#you never had a concrete sense of identity. you were nothing but calculating in all areas as a teen.

[trauma-trove]

[Id: screencap from the Barbie movie where Barbie is dancing at a party and asks if anyone ever thinks about dying. The subtitle is edited to read, "Do you guys ever think you might be a system?" End id.]

I'm delusional again. Fucking sake.

[miraculousluvbug]

WINGLESS | Ch. 6

***New to Wingless? Start at Chapter 1!

CH. SUMMARY: After learning Hawk Moth's identity, Lila inserts herself into Gabriel's inner circle so she can destroy Ladybug-- er, get Ladybug's earrings. Ha-ha-ha. Ha.

Lila toed the cement beneath her as she restlessly awaited the assistant’s arrival. Gabriel had used an earpiece to communicate to her, Lila assumed. But the waiting was painfully awkward. Neither party made any attempt to fill the silence. The absurdity of the situation sat on their chests like an overweight feline unwilling to move.

As the sun dipped out of golden hour, the mansion shrouded the garden in shadow. Lila squinted her eyes to try and make out the details of Adrien’s mother’s statue, but the effort was fruitless. Wouldn’t a billionaire have, like, lamps or something? Maybe he didn’t have lamps because he hardly left the walls of his office.

Lila’s lips twitched into a smirk, but she quickly smothered it.

There was a sudden scuffling of shoes against the garden stones from behind Lila. She observed wordlessly from the corner of her eye as the looming and brooding Gabriel Agreste flew to the assistant’s side at an inhuman speed and held his arms out to support her silently, his fingers never quite making contact with the body he seemed desperate to protect.

Huh. A weakness. Hawk Moth had a weakness.

Lila filed that tidbit away should she need it for later.

“You were quite cryptic over the phone, sir,” the assistant started.

“I suppose I was, Nathalie. What needed to be said was . . . not phone appropriate.”

“Sir?”

Knowing Gabriel was Hawk Moth seemed to have tipped a domino in Lila’s brain. It was like there was a blanket over her eyes and it had been ripped away. On several occasions, a blue-skinned bird lady aided and abetted Hawk Moth. Lila had wondered who would possibly be close enough to the villain to be looped into his plans.

The connection was easy to make.

Lila folded her arms across her chest and cocked her head to the side, looking Nathalie up and down. When she had finagled her way into the Agreste mansion with a despicable limited edition Ladybug figurine, discovering the identities of Paris’s most wanted duo was not only low on her list of possibilities; it was nowhere near the friggin’ list.

But Dio was it the single most delectable turn of events.

“Let me guess. You were Mayura.”

Nathalie, who had been wholly oblivious to Lila’s presence, sucked in a breath, head spinning to meet the eyes of Adrien’s conniving classmate. Nathalie opened her mouth, probably to protest Lila’s statement, but the words died on her tongue. The only sounds came from the crickets chirping into the encroaching night air.

“She knows,” Gabriel explained.

“She . . . she knows?” Nathalie repeated.

Gabriel nodded. Nathalie’s gaze fell to the grass sprouting in between the garden stones. As the trio stood, the occasional butterfly fluttered around Gabriel like they knew they were kindred.

“You don’t need to be worried about . . . What’s the phrase?” Lila rested a finger on her chin. “Ah, right. Me spilling the fagioli. I don’t know the French word.”

“Beans,” Nathalie supplied.

“You know Italian?” he asked. Then softly to himself, “My Emilie knew Italian.”

Nathalie ducked her head at Gabriel’s attention before straightening her posture and jutting out her chin. If Lila hadn’t seen the woman shuffle over to this spot as if she were going to faint any moment, she might have never known there was anything amiss.

“So you . . . what? Want to be an ally?”

“Multilingual and smart,” Lila teased.

Something dark flickered in Nathalie’s eyes. Much darker than Lila would have ever given her credit for. “You’d do better to watch your tone with me, Mademoiselle Rossi.” She spat Lila’s name like one might an unforeseen chunk of raw garlic.

Ah, so this was how Nathalie wanted to play this. Lila’s fingers tingled in anticipation. She was a flexible actress, best known for her improv skills and dedication to her roles. If a performance was what the assistant wanted, then Lila was eager to put on a show.

“Why, Mademoiselle Nathalie--” Lila started, turning her back on the pair.

“Sancoeur.”

Lila rolled her eyes but proceeded to pump her tone full of sickeningly sweet syrup. “Right. Mademoiselle Sancoeur, it would be my pleasure to get the Ladybug Miraculous for Monsieur Agreste.”

“And Chat Noir’s.”

Lila plastered a fake smile on her face and turned on her heel. “Hm?”

Nathalie arched an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You loathe Ladybug, don’t you, Mademoiselle Rossi?”

“That’s no secret.”

“You want more than to take her Miraculous.”

It wasn’t a question. Lila held eye contact with Nathalie, unflinching. Eventually, she spoke. “I want to humiliate her. Like she humiliated me,” Lila growled. I want to destroy her.

The assistant chose not to expand on this statement, but Lila could tell she sensed a much more sinister motivation. She must have been weighing the pros and cons, her mind running a mile a minute to predict what including Lila might entail. Lila had to agree: she was a wildcard. Her loyalties teetered like a see-saw, ever-changing to suit her needs. She knew this. And Nathalie knew this.

Lila’s eyes bore into Nathalie’s, challenging her to refuse.

“I admit,” Nathalie began after a beat of consideration, removing her tablet from the crook of her arm, “you might make a valuable asset.”

Gabriel, who had been quietly observing the interaction between his assistant and the girl, folded his arms behind his back. “Yes, even now, while I’m untransformed, your contempt for the bug is palpable.”

“She’s a cockroach,” Lila sneered, her lips upturned in a grimace and her hand clenched tightly into a fist.

Lila’s enthusiasm amused Gabriel greatly. His shoulders shook as he chuckled, but the sound was hollow. “That is something we agree on. No matter how many times I pursue her, she manages to outsmart me.”

Lila bit her tongue. She wanted to say It’s easy to outsmart a man whose password is “password,” but she didn’t. She honestly deserved an award for that caliber of commitment.

“While you are very clever, you’ve been playing an elementary partita, Monsieur Agreste.”

Gabriel’s eyes hesitantly shifted to Nathalie.

“Game, match, etcetera,” she clarified. Ironically, a meager little ladybird flitted to Gabriel’s shoulders then. He scrunched his nose at it.

“And though it’s been a rousing game of tag--” Lila paused purposefully as Gabriel, without breaking eye contact, lifted a palm and allowed the dotted beetle to crawl onto his fingers before proceeding to wordlessly pass it to Nathalie. Lila cleared her throat. “I’m here to up the stakes.”

With her mouth set into a thin line, Nathalie bent over and shook her finger until the thing lost its grip and fell to the concrete. In the process, her shirt rode up to reveal a compelling pale scar the length of a thumb running up her side. Lila arched an eyebrow. Nathalie hastily covered it.

“What exactly are you implying, Mademoiselle Rossi?”

Gabriel peered at Lila over the bridge of his nose, daring her to challenge his legacy as Hawk Moth.

But Lila was not an expert manipulator for nothing. She knew how to read people, and, more importantly, she knew how to please them.

She knew how to play them.

“You’re a proper gentleman, Monsieur.”

Flattery. She would begin with flattery.

With one hand, she twirled one of her pigtails. Men and boys alike often found intelligent girls not only intimidating but emasculating. She wasn’t sure if Gabriel would take too kindly to a sixteen year old picking at all the holes in his plans, holding a magnifying glass to his inadequacies.

But she always loved creating fire with glass as a child.

She particularly enjoyed setting unsuspecting ants aflame.

“Getting your hands dirty is beneath you. There’s no doubt your plans are always cunning.”

She nearly gagged at the sound of those words leaving her throat as she slowly approached the designer and his assistant, calculating each step before taking it. No, she really didn’t believe his plans were cunning. It seemed like he akumatized anyone, chucking strategy to the wind. Imbecille.

“Your akumas, they’re always dressed so well--” it took a colossal amount of willpower for Lila not to look away then, a classic sign of lying “--and their powers are always a genius play on words--” double gag “--but unless you’re willing to play in the mud . . .”

Crunch.

The young vixen made a spectacle of rotating her toes back and forth as she squashed the ladybug the duo had so gingerly set on the stone. She relished in the sensation of a dainty beetle beneath her boot, imagining in vivid detail that it was the heroine’s skull instead.

When she lifted her foot, the two adults barely spared a glance at the result. Lila smirked.

“I’m willing to make a mess, sir,” Lila asserted, peering up at Gabriel through her bangs. She twirled and danced on the balls of her feet. “I would be a brilliant addition! I’ve wanted to wipe that smile off Ladybug’s face since I met her.”

For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, Gabriel’s lips tilted into a smile. He looked . . . almost proud. Lila lapped it up like a woman lost in the desert being given a bottle cap of water.

“Your family is from Italy, Lila?”

Lila tilted her head, confused by the abrupt detour in conversation. “. . . Yes.”

“How would you feel about an impromptu family visit?”

Nathalie’s eyes widened. She whipped her head around to stare down her boss so fast she was nearly overcome by dizziness. “You can’t really want--”

Gabriel held up a hand, instantly silencing his assistant. She searched his eyes for any remnants of humanity. Was there any left? Did it slip through her fingers on her watch? Gabriel couldn’t possibly want-- They were children, for God’s sakes!

But like an avalanche, his mask crumbled, and swept away with it was any morsel of decency.

“I do want, Nathalie. I’ve grown bored of this back-and-forth business with those two meddling infants. They hold onto those Miraculous so firmly, as if they could possibly know, possibly fathom--”

He didn’t finish his statement, closing his eyes and rolling his neck. Lila delighted in Gabriel’s sudden slip of conduct as his shoulders hunched all the way to his ears and he grinded his teeth. She hadn’t pictured him to be capable of such an erupting volcano of emotion. She often wondered if he was capable of emotion at all.

“Hand me the tablet, Nathalie.”

Nathalie gripped the tablet until her fingers turned white, but the resolve she saw in Gabriel loosened her own. Grudgingly, she passed him the device.

“There are some items I’d like you to procure for me, items that I surmise you’ll be quite pleased to have in your arsenal.”

Whatever these items were, they seemed to have Nathalie on the edge of her seat.

It was suddenly imperative that Lila find out what could have ruffled Mayura’s pretty feathers.

“Sir, you won’t be disappointed.”

Gabriel eyed Lila a moment before affirming, “I don’t believe I will.”

The final remnants of the golden hour neglected the garden, blanketing its visitors in a foreboding shadow like it was them and then it was the rest of the world. Perhaps this is why they missed the piercing green eyes surveying the trio scrupulously from a neighboring building.

So jealousy was a green-eyed monster.

No one mentioned it also wore black leather.

-----

I hope you're enjoying my little fic as much as I'm enjoying writing it! 🥰 There's still so much to uncover in this story so buckle up. Follow me for updates and check out my Instagram where I post art!

(6/?) Previous | Next

[shouldntcryoverit]

the art of discordance

captain rex x jedi fic during the clone wars era.

warnings - general battle descriptions, injuries, death (geonosis yk)

taglist -> @pinkiemme

lemme know if you wanna be tagged :)

CHAPTER THREE

Geonosis was dusty, filled with nothing but agony and horrific ideals; it was inhumane even. A hue of blood red encased the planet in a tight grasp, it’s warning ignored by the republic troops trying so hard to breach it. The echoing sound of battle left nothing to the imagination, and with each thrum closer to the surface, Jaida could already feel the adrenaline claw at her throat. Though it was mixed with sensations of dread and regret. It wasn’t just the destruction that caused for her uneasiness, but the setting itself bringing back old memories.

The gun ships landed in midst of flames and cries, though there was no time to adhere to any of it. The soldiers rushed as far as they could against the geonosian fire, but found themselves unprepared at the force.

“General, ack, what do we do?” a soldier asked, hidden behind a rock for protection.

The young jedi frowned at the expanse of chaos, drawing a breath and connecting to the force around her, however clouded it may have been.

“over there, make it to that ridge and we can contact Kenobi” her words were rushed but still held certitude.

And so they did. The men and their jedi leapt from behind their cover and braced against the open fire. It took great effort, casualties even, but they made it and found Skywalker and his men in a similar position.

“what’s the word, can Obi-wan send support or what?” Jaida asked as she slid down to where Anakin and Rex were.

“no sir, from what i’ve heard he never made it to the landing zone”

Jaida winced at Rex’s words. “looks like we’re on our own then”

After a moments pause, Anakin came up with a plan.

“Rex, tell your men to move out, we’ll have to run the guns”

The captain nodded and stood up to relay the orders, Jaida sending Anakin a look in his absence.

“i just hope this works”

The success of the first wave carried through as the now combined team pressed onwards towards the meeting point. Things were going smoothly, until Ahsoka pointed out a rather large obstacle.

“that’s the eastern fortress” she pointed with a scowl “you know, the one you said we’d be no where near”

Her comment earned a displeased eye roll from her master, before he set off deciding a course of action.

His method figured, Jaida, Anakin and Ahsoka bolted across the planes towards the opposite wall. In one liquid movement, they grounded their ascension cables and scaled the face of it. After missing incoming shots by pure luck, the three reached the top and readied themselves for the second part of their assault. The droids at the top of the wall turned to face the jedi approaching them and open fired. Their shots were sent straight back with strong strokes of a lightsaber. With the help of the men down below, the clankers fell and let Reyes and Skywalker progress, while Ahsoka stayed back to cover their movements. They worked like a well oiled machine; trusting each other’s instincts and scouting as they went.

“look for an opening!” Just as the words came out her mouth, a slab of the concrete fell down and gave way to two destroyers.

“ah, found one!” Anakin replied

The pair sprung into position, backs facing to defend each other against the fire. As she fought, Jaida could sense the familiar yet jaded presence of the captain creep up behind her. She paused for a moment, calculating, then jumped upwards, landing perfectly positioned beneath her droid. The polished movement sent her blade through the center of the destroyer and it crumpled to the ground.

“have fun showing off?” Anakin asked as he helped his friend up

“as always” she managed, her mind elsewhere.

“come on”

The padawan rolled her eyes as she beckoned for them to follow her.

Almost hours of painful toiling, the padawans blew up the main target - the weapons factory meaning the forces could take the assets. It was certainly an easier effort compared to the onslaught that had been the first wave, but Jaida had suffered all the same. By the end of the conflict, she sat; head leant back on a rock and eyes closed against the unrelenting geonosian sun.

“need a drink?” Ahsoka asked, smiling as if she hadn’t been trapped beneath wreckage less than an hour ago

“thanks” Jaida took the bottle from her outstretched hand and drank from it, beads of water forming down her chin. She finished, and set down the flask, wiping her chin with a gloved wrist before looking back up to the padawan

“how’re you holding up?” Jaida asked grimly

“i’m glad we got the factory, though i could’ve done without almost suffocating” Ahsoka smiled through her sass, the optimism making her eyes light up.

“you did well today” she gave a small smile and moved to stand “go rest, you deserve it”

Ahsoka’s smile widened as she slipped away.

Jaida stood up with a wobble, apparently her twisted ankle wasn’t as ‘fine’ as she promised it was. She found her balance nonetheless and rubbed the tiredness from her face.

The walk to the tent that had been set up was short, and when Jaida pushed aside the tarpaulin cover she was relieved to see only Anakin left inside.

“oh hey” he welcomed, not looking up from his task. “told them all to go eat” he waved a hand where clones should’ve been standing.

“good, geonosis always takes a toll” her lips quirked upwards in gentle humour and she exhaled a short huff of breath.

At this Anakin lifted his head towards her. His face wasn’t set in complete worry, just a look in his eyes that Jaida recognised far too well.

“you don’t have to ask” she cut him off before he even spoke “i’m fine, really”

“Jaida it’s only been a year, it’s still fresh”

She sighed heavily “it’s hard for everyone”

“harder when you’ve lost your master in the same circumstances”

His words made her lips purse. She had lost her master; in the first battle of geonosis. It wasn’t exactly something she’d easily forget.

“Anakin-“

“you don’t have to act so tough” he tried, a hint of a smile tracing his lips.

“i know” Jaida paused “i still wonder if i, ah, maybe did something differently i don’t know, he might still be here”

It was a small confession, but it held so much weight.

“it wasn’t your fault”

“yeah” she smiled sadly, but held his gaze in strength and a strange feeling of serendipity.

She was about to speak, but was interrupted by a slowish beeping from Jaida’s commlink.

“Reyes here”

“we’ve got the reports- Kix’s processing them but we should be able to move off this rock in about 3 rotations”

Despite all the clones voices being notably identical, Jaida knew it was the captain speaking, and her tone shifted ever so slightly.

“good, tell them to get the wounded on transports first”

“yes sir” there was a hint of coldness that Anakin didn’t recognise in his voice.

The channel closed with a beep and Anakin lifted a brow at the huff of breath Jaida let out as it did.

“what-“

“i should go help Rex with the reports” she excused herself, ignoring the question that Anakin was silently begging her to answer.

“Jaida” he called

“hmm?”

“be nice”

She grinned “aren’t i always?”

[oadara]

my point about lyanna is that we don't know. maybe she was manipulated. we have no idea. concretely blaming her is unlike blaming dany for her white saviorism in slaver's bay. lyyanna was selfish but to act like she was definitely not caring for her fam based on circumstantial evidence, because that's what the evidence is, is wild when y'all excuse dany for things we see her do because her motives are good lmao I can't. blame Rhaegar all you want. he deserves it.

mentioning that we don’t have lyanna’s pov or that what we have is circumstantial evidence on what/when lyanna knew is excuses? I wonder what the yt people dany defense essays of her actions in slavers bay are. I was softening towards dany and her yt savior nonsense that got brown people killed bc of her mismanagement and had slaves sell themselves back into slavery. but if we’re taking an hardline position, then wonder what a defense of dany/slavers bay (book) is but an excuse of the outcome

Anon,

These are two separate��asks but I because clearly you are the same anon and by the way you write I’m pretty sure I know who you are. Why don’t we get a few things straight and then you can leave my mailbox alone for all eternity

I see that you mentioned the books, which is fantastic because I can finally set you straight on your delusion that the Slaver’s Bay was only populated by people of color, which is untrue, it was mixed race. Slaves from the Free Cities, Qarth Lhazareen, Dothraki, etc. populated Slaver’s Bay. 

Here, why don’t you read this, it’s straight from the horse’s (GRRM’s) mouth:

“And meanwhile, you’ve got Daenerys visiting more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures.

And that has generated its controversy too. I answer that one to in my blog. I know some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely disregard the logistics of the thing here. I talk about what’s in the books. The books are what I write. What I’m responsible for.

Slavery in the ancient world, and slavery in the medieval world, was not race-based. You could lose a war if you were a Spartan, and if you lost a war you could end up a slave in Athens, or vice versa. You could get in debt, and wind up a slave. And that’s what I tried to depict, in my books, that kind of slavery.

So the people that Dany frees in the slaver cities are of many different ethnicities, and that’s been fairly explicit in the books. But of course when David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] and his crew are filming that scene [of Daenerys being carried by freed slaves], they are filming it in Morocco, and they put out a call for 800 extras. That’s a lot of extras. They hired the people who turned up. Extras don’t get paid very much. I did an extra gig once, and got like $40 a day.”

Finally, I can get that off my chest. Now, let’s address your other points, that I give Dany a pass because but won’t give Lyanna a pass because of her you. Let me say this for what it feels like the one thousandth time, Daenerys Targaryen has made many mistakes. This has never been a problem for me, it’s one of the reasons I love her so much. 

Having said that, I have a hard time equating Dany’s mistakes with Lyanna’s mistakes. If you look at their upbringing, the education, the values they were thought, and the impetus behind their actions you see why this comparison falls short. So let’s look at the background for both Lyanna and Dany to see where these two young women are coming from. 

Lyanna as the Lord Paramount’s daughter would have had an excellent education, training as a lady, as well as a very stable upbringing. She was clearly allowed to indulge in the things she liked, such as riding and learning how to fight. Her father might not have approved of the fighting but he wasn’t against it enough to stop her from doing it. I think it’s safe to say that there was very little that Lyanna would have gone without while growing up at Winterfell. 

We should all know Dany’s story by now but I’ll repeat for the benefit of those who constantly seem to forget it. A few days after she was born she had to be rescued because the new king of Westeros had sent his brother to her home in Dragonstone to assassinate her and her brother. They ended up in Braavos and for about four year’s she had a good life but then her care taker died and she and her brother were thrown out into the streets. They lived in the streets and on the kindness of strangers for the next nine years. Dany remembers sailing on ships at least 50 times in this time period, so there was a lot of moving around. She lived in nine of the Free Cities and can remember times when buying a sausage was a luxury. Throughout all this, she lived in fear because her brother believed that king Robert was sending assassins after them.  Her training and education were handled exclusively by her brother and whatever she thought herself through books she would read while staying with some rich benefactor who would take them in for a few months. Whatever sense of right and wrong she learned she did so on her own because clearly, Viserys had a very skewed view on those. 

Before we continue we should note that there is an age difference between the two, at this point in the series (the end of ADWD) Dany has just turned 16 year’s old and Lyanna, who died at 16, died close to her 17th birthday. But if we want to find a point of comparison, Lyanna was running away with Rhaegar around the same time Dany was conquering Slaver’s Bay. So, let’s look at these two events to see the difference in their actions.

Let’s start with Lyanna. We all know the general story and we are going to assume, given some information we have, that Lyanna ran away willingly with Rhaegar.  She could have done it for a variety of reasons but whatever the reason it falls into one of three categories, she was in love with Rhaegar and wanted to be with him, she bought into the prophecy of TPTWP and thought she would save the world by doing whatever she needed to do to make that happen, or she was so against her upcoming wedding with Robert that she would rather run away. I know there is another theory of maybe Aerys finding out her identity and going after her, but that’s when you run home to Winterfell and have your dad and your betrothed sort that out. 

Looking at Lyanna’s background and support system and what we are told about her she was a very strong-willed and clever girl. Even taking into account her being in love, or believing in a prophecy or not wanting to get married to Robert, I can’t imagine that the ramifications of her actions never crossed her mind. She was raised a noblewoman, she was around nobles her whole life, the actions that she decided to embark upon would have been considered disastrous by any standard. And if she was taking a calculated risk for say the good of the world, she must have known that her family was not just going to sit at Winterfell and do nothing. 

I do take into consideration Lyanna’s age and that a person her age is also highly impulsive, but that still doesn’t absolve her of culpability. She is still responsible for her actions whether they were impulsive or not. In addition to all this is the amount of time she was gone, she didn’t get pregnant right away, at least 4 months had gone by before that happened. And of course I put most of the blame of Rhaegar, he was the adult in that situation, he had a wife and children, a father who he knew was mad, and it was his decision to run away with a young, unmarried girl, who happens to be the daughter of a Lord Paramount and she’s also engaged to another noble. Rhaegar being mainly responsible for what happens still doesn’t absolve Lyanna of her part in this mess and the destruction that took place because of her and Rhaegar’s actions. 

If Lyanna’s actions are night, let’s go to the day and briefly review Dany’s actions. So you have this girl who’s recently lost her brother, husband, and child and has no more family and no support system at all. She’s 15 year’s old, on her own, and she actually finds herself responsible for other people. Because she has no family and her father and older brother almost extinct their House, she feels responsible for avenging her family and recovering what was theirs. She goes to Slaver’s Bay to get herself and army, but while she’s there she sees that she has landed in the pit of hell. Little boys being mutilated, babies being murdered in order to train the Unsullied, children slathered in honey and thrown at bears for the amusement of the Master and just general slavery disgustingness. 

So, Dany having been sold herself and not appreciating the experience decides to do something about it, because “you know what? This ain’t right”. So she concocts a plan and voila Dracarys Motherfuckers. Now, a lot of Dany’s mistakes stem from how she left Astapor, which she left with a ruling council but without any defense and then the mistakes she made in Meereen. And while Dany’s actions did cause a great deal of death and destruction ultimately hundreds of thousands of people were freed from slavery and therefore free to chose their own choices. And in addition, her actions started a revolution in Volantis which will ultimately free hundreds of thousands of more people, if successful. Which means that in the long run millions of people would potentially be saved from continuing to be slaves or becoming slaves in the future. 

Can you see the difference in their actions and the outcome of their actions? If Rhaegar and Lyanna did what they did because of a prophecy, their actions were based on a belief which neither of them could prove was real. And in the meantime thousands upon thousand of people died, lives were ruined, families destroyed. And while you can turn around and say thousands died in Dany’s revolution, I can then turn around and say but hundreds of thousands more lived and were saved from a life of slavery. At the end of the day, people had hope when they might not have had hope before. 

Their actions are not comparable, no matter which way you cut it. 

TTFN

[caycep]

16 for Supercat please!

There you go ;) Also on AO3

16. Things you said with no space between us

Kara woke from her trance as the cab pulled into the parking lot, startled by the loud crunching sound of tires on gravel. She glanced outside the car window, where an elegant sixties-style building was coming into view. The car approached, grinding to a slow, staggering halt in front of the nearby entrance.

The venue was all glass panes and soft curves, alternated with blinding white concrete, austere but majestic. Her eyes darted to the round balconies on the first and second floor - balconies being one of those architectural features that instantly drew her attention. She wondered whether she’d have a chance to step onto one tonight, rest her elbows on the railing, smell the wind.

Two security guards stood on either side of the entrance, wearing identical grey suits. The one closest to her extended a hand, a small courteous smile, and collected the invitation from her hand. CatCo Worldwide Media Winter Gala, it read in golden calligraphy, Kara Danvers, Reporter.

She was escorted to a room bustling with people, the chatter audible from the corridor leading to it. Guests were standing around in groups of three or four, tight in conversations that didn’t concern her. She tried scanning around for familiar faces but found that none of her friends had made it yet.

Kara decided to head for the bar, pick up a flute of champagne, in an attempt to distract herself from the question that had been keeping her tense all day: Will Cat be here? She promised herself she would not truly hope for it, but, as unlikely as it sounded, Kara couldn’t quite shake the possibility that Cat would make an appearance.

Lights flickered, and James’s clear, booming voice filled the room. “Thank you all for coming here tonight” Kara, along with everyone else around her, turned towards him as he waited a few seconds for the noise to die down. He was standing on the podium at the back of the room, smiling at the audience. In his impeccable suit and affable manners, Kara almost didn’t recognise him. “It is my pleasure to welcome you to CatCo’s annual Winter Gala. In this festive occasion, I’d like to extend my gratitude to all of you for another year of hard work and dedication. As we look back at the past months, there are countless accomplishments we can…” at that, her attention stumbled and fell elsewhere.

It occurred to Kara, that this, standing among a crowd of strangers, felt like somebody else’s life. Some alternate universe where things had gone horribly wrong, a cruel joke she was witness to, a clairvoyance, a warning perhaps, but not real, not her own life.

Once a second home, CatCo now felt like an empty shell, void of all the people that made it worth it to show up at the office ready to change the world. She thought of Snapper, and how he had been more preoccupied with his morning coffee than with a missing girl, furrowed her brow in contempt. This is who I have to look up to, now.

She wondered what it would have been like if Cat had never left: would she be there on the stage herself instead of James, showering the captivated public with compliments and platitudes? Would Kara be standing around nervously, checking her watch every few minutes, obsessively calculating the odds that a certain someone would show up and relieve her restlessness?

All of her senses were on edge, attuned to the various clues that might announce her presence at the event. The nagging feeling she got when she spotted a glimmer of blond hair in the crowd, the faint rustling of velvet drapes as somebody was ushered inside, feet scurrying by a side door, the sound of heels dampened by the thick carpet, and the deafening resonance of hundreds of heartbeats, all beating their own rhythm, and none of them hers.

Shaking and out of breath, Kara looked for the nearest exit, suddenly yearning for a splash of night air. In her lowest moments, she found it calming to gaze up at the stars; the dark sky dotted with lights spoke to her of infinite possibilities. The key to her own story and infinite others was hidden just a breath away, behind a closed door, up the stairs and to the right, a few steps further. She pressed down on the handle and swung the door open, breathing in the bracing cold, instantly refreshed.

Every step on the balcony was invigorating, and as she stood there, both hands on the metal railing, she looked up and closed her eyes, letting the tension recede, as she summoned the memory of the place she once called home.

What would it be like, Kara wondered, to remain forever in limbo, between knowing and not knowing? Would it be better or worse, than continuing down this path? Between the disappointment that no doubt awaited her, and the inscrutable realm of possibility, lay the temptation of postponing choice. As long as the evening was not over, there was still reason to hope.

Absorbed in her fantasy as she was, she didn’t notice anyone approaching until she felt a hand on the small of her back; its touch was gentle and lingering, and it could potentially last forever, at least until she found the strength to spin around, face the person responsible.

She thought she caught a whiff of Cat’s perfume, a scent she could pick out of a thousand others, and her breath choked in her throat, because as much as she had longed for Cat to be there, tonight, she was not at all prepared to face her. Not like this, on a dark balcony, alone.

“Kara How are- how have you been?” It took all of her supernatural might to move, to turn around and face Cat Grant, Queen of all Media, CEO of CatCo. Her. Cat.

Kara said nothing. She racked her brain searching for a way to speak of the emptiness, of the lack of meaning there had been in the past months but had spent so much effort burying it all with ragged frenzy that the words felt alien, hollow.

“I missed you.” Cat said, after what seemed like a thousand years, and when Kara looked up from the floor she found a warm, loving smile, the one that caused Kara to burst into sudden tears whenever she thought of it. She was not crying now. She stood a little straighter, prouder, under that gaze.

“I thought leaving National City would be good for me, that it would revitalise me, make the creative energy flow once more.” Her resolve faltered a little, as Cat took a few steps forward and her hands travelled up to her neck, straightening the foulard she wore there, the casual brush of a finger on her pulse point causing her shivers all the way down to her toes. “I thought you were ready, that I was ready, that if only I gave you space you would thrive. And yet. Look at us.” And Kara looked.

She looked and saw the worry, the guilt perhaps, layers and layers of questions hidden in the lines of her face. They stared at each other for a long moment, studying their respective expressions, until Kara’s vision blurred, tears welled up in her vision and she pulled Cat close, wrapped her in the tightest of hugs. “Oh Cat-” she managed to stammer, before being overrun by sobs, her chest heaving deep sighs and shaky breaths.

It took Kara several minutes to make it back to Earth, fully realise where she was, whose dress she was smudging with tears, whose hands were drawing circles on her shoulder blades, in an attempt to calm her down. Only then she had the presence of mind of easing her grip a little and take a step back, create some distance between them. Her hands yearned to go back to their proper place on Cat’s hips, pull her close once more, but she managed to restrain herself.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong!? I wasn’t ready! I wasn’t-” and the tears flew once more, spilling with such intensity that they barely touched her cheeks before hitting on the floor.

“I don’t know,” she sniffed loudly, eyes frantically searching for her purse, where she might find a handkerchief, “I thought that being a reporter would allow me to bring truth and justice to this world, connect with people, at the very least push me out of my comfort zone… but with you gone… I’ve been out of my comfort zone for so long, and I guess… I just wasn’t ready to lose you too, I wasn’t ready for what the grief would do to me” she dabbed at her nose and face, worrying suddenly about her makeup, how dishevelled she must look, she must think I’m a mess, utterly unworthy of the attention she craved.

Cat raised her hands once more, loosening the knot at Kara’s throat, she wrapped her fingers around the two tails of the scarf, tugged at it, playful and a little desperate. “Oh, Kara…” she said, the sadness lowering the pitch of her voice to a ragged moan “I heard there was a boy, I thought you were doing just fine without me.”  Cat looped her fingers more, tightening the grip on the silk. They were close enough to feel each other’s breath. “Silly me to think that you’d call if you needed me.”

Kara’s heart pounded wildly in her chest, her face felt flushed and hot from crying, she had no clue what it felt like to be cold, but these tremors were terrifying, more so than talking down a gunman with a broken arm. “You know this is trouble, right?”

“Uh-huh” came the tiniest nod, the quiver of a lip, glossy eyes, expectant.

Closing the distance was easy, like having a drink when you know you shouldn’t. Taking a dive into a mountain lake, the promise of its icy depths causing shivers in waves, well before touching the surface.

Stepping from a cliff into the vertigo of a fall, a whirlwind of panic and giddy haze.

The kiss was like hitting the ground.

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Let’s Statistic 4: The Stats Strike Again

Thinking of making this a bi-annual sorta deal.

I have twenty-seven Sims who have been officially placed and ranked in BCs old and ongoing (including Sini), ten who are currently making the rounds, twenty-seven whose BCs or involvements are no longer active or otherwise dubious, and nine in reserve for future competitions or story-based projects. This makes seventy-three Sims in total. Ten new arrivals, four of them reservations. One of them I made just a couple of days before this update came out.

I added a new section to my spreadsheets at the beginning of the year: the Special Snowflake Summation Sheet. This is to head off any more anons who may ask whether any of my Sims aren’t “special snowflakes”. Considering being trans, being queer, and being disabled as the indicators of such, we have twenty-three Special Snowflakes, twenty-three that nearly count, fifteen that barely count, and twelve that do not count. (Mind you, among the twelve, only four - Sammy, Dalibor, Auguste, and Al Wilbur - have “no” in all three slots. All the others have ‘sorta’ or a question mark in at least one field.)

Of the seventy-two, thirty-five are designated as male in-game, while thirty-six are designated as female, and Alex and Eun are still their own thing. That’s two new DMACs (Oz and Octavio) and eight new DFACs; I’m taking care to make the gap between them narrower, as you can see, and until the latest one they were at exactly the same level. I want to maintain this closeness from here on out, however easy or hard that may be.

None of the ten new arrivals so far are cis - literally none. As established in Percy’s profile, I have set myself a goal to, unless absolutely required, never make a cis Sim again, which I have been sticking to quite well so far. (Lisa is the only possible exception, but only possible. Depends how I feel when I release her.) Twenty-seven cis Sims, counting the loss of Percy after the shift to demiguy*, out of seventy-two accounts for 37% of my contestants... or, put another way, 63% of my Sims are un-cis.

If we take into consideration almost all of the Sims I know for certain are not cis (excluding Butch, since Butch does not yet have a confirmed pronoun set at all), nineteen of my non-cis Sims use standard pronoun sets and nothing else, defining ‘he’ and ‘she’ as standard in this instance. Thirteen use a combination of standard and non-standard sets, which includes Sims who have a penchant for all pronoun sets; another thirteen completely use non-standard sets. If we consider ‘they’ to be a standard set in the sense that it’s the most universally accepted NB pronoun, those numbers become twenty-four, ten and eleven respectively.

Counting each explicit pronoun-set use only once, my non-cis Sims have nineteen unique pronoun sets between them, including ‘no pronouns’. This is a ratio of 17 non-standard to 2 standard, or 16 NS to 3 S depending on if you count ‘they’ as standard or not. So gitte would not have heard of a maximum of 89% of the pronouns I use, which I guess is close to the 99% she claimed when she first brought this up?

Fifty Sims are confirmed to be on the LGBTQ+ spectrum through either sexuality or gender identity; thirteen more are assumed to be through any category; Butch and Xyq are unknown. That’s a range of fifty to sixty-five of my seventy-three contestants - 68.5% to 89%.

It’s interesting to note that three.5 of my Sims so far have had their gender or orientation change over time, in an organic sense rather than a ‘this has been clarified when I wasn’t sure before’ sense as with Myron. Calfuray was initially made to be straight, but later gameplay put him as bisexual; Madison was initially cis before becoming a demiwoman early in death; and of course Lyra Maurer’s realization and transition. Percy’s aforesaid shift to demi-guy*, while made before he became a public download unlike the others, still counts as a .5 on the grounds that Clover got access to him before then and played him as cis accordingly, hence there was something there to be changed. 

One could teeeeechnically argue that Castor counts as well, since Castor’s aromanticism was hit upon post-MMBC and public download; I will defend this, though, on the grounds that Cas’ aromanticism is only half of the split attraction model that Castor operates under, and their pansexuality is not affected.

Myron remains the only Sim I have ever had to have been killed specifically for being on the spectrum. (Though Oz was singled out for it, and probably eliminated because of it, he wasn’t killed per se.)

* = For some reason, my spreadsheets are telling me I did this to Peter Jernigan as well, shifted him to demi-guy. The thing is, I don’t remember ever deciding on this directly or setting it in stone with anyone? But it must be something I’ve planned, otherwise the spreadsheet wouldn’t reflect it? So he’s in the ?? category for now. I may make this change explicit once Peter is released to the general public, or I may not. We’ll have to see.

Forty-five of the seventy-three, or 61.6%, are disabled (Skylar has been placed at no, but only for now, so subject to change). Twenty-four of those forty-five have at least one mental disability; twelve have a physical one; two have both; seven are hidden.

The three Sims to join the ‘hidden’ category are Oz, Alice, and Octavio. Oz has undiagnosed bipolar I, and Alice is, as I put it, “Implied to be an abuse victim? How much this impacts nym is up for debate”. So same case as Stellan, really. Octavio is hidden on the grounds that her low empathy could be a symptom of something, but not necessarily, and as of yet nothing else about her neurology is overt.

I have fifteen CAS-intended Supernaturals out of seventy-three; five of the fifteen are witches. (Skylar, despite claiming to be a Nogtail, doesn’t count as a witch in this instance. More on that when ce happens.) The three ‘story’ Supernaturals remain the same; three non-occult Sims join the death-induced Ghosts (that aren’t ghosts in the download file) - Ruya, Jake, and Calfuray Odell, who killed himself early into 2017 by my headcanon.

Thirty-three Vanilla Sims, five van/ban cusps, six Banilla, one ban/berry cusp, and twenty-eight Berry.

Four of the ten news have three pieces of CC, making 13 total (I think I forgot Percy counted as three too with the freckles? Or something like that). Vanilla is the first of my downloadable contestants to break four pieces of CC, but this was mostly for the purpose of showing off the new skin I’d made, and I do not expect this to become the norm. Two pieces is still the majority at 23 out of 73, but three is catching up fast.

Thus far, I feel like this year has been the year of Changing Categories, and taking contestants across multiple projects. Sera’s transferral from her old MMBC to Ostkaka MMBC and Lyra’s clean-up for use in Slaughter or Salvage was made concrete and confirmed, but on top of that: Oz underwent the same process to become a future MMBC host of his own; Percy, Seth del Bosque, and the secret-pending that I still can’t talk about just yet, were officially brought through from what were initially one-shot side projects to be canonized as contestants and future contestants respectively; and Auribus was similarly pulled from first being a Sims 4 baby to then being in line for a Rosey project to then being actually submitted to a melien project.

Of the ninety-eight in-game traits available for my use (discounting Unconventional), I have now successfully used all ninety-eight of them in my Sims. That’s... that’s got to be worth something, right?

I’ve used: ten traits once; thirteen twice; twenty-three three times; twenty-one four times; twenty five times; five six times; five seven times; and one trait a whopping eight times. (Keep in mind I am including contestants I have not officially released yet in my trait calculation.)

My most frequently used trait is Snob: Cashlin, Shabnam, Jake, Jack, Akakios, Hopkin, Lisa, and Percy. Friendly, Hot-Headed and Proper haven’t been used on any more Sims since the last incarnation of the statistics list; but Alice has brought both the use of Good from six uses to seven and the use of Coward from five to seven alongside Vanilla.

Obviousy, Octavio is the most recent Sim to have a unique trait. The rest of the single-use traits are Commitment Issues for Elanor, Hydrophobic for Cree, Handy for Lyra, Born Seller for Casey-Mae, a mistaken use of a bad trait for SLIP, Equestrian for Riba, Heavy Sleeper for Elliot, Loser for Butch, and Animal Lover for Percy. McQuoddy has lost Gatherer to Daisy; Stellan, Loves the Heat to Vanilla; and Karla, Eco-Friendly to Oz.

The Sim with the ‘most unique’ / ‘rarest’ trait distribution is Cree; three of her five traits do not go above two uses each, and the most used one is Daredevil at five. Conversely, the Sim with the traits who have had most use among my set is, of all people, Akakios; her traits do not dip below five uses, and she has both Good and the most-used Snob. (Cashlin technically has more traits with high usage, at two sevens and an eight, but the low-use of Sailor balances out that number.)

All in all, including every single repeat, my contestants share a grand total of 363 traits between them.

Let’s round off by talking about the Fifth Place Squad! It consists of seven Sims as of right now: Midnight, Castor, Lilavati, Stellan, Myron, Cree, and Cashlin. (Shockingly, contrary to my expectations, Cordelia has not made the fifth place squad.)

Five of the seven are ‘special snowflakes’; the other two nearly qualify for such. This is because Lila is the only one among them that is cis, while Cashlin is the only one that is for sure neurotypical and able-bodied.

There is a 3-4 split on the rig in mild favour of DFAC; same for occult distribution in favor of not-ordinary-human (though Cree is the only one to be CAS intended, and she’s an Imaginary Friend); same for coloration in favor of Berry (two vanilla, Myron is banilla).

All of the disabilities among the six of the seven that have them are mental ones, though Castor and Lila are still the two that double up with physical ones, by sheer coincidence!

None of the seven have zero pieces of CC, strangely. Three have one piece; two two, one three, and Castor as usual is the awkward outlier. The CC of four of the seven pertain to custom eyes; an overlapping four, to custom hair. Myron and Cree have both. Cree also holds the dubious honor of having custom hair, skin AND eyes, a distinction they share only with Madison outside of the Squad. 

The most popular traits among the seven have two uses apiece: Daredevil (Castor and Cree), Diva (Castor and Myron), Hot-Headed (Castor and Cashlin), and Natural Cook (Lila and Myron). None of Midnight or Stellan’s traits are repeated among the group.

[bi-apps]

Accepted - Rabastan Lestrange

lyinginthemeadowes

submitted:Application for Rabastan Lestrange

OOC Information:

Name/Age/Timezone- Ashley, 25, PST

Activity Level- I’m sorry - I know I sucked this week, but on average my activity is about a 6 out of 10.

Ships/Anti-Ships- Angst and chemistry.

Did you read the rules? Yes, I did! :)

IC Information:

Character Name- Rabastan Amir Lestrange

Age/Birthdate- 24; June 30, 1954.

Faceclaim-

1. Gaspard Ulliel 2. Chris Wood 3. Tom Sturridge 4. Theo James

Occupation- He claims he is “self-employed,” but in actuality he is more of a socialite.

Blood Status- Pureblooded, Sacred 28.

Traits-

(+) Resourceful (+) Ambitious (+) Dynamic

(-) Resentful (-) Calculating (-) Vindictive

Patronus- Rabastan’s patronus is a hawk primarily due to his attention to detail and strive to achieve perfectionism in all of his crafts. Also very much like the hawk, he shows keen intelligence and does not like to be trapped or limited by any barriers.

Boggart- His brother’s dead and mangled body. After all, Rodolphus is the one person on this planet he truly loves and would be beside himself without despite all other grievances.

Key Points-

One constant in Rabastan’s life is his relentless desire to please those closest to him. He often wondered how different his life would have looked if he had been the firstborn child. Instead, Rabastan Amir Lestrange grew up and discovered quite bitterly that he was a few years too late to being the coveted child and rightful heir. It wasn’t as if Rabastan was ever neglected. The Lestrange Family was well off—they always took care of their own. There was, however, an emotional element missing. It was hard watching his brother receive praise after praise from his parents as children while Rabastan rotated through new nannies at alarming rates. The boy stirred up trouble at every viable opportunity, scheming for familial attention and then breaking down when the result was anything but expected. Rabastan watched from afar as his parents groomed Rodolphus with certain assurances and promises about the greatness he was destined for and what he stood to inherit. It triggered Rabastan to feel so much contempt for an individual he relied on with his utmost being and yet he continually wanted to find new ways to impress Rodolphus. He could not resist somehow being in his orbit, which made it difficult the first few years they were apart.

Being at home without his brother proved to be both mundane and meaningless. While he didn’t have anyone to bump heads with, he also didn’t have the same competition that drove him forward. Rabastan felt stagnant until finally starting Hogwarts. The young wizard approached the new experience with an open mindset. He knew the world was full of possibilities for him and he was looking forward to getting a fresh start away from the prying eyes of relatives. However after being sorted into Slytherin, Rabastan learned this new segment of his life wouldn’t be all he amped it up to be in his mind. Rodolphus was already well-known; not just amongst members of their shared house, but the entire school. Rabastan felt much smaller than he was during those initial years. He feared he might be stuck living in his brother’s shadow for the rest of his life if he couldn’t find a way to break through the barrier.

Upon graduating from Hogwarts, Rabastan immediately knew he didn’t want to work a standard job or live a mundane life. At the expense of his family, he had more than enough means to figure things out on his own—so that’s exactly what he did. At eighteen years old, Rabastan briefly explored various portions of the world including Venice, Italy and continental portions of Europe where the art of gambling was originally founded. He was no stranger to the craft, but decided to take the time to expand his knowledge base on the subject which he would later use to his advantage. The wizard knew he had a special talent when it came to arithmancy, which he twisted to his advantage. He learned to count cards when it was applicable, and even discovered sequences that proved useful when placing bets on sporting events such as quidditch.

Gambling became one of Rabastan’s prime interests—he centered his entire life around it. He typically garnered success executing his carefully laid out tactics and strange methodologies, but not always. The wizard was known for going off on the occasional binder. At twenty-one, his family briefly cut him off from his trust fund in order to do damage control. He had gone nearly seven days without sleeping—fueled by a mixture of alcohol and questionable potions, it was apparent he wasn’t in his right mind. He gambled away more than a quarter of his inheritance over that time period—it was a hefty sum of money and, though he later made it back by completing an astute collection of ambiguous and borderline illegal tasks, it wasn’t his proudest moment. The wizard then went on to turn his momentary lapse of judgment into a sleazy, yet wildly successful and ingenious part-time business. For the right price he would be willing to commit certain crimes like arson or larceny, always laced with his own creative twist.

Ensuring his identity is well-guarded, the wizard wears a dark cloak and hides his face beneath shadows and concealment charms. Though Rabastan doesn’t remember the exact moment everything spiraled out of control, this alter ego has provided him with the exact sense of individuality he has been searching for all his life. For once, he feels he has stepped out of his brother’s shadow and achieved something entirely on his own—only the painstaking irony is everything he does is still done in the shadows. When the notorious ( and completely self-dubbed ) pyromaniac Napalm isn’t slumming the streets of Knockturn Alley looking for new business, the socialite Rabastan Lestrange is usually busy keeping up appearances within the community. The Lestrange Family plays a prominent role in the financial backbone of the wizarding community by often donating large sums of money to those they support and, though he isn’t the first-born son he wishes he was, Rabastan has learned the hard way that it is best if he doesn’t dishonor the Lestrange Family name again.  

Changes/Extra Info- N/A

Para Sample- I just want to apologize in advance for this. Rabastan is A LOT to deal with sometimes.

(tw: death, tw: murder, tw: abuse)

Golden embers whipped and whistled in the taunting summer breeze as Rabastan admired the blue-eyed girl running across the hillside. The girl, though no older than twelve or thirteen, was an exquisite work of art etched onto a living canvas of flesh with an apprehensive and narrowed bone structure. Nearing fourteen at the time, Rabastan reckoned it was the closest he ever felt to love, as he had a chance encounter with what life might have looked like had a different path divulged. However he would never confess to these sinful desires in early adolescence. The muggle was an abomination to his livelihood and he had been groomed of such assurances upon every available opportunity, until one day he snapped altogether, damning the reflection of an angel to wither and derail her days away in hell right beside him.

The sun beat down, scorching against the nape of his neck as he sauntered out from the canopy of oversized trees. Like an enemy on the prowl, Rabastan lurked in the shadows while watching the girl play with restless and hungry eyes. Her freckle-covered legs were lost beneath tall and wispy blades of grass, which he noted was long overdue for a trim. The wizard assumed that’s why she entertained herself there day after day, basking in the comfort the cool grass provided during these blistering hot summer days. Minutes passed until the fair angel took notice of him. She bore an innocent, yet totally despicable look in her crystal skeleton eyes, which made him eager to sink his teeth into her flesh as he glided his tongue across the surface of smooth lips. Seeded by his family’s blatant hatred, Rabastan perceived the sole way to silence his arbitrary desire would be something concrete; something both finite and fatal. The angel welcomed him with opened arms; it was the first and only time a slaughter would come to pass so easily.

As he meandered over, Rabastan’s growing-silhouette darkened the rays of sunlight that danced through her bouncing head of curls. The angel—laughing and smiling without a care in the world— continued to wave up at him, shielding a single eye from the stray sunshine that reflected in her oceanic eyes. She called his name and he cringed; he was lost in thought—maybe even perplexed—wondering if he could go through with the daunting task plaguing his doubtful mind. He knew how easy he could coax himself into action when equipped with his wand, but using magic outside of school was strictly forbidden. “Besides,” a little voice echoed off in his head,  “your first kill should be done with your hands. You need to remember the first time living flesh stops pulsating in your bare hands.”

“Do you want to play a game?” Rabastan asked the younger girl who quickly dropped her doll and rose to her feet. “What game?” She nodded vigorously as her mute blue eyes widened with intensity. “Hide-and-Seek,” he breathed, exhaling raspy breath as he shoveled his hands into his pockets. The girl boiled with excitement at the thought—a cute older boy was inviting her to play a game, what could possibly go wrong? It was evident she hadn’t the faintest idea what was in store for her as they traversed across the weed-choked terrain and back toward the trees where he first emerged. “How about you count and I will hide first?” The smirk on his face was perceived as nothing more than a harmless smile and the angel quickly agreed without protest. She adjusted herself at the trunk of a large oak tree, which she used to blacken out her eyes as she recited a string of muffled numbers out loud.

“Ready or not, here I come!” She called out and Rabastan noted her voice was more celestial sounding than ever. It would be the last time he ever heard it. She turned around and quickly became disorientated when she discovered he was already towering above her. She didn’t have time to react because he didn’t hesitate. He forced her to the ground and, though she struggled, he successfully pinned her down with the full weight of his body. Rabastan was weaker then, however compared to the sheltered and fucking pitiful muggle seizing in his grip, he was a lethal weapon wired to kill by nature. She struggled beneath him, flailing various body parts in an attempt to free herself from the chains of his fatal touch. With adrenaline pumping and instincts thriving like never before, he balled his hand into a fist and fired his best weapon at her.

Blood instantly trickled from her nose and stained Rabastan’s hands before conjoining them around her neck. It was a seemingly perfect fit and he quickly became high off the idealism that this very moment—his desire leading to indispensable action—was somehow part of a greater destiny. He tightened his restraint around her, slowly sending her deeper into the fate which he controlled. Rabastan’s subconscious desire was to revert his gaze anywhere but her own, however he would not let himself forget this special day. As she heeded consciousness for the last time in her short and disgusting life, he stared down into her blinding crystal blue spheres. They were more reprimanding now than ever, however as she lost the final stages of alertness, Rabastan too lost something; his perception transpired and whatever feeling he had disintegrated. As he choked the last breath from her body, she suddenly became the dirt she was always intended to. A fallen angel who went to sleep on earth woke up in hell because on that day Rabastan Lestrange chose to make earth his own hell.

[poemsbyjosh-blog]

The Last Bridge Burned

“Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”-Confucius

This dream may come true for some people, but for David Reynolds, it became a nightmare. Reynolds was a chief engineer, designing the Clinton Bridge, spanning across the Mississippi River from former President Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas into Tennessee. Arkansas’s nickname was “The Natural State” and this little corner of Arkansan Paradise definitely lived up to its name. Mostly referred to as “hunting land” in the South, this northeast corner was rich with lush, evergreen trees, nursed adequately by the clear flowing waters of the mother of all rivers in America, the grand Mississippi River, a grand spectacle that seemed to be divine in its ability to provide life not only to the rich wildlife of this area but also to the souls of all who witnessed its serenity. Animals were free out here from the dangers of society, as most people never ventured off the newly constructed highway running alongside the hilly terrain of Arkansas. The same paved path that led to America’s great divide which, like the inverted desires of the Panama Canal, needed to be travelled across. David referred to this slice of the South as his personal wonder of the world. And David planned to reveal this splendor to the travelling public.

For 17 years, David Reynolds dedicated his life to creating the mother of all beauty and bridges. A 4-lane walking path of sorts, convex to the water to let the rider peak at the center of this unbelievably wide river, where not only Arkansas and Tennessee were visible, but also Missouri, the Gateway to the West (Reynolds often said that if the explorers would have searched a few miles south, they would have found the passageway to Eden instead). The bridges sides were lined with the surrounding area’s identity, decorated by the habitant rocks of the area. The support beams had been wrapped in the same thick vine growing wild amongst the trees of this area, camouflaging any industrialization of one of nature’s gifts. The bridge stood high above the water, overarching any tree in the area, but the bridge had been erected out of both sides of the landscape with such sophistication that it appeared as natural as the ejection of roots from the dampened soil over a long period of time.

From the point of no return, as David jokingly coined it, the bridge left the actions of the woods and entered the most untroubled waters. Here, at the request of the bridge’s inspiration (fiscal supporter, more like it) Bill Clinton, the bridge becomes a true spectacle. It was his idea that this bridge be covered with the soil of the two adjacent states, creating a linking feel. The bridge was already supported by dense concrete, and the dirt could easily be packed in to give the road this “route 66” vibe. The mandatory street lines, as well as the medians, were carved out of a native, underwater rock, so smooth a hockey team could compete on it. The yellow of the rock gave off the feeling that they were from Dorothy Gale’s illustrious path. On each side of the road lay excess of 50 feet of “camping” area, for visitors who decided to stick with the scene longer than expected. David’s favorite touch was the inner 1000 feet of the railing along the outside of the bridge that had been made of glass so thick that it could withstand a semi at 70 miles per hour. But the best part about this 12 foot tall glass wall was the way it magnified the river in either direction for more miles than any eye should see. As David had so delicately described it “It was a more beautiful image than if Mona Lisa appeared in the Sistine Chapel with Starry Night as her setting.” Every pounding belief of the soul of Thomas Shepard would soon agree.

The way Thomas found David was in the wretched sight of a wretched soul. Some people believe that we are photographed reflections of the environment that surrounds us, but David must have been the negatives. At the time of Thomas’s arrival, chief engineer David Reynolds seemed to be designing his decline.

It was said that Reynolds’s blue eyes cast more motivation than any words ever could. His approach and dedication to the job was unrivaled, even by the skilled staff he had assembled. No matter how difficult the bridge had become, David never compromised the will of the design, but overcame with adversity, intelligence, and improvisation. This bridge was his task, his enemy, his obstacles, his religion, and eventually his life. David Reynolds may have created a bridge, but a bridge created David Reynolds. It was on the underbelly of his addiction on the Arkansas side where Thomas found David, who had long ago sculpted a hut into the bridge, as if it fit naturally. Some say it was because he couldn’t leave the bridge. Others say because he could never accept that it had been completed and his project had ended. The truth is, he killed two birds with one stone.

Thomas had driven down the gravel embankment to park by the water and stare out at it, possibly swim in the Mississippi River, a secret item on his bucket list. Thomas knew at most parts it would be dangerous, but he assumed there would be a shallow area off the bank of this area. He had no timetable to reach his destination, Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas would meet relatives he hardly knew and see the wonders of the Southeast United States, an area he was completely unfamiliar with. He couldn’t find a reason against a brief stop and thought maybe he would witness something majestic here. It was so that he did witness such, a majestic land and a majestic soul.

Thomas Shepard approached David, assuming he was a worker, like a park ranger of some sort. David seemed startled by Thomas’s approach, even angered, for the trespassing on his sacred grounds.

“Are you one of Clinton’s people,” the man said with a stern face, “here to give me another token of appreciation or some bullshit?”

He looked like he was strung out on drugs unknown to the hardest pill poppers of the West Coast. The glazed over anger in his eyes, however, still seemed overcast by this underlying intelligence, easily sensed. Thomas’s first assumption was he had ventured across some mad genius, who had become a hermit due to his attention to his work and lack of connection with other people and that he had lost track of time, as Clinton had left office 20 years ago at the turn of the millennium.

“I’m Thomas Shepard, from California. I was soon to cross this glorious bridge but decided I might prefer some sightseeing first. This is a beautiful area, something I am unaccustomed to back home.” The man’s previously pale face began to glow with what appeared to be enthusiasm. For a moment, subconsciously probably, Thomas feared he was soon to be the victim of rape at the hands of a woodsman of the south. His only exposure to such an area was from the film Deliverance, so he must plead ignorance to the environment.

The man, about the same height as Thomas, stood and dropped the fishing pole he had been holding errantly cast into the water. He dusted off his callused right hand and extended it to him, “David Reynolds, chief engineer of Clinton Memorial Bridge, nice to see such an avid naturalist venture into my abode. Care for a beverage?”

The man invited Thomas into his house, which from the outside looked to be nothing more than a shack, but inside was an elegant layout of sophistication and beauty that would be heralded if its zip code was 90210. Thomas took a seat on the couch across from the giant rocker he assumed was David’s favorite seat, probably carved from a tree indigenous to this land. “I am not the naturalist you have mistaken me for; I’m just a curious tourist from an area of skyscrapers and smog just passing through. I am sure you see many of my kind.”

“The number of tourists these days is staggeringly low” said David, pausing to sip his drink before continuing “and it seems to be decreasing at a constant rate.”

His way of speech was foreign to Thomas. All talk was foreign to Thomas after he left California, but this man’s vernacular was particularly strange. Possibly because he was a loner, dwelling on his own and therefore developing his own variation of the oft-butchered English language. But that still wasn’t it. It was in the way he seemed to calculate his statements, using numbers and statistics so easily, it was no wonder the man attained this position and it began to unravel more about the peculiar situation.

“Did you design this house yourself?” Thomas asked this, testing his own theories of this man he had ventured across. “It looks spectacular.”

“Thank you kind sir,” replied Reynolds, seemingly emotionless to the compliments, “but this is not where my true accomplishments are. They are all pieced together in that bridge you are soon to cross. That’s where my real work went in.”

David told Thomas all about the bridge with excitement and energy that made Thomas think of a 10 year old boy talking about his first home run in little-league baseball or a 13 year old girl going on endlessly about her first kiss. David was now 51 and had began work on the bridge 23 years ago, after 6 years out of college working for the government on designing roadways, specifically within the state of Arkansas. Reynolds gained a reputation as the best of the business, working his way up the engineering ladder rung by rung until he was so high that Mr. William Clinton, president of our great nation, recognized him for his work.

Clinton brought Reynolds to Washington where, over a day’s discussion, worked out the general concepts of the bridge President Clinton envisioned. Clinton, a political man even in the deepest crevices of his heart, planned on using this bridge to attract the conservative hunting faction, a crowd often unattainable in votes by the Democratic Party. They revered the mystic beauty of this prized hunting land, as well as the more liberal naturalists, who often times disputed big business governments, making it hard to attract this crowd to the polls. It was the idea of a genius, but little did he know his pet project was another man’s Frankenstein.

Reynolds shined designing the bridge, working with speed and efficiency that the government, frankly, could not even fathom. His staff worked diligently and continually to not merely erect the bridge, but perfect it. Reynolds began to mirror the likes of Picasso and Da Vinci rather than an engineer. In 17 short years, David Reynolds designed the Golden Gate Bridge of the South, except the Golden Gate was merely money thrown at an idea. Clinton memorial was the blood, sweat, and tears of an artist.

Reynolds took Thomas along the bridge, walking along and showing him each detail, details that any human would have forgotten or just cast away as unnecessary to show. But not David. He was like a robot, powered by the ins and outs of this bridge, and no detail was too small to be exposed. Thomas did not mind though; he was amazed at the true accomplishment that was being revealed before him. He could not believe the talents possessed by David, who appeared to be 75 in the face but as fit as a 30 year old and as sharp as any man at any age. After long attempts at persuasion, Thomas agreed to stay the night on Clinton Memorial, a plead much more easily convinced after Thomas had seen the great wall of glass.

Thomas and David spent the night living only by starlight, discussing life and all of its meaning and other deep conversations that seem to only occur in such a setting. Thomas discovered that David did not differ so greatly from himself. Both were loners by nature obsessed more with the routines of their day, the accomplishments of their talents, and the freedom for expansion within their minds. Thomas was living the same life as Reynolds, only Thomas had been forced to do so in Californian suburbia, an area where peace is the hardest drug to purchase. Here, peace was your truest companion. Thomas admired Reynolds and Reynolds appreciated Thomas, not just for his admiration but his authenticity as a person. Something Reynolds believed was the rarest of human subspecies.

“When I look along the Mississippi’s wave, allowing my eyes to travel so gently with each rolling wave, life becomes an infinite phenomenon.” Reynolds said with a glaze in his eyes almost as scenic as the stars above him or the nature below. “To me, life only appears in brevity within the fast paced lives of urbanization. Personally a ‘New York minute’ isn’t worth an Arkansan second. It is as if time moves slowly here in the woodlands, on my bridge connecting no one to nowhere, and that is just how I like it, years of thoughts can be cleared before the sunset of any day.” Reynolds and Thomas never made eye contact throughout the night. Both were too caught up in the Earth around them.

“That’s very poetic David, did you ever consider becoming a writer instead of an engineer,” Thomas asked expecting David to laugh at the idea.

“I am a writer, don’t you see. I’ve got 15 novels invested in this bridge. I have poems extending from each nook and cranny. Not only that, but I feel I created the perfect pallet, the ultimate empty book to be filled by the words of those who witness this glorious land. Of course I didn’t create such; this is the work of the most advanced gods. I just created a passageway to its invention.”

“I would guarantee that any travelling civilian fortunate enough to venture across this bridge is inspired to write the novels you boast of,” Thomas said, now grinning wide. But David was not grinning. In fact, he appeared to be struck by a harsh reality, stinging enough to create a long face, visible in the starlit sky. Thomas thought to himself I’m guessing this is what is responsible for the aging lines depicted in his face.

“I sit at my humble dock, everyday watching cars roll by and I can assure you that most never slow down enough to realize what they have passed.” Hatred now seemed to be enflaming on Reynolds’s face.

“Isn’t that the story of people’s lives,” Thomas retorted quickly and with a sense of anger, possibly to keep David from feeling alone. Often times, company is all misery needed to subside, in spite of its love for such. “People rush to the destination too quickly to appreciate the journey. We all want to reach the light at the end of the tunnel that we see so clearly with the false lenses of selfishness. If people were to look with their hearts, they would discover that the light they desire is travelling alongside them lighting the path, not the end.”

“Maybe you should be the poet,” said David, now with the lively grin returned to his face.

“I don’t think so, I think someone just opened a book in front of me, temporarily, and I filled it with my thoughts the best way I knew how,” said Thomas. Reynolds was now smiling so brightly he was on the verge of laughter. In the end, he could not prevent the flooding of tears of joy. After all, he designed a bridge, not a dam.

Reynolds and Thomas continued this banter well into the night. By the time they both surrendered to the temptation of sleep, Thomas felt as if he understood David and hoped that David understood him. Neither man had been a social butterfly as it was often called, yet both felt as if fate had drawn them to each other. Never had Thomas been so spiritually awakened as he had by the trees, dirt, and water around him. Reynolds had experienced such spiritual stimulation, but never with another person. Perhaps the Gods, whatever Gods there may be, had used their powers to let this occurrence happen. If there were any area they would inhabit Thomas thought I’m sitting amidst it.

David woke many hours before Thomas, who slept better on the rough soil than on any premium mattress. David did not mind waiting however, as he had nothing better to do and could not have been more at ease than he had been that night with Thomas. David sat, thinking the world over one good time as he had so many times before, until Thomas finally woke from his deep trance.

Once Thomas was up, they returned to David’s fishing area where Thomas had parked his car what seemed like months before. Time was a relative measurement, Thomas stated in an emphatic thought, and the last day has proven so. David helped Thomas be on his way, looking more out of touch with reality than ever before. Thomas believed this to be due to his departure and never gave it a second thought, although it did make the final moments tense.

The first few thousand feet of Thomas’s trip were sweeter than the few thousand miles he would travel otherwise. He went less than 25 miles per hour part of the way and enjoyed everything around him. The view was much more magnificent under the beaming sun of a midsummer Tennessee Day, as Thomas had crossed the halfway point of the bridge by the time such a thought came to mind. Every detail was cast with precise amount of sunlight to make it glow but not glare. And the river seemed to carry the sun’s reflection south with its waves, as if even light could not escape its magnificence. Many times, Thomas caught himself veering from side to side on the road. It did not matter though, because no on else was travelling along Clinton Memorial, “The Bridge for No One to Nowhere” as David had coined it. And what a beautiful bridge it was thought Thomas, this time actually scraping the stone median before becoming aware of the daydreamesque awe that had overcome him in his stare into David’s bridge.

Part- no, most of Thomas had wished the collision had been much more serious, and had stranded him alongside David for awhile, an excuse to avoid his pompous family in Georgia and remain in paradise, but he could not make himself wreck, nor could he avoid his previous arrangements as it was never in Thomas Shepard’s nature to break a promise. But as Thomas moved farther along his transnational trail, he felt more and more like he should return to David.

This feeling was not one commonly associated with missing the companionship of a close friend. It was more of a calling, as if the gods were telling Thomas which way he should be travelling, and that the path he was travelling along was incorrect. But the only way Mr. Shepard would turn around would be if the North Star up and moved East, pointing him towards Clinton Memorial Bridge and his friend David.

Thomas arrived in Savannah, Georgia towards the end of that day. Savannah was a beautiful town, as advertised, rich with tradition, heritage, and pride. But the beauties of this place thought Thomas smugly are like pebbles compared to the rubies and diamonds of Clinton Memorial. Thomas witnessed all of the scenic landmarks of this town and eventually found a hotel to sleep in for the night before meeting his family the next day. Thomas wished he were lying in Tennessee mud among the Arkansas bugs instead of this warm cozy room with all the luxuries that had been misinterpreted as necessities in this ruined 21st century world. But, nevertheless, he slept well in recovery from his long, emotional trip.

If one thing prevented Savannah from reaching the sheer majesty of David Reynolds’s creation, Thomas believed it had to be his own family. The amount of ugliness that followed this group was so bold it many times made Thomas physically ill. This is not a reference to their appearance but to the hideousness that is their overwhelmingly uncouth behavior. Politeness is a characteristic that never a Shepard, not even Thomas, had been blessed with, and Thomas despised being in their presence. Thomas often times thought their presence in his childhood made him the loner he was today. He then wondered if David had a similar family background.

Thomas survived the day, which began with his family showing off any commodity they had purchased, as if it should be celebrated to waste money on materialistic advancements, especially when they couldn’t realistically afford them yet desired this bragging right so much that they sacrificed any sort of financial ease for an overvalued luxury item, valued so high due to the logo which came with it. After hours at the Shepard house of adults arguing over who had the superior vehicle, as if they were children on the playground arguing over who was better between their two favorite quarterbacks (and, Thomas thought, with similar levels of intelligence), they all decided to have lunch together in the town, together. There were 20 people travelling in three vehicles because, in spite of their contradictory attitudes, the Shepards believed in being one loving family, a unit of sorts.

This kind of torturous companionship would continue on for the next two days but for once it did not seem to bother Thomas. Although his body was forced to travel onward, the mind of Thomas Shepard remained in its new home along The Bridge for No One to Nowhere. He still felt like he had to fight not to be pulled back to the bridge at any given moment as if a strong magnet had grabbed hold of his body. But this was much worse than that. His spirit seemed to be attempting to leave his body and return to his mind along the Mississippi River, but his body refused. Thomas had heard of duality within a person, but never this. He was now three, until the end of tomorrow when he would reunite with himself and himself; only 34 more excruciating hours to go.

Thomas managed to survive the last day and a half. The pain seemed intolerable, both from his emptiness in being away from the bridge and in his ‘relationship’ with his kin. But nonetheless he had survived. The anxiousness had surmounted now, and he decided to leave for the bridge that night. This would put him there mid-day the next day and give him 12 more hours to spend there, with his new companion, before he must return to the hustle and bustle of hell that he called a job, or even life in general for that matter. Dosed up on caffeine and spiritual ambition, Thomas returned to his true home between two states he often joked of.

The night was long but Thomas knew it was worth it. He had to get back to his spiritual sanction and return to the world with such beauty that it was required for him to witness such time and time again. As Thomas passed the morning lit Nashville, he realized that he had become no better than the typical hobo alcoholic he passed every day begging for a fraction of the change required to acquire his own spiritual freedom and seeing his own majesties. But there weren’t liquor stores around every corner for what Thomas desired, there was only one man that could sell him his drug, and Thomas rushed towards this man now. But something wasn’t right.

Thomas saw David standing by the glass wall on the north side of the bridge, the side Thomas was now travelling across. He was visible from a mile away, being at the very peak, like a man standing at the top of the world. Thomas would travel up this metaphorical Mount Everest, but his expression changed quicker than the elevation. A man who had not 15 minutes ago dreamed, even craved to be where he was had been flushed pale with concern. Anxiety so extreme even the purest beauties this world had to offer were outside Thomas’s peripheral vision as his eyes tunneled on Reynolds like the light at the end he had preached so hard against not half a week earlier.

When Thomas reached Reynolds his fears seemed to be truer than he ever expected. David was not the happy compadre Thomas had learned to love nor was he the disgruntled loner Thomas had happened onto by the river bank. No he was currently the worst of all of this man’s personalities. He was the mad scientist, and his evil creation stood complete beneath him. The smile on his face at that moment could have made murderers weep and soldiers tremble. This was not the facial expression of a man who could be approached, much less reached. He had escaped this world. His body stood atop the creation which seized his spirit. As for his mind, it was in the darkest depths of hell. Nonetheless, Thomas had to try.

“Hey David, I came back,” said Thomas, attempting to ease the situation, “I thought maybe we could have another night like the one we shared the other night.”

“There will be no more nights for me good friend,” said Reynolds, never making eye contact with Thomas. It seemed like he had managed to not make eye contact with any of this world. “I’ve come a long way, done many incredible deeds, and explored the thoughts I so sought. While I am most satisfied with the world I have placed around me, the surrounding world leaves such distaste in my mouth that I can no longer be trapped within it.”

“What are you talking about David?” Thomas was now speaking with a sense of frustration. He could not comprehend what was going through Reynolds mind, especially with what he had surrounded himself with. “You have everything any human could ever desire here: serenity, tranquility, freedom. What more could you possibly want? You have one of the engineering wonders of the world to yourself!”

“Yeah, I have a great thing here,” said David now speaking harshly, “a great accomplishment. Like a kid who made all A’s or a writer completing the best novel he could possibly write. But what you aren’t grasping, Mr. Shepard, is that when I bring my report card home, there are no parents standing there to congratulate me. When I finished my book, it sat in an attic where no one would read it.”

“Your bridge is out there David, people can see it. People cross everyday to witness the majesty.” Thomas said this with arms spread wide as if holding all of the nature that stood around him.

“Ok, so some people take my novel and use the pages as paper towels or toilet paper,” said Reynolds, remaining with the previous metaphor, “every day cars pass by here and never stop to see what they are passing. Every car passes without noticing the rock carving of the bolts that hold this bridge together. And I constantly ask myself why. I’ve spent many of my days pondering how they could do such and it always comes back to the same thing. Selfishness, lack of appreciation, pessimism, technologies, urbanization,” Reynolds sped up as he talked until he was muttering under his breath with hair clenched in his weathered hands. Then he calmed and smiled the smoothest smile, and grabbed a spot on the glass wall. He then softly spoke “The fact is, this world is heading straight to hell and humans are leading the way. And I will be damned if I have to stick around to see it anymore.”

Thomas’s face was now a foot from David’s and he began to panic. The truth is Thomas had become just as reliant as David on the hope that this place was special and, more importantly, indestructible to the evils that Reynolds had just mentioned. He needed this now, he needed faith in something and watching its creator fall would lead to the same for him. Now shaking and sweating, Thomas raised his finger to the underside of Reynolds jaw, and in a panicky oblivious way, began to scream at his friend “WHAT ABOUT ME, HUH? DID THAT EVER CROSS YOUR MIND? WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?”

With the same unaffected face he had had since Thomas arrived, David so calmly stated “You were just a false hope, something sent to give me some sort of belief. You were hope, don’t get me wrong, and I appreciate the final moments of bliss I could share with one of the good ones still out there. But, in the end, it is all false, all wrong. It is just not meant to be. You were like a holy spirit coming to bring me to God. Unfortunately I am an atheist, and that will not work.”

Thomas studied David now, trying to decide if he was poetic or mad. Thomas decided there was no difference in the two and even if there were, a man like David Reynolds could be both. Suddenly, David pushed on the glass where his hand had settled and like a magic trick, a square approximately the size of a doorway pushed outward and fell to the water so far below. Thomas was amazed, there were no noticeable marks or anything and just like that it had disappeared. Maybe David Reynolds was the God, or maybe a vivid dream of what Thomas wanted gone nightmarishly mad.

“Impressed are you?” said Reynolds, calmer than Thomas could possibly have been. “When I designed this place I cut this out one day, suspicious that a day like this might come. Of course I made it completely unnoticeable and I have a glass square of the same dimensions stored away in my house which can be placed here once I depart.”

“W-w-what are you planning on doing?” stuttered Thomas, now nervous, curious and terrified all at once, like a boy who had angered his father and was waiting to discover his punishment, too scared to know but even more scared of a surprise.

“In a moment I will jump from this very spot into the water.” said David still maintaining his composure, “If I have it right, from this height, if not from the heart attack I am sure to suffer, I will die from the impact that will be like a full body bludgeon. I will become partial splatter, until I sink down and I am quite literally ripped in two by the strong Mississippi undercurrent. My velocity I travel with will interfere too much with the velocity of the current and I am sure to be torn into the many people that I am sure you have discovered I am.”

For a split second, the dark-humored side of Thomas overtook him and he had a slight desire to see this. But it needs to be someone else he thought, snapping out of this state of mind and back to the one with only one focus, saving his friends life. “You can’t do that. I need you David Reynolds, and this world needs you too.”

But this seemed to not have any effect on David. He checked his watch, and stepped forward as if an invisible step existed before him. Thomas prayed there was such a step. But there was not. Before he began to freefall, David turned to Thomas and said, “Please keep my name, keep my world, and keep my bridge untarnished,” and then fell from his own creation. Thomas had no desire to see his friend die, but as if he was being forced to, he peered over the edge.

David Reynolds, for the millionth, and final, time in his life, had been right on with his calculations. His body stood no chance against the magnitude of the fall or the magnitude of this grand river. But this was not the part that shocked Thomas. Nor was it the fact that Reynolds had landed perfectly tangent to the reflection of the sun (That sick engineering bastard planned that all along Thomas thought No wonder he checked his watch). The part that caught Thomas off guard was that Reynolds did not have a heart attack on the way down. In fact Thomas could see a smiling face as he floated not 50 feet above the water, followed by the echoes of a madman’s laughter along the trees of his habitat. David Reynolds died happier than he had been since the bridge had been finished.

Hunters were common to this land, frequenting it as long as time could tell. Even Mr. Reynolds hunted these lands. Many animals were killed here, victim of human lust and greed, and every time the other animals went on as if nothing had ever happened. But this time, when David Reynolds fell to the hands of a human (be it the evils of humanity or his own, whichever you prefer), things were different. For what seemed like an eternity, but was actually about five minutes, Thomas Shepard stood atop this bridge and was awestricken with grief. It was possible that every living thing in the area was as well, as silence was the only thing that seemed to exist on Clinton Memorial Bridge.

Finally a car passed, a car that probably would not have stopped had it not been for the now sobbing man sitting beside a glassless piece of a towering bridge. He stopped and asked Thomas what was going on, probably assuming that Thomas was about to accept the same fate his friend had. When Thomas informed him of what had just occurred, he immediately contacted the police, who arrived shortly.

Nothing was ever found of David Reynolds, although Thomas said that anything you wanted to find of the man existed in the bridge. The funeral service was one of beauty along the river bank that this man called home. Former President Clinton even graced David’s legacy with his appearance. Praise was given, tears were cried, and respect was shown. And, although he was dead, the old sly Thomas had recently come to know had one last stunt up his sleeve.

In the two day absence Thomas took from the place, David left everything he owned to Thomas. To many people this was not much, but to Thomas it was the opposite. He now had everything he wanted, everything but the man he wished to share it with. He would quit his job and move into Reynolds’s house and never have to worry again because David Reynolds was a very rich man and when he became pieces within the water he loved, Thomas Shepard became the wealthy. But Thomas was unsure that he could go on with the most inspiring man he had ever met reaching the lowest point any human can reach. Then he remembered the final words David had muttered to him:

“Please keep my name, keep my world, and keep my bridge untarnished,”

Now Thomas understood why he had told him this; Because it would become his responsibility to do so. That man is still two steps ahead of me and his legs aren’t even connected to his torso muttered Thomas. Although Thomas seemed furious, he was mostly relieved at this. Now he had all of the things he so desired over the last few days and a purpose with which to do it. His only fear that remained is he would become what David Reynolds had, a pure soul lost in the torment of our world.

The person Thomas believed he had knew was only the surface to a much more intricate design buried deep beneath. In David’s den, Thomas discovered books and books on everything any man could desire to learn. There were probably no intellectual boundaries for David Reynolds and yet he kept challenging the boundaries of knowledge. His mind was a prize, a sacred gift that can only be created by some divine power (although Thomas believed if any human could engineer it, it would be David). Thomas enjoyed months onto years of discovering what this man knew, the side projects he had accomplished, and the ability of this man to solve almost anything.

Next, in David Reynolds subtle office, Thomas discovered the determination and dedication that were obvious in his masterpiece. The entire office had been dedicated to the design of the bridge and still the office was too small. There was a stack over three feet high in the corner of just blueprints on the design. I want to see the stack of errors thought Thomas before jokingly deciding this man never erred. The entire room was covered in pictures of the bridge as if it were a far-away destination and not the roof of this house. The man that was David Reynolds was also the bridge often crossed.

Thomas had found David Reynold’s personified in everything before him. His scholarly work, intellectual abilities, and anxiousness to learn were not just peculiar traits but golden in many ways. ‘Golden’ thought Thomas that’s the perfect word. He had discovered the rest of Reynolds’s bridge, what couldn’t be observed by the human eye. The things that weren’t there were more important to David than any piece of the structure and Thomas recognized this. For these two things, Thomas would never allow to tarnish. But the final wish of Reynolds’s three, Thomas was not so empowered.

He discovered the world of David Reynolds buried where any person would hide their world, beneath the bed they slept on. A box, approximately 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet filled to the brim with books of what appeared to be journals. Thomas’s hunch was correct, and they dated back almost 20 years. Thomas began reading them, knowing that his spirit and his fate required him to know the man he admired. But what Thomas discovered was like the sad realization of a child that Hogwarts isn’t real, or that the cartoons they watch can never come to life.

David Reynolds was a successful man on the outside, undeniably. But what he battled on the inside was a tragedy even Shakespeare would avoid. Many things became blatantly evident to Thomas. First was that this man was not dedicated to his bridge, he was obsessed, addicted. And not in the manner that is heralded but in the sickening way that makes your heart quiver. There were Stories about going days without food to finish a single beam, firing his only friends because they only put in 16 hours a day, complete obsession to his work. By the 7th year on the project, the bridge had become personified. By the 11th, it was as if it were a love story being played out between the inanimate object and Reynolds (who by this point may have been an inanimate object himself). By the end there was no differentiation between the bridge and David. They were one and it was terrifying to Thomas to read such, although he was aware of how much Reynolds cared for this bridge. Then, the books took a horrific twist

In the years following the bridges completion, David expected tourists from all over to want to see such an accomplishment. But they never came. Occasional passer-bys were enough for him at first, but in the end, the neglect of his creation led to his demise. He began creating stories, bizarrely untrue. He was writing in depth stories about cars plunging to their death because no one stopped to notice the chief engineer had removed half the bridge. No one would notice, he said, no one ever paid attention to the road that gets them there. More and more bizarrely insane stories from such a brilliant man (and a true wordsmith) that made you believe this was happening right before your eyes. Among the poems and short stories were 15 novels. “I am a writer, don’t you see. I’ve got 15 novels invested in this bridge,” whispered Thomas, reminded of these words exactly as David had spoken them to him that night atop the bridge, “that witty little asshole.” Every word was terrifying, until the last page of the last book. Reynolds wrote more calmly than any post before:

“Today, I am once again myself. I have overcome the personalities that have overtaken me these past few years and returned to myself. I did not accomplish such a task on my own but with the help of a man I now hold dearer than any person that walks this Earth. His name is Thomas Shepard, and like a shepherd he has guided me to epiphanies I never thought possible. He has rid me of the many demons that had taken over my soul and allowed me to live one more day as the man I once was. But with my brief sanity I must prevent myself from returning to what I have become. I plan to leave this wretched hell hole, possibly for another. But that I do not care about as long as I can separate myself from the life I now know, shared with the many devils that have filled my precious diaries with words I would never speak of.

My new friend wisely said “People rush to the destination too quickly to appreciate the journey. We all want to reach the light at the end of the tunnel that we see so clearly with the false lenses of selfishness. If people were to look with their hearts, they would discover that the light they desire is travelling alongside them lighting the path, not the end.”

This might be true, but you also must realize when the path has ended and your light flickers off. My world went dark many years ago but I have temporary been relit by the presence of my friend David, glowing brighter than any sun.

This will be my last entry in a series so eclectic no man could bear to follow it, and yet I have been forced to live such. But no more, for this world needs one less David Reynolds, uncontrollable mad genius, and one more Thomas Shepard, guiding me and my land to the salvation it so deserves.

As he finished the last section, Thomas Shepard looked to the sky (although he didn’t believe that was the direction to look to find his friend) and said in a voice so rasp it was hardly translatable “I can keep your name and bridge untarnished. But your world requires a little cleansing. That I don’t know if I can do.” A tear then rolled down Thomas’s eye like a rolling wave of the river he slept beside. “But I will sure as hell try.”

Thomas never put the piece of glass up to replace the missing door-frame sized chunk. Thomas Shepard did every thing else he believed David would have desired, or even done himself. He then did two things Reynolds would have never asked of him. First he contacted President Clinton and asked for a change in the name of the bridge to Clinton-Reynolds Bridge. At the request of Mr. Clinton, the name was changed to Reynolds-Clinton Memorial Bridge. And Thomas did replace the missing chunk, but not with glass, but an indigenous rock similar to granite he found outside Reynolds’s home. Then Thomas hand-engraved his thoughts and what he liked to believe were Reynolds’s wishes into the stone before erecting it:

“Here stands the highest point of this bridge, standing

700 feet above the water below. It was the visions of

Chief Engineer David Reynolds that many people would

Stand where this stone is and see for many miles while also

Appreciating the beauty of the design of his beloved project,

The bridge you currently cross. But this never came true and the

Sad fact is that most of you will cross this bridge with no more

Than a glimpse at the text before you. Because of this, the glass curtain

That was once a window to the most wonderful majesties this

World has to offer became a doorway to something much darker.

It was through this hole that Engineer Reynolds walked, committing

Suicide one faithful day. May he be remembered for his great scholarly

Mind, the beautiful bridge on which you travel, and the world around

You which he called home.

R.I.P

David H. Reynolds

1969-2020

“Pleasure in the mind puts perfection in the work”-Aristotle”

But pleasure in the spirit puts perfection in the soul.

[fesahaawit]

We Are Not Materialistic Enough

This is a guest post from my friend David Cain. It originally appeared on his blog, Raptitude.

When a friend of mine inspected the damage from a fender-bender, what upset him most was the discovery that his bumper was nothing but a brittle plastic husk supported by three pieces of styrofoam. The vehicle was new and probably cost about $35,000.

In the documentary Minimalism, on Netflix, sociology professor Juliet Schor articulated something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Essentially she said our society is drowning in needless possessions and consumer debt not because we’re too materialistic, but because we’re not materialistic enough, at least in the true sense. (Direct quote is here.)

In the everyday sense, the word “materialism” is used interchangeably with “consumerism”, a preoccupation with buying and consuming goods. We hear all the time that Western society is vapid and materialistic, meaning that it cares far too much about things, and not enough about spiritual or interpersonal values.

But using the word “materialistic” that way implies that the things themselves are what we value most, as though we consumers are connoisseurs of fine handiwork, attention to detail, and inspired design.

Looking closer, it’s clear our rampant buying has little to do with a taste for nice things. Our shopping culture does not suggest a close relationship with the physical and concrete parts of our lives. In fact we have very low standards for what physical objects we trade our money for, and for the quality of the sensory experiences they provide.

So much of our stuff is so crappy. Seams on brand-name clothes undo themselves under normal wear. Our grocery store vegetables are bland. We drink coffee that was roasted a year ago. Everything that can conceivably be made of plastic is made of plastic. (Seriously, who wants to sit in this?) We might be in love with buying, but we are not in love with things. 

If we were things-lovers, we’d have better things and few things we don’t use. Market competition would drive products to become better and better, instead of just more plentiful. The typical item produced by the most productive economy in history is a plastic piece of crap. I remember having to buy four standing lamps before I found one whose dimmer switch lasted a full calendar year, and I wasn’t buying the cheapo ones.

Good material things are available, but they’re the exception. Increasingly, if you want something durable and well-designed, something that feels good in the hands and is a joy to use, you’re looking into the high-end boutique market.

Last year I bought a stapler at an artsy gift shop for $63, and nobody I’ve disclosed that to hasn’t laughed at me for it. But I enjoy every single act of stapling, it’s made of thick gauge steel, and it will still be operational eight or ten presidents from now. How many flimsy mass market staplers had I gone through before I made a point of buying one whose physicality I actually respect? And how few things like that do I own?

I’m not sure when people started saying “They don’t make them like they used to”, but it is certainly true today. Something happened at some point that left us preferring more things over better things, and acquiring over using or owning.

Selves for Sale

Part of it has to do with a big shift in marketing that happened in the mid-20th century.

Ads used to be straightforward appeals to material needs: the product does this, it costs this much, and you can buy it at these stores. Products were marketed as solutions to acute material problems: dirty clothes, itchy feet, unruly beards.

Taking inspiration from wartime propaganda, advertisers began pandering to a different set of their customer’s needs—not straightforward material desires for a cleansing product or a smooth brandy, but their deeper psychological desires.

The modern truck commercial isn’t offering trucks exactly, it’s offering manhood. Ads are typically set in the badlands or on construction sites, or some other manly domain. The narrator is deep-voiced and talks to you like a knowing fellow man, and at the end a truck performs some act of heroism, dragging a tree out of a blocked roadway or something.

Laundry detergent ads aren’t offering laundry detergent, they’re offering the identity of a suburban mother who’s on top of her household. Booze ads are offering inclusion into a group of attractive friends. Vacation ads are selling rekindled relationships and a spell of freedom from adult responsibility.

Marketers began to sell products in a way that suggests you are buying something deeper and more abstract than a material thing: a sense of freedom, belonging, security, virility, popularity—any of the non-material qualities we perpetually seek and never have enough of. They sell us what we want to be, not what we want to have.

Unlike the practical needs of a working family, our desire for self-actualization is bottomless, and so when we try to buy it, we buy endlessly.

(This topic is fascinating and horrifying, and described in detail in the documentary The Century of the Self.)

The materiality of the product—what you physically receive from the transaction—is often an afterthought. Because most of us have lived our entire lives being sold products based on their symbolic value, we don’t find it that unusual or offensive when the item itself is cheaply put together and doesn’t evoke our respect or gratitude.

Even big expensive things, like my friend’s (briefly) new car, are as plastic and crappy as the customer will tolerate, and we tolerate quite a bit. A three-quarter-million-dollar “McMansion” isn’t a Nice Thing. It costs a lot but it’s still cheaply made, the product of numerical calculations made by some distant development firm. It represents nobody’s artistic vision, nobody’s best work. But it does come with status, and probably a sense of arrival at a particular socioeconomic rung, or stage of adulthood.

A lot of the stuff we buy we don’t even use, which would strike our pre-consumer ancestors as very bizarre.

Almost everyone reading this owns clothing they’ve only ever worn in a fitting room. Why? Probably because what was purchased was the glowing feeling of moving up, of improving the self, and that feeling was generated by the shopping experience rather than the item itself. The sense of improving one’s personal image a little further is probably a bigger motivator of most clothing purchases than the physical virtues of the garments themselves—the material quality, the tailoring, and the design.

Living on Solid Ground

There are other factors in our disconnection with the material world. The information age has given us too much to think about, too many abstract places to put our attention.

Today many of us work very abstract jobs, requiring little bodily awareness, and much mental effort tracking abstract things like processes, policies, formulae and schedules. More and more occupations emphasize an awareness of personnel rather than people, production rather than craft, maps rather than territories.

Contrast this with an agrarian life of plowing, chopping, knitting, gardening, cooking, building. These are all highly sensory experiences that require ongoing attention to your body, tools and other material aspects of the world around you.

It is normal now to spend most our lives preoccupied with what’s going on in places we’ve never been and will never go, and the actions of people we’ll never meet. That kind of “global” awareness may have its uses, but we’ve certainly never been so out of touch with the materiality of our experience—the concrete, the physical, the present.

The shoddiness we tolerate in our material goods is a symptom of our extreme preoccupation with the abstract and symbolic side of life. The hallmark of stress and unease is rumination—unconscious, uncontrolled thinking about things you aren’t really doing and conversations you aren’t really having.

The remedy is to make our relationship with the material world our primary concern, as it once was. We should be animals using abstract thinking as a tool, putting it down when we’re not using it purposefully.

Buy less, buy better. Notice the materiality of the things you use. Live in your body. Feel the ground when you walk. Chop wood, carry water.

David writes about what school never taught us: how to improve your quality of life in real-time. His blog, Raptitude, has been one of my favourites for years. <3

We Are Not Materialistic Enough posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[fesahaawit]

We Are Not Materialistic Enough

This is a guest post from my friend David Cain. It originally appeared on his blog, Raptitude.

When a friend of mine inspected the damage from a fender-bender, what upset him most was the discovery that his bumper was nothing but a brittle plastic husk supported by three pieces of styrofoam. The vehicle was new and probably cost about $35,000.

In the documentary Minimalism, on Netflix, sociology professor Juliet Schor articulated something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Essentially she said our society is drowning in needless possessions and consumer debt not because we’re too materialistic, but because we’re not materialistic enough, at least in the true sense. (Direct quote is here.)

In the everyday sense, the word “materialism” is used interchangeably with “consumerism”, a preoccupation with buying and consuming goods. We hear all the time that Western society is vapid and materialistic, meaning that it cares far too much about things, and not enough about spiritual or interpersonal values.

But using the word “materialistic” that way implies that the things themselves are what we value most, as though we consumers are connoisseurs of fine handiwork, attention to detail, and inspired design.

Looking closer, it’s clear our rampant buying has little to do with a taste for nice things. Our shopping culture does not suggest a close relationship with the physical and concrete parts of our lives. In fact we have very low standards for what physical objects we trade our money for, and for the quality of the sensory experiences they provide.

So much of our stuff is so crappy. Seams on brand-name clothes undo themselves under normal wear. Our grocery store vegetables are bland. We drink coffee that was roasted a year ago. Everything that can conceivably be made of plastic is made of plastic. (Seriously, who wants to sit in this?) We might be in love with buying, but we are not in love with things. 

If we were things-lovers, we’d have better things and few things we don’t use. Market competition would drive products to become better and better, instead of just more plentiful. The typical item produced by the most productive economy in history is a plastic piece of crap. I remember having to buy four standing lamps before I found one whose dimmer switch lasted a full calendar year, and I wasn’t buying the cheapo ones.

Good material things are available, but they’re the exception. Increasingly, if you want something durable and well-designed, something that feels good in the hands and is a joy to use, you’re looking into the high-end boutique market.

Last year I bought a stapler at an artsy gift shop for $63, and nobody I’ve disclosed that to hasn’t laughed at me for it. But I enjoy every single act of stapling, it’s made of thick gauge steel, and it will still be operational eight or ten presidents from now. How many flimsy mass market staplers had I gone through before I made a point of buying one whose physicality I actually respect? And how few things like that do I own?

I’m not sure when people started saying “They don’t make them like they used to”, but it is certainly true today. Something happened at some point that left us preferring more things over better things, and acquiring over using or owning.

Selves for Sale

Part of it has to do with a big shift in marketing that happened in the mid-20th century.

Ads used to be straightforward appeals to material needs: the product does this, it costs this much, and you can buy it at these stores. Products were marketed as solutions to acute material problems: dirty clothes, itchy feet, unruly beards.

Taking inspiration from wartime propaganda, advertisers began pandering to a different set of their customer’s needs—not straightforward material desires for a cleansing product or a smooth brandy, but their deeper psychological desires.

The modern truck commercial isn’t offering trucks exactly, it’s offering manhood. Ads are typically set in the badlands or on construction sites, or some other manly domain. The narrator is deep-voiced and talks to you like a knowing fellow man, and at the end a truck performs some act of heroism, dragging a tree out of a blocked roadway or something.

Laundry detergent ads aren’t offering laundry detergent, they’re offering the identity of a suburban mother who’s on top of her household. Booze ads are offering inclusion into a group of attractive friends. Vacation ads are selling rekindled relationships and a spell of freedom from adult responsibility.

Marketers began to sell products in a way that suggests you are buying something deeper and more abstract than a material thing: a sense of freedom, belonging, security, virility, popularity—any of the non-material qualities we perpetually seek and never have enough of. They sell us what we want to be, not what we want to have.

Unlike the practical needs of a working family, our desire for self-actualization is bottomless, and so when we try to buy it, we buy endlessly.

(This topic is fascinating and horrifying, and described in detail in the documentary The Century of the Self.)

The materiality of the product—what you physically receive from the transaction—is often an afterthought. Because most of us have lived our entire lives being sold products based on their symbolic value, we don’t find it that unusual or offensive when the item itself is cheaply put together and doesn’t evoke our respect or gratitude.

Even big expensive things, like my friend’s (briefly) new car, are as plastic and crappy as the customer will tolerate, and we tolerate quite a bit. A three-quarter-million-dollar “McMansion” isn’t a Nice Thing. It costs a lot but it’s still cheaply made, the product of numerical calculations made by some distant development firm. It represents nobody’s artistic vision, nobody’s best work. But it does come with status, and probably a sense of arrival at a particular socioeconomic rung, or stage of adulthood.

A lot of the stuff we buy we don’t even use, which would strike our pre-consumer ancestors as very bizarre.

Almost everyone reading this owns clothing they’ve only ever worn in a fitting room. Why? Probably because what was purchased was the glowing feeling of moving up, of improving the self, and that feeling was generated by the shopping experience rather than the item itself. The sense of improving one’s personal image a little further is probably a bigger motivator of most clothing purchases than the physical virtues of the garments themselves—the material quality, the tailoring, and the design.

Living on Solid Ground

There are other factors in our disconnection with the material world. The information age has given us too much to think about, too many abstract places to put our attention.

Today many of us work very abstract jobs, requiring little bodily awareness, and much mental effort tracking abstract things like processes, policies, formulae and schedules. More and more occupations emphasize an awareness of personnel rather than people, production rather than craft, maps rather than territories.

Contrast this with an agrarian life of plowing, chopping, knitting, gardening, cooking, building. These are all highly sensory experiences that require ongoing attention to your body, tools and other material aspects of the world around you.

It is normal now to spend most our lives preoccupied with what’s going on in places we’ve never been and will never go, and the actions of people we’ll never meet. That kind of “global” awareness may have its uses, but we’ve certainly never been so out of touch with the materiality of our experience—the concrete, the physical, the present.

The shoddiness we tolerate in our material goods is a symptom of our extreme preoccupation with the abstract and symbolic side of life. The hallmark of stress and unease is rumination—unconscious, uncontrolled thinking about things you aren’t really doing and conversations you aren’t really having.

The remedy is to make our relationship with the material world our primary concern, as it once was. We should be animals using abstract thinking as a tool, putting it down when we’re not using it purposefully.

Buy less, buy better. Notice the materiality of the things you use. Live in your body. Feel the ground when you walk. Chop wood, carry water.

David writes about what school never taught us: how to improve your quality of life in real-time. His blog, Raptitude, has been one of my favourites for years. <3

We Are Not Materialistic Enough posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[fesahaawit]

We Are Not Materialistic Enough

This is a guest post from my friend David Cain. It originally appeared on his blog, Raptitude.

When a friend of mine inspected the damage from a fender-bender, what upset him most was the discovery that his bumper was nothing but a brittle plastic husk supported by three pieces of styrofoam. The vehicle was new and probably cost about $35,000.

In the documentary Minimalism, on Netflix, sociology professor Juliet Schor articulated something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Essentially she said our society is drowning in needless possessions and consumer debt not because we’re too materialistic, but because we’re not materialistic enough, at least in the true sense. (Direct quote is here.)

In the everyday sense, the word “materialism” is used interchangeably with “consumerism”, a preoccupation with buying and consuming goods. We hear all the time that Western society is vapid and materialistic, meaning that it cares far too much about things, and not enough about spiritual or interpersonal values.

But using the word “materialistic” that way implies that the things themselves are what we value most, as though we consumers are connoisseurs of fine handiwork, attention to detail, and inspired design.

Looking closer, it’s clear our rampant buying has little to do with a taste for nice things. Our shopping culture does not suggest a close relationship with the physical and concrete parts of our lives. In fact we have very low standards for what physical objects we trade our money for, and for the quality of the sensory experiences they provide.

So much of our stuff is so crappy. Seams on brand-name clothes undo themselves under normal wear. Our grocery store vegetables are bland. We drink coffee that was roasted a year ago. Everything that can conceivably be made of plastic is made of plastic. (Seriously, who wants to sit in this?) We might be in love with buying, but we are not in love with things. 

If we were things-lovers, we’d have better things and few things we don’t use. Market competition would drive products to become better and better, instead of just more plentiful. The typical item produced by the most productive economy in history is a plastic piece of crap. I remember having to buy four standing lamps before I found one whose dimmer switch lasted a full calendar year, and I wasn’t buying the cheapo ones.

Good material things are available, but they’re the exception. Increasingly, if you want something durable and well-designed, something that feels good in the hands and is a joy to use, you’re looking into the high-end boutique market.

Last year I bought a stapler at an artsy gift shop for $63, and nobody I’ve disclosed that to hasn’t laughed at me for it. But I enjoy every single act of stapling, it’s made of thick gauge steel, and it will still be operational eight or ten presidents from now. How many flimsy mass market staplers had I gone through before I made a point of buying one whose physicality I actually respect? And how few things like that do I own?

I’m not sure when people started saying “They don’t make them like they used to”, but it is certainly true today. Something happened at some point that left us preferring more things over better things, and acquiring over using or owning.

Selves for Sale

Part of it has to do with a big shift in marketing that happened in the mid-20th century.

Ads used to be straightforward appeals to material needs: the product does this, it costs this much, and you can buy it at these stores. Products were marketed as solutions to acute material problems: dirty clothes, itchy feet, unruly beards.

Taking inspiration from wartime propaganda, advertisers began pandering to a different set of their customer’s needs—not straightforward material desires for a cleansing product or a smooth brandy, but their deeper psychological desires.

The modern truck commercial isn’t offering trucks exactly, it’s offering manhood. Ads are typically set in the badlands or on construction sites, or some other manly domain. The narrator is deep-voiced and talks to you like a knowing fellow man, and at the end a truck performs some act of heroism, dragging a tree out of a blocked roadway or something.

Laundry detergent ads aren’t offering laundry detergent, they’re offering the identity of a suburban mother who’s on top of her household. Booze ads are offering inclusion into a group of attractive friends. Vacation ads are selling rekindled relationships and a spell of freedom from adult responsibility.

Marketers began to sell products in a way that suggests you are buying something deeper and more abstract than a material thing: a sense of freedom, belonging, security, virility, popularity—any of the non-material qualities we perpetually seek and never have enough of. They sell us what we want to be, not what we want to have.

Unlike the practical needs of a working family, our desire for self-actualization is bottomless, and so when we try to buy it, we buy endlessly.

(This topic is fascinating and horrifying, and described in detail in the documentary The Century of the Self.)

The materiality of the product—what you physically receive from the transaction—is often an afterthought. Because most of us have lived our entire lives being sold products based on their symbolic value, we don’t find it that unusual or offensive when the item itself is cheaply put together and doesn’t evoke our respect or gratitude.

Even big expensive things, like my friend’s (briefly) new car, are as plastic and crappy as the customer will tolerate, and we tolerate quite a bit. A three-quarter-million-dollar “McMansion” isn’t a Nice Thing. It costs a lot but it’s still cheaply made, the product of numerical calculations made by some distant development firm. It represents nobody’s artistic vision, nobody’s best work. But it does come with status, and probably a sense of arrival at a particular socioeconomic rung, or stage of adulthood.

A lot of the stuff we buy we don’t even use, which would strike our pre-consumer ancestors as very bizarre.

Almost everyone reading this owns clothing they’ve only ever worn in a fitting room. Why? Probably because what was purchased was the glowing feeling of moving up, of improving the self, and that feeling was generated by the shopping experience rather than the item itself. The sense of improving one’s personal image a little further is probably a bigger motivator of most clothing purchases than the physical virtues of the garments themselves—the material quality, the tailoring, and the design.

Living on Solid Ground

There are other factors in our disconnection with the material world. The information age has given us too much to think about, too many abstract places to put our attention.

Today many of us work very abstract jobs, requiring little bodily awareness, and much mental effort tracking abstract things like processes, policies, formulae and schedules. More and more occupations emphasize an awareness of personnel rather than people, production rather than craft, maps rather than territories.

Contrast this with an agrarian life of plowing, chopping, knitting, gardening, cooking, building. These are all highly sensory experiences that require ongoing attention to your body, tools and other material aspects of the world around you.

It is normal now to spend most our lives preoccupied with what’s going on in places we’ve never been and will never go, and the actions of people we’ll never meet. That kind of “global” awareness may have its uses, but we’ve certainly never been so out of touch with the materiality of our experience—the concrete, the physical, the present.

The shoddiness we tolerate in our material goods is a symptom of our extreme preoccupation with the abstract and symbolic side of life. The hallmark of stress and unease is rumination—unconscious, uncontrolled thinking about things you aren’t really doing and conversations you aren’t really having.

The remedy is to make our relationship with the material world our primary concern, as it once was. We should be animals using abstract thinking as a tool, putting it down when we’re not using it purposefully.

Buy less, buy better. Notice the materiality of the things you use. Live in your body. Feel the ground when you walk. Chop wood, carry water.

David writes about what school never taught us: how to improve your quality of life in real-time. His blog, Raptitude, has been one of my favourites for years. <3

We Are Not Materialistic Enough posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ