#this is the information preserved and no other information about the story exists tangibly so it cannot be preserved

[hopefulqueer]

Solitude, Solifugids, and the Ten Percent Chance

(Author's note: this is about despair and radical hope and you are not alone, there's bugs. Please note that this story contains content involving heavily implied suicidal intentions and serious illness. Also, more than heavily implied bugs.)

A cloud of dust billowed up behind my car, tinging the blue desert sky with orange. It left a trail off into the distance, back towards civilization, getting fainter and more spread out and less easily detectable the further back I looked. I once heard a guest lecturer who studied theoretical physics say that no information in the universe could ever be truly destroyed. A drop of ink mixed into a pool of water might seem uniform and untraceable, but the movement of each molecule held the proof of what came before it. In that way, the motion of every particle that had ever existed could, in theory, be traced all the way back to the beginning of time. My dust cloud would eventually disappear to the naked eye, but once those particles had been disturbed, there was no going back.

My destination appeared as a tiny black dot on the flat horizon. There were very few man-made structures in this barren landscape in Eastern Oregon. This tiny church, lovingly built by pioneers on the Oregon Trail who thought it was their God-given right to take and take and take and leave their fingerprints on every corner of the planet, was the exception. This place had already been desecrated. I wouldn’t be staining anywhere new.

I pulled off the highway and onto the dead, scrubby grass and sand and rocks that surrounded the little stone building for miles in every direction. The ground crunched and groaned under my wheels. When I turned the key to kill the engine, something deep and powerful struck my ears.

Silence.

I got out of the car. The door slamming behind me was like a gunshot into the still air. A real gunshot might be even louder. I’d find out soon enough.

Apart from the occasional creaks as the heat in my car dissipated and it settled, my breathing was the only human sound for dozens of miles. I knew that there was no such thing as real silence in a city, but experiencing it like this for the first time still came as a shock. It was like putting on the best pair of noise-canceling headphones ever invented and then some. People were throwing away so much money to develop better and better technology. All that was ever going to do was add more noise to the world. Pointless. Arrogant.

Speaking of arrogance, an American flag hung limp, dusty, and tattered on a metal pole next to the church. That wasn’t part of what the original settlers had left behind. Somebody else had come along over a hundred years later and decided it was a good idea to put a flag there like a mark of pride, like an animal peeing on the scratches it left in a tree, like the church wasn’t bad enough. I opened my mouth and I screamed.

“There’s no one to hear you scream” is always that point in a horror movie where the character knows that they’re well and truly fucked. My piercing, wordless scream rose up and was lost into the hot, dry air. If a man screams in the desert and nobody’s around, is he really dying?

It felt like something was reaching down into me and tearing that cry out. Its claws ripped through my stomach and slit my throat, and the scream just kept pouring out of me like blood and smoke and water.

I was on all fours without remembering how I got there by the time I ran out of breath. My palms were stinging from pieces of gravel that had embedded themselves into my skin. I pulled dust and heat and oxygen into my lungs and stared down at my hands with dry eyes and a little bit of saliva on my lips. My body heaved into the returning silence. How long would it take someone to find me? A few hours? A day or so? A week? This dirt road was so infrequently traveled that scrappy little leafy plants were growing up around the wheel ruts. I wondered if I should walk further out into the desert and make life more difficult for somebody. I could make my impact just a little bigger, a little deeper. It felt unrealistic to me at that moment that more people didn't go missing. It was unbearably tempting, and there was just so much space out there to become lost in. This was more space than I had ever seen in my life. Why had it taken this to get me out further than a couple of hours from where I had been born? I'd never thought of myself as a coward before, or a shut-in, or even particularly sheltered. Now I was looking back at my life with this horrible fresh perspective and realizing how pathetic I had always been.

A gust of wind blew more dust into my face and I blinked hard to keep it out of my eyes. The sudden sound of a rhythmic dull tapping sent a burst of fear ricocheting through my body. It sounded so much like quick footsteps that I sprang to my feet and whipped around to look back over my shoulder, certain that I would see another person there. A reasonable thought would have been that it was a hiker, maybe, or a hitchhiker. But I had a strange expectation that they would be wearing the clothes of an Oregon Trail settler, or a pre-colonial Native American. I didn't believe in ghosts and I never had. Even so, when I heard that sound, I knew with every fiber of my being that there was a ghost behind me.

There wasn't any ghost. The ragged, faded American flag had caught the wind and was up and blowing, flapping and fluttering against itself. Some metal on its tether hit the flagpole and chimed weakly like a bell. 

I put a hand to my chest, actually shaking with adrenaline. Trying to get rid of some of that nervous energy, I kicked a rock that was a little too big to kick. It sent a shooting pain up through one of my middle toes and the rock only skidded along for a yard or two.

As I began to curse and hop on one foot, something on the ground caught my eye. In the dark leftover shadow where the rock had been, something was moving. A spider, or something like a spider, scuttled a few inches and froze in the sudden sunlight. I had disturbed its hiding spot.

I felt the need to get a closer look. I only knew a little about spiders and bugs. They had never captured my interest like the bigger animals had when I was a kid. I had always been enchanted by whales and dolphins and sharks and giant squid. This little thing, though, two inches long and tan and leggy with oversized mouthparts, was just as strange and alien as any deep-sea fish I'd seen in a documentary. I kneeled down and let my shadow fall over it. It tensed, and I leaned down closer.

Its body was a bit dull and its head shone a brighter orange. The shape of its abdomen was unlike any spider I had ever seen, bulbous and elongated at the same time. It had eight legs, like a spider, plus those long feeler-type ones in the front. As far as I could tell, it only had two little black eyes on top of its almost teardrop shaped face. 

I couldn't move. I was entranced with this odd thing. My eyes traced the gradient of colors down its long legs. I noted the hairs bristling out of it and the creases separating the segments on its back. It was beautiful. Beautiful.

As if finally recovering from the shock of having its home kicked away from above it, it darted off into a nearby bush almost faster than I could track it. With the spell broken, I sat back on my heels and sighed.

How long did a little creature like that live? A year or two? And how many of the babies of this species would live to whatever passed for a ripe old age? How many would live a full life, a full year? Less than ten percent, I was almost certain. 

Less than a ten percent chance to live out the year. It had resonated in my chest as such a hopeless figure when I drove out here. But that strange arachnid was so alive. It didn't know its odds and so it kept living, and because it kept living, it was still alive. It all seemed so simple now. That information, like all information in the universe, would never be undone.

[insurrection-if]

TW: trauma, and others.

"When an MC drinks the blood of a Gifted, they become connected to their heart, mind, and soul. They may feel past sensations, experience current emotions, or become foreign in their own skin."

After reading this from an anon's romance-centric ask, I suddenly have terrible ideas.

Just imagine MC experiencing the following:

Drinking blood from a dying/suddenly killed Gifted

How about blood from a badly tortured Gifted?

Then there's blood drinking from some psycho Gifted with zero remorse for the inhumane crimes (up to your imagination) they committed

Bruh. The side effects alone can either make the MC more intimate with their ROs or traumatized to the point that they might be averse to drinking Gifted blood. 👀

You've considered this as well, right? Will this be tackled on the story? How deep the darkness goes?

Extra: If you've got some ideas and time, how would ROs (minor and main) deal with a gentle, caring MC who was shaken and pitifully terrified after experiencing any of the scenarios?

(；´∀｀) Yes, when it comes to blood drinking, certain dark elements may be touched upon depending on one's choices, particularly in relation to trauma from other characters. Hence, uh, an aversion to blood drinking is certainly a possible option for the MC. Their experience with Elov in adolescence will inform them of this risk.

It’s also not as though their mother, who shared the same gift, didn’t struggle with the very same ‘costs’. The MC’s father has deep (and occasionally silenced) reservations against the MC developing a dependence on their gift due to the toll he witnessed on their mother.

I will say that Mockingbird should have an awareness towards certain individuals offering a higher risk of these unsavory linked experienced when drunken from. Drinking from characters such as Retriever, Imka, and Lempo would have a much lower (though a non-zero) risk of scarring mental or physical experiences compared to, say, Dearil, Bones, or Fyodor. Not that those characters lack past horrible experiences / prevailing issues in the present, but there are notable differences in their states of emotional healing and mental fixations (as well as the side effects of their gifts) which would influence Mockingbird's experience with their blood.

Onto the (considerably generalized) scenarios . . .

. . . with a general assumption / vibe(?) of an already established relationship for some, most, maybe? I don’t know it’s all loose. ʅ（´◔౪◔）ʃ

Main ROs

Akil

"It is not your fault.”

For someone with a heart so kind, with care even for those who deserve none, he says what should be known. His voice remains even. Enunciated, clear. On the surface, he is the pinnacle of reliable calm.

“You are not the cause of their pain. This is theirs to bear, not yours.”

He reassures with inarguable truth.

“It is a phantom pain. Breathe, please."

He tries to guide the pace of your breaths with his own. Sorrow cuts through him, but it does not surface.

If possible, he will order for the source of your blood, the one who acts as the origin for this translated pain you carry, to be tended to. That is where this pain is most tangible, most addressable. He cares not for who or what they might be—Cardinal or Hawk, innocent or vile—so long as the easement of their suffering reaches you.

But he knows that the mercy of your heart will cling to the miserable knowledge that such a pain like this exists at all in another. Physically inflicted, mentally imbedded, emotionally ingrained. Fleeting or constant. Dull or sharp.

He knows that the most crucial moments in helping you has yet to come. The hours and days after this shock are when he must become vigilant against the scars that can form, scars not as simple to address as those on skin.

He will be there for counsel, for support, however you require. He will be there to guide you through this darkness. He will do all he can to preserve what innocence remains from a trial as horrendous as this.

Kamiko

She calls your name in a tentative whisper. Her entire body seems to ache for a nearness to you, yet she does not close the gap of space between.

A gloved hands hovers above your cheek, her dark brown eyes searching for a sign that it is okay to touch you in this moment. A sign that her presence in this moment is accepted.

More than anything, she hopes for her presence—her support in this moment—to be wanted.

To be useless to you here, now . . . She could not forgive herself if that were the case.

She finds herself unable to ask of you what she would demand from herself. To bury this, to swallow any pity or fear in exchange for cold indifference. But you have a heart that bleeds. A heart that takes in everything—everyone—with such depth and grace. It feels acutely, intensely. Even for someone like her, human and unworthy of you, you feel her love and pain as though it were your own.

She loves your heart more than anything, but it is at times like this she cannot help but dread its vulnerable nature.

How can she ever hope to protect you from yourself; this sensitivity that defines the one she loves.

"You . . ."

Her voice sounds strange to her own ears. Weak, afraid. Protocol for this moment runs through her head. She knows what she is supposed to do. The routine, the procedure, the manual that lacks the human quality of this ache that is witnessing your pain.

". . . Please, tell me how to help you."

Sigmund

“I’m here. I’m here for you.”

Worry seeps in against his will, yet he curses at how hollow a comfort his words are.

He wants to wrap you in his arms. To anchor you with his heart. If he could only ground you with a touch, or a wisely spoken word— but his uses are limited, and the fault of your pain lies on him for not being enough to keep you from the blood and its toll.

“Songbird, Herz,” he tries again as his hand reaches for your cheek, a slow and visible reach as to not frighten you more, “Look at me.”

Your fear is tangible in the grit of your teeth, the vague tremble beneath your skin.

"Focus on me." It is as gentle a command as any man could ever give. His hand lowers to rest beneath your chin, urging your gaze to meet his as delicately as he possibly can. It is your delicacy that frightens him. It is your pain that hurts him more than anything else ever could.

Actions will always mean far more than words. Words are weak, quick to fail, and never seem to do what needs to be done.

If his love allows, he will (take you into his arms / guide you away from here with his strength as support) his hands squeezing for a moment - gentle and firm - as though to say, 'I am here, and beside you is where I will forever remain.'

He moves without thinking, a sole purpose guiding him forward. To take you somewhere safe. Quiet and calm, where you can scream or cry, laugh or rest, tremble or cling to him without fear of harm from the eyes and hands that have led you to this pain.

And if there is no quiet and calm to be found, no haven to steal you away into . . . then he will have to make such a refuge. Those who stand in his way will not be met with any hint of mercy.

Imka

"It's not right."

The feeble plea to the world falls past her trembling lips. Her hands seem to bear the most of her overwhelming sorrow as they reach for your own, caress your own, before making a panicked and tender journey to cusp your tortured expression. Her fingers stretch across your cheeks, worried at the thought of tears staining the face she loves.

"You don't deserve—Your gift shouldn't have to hurt you like this. It's not right."

She wishes she could take you away from here. She wishes she could take you somewhere where you never need to think of this pain again, where you can heal and rest and forget.

A place where you never crave for this agony, and never need to forsake yourself to it. This blood . . .

“I’m sorry,” coats her every shallow breath. She does not know whether she should hug you with all her might or pry herself from you so you might find your own breath again.

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry,” she whispers to you, to no one, as though these words held the power to transfer all your anguish onto her. If only she had a stronger gift, a less painful life, for your sake alone.

In the days and nights that follow, she seems lost, her hesitant smiles and cautious touches all distracted by the unshakable memories of your pain. She searches for an opening to approach the subject, scared to reopen this emotional wound when you are not ready or willing, but finds her attempts to speak comforts weak. Yet she does not for a moment give you doubt that she is here for you to lean on, a willing and loving presence that will listen to everything that needs to be said and will stand patiently beside you through all that cannot be spoken.

Elouan

His hand has yet to release your own, his bared touch offering a small presence of light and warmth. A string of curses flow beneath his breath, breaking now and then when he brings your hand to his lips to kiss, their soft texture pressed against your skin with an almost desperate touch.

“Curse them,” he mutters bitterly, blue eyes focused on nowhere and burning with a victimless rage, “For every ounce of pain ever felt or caused, curse us all. Mon amor, you have me going mad, helplessly mad. Here I sit useless, wishing for utopias and condemning victims just so you never have to feel this again.”

His sarcastic grin falters beneath unswallowable concern, his facade of control crumbling beneath your every shaken breath. He kisses your hand again, eyes fluttering closed as if to hide from the sight of your hurt, before summoning a weak smile once again.

“You are too good for us. You should not be made to bear our evils like this. Not mine, not theirs, none but your own—and, my love, you have no evils. Only pain inflicted by others, taken with such selfless grace that I fear I love a saint.”

It terrifies him. There is not a day that passes where he does not fear for the purity of your heart, a trait that once aggravated him to no end.

The blood is too tainted. His own blood especially—strawberries, rich and too sweet, you now attested it to be—had always proved itself far too foul for your lips, too ruined to ever be an offering to you. If he had been a better man before you met, he would have been worthy of you now. This truth is one he will forever regret.

"But you are alive, at least. You are alive and that is all a man as selfish as I can ask for. Live another day with me, ange, and I will do all I can to ease your pain."

Jae

"You'll make it," she chants breathlessly for the umpteenth time, the mantra affirmed more like a threat against the world for what would happen if you did not.

"Stay with me." Her arm secures itself around your hips, pulling you tighter against her, pressing you together as if she could physically transfer her strength to you by doing so. "Birdie, eyes on me. Please, fuck, please look at me."

The blood coils around her fingers, filthy crimson strings that she draws from your lips like it were poison. Fuck, that's exactly what it is.

Poison. Something so against your nature that she worries it is killing you ever so slowly with each drink. Something that takes from the light in your eyes, the gentleness of your touch. Something that takes and gives nothing but rot.

She summons what she can from your teeth, your tongue, any trace that might further trigger your gift with its taste. The blood obeys. It glides seamlessly from your opened lips to her tense hold.

She sneers at its presence.

When the last drop is lured from your lips, she casts it away somewhere far and unseen. Its stain should not remain anywhere near you, her pure-hearted love.

"It's gone. It's over," she promises, though she knows the memories of this will be scarred on you for countless nights to come. A rage burns within her at the thought of this truth.

Rage towards the CARDINALS, the HAWKS, the source of your blood, and the source of the pain you felt. To turn your own gift into a weapon against you, to twist the beauty of it in this way . . .

She forces a smile over the acidic fury that boils within her. A smile for you and you alone, hoping to inspire one of your own.

Hoping to help you leave this time in the past, buried and forgotten beneath whatever may come tomorrow.

"Leave here with me, please."

Niccolò

“It will end. You are you, and no one else. This pain is not meant to be kept.”

There is a soft gravity with which he speaks, his words as delicate as the touch he offers to your arms. His fingers brush against you in hopeful want for an invitation to hold you.

Despite your panic, your agony and grief carved so harshly and wrongly onto your being, the smile he shares is sincere. Small, and uncertain, but it is a smile born from an endearment towards all that you are, even the sides of you that are frightened, shaken, or slowly being lost to a gift you cannot tame.

“They are a sickness to you," he states as though it were the most blatant truth, a firmness mixing into his warm tone, "But you are resilient, and you will heal. I promise you, cuore mio, that I will not rest until you are comfortable with yourself again.”

And he knows that time will come again. The time will come for you to smile again, laugh again, just as you will inevitably cry and shake and break at the hands of this gift you cannot contain.

Mutya

“Dammit!”

Her voice pierces through the haze around you, forcing her to the front of the world that is your muddled thoughts.

Her hands are quick to follow—desperate, grabbing, caressing, only to retreat into curled fists that punch down onto her thighs. She has kneeled beside you without a thought, practically collapsing into a heap of furious cries.

"Fuck, I can't - I can't let this happen to you!"

She wipes the blood from your lips with her hands—as if that could sever the bond and all its costs—and chokes on all the curses and blame that overwhelm her.

She doesn't know what to do. How to help. Her panic only endangers you both, her thoughts pressing against her skull with the ache of her fears wishing for life.

“Mahal,” she whispers above the splitting pain that rings in her ears, “I can’t lose you to this.”

She is harsher on herself in the days to come. Vigilant for any signs of your distress that lingers, the memory of this pain that haunts your wounded gentleness. She vows to never let someone allow you to be hurt like this again.

She vows to be all that you need to heal from whatever this gift threatens to scar upon you, to make you become.

Fyodor

"Why are you frightened, душа моя?"

This is not the response he had expected.

Mishka says the blood is good for you. Necessary, like how Mishka is to him. And just as blood is needed, so is the pain.

Only with the blood would you be free. With the blood, you would be content.

But this . . . this he cannot allow.

"You are too delicate for them,” he affirms as a truth that should have been so obvious is only now seen before his very eyes. “For us.”

He kneels beside you with the slow movements of one approaching a nervous animal. The focus of his gaze does not stray from red gloss that wrongly coats your lips; something akin to hurt, a muddled picture of remorse, only heightening the natural intensity behind the way he looked at you.

“Little heart,” he calls. Beckons, truly, for the brush of his hand against your cheek is his wordless plea for you to draw nearer to him. To want—to desire and cling to—his presence as he would yours. “Ask me to change our fate, and I will.”

He is impatient. He tilts your chin so your gaze might meet his, guides those lips colored by ruin so he can briefly capture them with his own. Chaste and soft is the gesture.

When he draws away, he tastes what remains of the cause for your pain.

Yes, in this moment, his patience is lost. For the Hawks that cannot protect you. For the Cardinals that have pushed you to drink this dirty blood.

The human eye cannot perceive what occurs next. There is a light, then darkness. A warmth that encompasses you entirely. A rumble reminiscent of thunder in its strength, leaving cracks within the earth.

In a moment, you are stolen away. Until it is safe, until the world has once again earned the privilege of your grace, he will keep you where no further harm can be done.

Minor ROs

Dearil

"It's an acquired taste," comes the low hum of his voice from above, his looming figure visible just from the corner of your eye. Crumpled to the floor, almost lifeless at his feet, you feel his gaze pressed upon you like a weight, cold and foreign as though you were strangers once again.

Dreadful are those seconds that pass, their silence broken by his crooked and false laughter.

“Don’t play cute, little bird. Even children are quick to learn that there are consequences to greed like this."

On one knee he kneels beside you. He does not make to reach for you, to hold you.

He simply studies you. The focus of his eye flits over the panic you wear, the blood that stains your lips—at any other time, such a sight would please him.

Instead, in the weariness of his features, you see . . . disappointment.

"You take and take, more and more without a thought, so helpless and innocent on the surface. You fret and worry over those around you like someone truly sweet of heart, endearing others with your pleasant grace, pretending like blood doesn't stick to your teeth behind those patient smiles . . . Songbird, you feed like a starved beast living its last days."

And there it is. The endearment cuts through his former cold with a savored warmth that unsettles you. Fondness, so sudden that it is almost frightening to witness yet again how quickly he turns from cruel to . . . this.

The gloved tips of his fingers graze against your cheek. A light, careful touch that erases the trail of old tears. Reverent, almost, but you know how easily that will change on a whim.

“Are you not open-hearted enough to accept another’s pain? My dear martyr, is your heart not as bottomless as you proclaim?"

His harsh laughter again fills the room. It is imposing like him, bitter in spite of his smile.

You know that smile to be true. Whether it is for you or the ghost of another, however, is impossible to tell.

“Perhaps we should work on your tolerance."

Curadora

“It’s alright. You were so brave.”

She guides your head to rest on her shoulder, her arms loosely wrapped around you as she leans her head against yours. Her hums and whispers hope to soothe, to heal. Gloved hands run smoothly up your arm and to the gentle pulse of your neck, down again until her fingers can entwine with your own.

The mask lies beside her on the ground; a humiliating prop that hinders her ability to offer the human comfort she spills onto you. Fully visible is the worried squint in her dark gaze, the tension in the kind smile of her lips, and the thick texture of her hair messed in her initial panic to reach you.

Grace and panic all in one; her fear and love toil in a quiet battle as they threaten to overwhelm her. Yet composed she remains, trying to distract from the near past and approaching future.

“Remember yourself. Remember who you are.”

She is all too familiar with invasive memories. Unwanted images, unwanted thoughts, alien and intrusive yet craved for all the same. Her former love taught her to resist their call, and it had taken all her strength to see this as anything beyond cruel.

“Let me take away your pain. Forgive me, my love."

Her hand caresses your cheek. How familiar a cold, delicate touch. It gently guides you to meet her gaze, and it is as though she is trying to drink in every detail of your visage through the slow start of tears. Of course, for she wishes to remember this moment. This forewarning to herself, her weakness, and her dwindling reserves of time.

She will remember this moment for you. Protect it, guard it, and return it once you have the strength to endure this battle you should not have yet fought.

Her lips are tender as they brush against the crown of your head.

In the blink of an eye, she steals what was not yours to take and buries it within her own heart, cursing herself as quiet tears begin to fall.

In the mere moment of a kiss, you forget.

Retriever

“Okay, it’s okay. You’ll be okay, darlin'. Breathe with me,” he assures with a voice so tender, his own sorrow threatening to crack through.

His large frame blocks the visage of all else, all others. Like a shield, he curls himself above you as he tries to coach your breaths to be deeper, slower, leaning on all his experience in times of crises.

For a moment, it's just as it used to be. The panic, the fear, the innocence challenged and breaking beneath the weight of a sudden pain without just cause—the hope, the wanting, the need for someone to reach out and save them, even if he knows he can't and they know he can't—He forces down the memories of those days as his teeth grit behind his comforting smile, the facade of confidence he wears recovering before its slip can be noticed.

“You have me,” he affirms, “Right here, for as long as we need. Let it out. Lean on me.”

The Gifted are beautiful. Blessed, wondrous. You most of all, your gift especially—one so perfect and dangerous for a heart as empathetic as yours. He worries over what you saw, even more for the one you took it from, and yet no worry can near the amount he feels for you.

In the coming days, years from this moment . . . He worries over the loss of what makes you all that you are. He fears the loss of you to this gift that demands so much.

Lempo

“Darling, my sweet, are you okay?”

Her fingers brush (your hair away from / near) your vacant gaze, tender and placating in the light graze of her nails along your scalp. She coos softly, her other hand trying to guide your head against her chest, as she continues to murmur worries through a doting pout.

The air is sickly sweet, thick and perfumed as a dense honeyed smog eases into your gasping lungs. Once she settles your weight comfortingly against her, her guiding hand shifts to caress your cheek, your chin, and then trace the outline of your lips.

It is a patient urging, but an urging nonetheless.

“Muru," she gently calls as if trying to draw you out from a dream, her voice offering comfort through the tender hum, "I am so proud of you. You, with a soul that is everything and anything, can shine even in the darkest hours of another."

Her words are genuine, so perfectly honest and true. They carry in them her faith, her love, and her admiration in you.

"In death, in pain, in madness: in anything the world deems evil, wrong, or undesired, you take from them strength and purpose. You take it, and it can do nothing but strengthen the beauty I see in you."

Bones

"Fucking hell!"

It’s bitter and harsh, breathless and scared. Not a whisper, yet it’s soft. Not a scream, but it’s desperate.

And this moment is all too real. He can’t tell himself that your cries are a forgotten regret, that your tears are a punitive illusion—that the blood staining your (trembling) lips is no more than a memory of his in some torturous and temporary nightmare that scars no one but him.

This has happened before.

The madness, the fear, the repulsion. It is different, but underneath all the senseless details it is the same.

It will happen again, so long as you drink.

So long as you crave.

"Hjärtat," he practically pleas, hisses, through anguish and rage, fear and a love reawakening to a life so full and helpless that it hurts.

His instinct is to take you home. Back then, that had been your father. Someone more capable than him in caring for you. Someone who could comfort you, protect you, and put you back together when all he could do was further tear you apart.

But what has home become to you? Not that old little house on the wood's edge. Not the arms of your father, not the company of Mr. Flecther, and not in the shadows with him. Not those aged bricks in the city of angels, nor the Gifted that dwelled in their lonely streets. Home had become somewhere he could never follow.

Those damned, traitorous HAWKS. If you did not return to their grasp, it would mean the end of everyone that loved you before.

It could mean the end of you, and that would be the end of him.

A bitter farce of a laugh pushes past his grief, the barked sound broken by the threat of cries in his throat. "We haven't changed a bit."

He holds you in his arms. Buries his head in the crook of your neck. And he is so cold to the touch. Cold enough to ground you in this moment. So cold and coiled around you to the point that it almost hurts.

"For once," he whispers against your skin, his lips pressing momentarily against the pulse of your neck in the ghost of a kiss, "for fucking once in our lives, could helping you not mean having to let you go?"

To your father, to the future, to the HAWKS. What's best for you is never what he can provide. They can help you. Comfort you. Protect you. And he, all he can do . . . all he ever does, when it comes to you, is boil in his own selfish regret.

Mishka

“Endure, my dear.”

These foreign hands of theirs, designed to your preference, struggle to capture the sense of touch as much as they wish: fail to offer them the warmth of your glistening skin, the brush of your shallow breaths as they graze their fingers across your lips. As if that practiced gesture could be enough to silence your pain.

It is strange that you would think this painful. How can this be unwanted to you, these sensations and impressions that leave their mosaic of scars upon your soul? Is this not what you were born to desire? Born to become?

And yet, you seek escape from this. You come to them with hands that curl with regret. You reach for them with pleading eyes; eyes that wish to release what has been taken by those darkened lips.

You are a marvel to them, truly. A curious wonder that's lured them into an odd state of sympathy. In their lips and brows, it is almost as if your pain were being reflected, though it is more so a pain of uncertainty that disturbs them.

“This anguish is an earthly trap; you are stronger than it could ever be. Heaven, you are everything they can never be.”

And it is true. It is the very splendor of your soul, even if you wish for nothing more than to be rid of it. But wants cannot always determine what things truly are.

This is pitiful. And this vile sentiment—love, the vessel dares to call it with a faint challenge on his tongue—makes this scene all the lower and more horrific to bear. It is disgraceful.

Beneath them.

And yet . . . their attempts to harden themself to your frightened visage cannot help but soften into a sorrowful need to end all that troubles you.

When it is certain that you cannot endure, their hand is forced to interfere. It is with solemn purpose that they relieve you of this agony—its grip, its memory—as there is nothing to be desired in senseless pain onto the one they think they may love.

It will take them time before they become comfortable speaking about this event with anyone.

[designresearch604-ahnesshim]

Week 8: Further Research

Sun Ho Lee

Sun Ho Lee is a graphics designer based in Korea and America, but studied graphics design in America. In analysing her body of work, she focuses a lot on cultural themes, relationships with her roots and home country.

Before she was a graphics designer she helped North Korean refugees escape from their traffickers and oppressors. Activism and her design are intertwined as she "preserves and shares the cultural and political in-betweeners who have been neglected...". She aims to create and build a community that is culturally sensitive.

She weaves typography and materiality into her work to communicate abstract ideas to tangible and flexible systems.

She makes visible stories of other Asians through print and textile designs, she makes to create a space and platform for people bi-cultural people.

In her multi-disciplinary practice she highlights the experience of others and herself of the people who she describes as "cultural in-betweeners". These are beautifully crafted and designed with purpose and intent in projects such as:

Is This a Typo ?

In this publication and printed matter, Sun Ho questions and challenges this norm, "Is this a Typo ?". Many immigrants, people of colour, people of ethnic name change their name to avoid the hassle of correcting others and to also avoid mocking and racism.

There are 39 contributors who share and tell their personal stories about their names, butchered, tossed around and names that are recognised as typos on digital interface. This publication brings honour and celebrates ethnic names, their meanings and the individuals who carry them.

I personally can relate to this project as my parents also have given themselves english names so that they can avoid having to correct others of their names and also my siblings whose names on their birth certificate, passport are of ethnic names but also have given themselves english names.

Although my name is not an ethnic name, I can't exactly say it's a western name. Up until this day I still get mocked and teased for my name and when I was younger, especially in primary and intermediate I struggled with the name I was given and wanted to change it to something more generic. I can relate to the struggles and mockery these people have experienced.

Swish Swoosh

This project explores how Asian multilingual or bilingual individuals switch "codes" (languages) at home and in a professional setting. This publication also goes beyond just switching languages but the shift and change within our personality, traits and values.

This knitted ephemera Sun Ho made for this project states that the process of knitting is quite messy like how immigration was for immgirants. The original knitting machine could only read 24 pixels of information per row but she hacked it, increasing the data capacity to 200 pixels. The hacked machine produces glitches, refusing to "surrender to this new, forced way of existing" – this hints at when we swtich codes, we erase parts of us in order to fit in but those parts never can go away but come back.

The Chronicles of Sameri

Through materiality and publication Sun Ho emphaszies the fragility of memories through the glass material she uses for the publication, but also the use of rope communicates the strength and durability of her family members. This publication encapsulates the memories of her war-divided family, with hiopes of reuniting them with their children, siblings and parents (some whom they never even got to meet but only know of). Hr grandparents have cultivated a land in the midst of a barren mountain called Sameri and built houses so that following generations could live there, never having to seperate like how the war separated them.

She "wove together" spotty memories of her aunties, uncles pf grandma and grandpa.

Ji Hee Lee

Is a Korean graphics designer that is based in Germany. Recurring themes she explores in her practice are racial inequalities/stereotypes and how Asians/women experience, to draw attention and address these ideas through visual communication.

In her practice, through thorough research and analysing of her work she uses effective copywriting throughout her work. Some of them are more subtle while some of them are more powerful and can come off slightly aggressive – this is also shown through visual design.

Such as this:

Steretypography Posters

Ji Hee Lee breaks down cultural boundaries built by stereotypes. She explores this idea further by exploring different typefaces and seeking how "western" typefaces are perceived and how "Asian" typefaces are perceived by society. One way she broke this down was by going through a site called "dafont", which is a site for free fonts and there is a section seperate for asian fonts. Ji Hee states “By browsing these typefaces, you can see how ‘Asia’ is perceived to the eye of Westerners,”.

These anime inspired characters, ornamental bamboo sticks and chopsticks that embellish Asian typefaces and fonts come off as pervasive which is also met offline. She used these free fonts from these sites to design a series of posters that reveal how these typefaces have been heavily manipulated to appear "non-Latin" or "non-Western".

Her posters placed side by side fragmentally read: “Stereotypical Representations of foreign cultures build national and cultural boundaries,” and “Those types represent neither us nor you.”

It's interesting to see how this designer has approached her work and the themes and ideas she unpacks through exploration of western and typefaces that try to not appear to be somewhat "Asian". I thought this was an effective and creative way to unpack this idea by exploring how Asia as a whole is perceieved through the eyes of society and western people, when in-fact that is not what represents us.

Poster for Antiracism, 2016

Ji Hee lee continue to reveal the ways racism and stereotyping can become normalized both in visual culture and in society and has been a prominent idea Lee has working on ever since moving to Germany in 2016, as she encountered numerous racial experiences. She found herself sharing her own experiences with another fellow student So Jin Park and they came up with an idea to create a platform where Asians could come up and share their story and heritage, which now directly links to her next project "I Am Angry".

I Am Angry

From the platform they created they designed and launched a website "I Am Angry" to house the stories of these people – a website where they hope to continue to empower and help the Asian community find ways to deal with micro-aggression.

The site is divided into 6 sections, with "Now please stop saying Ni Hao to me" being what Lee calls the "heart and soul" of the website. When ou click on the "diagram" section it arranges itself to three sub sections of the page "sexism, xenophobia and racism". Persoanl stories that were recorded are scattered across the page and the ones that are centered are ones that touch on all three sub sections.

These stroies are displayed on pop-up windows and purposely designed to annoy users as they cannot close these windows which reflect the micro-aggressions they experience. Lee states "It’s a metaphor that derives from our everyday encounters: how we have no control over the situation.”

Many of her projects that she works on addresses these issues as these stereotypes and micro-aggressions is what impacts her as a designer and her day-today life, especially ever since moving to Germany. She believes the projects she works on have impact and promotes awareness and also speak against the prejudice, hoping to see gradual change within society.

Celine Dam

Celine Dam is a Vietnamese-Chinese writer and actor from Auckland, New Zealand. She has written several pieces for print, online publications and zines and is grateful to inform others through her unique lens. Through these art forms and practice, she hopes to bring light to more Asian stories within western media.

Pork & Poll Taxes

This is a theatrical play that Celine has starred in.

This play is set in the 1890's which follows a Chinese family in Aotearoa and China with the men looking for gold (Sam Gan Saan) and women staying in the latter. Although it is a fictional play the historical background and roots are rbought to light through this play.

To give some historical background, in the late 19th century many Chinese men sought their way to NZ to make fortunes in the Gold Rush. Migrant workers were brought over from China by the government to work in the Otago minefields. But as employment in mines began to dwindle, anti-Chinese prejudice began to flourish.

In 1881 this sentiment became official with a poll tax of £10 (equivalent to  $1770 today) was imposed on Chinese migrants and the number allowed to land from each ship arriving in New Zealand was restricted. Only one Chinese passenger was allowed for every 10 tons of cargo. In 1896 this was changed to one passenger for every 200 tons, and the tax was increased to £100 ($20,000).

For Chinese migrants arriving in New Zealand during the poll tax era, legal discrimination weren't the only obstacle they were faced with – migrants were also met with hostility from New Zealand’s Pākehā population, giving rise to organisations such as the Anti-Chinese Association and the White New Zealand League. 

Pork and Poll Taxes touches on many of these issues, exploring themes such as sacrifice, belonging and what it means to be a family, which Pua (director & writer) says she based on two Chinese proverbs: “One says that ‘we grow roots where we land’, which speaks to the Chinese diaspora and this idea that you can build a new life and home somewhere else. And the contrasting proverb is ‘fallen leaves always return home to their roots’, which touches on this idea that you always go back to where you’re from.”

Celine states "last night i claimed back the Chinese culture i'd once so heavily rejected. last night i dedicated my performance to my younger self. how liberating that she was now onstage speaking her mother tongue, claiming a culture she once ran away from. i dedicated that performance to my Chinese mother and all the richness of culture she has gracefully passed onto me. to my ancestors who kept their heads down so that i could lift mine up, and finally to talia pua. thank you for the opportunity to fall back in love with being Chinese."

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https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/03-08-2021/pork-and-poll-taxes-reclaiming-new-zealands-forgotten-history-on-stage

Dear Mama and Baba: A letter to my Asian Parents about Depression

This is a raw letter to her asian parents about a mental illness that does not cease to "exist" in asian culture and through Celines beautiful writing highlights the issue of depression in Asian culture and how it is an illness where usually it is not accepted or dismissed because older generations of Asians think its due to "lack of effort"and therefore, many concealing their illness. But Celine speaks out on the matter. She puts herself in the fore front so that other Asian's living in NZ can overcome it because the very culture has dismissed the concept of it.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/27-09-2020/dear-baba-and-mama-a-letter-to-my-asian-parents-about-my-depression

Grappling With my Chinese Name

Through this written essay Celine highlights a complicated relationship with her Chinese name. At age 12, she gave herself the name Celine, so she could avoid having teachers and peers mangle the name she was given by her parents. In this essay she tries to come to terms with all the ways our society has made her want to hide her name.

https://www.renews.co.nz/grappling-with-my-chinese-name/

In her work and practice she centres her Kiwi-Chinese,Vietnamese identity. In most of her practice, you can see her constant effort in bringing awareness and tackling on issues that she experiences as. Kiwi-Asian and her difficulty of accepting her identity but also takes us on a journey with her as she re-learns a culture she once walked away from.

Although Celines practice and work is very much different to mine, the themes and issues she tackles down with in her work is very similar to mine and the ideas and experiences I have as a Kiwi-Asian myself. I found myself relating to her, especially as Eastern Asian culture is very similar, Chinese and Korean. Many of the issues she brought up in her written pieces, I was able to relate.

Tyrone Ohia

Tyrone Ohia is a Maori designer. In this video Tyrone talks about his approach to his design practice.

He talks about his ancestors – which has rich and deep connections in Maori culture. He states "It was our view of the environment around us – the forest, the sea, the sky, the earth, all of those things. The most important thing is to open your eyes, our ears, and our minds to receive this type of knowledge.".

His guiding principle is to fully understand the Whakapapa and the. foundations of the project so tat he can encompass the history and meaning into his designs that he produces.

I also have similar views on how I start my design as well. When taking on any design jobs I like to have a full deep knowledge of whom and what I am designing for, especially if related to cultural matters.

This can be seen in these designs and project Tyrone worked on:

https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/page/toi-tu-toi-ora-artist-profile-tyrone-ohia

Toi tu Toi Ora

Their approach to designing this identity for the gallery and the satellite exhibition in Britomart was to reflect the unique Maori curatorial framework of the show which is based on the Maori creation narrative. Rather than using the Western chronological order of works they base it on Maori celestial origins.

Basing it on Maori concepts of time and space the shows title forms an interwoven timescape – an infinite ever-changing pattern that spills out of the gallery that draws the viewers into the Maori world. You can see that the words Toi Tu Toi ora repeatedly chants through the gallery space and out into the world, – the words mean "Maori art stands strong and in good health."

The typeface has straight edges, but also warps and bends in mythical ways to reflect the straight lines of Māori woven art forms, and the organic curves of carved art forms.

The shifting between the black and white colour scheme reflects the extremes of the Māori creation narrative – moving from darkness into the world of light, echoing the many dualities within Te Ao

https://bestawards.co.nz/toitanga/toitanga/extended-whanau/toi-tu-toi-ora-contemporary-maori-art-2/

https://concreteplayground.com/auckland/event/toi-tu-toi-ora-contemporary-maori-art

Saul Bass

Seachange Studio

[softer-ua]

i can't be the only one who wants izuku to get fucking pissed at his situation, at all might, start questioning what the fuck is going on with OFA.

because if you're going to trust a fifteen year old with something like OFA and bind them to the life of a symbol, you do not get to withhold information. deku was not told he'd be dealing with an enemy like AFO when he got the quirk, nor was he told that basically its whole point was not fighting some vague concept of evil, but fighting a very tangible very dangerous villain. he wasn't told that up until all might, inheriting this power was guaranteed suicide, and even after all might you only have a vague chance of survival. to be offered such a life altering "gift", Izuku should have been warned of everything. from the start. and if not then then from the very moment izuku started seeing vestiges, or at least when AFO resurfaced. WHY IN GOD'S NAME WOULD YOU HIDE ANY, ANY BIT OF INFORMATION ON A QUIRK THAT IMPORTANT?????

no because, if you look at it cynically, All Might took this kid who had nothing and who looked up to him as effective god. He took this kid who he knew had no sense of no self-care or self-preservation. This extremely reckless kid who he saw putting his life at risk three times (sludge v1, hanging on to AM as he jumped, sludge v Katsuki) within 24 hours. He picked this kid who he knew would give everything (because Izuku had "nothing", and therefore nothing to lose) and "gifted" him with a ticking time bomb. Of course Izuku is willing to break himself if it means using OFA to max potential. So much of his self-worth is based on OFA. He's said time and time again he isn't sure if he deserves it, that it's a borrowed power. If you've taken this kid and given him everything practically overnight, of course he'll go to self-destructive lengths to prove himself worthy of it. Who'd want to go back to being nothing after all?

And this is a logical conclusion. Someone like Izuku, someone like All Might probably used to be in his youth and still kind of is, they're perfect to be put on this kind suicide mission. They're a perfect vessel. Sure they're heroic and brave and selfless, but most importantly they're willing to die for the cause. OFA the quirk knows this. Literally two seconds after Katsuki sacrifices himself telling Deku not to do shit alone, Deku renders said sacrifice useless by doing exactly what Katsuki warned him not to😭 And the quirk and vestiges encourage him. They don't give a shit about repercussions and Deku's chronic pain or possible arm paralysis. They just want to beat AFO. You go son you break those arms 🤠

Doesn't it all feel a little bit exploitative?

Look at it like this. A kid is born with no power. This kid wants to be great, but the world says he can't. He meets his hero, and the hero says he can't either. Then the kid acts heroic, but reckless. The hero sees an opening. This kid is good and doesn't care one bit about his well-being? Jackpot! He offers the kid a deal. Great power, an extraordinary gift at surface layer. But one with so many more hidden strings attached that hurt and break and haunt the kid, that he was never warned about or taught how to deal with. But he can always give it to someone else! Can he, really? Can he go back to being nothing? With a personality like his, well nope. And that's why you pick the overly selfless reckless ones. The ones that will feel indebted to you to a ridiculous degree.

Isn't it like dare I say... like a deal with the devil?

As we progress more and more into the lore of AFO and OFA, I can really see why Katsuki's started to view it as a cursed power. And with how wildly different from expectations (at least mine) + far more nuanced the Todofam drama has revealed itself to be compared to what it seemed upon first intro, I'm inclined to believe there's more to the OFA story than clean cut, young bro good guy vs mean big bro oppression.

TL;DR - All Might is the metaphorical devil jr who gave Izuku a passed down deal, and neither he nor broccoli boy read the fine print.

Bakugo’s ghost sent me this ask 💀

Lol but seriously, these are all excellent points and I’ve been sitting on this ask until I had time to answer it because you’re absolutely goddamn right

This shit is explotive af, and I’ve got a suspicion as to why

I don’t think Deku was a random choice, there’s a layer of fate/mystic woven into the bnha world that gets over looked.

Sir had insane fortune telling abilities that were never once wrong about anything except when it came to the 2 OFA users fates. Deku even specifically says he’ll smash any fate in his way, and I think on some level he knows he can because he has a different destiny.

The vestiges break him from Shinsos hold, meaning the can have some level of control over Dekus body. You think AM noticed every time something like that happened? AM didn’t even notice Bakugo internalizing all the blame for his retirement even after watching his mom force him to apologize for it??

“I keep forgetting that your still a child” AM, sir, this is the third time you’ve admitted out loud that you were just gonna let Bakugo suffer his own fate 💀 please stop indicting yourself and at least pretend you care about Bakugo outside his relationship to Deku jfc

Also what are the chances you get nine random holders and none of them turn out to be corrupt or at least too self serving to die for the cause??? Slimmer than the pages bnha is printed on.

There’s something pulling some strings here, and I think it’s the true power of First users quirk.

What would be the point of transferring a quirk if that’s it’s only power?

What would be the point of this quirk being essentially password locked?

What would be the point of this quirk being able to forced on to someone?

There’ wouldn’t be any.

But what if that’s not what the quirk is?

What if the quirk is actually passing something along, and that’s why it’s dna based, it’s the transfer of an integral part of them.

Something that would change a person if forced on them but would possibly eradicate someone if stolen. Something like a souls desire? That could be a dangerous thing to give to someone else especially if it’s something they didn’t want, now they suddenly have to?

Then you give this quirk a strength enhancing quirk?

Now it’s got some juice, how much stronger did it get? Can it sense others with a similar goal, can it make its host gravitate towards those people?

Is the firsts quirk purposely finding exploitable heros, like Nana AM and Deku. All people who were/are willing to give up everything for the cause. How much of the first is in there, how much sentient power does this quirk have?

We know that Nana gave up her family, her child, for the cause. AM never bothered cultivating a family and pushed away Sir and anyone else who is anti him dying, and now we’re seeing Deku do the same.

Deku who had no friends to begin with, a dad who’s out of the picture, and an already slightly strained relationship with his mom?

Is this quirk capable of learning? Does it know that having people you care about slows you down from sacrificing yourself?

Does this quirk compound with the other users goals make the drive stronger each time?

Idk but there’s a glimmer of hope that Deku isn’t doomed to be a glorified meat puppet, and it exists in the form of Kacchan.

No one else had someone so deeply rooted to them, who could fight right along side them. Bakugo is an outlier in this story, almost the exact opposite kind of hero OFA wants, his connection to Deku breaks the cycle.

Deku would never give up on Katsuki, and even if he tried Endeavor will start coughing up ice cubes before Bakugo lets him. He couldn’t leave Deku alone when he was convinced he hated him, there’s no way he’d do it now.

Dekus story will be different from the other users that’s for sure.

[for-your-therapeutic-smile]

They Never Teach You How to Stop

Rarely do I lack the words to express myself. Perhaps this reflects my failure to maintain my journal consistently throughout 2020. Here goes an honest attempt to capture and document my mental state and the fatigue of Covid, the inertia of this shelter-in-place, the anxiety of this political crisis we face as a nation, the pressure of being a 1L in law school against the backdrop of civil unrest and Justice Ginsburg’s death, coming out - my dad told me he was disappointed -, the possible erosion of my relationship with someone I love, and this feeling of absolute dread and resentment for a system that continuously fails my and future generations (robbing us of a social contract that promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), among many other things I’m too tired to consider. When did we accept a $0 baseline as the American Dream? Oh, to be debt free - free from this punishment for having pursued an education. Stifling the educated to prevent them (myself included) from organizing and mobilizing the masses so we can supplant this system with a better one is the overall objective of the oppressive class (read: Pedagogy of the Oppressed); it’s the conflict between the bourgeois and the proletariat. The proletariat has swallowed the middle class, leaving only the ruling class. I am essentially on autopilot, forcing myself to go through the motions so I can survive another day. I know others join me in this mental gymnastics of unparalleled proportions, one social scientists and medical researchers will soon study and subsequently publish their findings in an attempt to explain the unexplainable. Despite a lack of air circulation, we are breathing history; the constitution, like our societal norms, must adapt accordingly. Judge Barrett: there is no place for originalism. While I seldom admit weakness or an inability to manage life’s curveballs, this series of unfortunate events seems almost too much to bear. 

And yet somehow I continue to find the energy to submit assignments due at 11:59 p.m., write this post at 1:38 a.m., “sleep”, wake at 7 a.m. so I can read and prepare (last minute!) the assigned material leading into my torts or contracts class. I find the energy to text my boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) so I can attempt to salvage the real and genuine connection we have, cook elaborate meals to find some solace, wrestle with whether or not to hit my yoga mat (I don’t), apply to a fellowship for the school year and summer internships, prepare my dual citizenship paperwork, manage a campaign for two progressive politicians, and listen to music in an attempt to stay sane . . . ~*Queues John Mayer’s “War of My Life” and “Stop This Train”*~ . . . I realize I have to be kinder to myself, give credit where credit is due. I hate feeling self-congratulatory though.

Mostly, I am too afraid of the repercussions if I stop moving at a mile/minute, that I can just work away the pain and be the superhuman who numbs himself from the low-grade depression and nervous breakdown. My body tells me to slow down, as evidenced by the grinding of my teeth, but I take on more responsibility because people rely on me. I must show up. I am a masochist in that way. This is what I signed up for and I’ll be damned if I don’t carry through on my promise to do the work. Pieces of my soul scattered about like Horcruxes, though they’re pure, not evil, so I hope nobody resolves to destroy them. 

My mind rarely rests. It’s 3:08 a.m., one of the lonelier hours where night meets morning; it’s the hour for and of intense introspection. It makes you consider pulling an all-nighter, one you reserve for an “important” school or work deadline. We always put our personal lives on the back-burner. 3 a.m. sets the tone for a potentially awful day. But that doesn’t matter right now. I’m letting some of my favorite albums play in the background: Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Mac Miller’s Circles, Rhye’s Blood, Alicia Keys’ ALICIA, Coldplay’s Ghost Stories, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Miley Cyrus’ Dead Petz in addition to other playlists, Tiny Desk performances, and tracks (I unearthed last week, like When It’s Over by Sugar Ray). I need to feel something. I need to feel anything. I need to feel everything. We experience such a broad spectrum of emotions throughout the day that we lose track of if we don’t pause to absorb them. Music reinforces empathy; it releases dopamine.

I spent the past two hours reading through old journals and posts, as scattered as they were, on a wide range of topics: poems I had written about falling in and out love, anecdotes about my world travels, and entries on personal, political, and professional epiphanies. The other night I found one of my favorites, a previous post from my time living in Indonesia, centering on the dualities of technology. It resonated with me more than the others. To summarize, I wrote about my tendency to equate the Internet with a sense of interconnectedness (shoutout to Tumblr for being my digital journal; to Twitter for being a place of comedy and revolution; to Instagram for curating my *aesthetic*; to Facebook where I track my family’s accomplishments and connect with travel buddies displaced around the globe all searching for a home). And yet I feel incredibly lonely and disconnected whenever I spend too much time using technology, so much so that I set screen time limitations on my phone recently to curtail this obsession with constant communication and information gathering. Trump and Biden admitted that it’s unlikely we’ll know the results of the election on November 3rd during their first presidential debate. Push notifications don’t allow us to learn of trauma within the comforts of our own homes. I’m already fearing where I will be when that news breaks. 

This global pandemic and indefinite shutdown of the world (economy) undeniably exacerbates these feelings. This is some personal and collective turmoil. But I was complicit in the endless scrolling and swiping of faces and places long before Covid-19. Instead of choosing to interact with my direct environment (today’s research links this behavior to the same levels of depression one feels when they play slot machines), I am still an active on all these platforms, participating the least in the most tangible one: my physical life. I am tired of pretending. I am tired of being tired. I am tired of embodying fake energy to exist in systems that fail me. I am tired of the quagmire. Like Anaïs Nin, I must be a mermaid [because] I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living. This particular excerpt from that 2016 entry was difficult for me to read: “The fantasy of what could have been if a certain plan had unfolded will haunt you forever if you do not come to peace with the reality of the situation. I hope you come to terms with reality.” I am not at peace with my current reality. But is anyone?

It’s a bit surreal for my peers to have suddenly started caring about international relations theory. It’s transported me back to my 2012 IR lecture at Northeastern: are you a constructivist or a feminist? Realist or liberalist? Neo? Marxist? The one no one wants you to talk about. Absent upward mobility, this is class warfare. But I cannot be “a singular expression of myself . . . there are too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers” . . . It feels like America’s wake-up call. But I know people will retreat into the comforts of capitalism if Biden wins and, well, we all enter uncharted waters together if the Electoral College re-elects #45. For those who weren’t paying attention: the world is multipolar and we are not the hegemon. Norms matter. People tend to be self-interested and shortsighted. Look to the past in order to understand the future. History, as the old adage goes, repeats itself. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Taxation without representation. Indoctrination. Welcome to the language of political discourse. Students of IR and polisci have long awaited your participation. Too little too late? Plot twist: it’s a lifelong commitment. You must continue to engage irrespective of the election outcome or else we will regress just as quickly as we progress. Now dive into international human rights treaties (International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), political refugees, FGM. No one said it wasn’t dismal. But it’s important. We need buy-in.  

While I am grateful for the continuation of my education, for this extended time with family, for this opportunity to be a campaign manager for two local progressive candidates (driving to Boston to pick up revised yard signs as proof that the work never stops), it would be remiss of me, however, not to admit that I am lonely: I am buried in my books, in the depressing news both nationally and globally, and in precedent-setting Supreme Court cases (sometimes for the worst, e.g. against the preservation of our environment). In my nonexistent free time I work on political asylum cases, essentially creating an enforceability framework of international law, for people fleeing country conditions so unthinkable (the irony of that work when my country falls greater into authoritarianism and oligarchy is not lost on me). I am fulfilling my dream of becoming a human rights lawyer which stems back to middle school. I saw Things I Imagined (thank you Solange). I have held an original copy of the Declaration of Independence that we sent to the House of Lords in 1778 and the Human Rights Act of 1998 while visiting the U.K. Parliamentary Archives as an intern for a Member of Parliament. This success terrifies and exhausts me; it also oxygenizes and saves me. Every decision, every sacrifice, has led me to this point. 

“It’s the choosing that’s important, isn’t it?,” Lois Lowry of The Giver rhetorically asks. This post is not intended to be woe is me! I am fortunate to be in this position, to have this vantage point at such an early age, and I understand the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. My life has purpose. I am committed to the work that transcends boundaries; it is larger than life itself. It provides a unique perspective. But it makes it difficult to coexist with people so preoccupied in the drama they create in their lives and the general shallowness of the world we live. It feels like there is no option to pump the brakes on any of this work, especially in light of our current climate, and that pressure oftentimes feels insurmountable. Time is of the essence. It feels, whether true or not, that hardly anyone relates to my experience, so if I don’t carve out this time to write about it, then I am neither recording nor processing it. 

Tonight, in between preparing tomorrow’s coursework, I realize that I have an unprecedented number of questions about life, which startles me because typically I have the answers or at least have a goal in mind that launches me into the next phase of life or contextualizes the current one. These goals, often rooted in this capitalistic framework, in this falsity of “needing” to advance my career as a means of helping people, distract me from asking myself the existential questions, the reasons for why we live and what we fundamentally want our systems to look like; they have distracted me from real grassroots community organizing until now. They distract me from the fact that, like John Mayer, I don’t know which walls to smash; similarly, I don’t know which train to board. Right now feels like we are living through impossible and hopeless times and I don’t want to placate myself into thinking otherwise despite my relatively optimistic outlook on life. As we face catastrophic circumstances – the consequences of this election and climate change (famine, refugees, lack of resources) – I do not want to live in perpetual sadness. I am searching for clarity and direction so I can step into a better, fuller version of myself. 

It’s now 3:33 a.m. Here is the list of questions that I have often asked myself in different stages of life, but recently, until now, I have not been willing to confront for fear that I might not be able to answers them. But I owe it to myself to pose them here so I can have the overdue conversation, the one I know leads me to better understanding myself:

Are you happy? Why or why not?

What do you want the future to hold? What groundwork are you going to do to ensure it happens?

What does your ideal day/week/month/year/decade look like? Why?

With whom do you want to spend your days? Why?

Who do you love and care about? Have you told people you care about that you love them? Does love and vulnerability scare you?

What do you expect of people – of yourself, of your partner, of your family, and of your friends? Should you have those expectations? Why or why not?

What do you feel and why?

What relaxes you? What scares you? What brings you joy?

What do you want to improve? Why?

What do you want to forgive yourself for and why?

Does the desire to reinvent yourself diminish your ability to be present?

Do you have a greater fear of failure or success? Why?

How do you escape the confines of this broken system? How do you break from the guilt of participation in it and having benefited from it?

How do we reconcile our daily lives with the fact that we’re living through an extinction event? This one comes from my friend (hi Jeanne) and a podcast she listened to recently.

How do you help people? How do you help yourself? Are you pouring from an empty cup?

How will you find joy in your everyday responsibilities, in the mission you have chosen for yourself? What, if any, will be the warning signs to walk away from this work, in part or in its entirety? Without being a martyr, do you believe in dying for the cause?

So here are some of the lessons I have learned during this quarantine/past year:

“I’ve Got Dreams to Remember,” so do not take your eyes off them. Chasing paper does not bring you happiness.

Be autonomous, particularly in your professional life.

Focus on values instead of accolades.

Do everything with intention and honest energy.

Listen to Tracy Chapman’s “Crossroads” & Talkin’ Bout a Revolution for an energy boost and reminder that other revolutionaries have shared and continue to share your fervent passion . . . “I’m trying to protect what I keep inside, all the reasons why I live my life” . . . When self-doubt nearly cripples you and you yearn a few minutes to run away when in reality you can’t escape your responsibilities, go for a drive and queue up “Fast Car” . . . “I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere, so take your fast car and keep on driving.”

With that said, take every opportunity to travel (you can take the work with you if absolutely necessary). Go to Italy. Buy the concert ticket and lose yourself in the moment. Remember that solo excursions are equally as important as collective ones. But, from personal experience, you prefer the company. Find the balance.

Detach from the numbers people keep trying to assign to measure your personhood.

Closely examine the people in your inner circle and ask them for help when you need it.

“And life is just too short to keep playing the game . . . because if you really want somebody [or something], you’ll figure it out later, or else you will just spend the rest of the night with a BlackBerry on your chest hoping it goes *vibration, vibration*” (John Mayer’s Edge of Desire) . . . so love fiercely and unapologetically.

Be specific.

Go to therapy even when life is good.

[howtofightwrite]

Q&A: Writing Dungeon Treasure

In my WIP, my characters find a shield left in a thousand year old ruin. Are there any metals that the shield could be made out of so that it might still be useful if preserved properly in a locked chest or something? I immediately counted out iron because of rust, and maybe copper and bronze corrode too much. I was contemplating gold because it seemed to be the most durable age-wise, but maybe it’s not that useful weapon-wise?

Gold won’t corrode, but it’s far too soft for use in combat. Bronze, iron, and copper will oxidize. This doesn’t mean they can’t be preserved for thousands of years, but they wouldn’t survive in an ancient ruin’s chest.

As a bit of trivia, when copper and bronze oxidize, they turn green, not brown.

So, this whole thing builds off a fundamental world building problem of challenge/reward structures in games. This is relevant for writing, because it can affect how you build parts of your world, and you should consider the reasons behind your choices. So while I’m talking about game design for the moment, think about how this applies to writing.

If you’re asking the player to fight through an extended dungeon sequence, you need to give them something at the end. That doesn’t need to be a physical reward. For example, Skyrim’s word walls which provide tangible abilities the player as a reward are fine. In a more abstract sense, information can be an entirely valid reward. That’s fine. It’s also true to life, somewhat, because the real treasure of most ruins is information about the people who built it and lived there. There’s also a boss chest in there with a random assortment of items, that makes no sense.

The problem with the boss chest that awards random, level appropriate items, is when they player is the first person to walk those halls in thousands of years. Any tangible weapon, would have rusted, or rotted away. Skyrim is an excellent example of this, as the various tombs, ruins, caves, and other dungeons exist in a weird kind of suspended animation. No human (or elf) has been in that ruin since the Metheric Era (at least 4500 years ago), but the candles are still burning, and there’s a chest with Dwarven gauntlets that are thousands of years more advanced than the ruin’s builders. What?

This works for a game, because as a player, you’re looking for that dopamine hit. You get a cool item, you feel good about it. It’s reductive to boil games down to a Skinner box, but in this case, the comparison is apt: Push the button; receive treat.

This doesn’t work in writing. There’s a lot of pieces to why, but the short version is perspective. In a game, you are the protagonist. In a story, you are witnessing the protagonist. So, when the player gets a piece of junk gear that’s marginally better than what they’re wearing, that’s a dopamine hit. It’s something cool you can use, and you will get the opportunity to play with it.

In a story, you don’t care if one of the characters finds new leather gloves in a ruin, unless there’s something special about those gloves. You’re there to see them grow as a character, and their gear is incidental to that. If that gear facilitates new options, or spurs character growth, then you’ll care. If those gloves belonged to someone the character knew, and they’re a hint to what happened to them, then the reader will care. If the gloves have special properties which can help with a challenge the character is already facing, then the reader will care. If the gloves offer two extra points of protection (whatever that means), the reader will not care.

A thousand years is a long time. If you’re talking about today, a one thousand year old weapon might be a low quality steel sword. A thousand year old shield may have been wood, which would have rotted away unless carefully preserved. So you’d be left with the iron frame for a shield. Or, you might have a low quality iron shield.

Many fantasy settings exist in a kind of technological stasis. I mentioned Skyrim a minute ago, so let’s look at that. The games span a little under a thousand years (Elder Scrolls Online takes place 952 years before Skyrim). In that time, there’s been no meaningful technological development in the setting. This also not even an egregious offender on this front, Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Star Wars are also guilty of this, with, literally, thousands of years of history where no meaningful technological advancement occurs.

Contrast to the real world where the last thousand years saw the development of civilization from fractured city states into unified nations, the development of mechanized transport, near instantaneous worldwide communication networks, and space travel. Most of that, in the last century.

When you’re sitting in the moment, looking at the past, it’s easy to see things as static. “Yeah, people fought with swords for thousands of years,” but, when you start looking at the details, you realize, nothing is static. The swords taken on crusade in 1096 were substantially better than the swords the Roman Legions were using in 96. And those Roman Legions were terrifyingly well equipped in comparison to the Greek Hopolites in 404BC.

There are settings that can justify long periods of technological stasis. In Warhammer 40k invention is seen as religious heresy in almost all cases; this is an example where technological development would stall out. This is further reinforced because of how jealously the Machine Cult guards their technology, while still viewing it in religious terms. There’s something sickly amusing about the idea of a religious cult that would worship a toaster, but, it could explain this kind of stasis.

Post-apocalyptic settings (including 40k) have some justification, because the people who knew how this stuff worked are dead, so the survivors have to play catch-up. Insert a religious order that blocks technological progression, with the political power to enforce it’s views, and you’ve got some justification for technology lying fallow.

This is where the boss chest makes sense. (Sort of, anyway.) If the world has fallen from some forgotten golden age, it’s possible that whatever’s at the end of the dungeon could be weapons or armor made from some lost alloy, that survived the millennia unharmed. It’s even possible it was stored in a climate controlled armory, rather than in a wooden chest that should have rotted away centuries ago.

Golden age gear can also work as story hook, on the idea that this stuff is significant enough to be an important step in preparing your characters to face whatever they’re dealing with. It’s the rare moment where you really can get away with a loot hunt in a non-interactive story.

The other possible payoff to all of this is a shaggy dog. Your character goes through all of the effort to get through the ruin, and they find a ruined artifact. They put hopes and dreams on this chunk of corroded bronze because they believed it was their key to victory, and now they have nothing to show for it. Remember, your reader isn’t here for the loot, they’re here for your character. How your character deals with that, how they move on, that’s the reader’s payoff. That’s what they’re here for. There’s nothing wrong with screwing your characters over, so long the result is interesting to read.

I’ve said this before, but your job as a writer is not to make life easy for your characters. Your job is to make their lives interesting.

-Starke

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Q&A: Writing Dungeon Treasure was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[laconservancy]

Los Angeles Needs Stronger Demolition Deterrents

In September 2019, the former longtime residence of Hollywood actor Eva Gabor (a 1938 Colonial Revival-style home) was partially demolished without proper permits. Photo by Adrian Scott Fine/L.A. Conservancy.

Preservation is fundamentally about people and the stories told through historic places. If you no longer have the place, can you still tell the story? You can, but it won’t be as real, tangible, or relatable if you can’t see, touch, and experience the place in which the story took place.

Demolition is an ultimate and irreversible loss. Over time, we quickly forget a lost building and its stories ever existed. This is especially true for subsequent generations that will never have the opportunity to learn this history. It is the reason why the Conservancy works so hard to develop alternatives and press for ways to keep and reuse older and historic buildings.

Not all demolitions are the same, especially those that occur without first securing proper permits and approvals. The City of Los Angeles is clear, stating in its building code that “no person shall demolish any building or structure unless said person has obtained a permit.” In late September 2019, the owner of 100 Delfern Drive in Holmby Hills began demolition without the necessary permits in hand. This 1938 Colonial Revival-style house was once the longtime residence of Hollywood actor Eva Gabor. Though the City’s Department of Building and Safety issued a stop-work order, the damage was already done with the front of the house partially demolished.

This demolition was especially egregious as the house was currently pending review by the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission as a potential Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM).

Councilmember Paul Koretz initiated the nomination and the full city council voted to support this effort in early September, prompting an emergency stay on any demolition activity and major alterations.

While the house at 100 Delfern Road is important for its association with Eva Gabor, its story is more than that alone. It was designed by Paul R. Williams, one of our preeminent architects whose career spanned almost six decades, from 1923 to 1973. Williams achieved success where others failed, breaking through racial barriers and becoming the first African American member (and later, Fellow) of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

The Gabor house now sits with its grand portico and front details in a pile of strewn debris while awaiting an outcome on its potential HCM status. This is an especially sad commentary on how some consider older and historic homes only for their location and lot size. While not every older home needs to be preserved, far too many are needlessly thrown away without considering alternatives or the impacts of out-of-scale new construction on adjacent homes and neighborhoods.

While it is still too soon to know what will happen with the Gabor house, other historic homes are currently under demolition threat— or have already been demolished—including more than a few designed by Williams. An example is the 1938 Tudor Revival-style Gladys Collins Lehman house in Toluca Lake. Most recently advertised for sale as an “utterly enchanting home” by “‘architect to the stars’, Paul Williams,” the home was demolished in August 2019, despite its owners acquiring a permit to remodel only and add onto the existing house. Unfortunately, these are not the first nor likely the last houses by Paul R. Williams to be demolished.

In late October 2019, the 1927 Tudor Revival house at 361 N. Citrus Ave. in Los Angeles was demolished, causing shockwaves amongst residents. Its new owner applied for a demolition permit on the day of closing and did not provide adequate notice to the public. Photo by Adrian Scott Fine/L.A. Conservancy.

Guardrails for Demolition

This is a familiar story in Los Angeles, with demolition becoming the norm. Some may recall the Art Deco Mole Richardson building, in Hollywood at La Brea and Willoughby, and its surprise demolition in 2014. In a period of only five days, a demolition permit was applied for and issued. The community remained unaware of the permit until the building was razed months later. At that time, the City lacked a process or requirement for public notice of demolitions.

Through our efforts and those of Hollywood Heritage, the loss of the Mole-Richardson building prompted the City to approve the Demolition Notification Ordinance, a citywide policy that requires public disclosure of demolitions for structures older than forty-five years.

Established in late 2014 and amended in 2018, property owners must inform abutting neighbors and their councilmember’s office of any planned demolition activity and post a visible public notice on the property. This process creates a thirty-day window for stakeholders to potentially negotiate preservation alternatives. This could include nominating a property for HCM designation, as has occurred for other threatened historic properties since this ordinance went into effect. We owe many thanks to Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell for leading this effort toward passage.

The City’s “scorched earth” policy is another tool available to discourage illegal demolitions. If a building is found to have been demolished illegally, the City can impose penalties, including monetary fines and a five-year construction moratorium on the site. Though too late to save the building, it can act as a deterrent to demolition. For instance, in 2013, the owner of an early 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival house in the Whitley Heights Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) tore down the property in its entirety, despite having been issued a permit for interior remodel work only. In 2014, the owner of the San Marino Villas demolished the Mediterranean Revival apartment building and HCM without any permits. In both of these cases, the City invoked its scorched earth policy, limiting development on the site.

In May, Councilmember O’Farrell introduced a motion to revisit the City’s current tools to address unpermitted demolition, remodels, and additions. Some offenders factor in the penalties for violations as a cost of doing business and proceed even without proper permits because the potential for profit is too enticing. With the problem only escalating, the Conservancy strongly supports this effort. We look forward to seeing what comes of this motion.

If you suspect a historic home in your neighborhood is threatened with demolition, give us a call at (213) 623-2489.

[wrldwrn-blog]

I'm curious-- Could you expand on how the phrase "It belongs in a museum" was racist? As I under stood it, Indiana wanted the stolen artifact to be where people could see and learn from it, while the guys trying to steal it were trying to exploit it, sell it, profit from it. Have I misunderstood something?

hello! ok, so maybe racist wasn’t necessarily the right term for that specific phrase, but i stand by my point that it’s a nasty phrase regardless. the idea that anything “belongs” in a museum is actually wildly eurocentric bc it implies that native/minority artifacts, people and culture exist for us to study, which is…..not rlly true at all.

anyways, this is kinda long, so if you don’t want to read my lowkey sleep deprived and rambly answer, i can probably just sum it up with a quote or two:

“The problem is that these films rarely spend any time considering the actual cultures from which artifacts are stolen. Ind.iana Jon.es is supposedly a professor, but we almost never see him reading, writing, or speaking to the living descendants of the communities he supposedly studies. Artifacts that have cultural and spiritual value are described as either mysteries or priceless treasures: they exist to be solved or sold, instead of preserved as the tangible heritage of past generations.“

“Many of the world’s richest and most renowned museums are filled with artifacts seized during colonial conquest. The wealth of Europe and North America came, in part, from looted treasure — not only gold and diamonds, but also the human beings who were turned into commodities by the atrocities of slavery.”

“Although the character of Indi.ana Jon.es arguably raised the profile of archaeology as a whole, and L.ara C.roft could inspire young women to go into the field, both figures have little regard for the cultures whose histories they collect. ‘It still promotes a problematic smash-and-grab mentality to irreplaceable artifacts and lives.’“

  x

this was actually a big thing back during that time period, and the mindset still kind of exists today  –– the concept that taking things away from people and studying them is somehow more important than the autonomy of a group. it is a wildly western (read: European/North American/white) mindset, that was mainly used against non-Western people to show that they don’t necessarily know what’s best for them and therefore have no place handling their own material goods. this is an actual archaeological thought process of the time, so like….while archaeologists hopefully don’t do “archaeology” the way ij does it anymore, it was still a prevalent thought process at the time, and probably is for some people today. basically, ij is a highly dramatized version of what archaeologists have done to people for the past few centuries, but the end result is kinda the same.

if he went to the people from which those artifacts were taken and was like ‘hey can i have this so that i can study it’ and they were like ‘yeah sure we don’t want it’, then that’s one thing, but a lot of early anthropology was based in the idea that non-white people weren’t really capable of handling their own stuff. what white people do with that information is usually take it and go ‘oh wow look at how backwards/ancient these primitive people are compared to us!’,  which is also…super racist.

you also have to understand that archaeology, by nature, is a really destructive process because once you take a site apart, it can’t be put back together. this can also be said for the places in which you do archaeology, because if you just walk in and start taking stuff, you’ve probably just fucked up relations with those people, and say goodbye to ever being able to get better data bc you’ve stolen stuff and now they hate you. anthropology highkey depends on having good relationships with the people that you’re studying, bc you’re not going to get good data if you don’t communicate and cooperate with those people.

because of that, it can also be a super politically/socially controversial process, and any good archaeologist should take great care to work with the people from that area, and to take really good notes and show a lot of care in how they conduct their research and excavations. what indiana does is like….go in, take some stuff, destroy some more stuff, and then pretend like he is somehow better than the people who are trying to make a profit off of those artifacts. he might be “better” in a sense because artifacts aren’t on the black market, but the museum is still making a profit off of those artifacts, and i highly doubt that any of those profits are going back to the communities from where those artifacts came. either way, those artifacts are being stolen, and the people really had no say in the matter. like yes, learning about other cultures is a good thing, but we don’t need to be walking all over hundreds to thousands of years worth of culture and tradition in order to do so.

basically the best way i can kinda explain it is like….imagine you live in a house. your parents lived in that house, your grandparents and their parents, and their parents and a whole bunch of your ancestors lived in that house. it’s probably got a lot of sentimental value to you, and you have certain stories and objects that mean a lot to you because of the history you have in that house. and then all of a sudden, some random white people come barging in and take a bunch of your stuff out of your house, and you’re not really being consulted on it because they don’t think you know best when it comes to your stuff, or how to take care of your stuff. if one guy says to you that he’s taking it so that people hundreds and thousands of miles away can “study” you (which is also a super dated concept, as most anthropologists today believe that you need to go participate in a society in order to study the society), that probably won’t make you feel any better bc no matter what he says (even if he’s taking your stuff so that other people don’t also…take your stuff), he’s still like…stealing your stuff, with no apparent plans to bring it back?

anyways, i know this is super rambly and it’s probably a wild stream of consciousness so i’m sorry if it makes zero sense, but also here’s some articles that probably put it a little better than i could: x x x

[garywonghc]

Investigating the Rainbow Body

by Michael Sheehy

If we look across spiritual traditions, we find the human body is broadly envisioned to be a vessel that contains the essence of existence and transformation — a container, likened to clothes that are to be stripped off or a boat that is to be abandoned once one has reached the breaking shore at death. Similarly, there are modern philosophical and scientific models that conceive the body to exist separately from the mind, the kind of mind/body dualism that Gilbert Ryle described as a “ghost in the machine.”

Though we find practices of bodily abandonment and denigration throughout Indian spirituality, the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions that were received and developed in Tibet — due to the synthetic collaborations of Buddhism with the arts and sciences of medicine, astrology, alchemy, and physiology that occurred during the formative period of tantra during the seventh through ninth centuries — place an emphasis on the body as a locus of transformation. Similar to Daoist traditions of alchemical transformation, there are Vajrayana traditions that say that all tangible matter consists of congealed forms of the five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth. As described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead and illustrated in the murals of the Lukhang or so-called Secret Temple of the Fifth Dalai Lama in Lhasa, there are cosmogonies that suggest the elemental energies that make up the cosmos are undifferentiated from those that make up the human body, and as such the body is a holon, simultaneously the individual person and the cosmic whole.

In Dzogchen cosmology, the primordial space of the cosmos is envisioned as being utterly open and translucent. Due to the natural effortless play of the cosmos itself, movement ensues. With this initial gesture, however slight, the element of air stirs up wind that oscillates rapidly into fire; from fire emerges the liquidity of water, and from water the solidity of rock and earth are stabilised. With this gradual gravitational collapse into the elemental forces that comprise the cosmos, a concomitant spiralling reconfigures matter into worlds wherein embodied beings emergently form. As such, the body is conceived to be a part of the whole, seemingly fragmented from itself. Not unlike contemporary astrophysics, Vajrayana traditions view our bodies to be an evolutionary product of billions of years of bathing in bright light.

Describing the reversal of this gestation process, The Tibetan Book of the Dead details the dissolution of these five elements during the time of death. First the body becomes heavy and sags as the earth element dissolves, saliva and mucus are excreted as the water element dissolves, the eyes roll backward as the fire element dissolves, the breath becomes wheezy as the air element dissolves, and finally consciousness flashes and flickers with turbulent visions as the space element dissolves from the physical body.

According to Dzogchen tradition, under certain circumstances the cosmic evolutionary process of gravitational collapse into solidity can turn itself back into a swirling, highly radiating configuration. That is, there are Tibetan traditions that suggest that meditative technologies can intentionally reverse this process of collapse, thereby altering the gravitational field so the inherent radiance of these condensed elements blossom. When this happens, the five elements of the body transform into the five lights of the colour spectrum. The Tibetan name given to this fluorescence is jalu, literally translated as “rainbow body.”

Material bodies dissolving into light is the subject of Rainbow Body and Resurrection by Father Francis V. Tiso, a priest of the Diocese of Isernia–Venafro who holds a PhD in Tibetan Buddhism. Exploring the body as a vehicle of spiritual transformation, this book presents Father Tiso’s research on postmortem accounts of the rainbow body of Khenpo A Chö (1918–98) in eastern Tibet, historical background on Dzogchen and early Christianity, and a comparative discussion of the rainbow body and the mystical body of Christ.

Father Tiso introduces his work by acknowledging that because research on postmortem paranormal phenomena cannot be conducted in a laboratory, there are inherent tensions that exist in conducting scientific investigations while relying on the good word of faithful informants. Seeking to take the approach of a participant observer in the tradition of anthropology, Tiso’s chapter on Khenpo A Chö is largely a series of journal logs from fieldwork in eastern Tibet and India and transcripts from interviews with local eyewitnesses.

What is missing at the beginning of the book is an overview about rainbow body phenomena in Tibet. In addition to references to pre-modern episodes found in Tibetan literature, such as mentions of Padmasambhava’s consort Yeshe Tsogyal going rainbow, reports of rainbow bodies have been emerging from Tibet sporadically over the past century. Perhaps the best known among English-reading Buddhists is that of Yilungpa Sonam Namgyel, who went rainbow in 1952, as recounted by the late Chögyam Trungpa in his memoir, Born in Tibet. There is also the case of Changchub Dorje (1826–1961?), a medical doctor and leader of a Dzogchen community in the Nyarong region of eastern Tibet, about whom we have stories from his living disciples, including Lama Wangdor, and from Chögyal Namkhai Norbu’s The Crystal and the Way of Light. Other well-known cases include: Nyala Pema Dudul (1816–1872), whose life story was written about by the great Nyingma master Mipham Gyatso (1846–1912); the Bonpo meditation master Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (1859-1935); Lingstsang Dzapa Tashi Odzer; and Khenchen Tsewang Rigzin (1883–1958). Also within the past few years there have been several reports such as those of Lama Achuk (1927–2011), Khenpo Tubten Sherab (1930–2015), and most recently, the mother of Lokgar Rinpoche. What is striking about many of these exceptional figures, including Changchub Dorje and Khenpo Tubten Sherab, is that they tended to be unflashy and nonchalant about their meditative accomplishments. In fact, there are numerous stories in Tibet of inconspicuous nomads and illiterate common folk who shocked their communities by going rainbow.

One particularly fascinating social dynamic that has emerged since the Cultural Revolution — and this has affected the reporting of numerous cases — is that the Chinese government has declared going rainbow to be illegal. In effect, because the phenomena so dramatically challenge the normative paradigm, there has essentially become a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about masters going rainbow in Tibet. For instance, Changchub Dorje’s shrunken bodily remains were hidden from authorities for years until the proper ceremonies could be openly performed.

So what exactly does rainbow body look like? According to these traditions, there are signs that indicate an adept has stabilised meditative realisation of the mind’s innate basic radiance. While alive, it is said that the bodies of these beings do not cast a shadow in either lamplight or sunlight; at death, signs include their physical bodies dramatically shrinking in size, and their corpses exuding fragrances and perfumes rather than the odours of decomposition. A common Tibetan metric for the shrunken corpse of a body gone rainbow is the “length of a forearm.” In the case of Khenpo A Chö, as Father Tiso notes, the local Chinese press reported that his body “shrank to the size of a bean on the eighth day and disappeared on the tenth day. What remain are hair and nails.” Other signs are the sudden blooming of exotic plants and flowers anytime of year and, of course, rainbows appearing in the sky.

These signs mark someone who has attained rainbow body, and some are said to have occurred in each of the cases mentioned above. However, there is also a special kind of rainbow body known as the great transference into rainbow body, or jalu powa chemo. This is the complete transference of the material body into radiance so that the only residue of the body is hair and fingernails. Great transference is a deathless state. Realised by Dzogchen meditation masters such as Garab Dorje and Padmasambhava, the great transference rainbow body is understood to be the actual enlightened qualities of these realised masters. Not unlike Christian saints, these qualities are understood to be continually available for beings to receive through the reception of light.

While it is tempting to draw parallels between the luminous bodies of Dzogchen meditation masters and saints, or even with the risen mystical body of Christ, Father Tiso goes one step further. Discussing the exchange of religious ideas along the Silk Route, and possible historical influences of Syriac Christianity and Manichaeism in the pre-Buddhist civilisation of Tibet, he asks if the first human teacher of Dzogchen, Garab Dorje, could have been a Christian master imported from the Middle East — or even the messiah himself.

The strength of Father Tiso’s book is its tremendous and ambitious breadth. He brings to the reader’s attention a broad spectrum of doctrinal and historical information not only about what he refers to as the “Church of the East” and possible doctrinal influences of Christian light mysticism on Tibetan religion but also about early Dzogchen practice. Discussing encounters of Christianity with Buddhism and Daoism, he cites little-known Christian mystics, including the Desert Fathers of Egypt, Evagrius, Abraham of Kashkar (ca 501–586), and John of Dalyatha (ca 690–786), all of whom he argues were critical figures in spreading the “religion of light.”

One example of this cross-fertilisation with which Father Tiso tantalises us is the Jesus Sutras, seventh-century Christian texts that were preserved among the caches of manuscripts discovered in the Central Asian cave complexes at Dunhuang. Thought to be have been produced by the Church of the East and Syro–Oriental Christian communities who travelled along the Silk Route, these texts remarkably borrow literary forms and devices employed in Buddhist sutra literature while echoing doctrinal claims of Christian theology in typical Buddhist parlance. For instance, similar in arrangement to many Mahayana Buddhist sutras, these texts present a question-and-answer dialogue about topics of spiritual self-cultivation, except instead of speaking with the Buddha, the interlocutor is the Messiah Christ.

Am I convinced that a Church of the East influenced Dzogchen in Tibet? Was Garab Dorje actually Jesus Christ? Did Christian light mysticism have a significant historical impact on the formation of yogic technologies that culminated in Tibetan expressions of rainbow body? These are certainly alluring questions. However, that’s not entirely the point. Father Tiso makes a compelling case by bringing his reader an intercultural, cross-historical, and inter religious discussion of the esoteric arts. To what extent there was bona fide synthesis among these meditative traditions from Egypt and Syria to China and Tibet is a discussion that warrants more attention and that this book propels forward. What’s most important, however, is that this work brings attention to the shared human experiment of contemplative transformation.

[lordmaurice]

Top 10 Fallout 3 Quests

I recently did a play through of Fallout 3 for the first time in a couple years and it inspired me to make a ranking of my favorite quests. There will be spoilers. I tried doing an evil play through as I’ve never played fallout 3 with a very evil karma before. This is just gonna be vanilla fo3 quests.

Honorable Mention to the Replicated Man & Tenpenny Tower, two quests I greatly enjoy and barely missed the list.

 10. Those!

I liked the abrupt, ominous start to this quest. A random child, Bryan, runs up to me while strolling around the wasteland and starts talking about his town being attacked by some mysterious creature. After finding the town infested with fire breathing ants and the kids father dead, I find a makeshift laboratory in a shed next door and notes on a terminal directing me to the source of the fire ants so I can exterminate them. Pretty solid way to start a quest, got me invested.

I opted not to kill the queen fire ant, dealing with only the nest guardians and returning to Dr. Lesko so I could get some of that sweet sweet Ant Might. The ending of the quest required me to find a home for Bryan. The game gives a decent amount of options for this but since I was being a naughty boy this time around, I went down to my boy Eulogy Jones in Paradise Falls and sold Bryan into a life of slavery.

Overall, a quality quest with a variety of ways to go about it.

 9. Agatha’s Song

Agatha’s house is a quaint little home tucked away in the north of the map. This is one of the times I sacrificed my evil karma for a quest. Agatha is a charming old widow who simply wants me to find a violin for her. She lets me know of a vault which once held the nation’s best musicians, and informs me that there I can find her ancestor’s violin in pristine condition. This led me to finding Vault 92 just south of deathclaw city.

Vault 92 was an interesting place to explore with an interesting story to tell. Through a series of holotapes and terminals, we’re able to piece together yet another disturbing vault experiment, causing vault dwellers to lose their mind. After fighting through a shit ton of mirelurks, I find the violin and return it to Agatha. While there is no physical reward for completing the quest, the reward of getting Agatha’s radio station and being able to hear the violin you rescued is enough of a reward.

Overall, a spooky romp through a sinister location with a heartwarming conclusion

 8. Reilly’s Rangers

I found Reilly on a hospital bed in Underworld, the only other non-ghoul in the settlement. I woke her up with a medicine check and she began going on about her team of badass shooter dudes and how they got fucked up by some super mutants. She told me that her team was holed up on the roof of a hotel and was in desperate need of rescuing. She gave me the passcode for her home base for some reason and sent me off to take her things and save her friends.

This quest offered some good old fashioned super mutant slaughter. Almost reminiscent of a Fallout 4 quest, but in a good way. I fought my way up the floors of a hospital and crossed a fallen radio tower to access the upper levels of the hotel, eventually fighting a super mutant overlord before finally reaching the roof. I saved the epic team and thankfully had a fissure battery on me to repair the elevator. We escaped and I returned to Reilly to get a beefy ass minigun named Eugene.

Overall, an action packed rescue with a solid reward

 7. Trouble On The Homefront

And so we go back to where it all started. Going back to Vault 101 after being locked out ever since level 1 was awesome. I received a distress signal from Amata, informing me that the new Overseer is insane and they need help. I walked back through the familiar gate and strolled back into my old stomping grounds. Upon arrival, and after chatting with some familiar faces, I found out about the two ideologies battling it out in the vault. Amata wants to open up the vault and the overseer wants to keep it closed.

When I approached Amata and she told me to convince the overseer to open the vault and not to kill him, I knew that I was going to kill him. I popped him between the eyes and Amata told me I needed to go. It was pleasant being able to interact with the tutorial characters after gaining some experience in the wasteland, and although there is no tangible reward, being able to take Butch as a companion is a nice addition. There are many ways to complete this quest and takes into account the initial choice of killing or sparing the overseer that the player encounters during the tutorial.

Overall, a fascinating trip down memory lane

 6. Stealing Independence

Whilst roaming the halls of Rivet City, I stumbled upon the Capitol Preservation Society. Here I found Abraham Washington, a brilliant historian who wants me to retrieve the Declaration of Independence from the national archives to preserve in his glorious museum. After arriving at the archives, I found a girl named Sydney fighting off some super mutants. I helped her kill them and then promptly shot her in the head and took her epic gun.

After fighting through a barrage of super mutants, mister gutsies and sentry bots, I came across a true patriot, Button Gwinnett, a Protectron who believes he is a founding father. After convincing him that I am Thomas Jefferson, he decided to take a long nap and allowed me to snag the document I craved. I was also able to pick up the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta while I was there. After bringing the documents back to Abraham Washington, I received a nice amount of caps and the schematics to build the railway gun.

Overall, a fun history lesson with a rad robot

 5. Wasteland Survival Guide

This is always the first side quest I tackle in Fallout 3 and this play through was no different. I sauntered into Craterside Supply and Moira sent me off on my first set of objectives. Each objective gives great opportunities for early experience and opens up the world early.

This is the perfect introductory quest for an open world RPG. It sends the player all around the map, providing them with solid loot, and lets them experiment with numerous mechanics, enemies, and locations all under the guise of creating a survival guide for the world you're exploring. It’s a multi-faceted quest with three sets of three objectives, leading to many opportunities to gain experience and learn about the Capital Wasteland.

Overall, a goddamn classic

 4. The Superhuman Gambit

I love this quest. Utter and pure fun and creativity. Upon first walking into Canterbury Commons, I witnessed a battle of epic proportions. The Antagonizer, a villainous ant commanding fiend, and the Mechanist, a robot commanding superhero, briefly argued before battling their minions and running off in different directions. After talking to the townsfolk and learning about their disdain for the two super-bozos, I was tasked with returning peace and justice to Canterbury Commons.

I started off by visiting the Antagonizer. After fighting through her ants, I reached the fiend herself and convinced her to give up her life of crime with my eloquent speech. She gave me her suit and fled. I then paid the Mechanist a visit. I decided to allow him to continue his delusional superhero antics and traded the Antagonizers suit with him for his swanky laser pistol. While this isn’t the longest quest, there are so many ways to approach it and its humor and lighthearted fun makes it a constant joy to play.

Overall, a superhuman war that only you can stop

 3. Oasis

After wandering through the grey, dead wasteland for so long, stumbling upon the lush, vegetated forest of Oasis is absolute joy. Upon first arriving I am whisked inside by some tree people and told that I have been summoned by some unnamed powerful character. After being forced to take some psychedelics, I wake up in a gorgeous, green grove. Here is where I find Harold, a man in a tree who has lived for hundreds of years. The tree people believe he is a God, but he informs me that he is simply a man inside of a tree. He has one request for me: death. He craves a release from his stationary existence, and I oblige. He informs me that I can find his heart underground. Harold can be killed on the spot by burning him alive, and although I am doing an evil play through, I’m not that evil.

While on my way to the heart, I overhear the tree people arguing. One wants to stop Harold’s growth so he can stay tucked away and safe while the other wishes to accelerate Harold’s growth and speed up forestation of the wasteland. After fighting my way through the mirelurks beneath Oasis, I arrived at Harold’s heart. I opted to accelerate his growth, as the thought of a vegetated wasteland intrigued me. There are many ways to go about this quest, and it genuinely makes you ponder what the most ethical option is.

Overall, a luscious land with some difficult decisions

 2. The Power of Atom

When I think of Fallout 3, I think of Megaton. The first town of the game is my favorite location. Perhaps the best part about Megaton, is that it can be wiped off the map with a nuclear bomb that’s just chilling in the middle of town. Upon first walking into Megaton, Lucas Sims tasks me with defusing the nuke in the town square once and for all. I smiled and gave a lukewarm thumbs up. After venturing into Moriarty’s Saloon, I encountered Mr. Burke, who tasked me with rigging the bomb to explode. Myself being a no good bad boy gave a devious smirk and agreed.

I met the Burke man at Tenpenny Tower, an elegant hotel in the middle of the wasteland, and met Alister Tenpenny, the man who Burke worked for. I stood on the balcony, pushed a button, and watched the town of megaton explode with a massive explosion, which still looks absolutely gorgeous in 2021. This quest ranks so highly for me because of the massive consequences that branch from this decision.

Overall, the bomb go boom boom kaboom

 1. Tranquility Lane

Whenever I start this quest, I never want it to end. While out hunting for dear dad, we reach Vault 112, and are guided to a simulation pod. Here, we enter Tranquility Lane, a simulation of an American suburb that contains the unknowing minds of the vault’s dwellers. Here we meet Dr. Braun, a sadistic scientist who parades around the simulation as a little girl named Betty. Hearing Bruan and Betty’s voices swap between each other is creepy and awesome.

Braun sends us on a quest to torment the citizens of Tranquility Lane. Each of the objectives he gives us can be completed in a wide variety of ways. All of these horrid acts culminate in the player dressing up like a killer and slaughtering all of the citizens, only for them to be reloaded to be tormented by Braun another day. There is a way to finish the quest without killing anyone or losing karma, as there is a way to access a secret terminal and call in the Chinese soldiers to save the day.

This quest is just ultimately creative and wildly fun. It’s the most enjoyable quest for me to play from start to finish, and has so many creative ways to go about completing each of its objectives.

Overall, a masterpiece quest

That’s gonna do it.

Peace.

[lvnalovegreat]

some luna headcanons

In Icelandic lore, magic is primarily a woman’s art. Witches were called vísendakona - wise women, knowing women, women of science. Accounts by muggles call them by many names, as for much of history the existence of magic was not disputed or despised to the degree it was in Great Britain. Eventually persecution did send her mother’s ancestors into hiding, but that could not stop strong women from continuing  to breathe light and reason into their world. They simply learned to dole it out in more subtle doses. Luna learned from a young age that a soup can be another word for a potion, a walking cane can be a staff in disguise, a garden can protect a house from evil - that magic will flourish wherever a clever, tender caster may hide it. 

Luna’s journey into the earthy, patient magic of her maternal heritage made great leaps and bounds during her time as her mother’s assistant, and this time started in the garden. Luna learned to hum beautiful, mildly enchanting tunes to  plants every morning until they grew taller than her. She coaxed gnomes away from the dirigible plums and towards the ordinary plums planted as a decoy. Garden work was an idyllic task for a pensive little girl, but a talented witch cannot be crafted from purely idyllic circumstances. A large part of her mother’s work was kept hidden from Luna, and for good reason. It was unrefined and brutal, a terrifying counter to Sigrún’s sophistication and tenderness. As Luna grew older her mother entrusted her with more information and a more significant role as an assistant. It was at this point in Luna’s life that she learned the true power of knowledge. Luna watched her mother’s work consume her in a very literal sense of the word. Luna’s participation in these experiments forced her to wonder if perhaps she could have done something to prevent the day from turning as pear-shaped as it did. For years she chatted quietly about the possibility, among many other things, to Hogwarts’ thestral herd. Luna’s  heart aches for the the creatures. She wonders if, perhaps like her beloved thestrals, her lot in life as an outcast was determined from birth. She misses them dearly and hopes they aren’t suffering under the school’s new administration. 

As much respect that Luna has for her childhood hero Newt Scamander, her father obviously holds a more  tender place in Luna’s heart as a magizoologist and explorer. He met Luna’s mother while traveling around the globe in search of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, a supposedly breathtaking creature that neither of her parents doubted the existence of. Luna will wistfully tell the romantic story of how her mother and father conceived her in a tent in Northern Sweden beneath the winter sun in all its detail. All its glorious detail.  Xenophilius was (and is) a doting, intelligent father. He listened with great patience to all of little Luna’s eccentric theories about the world around her and she learned to do the same for him in return, and as a result raised an open-minded and respectful woman. He did not insult his daughter with dumbed-down speech or lies about Father Christmas, but instead included her in his work from a very young age. He painted the stars on Luna’s ceiling and showed her which she was born under so she’d know when she was most safe from Nargles. He wore his coat to the threads to buy Luna books to devour and crystals to protect her brain from wrackspurts.    After the death of Luna’s mother, Xenophilius took a break from his profession of growing potions supplies and took Luna to spend time living with his mother’s family in Brazil. Luna did not entirely appreciate being around so many relatives she wasn’t particularly close with, but she could tell it helped her father a great deal. When they arrived back in Ottery St. Catchpole, Luna named her father’s new piece of journalism the Quibbler. 

Luna suspects the Crumple Horned Snorkack doesn’t exist, but nobody else will know that she doesn’t believe strongly in such a key aspect of her father’s life’s work. She doesn’t want to discredit his other discoveries - because nargles do exist, as to a whole host of hidden creatures only her father has been dedicated and intelligent enough to learn of.  Luna’s keen intuition when it comes to those around her has also allowed her to see her father’s desperate search for what it is - a way to keep her mother alive, as Sigrún had been just as excited about the possibility of finding it as he had, and they had used up their honeymoon money looking for the legendary creature. And for that Luna finds the search an admirable cause even if it never bears tangible fruit. 

Luna had never minded being alone, and still she cannot remember a time when she could consider herself anything but an outcast. However, making friends changed her forever. Now that she knows the comfort that comes in caring for such a diverse and wonderful group of people, she also knows that returning to isolation would hurt her immensely. The thought of her friends losing themselves to this war scares her - will it turn Neville hard? Will it take Ginny’s youthful passion away? Will Harry be able to handle the mess he’s being thrust into?  Luna takes pride in keeping the peace. She finds people forget the spiritual aspects of self care, so she does her best to help them keep their souls healthy even when their bodies ache. The last thing she wants is pessimism and anger overtaking the Resistance. She detests the notion that a good fighter is hard and stubborn and cruel. Luna mourns the losses on both sides, and does not seek to do any more harm than is absolutely necessary. Luna has never killed and dreads the prospect.  All the same, her ability to detach from planet earth and plant the thinking part of her brain firmly in the clouds helps her get dirty work done. She’ll protect her friends at almost any cost. 

Luna’s father passed his talent for painting on to her and then some. Luna’s walls have changed dramatically over the years, from the star chart her father painted her to whimsical stories all the way up to her final piece featuring her friends intertwined in a protective golden circle. Luna does not always speak much, but she draws and paints almost daily, and often practices meditative painting. She loves how much emotion can linger in a single color and how easily her world is communicated in pictures.  When Luna hid in the Room of Requirement prior to slipping out of the castle, she used the steady hand her father blessed her with and the ancestral lore her mother taught her to make the bold decision to tattoo runes onto her skin. The tattoos are mostly hidden beneath her shirt and pants, but the two most prominent ones are located on her wrists, right above the hands. She genuinely believes they help her focus her magic and provide protection and, as demonstrated with placebos for Felix Felicis, sometimes belief is all one really needs.  It’s not her body’s appearance that matters. These tattoos help Luna preserve her soul. Like most things, Luna has thought deeply about her ink. She thinks about how she can look at them while she’s being tortured. How they will help identify her mangled corpse. How they will look sliced through with scarring. Luna thinks about all the grisly details with general indifference, but she hopes most of all that her tattoos will help her remain a good friend and protect her soul from decay. Are these things necessarily what the runes she chose were originally meant for?  As always, Luna thinks that’s up for interpretation. 

[productioncontrol3]

ProductionControl

Deming and worked with Japanese producers to create the idea of Total Quality, where Quality extends past the manufacturing procedure to all organizational processes and instills the values of Quality in each worker.x As a result of this Total excellent transformation, Japan turned into a manufacturing powerhouse, vastly increasing its market share at the expense of American manufacturers who had yet to recognize the worth of Total Quality.American manufacturers and legislators started to comprehend the crises of inferior Quality in American manufacturing. Globalization and emerging technologies have expanded the tools used to fulfill with Quality ProductionQuality and both the range of Quality. New approaches, such as Six Sigma developed by Motorola, have achieved levels of version and earnings reduction to make services and goods that are free from flaws. Quality is now seen as an approach which can be applied to any organization, including government, services, health care, education, as well as nascent technology such as Bitcoin and Block chain.Implementing Quality Management and investment in a needs the initiative of executive sponsorship in any organization. Leadership will not spend money without a solid business case that emphasizes either the costs of not investing. Given the reality that the advantages of Quality Management are difficult to quantify in direct terms and have longer payback periods, executives with no expertise in Quality Management often don't observe the value of investing in it compared to investments in engineering and sales, where the direct benefits are simpler to calculate.The truth is that the typical catalyst for garnering executive sponsorship for Quality is often a negative compelling occasion, such as a recall or major reduction of market share While damaging persuasive events can indeed be powerful catalysts for change and also help concentrate executive attention on Quality Management, it might also come at enormous cost: lives may be lost, ecosystems might be destroyed, and the company may endure significant brand and fiscal damage as these external failures increase prices by an order of magnitude.Gaining executive aid begins with presenting a solid business case supported by qualitative and qualitative information that tell the story of optimistic persuasive events and fiscal return such as reduced waste, higher efficiency, and increased customer satisfaction.By creating a strong case for proactively investing in Quality, associations can avoid situations where they only see value in Quality by responding to unfavorable events that have a destructive and irreversible effect on the ProductionQuality , the marketplace, and the environment.Quality direction has four elements: quality planning, quality assurance and quality control and continual progress.These include processes, tools and processes which are used to make sure that the outputs and benefits fulfill customer requirements.The first component, quality planning, involves the preparation of an excellent management plan which describes the processes and metrics that will be used. 

The quality management strategy has to be agreed to ensure that their expectations for quality are correctly identified. The procedures should conform to the procedures, values and culture of their host organisation. Quality assurance offers confidence to the sponsor organisation that its projects, programmes and portfolios are being well managed. It validates the constant use of processes and standards, and ensures staff have the knowledge, abilities and attitudes to fulfil their job roles and responsibilities. Quality assurance must be independent of the project, developer or portfolio where it applies.The next part, quality management , is composed of review, measurement and testing. For this to work, specifications must be under configuration control. Commonly while preserving acceptable time and price constraints, this will be to adapt issues or change requests. Any ProductionQuality changes to approval criteria should be accepted and communicated.The final component, continual improvement, is the standard term used by businesses to explain the way that information provided by quality assurance and quality management processes is utilized to induce improvements in efficiency and efficacy. A maturity model provides a framework where continual improvement can be initiated and embedded in the organisation.Projects that are part of a developer may well have much of their quality management program developed at developer level to ensure that standards are in accord with the remainder of the programmer. Projects need to develop their own excellent management programs, either from scratch or by adapting those from other projects. This may seem to be an administrative burden at the beginning of smaller projects, but is always worthwhile in the end.Projects deliver tangible outputs which are subject to a lot of forms of quality management, determined by the technical nature of the work and codes affecting particular industries. Existing lessons learned should be consulted at the beginning of every project, and any relevant lessons utilized in the planning of this project documentation. In the close of each project, the lessons learned should be recorded as part of this post-project inspection and fed back into the knowledge database.The duty of the developer management group is to create an excellent management program which encompasses the diverse contexts and technical requirements included inside the developer. This sets the standards for the job quality management plans and also acts as a plan for quality in the advantages realization regions of the programmer.A comprehensive ProductionQuality management strategy at developer degree can greatly reduce the effort involved in preparing project-level quality management plans.Quality control of outputs is mainly handled at project level, but the developer may get involved in which an output from one job is an input signal to another, or where additional inspection is required when outputs from two or more jobs are brought together.The programmer is responsible for quality management of advantages. This is a intricate task because the acceptance criteria of a benefit may cover subjective as well as quantifiable variables but benefits should be defined in measurable terms so that quality management can be applied.

The standard scale of programmed means that they have a very beneficial role to play in continuous progress. Programmer assurance will ensure that jobs do take existing lessons learned into account then capture their particular lessons for addition to the knowledge database.The very nature of a portfolio signifies that it is not likely to need a portfolio quality management plan. Quality management for your portfolio should be indistinguishable from the quality management policies of their host organisation for a whole.It may be necessary for the portfolio management team to give guidance on the use of policies or perhaps augment them where the portfolio creates particular requirements.The portfolio is accountable for delivering strategic objectives. These may be expressed in very broad terms ProductionQuality in difficulty. When establishing the scope of a portfolio, attention should be given to defining acceptance criteria for tactical goals so they can be caliber controlled.Continual development is very much an issue in portfolio level. The portfolio management group needs to make sure that the direction of programmed and projects becomes efficient and effective with the passage of time. Quality management comprises everything we do to be sure we deliver and produce our firm's products and services to spec and at the appropriate price. Quality direction also includes making sure products arrive on time. It guarantees that a organization's products or services will be consistent.Quality management concentrates both on product and service quality and about the means to attain it. Quality control ensures that there's a high quality of services and products delivered. As every item or service left is exposed to a thorough quality assurance procedure to ensure the outcome is reliable and durable.Quality management ensures customer satisfaction as the product and services delivered goals to exceed the expectation levels of the client. This finally contributes to client loyalty.Quality management increases efficiency and ProductionQuality which favorably affect the revenues for a company.The achievement of quality management initiatives is dependent on teamwork. This system defines a company will achieve delivery and the creation of the item or service they provide to their customers. The QMS needs to be specific to the service or product you provide, so it is very important to tailor it to your needs when employed in your company.

[rottenappleusach]

Psychoanalytic Dualism of Mrs. Dalloway´s characters

José Garrido Geraldine Lara Virginia Woolf’s ‘‘Mrs. Dalloway’’ portrays an interesting post World War I society in which characters are being constantly influenced by the consequences of this historical event. Not only are the changes imposed by governments shaping our characters’ minds and personalities, but also the development of their own internal world. How they metabolize the direct or indirect exposition to death of that period is going to be an important process to the self of the beings. As we have to deal with these factors of the conscious and unconscious of the mind, it results wise to psychoanalyze the characters’ behaviour in order to comprehend and illustrate more profoundly certain interpretations. Through Freud’s ‘‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’’ we are going to understand the instinctive drives manifested in Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren, which represent a relationship of dualism that clarifies the Freudian notions of Thanatos and Eros....

Through years, different types of criticism has been created in order to analyse literature in an effective way, this is to say, avoiding fallacies. One important school is Psychoanalysis that maintains the main characteristics that Freud has studied. Psychoanalytic literary criticism is understood as a tool that helps us discover and understand the reflection of the author’s most hidden desires and anxieties that are repressed by the conscious mind, inside a particular text. Freud, at first, bonded all human behaviour to the sexual instinct (‘‘Eros’’), but he realised that there was also another human natural instinct as a counterpart of the previous: the death drive (‘‘Thanatos’’). This way, the dichotomy between self-preservation and self-destruction is proposed as a constant identity struggle that, in literature, commonly ends with one of the two sides triumphing.

Jacques Lacan also refers to this idea that postulated Freud, but he centres the idea of psychoanalysis in four different perspectives: The Drive, the Unconscious, Repetition Compulsion and Transference. For our essay, the different conceptions of drive are important, thus are necessary to clarify. The notion of drive differs from Freud’s, in that Lacan’s drive is not a mean to accomplish satisfaction but to circle round the object, creating a repetitive enjoyable movement. Furthermore, Lacan’s drive presents a dual bond between the symbolic and the imaginary and not in opposition, both belonging to the same type of drive. As to Lacan drive is excessive and repetitive, all drives are destructive, so part of the Thanatos.

The death drive (Thanatos) pursues the self returning to an inorganic state, and as Julia Kristeva implies in her work ‘‘Black Sun’’, ‘‘he [Freud] considers the death drive as an intrapsychic manifestation of a phylogenetic going back to inorganic matter. Nevertheless… it is possible to note… the strength of the disintegration of bonds within several psychic structures and manifestations. Furthermore, the presence of masochism, the presence of negative therapeutic reaction… prompt one to accept the idea of a death drive that, … would destroy movements and bonds’’ (Kristeva 16-17). Here we notice that this perception indicates that there are two different death drives, one in the psyche manifested to the outside as a violent instinct, and the other manifested to the inner self, self-destructive. This last one can result in an accumulation and cultivation of death drive, and Kristeva questions if this process could be erotized by the self, being implicitly part of the pleasure principle and leading to a constant change of the satisfaction object.

Freud’s concepts of Thanatos and Eros are present in the characters of ‘‘Mrs. Dalloway’’ since they behave according to inner forces that propel them to do so. In the case of Septimus Warren Smith, it is important to say that he is a veteran soldier that is shell-shocked by the impact of World War I because one friend of his, Evans, was killed there and Septimus saw it. Before the war, he was a normal person and he liked poetry. But after that he became a numb person. Moreover he is becoming mad and has different kinds of hallucinations. At the time of the story, Septimus and his wife Lucrezia are waiting for a doctor in an apartment, who is going to treat Septimus’ problems. They both pass through a very lovely moment but then Septimus throws himself out the window and dies.

First, Freud’s Thanatos is highly related to the death instinct and to the self-destruction of the person. This is explicitly clear at the end of the work with Septimus death. Second, this sudden personality change after war is related to the Unconscious mind, proposed by Lacan, in which the repressed feelings change the way in which a person behaves. Also this is shown in the form of automatic thoughts that are the ones that appear without any apparent cause, which are represented by the desire of death at the end of the story. Moreover, the Lacan’s Repetition Compulsion concept is also present since, as the name says, Septimus repeated in his mind several things that happened in the war that made him feel distressed to the point he turns mad and suffers hallucinations which are also an important behavioural characteristic of this kind of phenomenon. This character present an extreme case of cultivation of death drive, and Kristeva’s notion of erotization of it seems possible as Septimus is always looking for the pleasure and liberation of death, re-encountering with his dead friend.

In the case of Clarissa Dalloway, Freud’s Eros is dominant. She had a strong relation with the life instinct. It has to do with solidarity and true love. Also she tries to relate people with each other because it is a pleasure for her, and this can be seen in the fact that she is giving a party to a high number of people.

“Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that everyone was unreal in one way; much more real in another. It was, she thought, partly their clothes, partly being taken out of their ordinary ways, partly the background, it was possible to say things you couldn't say anyhow else, things that needed an effort; possible to go much deeper” (Virginia Woolf, 134).

However, Clarissa is also affected by the World War I since she saw her sister being killed, so two of the Four fundamental principles of Lacan are present: Transference and the Drive Theory. The first is related to the reproduction of emotions related to past events since she constantly sees the changes that the war brings to society, and more importantly, she every now and then thinks about her sister. The second one is related to a negative state of tension created when some psychological needs are not satisfied. This is shown in the work through the Clarissa’s pessimistic way of seeing things because she is mostly interested in her own social gratification.

To contrast the ideas of different literary analytic schools, we want to talk about the Marxist criticism. The relation between this with Psychoanalysis is that both look for information inside the text but the difference is that Marxism tries to see things that exist outside the text represented in it, whereas Psychoanalysis tries to look for inner things that happen inside individuals represented in the work. Then, “Mrs. Dalloway” can also be analysed from a Marxist point of view: Clarissa Dalloway is disinterested with the “Eros” conception, but she behave in that specific way because of the individuals’ roles inside the society in which she is immersed where she is somehow obligated to do certain things. On the other hand, Septimus is mentally different to the rest of the society and he cannot comply with the personal established roles inside it, so he cannot find a viable alternative for the curse of his life because he has been rejected by his peers.

These ideas can be exemplified in Eagleton’s chapter “Form and Content”. Special attention is put to the form, meaning, and style of the work where context is important since it determines the way in which the story is understood. It is important to notice the society in which this story takes place has an established ideology, defined as “forms of social consciousness” (Eagleton 3), about the social roles of people. As context determines form, which is understood as “a complex unity of at least three elements: . . . literary history of forms, . . . certain dominant ideological structures, and . . . relations between author and audience” (Eagleton 12); both characters can be analysed from this perspective. Clarissa is a woman that behaves according to the dominant ideology of the period of time in which she is living, that the reader will understand if he/she is aware of the context. Although she feels the oppression of society, she is still part of the world she constantly critiques. Besides, Septimus is obviously affected by the World War I and it triggered a behavioural change in him. When the reader knows that, he/she can understand why he behaves in the way he does, because it contradicts the dominant ideology of that time since he is labelled as a mad man.

To conclude, it is important to understand that Psychoanalysis covers different areas of the conscious and unconscious of the mind, taking always beings and their internal worlds as the main object of study. The human instinctive deciphers a major part of characters when we need to analyse them. When a narration does not present tangible characters, we have to notice that the interpretation will focus on the author, who, despite its unwillingness, would reflect its own drive and satisfaction. If the focus of the analysis is not centred in any being but rather epoch, community or social environment, Marxist perspective is always useful to comprehend the outside elements that influence a literary work. Despite we do not mention equilibrium between the Eros and Thanatos in this work, it is always possible. Indeed, a ‘‘normal’’ person would be someone that has reached the equilibrium between these two instinctive desires. In literature, flat (simple) characters are often found with one of both sides more dominant than the other, but it is important to understand that the real world does not work as if it was black or white, nor does round (complex) characters.

Works Cited

Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary criticism. London: Routledge, 2006.

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

1961.

Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1989.

Lacan, Jacques. Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. W.W. Norton, 1998

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. South Australia: University of Adelaide, 2015

[duaneodavila]

Post-Mortem Drama Continues For Farrah Fawcett Portraits Painted By Andy Warhol

Farrah Fawcett (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett both died on June 25, 2009. Each of these icons’ estates has been the subject of litigation, dispute, and popular interest. In recent legal news, Jackson’s Estate commenced a lawsuit against HBO as a result of the documentary, Leaving Neverland.  Fawcett’s Estate, however, provides particular recent intrigue with respect to two portraits of the star, painted by Andy Warhol.

In December 2013, a Los Angeles jury found that Ryan O’Neal, Fawcett’s life partner of three decades, was the rightful owner of one of two Andy Warhol paintings of Fawcett. Trial testimony revealed that the art icon made two portraits of Fawcett in September 1980, in his New York studio, The Factory. In her last will and testament, Fawcett bequeathed her artwork to her alma mater, the University of Texas.

The story behind the twin Warhol portraits would make for a great Charlie’s Angels plot. Following Fawcett’s passing, the University, which did not know it was receiving Fawcett’s artwork, let alone a Warhol, secured one of the Fawcett portraits, but the other was in O’Neal’s possession, unbeknownst to them. The University was not aware of its existence until Fawcett’s college boyfriend, football player Gregg Lott, informed the school of the existence of a second portrait. (Allegedly Lott and O’Neal have a bad relationship.) Producers from Chasing Farrah, Fawcett’s reality show, gave the University film clips of the paintings to verify that a second portrait existed.  After significant research and the viewing of an OWN network documentary about Fawcett and O’Neal, the University confirmed that a second portrait existed and laid claim to it pursuant to the last will’s bequest.

O’Neal, however, claimed that he owned the painting that hung over the couple’s bed in their California beach house. By his theory, it was not part of Fawcett’s estate and therefore not the University’s property. In addition to the artwork left to the University of Texas, Fawcett left $4.5 million to her son, Redmond O’Neal, $500,000 to her father, $100,000 to Lott, and her personal belongings to a Texas nephew. O’Neal was not included in her last will or trust.

During trial, O’Neal testified that he had introduced Fawcett to Warhol and further arranged for the portrait session, of which he was present. He testified that Warhol gave Fawcett one portrait and he gave O’Neal the other.  Other witnesses corroborated the story.

The jury was tasked with the question of whether Fawcett owned the Warhol portrait (in O’Neal’s possession) when she died on June 25, 2009.  If she died owning the painting, it would pass via her last will to the University of Texas. If it was not hers upon her death, then the University had no right to the artwork. Witness testimony was all that the jury could consider as Fawcett and Warhol are dead and there were no receipts, reports, or gift correspondence relating to the transfer.

The jury found the witness testimony and that of O’Neal’s credible enough to deem that Fawcett did not own it upon her passing and that it was in fact O’Neal’s property. The painting has just returned to the news as O’Neal is attempting to sell it for approximately $18 million. Despite its tremendous personal meaning, O’Neal reportedly wants to sell it to an art collector as opposed to having it pass to his four children, when he dies. Surely money can be divided more equally than a painting.

It is not uncommon for questions of ownership of tangible property to arise following a death. Often they relate to jewelry, furniture, and art work, items that can be easily transported or transferred. Sometimes there exist claims of lifetime gifting and certain items may not be part of the estate. In the case of gifting, generally the burden is on the donee to prove that a gift had been made. In this case, O’Neal’s argument was that it never belonged to Fawcett and he was the original owner of the piece transferred directly to him by Warhol.

It is impractical to list every piece of tangible personal property in one’s last will and testament. Often individuals sell or transfer items during their lifetimes and making such a bequest in a last will causes confusion when items that were long ago transferred are not found upon death. An Andy Warhol portrait, however, is significant enough to specifically identify. In this case, where there are twin paintings, a specific reference could have saved O’Neal, the University, and the court significant time and resources. Additionally, if the intention was in fact for the University to receive the art collection, best practice would have been to inform the school of this, so as to have a clear inventory of what was included in the bequest. The twin Warhols are not the only issues involving Fawcett’s art work as the probate court was also left to decide whether acquired art work in addition to original artwork was left to the University of Texas.

Perhaps O’Neal’s desire to sell the portrait, which he testified was an important part of his life, is to avoid unnecessary administration or even chaos upon his passing. If it is sold now, the monies can be used during his lifetime and then divided when he dies, as he directs. Alternatively, the painting, if in his estate upon his passing, can be specifically bequeathed to a person(s), sold, or transferred to an institution as a donation. Given the drama that ensued following Fawcett’s passing, perhaps O’Neal’s desire to sell now makes the most sense financially and also with respect to preservation of the iconic piece of art.

Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com. 

Post-Mortem Drama Continues For Farrah Fawcett Portraits Painted By Andy Warhol republished via Above the Law

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 1/31/2019

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Thursday 31st January2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

BARBADOS URGED TO FOLLOW JAMAICA’S IMF BLUEPRINT – Barbados can come out stronger at the end its four-year International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, should Government learn the lessons from Jamaica’s experience. This advice came from former co-chair of Jamaica’s Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), Richard Byles. Delivering the featured address for the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) quarterly luncheon this afternoon, Byle offered the blueprint for Jamaica’s remarkable four-year turn-around from inability to borrow on the capital markets to being a poster child for the IMF. Byles, who is also the chairman of Sagicor Jamaica, revealed that this was only possible through strong leadership, transparency, independent oversight and a bit of luck. He explained that the circumstances which forced Jamaica to turn to the IMF were very similar to those currently faced by Barbados with very high debt to GDP ratios and low foreign reserves. He also pointed out that like Barbados, Jamaica’s target under the IMF was extremely daunting. Therefore it took strong leadership and political will to ensure that country stayed the course in the face of heavy skepticism from all ends, Byles noted. “When we approached the IMF, they were very skeptical about our commitment to carry through a program. Indeed they were just as skeptical about a country being able to pull themselves out of a 145 per cent debt to GDP without a massive debt haircut… So we had to do a massive tax package to lift ourselves to a 7.5 per cent primary surplus. You would recall that Greece rioted about the same time for three per cent primary surplus,” he said. Under its IMF programme, Barbados has been asked us to sustain a six per cent surplus target for the majority of the four years, as a pre-condition for assessing any further loans from the IMF and other support institutions. Byles pointed out that similar to Barbados’ monitoring committee, EPOC was also established from representatives of the domestic creditors, private sector and trade unions. This group was given access to all of the data on Jamaica’s progress under the IMF program. The group also had the authority to consult with the IMF and make comments to the public. Apart from holding government’s feet to the fire to make good on the country’s commitment, such an oversight body provides transparency, which helps to build confidence among the general public, he explained. “I think also that EPOC allowed a sense of patience to develop amongst the public. So by seeing that targets are being met and by hearing from people who had no special political bias that these targets were being met, people developed a patience and were willing to give the program a chance to work,” he said. However while the businessman seemed to suggest that Barbados’ prognosis on surviving the IMF was positive, since the Mia Mottley-led administration has started ticking many of boxes checked by Jamaica, he warned that the journey was still fraught with pitfalls. He warned that naysayers and detractors will create disbelief along the way and that only actual results could combat this. Byles also pointed out that based on the Jamaican experience, the risk of structural adjustment fatigue is very real. “There’s a risk of fatigue from too much of this reform and not feeling something tangible and positive. So after two, two and a half years of hearing yes we are hitting these targets people started to complain that they were not feeling it. You must remember that there was tax reform, wage freeze and increased cost of living, which were a lot for people to bear,” he stressed. (BT)

NO REDUCTION IN LEVEL OF CORRUPTION – Perception of public sector corruption in Barbados has not declined, but it is the lowest in the Caribbean.  That’s based on the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International.  The ranking placed Barbados at 25 out of 180 countries for the second successive year, with a score of 68 out of 100.  The island also scored 68 in 2017 and 61 the previous year, and based on the 2018 Index, it was least corrupt in the Americas after Canada (9) with a score of 81, the United States (22) and Uruguay (23), with scores of 71 and 70, respectively. In the Caribbean, Barbados ranks highest, followed by The Bahamas at 28, St Vincent and the Grenadines (41), Dominica (45), St Lucia (50), Grenada (53), Jamaica (70) and Trinidad and Tobago (78). (DN)

BILL WILL HELP IMPROVE COUNTRY’S RANKINGS – A Government Senator says the introduction of the Planning and Development Bill 2019 which went before the Upper House today, will assist Government with improving its status on the ease of doing business in Barbados. Speaking in Senate as he debated the Planning and Development Bill 2019 on Wednesday, Senator Damien Sands said that Barbados dropped to a ranking of 132 in the World Bank Report in their ease of doing business which he attributed to the long wait for approval from Town and Country Planning. “That is a slippage of 15 positions from where we were in the previous report and one of the major factors for that slippage circled back to the delay in getting a response to an application laid at the Town and Country Planning,” he said. He noted that the report indicated that it takes approximately 15 months to receive a response from the Town and Country Planning. Sands believes that the country’s slippage in the ease of doing business ratings suggested that the laws governing the Town and Country Planning Act were outdated. “These few observations suggest to me that the existing legislation is outdated. It is inefficient in the process, it lacks transparency as the Chief Town Planner is responsible for decisions. There is a clear impediment to economic activity, economic growth and investment,” Sands said, adding that the current system leads to persons feeling disenfranchised. “We have a system were persons feel that the goal post is constantly shifting. They feel as though when they apply their wait is in vain. Fifteen months is way too long in any given application process. That simply cannot be good enough in a 21st century Barbados. This Bill seeks to address these concerns by implementing timelines,” he said. Sands who is a lawyer by profession said the Planning and Development Bill 2019 is a part of Government’s transformation process as it seeks to increase accountability, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in the Town and Country Planning Department. “The teeth have now been placed with this Bill whereby if a person is found guilty of being directly or indirectly influenced to make a decision for financial reward or otherwise; if they fail to declare a conflict of interest they may find themselves imprisoned, fined or both,” he said, adding that the penalties for a breach of the act range from $100,000 to $250,000 thus serving as a deterrent and restoring Barbadians’ faith in functionality of the Town and Country Planning Department, he added. (BT)

GREATER PUNISHMENT NEEDED TO DETER DAMAGE TO OUR HERITAGE – A Government senator is calling for stiffer penalties against Barbadians who destroy or tamper with key pieces of infrastructure deemed critical to preserving the country’s heritage. In his contribution in the Senate on the Planning and Development Bill, 2019, Government Senator Dr Rommel Springer indicated that while he was pleased to see more punitive measures than were previously imposed, some aspects of Barbados’ heritage were so important that the hefty fines under the new bill were insufficient. Under part six, clause 54 of the new bill, those who demolish or alter specific monuments or buildings of national importance could be fined up to $500,000 if convicted. “The increased fines will go a long way in preventing people from going in the dead of the night, under the cover of darkness and pushing down some of these properties. “I feel it should be more, because when you destroy these buildings, there’s no going back. That part of your history is gone forever,” he said, noting that while buildings in places like Bridgetown, a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site, were usually not affected, old structures, like the traditional slave huts in rural parishes needed greater protection. “There are some among us that might argue that many of these relics of our past are now irrelevant and have no practical use in a modern Barbados. But I would tend to disagree, because these monuments and relics connect us to our past and they tell a story about the struggles, the aspirations and the dreams of our forefathers. “Any piece of legislation that speaks to the preservation of our building heritage, I would gladly throw my support behind. But I think a little bit more needs to be done to ensure that all of these properties are found and listed. Senator Springer also expressed concern that some “Barbadians who have a fascination with concrete” continue to threaten the country’s green spaces, particularly in rural parishes. He complained that some indigenous plants have disappeared from the country’s landscape, which in the past were used for healing and in modern Barbados could be used as alternative medicine.    “Perhaps in this Barbados, there’s no need for plants for medicinal use. But persons are now looking for alternatives to western medicine. But the problem now is that you can’t find the plants anywhere, not even in the gullies. “In Barbados we have taken to pushing away all of the greenery, all of the grass and bush and trees and There’s very little regard for trees now. I think before it’s too late, something needs to be done about that,” adding that such issues should be addressed by the Town and Country Planning Department. “There is devastation taking place in terms of our natural environment, not only along the coastlines. In the rural areas in Barbados, a lot of our natural plants and vegetation are disappearing,” said Springer. (BT)

SNEAKY GOVERNMENT – Opposition Senator Caswell Franklyn has accused the current Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration of rushing the implementation of the Planning and Development Bill and favoring architects over draughtsmen in the process. In a fiery contribution which drew a rebuke from President of the Senate, Sir Richard Cheltenham, when he accused the Government of corrupt practices, Franklyn referred to the public meetings held to discuss the draft bill as a “pappyshow” and said it was “sneaking” legislation past people who have an interest in it by coming to Parliament and not following procedures. The Opposition senator was particularly concerned about the status of draughtsmen under the Bill, saying that they were being sidelined in favour of architects, who contrary to popular belief were not the the ones who determined whether a building would be viable. “Draughtsmen are not the problem! What you need is a structural engineer who will ensure the building will be safe. An architect is not a structural engineer. He can draw any fancy thing, but the architects now want to get their way and they were able to prevail on the Government to limit the work of draughtsmen.” Government Senator Dr Crystal Haynes intervened at this point, stating that, “Standards matter. Anybody with a CXC in Technical Drawing could be considered a draughtsman, but the final draft of the Bill allows draughtsmen to continue to draft plans for buildings up to ten units.” On other matters regarding the Bill, the Opposition Senator said provisions for the removal of derelict buildings were addressed in Section 11 of the Housing Act, but hardly ever used, and presently when applications were refused, the Town Planning Department gave applicants at least three reasons for their decision. Senator Franklyn also stated there were 400 outstanding applications within the department. “The staff is doing its best under the circumstances. The ministers who have to approve these things do not know about planning, and we need a system where the minister is taken out of the approval process. They should be involved in the policy-making process alone. Some of the people I represent are trained professionals who are overruled by an elected person who knows nothing about planning.” Regarding the Planning and Development Board, Senator Franklyn said he saw the benefits of it under some circumstances. “I approve the hybrid system where the board will stick to planning decisions and leave civil servants to do their jobs. It is a good idea to have a second opinion on the more complicated applications.” However, some elements of it still worried him. “Delays in the Town Planning Department also come about because people have to wait on different agencies, like the Coastal Zone Management Unit, Environmental Division, Fire Service, Ministry of Transport and Works, etc. before approval can be granted, and if they don’t get that, the town planner’s hands are tied. “Clause 28.3 says if approvals or comments are not given in a particular time, they can be disregarded, and the board or minister can approve the application. I hope it does not mean the board can waive or disregard environmental impact assessments or other geotechnical studies.” Citing an example, Senator Franklyn said, “When the “Barrack building” was under construction, there was not enough preliminary work done, and it was only after a tractor accident that people discovered the amount of caves that were under it.” (BT)

DLP ALARMED AT DOTTIN’S ENGAGEMENT – The political party that formed the last Government in Barbados is the latest voice to condemn Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s recent appointment of former Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin to be consultant on crime to the current Commissioner Tyrone Griffith. The Democratic Labour Party (DLP) today expressed alarm at the move, which Prime Minister Mottley told a news conference on Friday would allow Dottin to lend his “skills” in the crime fight. But the DLP sees it as a worrying approach to dealing with the country’s crime problem. The party said in a press release that it was alarmed that the prime minister was merely superimposing a former officer who was removed from duty. “The re-hiring of the former Commissioner of Police in a post of consultant is a slap in the face of those responsible for law enforcement in the country. With this clumsy enforcement of glaring political patronage the prime minister has made it clear to the current Commissioner of Police and all Barbadians that she has no confidence in the police force, and especially its senior management,” the release stated. The DLP, whose general secretary Guyson Mayers was chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) during Dottin’s tenure, recalled that Attorney General Dale Marshall’s first act of business on assuming responsibility for the police was to bring soldiers to work with them, an initiative the former Government utilised during the Crop Over season. “This too sent a message to the police and the public that he has no new solutions nor the ability to source preventative measures,” said the party, which is now led by its first female president Verla Depeiza. The DLP said it respected the decision of its general secretary to separate his service as the chairman of the Police Service Commission from his politics and not to engage in his duties in that office at this time. “The decision taken by the prime minister to push Darwin Dottin back in the RBPF is an affront to the decency of Barbadians and will undermine our legal system. Far from curbing crime, it will embolden the criminal element, for all will now know that there is no morality in the maintenance of law and order under this administration,” the party said. The DLP believes that firm measures are often needed to enforce the law, but contended that no one should ever step outside the law to do so. “Further, we are policing fellow citizens and that should never entail declaring war on our own people, especially when the prime minister believes that the gun violence that we are witnessing is as she says just a spat between two groups,” the DLP warned. The party said it respects and has confidence in the systems and institutions that have served this country well for many years and continues to trust the members of the force to do what they have been trained to do. “That the prime minister would attack the previous administration and use it as an excuse for her Government’s inability to manage the crime situation in the country is not surprising. We have long observed that this Government’s approach has been one of blame all others and accept no responsibility for anything.” However, the DLP said the safety of Barbadians is more important than cheap political tactics. “Some things should be above politics and Prime Minister Mottley and her Attorney General need to bring solutions to the people who believed she had them. The blame game has become stale,” the party said. (BT)

PUSHING TOLERANCE IN TOURISM – Tourism officials are encouraged by Barbados’ efforts as a tourist destination to be more inclusive and tolerant of members of the Lesbian, Gays, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) community. Pointing to the diversity training initiative, Fresh Hospitality Training that was launched in Barbados last September, Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) Frank Comito said it would be extended to other regional destinations this year. He insisted that awareness and training were “critical tools in the advocacy” for greater inclusiveness and tolerance of various groups. “So we are continuing in that vain. There is a reticence by many leaders, but we are starting to see that change as well, particularly with some leadership shown by the Ministry of Tourism,” he said, adding that when the training was done in Barbados words such as acceptance, tolerance and understanding “came up”. It was in mid-September last year that the pilot project was launched by Virgin Holidays and the CHTA’s Education Foundation, and commenced in October at the PomMarine Hotel and Hospitality Training Institute. The project seeks to provide diversity training for hotel employees and tourism students and equip the industry with improved service skills. Responding to questions during a press conference at the Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Montego Bay, St James on Wednesday, CHTA President Affonso-Dass said the matter of inclusiveness and diversity was “on the radar” of the association. She said she was encouraged by what has been taking place so far. “We are starting more active conversations with governments because at the end of the day, on the books in many of our destinations, there are laws and there are antiquated laws and laws that need changing. We recognize this and so we are trying to speak to it in a number of different ways,” said Affonso-Dass. “The main thing and the most encouraging for me is the fact that you started that conversation, and there have been indications from a number of ministers across the Caribbean that it is a conversation that they know they need to have,” she said. Pointing out that people had “basic rights, Affonso-Dass said she was optimistic that Caribbean destinations that were less inclusive would soon change. “It is more and more a part of our regional conversation and I am encouraged by what I am seeing and all I can say to you is that I am hopeful for the day when we will be truly inclusive and I think it is probably sooner than later,” she said. Meanwhile, Chief Marketing Officer of the CHTA Matt Cooper acknowledged that the required change would not happen overnight, adding that it would require a “change in the hearts and minds” of the people. “We realize that it is not a short road. It is not something that we just look at solely for monetary purposes and realizing the potential of the LGBTQ+ market, but it is an advocacy issue, it is an issue that really takes time,” he said  (BT)

BWA ENCOUNTERS A SETBACK AT APPLEWHAITES PUMPING STATION – The Barbados Water Authority has encountered a setback in resolution of the pump issues being experienced at the Applewhaites Pumping Station. This setback will mean that repair work will now need to continue on Thursday, January 31. Consequently, this Station is not yet pumping at full capacity and customers in some districts may continue to be impacted by water outages or low pressure until the all issues are resolved. These areas may include Shop Hill, Dukes, Edgehill, Melrose, Padmore Village, Welches, Redman’s Village, Kew Land, Bagatelle and surrounding districts in St. Thomas. Horse Hill, Suriname, Edgecliff, Chimborazo, Sugar Hill, Lammings and surrounding areas in St. Joseph. Hillaby, White Hill and surrounding areas in St. Andrew. The Authority’s tanker crews will continue to assist customers in the affected areas in the interim. (DN)

PRIMARY STUDENTS EXPOSED TO AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUES – Government should not be burdened with the task of funding projects for the development of youth in key areas of national importance. This is the attitude which resulted in an over US$200,000 investment in local environmental and agricultural projects in 43 schools across the country, which have now started to bear fruit. David Bynoe, National Coordinator of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Program (SGP) implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), financier of the island-wide programs, was speaking today at the opening of the “Living Learning Lab” at the Roland Edwards Primary School in St Peter. The lab facilitates the use of various technologies, introducing students to sustainable farming techniques and promoting farming as a viable career option from an early age. “This is a project that brings several civil society organizations together, this is a project that brings several communities together, that can have a national impact and one that can take you across the Caribbean and across the world,” said Bynoe, who lauded government’s efforts to develop the vital industry, while adding that the administration alone could not shoulder the heavy burden.  (BT)

ROSS UNIVERSITY WAS NOT A GOVERNMENT ‘PLAN’ – An Opposition senator is charging that the introduction of Ross University to Barbadian shores is nothing for Barbados to boast about as it was an ad hoc investment opportunity to Dominica’s detriment as a result of 2017 hurricane season. Senator Crystal Drakes in her response to the debate at Planning and Development Bill 2019 said that Barbados must not mislead Barbadians that Ross University was a planned strategy when it was a mere ad hoc opportunity. “To give the impression that the investment of Ross University was something that was aggressively done by Government as they had these plans and aspirations for educational tourism in Barbados is misleading. The point about Ross University it was almost ad hoc and then on the backdrop of that we had to find space for those persons to come into Barbados,” Drakes said, adding that Barbados had to take into consideration the environmental impact that an increase in economic activity has on the island. “When we have an increase in economic activity like that, we have to take into consideration how the students, the lecturers and all of the things that go along with it will place a greater demand on energy, water resources as they will generate waste. Have we accounted for these factors when we have these ad hoc introductions into our economic activity?” she asked. She said Barbados cannot have the way in which one allocates land disjointed from the way in which you are trying to chart the way forward for economic activity. Three weeks ago, Ross University was launched in Barbados welcoming 1350 students and staff. (BT)

STUDENT SHOCK – The Grantley Adams Memorial School student who was photographed holding a sign during a student protest last October, has been transferred to Daryll Jordan Secondary School in St Lucy.  He was given the news when he returned to the Blackman’s, St Joseph secondary school on Tuesday after spending close to two months on suspension, including ten days at the Edna Nicholls Centre in St Peter.  However, his father is not taking this lightly and intends to seek legal advice to challenge this decision.  The upset father summoned the NATION to Grantley Adams Memorial on Tuesday after receiving the information via a telephone call from an official at the Ministry of Education.  “I took my son back to school this morning and the principal took me to his office. He telephoned a Miss Warner at the Ministry of Education and she say that she and the rest decide that my child will be transferred to Daryll Jordan.”  The father said he responded: “My child is not going down there. I prefer him to be home and I would send him to evening classes.  “But Miss Warner tell me if I do that, I would get charged for keeping him home. So now I don’t know what to do,” he said. (DN)

GUN COURTS NEEDED – As Barbados continues to grapple with a spate of gun violence that has so far taken nearly half a dozen lives, a former magistrate is suggesting that part of the solution lies in the establishment of gun courts. Keith Simmons, who sat on the Bench during the early 1980s, said that if his recommendation is accepted and executed, it would speed up sentencing, address the backlog of cases and even reduce the number of arms and ammunition accused who return to the streets through the bail system. “All cases involving guns at this present moment go the High Court. What we need to do is change the gun law so that a magistrate can deal with possession of guns or possession of ammunition,” Simmons told Barbados TODAY. “Even when a fellow is charged with murder, the magistrate would deal with that . . . give him up to seven or 10 years [sentencing leeway]. First of all, he can’t get bail because he would be sentenced already,” the Queen’s Counsel noted. Simmons, who served as Barbados’ first and only Minister of Justice from 1991 to 1994, said Barbados was facing a law and order crisis, and therefore two gun courts would ease the situation significantly. “You have a family court; you have a traffic court; you have a juvenile court. Why you don’t set up a gun court? It would work from 2 o’clock to 5 o’clock each day . . . two gun courts working side-by-side,” said the senior legal counsel, who is also a well-known social worker. He suggested the courts be set up in the Bridgetown area. The former magistrate argued that there was nothing complicated about adjudicating “possession”, contending that a person either possessed a gun or he didn’t. “It is no big set of law. It is if you have a gun or you haven’t got a gun. It is not like fraud. You either have possession or don’t have possession of a gun. You have possession of a firearm or you don’t have possession of a firearm,” he reasoned. “So let the possession aspect go before the magistrate. So by the time the backlog gets to them they would have served time. So even if they stay in there [prison] for five years before the other gun-related charges come up, they would be there [in jail],” he added. Simmons pointed out that at the moment, a person on such serious charges was entitled to bail. “So if a man is in jail for two years, and he applies for bail, how can the judge deny him bail once he has the sureties? So it is a simple matter,” Simmons told Barbados TODAY. Simmons insisted that the only way to solve crime in this country was to “put away the perpetrators.” “And the more serious the crime, the quicker,” he added. He also said that two gun courts would provide more criminal work for lawyers since few of them were now doing this type of job. The social worker also recalled that as far back as 1975 he had recommended compulsory national youth service in Barbados but was ridiculed. Simmons said the country was now paying the price for ignoring the suggestion. He also responded to Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s appointment of former Commissioner of Police (COP) Darwin Dottin to be consultant on crime to sitting COP Tyrone Griffith. “It is a step in the wrong direction,” Simmons told Barbados TODAY while expressing concern about the kind of relation that Dottin had had with his now retired Deputy Bertie Hinds. (BT)

MAN STABBED MULTIPLE TIMES AT JEMMOTTS LANE – A St George man was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) for treatment last night following a stabbing incident at Jemmotts Lane, St Michael. Acting Police Public Relations Officer Station Sergeant Michael Blackman said lawmen responded to a report and found 38-year-old Dwayne Straker, of Trenches, St George lying on the aforementioned road around 9:15p.m on Wednesday, January 30. “He [Straker] reported that he was stabbed multiple times about the body by an unknown man who attempted to rob him,” the police spokesman reported this morning.The victim was taken to the QEH by ambulance. Anyone with information that can help police with their investigation is asked to contact Police Emergency number 211, Crime Stoppers at 1 800 8477 or any police station. (BT)

MAN INJURED IN WOUNDING INCIDENT – Twenty-year-old Deshon Fagan, of Mason Hall Street, St Michael was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital with lacerations to the head after being involved in an altercation with another man. Acting Police Public Relations Officer Station Sergeant Michael Blackman said the incident occurred at the Constitutional River Terminal around 11:05a.m. on Wednesday, January 30. Investigations are underway. Lawmen are asking anyone with information that can help with this probe to contact Police Emergency Number 211, Crime Stoppers at 1 800 8477 of the nearest police station. (BT)

COMPLAINANT HAS CHANGE OF HEART –Too many people involved in domestic disputes get hot-headed and call the police and later come to court and say they are not going through with the case. Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson made this remark after another complainant appeared in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court and asked that a matter be discontinued. She reiterated that it was costing the taxpayers since it involved police having to go through the entire process and it was also a waste of the court’s time, adding that such persons be asked to pay costs as was done previously. She acceded to the request of Richelle Walker, who said she was not coerced into discontinuing the matter, adding that she and the young man involved Nicholas Henry Rico Bailey, were co-parenting their six-year-old daughter. Among the charges which dated back to November 2016 was that the accused used a cell phone to send a threatening communication to the complainant. Bailey however still has other matters pending, and must return to court on May 23. (BT)

TAYLOR BACK TO COURT IN JUNE – A 27-year-old self-employed woman of Westbury Road, St Michael, must return to court on June 4, after pleading not guilty to four charges including using abusive language to a policeman. The charges against Shanice Rickeena Taylor are – that on January 29, 2019, she unlawfully used threatening words to PC Paul Goddard; unlawfully used abusive language to the same officer and unlawfully assaulted him. The final charge was obstructing PC David King. The matter came up before Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court and she granted bail in the sum of $750 with one surety. She further ordered that Taylor report to Central Police Station twice weekly before 9 a.m. (BT)

BACK TO PRISON – Only last December 10, Andrew Sylvester Moore walked out of Her Majesty’s Prison, Dodds, St Philip, after completing a prison sentence. However he returned there yesterday having been remanded after pleading not guilty to theft. The charge against Moore, 44, of no fixed place of abode, is that on January, 29, 2019, he stole a pair of sunglasses belonging to Anderson Wood. In objecting to bail, Prosecutor, PC Kenmore Phillips noted that if granted bail, Moore would re-offend, adding that he ended a prison term last December. Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson noted that his conviction card started in 1992 and the most recent offence was in January last year. He pointed to his head suggesting that he had a mental problem, but the acting magistrate said she had seen his theatrics on entering the court and told him he would get assistance at the prison.  (BT)

LEADERSHIP ISSUE REMAINS – Grenada’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell has warned that unless there is a change in the current administration of Cricket West Indies, instances like last weekend’s shock win over England in the opening Test will remain one-off occurrences.  Speaking in the wake of the Windies’ crushing 381-run victory inside four days at Kensington Oval, the veteran leader argued that sustained success on the field could only be achieved by proper leadership and management, and a governance system “that promotes the interestsof the players”.  “We have seen West Indies perform well in a particular game in the past but as one who understands the game well, I know you cannot make a final judgement on the performance ofa team by one game,” Mitchell said. “As they say in areas of intellectual activity, maybe that’s a one-off. I don’t like one-off.  “I like it to be clear there’s a permanent change in attitude.” He added: “As I have said over and over, unless the administration changes, I do not think we will see the kind of performance we need to.” Mitchell is a former chairman of CARICOM’s prime ministerial subcommittee on cricket and has continued to lobby for governance reform in West Indies cricket.  (DN)

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[adventures-through-two]

Audio review: The Black Hole (EA 2.3)

Written by Simon Guerrier and able to download from the Big Finish website here

Summary: Oh no, it's the Time Lords! Pre-War Games! Has continuity been shattered? Short answer no. The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria run afoul of the Gallifreyan security services while investigating a space station orbiting a black hole. There is much timey-wimey regeneration switcheroos to be had.

Good points:

Structure is one of those things that's usually notable only when it isn't very good – when a story crams too much in, rushes the final act, or just doesn't flow very well. The Black Hole refreshingly, is noticeable for its well-balanced, excellently paced format, hinging perfectly on a corker of a mid-point cliffhanger.

On the cliffhanger itself... Woooh boy. The script does a good job convincing the listener that the main peril has been for the moment fought off at forty minutes in; there's been drama, uneasy truces, technobabble galore and a dash of peril for good measure, and – given that the second episode ends with the Doctor and Jamie going off to star in The Two Doctors leaving Victoria on the space station, it felt like the episode would be about whatever happened when they inevitably failed to get back to the right time and encountered whatever caused the black hole. I was right, but satisfyingly in a way I didn't expect. And then SURPRISE BITCHES. It's the Monk here to ruin your temporal party!

Rufus Hound has a steady, understated turn as the dogged and ultimately noble Constable Pavo before flinging off calm and collected to ham it up as the gleeful and triumphant figure of the Monk. The transformation is completely left-field  and delightful to listen to. I've never watched The Time Meddler, so my only Monk knowledge comes from his role in the Eighth Doctor audios. The Monk is great here, an equal intelligence to the Doctor's, and Hound and Hines bounce off one another with a tangible ease.

Speaking of voice acting, David Warner is magnificent as usual, and Janet Dibley plays the competent, determined commander Flail. On a second listen, you can really appreciate her shift into the mid-story reveal of the real Constable Pavo.

Not so sure points:

There's a few moments that don't gel as much with the reason of the audio and as a result ring slightly hollow. One is the late game introduction of the Seeth, and because of the focus on the Monk, as villains they kind of some across a bit one dimensional.

Another more noticeable absence is the emotional follow-up from Victoria's momentary erasure from existence, the trauma which causes her to be written out of episode three doesn't get the closure it requires. Guerrier admits the story would have focused more on the ramifications of this if it was a Companion Chronicle, providing an inside view of how the shift in format requires a different approach. But as it stands as an EA,  the moment isn't addressed with as much gravity as it required.

Speaking of Victoria, it seems obvious to mention that as an actor, Deborah Watling sounds little like she did in 1968. This is audible to a degree with every older companion but in comparison with say Wendy Padbury or Katy Manning, it's really obvious with  Watling, and initially takes a bit of getting used to.

Other notes:

Disclaimer: I adore the whole Season 6B premise, and its potential for the Doctor as an unwilling CIA operative together with an older Jamie in the years before his regeneration into Three. Having said that, Guerrier has taken pains to write a pre-War Games Time Lord story into which The Two Doctors (and presumably Helicon Prime) fits, only failing to explain why the Doctor and Jamie look twenty years older between serials, which isn't really his fault. The result is a solid alternate interpretation, even if it robs me of  my 6B headcanons. Ah well. Can't have everything.

Knowing what's to come in the future often helps to inform the tone of chronologically earlier adventures, and in this story there is a sublimely understated moment in episode one when the Doctor realises that the sort of technology that conjured up the black hole must mean that his own people are involved, and he panics. Not just flustered, not just 'oh-dearing' and stressing, as in actually bolts back to the TARDIS and readies to fly away. It's a brilliant moment, contrasting the Doctor's uncharacteristic desire to leave immediately and get as far away as possible, with Jamie and Victoria's unwavering belief that he'd never leave people in danger, and their subsequent confusion as to what could have frightened him so much that he'd consider abandoning the people on the station to whatever their fate is. As a moment, it not only cements the Doctor's values of saving others over his own self-preservation, but also it ups the stakes, and really hammers home how desperate the Doctor had to be in The War Games to ask for help.

In conclusion:  A temporal tango of wits between the Doctor and the Monk. Another solid story from Simon Guerrier. 8/10