#Amarantos: Castor

[speculative-scintillation]

I don't know how to explain why, but this is the BIGGEST Castor mood and if Amarantos ever becomes a TV show I want the theme song played on a watering can and a saw

(For those confused, Amarantos is the novel series I'm working on, Castor is the main character, and there's some in universe reasons why androids aren't allowed to play instruments. The final necessary detail is that Castor is fueled entirely by spite. Okay maybe I do know how to explain why this is the ultimate Castor mood)

[rogue-ai-cat]

Dream

There's part of the setup that I don't remember, but (and I need to preface this by saying that I was up all night writing Amarantos Amarantos, so I had Castor on my mind) the dream followed an Android in a war. I can't remember what their name was, but my brain wants to say it was the name of an American aircraft carrier in WWII. Yeah. Anyway, we were trying to find a way to get into enemy territory (I think we were trying to recover something) and I was digging a sort of a shallow trench for my team to hide in while we all snuck up to the wall, but then something happened and we decided we needed to move now and (I can't for the life of me remember why I had to do this) I ran through the gate into enemy territory to cause a distraction to let my team sneak in the other side.

Now dream logic takes over....

Our enemies are velociraptors. I'm running through a city (when did it become a city?) Full of velociraptors in the dark (when did it become night?). And I run past a like a giant barn where T-rex are stabled like horses and they're snapping at me as I run by and I'm being chased by many velociraptors and I'm afraid to look any direction except straight ahead of me.

Then I make a sharp right turn and dash into a house. It's day again and our enemies are cartoonish looking soldiers. I ran through the house to the back room which has a door leading outside, but instead of running back outside, I hid inside a hollow sofa (what?). All the people ran outside, thinking I had ran back outside, but some little wimpy person stopped and sat on the sofa, so now I'm trapped in a sofa (again, what?). The people who ran outside noticed that I hadn't ran outside and came back inside. They immediately turned over the sofa, so I ran between them and punched through the door and ran. But there was nothing nearby to hide behind, so I made a mad dash for a lake (why?) And while jumping into the lake I got shot by someone.

Now I'm in the water, and there's one of those Bigass water dinosaurs (Like Jurassic World. what are they called?) And it's trying to eat me. (And it's night time again)

Then it gets weird for even dream logic and I start breaking up into particles and I'll be safe as long as the dinosaur doesn't swallow any of them and then I drift as a cloud of dust to the other side of the lake and rematerialize. Except doing whatever the fuck I just did was really bad for me and I start throwing up green goo. I crawl into some fancy city center with nobody around (and it's day again) until a strange man appears and starts heckling me.

And then I woke up.

[laurelesgourmet]

Dulcemanía: la repostería de primer nivel ya tiene su festival

La gastronomía, por todo lo que genera y representa, hace parte de la cultura de cada pueblo y lugar, razón por la genera tanta empatía, antojo y cercanía. Por eso, su influencia logra ser una manifestación más de lo que es el espíritu creativo del ser humano en la medida en que es un reflejo de la época en que vivimos y lo que hemos aprendido, al tiempo que se convierte en un fiel testimonio de nuestra forma de ser, pensar, conocer y degustar. Cada vez que usted prueba algo nuevo, muchas cosas pueden cambiar en su interior: incorporar sabores es dejar que el alma crezca y el cuerpo conozca.

Es sabido que cada ciudad, pueblo y región del país tiene sus propios eventos, y por lo general se intenta darle gusto a todo el público a pesar de que no es sencillo complacerlo. Eso sí, aunque haya eventos más relevantes que otros, todos son importantes en sus respectivos entornos y especialidades.

De ahí que iniciativas como Dulcemanía se conviertan en acontecimientos que se hacen muy significativos para las diferentes sociedades en la medida en que ellas mismas los vivan e incorporen como parte de su tradición. Un grupo de personas que se la jugaron por endulzar a toda una comunidad a lo largo de una semana merece que les abramos espacio y vivamos la experiencia que nos proponen.  

Esta iniciativa de sabor, cargada de dulzura y una gran variedad de opciones, lo invita a visitar su página web (www.dulcemania.co) y a elegir cada sitio participante con sus respectivas opciones. Además, será importante que usted comparta la experiencia vivida en Facebook e Instagram bajo los hashtags #DulcemaníaCol y #MiGanadorDMcol. Esta será una oportunidad para salir en familia, con la pareja o los amigos con el fin de conocer el trabajo de grandes reposteros sin gastar mucho dinero. Anímese y déjese consentir.

Estos eventos irrumpen en el orden cotidiano mientras convocan a las multitudes a participar al tiempo que generan recursos económicos, ofertas imperdibles, momentos agradables, visibilidad de los negocios, opciones laborales y hasta mejores propinas. Anímese a probar, invitar, antojar, repetir y a etiquetar los diferentes lugares que harán parte de Dulcemanía, un evento cuyo fin es unir en torno a lo dulce que puede ser la vida. 

Todo nuevo evento es una oportunidad para mostrar lo mejor de los diferentes talentos que conviven a lo largo y ancho de cada población, ante lo que surge la pregunta: ¿Habrá una mejor forma de conocer a alguien (y de darse a conocer) que a través del corazón? Pocas personas más apasionadas por su trabajo que los reposteros y pasteleros, por lo que valdrá la pena acompañarlos en su semana. En un mundo en el que muchos ocultan lo que sienten y son, reposterías, cafés, panaderías artesanales y gelaterías de Medellín y Envigado decidieron mostrar su interior, su lado más dulce. Salga y conozca, deguste y participe.

Un debut esperado

Laureles Gourmet estuvo en compañía de otros medios e invitados en el lanzamiento de Dulcemanía, encuentro realizado en la tarde del pasado 29 de agosto en Ganso & Castor Café – Bistró, sede Manila. Una velada entre amigos y en la que los organizadores dejaron ver su satisfacción por ser la primera empresa en Colombia en hacer un evento como estos, enfocado en la repostería y el dulce, y en la cual relacionaron lo que representa un postre con la magia de nuestros ancestros, las recetas abuelas y los placeres de la vida.   

Una de las ideas de este evento es ayudar a incrementar el consumo de postre a lo largo del día, que el disfrute de ese momento tan especial para el paladar se dé de forma más frecuente y no solamente en ocasiones especiales. Dulcemanía, en su primera edición, aparece como la opción para mostrar esos talentos culinarios que están esperando por cada comensal y por satisfacer los diferentes gustos y exigencias. ¿Vamos?   

Este 2018, entre el 3 y el 9 de septiembre, cerca de treinta de las mejores reposterías de Medellín van a poner a disposición del público dos postres con lo mejor de su carta y se le medirán al reto de entregar, además, una botella de té Hatsu de 250 ml y una bebida caliente (aromática, té o café) por $10.000. Cabe destacar que uno de los dos postres estará elaborado con chocolate nacional.   

La experiencia de los amantes de los postres no debería bajar de cinco visitas a los diferentes negocios participantes o al menos de probar la misma cantidad de opciones, aunque se vale repetir. Ya sea para despedir una comida o abrir el apetito, estos dulces manjares inundarán las redes sociales y las calles. Dese gusto e invite.    

Cierre los ojos e imagine el poder del dulce haciendo su trabajo de seducción… esta es una oportunidad que Dulcemanía ha convertido en realidad gracias a los siguientes participantes: Alfamore, Amada, Amaranto Pan Artesano, AmatiCafé, Amor-Acuyá Gelato, Andrés Bakery, Antonio's Gelato, Arte Dolce, Bebo Maestro del Gelato, Cocolatte Café, Como Pez en el Agua, Cone Heladería Repostería, Délmuri, Don Jacobo Postres y Ponqués, Dulcinea Panadería, El Astor, Mikaela, El Portal, Ganso & Castor Café – Bistró, La Tartaletería, Nurols Crepes, O-Cake Bakery & Coffee, Sharbets, The Chocolate House, Todo Fresa, Sin Azúcar y Valentina Bakery.

Placer ancestral

Los postres, ese complemento dulce y maravilloso en la gastronomía de cada región del mundo, no son nada nuevo e incluso cada familia tiene uno que hace parte de su propia tradición. Según el portal thegourmetjournal.com, con el descubrimiento de la miel de abeja y del azúcar, aparecieron los pasteles, garrapiñadas y mazapanes. El azúcar, por su parte, se empleaba en el 8.000 a. C. para decorar los jardines y, más tarde, para masticarla aportando ese peculiar sabor dulce. No fue hasta el 4.500 a. C. cuando pasó de Nueva Guinea, su lugar de origen, a cultivarse en China y el cercano Oriente. Se podría decir que Dulcemanía vendría siendo un naciente homenaje a un producto legendario.    

  ¿Qué tal si deja que el dulce lo atrape con su gran toque de magia y le alegre toda la semana que dura Dulcemanía… y por algunos días más?

[speculative-scintillation]

[speculative-scintillation]

Ahhhh look at them!!!! They're so precious!!!

[speculative-scintillation]

Okay, so I’ve had this idea for a while of Castor doing some sort of presentation for a grade school class, but then the series got really bizarre and I decided that probably wouldn’t happen, so the idea morphed into Castor doing a make-a-wish, and I think that what I just write is something we all need to hear right now.

(This is a super super rough draft, so it's a MESS, but you get the point)

“Do you like music?”

“I like music.”

“What's your favorite music?”

“My favorite music? I don't know. I like lots of music. I like sad music.”

“Sad music?”

“Yeah, but not really sad music. I like the kind of music that is sad but gives you hope that everything is going to be okay again. Hope is very important when you're sad.”

“What's your least favorite music?”

“Party music.”

“Why you don't like party music.”

“I don't like parties.”

“I don't like parties either.”

“They don't end well, do they?”

the boy shook his head.

Mother: “we invited half the school over for his birthday, and maybe twenty people said they would come and then nobody did. Not even his friends.”

“Some friends. Though I'm sure at least one of them had a good reason.”

“A few had the decency to at least formally cancel.”

“Why you don't like parties?”

“Uh because I... You know that's really hard to explain. That's the thing about being grown up is that the older you are the less simple answers are. And the less simple questions are.”

“I'm not gonna grow up.”

Mom: “You'll grow up! We'll get through this and you'll grow up.”

“Do you want to grow up?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because grown-ups have to go to the war. Grown-ups have to – to work and they never have any fun and they yell and get divorced.”

mom: “Oh.”

“Life is full of dark things, but I would never say that you 'never' get to have any fun. No fun exists where you make it. I mean, you have all of your toys, and you have your favorite toys, but your favorite toys aren't special for their materials or what they are. There are a million plastic blue cars in the world, but that one is special because of your imagination. You took that blue plastic car and you made it fun. But making things fun is hard sometimes. Creepy dolls are less fun because they're creepy. It's harder to get over that creepy, harder to see something else in that doll that can make it fun, but that doesn't mean that doll can't be good. Everyone and everything has something in them that is good. The only thing that happens when you grow up is that the bad gets harder to look past, but the good is always there.”

“What's good about being sick?”

“You know that ridiculous ancient phrase “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger?”

“yeah my mom says it always when I get my shots”

“I don't like that phrase. What doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger, but what it does is make you smarter, and it can make other people smarter too. Every day we get closer to finding a cure for the things that make people sick, because of people like you who are sick but who chose to try to find that cure.

“And you get smarter too. Pain isn't always a good thing to know. It's the big bad thing, but when you experience pain and you keep looking for the good thing I was talking about before, and you learn to see how good things can be instead of how bad they are, and then you choose to do everything you can to make them good instead of bad, that's very important. That's something that a lot of people never learn how to do.

“You hear people complain about problems that aren't really problems. Crying and screaming cause they spilled juice on their white shirt not knowing about how small that bad really is compared to everything else, but they never learned to see the good, so all they see is the bad, and because of that, all these little bads destroy them. Say a stranger at school spills juice in your shirt accidentally. If you only see the bad, you focus on your shirt and you are angry, but when you see they good, hey you just met someone. Maybe they'll be your new friend. And if they do, the juice stain doesn't matter so much anymore. I met some of my very best friends on the worst days I've ever had, and they made every day after that bad day better.”

[speculative-scintillation]

I feel like I haven’t been updating you guys much on how projects are going, so here’s an excerpt from something I wrote the other night. This is from Fissure BTW.

Our most volatile instability is caused by the destruction of our sense of reality. Thus, we are programmed to believe that everything we see and experience is real. That doesn’t change the fact that the perception of reality is still based entirely on familiarity; things which are certain. Space does a good enough job challenging that on its own, but this... There is so helplessly little that I can compare it to. It is real because it happened, but there was nothing familiar and little certain. Our chief engineer is even going so far as to doubt certain elements of physics as we know it. It is real because it happened, but in all other senses of reality it seems completely impossible. Yet it cannot be delusion, nor any other variety of fabrication. It cannot be denied that it happened.

[speculative-scintillation]

I think the thing I love most about Castor, as a writer, is her moments of ineptness. Of course we all know I have a soft spot for "inept" little robots, but this is more than that.

The way she's written, she's so impossibly capable. Even when she's weak or disabled in some way she has the strength and the determination more than anything to do what needs to be done. Even in moments when the situation is out of her control she finds a way to show strength.

And I think that having moments in there where she isn't as capable are a beautiful contrast to that. Not just moment of incapability, but moments where she's willing to show weakness. The admission of failure that comes with the snark she gives Dania and Oz, the moments when she's willing to accept help even when it isn't necessarily needed, or to ask for it when it is. The moments where she admits that she's not ready to stand up yet.

And my favorite moments, where she sets aside her image and her strength to make a point. When her true strength requires perceived weakness.

It's just fucking great. I love Castor.

[speculative-scintillation]

After failing to save an injured moth this afternoon, and spending most of the time wondering if I should have just crushed it and ended it's suffering¹, I've been thinking a lot about this horribly unclear little word that we have called 'mercy' and all the ways it can be interpreted, and of course that train of thought was carried over as I sat down at my desk to try to get tonight's writing done.

Before Castor became a captain, she worked in the rogue recovery division. Her job was to find and recover if possible, destroy if necessary, any potentially hostile deviant that Parvum had lost.

She was also a soldier.

When a machine is obviously failing the rule is always to kill it. Death to such a thing is only a temporary inconvenience and oft far better than the slow decay that might precede it 'naturally' or the hazard that the unit could pose to others. The latter, of course, is Parvum's greater concern.

But with people, the rule is never to. Because with people that's not a decision that can be undone. Only people can decide who lives and who dies. A machine simply cannot make that choice.

As a soldier, things get complicated. When a unit can kill someone for opposing them, but not out of this so called "mercy". In truth, a unit can only kill in war when ordered to.

That was one of the many concerns with Castor becoming a captain. Can you have a captain of a military vessel who lacks the authority to make that decision, the capability to fire on the enemy? Or can that trust be placed in a machine?

It's an issue I had already planned to address in the series that I'm now thinking about a little bit more seriously. What is mercy to those who know two flavors of death where neither are the one we know?

This is something I need to work into the pilot episode somehow, and it has to be major. That has to be the plot.

I have some outlining to do.

-

1. It's amazing what small things can get to you. Most people would have seen a battered moth and simply thrown it outside for the ants to eat alive without really thinking about it. Even I would have normally... but that moth then, by forces a bit beyond my comprehension, became worth my attention. I don't know. Maybe it's the cosmos way of telling me there's work to be done on the subject of mercy.

[speculative-scintillation]

"What brings you down into the belly of the beast?"

"The beast."

"Should I leave you alone with her?"

"No."

Dae settled in next to Castor against the rail. "What does she mean to you?"

"Hmm?"

"Is she someone? Does a ship have a soul?"

"I'm no philosopher, Dae," Castor replied as if that would be all, but then interrupted her own decision, "but I think she's like the stars."

Dae looked confused

"When you look out a window at all those stars, are you looking at them or beyond them? What drew mankind to the seas, to the stars? Not the sea, not the void, but something beyond them. Hope, potential, home even. The call to be part of something greater than yourself. Something worth living for, fighting for, taking a risk for.

"Is she someone? She is everyone who has touched her, seen her, built her, fired upon her, hated her, and loved her. Does she have a soul? Do the stars?"

Dae nodded, "You are a philosopher."

"Is that the answer you wanted?" Castor replied, somewhat confused.

"It's an answer that works."

"But it's just another question."

"Most answers are, at least most of the ones that matter."

"So most will never resolve?"

"Most won't. They continue on and on forever, amarantos. An infinite unknown for every known."

"How do you live with that?"

"Simple. Once you get far enough down the chain, the question you started with doesn't matter anymore. There's an infinite unknown, but you can only focus on a certain amount of it at a time. Pick the questions that matter. Maybe you'll get the answer you were looking for, but life is about the journey, not the destination. Maybe you don't need the answer. Maybe you just need the question. As you said, 'the call to be a part of something greater than yourself'".

[speculative-scintillation]

Okay so I need to talk about the thing I just reblogged (but I don't want to derail that thread, so now we’re here). 

I don’t know what was going through Chris’ mind during this evaluation, but I believe his reply was meant as a subdued form of polite acceptance for Nina’s criticism. Even though Nina gave him this elaborate negative comment, he still respects her enough as a professional to take what she is saying constructively (even though it was never offered in the spirit of edification).

Nina doesn’t like his graciousness! She goes out of her way to make sure he feels insulted: "That’s not a compliment.“

Chris responds with a curt, clarifying reply:

“I didn’t take it as a compliment.”

Now THAT is my favorite kind of smackdown. It’s understated, subtle, humble, and completely turns the tables on the person who is supposed to have all the power.

I don’t know about other viewers, but after this interaction I was left with the distinct impression that it was not Chris’ understanding of Nina’s criticism that was lacking, but instead it is Nina’s authority as a critic that suddenly became questionable (at least in this one exchange).

SOMEBODY FINALLY EXPLAINED IT!

THIS IS EXACTLY HOW CASTOR IS. And this is why I feel like so much of her dialogue would be lost on a lot of people. She is exactly like Chris in this scene in the way she reacts to things. She’s modest, considerate, careful, and polite, but she is NOT submissive, and when you throw shit at her like that she’s going to react, but so few people communicate like that that I feel like that sort of comeback isn't recognized as a comeback.

Basically, my entire wit is in that kind of subtlety, and because it always whooshed right over most people, the smackdown was never recognized and the people coming at me just thought I’d made an idiot of myself, and because they’re the top dogs in town, they're right and I got my ass kicked regardless.

I really only know one person who actually understands that subtle smackdown kind of wit, so it just seemed too uncommon to be understandable. And that's why I’ve been so reluctant to post Amarantos excerpts (they exist, trust me).

Okay, so the excerpt I posted most recently has the most obvious example of that kind of response that Castor uses in the entire series so far and it’s still missed by people in the room

“Nobody’s giving up yet.” Oz asserted, staring in frustration at his thumb on the call button on the door panel.

“Who’s nobody?” the door replied with as critical a tone as he’d ever heard Castor muster.

That second tag ISN’T THERE in the document. I’m actually not sure if it even fits her character that well. I threw it in the post to highlight the comment, but I’m kind of hoping that, by this point in the series they’ll be easier to spot because of exposure.

But that comment has an extreme double meaning here. Basically what this would translate to is a combination of “Obviously someone has or we wouldn’t be here” and “I have”. It’s about the biggest punch she can throw and she lands it right in the stomach of one of the two people most likely to get it. And the other person is Dan, who gets mentioned in that scene also

“Is there any way to win by you?”

“You should ask Dan that. After all, isn’t this the way he made me?”

Which is another one of those smackdown comments, but literally only to Oz because, while Dan is the one who built her and the one who knows everything -technically- about her, Oz is the one who actually knows her behavior. 

In this situation, Oz is trying to make it seem like this interaction that they’re having isn't one of at least five that happen in the series because normally Castor wouldn’t want to admit or be allowed to admit that kind of thing to her crew, but now it’s been forced out there, and she wants to take advantage of that as much as possible and do what little she can to KEEP it out there

“Do you really want this out here?”

“It’s already out there. And maybe it’s about damn time.”

So Oz is trying to obscure things by making this seem unusual and denying the things he knows about her and she hits him with “well if you don’t know, maybe you should ask Dan”, and that’s a real punch.

But the fact that this is one of the more obvious examples and they both, especially the second one, could go completely missed with ease just bugs me a little bit.

And I was going to change it.

And then I saw this.

And now I’m not going to, because I know that there are people out there who appreciate that shit.

[speculative-scintillation]

The thing I’m noticing more and more about Amarantos is that a lot of the most emotionally tense scenes in any episode don’t involve that episode’s antagonist. That's probably because most of the time the antagonists aren’t trying to be antagonists. They have nothing personally against Castor or her crew, for the most part, they just create a situation which puts people in danger. Somehow, and I know this is entirely Castor's doing, the conflict remains against the situation and not against the antagonist. 

She just doesn't take anything personally enough to warrant a tense direct conflict most of the time. She can't give anyone the thrill of getting to her, so there's no point really in antagonizing. But there is always a tense internal conflict going on which is a lot more important and, again, often has less to do with the antagonist and more to do with the context. Even in the two or three episodes where someone is intentionally and directly trying to compromise her and harm her crew, she doesn’t take any of that personally. She can’t. She deals with the situation. She moves on. It's not until later that any of it actually means anything.

And the more I encounter this recurring thing, the more I like it. It’s unusual, it’s strangely comforting, but it doesn't sacrifice any of the necessary tension. It probably won’t be everybody's cup of tea, but that’s okay. I like it.

[speculative-scintillation]

One of my favorite things about Castor is how much shit she knows that she’s not supposed to know

[speculative-scintillation]

Amarantos starts at the end of a war. I had planned for that war to be the only war that happened in the series.

And then I wrote 𝙱𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚝’𝚜 𝙷𝚊𝚗𝚍, which introduces another war going on out on the fringes of inhabited space which Castor is dragged into.

And then I started writing 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙴𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 and its still-untitled first half which threatens to reignite the big war that the series started with. Both are predominantly Castor episodes.

And now I’m writing 𝙵𝚊𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚂𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎 [working title] and ANOTHER war has come up, and again, it’s a Castor episode.

And now I’m just sitting here wondering to myself why Castor keeps finding herself in the middle of all these f*cking wars. By the end of this series, I’m going to have covered war from every possible angle and it’s going to be completely exhausted. 

[speculative-scintillation]

Castor’s subtle and completely backwards system of gestures is going to be the death of me

[speculative-scintillation]

I could write like an entire season’s worth of material that's just Castor getting in trouble for talking to news media outlets