#urban fallow

[russellmoreton]

Sequential Photograph : In the space around the "spatial turn" (539) by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: Art as Spatial Practice. Space folds : Containing "Spatialities around historicality and sociality" "All that is solid melts into air" Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, (Poetic observation concerning the constant revolutionizing of social conditions) Perceptions now gathering at the end of the millennium. Spatiality, Robert T. Tally Jr. 2013 pictify.com/user/russellmoreton

[chidori-art]

modern fantasy #3 b&w version

[nickjgoodsell]

My Fancast/Dreamcast: The Bonds That Tie series by J. Bree

Image from my bookstagram: @goodyreads Here’s my latest fancast/dreamcast! The Bonds That Tie series is a Urban Fantasy, Reverse Harem romance series that’s super popular in the book community and is about a young girl, Oleander Fallows, who ran away and is caught and brought back to her bonded when that was actually the last thing she wanted…but why? The mystery surrounding that remains to be…

[dowsingfordivinity]

The Fallow Sisters

This is a wonderful series of books by Liz Williams. The books are set in Somerset, London, and the various Otherworlds that intersect with Britain. The main characters are the four Fallow sisters, who are very interesting. The books are magical and very evocative of the landscape. The author has lived in that area for many years so she really knows the landscape well. I also really enjoyed how…

[yaikelthewarrior]

😯👌👉 próximamente.💪🏼Nuevo estreno mundial 🌎 . . . . . #reggaeton #urban #urbano #latino #miami #cubanosconflow #singer #followｍe #fallowers #música #latinmusic #latinos #conflow #thewarrior #calidad #loúltimo #cubanosporelmundo #latingrammy #trapmusic #trapcapos #estilo #flow #denbow #youtube #spotify #appelmusic #YaikelTheWarrior https://www.instagram.com/p/CrUyqRnOudJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[startheskelaton]

FIRST CHAPTER OF "Urban Kiju" IS UP AND PUBLISHED!!!!

[ghelgheli]

According to Marx, metabolic rift appears in three different levels and forms. First and most fundamentally, metabolic rift is the material disruption of cyclical processes in natural metabolism under the regime of capital. Marx’s favourite example is the exhaustion of the soil by modern agriculture. Modern large-scale, industrial agriculture makes plants absorb soil nutrition as much as and as fast as possible so that they can be sold to customers in large cities even beyond national borders. It was Justus von Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry (1862) and his theory of metabolism that prompted Marx to integrate an analysis of the ‘robbery’ system of agriculture into Capital. [...]

Liebig harshly criticized modern ‘robbery agriculture’ (Raubbau), which only aims at the maximization of short-term profit and lets plants absorb as many nutrients from the soil as possible without replenishing them. Market competition drives farmers to large-scale agriculture, intensifying land usage without sufficient management and care. As a consequence, modern capitalist agriculture created a dangerous disruption in the metabolic cycle of soil nutrients. [...]

Marx formulated the problem of soil exhaustion as a contradiction created by capitalist production in the metabolism between humans and nature. Insofar as value cannot fully take the metabolism between humans and nature into account and capitalist production prioritizes the infinite accumulation of value, the realization of sustainable production within capitalism faces insurmountable barriers.

This fundamental level of metabolic rift in the form of the disruption of material flow cannot occur without being supplemented and reinforced by two further dimensions. The second dimension of metabolic rift is the spatial rift. Marx highly valued Liebig in Capital because his Agricultural Chemistry provided a scientific foundation for his earlier critical analysis of the social division of labour, which he conceptualized as the ‘contradiction between town and country’ in The German Ideology. Liebig lamented that those crops that are sold in modern large cities do not return to the original soil after they are consumed by the workers. Instead, they flow into the rivers as sewage via water closets, only strengthening the tendency towards soil exhaustion.

This antagonistic spatial relationship between town and country – it can be called ‘spatial rift’ – is founded upon a violent process of so-called primitive accumulation accompanied by depeasantization and massive urban growth of the working-class population concentrated in large cities. This not only necessitates the long-distance transport of products but also significantly increases the demand for agricultural products in large cities, leading to continuous cropping without fallowing under large-scale agriculture, which is intensified even more through market competition. In other words, robbery agriculture does not exist without the social division of labour unique to capitalist production, which is based upon the concentration of the working class in large cities and the corresponding necessity for the constant transport of their food from the countryside. [...]

The third dimension of metabolic rift is the temporal rift. As is obvious from the slow formation of soil nutrients and fossil fuels and the accelerating circulation of capital, there emerges a rift between nature’s time and capital’s time. Capital constantly attempts to shorten its turnover time and maximize valorization in a given time – the shortening of turnover time is an effective way of increasing the quantity of profit in the face of the decreasing rate of profit. This process is accompanied by increasing demands for floating capital in the form of cheap and abundant raw and auxiliary materials. Furthermore, capital constantly revolutionizes the production process, augmenting productive forces with an unprecedented speed compared with precapitalist societies. Productive forces can double or triple with the introduction of new machines, but nature cannot change its formation processes of phosphor or fossil fuel, so ‘it was likely that productivity in the production of raw materials would tend not to increase as rapidly as productivity in general (and, accordingly, the growing requirements for raw materials)’ (Lebowitz 2009: 138). This tendency can never be fully suspended because natural cycles exist independently of capital’s demands. Capital cannot produce without nature, but it also wishes that nature would vanish. [...]

The contradiction of capitalist accumulation is that increases in the social productivity are accompanied by a decrease in natural productivity due to robbery [... i]t is thus essential for capital to secure stable access to cheap resources, energy and food. [...]

The exploration of the earth and the invention of new technologies cannot repair the rift. The rift remains ‘irreparable’ in capitalism. This is because capital attempts to overcome rifts without recognizing its own absolute limits, which it cannot do. Instead, it simply attempts to relativize the absolute. This is what Marx meant when he wrote ‘every limit appears a barrier to overcome’ (Grundrisse: 408). Capital constantly invents new technologies, develops means of transportation, discovers new use-values and expands markets to overcome natural limits. [...]

Corresponding to the three dimensions of metabolic rifts, there are also three ways of shifting them. First, there is technological shift. Although Liebig warned about the collapse of European civilization due to robbery agriculture in the 19th century, his prediction apparently did not come true. This is largely thanks to Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who invented the so-called Haber-Bosch process in 1906 that enabled the industrial mass production of ammonia (NH3) by fixing nitrogen from the air, and thus of chemical fertilizer to maintain soil fertility. Historically speaking, the problem of soil exhaustion due to a lack of inorganic substances was largely resolved thanks to this invention. Nevertheless, the Haber-Bosch process did not heal the rift but only shifted, generating other problems on a larger scale.

The production of NH3 uses a massive amount of natural gas as a source of hydrogen (H). In other words, it squanders another limited resource in order to produce ammonia as a remedy to soil exhaustion, but it is also quite energy intensive, producing a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) (responsible for 1 per cent of the total carbon emission in the world). Furthermore, excessive applications of chemical fertilizer leach into the environment, causing eutrophication and red tide, while nitrogen oxide pollutes water. Overdependence on chemical fertilizer disrupts soil ecology, so that it results in soil erosion, low water- and nutrient-holding capacity, and increased vulnerability to diseases and insects. Consequently, more frequent irrigation, a larger amount of fertilizer and more powerful equipment become necessary, together with pesticides. This kind of industrial agriculture consumes not just water but large quantities of oil also, which makes agriculture a serious driver of climate change. [...]

[T]here remains a constant need to shift the rift under capitalism, which continues to bring about new problems. This contradiction becomes more discernible in considering the second type of shifting the metabolic rift – that is, spatial shift, which expands the antagonism of the city and the countryside to a global scale in favour of the Global North. Spatial shift creates externality by a geographic displacement of ecological burdens to another social group living somewhere else. Again, Marx discussed this issue in relation to soil exhaustion in core capitalist countries in the 19th century. On the coast of Peru there were small islands consisting of the excrement of seabirds called guano that had accumulated over many years to form ‘guano islands’. [...]

In the 19th century, guano became ‘necessary’ to sustain soil fertility in Europe. Millions of tons of guano were dug up and continuously exported to Europe, resulting in its rapid exhaustion. Extractivism was accompanied by the brutal oppression of Indigenous people and the severe exploitation of thousands of Chinese ‘c**lies’ working under cruel conditions. Ultimately, the exhaustion of guano reserves provoked the Guano War (1865–6) and the Saltpetre War (1879–84) in the battle for the remaining guano reserves. As John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark (2009) argue, such a solution in favour of the Global North resulted in ‘ecological imperialism’. Although ecological imperialism shifts the rift to the peripheries and makes its imminent violence invisible in the centre, the metabolic rift only deepens on a global scale through long-distance trade, and the nutrient cycle becomes even more severely disrupted.

The third dimension of metabolic shift is the temporal shift. The discrepancy between nature’s time and capital’s time does not immediately bring about an ecological disaster because nature possesses ‘elasticity’. Its limits are not static but modifiable to a great extent. Climate crisis is a representative case of this metabolic shift. Massive CO2 emissions due to the excessive usage of fossil fuels is an apparent cause of climate change, but the emission of greenhouse gas does not immediately crystallize as climate breakdown. Capital exploits the opportunities opened up by this time lag to secure more profits from previous investments in drills and pipelines. Since capital reflects the voice of current shareholders, but not that of future generations, the costs are shifted onto the latter. As a result, future generations suffer from consequences for which they are not responsible. Marx characterized such an attitude inherent to capitalist development with the slogan ‘Après moi le déluge!’ (Capital I: 381).

This time lag generated by a temporal shift also induces a hope that it would be possible to invent new epoch-making technologies to combat against the ecological crisis in the future. In fact, one may think that it is better to continue economic growth which promotes technological development, rather than over-reducing carbon dioxide emissions and adversely affecting the economy. However, even if new negative emission technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) are invented, it will take a long time for them to spread throughout society and replace the old ones. In the meantime, the environmental crisis will continue to worsen due to our current inaction. As a result, the expected effects of the new technology can be cancelled out.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene

[gamerchip]

All Visible Pokémon in the Legends Z-A Trailer (New Kalos Pokédex)

So I'm sure I may miss something but with the Legends Z-A trailer they showed off a series of Pokémon, many of them distinct being the only colored models in the New Lumiose. I went thought to find all the Pokémon available in the New Kalos Pokédex! (Speculation at end).

The first mons we see are series mascot Pikachu running through a group of Litleo and Pyroar (male and female).

Next we pass by our outdoor café with Flabébé, Klefki, and a Matron Trim Furfrou. Based on the coloration, we can assume all the Flabébé are holding red flowers.

Next we come to the waterway, presumably the one between Vert and Jaune Plaza. It's where we see the most Pokémon starting with Fletchling on the top left railing, Dragonair and Staryu in the water, and a Hawlucha with the trainer catching Dragonair.

Pulling out further we can see a Gogoat and Arbok on the bridge, and Hippopotas and Absol with people on the lower right walkway. In the waterway we see more Staryu along with Magikarp and Gayarados. An Emolga flies in before we switch scenes, (Its impossible to get a screen grab with both Absol and Emolga in frame).

We move on to the battle between Sylveon and Aegislash, several Pokémon are seen in the background. From left to right they are Female Meowstic, Diamond Trim Furfrou, and Krookodile with several Sandile.

As the camera switches to Sylveon attacking we can see Bellsprout, Heracross, and Pinsir to its right.

As the camera switches to fallow the Talonflame, we see it fly towards an Eevee, Onix, and Pangoro.

Continuing the flight, we see an Ariados scaling one of the buildings on the left and a Dandy Trim Furfrou on the right. There is also a Pokémon walking next to a trainer, while it is hard to make out I assume that this is an Espurr.

The final scene with Pokémon fly's us over what I assume is the new Jaune Plaza. On the far left there is a Heart Trim Furfrou. In the center plaza Tyranitar and Male Pyroar appear near a trainer while Krookodile and a Sandile are playing in the center fountain. Finally a Noivern and two Noibat fly in from the right.

Assuming that no evolution lines change, there are currently 56 Pokémon in this new Pokédex all which appeared in the Original Kalos Pokédex, 5 of which have Mega Evolutions (Absol, Heracross, Pinsir, Tyranitar, and Steelix). Interestingly the trailer showed off no Ice type Pokémon. Regardless I'm super excited to see this new urban based Pokémon game!

[avaantares]

People who live in population centers often don't realize just how much the urban/suburban lightscape has robbed them of.

Not just the stars and galaxies you should be able to see with the naked eye -- though that is also something that's almost impossible to see near cities due to light pollution -- but also the absolutely magical experience of seeing fireflies the way they should be seen. The way they can only exist away from man-made light sources.

Coming back from a historic small-town theatre I frequent, I have the choice between taking the interstate or the rural back roads. I almost always choose the latter, so earlier this evening I was driving out in the country for about 15 miles. That region is primarily farmland with a handful of scattered residences. It was around dusk, and -- friends, it was like the earth was covered in glitter. In the fallow fields and pastures, tens of thousands of fireflies sparkling, just this universal, unbroken twinkling everywhere you looked. The kind of light show that doesn't even look real because we're used to seeing just a few fireflies at a time, if we're lucky enough to have a large backyard or a patch of woods nearby. Or maybe you don't get to see fireflies at all because you're in a city and there's nowhere for them to lay eggs (in undisturbed fallen leaves, mostly), so you've only seen them in videos. But the fireflies were the only lights on this land before we put up our electric flood lights and streetlamps, and in these broad swaths of unlighted field and self-mulching fencerows, they're still thriving.

I watched this display in awe as I drove, slowing down at times to admire a particularly flashy area. And then I'd drive past a house with a billion watts of exterior security lighting, and... nothing. Not a glimmer in those yards. Maybe one lonesome flicker in the ditch by the road, a firefly that couldn't find the party or didn't make it to the darker areas for some reason. It's alone because there's no reason for fireflies to come to bright places; they light up to find mates, and they're obscured and blinded by the man-made lights.

The closer I got to my suburban home, the fewer fireflies there were along the road. When I came to the high school with its massive day-bright stadium lights that stay on all night (and which fill me with rage fully as incandescent for so many reasons), I didn't spot a single firefly for a quarter mile in either direction. Kids growing up in the neighborhoods around that school will never have the chance to watch fireflies in their own yards, or learn to scoop them gently from underneath to catch them without harming them and then let them crawl to the tips of their fingers to fly away again. When they grow up, they won't have any emotional association with fireflies that would inspire them to leave a few leaf piles along the fence in autumn, or to turn out the exterior lights at dusk and let the fireflies do their thing.

It saddens me that many (probably the majority of) people living in this era aren't getting to see how beautiful nature is when we just leave it alone. Instead of enjoying its natural state, we're spraying poisons on our lawns, and replacing native species with non-native ones because the yard looks more uniform that way, and throwing bagged leaves in landfills instead of letting them break down naturally and provide vital habitat for small animals and insects, and installing so many landscaping and security lights around our residences that you could stand in the yard and read by them in the middle of the night. Fireflies are actually threatened in some areas where they used to be common because of all these things.

If you live in a city or a lighted suburban area, I'd encourage you to try to get out to the country at least once and experience fireflies in force in their natural habitat. And if you're in an area where fireflies are native and you are in a position to, maybe leave a little pile of wet leaves for them in a corner of the yard. Turn out the lights in summer. Refrain from spraying pesticides on your grass.

Let the little guys light up the world for another generation.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The rationalisation of space under capitalism is one facet of the ideology of progress which has had a profound impact on the spatial organisation of society in nature. Marxist geographer David Harvey writes that ‘capital accumulation and the production of urbanisation go hand in hand’. For Harvey, urbanisation is a physical manifestation of the drive to produce a ‘rational landscape’ in which barriers to the turnover time of capital accumulation are removed. In this sense then, letting space lie fallow introduced unacceptable friction into the capitalist system. Highlighting this shift, urban and environmental geographer Matthew Gandy notes that ‘the very idea of rest, and of resting space in particular – letting the earth sleep – counters the accelerative and all-encompassing momentum of late modernity’. The incongruity, however, isn’t just a question of an anxious space of late modernity. The instrumentalisation of space is already apparent in the mid-19th century, when Ildefons Cerdà’s opening statement for urbanisation sought to ‘fill the earth’. And by the early 20th century, this programmatic vision for design was fully institutionalised when Ebenezer Howard’s seminal Garden Cities project ‘sought to maximise functionality through territory saturated with activity’.

Time is also rationalised and subsumed under the growth imperative, which legitimates practices used to force people into reconfigured social relations. As critical urban theorist Alvaro Sevilla-Buitrago remarks, for example, ‘improvers couldn’t stand idleness, regardless of whether it referred to a quality of land or to poor commoners “wasting” productive time by contemplating their grazing livestock instead of embracing wage discipline as day labourers’. It was the capitalist project to proletarianise the population that transformed social relations connected more with ecological rhythms into the realm of the abstract rhythms of capitalism. Put another way, wresting productivity from humans – and non-humans – through labour discipline has always been a central feature of the project of capitalism, from the Enclosure Acts in England until today. Capturing ‘wasted time’ also had another social dimension: the production of new forms of citizenship meant to underpin the bourgeois vision of the modern metropolis. In New York City, for example, Sevilla-Buitrago interprets the construction of Central Park as a ‘special kind of enclosure … [that was meant to] shift behaviors from one regime of publicity to another’ in a battle that pitted the elite against the commoning practices of the New York City streetscape by recently arrived immigrants. While geographer Tony Weis has shown that the slow rhythms and periodic pauses of fallowing can influence social organisation in potentially progressive ways, we see above that the devaluation of idleness has instead promoted a capitalist subject synchronised to the rhythms of capitalist time.

Taken as a whole, the move to valuing progress over fallowing signalled a regime change that rationalised space and time, which, in turn, produced radical social, ecological and continuous urban transformations that, today, are felt on a planetary scale. Viewing the planet as a kind of perpetual growth machine with a core purpose of chasing profits, an ever-growing metabolism, is churning the earth in successive waves of creative destruction. This results in both acute and chronic pathologies of devalued human social relations, diminished diversity of the biosphere and a continually transformed urban fabric at ever larger scales. What impact has the growth imperative had on the design professions? Embedded in, and arguably a tool of, capital, the design professions have been criticised as largely geared towards solving the problems of wasted space to restore class relations and processes of accumulation. Can a design culture that sees itself as inextricably linked to growth retrain its analytical lens on social and ecological value production that exists outside capitalist sociospatial relations, rather than viewing moments of inactivity merely as opportunities to promote the next growth cycle?

[pattern-recognition]

so many progressives that are on the side of Palestine, even those with conviction to demand a single state Palestinian solution, are still swept up in the orientalist fantasy that an ideal Palestine would look like a picturesque NatGeo cover, nothing but anonymous shepherds, small villages, and temporally-ambiguous peasants subsistance farming. it harkens back to the original colonialist argument that coveted regions like Palestine, South Africa, North America, etc, everywhere the saga of settler-colonialism has unfolded, that these places are nothing more than exotic vistas devoid of people and civilization and ripe for conquest. On the complete opposite of the spectrum, many of the same fantasies are shared, with different impulse, by fundamentalist ideologies like salafism, wahhabism, pashtunwali, etc, themselves a reaction to colonialist exploration, but nonetheless seek to stifle industrialization in favor of untenable perpetuation of a socially-chauvinist ideal of mythologized traditionalism. the ideal Palestine, and the ideal post-colonial world, doesn’t look like vibrantly dressed but uneducated peasants planting rice by hand, it doesn’t look like land turning to fallow in a beautiful valley. it looks like factories, train yards, steel plants, universities, harbors bustling with ships and containers, robust urbanization, industrial agriculture, secular (or even state-atheist) governments, and all the other hallmarks of autarky and, if i may use a forbidden term, development. development, modernization, and secularism are the golden words of imperialism and capitalism, but they are spoken with a silver tongue. it is possible, and entirely necessary, to improve the material conditions for people without the parasites

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the Desert Sun:

The federal government and Imperial Irrigation District on Friday unveiled a key environmental assessment of a potential huge Colorado River conservation deal that could save nearly 1 million acre-feet of water through 2026 — and yield the agency and area farmers as much as $700 million in public funds.

Growers said they're ready to begin summertime fallowing and other measures as soon as the paperwork is finalized, and the clock is ticking. But a veteran analyst of intertwined Colorado River and Salton Sea issues and an area environmental justice advocate both said they have concerns.

The proposed System Conservation Implementation Agreement calls for up to 300,000 acre-feet a year to be conserved, or nearly 98 billion gallons of water — as much river water as the state of Nevada receives annually. That's an extra 50,000 acre-feet more than was originally proposed by IID, itself sufficient to supply a small city. An acre-foot of water equals about 326,000 gallons, and is enough for a year's worth of supply for about three households. And that would be on top of about half a million acre-feet of water that is already conserved and transferred to urban areas under earlier agreements.

The water district holds by far the largest and among the oldest rights to Colorado River water, giving its farmers top access to abundant amounts. But all are keenly aware of the long-term drought prognosis for the river system, and the ever present clamor of urban areas for more water.

The agreement, likely the last and largest of a series of deals struck between the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and cities, tribes and wholesale water contractors since the river system neared dead pool two summers ago, could take effect within 30 days if a series of approvals of the key environmental document are made in rapid fire order. The river and its reservoirs, the nation's largest, supply supply more than 30 million people with drinking water across seven western states, and irrigate millions of acres of farmland.

That document, a relatively short draft environmental assessment released Friday afternoon by Reclamation staff, says a full, time-consuming environmental review of the deal was not needed, because there would not be significant additional adverse impacts to endangered species, air quality or environmental justice communities from the relatively short-term program.

IID's board of directors hastily called an emergency meeting at 4:30 p.m. Friday and authorized staff to use the draft document to begin preparing related contracts and other paperwork, pending a series of federal, state and its own final approvals.

After waiting more than a year for OKs of their original offer to conserve a million acre-feet of water by 2026, they and area growers are eager to move forward.

[chidori-art]

modern fantasy #3

[nickjgoodsell]

My Review: Savage Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #2): by J. Bree

***Warning!! This review may contain spoilers from the previous title in this series! Continue reading with caution, you’ve officially been warned!*** To see my review of book #1 – Broken Bonds – Click HERE Total Star Rating: 4.25 Stars Oh, my girl likes that? You want me to kill everyone who dares to look at you? I will. I’m not a good man, not like the rest of your Bonds. I’m good for you,…

[dansnaturepictures]

28th September 2023: Red Deer and Fallow Deer that it was fantastic to see on our annual royal parks visit to Bushy Park today. It was a treat once again to see those majestic Red Deers, their dinosaur like roars a constant sound track, in this urban area evocative of wilderness. I never tire of watching and taking in these enormous mammals one of my favourites, the royal park visits firstly at Richmond Park first allowing me to see them and the parks have allowed us amazing chances to watch them over the years in the autumn. Today I was in my element watching them once more and taking photos as we saw them resting, roaring, charging around and battling each other in their dramatic rut and thrillingly and beautifully going into water, brushing antlers on vegetation and rounding the fenced in cafe' area as we enjoyed a hot drink roaring away as it did which was unique. I enjoyed seeing females again too with the stags interacting with them at points, but the big takeaway from today compared to this trip in previous years was we were lucky to see and hear loads of stags and see some amazing action. The Fallows Deer including nicely marked white ones were a treat to see too. What a day, in my next post I'll mention some other wildlife seen on this mega day out for us.

[just-1-scorpio]

Reading Asterion by Alessa Thron, so you don't have to. Chapter four and five.

This is a shared review of this two chapters between me, and @wordsmithic .

If you haven't read my two previouse posts of this book, here are the links:

Prologue, and chapter 1: https://www.tumblr.com/just-1-scorpio/769940204838584320/reading-asterion-by-alessa-thron-so-you-dont?source=share

Chapter 2 and 3: https://www.tumblr.com/just-1-scorpio/770923798270754816/reading-asterion-by-alessa-thron-so-you-dont?source=share

This time we have only one positive about the book.

wordsmithic: ah! i also forgot to say that I like this thing that the book has: an actual labyrinth were people die in combat trials. At least this isn't metaphorical!

So chapter four starts that night, from Asterion's perspective, who is doing paper work in his office, and one of his bodygoards who is Theseus for some reason is also there. They conversetion includes Ariadne, who Theseus calls "Helas woman". And here is where the problems start.

wordsmithic: Aren't they already in Greece...? Isn't almost everyone around them Greek..? I don't understand... Didn't the author have the common sense to realize her characters are not diaspora Greeks whose parents are pestering them to find someone "from the culture"?

wordsmithic: Unrelated but, every time I read "Hellas woman" I cringe deeply. It's like they're saying "Hungary woman" while they're in a Hungarian city already

scorpio: As far as I know Helas basickly just means Greece.

wordsmithic: yes it happened multiple times :'( I don't know, perhaps there are multiple ethnicities now on Styx ? and each district has another ethnicity? But then why isn't every Greek in the Hellas district?

So then Asterion goas out, and learns that Ariadne has arrived. He goas down to the club, and she meets Ariadne, who introduces herself as Kassandra, in order to keep her identity a secret. They flirt a little. Then Asterion's bisnise partner arrives, calls Asterion the minotaur, then he trys to flirt with Ariadne too.

wordsmithic: - I.... don't think I need to comment on this one.... This came out of nowhere and it fits with nothing else

Then in the end Ariadne goas to the bathroom. And here is where chapter 4 ends.

Now let's starts chapter 5.

This chapter fallowes Ariadne. Who in the bathroom takes off her underwear (I think we know where is this going), then goas back to the bar, and meets Nikos agein. Asterion apears, he fighs with Nikos, then Ariadne and Asterion go down to the fighting pits And more problems apear in these two screens.

wordsmithic: This is weird because Greeks - who are usually Christian - do not consider our ancient gods "freaks". The gods are important for us and, especially if we saw those deities irl, we would respect them and wouldn't call them "freaks." Unless there was a hypothetical religious movement against those gods, which we don't see in this book. It's probably the author's upbringing that shows here. Perhaps she's coming from a Christian denomination that looks at the ancient Greek gods as "pagan" and freakish.

scorpio: It's posible that it's the writers upbringing. If we have seen or at least heard about a momement ageinst the Gods, then it would have made much more sense.

wordsmithic: yup, they do that pretty often. I often have to explain to Americans that what they see as "pagan" stuff are not "pagan" here. It's just our culture and tradition

wordsmithic: also, drachmae is plural. Drachma is the proper singular term here. This grammatical convention is known to English speakers and can be found with a google search. But instead, every time Alessa uses the plural instead of singular type.

wordsmithic: If that is a clever answer I should be considered clever enough to have 50 degrees by now

scorpio: I don't get how is this a clever answer eather.

wordsmithic: Since it was the urban centers that got destroyed on the collapse, the ancient amphitheaters which were kilometers away were not touched. I mean, who vandalizes an ancient theatre when they are at odds with the government... Not the Greek people, at least. So! I assume she's talking about the surviving ancient theaters throughout the country. Plus, she would like to have the ancient aesthetic, so of course she refers to them. In that case, "littered" is a disgusting way to describe the existence of ancient monuments within a country!! Not only that, but the "ruins" themselves are restored to a large degree and Greeks watch plays there every summer. Case 54683 of Alessa having No Fucking Clue of what she's talking about

wordsmithic: Also the theaters were mostly intact to a very good degree. They are not just stones here and there.

scorpio: Yes. I have studies art history, and seen pictures of them. Most of them, and most of the pictures I seen of them, they look intact.

wordsmithic: Tells you how much she didn't bother to search... And she implied that the people also destroyed those theatres which makes no sense!!

wordsmithic: I.... thought we were in Greece? What do they mean "Greece fell"? Every character we met so far is Greek except perhaps two people (of perhaps Greek or other ancestry. I can't tell the way Alessa is handling names here)

scorpio: Yes. When people refer to a country as fallen usually means that it no loner exist, or have been ocupaide by an another conuntry. See "The fall of the Roman Empair" when people talk about the end of it. But as far as I know in this book is still an existing, and indopendent country.

wordsmithic: "But as far as I know in this book is still an existing, and indopendent country." same! :o if it wasn't then Alessa should have told us what other countries became part of the new country

We learn more about the death battles, which includes the labyrint, that was disgned to kill, and that's why fights in there are rarely used.

And then I don't think I have to tell or discribe what Ariadne and Asterion do whaile they watch the fight seeing that how this books reads like a generic mafia romanc, and that the book cover is a shirtless man.

There are problems. The worldbuilding is a mess. I know that I said this a hundred of times already. And an another problem is that it's veary easy to tell that Alessa doas not know what she is talking about.

Whaile we talked about these two chapters we got an another question. Where were the beta readers? There are beta readers who work for free, and work with self published writers. And the same question of "why these two?", that I had seince I found this book.

The book so far reads as if, she was thinking: "Mafia romanc, and Greek mythology are both popular on booktok. What could go wrong, if I mix them?" whaile writing it.