sure I trust it not to fall out from under me.”

           “It’s stayed up so far,” said Nat.  “Let’s see what we can see.”

[formlessmars-blog]

Sub Culture Essay

Introduction

In this essay, the topics of sub-culture within a design is going to be explored with its impact on design holistically and how it impacts design as a whole and why it should be considered in the creation process. The idea is that sub-culture stems from rebellion or desensitization to a parent culture thus creating a group of people who end up separated from its parent culture of which it belongs. 

The idea is to consider not just sub-cultures that may be affected during the design process but rather the idea that a sub-culture that may surface from the result of a design. This notion is mostly observed from a multitude of angles whereby a sub-culture may form out of sheer rebellion or as a response to and a reiteration of a parent culture. 

An in-depth look will be given to the works of Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige and other concepts such as Semiotics and Hegemony whereby an analysis will be made on subculture to dictate it impacts in design. There will also be an exploration of fandoms that stem from an iconic model in pop culture to further reinforce the concept that subculture is important during the design process. 

Subculture, The Meaning of Style

Author Dick Hebdige published a renowned book focusing entirely on subculture within the British scene around the youth culture called Subculture, The Meaning of Style (Hebdige, 2012). In this publication, Hebdige argues that style or fashion in this sense is the catalyst for subculture in the youth scene where he claims that even the most powerless of a teenager can become a punk rocker through sub-culture. 

Hebdige cites a wide range of subcultures within this text; he credits the skinheads to Rastafarians and even goths however he draws a lot from the ideals of structuralism and Marxist ways of thinking. Furthermore, he explains how black cultures like Rastafarianism pass on their values to other youth cultures with specific reference to dreads as imposing an aesthetic drawn from the 'otherness' of black culture. In this context, black culture serves as the fundamental standard by which other cultures are judged due to their impressionable output. 

Hebdige refers to some subcultures as 'cultural noise, whereby they create blockages within the flow of society due to their rebellious nature thus creating interference with mass culture. The blockage represents where a community has failed to meet the requirements of a subculture, and therefore style is where these groups turn in order to express their needs that they wish to be fulfilled. This also reinforces a concept of a dominant culture having a suppressive nature by way of this model mentioned above. 

Through commodification, one can gain an understanding of style. However, such a belief is only relevant when related to its subculture because once removed; it is then unable to express its need for a subculture. Although this entire publication focuses primarily on style as the focus of the subcultures, we can understand through this the idea of the parent-child relationship between the subculture, and its catalyst. It is this model whereby we base our argument that subculture must be considered in design or during the design process, as the relevancy of design can sometimes be dependant on subcultures that exist either for or against parent design. 

Hebdige says “our task becomes to discern the hidden messages inscribed in code on the glossy surfaces of style, to trace them as ‘maps of meaning’ which obscurely re-present the very contradictions they are designed to resolve or conceal.” (Hebdige, 2012)

Influence of Design on Subcultures

In this example, it's important to understand how subcultures are influenced by design, and then, through ontological design, subcultures form due to the impact of design itself. This is where the belief that subcultures may be an integral part of the design process or at least deserves some recognition when design is taking place. 

Examples in popular culture can be seen widely from music. Music is one of the most significant forms of design that holds such a significant impact that can be seen visually through these groups of people. Famous bands such as Metallica, Pink Floyd or even Nirvana have been observed to have played a role in the creation of not just subcultures but ideologies that would be seen to live on and stand the test of time having both contributed to the old school Rock and Grunge scene who, till this very day, is still being carried out and celebrated. 

To dig even further we can look at how design then can become commercialised as it becomes seemingly relatable to a large group of people such that they begin to assimilate the content or the design into being an integral part of their identities, the most famous example of this would be the band The Grateful Dead which is an old school rock band that has amassed such a large following to the degree where their fans are called 'Dead Heads' thus spawning a merchandise line called The Dead Bears which even today can be seen selling for a lot of money all of which began with the album art designed by Bob Thomas. 

It is evident that when mainstream design is commercialised it then gains the potential to be assimilated into or create a subculture thus giving strength, recognition and credibility to its parent culture. 

Relative to this we can also look at mainstream media for influencing subcultures where we can look at Playboy Magazine for example which made a subculture of men that shared the same views and goals as per what this magazine had suggested. These men who sought out luxurious lifestyles and seek to live out their lives as “Playboys” exactly as models such as Hugh Hefner would portray. This idealised and reinforced the thinking whereby a certain lifestyle became the influence, and like this, we saw a drastic change in the way men dressed for that period, in a way that would be consistent with that of a Playboy lifestyle in order to assimilate and infer it's message into everyday life. 

Subcultures in today's scene such as Hipsters or Vegans all stem from a holistic ideal that made it seem relatable or had a point of reference in order to promote or sell the idea. This is the contrast to the theories posed by Hebdige whereby his arguments represented subcultures as somewhat of a rebellious nature whereas Design Influenced subcultures merely reflect the parent culture and embody its values in their everyday lives. 

Why Subcultures Need to Be Considered

Subcultures are very important to design and can reflect whether or not the design is good or bad. Good design will spawn facets of fandoms and followings where these groups will carry these design elements further. An example of this would be cosplay. Cosplay is short for Costume Play, and generally, this is the act of bringing your favourite character to life, be it from a TV Series, Movie or Video Game. 

In the world of cosplay, a lot of more elegant details are considered, the aspects of the character from their clothing all the way to their hair as well as colours and mannerisms. To gain a better understanding, a video titled Why I Cosplay (YouTube, 2018), Two cosplayers were followed throughout their journey in order to gain a better understanding of their journey and the effort they put in but also, more importantly, to better understand WHY they do what they do. 

One cosplayer accounts: “Through cosplay, I could become these characters, I could live vicariously with how cool they were, and it seems people feel the need to become someone else to strengthen themselves.”  Not only does this account for such an emotional connection with these designs ultimately, but also one must realise what an incredible impact a simple design can have, and to go even further back, we can see that these were pure sketches or drawing at one point that evolved into these characters with personality and flow so much so that another person felt connected enough to bring that character to life for one day. 

“And really what makes cosplay so beautiful is how people can interpret curves and strange clothing pieces that wouldn't even exist in our world.” (YouTube, 2018), Quoted from an unnamed cosplayer, this speaks to how design is interpreted by the masses, this perfectly illustrates how people can consume design and interpret it in their way which is a matter of improving design and making it more efficient, as we're able to see how design can evolve along with the people who consume it. 

Above all, it is essential to consider the sense of community that design can create using cosplay as an example. These designs that were once just ideas brought people together and formed families through their choice of colour and shape. People sought to indeed dig deeper into design than most people would consider and in so doing they have given new meaning to design as a whole. 

And from a designers perspective, it's important to see how design is consumed and what is being interpreted in order to improve the design and this can only be achieved through the use of subculture. 

Looking back at the two contrasting types of subculture that has been covered, going from the rebellious nature to the unifying class, it's therefore crucial that one considers how the design process is portrayed as it could have either reception depending on its execution. 

Why Subcultures Are Intrinsic to Design

Through Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, we're able to gauge precisely how design is perceived which is relevant to cosplayers and pop culture assimilation of design whereas, on the other hand, we have the concepts of Hegemony and Counter-hegemony which is the suppressive and dominants cultures spoken about through the works of Hebdige. 

These are very contrasting receptions of design however they are the reason why design prosper, it is the only way we, as designers, can gage many things about the designs, all from how its perception to what is being done with it as well as what changes need to be made based on the feedback we receive from the subcultures. 

In conclusion, a brand can gauge its strength through its design based on its subculture if it has one, and alternatively one can design with the idea of a subculture in mind as a design must be strong enough for people to assimilate design on a physical level or even implement it in their own lives. 

Therefore looking at favourite fandoms such as Game of Thrones, Star Wars or even Marvel and DC, These facets of design spawned multiple subcultures from its brand all the way from cosplaying to the creating of new designing spawning from the original. 

Subcultures tell us that design is efficient. As aforementioned, subcultures assimilate designs and make it their own if it successful and even if not, they will pay for counter-hegemonic subcultures for their voices to be heard. In other words, subcultures are the market we are designing for, and they are the make or break whether or not design is in any way successful therefore, we can design with this in mind as the goal, in so doing we will be creating for the right reasons working with the right target market from the get-go and as such we will be able to improve further or retract a design based on its child culture.