#to point out that subsection 12 refers to a chapter

[aerodaltonimperial]

Working on rewrites of government rules sure is fun! You get to do things like have 2 and a half hour meetings where, at one point, you spend ten minutes debating where a comma should go.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Gathering the New Israel: Readings for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (OT)

In the Readings for this Sunday, Jesus continues his final journey, his fateful “death march” toward Jerusalem (Luke 9 – 19, the “Travel Narrative”) that began formally in Luke 9:51. The past several Sundays have foreshadowed Jesus’ coming suffering and death, but this Sunday we get a reprieve as themes of suffering recede into the background. We are temporarily caught up in the joy of Jesus' ministry, as he assembles around himself a congregation of disciples who constitute a spiritual “Jerusalem.” In the healing ministry of Jesus and his disciples, we see a fulfillment of certain prophecies of peace and restoration to the “holy city” of the LORD.

1. The First Reading is Is 66:10-14c:

Thus says the LORD: Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her, all you who love her; exult, exult with her, all you who were mourning over her! Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of her comfort, that you may nurse with delight at her abundant breasts! For thus says the LORD: Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent. As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.

When you see this, your heart shall rejoice and your bodies flourish like the grass; the LORD’s power shall be known to his servants.

This text comes almost at the end of the Book of Isaiah, concluding a long section (Isa 56-66) that foresees the fate of Jerusalem and the people of God in the future, in days to come. Reading through these chapters, one finds again and again that there will be division of God’s people at some point in the future (from the perspective of the prophet, c. 700 BC) into two groups who experience very different fates. Stern judgment will fall on the unfaithful among God's people, whereas the faithful will experience great joy at the restoration their city and people. This faithful group is called “my servants” (65:9,13-14), the “remnant” (46:3), and they also receive a “new name”(62:2; 63:15). They are hated by their own brethren for the sake of the LORD's name (66:5), but God will vindicate them and judge their persecutors (66:6). Nonetheless, this division within the people of God, resulting in a righteous remnant and a rebellious, persecuting majority does not mean a narrowing of God's plan of salvation. Instead, there will be successive waves of mission to the nations (Gentiles) in which God's glory will be proclaimed and the nations gathered to Zion along with the remnant of the people of Israel (66:18-21).

This Sunday's Reading is situated in the midst of this larger framework. The faithful of God's people, those who “love Jerusalem” and all that Jerusalem stands for (the true worship of God) will see the restoration of the city. They will experience her as a tender mother who nourishes her children.

In the Gospel Reading, Jesus is assembling around himself a “new Jerusalem,” a new community of properly ordered worship. As he sends out the seventy-two on a mission to preach Good News and heal the sick, the people of Israel experience God's love as like that of a tender mother, and they themselves have the opportunity to join the “new Jerusalem” by accepting the preaching of the disciples.

The prophets frequently personify Jerusalem as a young princess from the House of David under the title “the daughter of Zion.” In this way we perceive lady Jerusalem as a type of our Blessed Mother, the most perfect embodiment of the Davidic royal daughter. Though the Marian dimension of the text is not developed in this Sunday's Readings, we may understand Isaiah's prophecy as also being fulfilled in the tender spiritual care Our Lady provides to those who love her Son. It pleases God to express the maternal aspects of his love for us through the intercessions of the Theotokos.

2. The Responsorial Psalm is Ps 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20:

R. (1) Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

Shout joyfully to God, all the earth, sing praise to the glory of his name; proclaim his glorious praise. Say to God, “How tremendous are your deeds!” R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

“Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you, sing praise to your name!” Come and see the works of God, his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam. R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

He has changed the sea into dry land; through the river they passed on foot; therefore let us rejoice in him. He rules by his might forever. R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare what he has done for me. Blessed be God who refused me not my prayer or his kindness! R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

Psalm 66 falls in Book II of the Psalter (Pss 42–72), which is the most triumphant of the five books of the Psalter save the last (Book V). Unlike Book I (Pss 3–41), Book II is not dominated by psalms of individual lament, that is, complaint psalms reflecting the worshiper in distress. Instead, several psalms in Book II reflect the glory of Zion (=Jerusalem), the Temple-sanctuary, and the Davidic reign. Psalm 66 occurs in a subsection of Psalms (Pss 65–68) that reflect on God's great acts of salvation, and call on all the nations to praise God, especially at his sanctuary in Zion. This psalm provides us appropriate words of response after hearing of the salvation of Zion/Jerusalem prophesied by Isaiah in the First Reading.

3. The Second Reading is Gal 6:14-18:

Brothers and sisters:

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither does circumcision mean anything, nor does uncircumcision, but only a new creation. Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule and to the Israel of God.

From now on, let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.

This is the ending of St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians, from which we have been reading selections over the past few weeks. The main point of this Epistle has been to emphasize that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ (that is, by entering into the New Covenant which he embodies), not by the observation of laws and ceremonies of the Old Covenant (that is, the covenant mediated by Moses and finalized in the Book of Deuteronomy). In this passage, Paul uses “circumcision” and “uncircumcision” as loaded terms. “Circumcision” refers to the entire lifestyle characterized by observation of the purity laws of the Old Testament. “Uncircumcision” refers to the lifestyle lived by pagan Gentiles before their conversion. Neither Old Testament religion nor paganism “mean anything” anymore--that is, neither is salvific. The only thing that is meaningful is “a new creation,” which is Paul's expression summing up the fullness of the New Covenant established by Christ: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation!” (2 Cor 5:17).

The immediately following phrase should be translated in this way: “Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, that is, to the Israel of God.” St. Paul identifies the Church as the “Israel of God,” that is, as the spiritual Israel, for “he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal. His praise is not from men but from God” (Rom 2:28-29). Paul interprets Israel in spiritual rather than ethnic terms. This interpretation is fundamental to Christian identity and faith, even if simultaneously the Church does not deny a continuing theological significance to the community of ethnic Jews. Paul explains the continued significance of ethnic Israel in Romans 9–11, and the Catechism explains further in §839–840. St. Paul's understanding of the Church as the “Israel of God” also provides the necessary hermeneutical principle for applying the First Reading to the Church. “Jerusalem” as the “mother city” (Gk metropolis) of the “Israel of God” now applies to the Church in her ministers and sacraments. The flow of the sacraments from the Church to her children, especially the Eucharist, is the “mother's milk” with which Jerusalem nourishes her young.

Jesus is a “Jew of Jews,” the embodiment of Israel, and the Church is his body. Therefore, the Church is the Israel of God. In a special way, St. Paul's physical body was conformed to the body of Christ. He says “I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.” This may refer to all the wounds and scars Paul bore due to his many tortures (2 Cor 11:22-29), badges of honor in his service to Christ. Or perhaps it indicates St. Paul was the first stigmatist in the history of the Church.

4. The Gospel is Lk 10:1-12, 17-20:

At that time the Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way. Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand for you.’ Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.’ Yet know this: the kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.”

The seventy-two returned rejoicing, and said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.” Jesus said, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power to ‘tread upon serpents’ and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

The role of the seventy (or seventy-two) disciples, in addition to the Twelve Apostles, is frequently overlooked in our study of the New Testament, but it was important. Jesus was setting up the New Israel in his ministry, and in addition to the Twelve, who were simultaneously the New Patriarchs, the New Tribal Princes (see Num 7), and the New Officers of Israel (see 1 Kgs 4), Jesus also chose seventy others, who correspond to Moses' seventy elders over the tribes (Num 11:16-30). Just as Moses had twelve tribal princes and seventy elders (Numbers 7; 11:16-30), the New Moses has the Twelve Apostles and Seventy Disciples.

The mission of the seventy in Luke 10 is similar to, but clearly distinct from, the mission of the Twelve in Matt 10:5-15 and Luke 9:1-6. Although the passages are similar, they refer to two distinct events. The Twelve are explicitly sent only to Jewish territory (Matt 10:5) and for that reason are given no instruction about how to deal with Gentile or Samaritan food. The Seventy, however, are sent to Gentile and Samaritan territory, so Jesus has to instruct them explicitly on how to handle conscience issues regarding the observation of Kosher laws. Gentiles did not keep kosher, and Samaritans had different kosher regulations. Jesus tells them not to be concerned about this: “eat whatever they provide” (10:7) without asking questions of conscience.

The Seventy are part of the nucleus of the Church, the “Israel of God.” Better, as office holders and official representatives, they represent the New Jerusalem of the First Reading, that is, the ministering Church that cares for her members. Their role is analogous to that of the diaconate: they serve under and in support of Christ (the great episkopos) and the Apostles (the presbuteroi). They go before to prepare the way in towns which Jesus and the Twelve would later visit. So their ministry was preparatory, focused on preaching and attending to material needs (healings). Nonetheless, they also participate in the ministry of spiritual deliverance against the demonic.

Jesus gives the Seventy specific instructions based on the time and culture in which they ministered. These specifics may be impractical elsewhere: it would be difficult to evangelize Scandinavia barefoot, for example. Nonetheless, the general principle of apostolic zeal and trust in God for material provision should continue to characterize the Church's evangelistic mission. The Church still needs people who will go without the comforts of a bourgeois lifestyle (like having health insurance and a 401K) in order to evangelize in a direct and immediate way. The Catholic Church needs preachers, persons who will proclaim Jesus to people who haven't heard of him or have forgotten him, not just lapsed church-goers. The mission of the Seventy was accompanied by deeds of power. Perhaps one of the reasons deeds of power seem rare these days is the lack of bold action based on faith among those of us who call ourselves Catholic. Heaven and hell are still real. The Gospel of Jesus Christ still confronts every human being. Preaching and evangelistic mission are just as necessary now as they were two thousand years ago. This Sunday let's pray for revival of the Church's evangelistic zeal, beginning in our own parishes.

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

[hirazuki]

11, 12, and 13 for the ask game, please?

11. Do you write scenes in order, or do you jump around?

I jump around when jotting down ideas; like, if I'm writing something and then I get a random flash of inspiration, I'll jump to further down in my document to type out the sentence/scene/words/whatever, because I know from experience that I will NOT remember it later when I want it.

But when actually properly writing/editing the fic in full, no, my mind requires me to write scenes in order. It's one of the reasons it takes me so long to finish and post stuff, because if I'm stuck on a scene or sick of looking at it while editing, I can't move on to a different section and work on that instead. It has to be in order.

12. Do you outline your fics?  If yes, how detailed are your outlines?  How far do you stray from them?

ALWAYS. Mmm, it really depends. When I think of plot/scene sequence, it's very much like watching scenes from a movie in my head -- location, angle, POV, etc., and I really enjoy switching POVs multiple times even within a one-shot. So for pretty much everything, I'll first create sections in the document for each different POV; or, if it's a single POV, sections for each event/scene that happens. After that, if I'm writing a one shot, it's usually just word-vomiting ideas/phrases

kind of like this in this type of format

in each section, along with any relevant canon quotes/dialogue/research I want to use, plus citation of where I found it, in case I want to look it up in its original context again (learned that the hard way XD). So that I can have all of my material readily available to reference as I am writing, without constantly having to run around multiple places to find it and potentially miss something I had wanted to include but forgot.

If I'm writing something that's multiple chapters, I have a separate document in full outline mode, where I keep track of the content of each chapter and what each chapter will address, plus the timeline. For example:

[November] 

Prologue – Chapter 1: Battle on the roof of Las Noches

Chapter 2: Ulquiorra’s revival

Chapter 3: Zanpakuto rebellion + Ulquiorra in Soul Society

[November-February] 

[end of November -- Gotei 13 invading army arc]

[December 2 – Ichigo loses his reiryoku]

Chapter 4: Zanpakuto rebellion cont, Ulquiorra reunites with Orihime; 

[March-April] 

Chapter 5: Hoshi goes to Hueco Mundo, meets Grimmjow; Grimmjow stalks her in living world

^ these are chapters I've already written, so notes are pretty minimal and basically are only the broad contents of each chapter because I delete as I address/incorporate each thing, but for WIPs, each chapter also has a subsection that includes important points, quotes I want to incorporate, scene breakdown, etc.

I rarely ever stray from my outlines. There may be additional ideas or scenes that pop up in my mind that I want to incorporate, but at most it means maybe reshuffling some things around. It's never big enough to change anything significant about the fic.

13. Do you listen to music while you write?  If yes, what have you been listening to recently?

Nope! Music is very, very distracting to me. I require complete silence. I'll listen to music while daydreaming about fic or planning/researching, etc., and that's usually either character/universe playlists I've made or, if what I'm working from has an OST, I'll listen to tracks from that based on vibe (calm/ambient, sad, cheerful, battle, etc.) that matches the tone of the fic. But never when I'm actually writing, no.

Recently, I've had Darkness, The Other Side, and Moonlight Shadow playing on loop while I'm driving and thinking about fictional things. It was just happy coincidence (a matter of time, really, given how much of their music I have) that one of their songs played while I was thinking of Nan Elmoth, so now Blackmore's Night is officially the sound of that forest for me ♡

[getoffthesoapbox]

[VKM Spec] Appraising VKM 16

I daresay, it’s not every day you get a chapter that delivers a satisfying meal to last two months within a mere three pages. It’s good to be right every now and then, and I must admit I haven’t been this delighted by a VKM story development since VKM 7-8. 

Oh, and there’s Zero and Yuuki stuff to discuss too, of course.

If you haven’t read the chapter, scanlations can be found in the usual places.

Obligatory disclaimer for my anti-fans: This post is “zeki criticism” and “anti ky” (though probably fairly light on the latter). Please blacklist those tags accordingly.

Disclaimer - The Surface Layer

As with my post for last chapter’s release, I want to address the surface-level read here just in case any readers who are part of the anti-Zeki-critic crowd managed to make it past my first disclaimer. I’m well aware that if you take this chapter in isolation and ignore the context of previous chapters it is a relatively tame and typical shoujo chapter about a couple preparing to have sex for the first time. As I said in my previous disclaimer, in my opinion this interpretation does not hold up under contextual scrutiny or a more rigorous analysis. For the purposes of my own review of the chapter, I will be dealing exclusively with the contextual aspects rather than the surface layer. That being said, please proceed further at your own risk. (I will be so glad when Zero and Yuuki finally split so that I don’t have to write these disclaimers anymore. Patience, patience.)

“The Prince” Makes His Debut

Oh, boy, did we get a metric shitton of new information in the span of three pages. I had to do my happy dance for this chapter because Hino’s starting to pull out all the stops on the Vampire King plotline. Many more new questions have cropped up than have been answered, but I do believe we can finally reliably decipher some answers at this point. Now this is what I call progress! 

One Mastermind or Many?

Before I get into the minutiae of what’s still up in the air and what isn’t, I want to tackle the biggest question this chapter emphasizes. It was a potential question last chapter, but it gets special attention this time around: Is the Vampire King organization tied to this new organization, headed by the Prince, or not? I’d like to break down the evidence for both arguments, and then I’ll declare where I stand currently:

Two Organizations, Two Masterminds: There certainly is compelling evidence for the idea of two (or even more than two) organizations. We know from earlier chapters there’s an anti-vampire organization, the Vampire King’s organization seems to focus specifically on acts of terror, and this Prince organization appears to have a focus on research. Added to this the idea that Yuuki and Zero both consider the two-organization approach as a possibility, and we have a compelling case here for two organizations that are operating at the same time. 

Multiple Organizations, Headed by One King: The other option, of course, is that the Vampire King is the mastermind behind everything. This is a separate issue from whether or not the Prince is the same person as the Vampire King (more on that in the next subsection). Even if the Prince’s organization is separate, the Vampire King could still be operating in the lone-wolf fashion I described in my previous post on VKM 15. He could be merely passing on tips to these various satellite groups, who then act on the tips. That’s why we have everything from disgruntled kamikaze vampires (VKM 13) to threats against human children (VKM 14) to attacks on noble vampires (VKM 12) to specified research on vampires (VKM 15). All of this activity ordinarily wouldn’t be the product of the same groups of people, as the targets are specifically different. Sometimes nobles are targeted, sometimes human children, sometimes both humans and vampires. It’s too scattershot to be a cohesive organization, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be guided by an unseen hand moving the pieces in chessmaster fashion one step at a time. 

At this time, I lean more toward Option 2 as to the truth behind all the activity. For one, this is a story--having too many terrorist groups is redundant and narratively cumbersome. For another, Zero doesn’t seem convinced about these groups being potentially separate when Yuuki brings up the idea (his expression indicates he thinks this is all connected, but he doesn’t necessarily want to share that thought with Yuuki). Additionally we still have the revelations from the mad scientist in VKM 15--he doesn’t know the goals or plans of the person he follows. We also don’t know if the person he referred to is the Prince he speaks to in VKM 16 or the Vampire King himself. On top of this, we can be reasonably certain Zero was a target for both the Prince’s group and the Vampire King’s; it’s suspect that two “separate” groups would be after the same person. So for now, until new information comes out, I’d say we have several satellite groups being operated from the shadows by the Vampire King.

The Vampire King vs. The Prince

This was the second highlight of the chapter for me (the first we’ll get to shortly). When I saw Hino did this, I wanted to dance in the streets. The potential here is enormous. I hope I can cover it all and not forget anything. We have a couple of options for the identities of the Vampire King and the Prince to play with here:

The Vampire King and the Prince are separate people: At this time, it is completely possible that the Vampire King and the Prince are separate people. (The Vampire King may be an empty throne situation where it’s just a name the real mastermind operates under.) There’s no indication in this scene that the Prince is or is not the Vampire King or that he is involved with the terrorist activity outside of this particular incident. He does have access to some significant resources, however, and does seem interested in using demolition tactics, like the Vampire King’s group. However, at this time this may just be because he’s using the Vampire King’s activities as a cover to hide his own group’s. If that’s the case, the Prince might be operating independently from the Vampire King, or perhaps he’s also an extension of the Vampire King and is just the leader of his own group. 

The Vampire King and the Prince are one person: This is where the options get juicy. If the Prince is the Vampire King, we have potentially narrowed the list of suspects dramatically. The title “Prince” slaughters half the candidates for the Vampire King--a prince must be a young man who is unmarried and not old. This eliminates Kaien, Isaya, and all the ladies. These figures might still be involved in the organization, but they can no longer be the mastermind if the Prince is the Vampire King. The title also leaves us with only a handful of suspects: Aidou, Takuma, Kain, Zero, Kaito, and an as-yet unknown hunter/human/pureblood/noble. That’s a pretty significant drop in suspects if this is true. I think we can safely say that Zero and Aidou are not the Prince, which means if the Prince is also the Vampire King, they’re excluded from the Vampire King pool as well (but this is only if the Prince is the same--if the Prince is different, he could still be receiving orders from a King who is any one of the other suspects). Also, it appears “Prince” is just a nickname the little girl has given the Prince--it’s not necessarily the title he holds when he’s among adults. Unfortunately the mad scientist doesn’t address him by a title (perhaps he doesn’t know it--it seems the Prince is attempting to keep his identity hidden from the mad scientist, but not the little girl). With the title being merely a nickname, it’s completely possible that the Prince is also the Vampire King. Added to this is the fact that he clearly has the resources for a vast demolition operation as well as an elaborate rescue scenario--this person is clearly well-situated in society. 

Right now I’m still leaning heavily toward the Prince being the Vampire King (or at least the defacto mastermind operating under the VKing’s banner). In my opinion, this chapter has really narrowed the field down to Takuma or an unknown character, but I’m not going to waste space here speculating on why I still feel Takuma’s the best narrative option (I’ll be doing a follow-up post here in a week or so to address Takuma). For the remainder of this post, I’ll operate under the assumption that we still have no idea who the Vampire King or the Prince are. 

I will say the one interesting thing about the Prince title is that if he truly is the mastermind behind the Vampire King activities, it’s very fitting that the person who is doing all this in “honor” of Kaname doesn’t himself take the Vampire King title for himself and instead operates as the King’s “first-in-line”--a prince, so to speak. Quite interesting. Even if the title isn’t literal (it could just be the little girl’s nickname for the Prince), it’s still quite fitting on a meta level. 

What We Now Know About The Prince’s Group

What this chapter does answer is a few questions about the Prince’s operations that we didn’t know in VKM 14-15. In VKM 15, I’d speculated that the mad scientist was running his own sideshow and had just been receiving tips from the Vampire King. It seems that’s not the case, and that he’s actually a part of the Prince’s organization, if only nominally. Obviously from his own testimony in VKM 15, he is not part of the Prince’s privy council and has no idea what the Prince is working toward (much less the Vampire King). He is therefore officially confirmed as a mook whose only use is his research abilities. 

Another thing we can confirm is that whatever was going on with what appeared to be the Kaname parent metal last chapter, it was not Kaname acting on his own (unless he’s acting with this group, which leads to a potentially sinister implication given the Vampire King’s hypothetical goal surrounding Zero). Whoever was in charge of that metal, we can confirm two things: the mad scientist didn’t know what it was, despite it being part of “his group” and it was under the control or direction at the very least of the Prince. Whether it was “leant” to the Prince or under his control remains to be seen. This does lead me to believe the metal might actually be a vampire hunter weapon or a pureblood ability rather than Kaname’s parent metal itself, unless the Vampire King has found a way to harness it for his own use. 

It’s also now clear that the Prince and his team are not interested in Zeki children--they are interested in Zero tissue. So the little girl’s smirk at the end of VKM 15 had nothing to do with Yuuki’s confession and everything to do with her knowledge that they’d obtained what they’d come for--the vial of Zero’s tissue. I’m pleased to see that there was a vial that was obtained, though how exactly I’m not sure. I’d say likely it was via the Kaname parent-metal-lookalike, since the Prince gives the vial to the mad scientist (who didn’t know about it) and the little girl comes in right after, which means it didn’t come from her either. Likely whoever or whatever was controlling the parent metal lookalike also grabbed the vial. So we know that either we’re working with a pureblood Prince or we’re working with someone who has the ability to manipulate that parent metal thing. 

What We Don’t Know About The Prince’s Group

Unfortunately, as with anything Hino, the more answers we get, the more questions arise. Let’s start with the little girl. Is she a human? Is she a vampire? Was she the one controlling the parent metal thing, or was that a separate person? Who is her father? Is the woman serving her a vampire or a human?

Who is the Prince? The little girl wants him to stay home with her--is he a family member, or is he a migrant they’ve picked up? Is he a homeless person or someone in hiding? (We know two potential suspects who fit this bill to a T--Kaito would be in hiding, and Takuma is so homeless he hangs out by the Kanacube all day.) The Prince is clearly of high enough standing to be admired by the little girl and served by her family, so he at the very least has to be a Level C vampire if they’re humans, and higher in rank if they’re vampires. I’m not sure Kaito fits the bill for this one, but he might if he’d rescued the little girl and was her savior. 

Who was controlling the Kaname parent metal thing? If it actually is Kaname assisting this Prince’s group, that means the Kaname-metal is in agreement with the Prince’s goals, which have something to do with Zero. If it’s someone manipulating the metal itself or the Kaname metal working with a person, the only real option for the Vampire King is Takuma. If it’s a pureblood ability, it could just be a pureblood assisting the Prince, or the Prince could be the pureblood assisting the Vampire King with his ability. If it’s a hunter weapon, we’re clearly dealing with Kaito or Kaien. Either way, we still have no answers about what on earth went down with the metal in VKM 14 or how that’s connected to this group or the Vampire King.

More Hints Toward The Zero Cure Or Zero Weapons

I must confess to feeling a bit of smug satisfaction that the only bit of tissue the Prince thought worthy of preserving was the fresh Zero sample. So much for their big ol’ “coverup” operation. I knew the line about Zero being the cornerstone of a new era was hogwash if this mad scientist was only interested in dissecting things for regular vampiric purposes. He’s Aidou’s rival, and the only way to properly rival someone is to have better research and “beat” them. Which means this scientist needs to find the cure before Aidou does. 

I’m now of the opinion that the theatrics the mad scientist showed off in VKM 15 were merely that--theatrics. He seems much more composed and grounded in VKM 16, even if he’s still a bit of a ham. 

I don’t see too many options for his actual research other than something Zero-related--it’s not like purebloods need their lives extended (so life extensions certainly aren’t what he’s working toward), and if he was trying to extend the lives of nobles or lower, he’d be using a pureblood’s blood. Even if he was taking the tactic of trying to turn all humans into vampires, purebloods would be better targets than a random hunter/vampire mix. So I’m of the opinion that he was mostly spouting nonsense at Zero and is actually after the Zero cure itself. The only problem with the cure bit is why he would need to take down vigilante vampires for his research if it’s just the cure. If the cure is his goal, then I would say he was lying about killing the vampires too--possibly that was all a set up to throw Zero off the scent in case things went down badly. (If that’s true, whoever this Vampire King mastermind is, he’s way way way better at chess than Kaname, lol.)

The other option I can see for the mad scientist’s research is that he’s trying to make a better weapon than what the forge offers, which seems rather counterproductive for a vampire to do to other vampires. However, that would explain why it’s necessary for him to harvest the organs of vampires--Kaname himself did his experiments that way (though he used his own tissue). But if Takuma is the mastermind here, this method would work as an alternative to Aidou’s cure and it would also solve the “Zero problem” in a way that neither Yuuki nor Kaname could argue with (in Takuma’s opinion). Takuma would have known that Kaname was interested in Zero as a weapon for sure (I’m still not entirely certain Takuma cottoned on to why Zero was special--only that Zero was special), and thus using Zero for weapons rather than Kaname would allow Takuma to sacrifice Zero and bring Kaname back without sacrificing Kaname’s goal/purpose. 

Ultimately, I don’t care if the Vampire King or the Prince or Takuma want Zero for a cure or to create a weapon to replace Kaname and rescue him from the forge while removing Zero as a “threat” to Kaname’s monopoly over Yuuki--the result narratively is the same: it’ll force Yuuki to have to step in and start making some hard choices, and it’ll give Zero some serious temptation and a dilemma to work through. 

But sadly, that’s all we have to work with today. Time to move on to the less interesting parts of the chapter.

Zero - Dilemma & Decision

Before I begin this slog, I just want to preface this with my relief that Zero’s bizarre descent into cutesy gabbiness and virginal blushing in VKM 15 was merely a fluke due to the dangerous situation and not a permanent shift in character for no reason. He’s back in good form this chapter, and is a welcome sight to see again. He’s still not quite where I want him to be narratively, but I feel we’ve made some significant steps in the right direction, and I’m optimistic that the next two chapters will start taking us toward a better destination. 

For now, I’m going to split Zero’s section into three parts, because they really do have to be dealt with separately. 

Maintaining The Status Quo

My greatest fear last chapter was that Zero would jump on Yuuki’s offer, especially given all the blushing and flustered emphasis Hino was putting on the scene. I rely heavily on Zero’s moral compass in this story, because as far as I can tell he (and Ai, thanks to him) is the only one who even has a moral compass. He’s already in the doghouse for VKM 13 and I was not okay with the idea of him taking advantage of what is clearly sheer stupidity on Yuuki’s part out of desperation. 

Therefore, I was quite pleased with how Hino handled the aftermath of Yuuki’s disastrous proposition. It’s scary how good my instincts are when it comes to this character though, haha. My spidey senses are always on point with him. ;)

Just to recap on my issues from the previous chapter for those who’ve forgotten or didn’t read the last post:

I posited that Zero was not acting tsundere with Yuuki here, but rather that he was wary she wouldn’t be able to deliver on her declaration.

I was concerned that Zero would give in to temptation and not act wisely in response to what is clearly stupidity on Yuuki’s part.

As expected, the first point played out almost to a T the way I’d theorized, and thanks to that the second was put on hold for a time. That being said, oh boy, there is a lot of subtext for Zero in this scene, and most of it is not looking promising for a hot night under the sheets any time soon. 

First up, Zero’s initial reaction to Yuuki’s declaration is expanded on a bit--clearly he was surprised and flustered by her implication. He’s also embarrassed, which would be cute outside of the context. Unfortunately, I think his embarrassment here is more about his own reaction and how he’s losing his cool about it rather than how happy he is. His expression when he talks about his surprise is wistful rather than joyful--he’s clearly wishing he could take her seriously. And then she blows it with her response by going along with his line and trivializing what she just said, which confirms for him his suspicions and ruins the moment for him. 

What follows is definitely dark. Zero’s expression changes from wistful to downright devastated. Seriously just behold these two expressions and tell me this is “joy”:

That expression on the right is mindboggling for a man who just received good news. He looks like someone killed his cat. You could argue that the expression on the left is serious due to the topic--they’re discussing the potential of the Prince and VKing’s organizations for being separate, but the expression on the right has nothing to do with anything serious; all Yuuki’s doing is scolding him about something that ultimately never mattered. 

What we see in this second half of the scene is evidence of what is really going on in Zero’s head after hearing Yuuki’s little declaration--he’s not at all happy with how things are going or how she’s reacted to her own words. We can see evidence of downright despondency and melancholy forming here--honestly, his expression on the right is very Kaname-esque. Meanwhile Yuuki’s cheerfully ignoring his distress and--worse--she even tries to pretend she doesn’t hear him when he attempts to address the issue. She cuts him off and tries to avoid him. 

What’s worse I think is that even though she’s the one who should be apologizing to him for throwing this out there on a whim and hurting his feelings for no reason, he’s the one who reaches out to her and reassures her that he knows she didn’t mean anything by it and that he knows she wasn’t serious. Just unpack that for a minute. This woman not seven chapters ago asked this man to “date” her officially and then not four chapters ago asked him to sleep with her, and yet he still doesn’t believe she intends to move their relationship forward. That’s the height of pathetic, tbh. He’s clearly lost all hope that they’ll ever move out of this stagnation and it doesn’t even cross his mind to even try to see if she’s serious; he just immediately writes her comment off and tries to keep her from avoiding him over it.

Yuuki’s response to this does seem to surprise him a bit and to ease a bit of his frustration with her. But it’s clear from his expressions following her request that he’s already given serious thought to this topic and already knows his own answer. And damnit, Hino, you just had to use the “closed eyes with a smile” thing to act like that’s his real smile of joy and like hell that variant of it is. Don’t think you’ve fooled this reader--I’m not fooled by either of Zero’s bullshit eyeclose smiles this chapter. I know my boy, and neither of those smiles are from the heart. They’re both reassurance smiles.

What I do find interesting in this scene is that it’s brought Zero’s vivid inner life back which I’d been concerned Hino had forgotten about in VKM 15. We can see that Zero’s still going through a lot of inner turmoil, and much of the VKM 9/10/12/13/14 themes return here. What’s ultimately frustrating is how resigned Zero seems to be to this status quo between him and Yuuki, and how little motivation he has to move it forward. Though hopefully the later scenes in this chapter are indications that he’s decided to move forward himself finally. 

A last note on this scene--I was quite happy to see Zero getting frustrated/angry with Yuuki here. All those filters he’s kept up for her all these years are starting to fail him in the aftermath of VKM 13, and he’s not going to be able to play the VKM 9 game anymore. I’m looking forward to the whole sham falling apart, hopefully soon. Then we can finally see the real Zero emerge and be himself again.

The Decision

Oh Graveyard Scene, How I Love Thee. Seriously, the graveyard scene is the best Zero scene yet in all of VKM. It doesn’t have a ridiculous appearance by fragment!Ichiru nor does it have Zero clinging to Ichiru’s grave like a puppy either--it’s a legitimate grave visit where a decision is clearly being made. And UGH! The staging! Is! Perfect! I cannot believe how well the subtext is conveyed via nontextual panels. But first, I’ll have to break down the two potential interpretations for this scene and then explain why I’m leaning toward one rather than the other.

So there are two possible directions Zero’s graveyard decision will go, and without VKM 17 and beyond there’s not enough evidence to say for certain. The two routes are as follows:

Route 1: Zero decides to give it a try - This route is more evident if you take the final scene of the chapter into consideration rather than from the graveyard scene itself. We can see Zero is brooding over something incredibly serious at the graveyard. When Maria comes upon him, she asks if he’s concerned about the Prince’s group. Zero’s answer tells us that, whatever he’s been thinking about, work isn’t the crux of the issue. The only other option at the moment is his relationship with Yuuki and her declaration. The only hint we get about what decision he’s come to regarding this is his vague “Is it okay?” line. “Is it okay?” can mean a whole host of things, but taken with the kiss at the end of the chapter, it could potentially mean that he’s asking Ichiru if it’s okay to finally take a step forward and try going for a real relationship with Yuuki by increasing their intimacy or he’s merely asking himself if it’s okay to finally take that step forward. In this scenario, the decision Zero has likely come to is that this is the last chance for Yuuki and him--if, after this, Yuuki can’t move forward, Zero will have to walk away. Thus his question here is likely to Ichiru and asking Ichiru if it’s okay for him to try this even if it will fail, thus making it impossible for Zero to fulfill Ichiru’s wish for him. This can be further supported by Zero’s reaction to Maria, where he is relieved that even if he fails with Yuuki, Maria’s still around to carry on Ichiru’s final wish to “live on and accomplish the goal.”

Route 2: Zero decides this is the end - Zero has a specific MO in the original series--when he’s about to make a drastic decision, he impulsively does something romantic to Yuuki. Usually the “drastic decision” involves potentially dying or leaving her in some way. We see this several times in the original series--when he’s going to confront Shizuka, he holds Yuuki’s hand and tells her she was the reason he was able to live on. When they part in Night 46, he kisses her and abandons her. In Night 87, he seduces her and kisses her only to send them back to status quo immediately after. I’ll get into Zero’s kiss at the end of VKM 16 more when I get to that section later on, but any time Zero suddenly attempts intimacy is a time to be suspicious as a reader, especially if there hasn’t been proper build up to it (which there was not in VKM 16′s last scene, which I’ll demonstrate in that section). On top of this little fact about Zero, we have the subtext lurking in the graveyard scene. It is a melancholy scene. The staging is melancholy, the shots are melancholy, the screentones are melancholy. Remember, this Zero (VKM’s Zero) already knows Ichiru exists inside him--there’s no real reason to be brooding at Ichiru’s grave when he has Ichiru’s fragment; this was already resolved back in Night 59. Yet Zero is clearly brooding here. Why would he be brooding when he’s contemplating moving his life forward with the woman he loves? That’s a really weird thing to brood about. Even if you were sad that Ichiru wouldn’t be there to celebrate your happiness with you, the sheer amount of weight and heaviness Hino gives to these panels doesn’t match with that being Zero’s only issue. I would suggest given all of this that the graveyard scene is actually Zero coming to a decision to end his relationship with Yuuki in some way, and that he’s silently asking Ichiru for forgiveness and permission to not fulfill Ichiru’s last wish. In this scenario, the “Is it okay?” line is about Zero asking Ichiru if it’s okay for him to not fulfill Ichiru’s wish, because he tried his hardest and it just isn’t working. 

Obviously, given how much I wrote above, I’m personally leaning toward Route #2 as the route Zero’s going to take coming up here in the future. I have a few reasons for that:

Maria asks Zero if he’s bothered about the Prince’s group, and the panel of Zero shades him in the melancholy screentone and he hesitates when agreeing that that “too” is something that bothers him. This could potentially be an indication that he knows something more about the Prince’s group--or is intending to do something more about the Prince’s group--than he’s letting Yuuki or anyone else know about. Potentially Zero’s about to do something life-threatening, like face the Prince entirely. Potentially Zero himself has received some kind of letter or invitation asking him to come alone. We have no idea how much time has passed between this scene and VKM 15′s events--enough time at least for results from the investigation to come back to Yuuki. 

Zero has a very bizarre reaction to Maria bringing up Ichiru’s last words (I don’t think she knows they’re Ichiru’s last words, it’s just that they’re eerily similar to what Ichiru said). Hino highlights his eye widening when Maria says this. Now, if he’s going to try to fulfill Ichiru’s wish a la Route #1 by moving forward with Yuuki, there’s no reason for him to have this kind of reaction to Maria--instead he’d just smile, like he does a panel later. But if he was intending not to fulfill Ichiru’s words, if he was intending to sacrifice himself or leave Yuuki because the relationship had failed, then Maria suddenly saying something reminiscent of Ichiru’s last words would shock Zero momentarily because it would be almost like a reproach--he’s running away from his duty. 

Zero seems comforted by Maria “taking on” the burden of Ichiru’s last wish, and his final line is wistful--why would he be wistful about the idea of someone carrying on his legacy if his plan was to knock Yuuki up per her request? His conversation with Maria seems to imply that he’s hoping Maria will carry on Ichiru’s legacy, and that Ichiru’s lucky he has someone who can (because presumably Zero isn’t going to be doing that for Ichiru or having someone carry on Zero’s legacy). 

What I see in this scene isn’t a man contemplating his potential for a happy future with the woman he loves. I see a man contemplating how his relationship has hit the end of the line and--whether due to throwing himself into work and potentially dying or merely using all of that as an excuse to end things with Yuuki--deciding that the relationship is never going to be anything more than it is and that it’s time to let it go. 

Now, obviously he doesn’t do anything like break up with Yuuki in this chapter, and I don’t think that’s his intention. We know from VKM 15 that he’s very concerned about her PTSD due to abandonment. Whatever he’s planning, he’s going to do it in a way that (he hopes) won’t trigger the PTSD. But I do believe the graveyard scene is him making a decision that they’ve reached the end of the line--and whether he’s going to at least try one last time or not, this is the end of this phase of their relationship. 

The Fissure

The final Zeki scene is rage-inducing, I swear. If I wasn’t still ticked at Zero about VKM 13, I’d be raging right now. As it is, I’m still pretty unhappy with the stunt Yuuki pulls on him in this scene, though I’m pleased with what I see coming from him.

Yuuki just cuts him and cuts him and cuts him without a care in the world in this scene. First, she jokes about how she’s “happy” that “someone” cares about his safety--digging up an issue that’s been lurking in the background since Zero’s reaction to Aidou’s concern for his wellbeing in VKM 12--that no one cares about Zero’s wellbeing. Then she compounds this by saying Maria cares about the things Zero cares about--meaning Yuuki doesn’t. Worse, she then freaking offers Maria to Zero! 

Zero rightfully gets pissed and makes it very clear that he thinks Yuuki’s attitude about this is insulting. I loved his retort to her--derisively asking if the reason she’s stayed by his side is only to say he should go find someone else. His frustration with their relationship and with being unvalued, unloved, and unwanted is really starting to show at last and it’s great to see. Even better is how he responds to Yuuki’s preposterous attempt at self-pity--he stonewalls her entirely and instead responds with a vague line about how his happiness has increased “tenfold.” Tenfold! What a ridiculous thing to say after your girlfriend has just told you to go date another girl! Worse, he’s not even looking at Yuuki when he says this, which is not how Zero operates when he’s being honest about his feelings (see VKM 1′s confession for the difference, and even in that one he was filtering for her). This is a classic move when you’re lying. It’s all clearly a load of bull, and Yuuki questions it. Zero then gives the second bullshit fake smile of the chapter and affirms he’s happy. 

So what the hell is going on here and how does it all fit in with my theory from the previous subsection that Zero intends to put an end to this? Well first of all, we have to keep in mind a few things Zero does in this scene which he hasn’t done since Night 89. First is that he stops putting up with Yuuki’s bullshit and starts mocking her. This is something he hasn’t done since they were equals and he wasn’t desperately waiting for her to deign to sleep with him. So something big has changed here, and it wasn’t Yuuki’s declaration because in the first scene of the chapter he was still playing the VKM 9 game. The change happens after the graveyard scene, not the first scene. 

Second, he questions her reason for staying by his side. This is another “what am I to you” question. He wants clarity on why she’s sticking to him if she just wants to throw him at other women. When Yuuki’s response is to descend into self-pity, he doesn’t indulge her anymore--instead he cuts her off and stops the pity fest. 

But still, his happiness line, even if it’s a lie, can be read as reassuring her of his love. But is it really? In light of the fact that it’s complete bollocks, I would say this line is less about Zero’s happiness and more about him closing up loose ends. This is the happiest he’ll ever be in his life--if he’s about to sacrifice himself in pursuit of the Vampire King, or if he’s intending to switch his focus to bringing Kaname back, or if he’s intending to find a way to end the Zeki relationship without activating Yuuki’s PTSD, then this is the best he can offer her without raising her suspicions. It’s not like a sudden love confession would be appropriate here; she might cotton on to whatever it is he’s about to do. He’s trying to communicate something to her here, but at the same time he’s not indulging her self-pity fests anymore--none of that implies he’s intending to move forward with her or stay with her permanently.

A boyfriend who wanted to move his relationship forward with his insecure girlfriend would have listened to her pity fest and reassured her that he wasn’t interested in anyone but her (which is clearly what she was hoping he’d do). But he doesn’t do any of that. If he’s not going to play the game with her anymore (the game they’ve played together for 70+ years), then something is over even if he’s not making it explicit yet. What that is, I don’t know. It could be anything at this point. I just know his reaction doesn’t seem at all positive for a Big Romantic Move, despite the kiss at the end (more on that in the final section). 

Yuuki - Deflection & Avoidance

I really don’t want to spend too much time on this person. She’s infuriating this chapter, and I’d rather dwell on the more positive things. Still, I’m grateful Hino confirmed for me that I’ve been correct in my interpretation of this character--she is a complete mess who needs to get herself sorted ASAP. It’s a relief to see Hino at least knows Yuuki’s a mess, but the real question is whether she knows how to fix the mess or not. Time will tell there.

As expected, the reason Yuuki was shocked about her declaration to Zero in VKM 15 wasn’t because she wanted to bear his children and wanted to move their relationship forward. She’s shocked by the realization that her declaration means she’ll have to be the one to bear his children, and she didn’t mean that at all. Worse, she tries to run away from owning the consequences of her request and basically forces Zero to placate her, which pisses me off to no end. 

Then she tries to cover for herself by paying some lip service to having a child with Zero being “special” and how she wants to consider it seriously, but we can tell by her reaction later in the chapter that this is complete hogwash. Honestly, I’ve never been so frustrated with a heroine in my life. She continually sinks lower than the low bar I set for her. It’s just not even amusing anymore. 

But we do have to address the final scene. Rather than giving serious thought to what she said about having a child with Zero, Yuuki’s first instinct is to shove Zero off on to some other girl. This shows quite clearly that she hasn’t given any serious thought to the situation at all. I mean honestly, Zero’s reaction is mild compared to what it should have been. One little snide comment is way nicer than Yuuki’s behavior deserves. She’s too busy pitying herself to see what he’s going through or to care about anything outside of her own insular wound-licking. 

Honestly, when she asked if Zero was really all right with her, I wanted to scream. The answer is clearly no. You are a shit girlfriend, a shit friend, and a shit person! Why Zero puts up with you I cannot remotely comprehend at this point, you offer literally nothing in the relationship and he does all the heavy lifting. For Pete’s sake. I really hope Hino moves Yuuki out of this pity party stage ASAP because the time for this is long over. Yuuki’s been feeling sorry for herself ever since Night 89 and at this point it’s not cute or understandable or precious at all. At some point you have to buck up and take control of your life no matter how many bad choices you’ve made or how many Twu Wubus you’ve lost. 

Well, the less said about this, the better. 

The Poem

I don’t have much to say about the poem, honestly, because there isn’t much context and I know Japanese poetry is tricky in general, so I’m not sure how reliable any of the translations are just due to the difficulty of poetic language in general. 

As far as I can tell, though, the poem is infuriating. It seems Yuuki’s under some bizarre assumption that she and Zero made a pact to lock their feelings for each other up and “entrust” them to the future, where they’ll “maybe” bloom into something. This is absolutely insane considering Zero’s trajectory throughout VKM and what he verbally says to Yuuki multiple times throughout the chapters. Yuuki has to be absolutely insane in order to believe that Zero ever agreed to lock up his feelings. VKM 5 is definitely not Zero locking up his feelings, nor are VKM 3 or 9 when he tries to talk to her about love. I have no idea how she got this idea into her head, but it’s frustrating as hell and I can’t wait to see it dispelled and the scales to fall from her eyes. 

The other infuriating thing about this is that Yuuki used Ai as an excuse not to move forward with Zero or address the problems between them. Given the state Ai’s in because of this, that was a shit move on Yuuki’s part. 

Ai - Burden & Forbearance

The Ai scene hurts me in so many ways that I wanted to throttle Yuuki when I read it. I’m so, so, so angry about what Yuuki has done to her daughter I don’t even have the words for it. Where do I even begin with this. 

This child, this precious bean, has suffered an unrequited love for over 50 years. An unrequited love that, by the way, her mother is completely aware of. This precious bean puts herself to sleep because she is tired after only 50 years of life. Talk about the archetype of the devouring mother--Yuuki has stolen her daughter’s whole future from her simply because she can’t figure her shit out with Zero. Ai cannot move on until Yuuki does. 

Worse, Yuuki’s sitting there next to her daughter who is clearly in pain to the point of putting herself to sleep to escape it and she has the nerve to ask Ai if it’s okay if she pretends Ai’s happy. The child is in pureblood stasis sleep which purebloods only do to stave off complete and utter misery. How the hell would you be able to think your precious daughter is happy in such a situation?!

Worse, worse, precious Ai wakes up and reassures her mother with a fatass lie. The child has to parent the mother. Being a Cancer zodiac sign, this makes me rage. 

On top of all this! Ai tells her mother that she’s happy but she’d be happier of her mother was happy too. Rather than telling Ai she’s happy, Yuuki just goes “oh, I see.” She doesn’t even reassure her daughter in return. Even if you want to argue that Yuuki’s spent 70 years boo hooing over her twu wubu being an ice cube, this is utterly ridiculous. Yuuki should at the very least be able to tell her daughter she’s happy. Instead, we have Ai lying to reassure her mother, and her mother not even trying to return the favor. 

The whole scene is infuriating, and that leads us into the last bit before hopefully VKM 17 will save us from all of this nonsense. 

Zeki - Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Before the Ai scene, we get something interesting from Zero and Yuuki--both of them lie to each other about their happiness. Zero says he’s happy, and Yuuki says she is too. Their body language, however, and the paneling and screentones used for them are clear indications that neither of them is telling the truth. The lies have reached the end of the line and neither of them will be able to keep them going anymore.

What’s interesting here is that Yuuki can lie to Zero but not to Ai. She doesn’t reassure Ai that she’s happy--she is truthful with Ai. With Zero, however, she does lie. And likely she lies because she senses the truth--that he’s slipping from her and she’s losing her grip on him. With Ai she doesn’t need to worry about that--Ai belongs to her by blood and can’t leave her. But Zero can and is starting to show signs that he just might. 

So then we come at last to the big scene of the chapter--the kiss. I will say upfront that this is the best kiss we’ve had since Night 87. It’s a beautiful kiss, well-drawn, and the lead up to it is perfect. There are two possible interpretations for the kiss, and they align with the two routes I mentioned above in the Zero section. At this point, both are valid:

Route #1: Testing the waters - If Route #1 is the way Hino’s going with Zero, then this scene is fairly simple--Zero is testing the waters to see if Yuuki’s finally ready to try moving forward with him. 

Route #2: Saying farewell - If Route #2 is the way we’re going, Zero is seeing how much he can get out of his last kiss with Yuuki because he has nothing to lose anymore. He doesn’t have to worry about her VKM 5 rejections anymore. He’s back in a Night 46 position. 

My personal take on this scene is that Route #2 is the way we’re going, and the reason I say this is because, much like with Kaname and Yuuki in Night 89, the context for the kiss in VKM 16 isn’t conducive to a romantic moment. Hino breaks it up a bit with Yuuki’s flashback, but if you remove the flashback you get this order of events:

Yuuki tells Zero to go find someone else.

Zero asks her if that’s the reason why she’s stayed with him.

Yuuki asks if things are really all right with her.

Zero doesn’t respond and instead says he’s happier than ever.

Yuuki asks if he’s happy.

Zero lies and says he is.

Yuuki lies and says she is too.

Zero kisses Yuuki. 

That is the context that leads up to the kiss. These two characters both mutually lied to each other (and know they mutually lied to each other) right on the heels of Yuuki telling Zero to find someone else. In essence, the answer to “thinking seriously” about having children together is: “Nope, not happening.” That’s not exactly the best lead up to a kiss. 

So I personally would rather have the kiss be a farewell kiss than a trial kiss because a trial kiss indicates Zero’s desperate and is pushing things, which is antithetical to his reaction to Yuuki throughout the earlier parts of the chapter. 

A final, major problem I have with the kiss is this: If Yuuki’s been capable of kissing Zero all along, why the hell has she been holding out even basic intimacy like this from him? I’m not saying she should sleep with him, but she could have at least given him some form of physical affection throughout the 70 years, even if they both mutually agreed to stop before anything erotic began. This has to be addressed because now PTSD is no longer an excuse for her.

It’s interesting that all her excuses (and the excuses fans give for her behavior) are being stripped away by the narrative. Makes me more hopeful we’ll get a legitimate atonement arc in the future. 

What The Future Brings

All that’s left now is for what’s coming next. It really depends on what direction Hino’s going to go with Zero. Yuuki mentioned this chapter that he has work right after this, which means he’ll be heading out for “work” after having kissed her. I suspect what we’ll get (assuming we pick up right here in VKM 17) is Zero pursuing the VKing leads he has while Yuuki’s on cloud nine at home thinking about the kiss. 

My personal speculation right now is that one of two things is going to happen over the course of VKM 17-18:

Zero is going to leave Yuuki at the end of VKM 18 for some reason.

Zero is going to find out something serious at the end of VKM 18 that’s going to change his relationship with Yuuki regardless of his intentions in VKM 16.

I think this is the end of this “phase” of the Zeki relationship. We’re about to enter a new phase, and the end of Volume 4 seems a great place for it. If Hino follows the classic Zeki pattern, any time she gives us something “good,” it’s right before all hell breaks loose. And honestly, this time I’m quite ready for hell to break loose. It’s been a long time coming. 

Until next time!

[ilovereadingandilovebreathing]

MScale (Part 1)

A/N: Wow okay, so this is a Soul Eater AU set in the Psycho-Pass universe that I wrote but never posted, and honestly I don’t know why. I really dig the idea and direction I was going with it, so let’s see how this goes. This will be a multi-chapter work.

Summary: There’s no rest for the wicked (or otherwise) when Death City is crawling with latent criminals. It’s Maka Albarn’s first day as an inspector at the Shibusen Madness Scale Law Enforcement Department, and what a first day it is.

Word Count: 2511

Genre: Psycho-Pass AU; Action, Drama

Characters/Pairings: Maka Albarn, Death the Kidd (Dean Kiddenger), Black*Star, Soul “Eater” Evans, Sid Barrett, Myra Nygus, Crona Gorgon, Giriko Sawyer, Angela (mention of Mifune and Arachne)/None in this chapter

Warnings: Violence (threats with a knife and description of death by explosion [if you’ve seen Psycho-Pass, you know what I mean, if not, I don’t go into much detail, no worries]), minor character death, hostage situation

“Oh man oh man I’m going to be late!” A petite girl wove between masses of towering (over her, anyway) pedestrians; her blonde pigtails flew behind her when she finally broke free of the hoards and took off at a sprint.  “Excuse me, pardon me, sorry-Whoa!!” Grabbing a pair of silver handles just before her face had an unfortunate encounter with spotless glass, Maka Albarn sighed with relief when big black characters declaring “Shibusen Madness Scale Law Enforcement Department” met her eyes instead. Righting herself, she threw the door open and attempted to speed through the lobby unnoticed, pulling up only when a skull-faced security droid requested her identification. "Oh, here-" She whipped out her newly commissioned PDA2400 and flashed her ID.

 "Authorization Confirmed: Albarn, Maka. Your presence is requested in building 3, level 8, hall 5, security desk 12, belonging to the Enforcement of Autonomy through Technology Division."

 "Thank-" She paused, realizing a drone likely didn't register appreciation, so she merely tightened her signature pigtails and pressed forward.

After nearly 10 whole minutes of wrong halls and desks, Maka finally strode toward number 12, trying to keep her assurance about her. 

 "Um..." Well, that went... "Is this the EAT Security desk?"

 A raven haired man with brilliant golden eyes peered over his clipboard, his eyes narrowing as he flipped through the pages. 

 "You must be the new inspector....Albarn...Maka, correct?"

 "Yes, Maka Albarn." She straightened her shoulders, declaring her name with a stable tone. 

 "Albarn, huh?..." He muttered to himself. It could be a coincidence... "Dean Kiddenger. You may address me as Inspector Kiddenger. Now if you'll follow me this way..." He gestured down the off-white hallway. Following him like a newly domesticated animal, she nearly bumped into him when he suddenly stopped in front of an automatic glass door. "This-" He withdrew an identification card from his pocket, slid it through the registration slot, and ushered her inside. "Is our headquarters, so to speak. At least, for our unit of The Enforcement of Autonomy through Technology Division. You, myself, and our subordinates will work here."

 "Our-" Before she could get the question out, he was leading her to the side of the room.

 "Your station is here." He pointed to a small desk with a flat screen computer. "Any and all assignments will be delivered to your desk or sent instantly to your personalized Shibusen messaging inbox. Assignment reports are due no later than 24 hours after the mission is completed and all Madness Scale Detection Guns are returned to their proper dock. Assignments that do not fit the proper formatting as outlined in form-" 

 "FID 1-M, Form of Inspector Duties, section one, subsection M, of the Shibusen Madness Scale Law Enforcement Division handbook."

 He paused, his stare neutral as he observed her from behind his clipboard. Her mossy eyes glimmered, though she bit her lip a bit, realizing that she might have overstepped her bounds already...

 "It's nice to find that the academy was successful in training at least one knowledgeable recruit." The faintest shadow of a smile nearly graced his lips as he continued. "Seeing as you likely know anything else I might tell you, I will save both of us the time and trouble. Now, we will proceed to-" 

 A screeching blare sounded from a black box attached to the man'a hip, prompting a frown from him and a grimace from his new charge.

 "It seems we are needed. Kiddenger, Identification Code 4242564. Speak." Putting his ear to a small speaker, the elder inspector attentively absorbed the transmission, ending with a terse, "Yes, we'll be right down." 

 "It seems, Miss-....Inspector Albarn, that our assistance is needed in pursuit of a newly detected latent criminal."

 "So soon?  I mean, not that I'm not excited to jump into the job so quickly, I just....it seems so sudden."

 "Yes, well, we are a bit short on manpower as of late. We don't normally commission new recruits so soon, but your scores and overall progress and knowledge seem to show that you are prepared. Now, follow me to the preparation quarters and we will do a brief run down before we meet the rest of the team."

 ~

 "This-" Inspector Kiddenger placed his hands around a bulky gun, a large skull imprinted on the side. His eyes glowed white as the gun authenticated him. "Is your Madness Scale Detection gun, also called the “MSD” or “Demon” guns. They’re controlled by the Spartoi system. I trust you received lessons in the academy?"

 "Yes...briefly, but I caught on quickly." 

 "Good. Now, as a reminder, the gun decides whether or not someone is a criminal to be subdued. The gun reads the Madness Scale of whomever it pointed at and will only unlock the trigger if the target is a latent criminal. The level of depravity determines the level of enforcement. Another reminder: Only Inspectors may use guns on Enforcers, not the other way around, because they are, in fact, latent criminals."

 Her mossy eyes widened a bit as Maka pondered the implication. She knew, of course, what, or who, really, Enforcers were, but she never thought she'd meet them so soon, or that she would ever need to use a gun on one of them...

 "Get your gun. The Enforcers should be here-" He was cut off as a massive shadow overtook the transparent door a few yards away. "Now."

 The door slid open, and a group of five, led by a dark-headed woman with a bandaged face who must have been their supervising inspector, slowly filtered into the room and gathered their respective gear.

 "These are the Enforcers." The lead inspector nodded to the silent woman, hardly bothering to lower his voice. "They are neither human nor animal, but some fine-line creatures that dwell in between. They are not as spotless as you or I, their Madness Scales having been thrown off balance long ago, but they have been deemed redeemable only through their abilities and knowledge, granting them whatever significant value to this system." 

 "I-I see..."

 "Oooo Kiddo brought us some fresh meat!" A raucous tone declared. Maka soon identified the owner as an azure-haired muscle-head of a man; he approached her confidently, gun in hand as he looked her over. "Hmmm not bad, Kiddo, though she's a little...'small up north,' if you-OW!" He was cut off when another enforcer, a sizable man with cornrows, delivered a healthy slap to the back of his head, making him see stars. 

 "That's enough from you, punk." He grumbled. "Show the lady some respect. She's our new handler, after all." 

 "Indeed." Kiddenger broke in, shooting a disdainful glare at the loud mouth. "For today, Black*Star," He pointed to the now sheepish brawn for Maka's reference. "And Sid." He gestured to the towering figure. "Will come with me. Soul and Crona, you're with Inspector Albarn."

 "All right, team, let's do this!!" Black Star thundered, pounding out the door as the other two men followed behind him. 

 "Well..." Maka turned, finding herself face-to-face with a set of the palest blue eyes she'd ever seen. "I'm Maka Albarn," She chirped. "And you're..." 

 "Uh...um, C-Crona G-G-Gorgon..." The robin egg irises shied from her gaze. 

 "And you-" 

 "Hey, Kidd and the others left like a full minute ago." A growling tone bit off. "We'll save intros for later, we need to get a move on." Silvery locks brushed past her, and she barely caught sight of flashing scarlet as the rough-throated figure breezed past her.

 "Right, sorry....Soul?" She jogged after him, Crona trailing behind, his gun facing the floor. "So, where are we going, exactly?"

 "Check your SPDA. You should've been sent the information as soon as we were assigned." 

 Flipping open her device, Maka found a briefing message awaiting her. Scrolling through, she picked out the general details and area of pursuit. 

 Target Name: Giriko Sawyer

Occupation: Pest Control Technician

Affiliation: Arachnaphobia Pest Control Services (Currently Under Surveillance)

Status: Targets condition detected by street scanners when he was on his lunch break. Never returned to his post. His last detection indicated that his Madness Scale Ratio was unbalanced at 30:70.

 "The target's name is... Giriko... weird... okay, scanners not too far from here just picked up his readings. Let's go!" She took off at run, adrenaline feeding her elation as she lead her team to their mission field.

 ~

 "Let's see..." Maka stood at the crossroads of two alleyways, trying to pinpoint which of her three options was their best bet. "Left leads deeper into the city...right leads toward the residential district...straight leads to the business sector...."

 "He went right." Soul interjected.

 Maka stalled. "How do you know?...That...natural instinct for sniffing out depravity?" She snuck a glance at the rather tall man poised in front of her; his face was stoic. Despite what the senior inspector had said, he looked pretty human to her...though his eyes...

 He merely nodded to the right, indicating a discarded uniform hanging from a fruit crate. "Briefing said he works at Arachnophobia Pest Control, right?" 

 Blushing a bit, Maka followed the pair as they slowly moved forward. "Soul?"

 "Yeah?" He grunted, angling toward her with a raised brow as they crept forward.

 "What did it mean, in the mission update, when it said that Arachnophobia is under surveillance?"

 "That place has churned out a handful of employees with MScale imbalances. Giriko is the third this year. Some team from Shibusen is keeping tabs on the place to see if they can pinpoint the cause."

 "I see..." She started a bit when her PDA rang out with a mission update.

 "H-he took a hostage." Crona stuttered out, his brows creased. "A k-kid...a little girl n-named Angela. What'll we do now, Soul?" 

 "What we're already doing. Track the guy down and wait for the Demon guns to tell us what to do with the scumb-" 

 A dark, lurching figure emerged from around an apartment building about a block ahead of them.  A high-pitched little voice cried out indignantly. "You better let me go! You're gonna be sorry you took me! My daddy knows how to fight, and he'll kick your stupid butt with his big sword! He'll cut your guts ou-"

 "Shaddup!" The man hollered, suddenly spinning around and pinning the child against the wall, a knife angled toward her tiny throat. "One more peep from you and I'll slice right through that windpipe of yours, ya hear?!" 

 The child's words clogged in her throat, her brown eyes wide in recognition. "M-Mister...Gir-?"

 "Hey!" Maka cried, charging forward even as Crona and Soul grasped at her to keep quiet. "Let her g-"

 "Stop right there or she dies!" Giriko demanded, pulling the child in front of him as a human shield, the knife still at her throat. 

 "Crap." Soul muttered from behind her.

 "Hey, you! Alla you! Drop your guns, now! Or she dies!" 

 Throwing a glance behind the man, Maka slowly lowered her gun, signaling for the other two to do the same. 

 Detecting her subtle movement, the criminal peered over his shoulder. "The hell you-" 

 "AAHH!" Maka, her weapon raised and activated, charged at the man full force, gun pointed to his forehead. 

 "Target's MScale Ratio: 25:75. Now activating: sin erasing exec-." 

 "No you don't!" The man released the girl long enough to spin around and kick the gun from Maka's hands, a triumphant grin on his features. "Now you're in for it, Missy!" He bellowed, grabbing the girl in one arm and the inspector in the other. Laughing hysterically, he muttered, "There ain't no way I'm spendin' my life in one of those isolation rooms. I'm takin' both of you with me, and you'll be my pretty little-"

 "-20:80. Now activating: sin erasing execution."

 A roar shattered the air, and nothing was left of the man but scattered carnage and a pool of blood. Turning, Maka sighed with relief when she saw Kiddenger lowering his gun, Black Star and Sid looking on behind him.

 Turning toward the little girl at her side, Maka started, "It's gonna be okay, swee-" She froze at the petrified look on the child's face; her tiny body trembled violently, her big brown eyes wide and watering. Bending down, Maka took the child into her embrace, rocking her as the girl murmured, "He…he w-worked w-with my d-addy...he...t-tried to k-k-" She exploded into sobs, gripping onto the woman as tears poured from her eyes. 

 "It's gonna be okay now, sweetie." Maka soothed, lifting the child into her arms as she turned to her team. "Everything's gonna be okay."

 ~

 "H-How's she doing?" Crona asked a few hours later, coming up beside Maka as she watched the child from behind a two-way mirror. 

 "I think she'll be okay, eventually. Her madness scale took a hit after all that, but she's still a kid. They bounce back pretty well."

 "I'll say...."

 "Hey."

 Soul poked his head in the door. "Kidd needs to talk to us." 

 In the conference room, Inspector Kiddenger and a spectacled lady Maka recognized as the Head Inspector, Yumi  Azusa, sat at the head of a lengthy table.

 "Inspector Albarn." Azusa began, her tone and her eyes the same cold steel. "Inspector Kiddenger has informed me that you took....unnecessary and highly dangerous risks during your recent mission." 

 "I-" 

 "You threw yourself at a latent criminal, allowed him to de-arm you and take you into his custody, correct?"

 "Well, only-" 

 "Y-Yes, M-Ma'am,” Crona cut in, blushing when all eyes were on him. “Ah-she did, but-" 

 "She believed, though incorrectly, that her actions would allow her to free the hostage, even at a personal cost to herself."

 "B-but-"

 "Inspector Albarn, I understand that you are new here, but such actions cannot be taken. The risk posed to the hostage and to yourself-"

 "But, ma'am, um...Chief Azusa,” Maka started. “We both made it out alive and safe, save for some blood stains, and my MScale was completely unaffected."

 That froze the room for a moment.

 Sighing, the other woman rose and assented, “Very well. Since you are new and your qualifications are exemplary, you will be pardoned with minor probationary action this one time. I expect a full and detailed report to be sitting on my desk by 5:30pm tomorrow, understood?"

 "Yes ma'am."

 ~

 "Wow." Soul deadpanned as the trio strode back to the observation room. "She's never gone that light on anybody. She must really be impressed with you." 

 Maka merely hummed in reply as she went in to interact with Angela.

 "She's...different, Soul." Crona commented as they watched her bright eyes and sweet smile as she spoke with the recovering child. "I...I can't believe she wasn't tainted at all...even after that guy threatened her..."

 Soul merely grunted in reply, his flashing gaze still locked on the outlandish inspector who was his newly assigned owner.

 "B-but I'm glad she's here...A n-new face isn't s-so bad..."

 "Yeah, let's just hope that we don't end up babysitting her more than she monitors us."

 The older Enforcer turned on his heel, heading for his quarters to do a little investigating of his own.

[ohioprelawland]

First Shot Of USWNT Suit Blocked

By Vincent Lucarelli, The Ohio State University, Class of 2021

May 12, 2020

On May 1, the Central District Court of California ruled the United States Women’s National Soccer Team would not see their equal pay suit go to trial, in the case of Alex Morgan et al v. United States Soccer Federation Inc.

The team, who won their second straight FIFA World Cup in France last summer, initially filed the suit in March of 2019,alleging the fact their counterpart men’s squad is being paid more is a violation of the Equal Pay Act.The women also made additional allegations that the United States Soccer Federation was discriminating against them in other ways like giving them inferior travel accommodations.  

The Equal Pay Act dates from 1963 when President Kennedy added it as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Section 6(d)(1) of the amendment, begins by stating “No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate…. between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees…at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex.”[i]This set a precedent that has had its share of ups and downs in court throughout history.

For example, in the case of Rizo v. Yovino, Fresno County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 that it was in fact a violation of the Equal Pay Act for Fresno County Public Schools to have a policy in which new hires were paid the same salary as their last job plus 5%.[ii]Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s majority opinion at the time focused on how “salaries speak louder than words” and how basing one’s current salary on prior salary only continues to perpetuate the gender pay gap. This was a major win for equal pay advocates but Reinhardt died before the decision was published and the Supreme Court later invalidated the 6-5 decision by ruling that his vote could not be counted. [iii]

More recently, in 2020, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a law meant to close the wage gap that was passed in the city of Philadelphia, making it illegal for employers to look into a prospective employee’s wage history at all in

Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia v. City of Philadelphia.[iv]

These two cases are a good example of how this fight for equal pay has had its share of setbacks (for good reasons or not) but often there is some give and take depending on how certain aspects are interpreted.

The soccer team’s case takes on a different hue because of the presence of a thorny issue—collective bargaining. Judge R. Gary Klausner, who wrote the majority decision in the women’s case,cited terms from a collective bargaining agreement that was agreed upon in 2017—one that midfielder and outspoken voice Megan Rapinoe stated the Women’s Nation Team Players Association should be proud of[v]—as the reasons for his judgement. More specifically, Klausner stated the women’s team chose to forgo higher bonuses in exchange for other benefits such as being able to have more players under contract and they cannot now state after the fact, that the were not treated fairly as that is what they agreed to at the time.[vi]

Over the years,collective bargaining has come to be associated with what is often referred to as the “Factors Other than Sex Defense.”[vii] This moniker takes its name from the sentence that ends the previously mentioned section 6(d)(1) of the original Equal Pay Act. That sentence rounds out the original “No employer shall discriminate…” statement cited above by saying that “factors other than sex” can be exceptions to the rules that are outlined in the Act.

The Act lists a seniority system, a merit system,and a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production as possible exceptions.i The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Compliance Manual, which dates from 2000, goes into greater detail by listing in its section 10 on “Compensation Discrimination” ten additional “defenses” that could be identified as “factors other than sex” and collective bargaining is one of them.[viii]The U.S. Soccer Federation has claimed as defenses several of these listed factors over the past year including differences in revenue production,[ix] and the idea of a merit system stemming from the fact that the women received greater aggregated pay since they played more and higher tier matches than the men.  

Sticking with collective bargaining though, specific cases in which the issue of a collective bargaining agreement has come in conflict with the Equal Pay Act are few in comparison to some of the other factors listed. In point of fact, Title 29, Chapter XIV, section 1620.23 of the Code of Federal Regulations (entitled “Labor”) explicitly states “Any and all provisions in a collective bargaining agreement which provide unequal rates of pay in conflict with the requirements of the EPA are null and void and of no effect.”[x] The EEOC manual echoes the language of Title 29. Moreover, deeper in the original Equal Pay Act, it states “No labor organization…. representing employees of an employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall cause or attempt to cause such an employer to discriminate against an employee in violation of paragraph (1) of this subsection.”Paragraph 1, of course in this case refers to the original “No employer shall discriminate on the basis of sex” section.

As a statement of facts,the verbiage in these laws contradicts what Judge Klausner wrote in his decision. According to the documents mentioned above, the terms of a CBA cannot be a defense against unequal pay. Even then Molly Levinson, a spokesperson for the women’s camp, claimed in a tweet published May 9, that the women only accepted the 2017 CBA because the U.S. Soccer Federation would not discuss equal pay, and they then accepted the best deal possible. [xi]

At the same time, if US Soccer does not want to follow this path laid by Klausner and instead wants to stick to a defense like the one they provided in a statement following initial allegations of discrimination in March 2019--stating that differences in pay related to differences in revenue produced by each team--“they might be able to justify this.”vi In saying this, EEOC manual cites Byrd v. Ronayne, a 1995 case decided in the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found a male lawyer was justified in receiving higher pay because he generated more revenue for his firm. That case that has many similarities to the case between soccer teams in question here and, in short, this all illustrates the multiple ways in which the “Factors Other than Sex Defense” can be applied by U.S. Soccer.  

The women filed an appeal on May 8.

________________________________________________________________

[i]The Equal Pay Act of 1963. (1963). Retrieved from U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Statutes website: https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963

[ii]Chappell, B. (2018, April 10). The Equal Pay Act of 1963. Retrieved from National Public Radio website: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/10/601096889/women-cant-have-prior-salaries-used-against-them-court-says-in-equal-pay-case

[iii]ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT (18–272). (2019, February 25). Retrieved from The Supreme Court of the United States website: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-272_4hdj.pdf

[iv]Grossman, J. (2020, February 11). A Win for Equal Pay: The Third Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds A Law Designed to Address Wage Gap. Retrieved from Justia website: https://verdict.justia.com/2020/02/11/a-win-for-equal-pay-the-third-circuit-court-of-appeals-upholds-a-law-designed-to-address-wage-gap

[v]Hays, G. (2017, April 5). U.S. Soccer, women's national team ratify new CBA. Retrieved from ESPN website: https://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/story/_/id/19082314/us-soccer-women-national-team-ratify-new-cba

[vi]Gardner, E. (2020, May 4). In U.S. Soccer Ruling, Judge Shows Why "Equal Pay" Can Be Elusive. Retrieved from Hollywood Reporter website: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/us-soccer-ruling-judge-shows-why-equal-pay-can-be-elusive-1293066

[vii]CLOSING THE “FACTOR OTHER THAN SEX” LOOPHOLE IN THE EQUAL PAY ACT. (2011, April 4). Retrieved from National Women's Law Center website: https://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/4.11.11_factor_other_than_sex_fact_sheet_update.pdf

[viii]EEOC Compliance Manual: Section 10 Compensation Discrimination. (2000, December 5). Retrieved from United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-10-compensation-discrimination#N_74_

[ix]U.S. Soccer Formally Denies Claims of Gender Discrimination in Response to USWNT. (2019, May 7). Retrieved from Sports Illustrated website: https://www.si.com/soccer/2019/05/07/us-soccer-uswnt-lawsuit-gender-discrimination-equal-pay-response

[x]Electronic Code of Federal Regulations: Title 29. (2014). Retrieved from Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute website: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/29/1620.23

[xi]O'Mard, M. (2020, May 9). USWNT Appeals Dismissal Of Equal Pay Lawsuit Vs. U.S. Soccer Federation . Retrieved from New England Sports Network website: https://nesn.com/2020/05/uswnt-appeals-dismissal-of-equal-pay-lawsuit-vs-u-s-soccer-federation/

[katebushwick]

INTRODUCTION

In 2011 I published The Sociology of Architecture, since which time I have come to regret somewhat the book's title. In place of the definitive article – the The – I increasingly feel that an indefinite ‘A’ would have been more appropriate, or perhaps that the plural Sociologies should have featured somewhere, in place of the singular Sociology. Although this issue does not exactly keep me awake at night, it is fair to say that should I be writing this book now, the title would be different, and quite possibly less assuredly disciplinary.

This rather self-indulgent opening is intended to hint at the relatively wide scope of what can meaningfully be considered cultural sociological analyses of architecture, which by now is a growing, and intellectually vibrant, field of inquiry. Throughout this chapter I hope to communicate the insights that have emerged as a result of what broadly could be understood as sociological engagements with architecture.1 Thanks to the socially meaningful nature of architecture's material form – not to mention the production and reception of such – and its associated entanglements with both ‘everyday’ and out-of-the-ordinary practices alike, architecture presents a beguiling area of study for those interested in social order and sense-making social action. Additionally it would seem that sociologists are well equipped to research the specific ways in which buildings and the spaces between them are, to coin a phrase, socially produced. However, this is a deceptively challenging terrain of study, replete with a number of pitfalls, some of which are also considered here.

So, there is polemic intent in this chapter. On the one hand, I hope to encourage sociologists to contribute more research insights about architecture, and, on the other, am keen to share the recently widened scope of resources available to sharpen such inquiry. In general I make a case for the necessity of theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded studies, attentive to the specificity of architecture as a form of cultural production, and the social contexts in which it is embedded/from which it emerges. The chapter is organised in such a way so as to provide those who may be interested in pursuing this research agenda with the major reference points (at least as I see them). By surveying a hundred or so of the key academic contributions to the debate, the chapter aims to allow for the emergence of some generalities of sociological approaches to the study of architecture and the built environment.

Following this Introduction, the first section of the chapter briefly unpacks the assumptions that underpin the subsequent organisation of the research literature. Highlighting some of the perils associated with such exercises in ‘canon-formation’, sociology – and, to a lesser extent, cultural sociology and architecture – are frames that inform the rest of the chapter. The remaining sections are concerned with an analytical review of the rapidly expanding sociological research literature addressing architecture. This amounts to a necessarily fleeting overview of some of the key academic research contributions – primarily published books, articles, and chapters – that constitute landmarks in a (cultural) sociology of architecture. Three subsections act as a rough-and-ready typology that divide3 these circa one hundred pieces into: (i) those sociological contributions that have positioned architecture as reflective of major political, economic, and cultural shifts; (ii) ethnographic studies of architecture as a profession/practice; and (iii) analysis of human-built environment interactions (inspired, to a greater or lesser extent, by Science and Technology Studies). This division of the research literature is proposed for present purposes only, and to organise the wide and varied existing research on architecture that is sociological in character.

A LOADED CANON?

Garry Stevens has suggested it would take just one day to read sociological research contributions focused on architecture (1998: 12). This was probably more or less true when he wrote his ground-breaking architectural-sociological book The Favored Circle – on which much more later – but the intervening fifteen or so years have seen this research landscape significantly expanded. While not presenting as small a sub-field of knowledge production as mainstream sociological activity (understood for example relative to the numbers of scholars working on the topic, national association study groups, publications, major funding bids, or taught courses), there is a vibrant community of academic sociologists addressing architecture either directly or in more en passant ways. Significant insights have, been garnered from this research; before discussing what I consider to be some of the landmark classic and contemporary sociological theories and studies in this tradition, I want to make some initial observations concerning the task of representing such.

When seeking to articulate the range of sociological studies of architecture that have been carried out to date, one quickly becomes entangled in a series of thorny issues pertaining to disciplinary boundaries and canonisation. As the aim here is to sketch out the contours of sociological engagements with architecture, there is a need to say at least a few words about the rationales that guide the inclusion of some contributions (and, by extension, saw the exclusion of some others).

If we start from the perspective that disciplines, including, but not limited to, sociology, act primarily as ‘flags of convenience’ under which we sail when researching, teaching, and studying, then the problem of defining precisely what a sociological approach to the study of architecture is recedes to a secondary concern, with what research is called or who is doing it having less significance than what is being done. If adopting this pluralistic understanding of sociology as a discipline, we are in danger of tilting at a windmill, inasmuch as we are using an ill-defined approach to address an amorphous topic. Under these circumstances such an extremely broad range of things can be understood as ‘sociologies of architecture’, and one could question the clarity added by the label, such a, critique of disciplinary frontiers also makes writing a chapter like this almost impossible …).

If, on the other hand, if we start from the perspective that disciplines remain intellectually meaningful, either because they define a systematic set of theories and methods that underpin inquiry, standing proxy for a particular ‘way of seeing’, then the question of what a sociology of architecture adds to our understanding of architecture takes on some import.2 However, while operating with stricter threshold criteria for ‘sociology’ – perhaps defined by a particular set of theories, methods, or combinations thereof – may promise clarification, it also necessarily contains so many arbitrary factors as to be inherently contestable: is sociology to be defined as research carried out by those working in sociology departments? Or perhaps research produced by those working outside of these institutional settings but drawing more or less significantly on sociologists’ frameworks or approaches? Should discussion be limited to articles published in sociology journals, or open to the rather more numerous interdisciplinary engagements, addressing, for example, cities and urban form? Et cetera, et cetera.

My approach here tends towards the former, more permissive, alternative in most counts; in terms of this chapter, such a stance makes more possible the inclusion of a wide range of published contributions and discussions that have added much to – or drawn meaningfully from – sociological understandings of architecture and the built environment. Still, canon-forming exercises like the one you are reading now must proceed with much care in ensuring that representations are reflective of the fact that the academic sociological community is a disparate and diverse one.3

Also reflective of a rather lenient approach to disciplinary boundaries, I have understood cultural sociology in just one sense of the term, that is, to mean encompassing sociological analysis of architecture as an inherently ‘cultural’ form (so bound up with meaning-making in its social production and use). While this approach – associated less with a ‘strong programme’ of cultural sociology – ostensibly gives latitude, in what follows, I embark on the research-landscaping task fully aware that such a fuzzy approach to disciplinary boundaries will not be to everyone's liking and that my approach remains contingent on some relatively arbitrary lines of demarcation, while being safe in the knowledge that any single chapter like this will not do justice to the depth of insights contained in the contributions I discuss. With these initial caveats in place, what are some of the landmark contributions that sociologists have made to our understanding of architecture?

ARCHITECTURE, MEANING, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Robert Gutman, for much of his career a Professor of Sociology working in the Architecture School at Princeton, is a key figure in architectural-sociology, who developed systematic sociological inquiry into the ways in which architects and their buildings are implicated in the design of buildings that are often positioned so as to symbolise major civilisational shifts (1968; 1972; 1988; 1992; 2007). Gutman's long-standing interest was in structural accounts of the architectural profession's relationship to broader social relations, and his path-breaking research led him to observe that:

Rare is the building not designed by an architect that represents the supreme values of a civilization. This has been true for temples, palaces, libraries, and city halls in Greece, Rome, and Europe during the Renaissance, and for museums, university buildings, and corporate headquarters more recently. The design of great seminal monumental buildings is the unique province of architecture, its ’natural market’ which he observed. (1992: 40)

Gutman's starting point was to position architecture vis-à-vis the culturally, politically, and economically powerful and to understand buildings as reflective of the broader sets of social arrangements from which they emerge. It is this general approach that informs the contributions of the first group of sociologists, who in their varied analyses have approached ‘famous’ landmark buildings as cultural reflections of broader cultural and/or political-economic trends. Much of this type of research has emerged as a result of sociologists seeking to engage with architectural forms as materialisations of social dynamics or phenomena that they have elsewhere pursued analysis of. Accordingly, much of this research is theoretically motivated and tends towards generalised accounts of the built environment rather than close empirical engagement.

In this tradition of inquiry could be mentioned Jürgen Habermas’ (1989) engagement with architecture, which formed a chapter-length contribution to his wider analysis of the ‘philosophical discourse of modernity’. Habermas situates architecture relative to this theory of modernity and postmodernity, exploring the potential of a recovery of the potential of a less rationalised and technocratic modern architecture movement (and in the process critiquing the ‘conservatism’ he sees as inherent in ostensibly radical architectural moves associated with postmodernism). Similarly, Ulrich Beck's analysis of the ‘City of Or’ (in Democracy Without Enemies) interrogates what he sees as the increasing reflexivity of architects relative to identity politics and public representations of culture (1999). Another major figure of European social theory, Göran Therbon, has published on the built environment, with particular reference to the 19th-century state-led projects that saw major cities and capitals become sites of political celebration and expression (2002). In this important article Therbon draws particular attention to the proliferation of statues and other designed elements in the European urban built environment in the 19th century. Also perhaps worthy of mention in the context of theoretically motivated analyses of architecture vis-à-vis major political shifts is an article that Gerard Delanty and I published that sought to tease out the ways in which the political project of European identity-building was implicating and imbricating architectural production and the built environment more widely (Delanty and Jones, 2002).

While these theoretical accounts of architecture have illuminated much, it is fair to say that such research tends towards broad-sweep analysis of the ways in which architects and their built productions get drawn into cultural and political claims regarding the definition of the situation. Arguably, the type of work addressed above is less than attentive to the embedded practices through which architecture becomes culturally meaningful in a specific context. And, to generalise the formulation that architectural theorist and urbanist Anthony Vidler (1991) develops in his discussion of the French Revolution, cultural sociologists should arguably be concerned less with finding a definitive, essential, style of a given social context and more with studying the practical roles of architects and the uses of architecture during a given socio-cultural period.

Next, a group of scholars have done just this, namely studied empirically the specificities of the ways in which states have deployed architects and architecture in periods of political change. Evgeny Dobrenko is a representative if this group; his book The Political Economy of Socialist Realism (2007) is an exemplar of research sensitised to the nuances of architectural production that takes place under the auspices of state-led cultural projects. Dobrenko, a Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Sheffield, addresses architecture's practical deployment – which can of course be symbolic – at the interface of culture, economy and politics.4 Dobrenko argues that socialist realist architecture was not simply a way of aestheticising an economic movement, and so a case where architectural meaning could be ‘read off’ economic organisation, but rather that architectural production – alongside literature, films, photography, and other forms – was a key site of the practical production of the socialist project itself. By pursing this analysis Dobrenko understands architecture as a culturally distinctive form of representational politics with a reality-making quality. Similarly, Architecture, Power and National Identity ([1992] 2000), Lawrence J. Vale's definitive study of parliament buildings (capitols) in post-colonial contexts, is particularly interested in those architectural sites that are mobilised as part of broader political attempts to reposition states relative to internal and external publics. For Vale, crucial political questions in the design of parliaments often centre on which architectural style should be chosen and what buildings mean; in his analysis these controversies often serve as proxies for struggles concerning whose identity should be represented publicly. Vale traces a number of disputes in post-colonial contexts – including Papua New Guinea, Brazil, India, and Sri Lanka – where the formal architecture of government is bound up with cultural representations of social pasts and futures, collective identities, and the role of the nation in the world; in Vale's account parliament architecture is inextricably bound up with the question of the nation.

Similarly, in her research on the uses of modernist architecture in the Turkish Republic (published as an illuminating book entitled Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic) Sibel Bozdo˘gan has explored the ways in which the commission of highly rationalised architectural form saw the coterminous rejection of a vernacular Ottoman revivalism. Rather than reducing the state commission of European modernist architects to a colonial cultural politics, Bozdo˘gan skilfully draws together the political contingencies and aesthetic struggles internal to architecture that were articulated into political meanings (also see Bozdo˘gan's more recent co-authored book – 2012, with Esra Akcan – Turkey: Modern Architectures in History, which provides a definitive architectural-historical treatment of modernism in Turkey). Anthony D. King is a prominent sociologist who also addresses colonialism and architecture, associated with the colonial period when the built environment of capital cities reflected much of their status as quasi-global administrative, political, and economic centres (1976). King artfully addresses the ways in which negotiations between pasts and futures, the mobility and incorporation of ‘foreign’ architectural patterns, and the cultural inter-relationship and influences centre on the built environment (King also edited the classic volume entitled Buildings and Society (1984), which drew together essays focused on the relationship between 19th-century disciplinary institutions – such as the school, the prison, and the factory – and architectural development).

Looming large in all these accounts is the question of how and what architecture comes to mean. In my opinion, an under-read and under-cited book on this question is Architecture and Its Interpretation by Juan Pablo Bonta (1979), which provides a masterful empirically grounded illustration of the contested social processes through which buildings come to acquire social meanings. In this study Bonta shows the ways in which a ‘collective plagiarism’ – or perhaps collusion? – between architects, theorists, critics, and students underpins agreement on meanings and values within the architectural field; he argues that powerful critics have the capacity to define meanings and values therein. Foreshadowing the Bourdieu-inspired engagements discussed below, Bonta analyses how ‘the meaning of architecture can be removed – and sometimes even dissociated – from what architecture actually is’ (1979: 14, emphasis in original). Researching empirically how architectural styles come to be attributed with social meanings over and above the actual built form, Bonta shows how the development of symbolic associations is contingent on collectivised judgements that architects – and others in the field – attach to buildings and styles and disseminate via review, critique, and teaching.

Approaches such as Bonta's examine the social judgements that exist around the built object itself, critiquing the tendency for the judgement of the critic to be obscured at the very point that they make arbitrary pronouncements of architectural value. The arbitrary, judgements of critics are made clearly visible in Bonta's analysis of the initially muted reception and subsequent celebration of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion at the Barcelona Expo in 1929, a case study that illustrates his wider point about the relative power of voices within the architectural field. Focusing on the reviews of critics published in the international architectural press, Bonta shows how influential critics’ retrospective judgements contributed to this initially unremarked-upon structure becoming widely considered a modernist masterpiece. Through studying the creation of ‘architectural orthodoxy’, Bonta shows how ‘collective plagiarism’ is effectively responsible for the collective aesthetic judgements that ‘originate and disappear with time’ (1979: 138).

The anti-foundationalist approach adopted by Bonta is in general characteristic of cultural sociological engagements with architectural form, for example such as can be found in the excellent study published in The American Journal of Sociology by Virag Molnár (2005), a sociologist at The New School, New York. In this paper Molnár engages with a controversy surrounding the use of tulips on Hungarian modernist architecture. Her analysis unpacks the ways in which the decoration of modernist architecture with these national folk symbols became a touchstone for a whole set of wider, and deeply political, struggles (Molnar has also very recently published a monograph on state architecture in post-war central Europe). In some sense the controversy over the tulip decorations on buildings has resonances with the ‘Battle of the Styles’ in Victorian Britain, which was a highly politicized struggle centring on the quest for an ‘appropriate’ architectural style in which to design major public buildings. In this context architecture became politicized objects whose meaning and import was interpreted by political and cultural elites and citizens engaged in highly abstracted readings of architectural styles and claims concerning British national identity. It was in this context that gothic revivalism and neo-classicism became imbued with questions of the cultural representation of the civilizational aspirations of the British nation state; the ‘Battle of the Styles’ is a historical illustration both of the ways in which architects and their work can get drawn into state projects at particular junctures, and that social values come to be ‘read off’ architectural styles (Jones, 2011: 54–64).

The clutch of studies discussed in this section all help to illustrate the relational and contingent ways in which social judgements of built objects become operative, with meaning residing in the architectural community rather than in essentialised characteristics of the objects or spaces themselves (Wolff, 1981). It is this characteristic – if not only this (Löw and Steets [2010] for a critique of the over-extension of this perspective) – that makes architectural production and consumption both ripe for sociological analysis, and for mobilisation in all sorts of political contests. In other words it is precisely ‘the essential arbitrariness of [architectural] symbols … [that] allows them to be the object of struggles, in which groups try to convince others to value their capital more than that of their rivals’ (Stevens, 1998: 69). The studies carried out by Bonta (1979), Lipstadt (2003), Molnár (2005), and myself (2006; 2011) provide reminders that when it comes to pronouncements on/judgements of architectural value, cultural statements are never objective nor natural, nor do they capture some underlying essence of the design; rather, the observation that there is an arbitrary foundation to the architectural field leads us to ask far-reaching sociological questions of the claims made by architects and others operating therein (Stevens, 1998).

Against this backdrop I published a piece on the Ground Zero reconstruction in Sociology, in which I wanted to give some analysis of the public pronouncements of an internationally-leading architect, Daniel Libeskind, vis-à-vis the symbolic component of his masterplanning design. I argued that as well as lending their house style to the design of buildings, leading architects such as Libeskind – sometimes referred to as ‘starchitects’ (Sklair, 2005; McNeill, 2009 for critiques) – are prolific generators of social and political interpretations of their own design work. I argued that architectural meaning-making is not limited to built form alone, and that an important facet of the commissioned work of leading architects is in talk about their designs (and accordingly that sociologists should pay attention to how these ostensibly ‘non-architectural’ interventions are deployed in context). In the case of the New York rebuilding I argued that ‘it is often against a mistakenly assumed backdrop of political autonomy and neutrality that high-profile architects are engaged in the creation and reproduction of cultural identities’ (Jones, 2006: 550).

In an important book on discourse and architecture entitled Buildings and Power (1993), Thomas Markus analyses the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries, managing to balance technical analyses of architectural drawings and plans with semiotic engagement about building types. His analysis covers the disciplinary function of buildings housing galleries, museums, expos, libraries, etc. Markus’ approach can also be read as a withering critique of those architectural histories that position buildings as neutral objects somehow set outside social relations – including capitalist ones (for critiques see also Wolff, 1981; and for Marxist readings of architectural aesthetics, Tafuri, [1976] 1999; Bentmann and Muller, 1992; Dutton and Mann, 1996; Jones, 2009). This critical approach is echoed in Space and Power, a book in which Birkbeck sociologist Paul Hirst addresses the ways in which ‘architecture is configured by power … and becomes a resource for power’ (2005: 3), with particular respect to military architecture. Hirst's contribution is perhaps less architecturally expert than is Markus’ – which demonstrates a sophisticated grasp of the nuances of architectural style and its meaning (albeit from a critical perspective) – but nonetheless draws on a range of social theorists of space to excellent effect (see also Löw and Steets [2010], who surveyed in detail these types of ‘spatial-architectural’ contributions).

Another major concern of sociologists analysing architecture as a manifestation of broader social change has been to situate architecture within broader capitalist relations. In a series of articles LSE sociologist Leslie Sklair has drawn attention to the links between capitalist globalisation, internationally high-profile architectural practices and architecture (his analysis grows out of his long-standing analysis of a transnational capitalist class and global-political-economy) (2005; 2006; 2010; 2013). Sklair positions the emergence of contemporary iconic architecture as an expression of the long-standing desire of economic elites to materialize their power, contending that ‘in the era of capitalist globalization the dominant force driving iconic architecture is the transnational capitalist class’ (2010: 138). Sklair's research is primarily addressed towards those buildings that are recognisable, widely disseminated and celebrated within and outwith the architectural community.

Understanding those eye-catching, distinctive forms designed by high-profile architects as ‘resource[s] in struggles for meaning and, by implication, for power’ (Sklair, 2006: 21), Sklair's approach is one of the most distinctively ‘sociological’ assessed here. In foregrounding the temporal, spatial, and aesthetic components of major architectural schemes – asking: ‘iconic for where, iconic for whom and iconic for when?’ (2005; 2006) – Sklair goes to the heart of issues pertaining to how the built environment contributes to the global capitalist imagination, both via the aesthetic consolidation of a transnational corporate class (Sklair, 2005) and more prosaically through providing material structures in which surplus value – and meaning concerning such – is generated (Sklair, 2010). Like Sklair, I have also sought to investigate architecture as one space in which capitalism is culturally narrated/becomes socially meaningful (Jones, 2009; 2011). Sklair's forthcoming book The Icon Project: Architecture, Cities, and Capitalist Globalization promises to extend this approach; other studies that have sought to draw critical sociological theories to bear on the study of architecture include Monika Grubbauer (2014), who has recently utilised Marxist theory to address the development and surplus value associated with the architecture of office towers, and Monika Kaika and Korinna Thielen, who – in an excellent article in the journal City (2006) – analyse parallels between contemporary urban capitalist ‘shrines’ and traditional religious architecture that dominated ‘landscape’ and ‘imagination’. Recent analysis of the huge scope and scale of architectural development in urban China (for example Jianfei, 2009; Ren, 2011; Bracken, 2012) has included sociological critique in a variety of guises, with much drawn from classical urban sociology in this general debate.

CULTURAL SOCIOLOGIES OF ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

If one tradition of the sociological study of architecture has been to position built form as reflective of major social and political-economic shifts, another approach has been to study empirically the practical things that architects do in studios, firms, and on building sites. These by-and-large ethnographic studies have the longest lineage of the sociological studies of architecture, and in general have drawn much from the sociology of the professions literature; latterly the considerable influence of Pierre Bourdieu is highly visible in engagements in this tradition.5

One of the by-now classic accounts of architectural practice is Dana Cuff's study Architecture: The Story of Practice (1991). In this landmark study, Cuff positions architects as cultural intermediaries closely connected to capital – especially property interests – and political elites. While retaining a critical approach, Cuff manages to develop an uncluttered and analytic ethnography, drawing our attention to the situated rationalities and practices of architects working in specific firms. Through careful empirically evidenced research, Cuff avoids a reductionism that would understand architects’ motivations as driven primarily by economically accumulative motives; on the contrary, despite their close linkages with and reliance on the corporate class who commission much of their work – in fact often because of them – the architects that Cuff studies emerge as a highly reflexive group, whose own political and cultural positions are oftentimes at odds with those of their clients. Similarly, Judith Blau (1984) also studied constraints on architects’ action from a sociological perspective, and in particular the ways in which disagreements between various interests in design and building are managed – typically skilfully – by architects in situ. Blau and Cuff's monographs were path-breaking ethnographies of architectural practice.6 For a good example of a contemporary ethnography of architecture, which draws a great deal from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, see the work of Jörg Fuhrmann (2015). Magali Safuri Larson's Behind the Post-Modern Facade: Architectural Change in Late-Twentieth Century America (1993) also contains sharp sociological analysis of professional practice, with particular attention paid to the key role of prize-giving in the architectural hierarchy. Larson interrogates the speeches of the judges of the prestigious annual American Progressive Architecture Award 1965–1985, revealing how radically different conceptions of the architect's social role were both reflected and constructed therein. In a recent reflective piece, Larson has suggested that her key study gives a ‘microhistory of [an aesthetic] shift, seen from inside the profession by individuals constituted as gatekeepers, [identifying] the “anointing” function that elites have’ (1993: 327); the book certainly demonstrates convincingly how architectural meaning is contested and consecrated as a key part of professional architectural practice. In Larson's account power operates as a taken-for-granted element of the architectural field, crucially capturing the specificity of architecture as a symbolic – as well as material – production. Getting close to the often niche nature and self-referentiality of architectural ‘insiders’’ aesthetic claims, Larson's – like Cuff and Blau's work – is a study of design professionals contingent on a depth of research engagement.

Other studies of architectural practice that are sociological in nature are to be found, for example, in the work of Hélène Lipstadt, who works in architecture at MIT, but who has a background in cultural theory and anthropology. Lipstadt has interrogated the architectural competition as a key component of elite architectural practice (2003). While Lipstadt's inclusion illustrates my somewhat elastic conception of ‘sociology’ – at least institutionally speaking – she is one of the thinkers to have drawn extensively on Bourdieu in assessing architecture. Lipstadt has researched the competition stage, during which architects compete for the award of commissions, and from her perspective accordingly become embroiled in conflicts over symbolic and material capital. By interrogating this stage of a broader process of cultural production, Lipstadt shows how the competition represents a site of struggle to define the social parameters of architecture itself. Similarly, Garry Stevens (1998: 97), also operationalising Bourdieu, suggests that the competition allows participating architects

to make a ritual demonstration of allegiance to the elites, … if the competition obliges the economically and politically dominant to aver in the most public manner their symbolic dependence on architects, the architects always re-avow the covenant by affirming their material dependence on the wealthy and powerful.

Studying in depth some of the ‘tournaments of value’ (Appadurai, 1986) – for example, the competition, prize-giving, and other struggles over status – allows Cuff, Stevens, Lipstadt, Larson, and Blau to reveal the practical dynamics of consecration crucial to the field of architecture.

Approaches from historical sociology have added much to our understanding of the emergence of the architect as a distinctive occupational and social role. For example, David Brain, a Professor of Sociology & Environmental Studies (New College of Florida), has published on the emergence and consolidation of the architectural profession in the United States and Europe. While having antecedents in ancient Egypt, Rome, Renaissance Florence, etc., Brain argues that it was significantly in the period of 1820–40 that a fertile cultural and institutional context saw the emergence of the modern professional architectural class in these places. During the early–mid-19th century, Europe and the US witnessed a growing stock of clients/patrons – crucially including the state – that saw architects being engaged specifically as designers (as distinct from the less specifically design-focused ‘gentleman-architects’ and ‘builder-architects’ predominant in the 18th century). For Brain, architectural design in and of itself became conceived as a professional practice only when ‘[t]he work of producing drawings provided architects with the practical foundation for a discipline of design, and its anchoring point in a division of labor’ (Brain, 1991: 244). Drawings became in effect intellectual properties, but this was certainly not a linear or uncontested process, and Brain shows how the emergent practice of professional architecture was highly iterative, developing in conjunction and contradistinction with other building professions such as engineering, construction and surveying (also see Cohen et al. [2005] for a contemporary study of such professional demarcations).

Accordingly, and via a critique of the limitations of a rational choice/market monopoly model of professions, Brain focuses our attention on the contingencies and opportunistic dynamics of the architectural profession. Rather than taking for granted the emergence of the profession as inevitable, he unpacks the production of architectural knowledge, understanding such as a practical and ongoing achievement (1991: 240). This is especially the case given the scarcity within the market for buildings symbolising major civilisational achievements in ‘great, monumental’ buildings (Gutman, 1992), outside of which the vast majority of architects operate (also see Stevens, 1996; 1998). In his accounts, Brain draws attention to the circulation of a stock of cultural knowledge derived from the ‘Grand Tours’ of Europe, which allowed for the reproduction of Roman and Greek styles in Anglo-US contexts.7 Similarly, but addressing a more modern history, the sociologist Florent Champy – who in fact also wrote a monograph entitled Sociologie de L'Architecture (2001), which addresses architectural production from a sociology of the professions perspective – analyses the ways in which the self-generated repositioning of the architectural profession in France post-May 1968 rested in some part on an ‘old’, stable, and protected status of the professional architect vis-à-vis cognate practices, such as for example those associated with landscape design or engineering (2006).

A point of encouragement for sociologists researching architectural practice can be found in the myriad ways in which their analysis has been imported into architects’ conceptualisation and practice. In fact, the exporting of sociological ideas into architectural practice was one of the explicit aims of the early sociologists of architecture, as was expressed by luminaries such as Robert Gutman (1968; 1988) and Herbert Gans (1977), both of whom would doubtless be delighted to see Jeremy Till – an architect and leading architectural theorist – engaging so explicitly with sociological theory to make sense of the ‘mess’ and ‘contingency’ of architectural practice and training (2009). Also cause for optimism about sociology's capacity as an ‘exporter’ is to be found in the publications of Robert Adam, a practising architect and partner in ADAM Architecture (a major London firm). For example, in his book The Globalization of Modern Architecture (2012), which draws extensively on recent sociological theory (in addition to being enriched by reflection on his own experience as a well-established international architect), Adam uses the work of Giddens, Beck, Bourdieu and many of those discussed in this chapter to frame and make sense of the political-economic currents shaping the internationalisation of architectural practice and its client base. Other notable attempts to ‘translate’ sociology for architects can be found in the ‘Thinkers for Architects’ series, which aims to introduce the ideas of major social thinkers – such as Bourdieu (Webster, 2010), Lefebvre (Coleman, 2015), Foucault (Fontina-Giusti, 2013), and Deleuze and Guattari (Ballantyne, 2007) – to architects.

Another vibrant area of sociological engagement can be found in sociological studies of architects’ training/socialisation and the broader social reproduction function of the profession more generally. The major figure in this area is the architect-cum-architectural-sociologist, Garry Stevens. His perceptive analyses of architectural production (1995; 1996; 1998) are reflective of both a depth of understanding concerning architectural pedagogy and a sharp ‘sociological imagination’, which draws extensively on concepts from Bourdieu. Stevens (1998) convincingly demonstrates how the demography of architects is inextricably linked to the (symbolic and material) markets for architecture; by connecting the structural conditions of architectural action to the waxes and wanes of numbers of architects, Stevens reveals the relation between the socialisation of architects and the parameters of the field itself. Master–pupil chains, understood from Stevens’ perspective as the sites of aesthetic socialisation and class reproduction, are a crucial mechanism for this consolidation. Against the backdrop of the broader structure of the profession, which at any one time has so much symbolic capital to compete over (1995), Stevens is interested in the disjunct between those leading architects who set the aesthetic and practice tone – in effect coming to dictate the architectural terms of engagement – and others in the field, whose day-to-day work is not understood by others (or themselves) as serving a high aesthetic purpose.

Also drawing on critical sociological tradition to interrogate the social reproduction function of architecture, Thomas Dutton, a Marxist architectural theorist who for many years has worked in Miami University, has also focused attention on the ‘hidden curriculum’ in architectural pedagogy; that is, those sets of implicit but unarticulated values and assumptions that shape the ways in which architects are trained and subsequently practice. As does Stevens’ research, Dutton's evidences the key point that architectural schools are far from being neutral sites of education, but rather that studio and classroom pedagogies ‘reinforce certain ideologies, values, and assumptions about social reality so as to sustain the interests of some groups at the expense of others’ (Dutton, 1987: 17). Dutton's and Stevens’ analyses both have much to tell us concerning the classed nature of architecture as pedagogical and professional practice.

Sociologists engaging with architectural practice have also made very important interventions in both revealing and critiquing the social divisions that characterise architectural practice. For example, in their article ‘Women Architects and their Discontents’ (2004), sociologists Bridget Fowler and Fiona Wilson report on a study that unpacked the gendered assumptions implicitly and explicitly at play in the socialisation of architects, with a key conclusion of their study – which is based on interviews with 72 architects – that the partial and arbitrary nature of judgements in the field have a masculinist character, and underpin the highly unequal and gendered nature of architectural reward and practice. Addressed to similar sets of issues, although drawing less extensively on Bourdieu and sociological theory than do Fowler and Wilson, Annmarie Adams and Petra Tancred (2000) reveal the ways in which Canadian women architects are positioned in major journals by powerful critics (typically men); they also explore the range of resistances that followed. Adams and Tancred reflect on the space of possibilities for more equitable practice that are opened up – if not always realised – by the emergence of modernism and associated ‘new’ practices in the Canadian architectural community. Taken in the round, sociologically grounded studies of architectural firms clearly reflect the insights that can be derived from ethnographic engagement and, relatedly, from problematizing the taken-for-granted nature of the practice. Researching the ways in which social inequalities play out and are sustained in the architectural field requires an approach sensitised to the nuances of practice and the associated motivations of architects, which of course cannot be reduced to economic extrinsic reward, and that in fact are often highly aestheticised (Blau, 1984; Crawford, 1991; Cuff, 1991; 2014; Stevens, 1995; 1996; 1998; Jones, 2009; 2011; 2015).

Importantly, there are also notable attempts from within architecture to challenge the constraints associated with professional practice and sociologists who have sought to make sense of such. Noting that the vast majority of the world's buildings and spaces between them are not designed by architects,8 as did Rudofsky in his seminal Architecture Without Architects (1972 [1964]), opens up a series of pertinent questions about: (i) user-designed architecture; and (ii) the reward structures and working assumptions of professional architects in contexts where to a greater or lesser extent there is an architectural monopoly on building design. Still, by-and-large, sociological analysis has focused on elite architectural practice and the built outcomes of such, although there is emerging interest in those design-build programmes – where architecture students engage in design in communities – such as the one at the Rural Studio that myself and Kenton Card have published on (2011), or the work of the humanitarian networks such as Architecture for Humanity (Sinclair and Stor, 2006).

ARCHITECTURE, HUMAN–OBJECT INTERACTIONS, AND STUDYING MATERIAL CULTURE

A major catalyst for the recent growth of interest in sociologies of architecture has emerged thanks to a group of scholars pursuing analysis drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (see Fallan [2008] for a lucid and comprehensive summary of ANT approaches to architectural analysis, and Latour and Yaneva [2008] for an operationalization of the approach). Although the studies that I have grouped together in this section are extremely disparate in terms of topic focus and their conclusions concerning material culture, they do share an overarching general aim to assess empirically the ways in which human–object interactions – of course including elements of the built environment – are made and become normalised.

Albana Yaneva, a Professor in Architectural Theory and now Director of Manchester Architecture Research Centre, has been path-breaking in pushing forward these distinct but related approaches. In fact, Yaneva's work draws extensively on perspectives derived from STS, showcasing the insights that can emerge when bringing together some of the carefully observed traditional studies of architectural firms with sociological currents emerging from material cultures and Actor-Network Theory. For example, in her monograph reporting on an ethnographic study of the major Dutch firm OMA (2009), and her the article with Bruno Latour on analytical approaches to capturing the dynamic nature of architecture-in-use (2008), or the more recently published book Mapping Controversies in Architecture, Yaneva is concerned to unpack the interactions between human and non-human actants. In her studies Yaneva adopts a pragmatist approach to explore architectural production, and as a result is concerned with the practical ways in which architecture as a situated practice and material production is contingent on, and constitutive of, a whole range of human–object relations.

Yaneva's studies are underpinned by a concern to reveal the ways in which architectural production is fundamentally entangled with a series of materialities, which extend far beyond the building itself (her discussion of the role of models and presentations in her study of OMA is an illuminating example of this broader concern). Similarly, Michael Guggenheim – a sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London – has also published widely on architecture, using theory and methods derived from STS, broadly understood. Some of Guggenheim's research makes sense of the ways in which architecture becomes bound up with temporalities (2009), or how changes in buildings’ uses to/from sacred ones reflect something of architecture's status as a ‘mutable immobile’ (2013), in other words the ways in which meanings and practices in and around buildings become more or less stable contingent on the efficacy of certain key material interventions.

The work of Thomas Gieryn (2000; 2002; 2006) also provides a useful lens through which to view the implication of architecture within broader cultural projects. In a series of articles, Gieryn, a sociologist working within the STS research tradition, has sought to reveal entanglements between architectural materiality and the stabilisation/credibility of knowledge claims. More widely, Gieryn's analysis has directed attention towards the ‘provenance’ of knowledge claims, reflecting the ways in which origins at a specific place and time both leave their ‘hallmarks’ on the production, and – most distinctively – form the basis for representations of place to themselves, mobilised as a resource that adds authority to truth claims. Gieryn's work on the concept of the ‘truth spot’ (2006: 6–29) – that is a ‘geographic, architectural and rhetorical construction [of] “place” [that] is mobilised as a resource to allow claims to gain believability and persuasiveness’ – has much potential to sharpen understanding of the scientific and cultural claims that derive and draw from the built environment. Gieryn himself (2000; 2002; 2006) directs attention towards the ways in which cultural representations of place are themselves mobilised as a resource that adds authority to truth claims (2006: 28–9), allowing them to cohere and to ‘gain believability and persuasiveness’ (Gieryn, 2006: 6; also see Jones, 2015).

This process fundamentally implicates architecture, as Gieryn demonstrates in ‘What Buildings Do’, an article that is underpinned by a pragmatist analysis of the built environment and that does much to bring together a social constructivists programme of sociological research on the built environment. Questioning how architecture is mobilised to ‘do’ things in specific contexts – such as ‘[stabilising] social life [, giving] structure to social institutions, durability to social networks, persistence to behavior patterns’ (Gieryn, 2002: 35) – Gieryn analyses the development of a new science building and lab at Cornell.

Another significant line of inquiry that can be understood within this general category, but that does not always draw explicitly on STS or ANT, is research exploring the ways in which the built environment is experienced by many as hostile to their capabilities and bodies. A number of very important studies have drawn out the disabling nature of many buildings and the spaces between them; see for example Rob Imrie's analyses of disability and architecture which have made a very significant contribution here (he worked for many years in a Geography Department but has relatively recently joined Goldsmiths as a Professor of Sociology). Imrie's research has been extremely significant in raising questions about the right to the city, and the key role in relation to access and facilitation played by architect-designed urban spaces (see for example Imrie and Kumar, 1998). Imrie's critical approach to these questions is one sensitised to the practice of architects as well as the built ‘products’ that are the outcome of such; see for example his analysis of architects’ conceptualisations of the human body (2003), housing (2006), or the relationship between architectural regulation and practice (2011, with Emma Street). Imrie has recently been developing these set of concerns to address the Universal Design movement, which implicates architecture as part of attempts to make the built environment less hostile to users’ bodies and capabilities (also see Jones [2014] on the same topic, or related studies revealing the normate assumptions that underpin urban design and architecture vis-à-vis ageing and architecture from Galcˇanová and Sýkorová [2014] and Jarmin Yeh [2015] or gendered embodiment assumptions [Grosz, 2001; Evans, 2006]).

There are also many studies of the ‘social life’ of buildings that draw less ostensibly on STS, but that are still fundamentally concerned with architectural-material culture. For example, see the museum studies scholar Suzanne MacLeod, whose ‘new social biography’ of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool – although not situated explicitly within the STS tradition – demonstrates clearly the ways in which careful empirical study of the materiality of a building, particularly focused on periods of experimentation in architectural fabric, can illuminate broader competing cultural visions concerning the social role of art. In particular, through careful archival and visual analysis, MacLeod charts the shifts in the self-conception of those governing the gallery alongside the various forms of architectural interventions commissioned by them. Or, in a similar vein, see for example the work of Linda Mulcahy, a socio-legal academic working in the Law Department at King's College London, who pursues analysis of the positioning of publics in court architecture. In her carefully argued and scholarly book Legal Architecture Mulcahy draws attention to the ways in which conceptualisation of ‘the public’ through history has been reflected in the positioning of publics in trials.

As is reflected by the work of both MacLeod and Mulcahy, it is fair to say that many extremely successful sociological engagements with architecture have come from outside the discipline formally considered. See for example the analysis of the major transformation of architectural practice afforded by computer aided design (CAD) by the architect and theorist Paolo Tombesi (2001), or the analysis of the architect and urbanist Simon Guy – in collaboration with Lancaster University sociologist Elisabeth Shove – on architectural technology, engineering, and green policy and practice. The Glass State (2006) by architectural theorist Annette Fierro is another significant contribution that engages in analysis of a technology popular in contemporary political architecture; addressing the Parisian Grand Projects with particular reference to the ways in which glass is positioned in political and architectural discourse, Fierro understands glass as a building material with significant symbolic associations vis-à-vis the discourses of transparency so common in European political discourse (also see Delanty and Jones, 2002; Jones, 2011).

In general a major strength of STS perspectives has been to add significant descriptive depth to sociological engagement with materiality. Recent accounts of parliament buildings (Danyi, 2012), ageing and the built environment (Yeh, 2015), gender and space (Bartram, 2011), and urban planning (Herberg, 2015), have all yielded much sociological insight about the built environment (see also the edited collection focused on STS-inspired sociological accounts of architecture edited by Anna-Lisa Müller and Werner Reichmann (2015), in which some of these chapters appear). While such STS-inspired analysis has been responsible for adding much momentum to sociological analyses of architecture and the built environment, a potential limitation of this approach is that a deep description of a particular site, material or building can sometimes miss the connections between architecture and the broader contextual relations in which buildings are commissioned, designed, and used.9 Of course, from the perspective of this tradition, ‘contexts’ such as capitalism, democracy, or the social itself, may be considered false stabilities and artefacts of disciplinary knowledge production. Regardless, recent dynamic currents in ‘sociological’ STS studies of architecture have provided a useful corrective to the over-generalised accounts that can risk missing the nuance and specificity of both architectural production and product, and have doubtless added much to our understanding of human interactions with architecture and the built environment.

CONCLUSION

While some sociologists have explicitly sought to articulate what a programmatic sociology of architecture may look like or include (Gutman, 1968; Zeisel, 1975; Gans, 1977; Ankerl, 1981; Champy, 2006; Delitz, 2006; 2009; Löw and Steets, 2010; Jones, 2011), the contributions assessed above were generally not addressed to such a task but rather to studying architecture as a profession or as a set of meaningful spaces (and interactions therein). I hope that this chapter serves as an encouragement to sociologists to give consideration to the social production of the built environment, even if this is understood quite minimally. For the sake of space, ironically, I have included those contributions quite tightly focused on architectural practice and the built outcomes of such, and have neglected to include related discussions of sociologies of space (see Löw and Steets, 2010), or those numerous analyses of social action that include more en passant engagement with the built environment (for an extension of this argument see Gieryn [2006]). One thing I would note is that as architect-designed buildings and spaces provide the contexts in which a great deal of social practice takes place, and against this backdrop there is much potential for more en passant sociological accounts of architecture (a point also made by Gieryn [2002] and Löw and Steets [2010] on architecture, space, and sociality). The rich and varied contributions surveyed have been brought together as a result of the latitude I have taken with respect to definitions of ‘sociology’ in general and ‘cultural sociology’ in particular, and it is notable that the research literature addressed above is so varied in theoretical and methodological approach.

My somewhat rough-and-ready typology, reflective of my own readings and interpretations – and in a number of cases limited by my linguistic limitations – has hopefully organised this literature in a legible and sensible way. Writing this chapter has strengthened my sense that this is an intellectually fruitful moment for ‘sociologists of architecture’; as a community, even such a disparate and eclectic one, we find ourselves in the enviable position of exporting many analytical resources with respect to the built environment. Developments in STS-inspired research studies have attracted a group of career-young sociologists whom I feel have enlivened and sharpened thinking in this field. Well established questions of power, inequality, and space persist and are given specificity by engagement with buildings and the spaces between them. In conclusion I would echo the important points made with such precision and eloquence by many of those discussed above: architecture is entangled in projects of reproduction and celebrations of power, while also simultaneously providing a space for social experimentation and radical critique of the prevailing order. It is the tension that exists between these competing possibles and their realisation that provides such a rich context for sociological research.

[starstruckloverdream-blog]

Dissertation Introduction



Dissertation Introduction

The Dissertation Introduction Guide!

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Table of Contents

What is a dissertation introduction?

What is the purpose of dissertation introduction?

What is the structure of dissertation introduction?

The Background Subsection

Where to find a good dissertation introduction example?

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The first chapter of the dissertation is the dissertation introduction. The dissertation introduction details the purpose of the study, the research problem, offers a justification for the study and defines the research objectives.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF DISSERTATION INTRODUCTION?

The Introduction to your dissertation ought to do a number of things:

Provide preliminary background information (to place your study in context).

Clarify your focus of study.

Specify your overall research aim and individual objectives.

Point out the value of your research.

The dissertation introduction can be structured as follows:

Introduction Chapter # 1

Subsection # 2: Research Focus

Subsection # 3: Overall Research Aim and Individual Research Objectives

Subsection # 4: Value of this Research

If you find it more convenient it is perfectly acceptable to subsume sub-section 4 within 2 and/or 3.

The Background Subsection

The Background sub-section to your dissertation introduction should place your research area in context, referring to relevant literature sources using a variety of direct and indirect referencing techniques.

The Research Focus Subsection

The Research Focus sub-section of your Introduction can be combined with the Background sub-section, or placed in a separate sub-section. It describes the subject of your research.

Overall Aim & Individual Research Objectives

The Overall Aim and Individual Research Objectives sub-section of your dissertation introduction clarifies your research focus in simple terms, where your main research aim is identified and the specific research objectives needed to complete your main aim are enumerated. Both your overall aim and your individual research objectives can be transformed into research questions. In this sub-section provide an overview of the research methods that you will use to do your research and remember to estimate the length of time to complete your major research tasks.

Value of Research Subsection

A paragraph or two placed in previous sub-sections, should be created, explaining the value of your research, i.e. why you think your research is worth doing (think in terms of the beneficiaries of your work).

Finally, create an outline structure, which you complete accumulatively as your progress through your dissertation. The outline structure highlights the main sub-sections contained in each of your chapters.

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