#technically i can just make a guy without them fitting into a pre-existing universe but for some reason i feel bad abt it

[radrobotz]

I NEED TO STOP MAKING BOT OCS THEYRE OVERPOPULATING AND BARELY FIT INTO THE ACTUAL STORIES I HAVE

[heraldofzaun]

Hi. We’re doing this again. I’ve already spoken a little bit (well, a great bit) about how old lore Viktor wasn’t a stereotypical evil villain, but I keep seeing this interesting trend crop up - especially in the comments of analyses on Viktor’s character - and so I’m going to write about it. That trend is the fact that people seem completely and utterly convinced that only old Viktor “augmented without consent” or “didn’t respect free will” or similar mad-scientist-adjacent claims. This isn't true. The inverse is true, actually.

What follows is the entirety of Viktor’s old lore (I’m using the first - the second variant is the one that snips out his going to the Institute of War, I’m not trying to pull a trick on you or anything), his lines upon release (which are still technically canonical, even if many people believe them to be outdated - whether that is due to Riot still believing that they’re accurate to his character or, more likely, Riot not caring to replace them, I don’t know), and the accompanying blurb to his release comic. I am also including Jayce’s second lore, the one which Riot wrote after Viktor fans pointed out that Jayce’s original lore was contradictory to Viktor’s character. (Which is mentioned in the post I linked above. TL;DR: Viktor fans made such a fuss that Jayce’s lore got changed to paint Viktor as less of a villain, which again points to the fact that old Viktor wasn’t necessarily perceived as villainous by his fans. Of course, fan perceptions can be wrong - but canon was changed, so...)

This screenshot is missing his pick/ban quotes (“Join the Glorious Evolution.”/”Inferior constructs.” - ban quotes were added after his release, so they recycled one of his attack lines) and the quotes for Chaos Storm (“Obliterate!”/”Consume!”/”True power!”/”Behold!”). This is because it didn’t fit on my computer screen nicely.

This was written alongside Viktor’s teaser comic. (I personally really like the teaser comic, even though I’m concerned about Viktor cutting a hole in his laboratory wall.) It is, technically, non-canon material as it was posted on the now-defunct forums rather than anywhere on the client, but as we’ve seen a recent trend of Rioters Word-of-God’ing facts about canon, I may as well include it. There may be more Word-of-God confirmations on those forums as well, but the backup site that they’re currently hosted on doesn’t allow for searches as the original site didn’t either. You can find this on the “Development” tab of Viktor’s wiki page, if you’re curious.

Is there anything in here, besides “Submit to my designs.” and a few other of his voice lines, which should be taken with the context that they were a) written in 2011 and are thus not the highest examples of character-focused writing and b) written under the context of these being things he is saying to opponents on a battlefield, that says “Viktor augments people who are unwilling”? I don’t see it. He isn’t an angel, sure, because he wrecks Jayce’s lab after the man doesn’t want to work with him, but… He’s mostly alright, at least when it comes to the claims I’m investigating. (Also, note that his acolytes are not specified as being under his control or anything like that - they very well may just be people he’s helped, who don’t want a strange man smashing up the lab they were helped in.)

An interesting side-note: Jayce’s first lore does seem to imply that Viktor murdered people, as he “staged a deadly raid on Jayce’s laboratory”. This is concerning. There’s still somewhat of that implication in the second lore, considering the whole “incinerating the lab’s meager security force” line, but I’ve never seen anyone in fandom over the years use that as evidence for Viktor being a murderer, which is interesting. There’s actual textual evidence you can point to to say that Viktor’s a morally awful dude, and yet no one pointed to it when it was canon...I’ve never seen it cited in any character analyses for Viktor, nor have I ever seen anyone make the point that it’s people that Viktor’s incinerating. Food for thought, I guess. Anyways, my personal take is this: it’s security systems, not people. It doesn’t quite make sense, in-universe, for Viktor to murder a bunch of redshirt security guards but only blast Jayce aside - and leave him with no lasting injuries, obviously. Out-of-universe, you can say that it’s because Jayce is a champion, but still… It really doesn’t fit. Of course, I’m an old lore Viktor fan and this is entirely me trying to justify that he’s not a bad guy, so you can definitely take my words as biased. As we’ll see later, even if you take this as proof that old Viktor’s a killer, it doesn’t mean new Viktor is morally spotless.

Also, if you speak a language other than English and want to kill time, feel free to write in with what Jayce’s old lore says he did if you can find a translation of it. (If you go to the League wiki you can find other language versions of it, and from there you can poke around on Jayce’s page to see if it even has his older lore at all.) The Polish version apparently doesn’t imply people, but the Russian version uses “guards”... or so I think, my knowledge of Russian is pretty small so it was me and Wiktionary against the world. I think that League lore translations, especially from 2011, aren’t exactly the best material for textual evidence, but it’s an interesting curiosity. (I’m genuinely fascinated on how this was never a point of argument, and also to the fact that it was made much more ambiguous in Jayce’s post-outcry lore… but not removed.)

Anyways. Of course, you can take his lines and general character to a logical endpoint and say that it is implied that he doesn’t care much about whether or not people consent to the Glorious Evolution, but at that point you’re arguing interpretation and need to say as such. The cases I’ve seen in which people say that old lore Viktor was lopping people’s limbs off without consent or what-have-you just say that, without citing any textual evidence or saying that it is possibly implied by his character and lines. It’s pretty hard to take those claims seriously when there’s much more textual evidence that current-canon Viktor doesn’t seem too keen on respecting autonomy. Let’s begin with his own lore, which is written to favor his perspective.

Please keep in mind that this Viktor got his start selling automative technology to businesses in Zaun. The Zaun that is full of corrupt chem-barons. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he only sold to good businesses. (Also, fascinating that a common complaint about old Viktor is that his status as a pioneer of his field is that he’s “unrealistically accomplished”, and that other people would have figured out the same technology - just as it seems to be the case in current lore, with the Church of the Glorious Evolved existing pre-Viktor (except that it probably didn’t at the time of this lore’s release, as there’s a paragraph later on in his lore that talks about a “quasi-religious cult” that is unnamed but… Who else would it be?) and augmentations being common on the NPCs on the Universe page. Yet someone who’s 19 having their inventions be commonly used in Zaun long enough for the term eventually to be used in reference to the next stage of their life is perfectly acceptable. Anyways…)

What we see from this is clear: even if there is a “good” reason to control the divers, there is no mention of them consenting to the procedure. Considering the previous quotation, Viktor seems to deal more with the bosses than the workers and doesn’t seem to consider the potential job-removing impacts of his work (how many people lost jobs due to being rendered obsolete?), which doesn’t bode well for him caring much about what the workers think. But of course, this aside about dealing with bosses is all interpretation, so you can ignore it if you’d like. There still is, however, actual, textual evidence that new Viktor does not care about consent if he believes his idea is what’s best for you.

Ignoring the writer misusing the term “psychotics” - par for the course in fiction unfortunately - here’s Viktor kidnapping people “for their own good”. Nothing is said in his lore if he’s contracted to do this, or if he’s just Zaun’s version of a Good Samaritan out and about chloroforming people. While I’m not saying that the moral choice is to not intervene, he is drugging people here and performing brain surgery on them. Please note the “in a manner of speaking”. What does that mean? Is it in reference to them having permanent brain damage? Or is it in reference to him being all well-and-ready to transfer their bodies into robots that presumably weren’t designed for them? (Speaking of, if Viktor can transfer the consciousnesses - or at least brains - of people… why is he still in a fleshy mortal body? Yes, it would require a VU to update him to be fully robotic, but none of his written media seems to imply that he’s on his way. His color story has him integrating technology directly into his arm, for example. Why aren’t you getting into the robot, Viktor?)

Anyways, two options here: either the automatons had enough of their former programming to react to Viktor giving a kill command, or the consciousnesses of the people Viktor is “saving” are in these robots and are under his sway enough to commit murder. Either is bad (and negates any moral superiority over old Viktor’s maybe-implied-canonical-murder), but the second is horrifying. And, obviously, non-consensual. (Because the damage is reversing, I don’t believe there’s room for a justification of the second option in which these people are still violent and dangerous.)

Anyways, last bit. It’s pretty bad when your ethics are panned in Zaun, the nation host to rampart corruption and also people like Singed. Let’s now move on to his color story, which is what a lot of fans point to as evidence for new Viktor having a heart or a moral compass.

Yay! Moral win: your cyborg isn’t cutting off the head of a child without his consent. (Also, again, is this proof that Viktor can put brains or consciousnesses in robot bodies? Admittedly, he might be joking since this Viktor is a little softer than he is in his biography.)

Moral… win… your cyborg is augmenting a child… Anyways, joking aside, this is unethical. How’s Naph supposed to consent to something like this? I know that we can’t expect fictional characters in a fantasy setting to abide by modern ethical standards, but I think we can critique them from an out-of-universe context. This is bad. Viktor gives very little context, could very well be lying (he isn’t, hopefully), and sends the kid off with his version of a pat on the back and tells him to come back if he wants more. (The “Oh yes” is also… creepy.) A kid’s decision-making abilities aren’t developed to the extent that they can be reasonably expected to understand or consent to a procedure that removes a pretty crucial emotion. If Naph comes back and wants his fear gone permanently, will Viktor oblige?

Also, fear is something that is very important to survival and judgment calls. Without fear, a kid in Zaun might take dangerous risks that could end up with them dead. I can’t really see how people interpret this as a morally sound decision - Viktor’s pretty much giving mood-altering drugs to a child and telling him to come back if he wants another hit. Just because he got Naph’s okay doesn’t mean that he got informed consent.

Let’s now turn to the black sheep of Viktor content: his Legends of Runeterra lines. There’s two of interest.

Armed Gearhead’s card art is of a man whose only augmentation is his arm, which he says he broke in another line. (I suppose he didn’t want to wait for it to heal?)

Viktor is talking about messing with his head, here, because Armed Gearhead is… too emotive, I’d guess. He is “not yet complete”. A statement which Armed Gearhead seems rather apprehensive about, if you listen to his response.

I know that LoR Viktor is one of the more “comically villainous” depictions of Viktor we’ve seen, so if new Viktor fans would like to ignore his lines I have no issue with that. But these lines certainly seem to imply that what Viktor sees as Armed Gearhead’s end state isn’t necessarily what he sees as his, and should be considered if people want to take them as canonical.

Not necessarily needed, but here’s Jayce’s present lore. One of them is definitely lying - Jayce’s lore says that he doesn’t strike until after Viktor gives the kill order, and Viktor’s says that he gave the kill order in response to Jayce smashing up the lab. Either way, Viktor is ordering automatons (that, in this version, are outright stated to be housing the brains of the people Viktor is trying to keep alive) to kill Jayce. Not a good look.

Viktor’s new lore gives significant textual evidence that he doesn’t care for whether others willingly consent to his ideas, so long as he believes that his ideas are for the greater good. This is in contrast to the vagueness of his original lore, meaning that any individual who speaks about how current Viktor is someone who cares for consent in contrast to the “unethical mad scientist”ness of old Viktor is unfortunately mistaken. I have to imagine that general fandom interpretation, combined with the fact that his bio and color story are very tonally different, have made it so people believe that this version of Viktor is much more ethical than he canonically is.

Interpreting Viktor as sympathetic and actually morally grey is fine, of course! Riot wrote his narrative very poorly when he was updated, which is why I’m still finding bones to pick with it in comparison to his original and more open-to-interpretation lore. The issue is stating that this is canonically the case, which it isn’t, and/or stating that the current iteration of Viktor has the moral high ground over his previous incarnation, which he doesn’t. I think that much more interesting character conversations can happen if people acknowledge that Viktor as he’s currently written is roundly unethical - how can that be improved upon for a more complex character, does that mean that Jayce’s behavior was right, etc. For all my dislike of new Viktor, I’d be genuinely curious to read a take that actively acknowledges his pre-college work in automation and how that affects his standing in Piltover and Zaun. (Is he well-known in industry? What do workers think about him? And so on…) And, well, on a personal note: I think that acknowledging current Viktor’s moral failings would be nice, because it would mean that people would stop using old Viktor as a strawman.

Anyways, I suppose that’s the post. Thank you for reading!

[ilovemygaydad]

title: the pirate king and la princesa

pairings: pre-romantic analogical

summary: a new pirate has invaded logan’s pirating territory, and that simply won’t do

warnings: enemies to lovers (kinda), nothing is historically or factually accurate, this exists in a made up time because i don’t care and also i said so, swearing, pirates, probably some shitty google translated spanish, caps a couple of times, shouting, a sword is very briefly mentioned, i definitely don’t know how boats work, i absolutely don’t know much about pirates, threats, mentions of alcohol, virgil kisses logan without asking but they both like it so? it’s your call, stealing, and possibly something else

a/n: this was so @fandomsandanythingelse would get her phone fixed, which ended up not needing to be done. i fell in love with this universe anyway so here you go. pirates analogical with enemies to... something resembling lovers. it sort of counts...

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-

Logan supposed that, since they were out on the open ocean, there was no such thing as “turf.” A person isn’t able to own a part of the ocean, no matter how much they sailed it.

That being said, however, Logan didn’t give a fuck about technicalities because some new pirate decided to encroach on HIS turf. Everyone who’d spent any time in piracy knew that the areas near the eastern coast of America was where Logan Bonny and Logan Bonny alone operated. Call him territorial, but Logan had made himself a name on the sea for a reason, and when some newbie came along and tried to threaten his place... Well, that certainly couldn’t continue.

He’d found out about the other pirate through his crew, who had been whispering about the mysterious stranger they’d heard about during their last trips to the mainland. Virgil Castillo. Captain of La Princesa. Apparently, he had only joined the pirate scene just over a year ago in Spain but had recently made the voyage over to America to avoid the Spanish Navy. That in and of itself would have been completely fine--Logan had been in his fair share of trouble with the law, and he didn’t fault others for needing to flee--but this... Castillo guy just had to decide to start raiding ships in Logan’s turf. He had beat Logan to multiple ships that would have given them helpful supplies for all of the crew members, which just made him more frustrated.

Logan had spent years cultivating enough of a reputation to earn his spot as the “Pirate King of the East Coast,” and he wasn’t about to let Virgil Castillo and the crew of La Princesa take that from him.

“Hey, Cap, wanna stop your brooding so we can get on course for our next destination?” Logan’s first mate, Roman, teased from the doorway of his quarters.

“I’m not brooding, Roman,” he snarled half-heartedly as he gathered his things into a neat pile and stood. “I’m not a child.”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry that I ever insinuated that you’re a petulant, irritating child.”

Logan gave Roman a sharp clap on the shoulder. “Apology accepted.”

---

It took about three months for Logan to cross paths with his self-proclaimed nemesis. Too soon, yet not soon enough. 

Logan had been sitting in the darkest, quietest corner of a tavern (which was to say that it was extremely dark and not even moderately quiet) looking over a few charts and maps while his entire crew celebrated their latest success. He had never particularly enjoyed loud, rambunctious festivities regardless, and it just made sense to spend the time looking over his plans earlier and sober instead of hungover and at the last minute. 

Or he was a “party pooper” as Roman had called him. Whichever shoe fit.

“When I had heard about ‘Pirate King of the East Coast,’ I imagined someone a bit more... interesting,” someone with a thick Spanish accent said across from Logan.

Insulted, he glanced up and found a tall, elaborately dressed man with thick, dark hair and even darker eye makeup. It only took him a moment to realize who he was looking at.

“Virgil Castillo.”

The man smiled brightly, showing off his stupidly perfect teeth. “The one and only. I was unaware that you knew of me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Logan snarked. “It wouldn’t take a fool to know that you’ve been sailing in my territory.”

Virgil hummed and sat down in the chair next to his, which was equal parts astounding and frustrating.

“Do you mind? I’m trying to work.” His arms protectively hovered over his papers to make sure that the opposing pirate wouldn’t try to steal his plans. 

“No, I don’t mind.”

Logan blinked a few times at the absolute nerve of this man. His mouth hung open in awe for a moment, but it was gently shut by a finger pushing up on his chin.

“Do not worry; I am not here to steal your plans. Eres muy guapo y quiero sentarme contigo.”

“I don’t know what that means...”

Inexplicably, Virgil leaned closer; his cool hand moved up to cup the side of Logan’s jaw. “You seem like a smart man. I’m sure that you will be able to figure it out in a moment.”

Logan’s body felt frozen as the other pirate closed the gap between them, gently pressing their lips together in a kiss. Holy shit, Logan was kissing his greatest enemy. Even worse--if things even could get worse--he felt himself moving to kiss back.

As soon as the kiss began, it was over. Virgil’s face hovered close for a few moments, which really solidified what had just happened in Logan’s mind, before he stood and took a few steps back. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket. They stared at each other’s faces, and Logan was very glad that both the dim lights and his dark complexion masked most of the heat in his face.

“Until next time, Logan,” Virgil said with a quick two-fingered salute. In the time that it took Logan to blink, he was gone, leaving the pirate to sit and contemplate what the hell had just happened.

It was either a few seconds or a few hours before Logan was shocked out of his reverie by a hand placing itself on his shoulder. He blinked, and Roman’s face came into focus a foot away. Roman looked concerned, which was an odd thing to see on the normally careless man.

“Jeez, Cap. You looked like you were in some other dimension for a minute. I saw a guy walking away from here--did he do something to you? Who was he?”

“Virgil Callisto,” Logan choked out. “He kissed me.”

A huffed laugh escaped Roman’s lips as the captain glanced down at the table. “He kissed you?”

Logan nodded, but his face shifted into a scowl just as fast. “Son of a bitch!”

“What? A kiss isn’t that bad. He was pretty, too--”

“No, Roman,” he cut off, standing. “He fucking stole my telescope!”

“Oh shit.”

---

“Pat, we have to leave. Now, preferably,” Virgil commanded in Spanish as he hopped back onto the small vessel he used when he wanted to go to shore to avoid his ship being recognized. Patton had opted to stay onboard while Virgil explored the town, which was fine now that Virgil had royally fucked up.

“What? Why?” The small man began to untie the boat from the dock, but he shot a confused look at his captain.

“I met Logan Bonny.”

Patton gasped in surprise. “Really?”

“I may or may not have kissed him,” Virgil said sheepishly as he helped his first mate.

“Aw, good for you! I’m so proud, Virgil--”

“I also may have stolen his telescope...”

Patton’s movements immediately halted, and he looked at Virgil with what could only be described as faux cheer. “You did what?”

“I, um...” Virgil took the ornate looking glass out of his coat pocket, shyly holding it out for the other to see. “I swiped it by accident.”

“You STOLE the most FEARED PIRATE of the East Coast’s BELOVED TELESCOPE?!” Patton screeched like an offended mother.

“I got scared!”

A loud groan echoed through the quiet night as Patton buried his face in his hands. “Virgil, I cannot believe that you messed this up so badly.”

“Believe it, Patton. I am an idi--”

“VIRGIL CASTILLO, YOU ARE A DEAD MAN!”

Virgil’s eyes went wide as he recognized the voice and swiftly sliced the remaining ties with his sword. They could replace the ropes, but Virgil’s life wasn’t so replaceable.

“Okay, let’s go before I’m murdered, please!”

Patton smacked his arm as he rounded to the sail. “This is what you get for stealing!” 

“Literally all we do is steal! We’re pirates!” Virgil argued, pushing off of the dock.

A sharp, warning look graced Patton’s normally gentle features as he regarded the captain. “Don’t test me.”

Just as Logan’s feet began to pound down the wooden dock, the ropes of the sail let out, and the wind set them out in time to be out of reach.

“I will find you, Castillo! Mark my words!” Logan shouted.

A cheeky grin wormed its way onto Virgil’s face as he replied in English, “I’m looking forward to it, mi querido!”

[vaguely-concerned]

I am reading the Rogue One visual guide and I’m going to ramble at you about it

Starting with Baze and Chirrut facts because nothing is more important than Baze and Chirrut

- The Guardians of the Whills believe very deeply in the Force but their cosmology doesn’t center any fight between light and dark and they believe mortal minds can ‘encompass the totality of the Force’ with the right training (seemingly even for non-Force sensitives). *thinks of a little green baby who’s going to need some help with his place in the universe one day and how reductive the light/dark side dichotomy can be* good to know good to know. yes everything eventually comes down to baby yoda and his poor stressed out dad. protect them

- “Opposites in balance. Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus share a homeworld and a history, although they strike a compelling contrast. Baze is a hardened pragmatist, while Chirrut’s faith flourishes even in trying times. They both claim to act as the protector of the other.” 

in every way they are #goals. bffs/partners to lovers is Everything. ‘They both claim to act as the protector of the other’ is very funny and very sweet and very true; my favourite thing

- this book describes chirrut as baze’s ‘best friend and moral compass’, which is a funny way of spelling ‘husband of 30 years’ but who am I to criticize 

- baze is just. he’s so good. they say here pragmatism is his biggest trait but you can tell how much love has been at the center of him (and probably continues to be under it all) from the totality of his rage. I don’t think you can be this deeply hurt without loving just as deeply first. (like chirrut says, he used to believe more than anyone and now he’s thrown aside literally everything about the guardians except chirrut) it’s like he’s suffered a moral wound just seeing what’s happened to his home and it won’t heal and it never does, he just loses chirrut too and then at least it’s over. jesus christ it’s so soul crushingly sad in a quiet undramatic way 

- “Though both are Guardians of the Whills, Baze and Chirrut could not be more different in their approach to combat. Traditionalist Chirrut still carries weapons associated with the ancient order, while Baze adopts an implement of modern warfare. Their methods suit them individually, and both are effective extensions of their distinctive personalities. Though Baze may chide Chirrut for his antiques, and Chirrut may decry Baze’s reliance on soulless tools, they trust each other’s defences to such weapons.”

THEY TRUST EACH OTHER’S DEFENCES TO SUCH WEAPONS. YOU HAD TO WORD IT LIKE THAT HUH. YOU HAD TO GO AND MAKE IT CLEAR THEY’RE EACH OTHER’S MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. WHAT. THE FUCK

- it’s implied baze’s hair used to be shorter when he was a Guardian! he’s just let it grow past what’s customary for them (and an excellent choice too his hair is wonderful)

- his repeating blaster is described as ‘modified and highly illegal’ hahaha

it also weighs 30 kg and is meant to be mounted on a tank

baze is the best

- chirrut built his own lightbow! apparently used to be a thing the guardians did to symbolize the end of their training. I wonder if baze used to have one too? even more I wonder if they’ve always been part of the same uh ‘divisions’ or what have you within the guardians, because I think there are some implications that baze has been more of an assassin/focused on violent conflicts even before the empire came and chirrut hasn’t

- this book does not adequately capture chirrut’s trickster/funny side, making me wonder how much of that was an addition by the actor and how much was planned out

- honestly... more baze & chirrut (well baze/chirrut let’s not play here) prequel books WHEN. what does their living room look like (because we do know they live together) how did they meet, when exactly did baze lose his faith and chirrut his sight, what was their first kiss like 

inquiring minds want to know (it’s me I want to know) 

- unless the wording is deliberately misleading here chirrut was not born blind (though he won’t discuss how he ended up this way) and he’s learned his current fighting technique over a prolonged period of time 

- bodhi is a bit of a gambling addict! and specifically one who’s pretty good at it; even after the empire knows he’s a defector he gets past their restrictions because he’s saved up all the credits/favours/even id-vouchers he’s owed by other imperial grunts fsdhfksdjf precious I love him 

- saw gerrera’s medical droid a) has been modified so its programming won’t stop it from being able to dispense drugs at dangerous intervals, b) professes sheer bafflement that saw is still alive and c) is ‘frequently deactivated to prevent it from building an ethical case to discontinue treatment’. I find the whole thing darkly hilarious.  

- there are literally whole subplots going on in the crowd scenes on Jedha about a mad evil surgeon who ‘decraniates’ people (essentially turning them into mindless servile husks with all of their head above the nose cut off, somehow), a masked cop from the Milvayne Authority who’s gone rogue to do the right thing and hunt him down against orders, a death cult, a bunch of different religious sects, a translation droid who has befriended a group of local orphans and shares his credits with them so they can eat and he’s SAVING UP FOR A PROCESSOR UPGRADE SO HE CAN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF SPIRITUALITY ;_____; what the fuck I want a tv-series about this droid IMMEDIATELY 

- this book shows you just how crucial K-2 is as an asset and what a masterstroke cassian’s reprogramming of him is... and it says some very, very sweet things about cassian as a person under all the trauma and spy stuff that he essentially treats him as his best friend instead of a tool. cASSIAN he deserved to survive and have SO much therapy ;_____; ah well at least we’re getting a prequel series about him right? pls be good

- oh cassian was a proper separatist during the clone wars! he probably has some very interesting points of view about the republic pre- and post empire huh (this is what I love about the clone wars era; they have built SUCH a believable and interesting political world here, all shades of grey. there were separatists with very valid points even thought they were lead by a guy named COUNT DOOKU played by CHRISTOPHER LEE, the first sign that you should look inwards and ask yourself... wait are we the bad guys)

- it’s so much more understandable to me now who in the rebel leadership is for following jyn’s plan and who is not. (namely: the ministers of finance and industry are both Not Into challenging the empire directly, kind of understandably)

in depth description of weapons technology... I sleep. deep dives into the political structure of the alliance leadership and their backgrounds and motivations? I have never been happier

(this. sort of should have been in the actual movie tho things would have made more sense)

- BAIL ORGANA Leia’s actual dad out there lookin’ fiiine, being righteous and good, almost making me forget he’s going to die SO SOON oh fuck :( 

- orson krennic is, presumably straight faced, described as ‘a cruel but brilliant man’ which is PATENTLY LUDICROUS because krennic is by literally every indication a fucking idiot, he needs galen to do all the real work for him, he mouths off to DARTH VADER and then tarkin just effortlessly swoops in and fucks him over in the end, easily outmaneuvering him... orson krennic is a fucking loser I don’t care if he’s the one who introduced brutalist architecture to coruscant

lol lol lol *arrow pointing towards krennic’s head* ‘Keen mind dissects architectural puzzles and conspiratorial plots’ okay I see what happened here orson krennic wrote this book 

- oh galen erso is kind of one of the most interesting and heartbreaking characters in all of star wars. (and I do not say this just because of mads mikkelsen’s cheek bones) he’s incredibly intelligent but from a really poor family and wanted to eliminate the difference between rich and poor and invent a new form of infinitely renewable energy... and technically he did achieve that, except his old college buddy orson krennic immediately found a way to use his technology for genocide and he didn’t realize until it was too late :’) there is something so comforting in the fact that in the end galen still got the last laugh in the most epic but unsung way. he’s the sort of quiet Magnificent Bastard who doesn’t even care he’ll never get the credit as long as it worked. u did good on that one jyn

also several of the scientists galen is leading on eadu are in the same category as him -- captured and forced to work for the empire. so that’s great and not at all upsetting 

- galen and lyra’s falling in love story is kind of sweet (though naturally it pales against baze and chirrut’s whole deal but then who could compare) and the sheer effort and detail that’s gone into building the farmstead in the beginning we end up seeing for 5 minutes... dude (it feels very convincingly like somewhere a family would live though) 

- *sees that ‘databook’ is a concept that exists apparently; groans in fic research I thought ‘holodisc’ might do the job but maybe this is a better fit*

- I will say that my largest gripe with this movie is how glaringly unnecessarily male it is. there’s literally no reason for most of the rebels and ESPECIALLY all of the scientists to be male but here we are. 

well the stormtroopers could all canonically be any gender behind the armor so uh that’s. something lol

- despite being all desert-y jedha is apparently quite cool! temperature-wise I mean though the huge ancient statues lying everywhere are pretty awesome too

- wow stormtrooper armor really does just suck huh. it’s like ‘well it might protect you from a blaster bolt if you stand upwind and angle yourself just right, who knows’. I guess this is why everyone and their grandmothers are drooling over mando’s beskar lol

- star wars’ insistence on sticking to single-biome planets is so silly and I love it. stick to that incomprehensible world building decision lucasfilm I respect you

- mon mothma! basically the most important character in the star wars universe who most people won’t know about lol she’s like the anti-palps. for the most part she is one of the most Big Goods in all of star wars (along with bail) but also she’s played by the actress who voices moira in overwatch so I do instinctively distrust her whenever I hear her talk haha. called palpatine a ‘lying executioner’ to his face which is both admirably bold and remarkably restrained, considering all the things palpatine is.

- oof the two people mentioned the most on anakin/vader’s pages are palpatine and obi wan. that’s. hurtful and bad and awful. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making me watch ‘clone wars’ because watching ‘clone wars’ actually made me care about anakin skywalker :(

-ah shit this is a lot of pages about pasty empire dudes i’ll uh come back to these lol

[bigskydreaming]

So it took interest rates that were like WE OWN UR SOUL NOW U FOOL HAHA TWILL BE OURS FOREVER, but joke’s on them lol like I never use that thing anyway. But I got the personal loan for $10K in the end after like a month of searching but who knew that obsessively raising my credit score for a year by like....occasionally chilling all night in an IHOP rather than use a credit card too much on a room would like....pay off with a credit score that actually is useful to me in a way that means I don’t even care right now that hahaha credit scores are just pointless imaginary numbers that really only exist because capitalism’s a dick?

Look I’m allowed to be a hypocrite for three weeks let me have this, I promise I’ll go back to ranting about people selling their souls for the sake of strings of binary code on a computer screen, like just cuz I wasn’t using mine doesn’t mean other ppl don’t want theirs.

Because oh yeah so I was like gimme the loan plz and they were like ugh fine and I somehow got my credit card companies to raise my limits because I’ve had them for over a year now and I honestly couldn’t even tell you how I convinced them to do that like did I haggle did I beg did I put out, who knows, it’s been a very long and strange and sleep deprived month and that’s on top of a long, strange, sleep-deprives two years. Point is between raising my limits on those two, the loan of DOOM and getting a CareCredit card with the remaining credit left to me or before the latter realized I’d just massively dinged my credit cuz the raised limits and loan hadn’t been reported yet, I came up with the $12400. Like again most of that is in the form of imaginary money that I’ll probably spend years paying out of future paychecks so if anyone wants to go ahead and put The Revolution on the books for like, say October, that would actually really work for me. I’d even be all pumped and full of rest and vigor and extra fightey and like, you know how fightey I usually am to begin with I’m just saying....

So now I am literally just waiting for my loan check to clear in my bank account cuz my doctor doesn’t accept checks. Second it does, probably Monday, I’ll go down to my doctors office, pay the $6200 upfront and finish the insurance paperwork for them to submit the claim for the insurance company’s part of it, and they can officially schedule my surgery, possibly in as little as three weeks??!!

Which is absolutely surreal to me, like after literal years of treading water and setbacks and everything dragging out endlessly and he’ll even just yesterday, it’s utterly bizarre finishing my stuff at my bank and doctor’s this morning and hearing how matter of fact they all are about how quickly things could happen now and like. Finally be over. Or like, start lol in the sense of holy shit I could actually maybe have an actual life again.

They can’t confirm a date until my first payment is processed, only then does she officially put me on the books at Cedar Sinai when they can get me into an open OR, but it hopefully could be the 20th. She’s already got another surgery scheduled for that day and an OR booked for it with potential slots before and after it but I can’t count on the 20th as a given just yet. Could still be one, two or even three weeks after that before they actually fit me in, so I’m trying not to set my thoughts and hopes too much on that three weeks from now appointment but that’s easier said than done. LOL.

But whenever it’s actually set for, I go in the day of, pay the second half of the payment, and the surgery takes a few hours but they send me home the same day. My high school friend from San Diego hopefully is going to be able to take enough time off to look out for me while I recover, we’ve been tentatively planning for that for most of a year but couldn’t guarantee anything with her work until we had actual dates which I mean we still don’t technically have. But my jaw will be wired shut for ten days so there’s no way I can manage on my own, esp the way I’ve been getting by day-to-day, and I’ll be on a liquid diet and having to drink everything through a special straw and stuff and completely unable to talk the whole time and oh yeah also apparently in agonizing pain that I’ve been extensively warned could put anything I’ve experienced thus far to shame, so I’m really REALLY looking forward to that part lol. Currently pondering the viability of just knocking myself unconscious every day. We’ll see how it goes.

But after that I go back in ten days later and they unwire my jaw, check that everything looks okay and I’m healing the way I’m supposed to, and I have two weeks of physical therapy and....that’s it. It’s over. I’m just. I’m just leaving that right there for now because I honestly don’t even know what to do with that thought after all this time, it’s. Like I can’t quite wrap my head around it and even really picture how that works. Idk my brain just fizzes out and it’s like wait, are you sure, that doesn’t sound right.

But like I made them go over it multiple times to make sure I wasn’t missing anything or understanding it wrong or whatever, like my doctor was this combination of kinda amused but also exasperated when I finally stopped asking to go over it all again. LOL look I just really really really needed to be sure there wasn’t something else involved that like I was supposed to already know or have been told by someone else, I don’t know okay? Anyone who’s been following me the last couple years knows that this isn’t how this sort of things go, they’re supposed to get my hopes up and then tell me they have no clue what’s wrong or send me off to someone else or tell me oh yeah you also need another thirty thousand and an MRI and some headgear that’s like made of platinum, but we just thought you already knew that. LOL.

But. I mean. Yeah. That’s it. I checked. A lot. Theoretically though unless there’s some new bizarre development in which case I will most likely detach my spirit from my body and evolve into my ultimate great rage power Digimon form, AreYouFreakingKiddingMeMon, and go like, fight god or the physical embodiment of the universe or whatever like I keep threatening....like, that really is what’s left. And then it’s all over. My jaw should by all accounts be restored to its full functionality from before all this. No more pain, no more eternal headache, no vertigo, blind-outs, no problems eating any particular food or swallowing or 45 degree slope to my lower jaw, none of the shit that’s been my day to day existence for well. Years. LOL.

Yeah. Really don’t know what to do with that yet. I just. Can’t. Haha.

Anyway, as I’ve said before, I literally couldn’t have made it to this point without the support of people here, both emotionally and financially. I hate to ask it because you’ve helped so much already, but I’m definitely going to have to ask for your help a little longer, there’s just no way around it. I am completely wiped and tbh overwhelmed so I’m probably going to try and sleep the rest of the day - I was pretty much up all night, unable to sleep while I waited to hear back on all this.

Then when my head’s fully processing things again and not friztzing our because I’ve forgotten how to process good news, lol, I’ll probably be putting together a post asking for your help paying my insurance premiums one last time, and on Monday or once I get the official set in stone date for my surgery I’ll be doing another, basically begging you guys to help keep me afloat the hopefully no more than three weeks til then.

I really really hate having to do that when I know you all have helped and given so much already, and it’ll literally be nothing more than my basic expenses of motel room and food, I don’t need anything beyond that, but I truly don’t see anyway around it. I exhausted every possible avenue available for me to try with my credit in order to get this loan and raise my limits enough, and I milked every cent I could out of those. There’s just no more money to be pulled out of any of that, it took everything I had to get what I needed for the surgery. And I’m afraid of the very real possibility that if I don’t ask for this help because of pride or because of how much I’ve asked for already, I’ll end up using one of my credit cards to pay for my room and such and end up stuck without enough money at hand to cover the second half payment on my day of surgery and I truly literally can not afford that. I have no idea what will happen with my insurance if I have to reschedule, how long it would take to reschedule, etc.

And the other side of this is there’s really not a whole lot left I can do for work at the moment. I’ve finished off all my existing projects except for one last cover and they already paid for it in advance. I honestly don’t know that I could take on new jobs if it ends up with my surgery on the 20th in just three weeks. Searching for more jobs and clients has become more and more time consuming these past months as is, and the simple truth is I couldn’t in good conscience or in honesty guarantee any new clients that I could finish their job in that time frame. Not with my present state physically and mentally and the uncertainty of my day to day expenses and stress about potential complications hanging over my head and not, truthfully, mixing all that well with my pre-existing mental health conditions lol. And yeah, if I can’t guarantee getting any new projects done in three weeks, I can’t afford to take them on for any potential client’s sake, not to mention the sake of my professional reputation, which I will really need to be, y’know, intact, in order to rebuild my life basically from the ground up, once my previous physicality and quality of life comes back after my surgery and recovery (knock on wood). With at least two or three weeks of recovery after the surgery even assuming it goes well and has no other complications, that’s way too much time to leave clients hanging and not be available to address any needs, concerns, revisions, etc. Especially if they’re not returning clients but brand new ones.

So yeah, as much as I would love to not have to ask for any more help than I already have and have been given, I sincerely just don’t see any alternatives that don’t jeopardize or risk wasting all the help I’ve already been given. You know I am fully aware of just how much that is and what its cost some of you, and I already could never repay you for this, not even in terms of just the money itself, but the fact that I know some of you have given at your own very real expense, sending me money that you really could have used yourself, that wasn’t any kind of surplus. I am already beyond grateful and humbled and overwhelmed how many of you have stepped forward to help me in ways that even though I’m older than many of you, I honestly have no precedent for, in ways and to an extent I’ve never received help or support from family. So I just needed to say that again, because I have not asked for any of this lightly, and I don’t now either. Really, really thank you. I’m not exaggerating or being dramatic or hyperbolic or silly for a change, when I say you guys most likely saved my life. Its simple fact. Hell, I was genuinely hours away from sleeping outside freezing my ass off in December, that first time I posted asking for help and you guys came through for me. So, yeah. I will never ever forget this, and never ever be able to give back as much as I’ve been given these past few months, though I will always do my best to pay it forward.

I’m going to go ahead and leave my paypal link here anyway, though I’ll be making those two additional posts tomorrow and next week, as I said. Aiming to keep them shorter than this, well, shorter than any of my posts, really, as shorter posts really just get more traction and I’ll need that. I can always link to the longer explanations of my situation for those wanting to know more.

Again, thank you all more than I can figure out how to put into words. I’m finally. Fuck. LOL. Sorry, I’m being very umm, sentimental over here but like its your fault I’m overwhelmed lol, like omg you guys, you can’t just throw love and affection and support at a guy with so much childhood traaaaaaaaauma, his brain doesn’t know how to handle it, look, you broke him. Are you happy? You broke his brain machine.

Okay cool, we’re back to inanity and obnoxious humor as an overcompensating self-defense mechanism, whew, everything’s normal, everyone can relax. LOL. Anyway, I’m gonna shut up now and go try and get some rest. Just know that I’m doing so feeling way more....hopeful? Optimistic? Faith-in-humanity-and-goodwill-and-community-ey? Than I have in years.

....the fact that I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now is called probably tells you all you need to know about me, huh? LMFAO God I’m so messed up lol. But whatever. Still alive and kicking. So. Y’know. There’s always that.

https://paypal.me/bigskydreaming?locale.x=en_US

[oxboykev]

First Friday

I am jobless. By choice. You see, a month ago I ended my employment as a technical writer at a biotech company. It wasn’t exactly a rash decision. I had been contemplating this imminent separation since probably last December. 

Prior to this job, I was employed as a Captionist at a local technical university. That lasted all of two months. They could see that all the training in the world wasn’t going to help me learn on the job and so they told me to stop clutching onto the banister I was dangling from and, for all of our sakes, let go. The job required expert listening, near perfect accuracy capturing speech and translating it into electronic shorthand and lightning bolt typing speed. It was humbling to know that I possessed only one out of the three, at varying times, and, honestly, was fair to mediocre in demonstrating either of them consistently.

Like now, back then when I turned in my work laptop and its corresponding rolling suitcase to the office I contemplated my essential worth to society. As has been written countless times and is known to virtually everyone around the world, having an occupation not only allows you to accumulate capital, but it also invests a person with a sense of belonging and dignity. It provides a sense of worth in the eyes of one’s family, peers, loved ones and, most importantly, oneself. It’s an easy calculation to make, but I seem to be the only one in my immediate surroundings who can’t seem to come up with the correct change.

Thus, it was with much fanfare that I welcomed the decision of the aforementioned biotech company to bring me aboard as its newest technical writer last July. After several months of searching and one extensive and effectual in-person interview later, I had accomplished a professional aspiration I had of being a technical writer. What I didn’t let on was that I had only brushed shoulders with technical writers and had never written a proper technical document up until my hiring. In actuality, through word-of-mouth and first-person accounts I only lived the job vicariously through a number of technical writers with whom I was coworkers or friends. The fact that I had never held the title or had actually done any such writing previously was to be my ultimate undoing. But I charged ahead anyway because, to be completely honest, I needed the money and security of the benefits that a full-time job guaranteed. Even so, I was still confident in my intelligence and capacity to learn through touch and sight how to become a technical writer. I was fully prepared to make technical writing my career of choice.

Reality, though, has the unique talent of cutting you off at the knees if you dare ride into a situation with such sugar plum delusions dancing in your head. Landing the job of technical writer, I soon learned, was not that much of a hurdle. The seemingly insurmountable difficulties occurred when I tried navigating the pre-existing dynamic that had already been baked inside the “team” at the company. I know that it takes a while for me to warm up to new people and situations, but I always felt I compensated for my initial stiffness by keeping my eyes and ears open and holding out the hope that I would eventually learn my way around any obstacles and redeem myself with my coworkers by becoming more familiar with and sympathetic to their little quirks. That’s the same attitude I carried with me into the technical writer position to this new team. However, it didn’t serve me well this time because I couldn’t learn the basics and intricacies of the job as fast as the boss and coworkers expected me to. 

It didn’t help that my boss had spread her attention and energy thin by accepting a new supervisory position for a different department within the company shortly before she hired me. She ostensibly was going to have to do double-duty in order to juggle her oversight responsibilities for two departments. On my first day in the office, my boss had already packed up most of her office items and was transitioning to her new office in a different part of the office building. So within a couple weeks of me starting she was out of pocket and already assuming the duties of her new role. That left limited facetime between us and wasn’t especially conducive to getting to know each other better and attempting to be in sync. Perhaps it’s a mistake on my part to think I need a lot of personal attention to place things in order and put all my effort into learning the ins-and-outs of a job. Given my years of experience in the workforce, maybe I shouldn’t be so unnerved by the feeling of being left to fend for myself and just jump into the stream of work before me. 

Suffice it to say, the limited attentiveness of the boss left my two other beleaguered coworkers to pick up the slack and take on the majority of my training. All I can say is that they did the best they could, given the timing and circumstances. But when the more senior medical writer decided to quit several months after I arrived, in October 2018, leaving the junior technical writer to deal with me plus another recently hired technical writer that’s when, I feel, my tenure at the company became more and more tenuous. The pressure to “get it right the first time” and perform like a veteran technical writer were implicit points made to me by the supervisor in her office during our one-one-one meeting a few days prior to the senior medical writer leaving for good. Of course, I readily conceded to her demands because I needed the job, considering I had been jobless for over a year after leaving Seattle, then the short stint of playing Captionist and finally a return to an uncertain job search before landing the technical writer job. If I had been completely honest, for both of our sakes, and told her that it was going to take a considerable amount of time for me to perform at the level she expected of me, then I would’ve rendered my usefulness to the team moot. In hindsight, I did myself a disservice by believing I had to cling to this one particular job instead of cutting my losses, once again, and find myself something more fitting.

So I bit my lip and continued to rough it through the thicket of a subject field I realize now I had no business being in. By the end of 2018, with three new writers installed, we became a team of five. And I was the only male. Regardless, I had been in numerous work situations where I was the only man and had no trouble fitting in and actually forming some strong bonds of friendship with my female counterparts. So it was all the more curious and a bit humiliating to be gradually ostracized by the newest recruits. No matter what effort I made in the beginning to chat with them and become familiar with their personalities, they eventually coalesced into an inviolable clique. As the months warmed up, I noticed these three would go for walks during lunchtime and not invite me. Then, eventually, they didn’t invite me into their casual conversations anymore. I guess the increasingly humiliating part for me was that they would commiserate around the near vicinity of my desk and act as if I weren’t sitting just a few feet away. From my vantage point, it had gotten to the point that each and every day they were giving me the brush-off, sans any rationale, and I just had to take it. It wasn’t as if I could argue back, since all three of them had stopped talking to me, thus leaving me nothing to work with. This untenable situation became more acute when the junior technical writer went on maternity leave at the end of May 2019. There I was, the guy none of his teammates talked to and whose boss came by once in a while to check up on me. Isolated. Plus, I was given fewer and fewer assignments as the weeks and months rolled by. 

After my first annual performance review, I could tell the boss was slow-motion demoting me. Due to a combination of factors, including, admittedly, a fair number of unforced errors on my part, my boss noted that the quality of my work was subpar. She went through the motions of advising me how I could improve and letting me know that she appreciated my willingness to learn from past mistakes. In my head, I wanted to ask her, “Why are you keeping me on? Why waste your and my time any longer?” It got to the point where I would just sit at my desk each day and pretend to be busy. You would think fake working would be rather easy. However, when you’re a man of conscience and pride, like I am, it was actually a numbing and increasingly resentful experience. The fact is, I really wanted to be a valuable contributor and demonstrate my hard work ethic. But there was going to be no path forward for me when my position was continually being undercut and my workload, for months, had been dwindling to virtually just one project. I really stopped caring. I had no backers, I had no moral support and the point of it all seemed to be getting more and more pointless.

Without acknowledging the obvious tension and remaining silent about the inevitable parting-of-the-ways between she and me, my supervisor emanated professional antagonism toward me every day that I persisted in showing up at the office. So after taking a week-long vacation toward the end of September, I went to my computer and typed up a brief, to-the-point resignation letter and handed it in to my supervisor on a Monday morning. The look on her face and her body language told me immediately she had been looking forward to this moment just as much as I.

Although I feel like I’m in more limbo now than ever, to be honest, I also feel freer than I’ve ever felt in the last year and a half. But this also means I have plenty of free time to second-guess myself and wonder what was it all for. I guess that’s what’s called “being human”. 

[acarolingfae-blog]

Hana

“So, why are you here?”

What do you mean?

“I mean, like... what are you doing here?”

Well I'm kinda here doing a favor for your subconscious.

“So, you're not my subconscious?”

Nah, I just work for him. He’s a cool guy though. I kinda exist on a necessitation basis.

“Which means?”

Okay, so... I exist because there's an objective requirement for the duties I perform. It's part of the Universal Creation Imperative.

“Are you just making up phrases to mess with me?”

Nah, man. It's the cornerstone of the doctrine of rules that facilitate and protect the fate of everything that you know to exist.

“This is bullshit, man. You're like a hallucination or a demon or something I gotta get you out of my head.”

Wait man just hear me out. If you listen to everything I have to say and still never want to see me again I'll go away forever.

“...How do I know you will?”

Hey man, it doesn't really matter does it? It's basically no extra work, and if I was gonna stick around I would do it anyway, right?

“...Alright fine. Go ahead.”

Thank you. Alright. First off, since I'm a product of YOUR subconscious I don't know anything that you don't already know on some level, or can't deduce based off what you already know. This is a really important thing to establish, though it might not be relevant right now; we'll see. Second, whether or not you can sense me doesn't matter. I'll be a part of your mind until you die and I have been since you were old enough to think in more than just vague concepts. At the end of my spiel and your questions you will have the choice between keeping me in your life or forgetting about this whole conversation and never seeing me again. If you choose to forget me, I'll just recede back into your subconscious and do stuff there. Either way, I'll be guiding you toward your predetermined fate. It's just that if you DO see me, I'll be less subtle about things so you get to see all the cool shit I can do. Plus, I'm already calibrated in a way that fits your specific personality, so we're guaranteed to get along famously. Anyway, do you have any questions?

“Uh... yeah... so if you're ‘guiding me to my fate,’ what is my fate exactly?”

Well eventually you'll die.

“Yeah I kinda figured. But what about before that?”

I dunno *shrug*

“What?”

Dude, I already told you I don't know anything you don't know. And you definitely don't know the future.

“So how do you know what you're doing is right?”

Because I'm doing it.

“What?! That doesn't--”

Look man, I exist by “necessitation.” I was created with pre-calculated values to match my personality with yours, with that fate in mind. I am what's needed; whatever I do needs to be done; whatever I say needs to be said. It's the same thing with you: you will never think anything that hasn't already been mapped out, and every one of your thoughts exists for a reason, though you might not know what it is at the time.

“Hmm... fair enough. But don't you ever doubt yourself?”

Nope. YOU feel doubt because it's a good safety mechanism. Otherwise, if you do everything you want you when you want to do it, you will kill us all in a spectacular fashion. I, on the other hand, don't need to reconsider my decisions, because I'm not a real person like you are. It’s a bit redundant on me.

“Riiight... so, what do I call you?”

Ooh, this'll be fun. I'm a product of your subconscious so whatever name you assigned to me without realizing when you first saw me is the name I go by.

“So how do I know what that is?”

Why don't you think hard for a sec, and on the count of three I'll say my name while you say what you think it is. 

“Okay...”

Ready? 1... 2... 3!

*Both* “Hana!”

“Woah...”

Pretty cool, huh?

“Totally. So, does everyone have one of you?”

Pretty much, yeah. There might be a few people out there that don't, I dunno. Not a lot of people can see theirs--in fact, you haven't met a person who can--but everyone you've met has one.

“How do you know? Can you see others?”

Yeah, man. Every time you consciously exchange ideas with a person, whether by talking, texting, or whatever, me and their guide also have a little chat. Your subconscious is used every time you make a conscious action, so whatever you do I know about it too.

“So you're like a ‘guide.’”

If you wanna think of it that way, sure.

“You just called yourself a ‘guide!’”

Then apparently you must think of me that way.

“But...I...whatever. Then how would you think of it?”

Well I'd like to be known as a trailblazer, seer, warrior-philosopher type, but really I'm more like a close friend that only you can see.

“An imaginary friend?”

Sure, but that's a little degrading innit?

“Sorry, but this whole thing is still a little overwhelming.”

That's okay. Hey, remember that book with the fighting bears? You really like the series, with the alien creatures that evolved to use tree seeds as wheels to roll around on.

“Yeah the... uh...” *snap* “His Dark Materials series!”

Yep. Remember in that one universe, where everybody has a daemon that represents their soul?

“Oh right! Are you-”

Kinda, but it's a little different from that. I can't quite remember it ‘cause you haven't read it in a while, but it's not like I'm your soul, or I can die or anything.

“You're immortal?”

No because I'm not technically alive. I'm tied to you, but not the 'you' you think of. I mean the whole 'you,' including your subconscious and everything else that ticks in your mind. And body.

“I'm not sure I follow.”

Look man, you might think that everything you are aware of is everything that you are, but you're dead wrong. You may not realize it, but YOU also exist out of necessitation. Your conscious mind is a creation of your brain to help you arrange executive orders and make macroscopic decisions. The other parts of your mind deal with the mundane details like growing hair or redirecting sodium so you can focus on whether or not those jeans make your butt look big enough. Which they don’t, by the way. 

“Yeah, that's not my issue. How are you not technically alive?”

Well, living as you know it is a highly independent experience. Something that is alive supports itself physically and biologically, recycling resources and energy to keep on keeping on, ya know. You aren't alive either, your body is.

“Fine, but my decisions have a tangible effect on the physical world.”

And mine don't? Up until now you've been sending vibrations out into the air just because I decided to show myself to you.

“Isn't that more of an effect by proxy?”

Yes, but how are you any different?

“Well, I can choose when to act, and you must choose when to make me act.”

YOU are not acting. "YOU" *circling motion* are. The machine that is your human body is what’s doing stuff. If we could isolate the neuronal connections that facilitate YOUR existence and keep them in a jar, none of your decisions would mean squat. Effectively, you wouldn't be making any choices because there's no difference in tangible outcome.

“Okay, but telling a machine to move and telling a person to move a machine are pretty different.”

You don't think I have control over your body too? You know how many times I saved your clumsy ass from falling off a bunk bed?

“I've never--”

Yeah, because of me you donut. You're welcome

“Thank you?”

Yeah, whatever. Do you have any other questions?

“Um, yeah. Sure... why, umm... why are you... whatever it is you are?”

Hey man that's pretty rude, not gonna lie. I think you look pretty weird too but I don't spout off about it all the f-

“Sorry! Sorry. It's just... I've never seen one of you before.”

It's alright. I am whatever my calibrations make me.

“So you're some kind of... furry dishwasher?”

Well I don't wash dishes, but I do like the cubular shape, sooo...

“So for the rest of my life, I'll have to look at an imaginary fuzzy cube that talks to me?”

Not necessarily. I'm a representative of your subconscious, so I will gradually change as you do. And, if you ever get into any major life-changes, I'll probably look pretty different at the end of it.

“Oh thank god.”

Yeah nice to meet you too, fruitcake.

[stridercest]

Idk if my last ask came through but long story short I don’t support incest or pedophilia or abuse or stridercest in whole but I do ship a somewhat ‘altered version’ where they’re both adults, and unrelated- just a ‘cool sword guy likes ironic DJ’ kind of thing I really don’t support the ship the way it’s portrayed, I just think the personalities could fit together in another universe I don’t want to offend or hurt anyone so tell me if I do! Thanks for listening.

There’s technically nothing wrong with shipping them in an unrelated AU. I’d just rather you make new OCs based on them to ship together rather than using these canonically related characters and going through Stridercest content to find stuff that fits your headcanons, if that makes sense?

And yeah, that dynamic of two gay men would be a sweet combination anywhere else! I encourage anyone to try and make characters like that. But again, with the canon Striders, even in an unrelated and non-abusive AU, people who fetishize incest, abuse, and even rape will enjoy your work and won’t view your positive, healthy AU the same way you do. The average Stridercest fan is a weird freak in their mid-twenties to near-thirties who’ll view your AU in a perverted way-- e.g. perhaps that you’re secretly like them, but not trying to get more hate or discourse thrown your way (which isn’t your intent-- you genuinely enjoy these characters outside their situation of being related and wrt Bro and Dave, without the elements of abuse and pedophilia).

Try and make a clean slate with new characters. I know that’s a lot more work than using pre-made, already-existing characters from a popular and long-standing fandom, and yeah you’ll get less exposure and fame from creating a new set of characters, but in the long run, your new characters can inspire a lot more young gay people who’re weird nerds with niche hobbies to find someone just like them. And, it won’t attract a majority of readership that loves incest, abuse, etc. If you’re writing or art skills are good enough, you can even try and make a story out of them, and the characters would develop over time and become your own. That’d be hella cool.

[ripstocking]

In the 1960s Ricardo Bofill set up the Taller de Arquitectura (Architecture Workshop) by bringing together a multidisciplinary group of architects, engineers, sociologists and philosophers to create the basis for what would become his career. After several residential projects, the Taller de Arquitectura set out to design buildings that would break with conventions and explore new forms of social relationships for families and neighbours. In the early 1970s, Ricardo discovered an old cement factory on the outskirts of Barcelona, surrounded by a large plot of land. This is where he carried out two major projects that we talk about in this conversation. Firstly, Walden 7, a vertical neighbourhood heavily influenced by philosophical and political schools of thought of the time. Its name comes from Frederic Skinner’s science-fiction utopia book Walden Two. Secondly, La Fábrica (The Factory), the building where this conversation took place, a project that turned an old factory into Ricardo’s own home and the office for the Taller de Arquitectura. Accompanied by Guillermo López, architect and editor of Quaderns magazine, Ricardo met us in his office inside the cylindrical silos of the former cement factory. We sat around the table on which he made the first sketches for most of the projects in his career and talked as he smoked one cigarette after another. Ricardo Bofill: The story of my house is the story of my life. I started studying architecture at university in Barcelona, but I was thrown out so I had to leave. Later I returned to the city and started working on some housing projects with my father, who was also an architect. Some years later, at the height of Franco’s dictatorship, I was thrown out again when I tried to experiment with larger-scale projects such as ‘Ciudad en el espacio’ (City in the space) in Madrid, a new neighbourhood with social housing designed to promote different forms of organising families and property. The guy who threw me out was the Mayor of Madrid at the time and he told me I would never work in Spain again. My life story stems from those circumstances. At the time I thought Catalonia was great; somewhere where it was possible to do avant-garde projects. But there wasn’t space to think big, in terms of neighbourhoods and towns, which is what interested me. The prefabricated houses and Le Corbusier-esque apartment blocks that were used to plan whole neighbourhoods were very much in fashion then and something of an obsession at the Barcelona School of Architecture. But I hated Le Corbusier: he might have been highly talented, but ultimately he was just a man from La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland with a Calvinist, Puritan mentality. Someone who essentially hated the city. The city is where a utopia can take shape, but it is also clearly the site of corruption. When Le Corbusier arrived, cities were horrible, dirty and full of beggars, and he was horrified. So he started to make plans to knock down half of Paris, Barcelona, Algiers… Wherever he went he came up with this sort of idea. This was also the time of the Athens Charter, with its clear division of functions —this is where you work, this is where you sleep, this is where you eat— which is the worst thing imaginable. The Athens Charter was a disaster whose effects are still being felt today. I fought a really tough personal battle against this, which started at university. My whole career has been an endeavour to rescue the Mediterranean city, the European city, a city with streets, squares, public spaces and mixed uses. That’s what my life has been about. Imagine a world without cities. It would be a world without any culture, without any civilisation. Nothing would have happened because all major advances always take place in cities. They are a meeting point, a gathering place, the site where people meet and things happen. Obviously there are contradictions in cities, but it’s one thing to untangle these contradictions and quite another to say we simply won’t make any more cities.   Example of the monumental scales of Walden 7 ARQUITECTURA-G: In your book Espacio y Vida (Space and Life) you say that an architect should not only come up with solutions to a client’s specific requests, but also go beyond a purely utilitarian approach. In other words, architecture should have a soul. Both Walden 7 and your house-studio, La Fábrica, can be understood as housing experiments where the decisive factors are the scale, the pre-existing structures and in the case of La Fábrica, the fact that you are your own client. Ricardo: In the early 1970s, I wanted to make a leap in terms of scale, to go from planning typical Barcelona apartment blocks to planning a whole neighbourhood. This wasn’t easy because developers at the time wouldn’t even hear of it. However, I made my first attempt in Reus (south of Barcelona), with the Barrio Gaudí (Gaudí neighbourhood). The houses I had built before were made using very few resources, almost like a craftsman, using very primitive techniques and materials like bricks. At that time I identified myself very closely with so-called vernacular architecture. Architecture without architects, made up of volumes integrated into their context and made out of local materials without any major technical resources. I started planning with this idea very much in mind, both when I made my first buildings in Barcelona and also the Barrio Gaudí in Reus. Then I moved on first to Ciudad en el espacio and then Walden 7, which was an attempt to build a vertical neighbourhood following these criteria. What happened with these neighbourhoods, both Ciudad en el espacio in Madrid and Walden 7 here in Barcelona, is that no developer wanted to take the risk of backing such an operation. So I had to team up with an economist friend of mine and between the two of us we bought this plot of land on the outskirts of Barcelona and undertook the project ourselves. At that time we were a big work group, with people from different disciplines. First and foremost we wanted to build a different kind of community, roughly following the communitarianism of philosopher Henri Lefebvre, who collaborated with us. Although it might not seem so now, this was a fairly revolutionary idea at the time. Walden 7 wasn’t just a property, but a property with shares: everyone bought part of the building and chose a way of life. Walden 7 was built out of modules, so if there was just one of you, you could just buy one; if you were a couple, two; or if you formed part of a bigger group, several. Everyone could choose how they wanted to live there. The way of life inside was different, since the spaces were mainly multifunctional. The housing we were putting forward at the time didn’t have an entrance, living room, bathroom, etc.; each module could serve for anything. In addition, the modules fitted together in space to form a kind of monumental building, all the while influenced by vernacular architecture. It is monumental in scale, so that it can be seen, so that it really exists, but inside it also has small streets, nooks and crannies… It’s an object on a double scale, monumental and human. As a result, the project was severely criticised because at that time creating a monument in suburbia was frowned upon. There was a trend of opinion in society that believed that cheap houses had to look cheap, as well as being cheap. If you turned that on its head, people got angry. As far as La Fábrica was concerned, I was looking for a place for a broader experience that would encompass both my home and my workplace. In Barcelona, there was a series of regulations that made this impossible. But one day on the way out of Barcelona, I saw this factory from the road. I went in, spoke to the manager and he told me they were leaving in a month. A-G: Everything was still working when you arrived. How did you go about changing things? Ricardo: That’s right, it was still belching smoke and since it was a cement factory, there was dust everywhere. We spoke to the owners and we bought it. Then we spoke to the town council of Sant Just Desvern (a town on the outskirts of Barcelona where the factory is located) and told them we wanted to do something different. It was the end of the dictatorship and there weren’t many regulations that applied to the outskirts of Barcelona, so we could get on with the project. After that we moved the Taller de Arquitectura from Barcelona to some huts next to the factory. I set up there and started to build. As the developer, I had some financial problems during construction and we were affected by a series of changes to regulations. Later, the town council even expropriated part of the factory. I had got myself what people thought was the most horrific place on earth, full of smoke and cement dust. Transforming it was an exciting challenge. I thought it was important to conserve cities and change them without having to knock everything down, exactly how things had been done throughout history. In the Renaissance and also in the Baroque period, somebody would turn up and add a new bit to an existing building that remained in place. I wanted to repeat this experience, only not with a normal building, but the most complicated one, a cement factory. The work went on for ages. It took two years just to clean the place. The space where we are now was a silo full of cement. We had to empty it and then clean it. In the same way that there is vernacular architecture, there is also industrial vernacular architecture. Traditionally, factories were not planned; they just took shape bit by bit. The sum of these parts is incredible, but in the case of La Fábrica we had to gradually uncover all the pure forms hidden underneath all the mess. After we had emptied it, what came next was like moulding a sculpture: cutting out walls, removing bits to adapt things for a new use, cutting out holes to create new windows, preparing areas to make slabs and other pieces. In addition, the goal was that after all these cuts, the new forms would be pure geometric forms. There were lots of bits and pieces covering the interesting parts that we wanted to uncover. From an aesthetic perspective, as you move through the spaces you can see that each part is a very different world. This project has taken shape over many years, so although it is based on vernacular industrial architecture, it passes through different visions of architecture. After cleaning everything and leaving pure geometric forms, we planted lots of vegetation. It has a touch of the Brutalist movement, but also a certain Romantic attitude. The plants everywhere made an unliveable space a bit more human. The process also has a kind of historicism to it. How do you create a window in a closed cylindrical silo? It’s very complicated, especially from the rationalist perspective. The windows in the silos are inspired by traditional Catalan architecture, in accordance with this historicism I mentioned. Each space is also influenced by my travels around the world. The result is very eclectic, because there is a lot of space and it has taken shape over a long period of time. I started the transformation of the factory slowly and it was never completed. In fact, my house-studio is still unfinished forty years later. It is so big and complex that it can never be finished. In addition, seeing La Fábrica as a house-studio is linked to the idea from Catalan craftsmanship of having the work space and house in the same place. This is where I live and most of the projects I’ve done in my life I’ve done at this very table.     The beauty of the hidden geometry of La Fábrica Guillermo López: Following on from this, in your book Espacio y Vida you refer to La Fábrica as a manifesto that not only contains some of your ideas on architecture, but also, as you were just saying when you talked about the long construction time, distils your experiences and references from your travels. Now, over two decades since the book was published, do you still see La Fábrica as a manifesto? Ricardo: I’m often asked about my favourite work and I never know what to say. I always like the latest one the most… until I stop liking it. When I’m planning any project, I like it, but afterwards, when I stop designing it and I see it built I start to see shortcomings. What I can say is that the place where I live, here, is where I’m at my best, where I feel most comfortable and where I can think most clearly. This is where I can lead a more disciplined life. Here I can live an almost monastic life —in a nonreligious sense— and although it can sometimes be quite uninhibited, it is also completely controlled and structured, hour by hour. This is the best place for me to concentrate. If you look you’ll see this space here is very empty, with no references around me. Here there is no awareness of space or time, which is what I need to begin a project. I tailor-made this world for me. A-G: Going back to Espacio y Vida again, you start this essay by saying you are a ‘nomad’, a ‘traveller with no haven, forced to set his points of reference by his route’, quite a declaration of principles set against the static nature of architecture. How does the personal construction of your own world and the shelter it offers sit with your nomadism? Ricardo: I met many Tuareg people and became friends with some of them. Whenever I could, I went to see them and travelled with them throughout the Sahara. I liked their way of life and their philosophy a lot. They were nomads and had a whole ritual of behaviour that enabled them to live in a hostile territory like the desert. From the way they dressed to the way they had tea in the morning, every ritual had a meaning in that environment. If you get it wrong, you have a really bad time. It’s a life in which everything is used to the minimum. Something else amazing is their sense of space. Without a compass or anything, they know how to cross a huge territory without getting lost. I really like that way of living, with the absolute minimum and on the move. Nomads have certain reference places where they stop. This happens to me when I go to the Sahara desert, where there are places I really like or when I go to see a certain building by Palladio in Venice. The same thing happens when I go and see something in particular by Wright. There are places I have as a reference when I travel. I spend half my time travelling and the other half here. I’m a nomad who can return home to find an atmosphere ready for getting on with intellectual activity. Guillermo: At the start you referred to vernacular architecture, to volumes that multiply and fit together. In projects like Walden 7 this same logic applies, but also includes vertical growth. Although your projects are very different in nature, we can see a common thread running through your work in the form of the geometric laws that structure them, sometimes more obviously than others. In the case of La Fábrica, you didn’t start with a blank plot of land; there were pre-existing structures there with very clear, striking geometries. On the ground plan the silos are perfect circles that you then approach following a strategy of subtraction… Ricardo: Destruction. Guillermo: Destruction? Well, that’s a bit of a different concept… Ricardo: Yes, completely. It was all about destroying in order to find the hidden beauty inside the factory. It’s an almost sculptural work of destruction. A-G: One thing we noticed is that although the pre-existing structure is monumental in scale and has huge dimensions, when you actually need to find yourself, when you need to concentrate and face the blank page, you come to the place where we are now, which is completely the opposite, bounded and shielded. Ricardo: I like things that are monumental in nature, but you have to be very careful with them. I’ve had to mix two concepts. This difference is very subtle and you have to know how to handle it. Monumental architecture is institutional architecture linked to language with a neoclassical undertone and the architecture of power. So you always have to introduce this double scale into projects to ensure they are both monumental and welcoming; you have to introduce the human scale into projects so people can feel comfortable. A-G: That double scale you refer to is found in your house-studio, where a certain monumental nature sits alongside a more domestic and intimate side. What strategies did you follow to adapt the domestic scale to the enormous scale of the pre-existing structure? Did you follow a process that evolved as you went along or did you start with an initial plan? Ricardo: It evolved as we went along, although the process and strategies for the project were clear: to clean, destroy, plant, introduce historicist aspects, include the accumulated influences of my different travels, etc. What wasn’t so clear were the different uses of each space. The construction had to be done point by point. The walls of the silos are only 12cm thick and we had to make a series of grooves in which to place the brick slabs because at the time it was too expensive to make them out of concrete. We built it all point by point. I addition, I liked building it like that, cheaply. I don’t like luxury, I really don’t. This is very important, because architecture that is an expression of luxury really bothers me. You can see that there are as few things as possible in the rooms in this house-studio. I like brick walls without covering them with luxury materials; I like minimal things. All the tables and chairs in the offices and rooms are the same as they were forty years ago. I don’t like changing anything. I like the minimum, the bare necessity, the purest look possible. That’s how I live best. Guillermo: You talked before about eclecticism and specifically about how different actions have been superposed over the course of the process, and you also criticised the separation of functions as set out in the Athens Charter. Seen as a manifesto, your house-studio, La Fábrica, appears to challenge the idea of zoning, of life understood as a series of pigeonholed functions that occur in a linear fashion. Rather, the project suggests a mixture, a constant game of opposites in which the industrial blends with the domestic, your private life with work, vegetation with the artificial, etc. What we see is a sum of deliberate ambiguities as a response to everything that was attributed to the modernist movement, which is far more likely to mark things out. Ricardo: The thing I know how to do best is oversee the work processes and change them in accordance with the project, managing the change of scale, going from large scale to small scale. When I was young I thought that one day I might build a entire city, but I later realised I couldn’t do it. The strategy I followed with the Taller de Arquitectura was to plan pieces of cities, pieces made in such a way that someone could put them all together and the end result would be a city. However, style and architectural language no longer interest me as much. When I started out, the International Style was in fashion. In the United States, the results of Mies’ architecture were everywhere: glass with steel structures. The language was being pared down more and more and we were heading towards an absurd monotony. Mies could reduce his language to the minimum, but that didn’t mean we all had to write a novel with the same four words. That’s how we started postmodernism, aiming to regain the language of historical architecture. Suddenly people realised there was a broader language in which to write architecture. In truth, what happened is that very bad architecture emerged. The vulgarization of postmodernity in particular was appalling. So after two or three years I decided I wasn’t interested in postmodernism any more. But I did want to write in a different way or try to invent languages, or at least not repeat myself, because it is very hard to invent. As you said earlier, it’s geometry that underpins our buildings. Geometry has always been key to my work. A photograph of La Fabricá from the exterior☄️☄️☄️ A-G: Going back to La Fábrica, we’re particularly attracted to the idea of ruins. First you carry out work in a former factory by emptying and destroying and then, following a Romantic idea, you plant vegetation that devours the construction. It could almost give the impression that you want to inhabit a ruin. Ricardo: I like the idea of a ruin a lot, but in a metaphorical sense. I like the fact that the building never ends, it isn’t finished, that this kind of ruin constantly stands out. I like the idea of a ruin philosophically. Life is a ruin. The incomplete, half-finished work in ruins is a subject that has always fascinated me. The work of art doesn’t exist; it’s like a greyhound race in which you run towards something but never manage to reach it. All work has something wrong with it. I’m drawn to the idea that there are other worlds under something. Guillermo: In this project, the aspect of a ruin comes about not only because it is unfinished, but also by the lush vegetation, which superposes itself onto the clear geometry of the silos and gradually conquers it as it grows, until it separates the building from the outside context. In fact from your house-studio, the only clearly visible reference of the outside is Walden 7. Ricardo: I wanted the vegetation to devour the building and cover it. I wasn’t interested in creating a façade here. Not for me. If you take a walk around here, you won’t see anything of this building; it’s covered by the gardens for two reasons. Firstly because from these windows here I didn’t want to see anything happening outside; I want a closed world. And it’s also covered with vegetation because I didn’t want this building to have a composed façade. None of the houses I’ve made for myself have had a façade. I design façades because clients ask me to, because I have to. But the façade isn’t the aspect that most interests me; it’s the space. To understand the space you have to open your eyes as wide as possible, have the widest field of view, 180˚, and also see the context, the space. When you turn around, remember what there is behind you as well; notice you’re surrounded and appreciate that spatial feeling of pleasure. A-G: We’re interested in the everyday side of life, finding out how you move through such a large space, how you colonise it, whether you have to learn or let things go to be able to inhabit it. You spoke before about rituals… Ricardo: You have to create your own way of life, lifestyle and pleasure. You have to organise your pleasurable situations in accordance with your personality, and more so as time passes. As you get older it’s more and more difficult. In my case, I have to ritualise time and space. One space to do one thing, one time to do something else—the times are very clearly set out. All this is a ritual to conserve your creativity, interest and learning. For that you have to be increasingly strict. The older you are, the greater the risk of your creativity decreasing. At the start of a project, my way of working is being here alone. I’m interested in carrying out a project, but the moment I enjoy most is the blank page, the conception of a project. During the creative moment I don’t like to have any influences; I don’t like to have books or magazines around to see what other people have done. I like to start with my head as clear as possible. I’ve already had plenty of influences travelling and visiting work by architects I like. Here I don’t want any. Some people root themselves a lot in the past when they work. I find thinking about everything I’ve done in my life, step by step, incredibly boring. Going back over it all, what I did in such and such a year, what happened etc., isn’t for me, and that’s why I don’t keep memoirs. On the other hand, I still have fun thinking about a project; it’s exciting to think about what I’m going to do in each new project. Guillermo: When you started to talk about La Fábrica, you said how regulations affect what we build. In this sense, La Fábrica is a place that lets you challenge highly restrictive regulations. Do you think that in this context a project like La Fábrica would still be possible today? Ricardo: Not if you stick to the regulations, play by the rules of the game. Neither La Fábrica nor Walden 7 would have been possible today. In the more highly regulated countries, where people are more careful, there are fewer problems, but it’s also more difficult to be inventive. There is more invention in third-world countries than in places like Holland or Denmark, where everything is perfectly regulated. If I had to do it for myself, if I couldn’t do it here, I’d go somewhere else. I’d keep changing countries until I found a place where I could build my world.

[ripstocking]

In the 1960s Ricardo Bofill set up the Taller de Arquitectura (Architecture Workshop) by bringing together a multidisciplinary group of architects, engineers, sociologists and philosophers to create the basis for what would become his career. After several residential projects, the Taller de Arquitectura set out to design buildings that would break with conventions and explore new forms of social relationships for families and neighbours. In the early 1970s, Ricardo discovered an old cement factory on the outskirts of Barcelona, surrounded by a large plot of land. This is where he carried out two major projects that we talk about in this conversation. Firstly, Walden 7, a vertical neighbourhood heavily influenced by philosophical and political schools of thought of the time. Its name comes from Frederic Skinner’s science-fiction utopia book Walden Two. Secondly, La Fábrica (The Factory), the building where this conversation took place, a project that turned an old factory into Ricardo’s own home and the office for the Taller de Arquitectura. Accompanied by Guillermo López, architect and editor of Quaderns magazine, Ricardo met us in his office inside the cylindrical silos of the former cement factory. We sat around the table on which he made the first sketches for most of the projects in his career and talked as he smoked one cigarette after another. Ricardo Bofill: The story of my house is the story of my life. I started studying architecture at university in Barcelona, but I was thrown out so I had to leave. Later I returned to the city and started working on some housing projects with my father, who was also an architect. Some years later, at the height of Franco’s dictatorship, I was thrown out again when I tried to experiment with larger-scale projects such as ‘Ciudad en el espacio’ (City in the space) in Madrid, a new neighbourhood with social housing designed to promote different forms of organising families and property. The guy who threw me out was the Mayor of Madrid at the time and he told me I would never work in Spain again. My life story stems from those circumstances. At the time I thought Catalonia was great; somewhere where it was possible to do avant-garde projects. But there wasn’t space to think big, in terms of neighbourhoods and towns, which is what interested me. The prefabricated houses and Le Corbusier-esque apartment blocks that were used to plan whole neighbourhoods were very much in fashion then and something of an obsession at the Barcelona School of Architecture. But I hated Le Corbusier: he might have been highly talented, but ultimately he was just a man from La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland with a Calvinist, Puritan mentality. Someone who essentially hated the city. The city is where a utopia can take shape, but it is also clearly the site of corruption. When Le Corbusier arrived, cities were horrible, dirty and full of beggars, and he was horrified. So he started to make plans to knock down half of Paris, Barcelona, Algiers… Wherever he went he came up with this sort of idea. This was also the time of the Athens Charter, with its clear division of functions —this is where you work, this is where you sleep, this is where you eat— which is the worst thing imaginable. The Athens Charter was a disaster whose effects are still being felt today. I fought a really tough personal battle against this, which started at university. My whole career has been an endeavour to rescue the Mediterranean city, the European city, a city with streets, squares, public spaces and mixed uses. That’s what my life has been about. Imagine a world without cities. It would be a world without any culture, without any civilisation. Nothing would have happened because all major advances always take place in cities. They are a meeting point, a gathering place, the site where people meet and things happen. Obviously there are contradictions in cities, but it’s one thing to untangle these contradictions and quite another to say we simply won’t make any more cities.   Example of the monumental scales of Walden 7 ARQUITECTURA-G: In your book Espacio y Vida (Space and Life) you say that an architect should not only come up with solutions to a client’s specific requests, but also go beyond a purely utilitarian approach. In other words, architecture should have a soul. Both Walden 7 and your house-studio, La Fábrica, can be understood as housing experiments where the decisive factors are the scale, the pre-existing structures and in the case of La Fábrica, the fact that you are your own client. Ricardo: In the early 1970s, I wanted to make a leap in terms of scale, to go from planning typical Barcelona apartment blocks to planning a whole neighbourhood. This wasn’t easy because developers at the time wouldn’t even hear of it. However, I made my first attempt in Reus (south of Barcelona), with the Barrio Gaudí (Gaudí neighbourhood). The houses I had built before were made using very few resources, almost like a craftsman, using very primitive techniques and materials like bricks. At that time I identified myself very closely with so-called vernacular architecture. Architecture without architects, made up of volumes integrated into their context and made out of local materials without any major technical resources. I started planning with this idea very much in mind, both when I made my first buildings in Barcelona and also the Barrio Gaudí in Reus. Then I moved on first to Ciudad en el espacio and then Walden 7, which was an attempt to build a vertical neighbourhood following these criteria. What happened with these neighbourhoods, both Ciudad en el espacio in Madrid and Walden 7 here in Barcelona, is that no developer wanted to take the risk of backing such an operation. So I had to team up with an economist friend of mine and between the two of us we bought this plot of land on the outskirts of Barcelona and undertook the project ourselves. At that time we were a big work group, with people from different disciplines. First and foremost we wanted to build a different kind of community, roughly following the communitarianism of philosopher Henri Lefebvre, who collaborated with us. Although it might not seem so now, this was a fairly revolutionary idea at the time. Walden 7 wasn’t just a property, but a property with shares: everyone bought part of the building and chose a way of life. Walden 7 was built out of modules, so if there was just one of you, you could just buy one; if you were a couple, two; or if you formed part of a bigger group, several. Everyone could choose how they wanted to live there. The way of life inside was different, since the spaces were mainly multifunctional. The housing we were putting forward at the time didn’t have an entrance, living room, bathroom, etc.; each module could serve for anything. In addition, the modules fitted together in space to form a kind of monumental building, all the while influenced by vernacular architecture. It is monumental in scale, so that it can be seen, so that it really exists, but inside it also has small streets, nooks and crannies… It’s an object on a double scale, monumental and human. As a result, the project was severely criticised because at that time creating a monument in suburbia was frowned upon. There was a trend of opinion in society that believed that cheap houses had to look cheap, as well as being cheap. If you turned that on its head, people got angry. As far as La Fábrica was concerned, I was looking for a place for a broader experience that would encompass both my home and my workplace. In Barcelona, there was a series of regulations that made this impossible. But one day on the way out of Barcelona, I saw this factory from the road. I went in, spoke to the manager and he told me they were leaving in a month. A-G: Everything was still working when you arrived. How did you go about changing things? Ricardo: That’s right, it was still belching smoke and since it was a cement factory, there was dust everywhere. We spoke to the owners and we bought it. Then we spoke to the town council of Sant Just Desvern (a town on the outskirts of Barcelona where the factory is located) and told them we wanted to do something different. It was the end of the dictatorship and there weren’t many regulations that applied to the outskirts of Barcelona, so we could get on with the project. After that we moved the Taller de Arquitectura from Barcelona to some huts next to the factory. I set up there and started to build. As the developer, I had some financial problems during construction and we were affected by a series of changes to regulations. Later, the town council even expropriated part of the factory. I had got myself what people thought was the most horrific place on earth, full of smoke and cement dust. Transforming it was an exciting challenge. I thought it was important to conserve cities and change them without having to knock everything down, exactly how things had been done throughout history. In the Renaissance and also in the Baroque period, somebody would turn up and add a new bit to an existing building that remained in place. I wanted to repeat this experience, only not with a normal building, but the most complicated one, a cement factory. The work went on for ages. It took two years just to clean the place. The space where we are now was a silo full of cement. We had to empty it and then clean it. In the same way that there is vernacular architecture, there is also industrial vernacular architecture. Traditionally, factories were not planned; they just took shape bit by bit. The sum of these parts is incredible, but in the case of La Fábrica we had to gradually uncover all the pure forms hidden underneath all the mess. After we had emptied it, what came next was like moulding a sculpture: cutting out walls, removing bits to adapt things for a new use, cutting out holes to create new windows, preparing areas to make slabs and other pieces. In addition, the goal was that after all these cuts, the new forms would be pure geometric forms. There were lots of bits and pieces covering the interesting parts that we wanted to uncover. From an aesthetic perspective, as you move through the spaces you can see that each part is a very different world. This project has taken shape over many years, so although it is based on vernacular industrial architecture, it passes through different visions of architecture. After cleaning everything and leaving pure geometric forms, we planted lots of vegetation. It has a touch of the Brutalist movement, but also a certain Romantic attitude. The plants everywhere made an unliveable space a bit more human. The process also has a kind of historicism to it. How do you create a window in a closed cylindrical silo? It’s very complicated, especially from the rationalist perspective. The windows in the silos are inspired by traditional Catalan architecture, in accordance with this historicism I mentioned. Each space is also influenced by my travels around the world. The result is very eclectic, because there is a lot of space and it has taken shape over a long period of time. I started the transformation of the factory slowly and it was never completed. In fact, my house-studio is still unfinished forty years later. It is so big and complex that it can never be finished. In addition, seeing La Fábrica as a house-studio is linked to the idea from Catalan craftsmanship of having the work space and house in the same place. This is where I live and most of the projects I’ve done in my life I’ve done at this very table.     The beauty of the hidden geometry of La Fábrica Guillermo López: Following on from this, in your book Espacio y Vida you refer to La Fábrica as a manifesto that not only contains some of your ideas on architecture, but also, as you were just saying when you talked about the long construction time, distils your experiences and references from your travels. Now, over two decades since the book was published, do you still see La Fábrica as a manifesto? Ricardo: I’m often asked about my favourite work and I never know what to say. I always like the latest one the most… until I stop liking it. When I’m planning any project, I like it, but afterwards, when I stop designing it and I see it built I start to see shortcomings. What I can say is that the place where I live, here, is where I’m at my best, where I feel most comfortable and where I can think most clearly. This is where I can lead a more disciplined life. Here I can live an almost monastic life —in a nonreligious sense— and although it can sometimes be quite uninhibited, it is also completely controlled and structured, hour by hour. This is the best place for me to concentrate. If you look you’ll see this space here is very empty, with no references around me. Here there is no awareness of space or time, which is what I need to begin a project. I tailor-made this world for me. A-G: Going back to Espacio y Vida again, you start this essay by saying you are a ‘nomad’, a ‘traveller with no haven, forced to set his points of reference by his route’, quite a declaration of principles set against the static nature of architecture. How does the personal construction of your own world and the shelter it offers sit with your nomadism? Ricardo: I met many Tuareg people and became friends with some of them. Whenever I could, I went to see them and travelled with them throughout the Sahara. I liked their way of life and their philosophy a lot. They were nomads and had a whole ritual of behaviour that enabled them to live in a hostile territory like the desert. From the way they dressed to the way they had tea in the morning, every ritual had a meaning in that environment. If you get it wrong, you have a really bad time. It’s a life in which everything is used to the minimum. Something else amazing is their sense of space. Without a compass or anything, they know how to cross a huge territory without getting lost. I really like that way of living, with the absolute minimum and on the move. Nomads have certain reference places where they stop. This happens to me when I go to the Sahara desert, where there are places I really like or when I go to see a certain building by Palladio in Venice. The same thing happens when I go and see something in particular by Wright. There are places I have as a reference when I travel. I spend half my time travelling and the other half here. I’m a nomad who can return home to find an atmosphere ready for getting on with intellectual activity. Guillermo: At the start you referred to vernacular architecture, to volumes that multiply and fit together. In projects like Walden 7 this same logic applies, but also includes vertical growth. Although your projects are very different in nature, we can see a common thread running through your work in the form of the geometric laws that structure them, sometimes more obviously than others. In the case of La Fábrica, you didn’t start with a blank plot of land; there were pre-existing structures there with very clear, striking geometries. On the ground plan the silos are perfect circles that you then approach following a strategy of subtraction… Ricardo: Destruction. Guillermo: Destruction? Well, that’s a bit of a different concept… Ricardo: Yes, completely. It was all about destroying in order to find the hidden beauty inside the factory. It’s an almost sculptural work of destruction. A-G: One thing we noticed is that although the pre-existing structure is monumental in scale and has huge dimensions, when you actually need to find yourself, when you need to concentrate and face the blank page, you come to the place where we are now, which is completely the opposite, bounded and shielded. Ricardo: I like things that are monumental in nature, but you have to be very careful with them. I’ve had to mix two concepts. This difference is very subtle and you have to know how to handle it. Monumental architecture is institutional architecture linked to language with a neoclassical undertone and the architecture of power. So you always have to introduce this double scale into projects to ensure they are both monumental and welcoming; you have to introduce the human scale into projects so people can feel comfortable. A-G: That double scale you refer to is found in your house-studio, where a certain monumental nature sits alongside a more domestic and intimate side. What strategies did you follow to adapt the domestic scale to the enormous scale of the pre-existing structure? Did you follow a process that evolved as you went along or did you start with an initial plan? Ricardo: It evolved as we went along, although the process and strategies for the project were clear: to clean, destroy, plant, introduce historicist aspects, include the accumulated influences of my different travels, etc. What wasn’t so clear were the different uses of each space. The construction had to be done point by point. The walls of the silos are only 12cm thick and we had to make a series of grooves in which to place the brick slabs because at the time it was too expensive to make them out of concrete. We built it all point by point. I addition, I liked building it like that, cheaply. I don’t like luxury, I really don’t. This is very important, because architecture that is an expression of luxury really bothers me. You can see that there are as few things as possible in the rooms in this house-studio. I like brick walls without covering them with luxury materials; I like minimal things. All the tables and chairs in the offices and rooms are the same as they were forty years ago. I don’t like changing anything. I like the minimum, the bare necessity, the purest look possible. That’s how I live best. Guillermo: You talked before about eclecticism and specifically about how different actions have been superposed over the course of the process, and you also criticised the separation of functions as set out in the Athens Charter. Seen as a manifesto, your house-studio, La Fábrica, appears to challenge the idea of zoning, of life understood as a series of pigeonholed functions that occur in a linear fashion. Rather, the project suggests a mixture, a constant game of opposites in which the industrial blends with the domestic, your private life with work, vegetation with the artificial, etc. What we see is a sum of deliberate ambiguities as a response to everything that was attributed to the modernist movement, which is far more likely to mark things out. Ricardo: The thing I know how to do best is oversee the work processes and change them in accordance with the project, managing the change of scale, going from large scale to small scale. When I was young I thought that one day I might build a entire city, but I later realised I couldn’t do it. The strategy I followed with the Taller de Arquitectura was to plan pieces of cities, pieces made in such a way that someone could put them all together and the end result would be a city. However, style and architectural language no longer interest me as much. When I started out, the International Style was in fashion. In the United States, the results of Mies’ architecture were everywhere: glass with steel structures. The language was being pared down more and more and we were heading towards an absurd monotony. Mies could reduce his language to the minimum, but that didn’t mean we all had to write a novel with the same four words. That’s how we started postmodernism, aiming to regain the language of historical architecture. Suddenly people realised there was a broader language in which to write architecture. In truth, what happened is that very bad architecture emerged. The vulgarization of postmodernity in particular was appalling. So after two or three years I decided I wasn’t interested in postmodernism any more. But I did want to write in a different way or try to invent languages, or at least not repeat myself, because it is very hard to invent. As you said earlier, it’s geometry that underpins our buildings. Geometry has always been key to my work. A photograph of La Fabricá from the exterior☄️☄️☄️ A-G: Going back to La Fábrica, we’re particularly attracted to the idea of ruins. First you carry out work in a former factory by emptying and destroying and then, following a Romantic idea, you plant vegetation that devours the construction. It could almost give the impression that you want to inhabit a ruin. Ricardo: I like the idea of a ruin a lot, but in a metaphorical sense. I like the fact that the building never ends, it isn’t finished, that this kind of ruin constantly stands out. I like the idea of a ruin philosophically. Life is a ruin. The incomplete, half-finished work in ruins is a subject that has always fascinated me. The work of art doesn’t exist; it’s like a greyhound race in which you run towards something but never manage to reach it. All work has something wrong with it. I’m drawn to the idea that there are other worlds under something. Guillermo: In this project, the aspect of a ruin comes about not only because it is unfinished, but also by the lush vegetation, which superposes itself onto the clear geometry of the silos and gradually conquers it as it grows, until it separates the building from the outside context. In fact from your house-studio, the only clearly visible reference of the outside is Walden 7. Ricardo: I wanted the vegetation to devour the building and cover it. I wasn’t interested in creating a façade here. Not for me. If you take a walk around here, you won’t see anything of this building; it’s covered by the gardens for two reasons. Firstly because from these windows here I didn’t want to see anything happening outside; I want a closed world. And it’s also covered with vegetation because I didn’t want this building to have a composed façade. None of the houses I’ve made for myself have had a façade. I design façades because clients ask me to, because I have to. But the façade isn’t the aspect that most interests me; it’s the space. To understand the space you have to open your eyes as wide as possible, have the widest field of view, 180˚, and also see the context, the space. When you turn around, remember what there is behind you as well; notice you’re surrounded and appreciate that spatial feeling of pleasure. A-G: We’re interested in the everyday side of life, finding out how you move through such a large space, how you colonise it, whether you have to learn or let things go to be able to inhabit it. You spoke before about rituals… Ricardo: You have to create your own way of life, lifestyle and pleasure. You have to organise your pleasurable situations in accordance with your personality, and more so as time passes. As you get older it’s more and more difficult. In my case, I have to ritualise time and space. One space to do one thing, one time to do something else—the times are very clearly set out. All this is a ritual to conserve your creativity, interest and learning. For that you have to be increasingly strict. The older you are, the greater the risk of your creativity decreasing. At the start of a project, my way of working is being here alone. I’m interested in carrying out a project, but the moment I enjoy most is the blank page, the conception of a project. During the creative moment I don’t like to have any influences; I don’t like to have books or magazines around to see what other people have done. I like to start with my head as clear as possible. I’ve already had plenty of influences travelling and visiting work by architects I like. Here I don’t want any. Some people root themselves a lot in the past when they work. I find thinking about everything I’ve done in my life, step by step, incredibly boring. Going back over it all, what I did in such and such a year, what happened etc., isn’t for me, and that’s why I don’t keep memoirs. On the other hand, I still have fun thinking about a project; it’s exciting to think about what I’m going to do in each new project. Guillermo: When you started to talk about La Fábrica, you said how regulations affect what we build. In this sense, La Fábrica is a place that lets you challenge highly restrictive regulations. Do you think that in this context a project like La Fábrica would still be possible today? Ricardo: Not if you stick to the regulations, play by the rules of the game. Neither La Fábrica nor Walden 7 would have been possible today. In the more highly regulated countries, where people are more careful, there are fewer problems, but it’s also more difficult to be inventive. There is more invention in third-world countries than in places like Holland or Denmark, where everything is perfectly regulated. If I had to do it for myself, if I couldn’t do it here, I’d go somewhere else. I’d keep changing countries until I found a place where I could build my world.