#and like I don’t mean this necessarily negatively but its like i barely even recognise the blogs LOL??

[loverboydotcom]

also waking up realising I posted an excerpt that I didn’t really want to post in hindsight but it’s okay bc this sites algorithm is so fucking bad barely anyone saw it 👍

[worldofjuju-blog]

The Big D. Yes, Depression.

1175. That’s the number of Monday’s I’ve lived through. You’d think as humans trapped in the repetitive cycle of the same 7 days for all of eternity we’d be used to them by now, but in all honesty they never seem to get any easier. You know that typical ~Monday~ feeling of a grey cloud looming over your head, that rain-on-your-parade-don’t-want-to-leave-the-house kind of feeling? 

‘Yeah Juju... We all experience Monday’s’ I hear you scoff. 

But what if that grey cloud wasn’t just a grey cloud? What if it was a storm blasting thunder into your eardrums, beating your brain until its fuzzy and numb, striking your body with lightening and rain until it is broken and weak. What if the wind rippled over every inch of your skin, cackling at your misery ‘You think you can escape? Ha! Think again!’ What if that feeling lasted not just Monday, but your entire week, every week, until every week blurs into one big grey mess and you can barely remember what day it is and why would it even matter anyway? Each day brings the same rain, the same thunder, the same misery.

You watch others playing and laughing in the sunshine and long for that feeling of warmth and happiness, you copy their smiles trying to fool everyone into thinking you were also blessed with the light but inside you are cold and dark and sad and the light feels like its a million miles out of reach. You smile until you simply cant and all you can do is lie there whilst your brain turns black and infected and rotten.

I have lived in the heart of the storm and I’m definitely not in the clearing yet, but I am learning that the light is not as far away as it once seemed.

That’s why my first ~serious~ post is about The Big D. Yes, Depression.

Depression is described by the Mental Health Foundation as ‘a mental illness that causes people to experience depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy, and poor concentration.’ This mental illness is something that affects my life and a huge number of my fellow Earthlings. It is in fact the most predominant mental health problem worldwide.

Now, I’m definitely not an expert - that’s why I’m not writing some la-di-da ‘cure yourself with vitamins and yoga’ kind of post. I’m purely expressing what The Big D means to me and attempting to educate others around me so they can understand the illness better. Below is a few (maybe helpful) tips for people struggling and those looking to support their depressed loved ones. *I cant speak for everyone with depression because everyone has different experiences, but this is the world of Juju so if these relate to you, cool! If not, also cool!*

DONT

- Act as if someone with depression is overreacting. ‘Cheer up’, 'just be more positive’, ‘smile love’, 'you don’t even have it that bad!’ Let me repeat this for the people in the back - depression is a mental disorder caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Lower-than-normal levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin can cause depression and, unlike Trump, neurotransmitters don’t discriminate against race, gender or economic wealth. Therefore, depression can happen to ANYONE.

- Call them ‘lazy’. Someone with depression may sleep a lot or get extremely tired from everyday tasks. In my worst days even getting out of bed seemed like climbing Everest and my arms felt simply too weak to even brush my teeth. There is scientific evidence that depression negatively affects psychomotor skills and can cause a lack of coordination, slowed speech, decreased movement, and impaired cognitive function. Thus, let sleeping lions be.

DO

- Understand that the mind and body are connected. ‘The brain, nervous system, immune systems, all the organs of our body and all the emotional responses we have, share a common chemical language and are constantly communicating with one another.’ Dr. James Gordon (founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine). This means people with depression are more likely to get sick, redefining that well known patronising phrase ‘it’s all in your head’. This connection does however, highlight the importance of looking after your body’s health which in turn can help your brain on the road to health too.

- Be patient! Praise yourself for going to that first therapy session, but recognise that this needs to be maintained in order to see progress. Mental illness is something to be managed, not necessarily cured. Of course cure would be fantastic but this is not realistic for everyone. A realistic goal is to learn to live with your illness one day at a time. Find the right medication and coping strategies that work for you. Who knows, one day you might not need them.

Hopefully you found this interesting and even a little bit informative. If you are currently in a storm, remember that the light is just behind the clouds. Reach out to someone you love and be kind to yourself.

[myfriendpokey]

the netflix of history

hard to talk about kitsch exclusively in aesthetic or historical terms - it's more like the point where aesthetic becomes history, or history aesthetic. you know it when you see it, like pornography or the sublime. in fact it's weirdly similar to the modern sublime, the shock of the new, of something you wanted or briefly felt but hadn't realised until now was even possible - "i don't know what this is, but i love it." "i don't know what this is, but i hate it". the truly kitsch is not just the bland, expected, overused or overdetermined - it's more the boundary where all those qualities come into being, where without quite being able to put your finger on it what's good has changed into the horribly false. something you maybe recognise, respect, in principle approve of, is suddenly intolerable. you nitpick, waver, make excuses or hypotheses, and then finally get exasperated: it's just that something doesn't work, has nothing left in it as a style, has become unusable. which doesn't mean it can't be reconstituted for second-order uses, as thomas mann has the devil say in doctor faustus: "One could raise the game to a yet higher power by playing with forms from which, as one knows, life has vanished." this becomes a way to "acknowledge freedom": that these forms have no more historical or emotional resonance makes their deliberate re-usage sort of an individual, gratuitous act. and they're also  a way to examine life in negative, life as being  whatever kitsch is not - the very paltriness of these old forms makes it easier to see traces of an active mind which moves through and rearranges them. but even this relies on a certain inert passivity in the forms being rearranged. like enemies that have become distant enough from us in time that they can be remembered fondly, when what's truly awful is that something can "die" without actually going away, or without anyone seeming to notice.

there's no particular moral element to being "anti-kitsch", contra a lot of  (themselves by now quite kitschy) arguments about the political benefits of breaking down recieved ideas, vigorous clear language etc. fascism is kitsch, but to be anti-kitsch is not necessarily to be anti-fascist. jenny turner gives the gruesome cautionary tale of "the institute of ideas", ex-trot radicals whose desire to epater lez bourgeoise eventually turned into goading, repetitive pamphlets about the desireability of oilspills and big business.  you could also think about the likes of lyotard, hitchens, nick land etc- or johnny rotten... the moment of irritated dissatisfaction in encountering something perhaps a little too glib, too rote or unsuprising, occurs without respect for the context or scale of the offence. and in fact part of the value of iconoclasm is in this levelling quality, in being able to throw off the habitual guilty hedging of your own impressions. maybe  this book, this album, this videogame, is a little corny or trite, but i guess it's basically harmless or "well constructed"... NOT!!!! death to all middle-of-the-road indie games about dead wives!!!! ha ha ha!!!! well, actually, i do agree with that part, and a big reason i cared about pop music at all as a teenager was the allowance it gave me to be fast and loose in my antipathies. the famous "value of art" is not just about what's beautiful or moving, it can also be in the reverse, the negative, the rush of finally putting a finger on just what it is that always bugged you about some element of culture as you finally encounter an alterity to it (which is partly why artistic canons are exciting as a set of arguments and next to useless as a set of inspirations). aversion can become a chance to have the courage of your own understanding, as they say, and connect private sensibility to the world at large. and i always enjoyed it, but also wonder what would have happened if these irritations had instead been channeled by, say, videogame youtube, or 4chan, or any of the public figures who rail against the yoke of bien-pensant liberal platitudes while continuing to support the, apparently less chafing, yoke of racial suprematism and US imperial policy. i think being anti-kitsch is the founding, sustaining effort of experimental art, but when the power of that effort is that this negativity has no necessarily determining form there's also no guarantee it won't morph into its ghastly opposite - anti-kitsch kitsch, of the kind purveyed by the late ayn rand who produced, as turner also writes, a strange but recognisable mirror image of high modernism itself.

but then what? you can't avoid kitsch, the awareness of it, you can't always be "understanding" of it, i feel it's a terrible mistake to just claim we can all just be more mature, less vindictive and perverse, more focused on the REAL problems of the world (lower your sights and raise your aim, as ABC once said) and less caught up on the negative. i don't think it goes away when you repress it, i think there'll always be a tipping point. true kitsch is what always just barely exceeds what you're willing to tolerate. one of the strands in percival everett's "erasure", memorably glossed by greil marcus, tracks the narrator's efforts to repress the nagging, peripheral awareness of a really bad book, an irritatingly worthy, false, self-satisfied piece of commercial hokum which is of course held in wide esteem, praised for its authenticity- until it's casually mentioned by a friend, and he can't help himself, it comes out, venomous, disproportionate rage, pure spite, and the friend not unreasonably is asking what the fuck is your problem? everett's hero is black, the book he's attacking is one that claims in whatever way to be representative of his life and experience - - and here's another reason the problem of kitsch is not so easily avoided, not so easily consigned to mere bad taste. kitsch might well exist in every culture, but in the manner of the old modernist sublime, the form it takes is absolutely distinctive to that culture, to the time, historical, material conditions in which it is produced. the manner of the really bad book is as mysteriously expressive of its period as that of the really good one. and so it appears less as an aesthetic failure, more a challenge from history itself, a challenge to deal with and reimagine that history's own conception of itself. the connection of experimental art with the contemporary is not that it's directly expressive of contemporary conditions but that it's directly engaged with contemporary kitsch. i don't know if you can sever this without also losing the contemporary itself in the process, which is maybe why certain mature works appear weirdly self-satisfied, adrift, as if having finally rid themselves of the nagging imperative to deal with some specific formal problem they're finally free to relax and become as boring as they wish.

the line quoted earlier from doctor faustus was directed, tauntingly, at the book's protagonist, who refuses to be fobbed off by playing with dead forms: what he's bargaining for is an entirely new one, an eerie, uncanny reemergence of new life within dead culture, a fresh beginning, purchased through sacrifice. and it's tempting to  think of that in relation to the videogame industry with its mandatory newness purchased through burnout, an institutional eternity - "make it new", make it new, i know, but why bother when stockholders (or whatever handful of Chosen Auteurs are still kicking) will accrue all the reward? maybe it should be changed to "make it old". or maybe there are other ways to engage with kitsch than with horror, the perpetual flight backwards into the unknown, with property surveyors lurching along behind. to take the urge to "make it new" itself and treat it like gertrude stein did placidly interminable magazine prose, or robert walser did the sentimental novella, thomas bernhard did the blowhard rant, as mann himself did the bourgeois novel, like a habit to be chopped up and emptied out - a kind of reptile tank for nervous consciousness, to watch it as it scuttles between the camoflague of its era. and what better form to do so than videogames, where newness has always been the attempt to outrun judgement. we pull aside the plastic rock and glimpse it - the horrible distracted grimace of the past, busily churning out the future........

(image credits: Crescent Moon Girl, Bloody Roar - Gado, Lunar 2, Anton Ze Player’s Bubble Bobble: The Adventure)

[rotten-zucchinis]

Reflections on (my) embodied queerness-- Part 2: confounding queer family members

This is part 2 of a 3-part reflection about some aspects of my own embodied queerness. 

TLDR: This part is about some misunderstandings I’ve had with my lesbian mother and bisexual sister at various points in time, about my queerness. And how experiences of things like homophobia don’t divide up neatly by “identity labels” (or experiences of attraction for that matter). Note: the experiences and reactions of my mother and sister aren’t representative of all lesbians or all bisexual women (or people!)-- I’m talking about them because they’re people in my life, and the whole point is that there *isn’t* a single lesbian, bi and/or asexual experience.

Part 1: Homophobia doesn’t care about “identity” or “attraction” [here]

Part 3: People reading me unpredictably... or as Shaggy from Scooby Doo? [here]

More than a decade ago now, when I first tried to come out to my mother as asexual, she didn’t believe me because I was “obviously queer”. (I’ve written about that more [here].) It took a good while but she now accepts me as both. I think a part of that was her coming to fully accept that I’m still queer, even while I’m also asexual. Coming out as asexual didn’t mean I wasn’t queer and it make me *less* queer. She’s queer too-- she’s a lesbian (she uses both words). She struggled a little to understand that my “queer” is different from hers. 

In some ways she still struggles to understand my queer because my queer life doesn’t look a thing like hers. Her queer life fits neatly into homonormative ideals-- she’s monogamously married to her wife and they’re raising now-teen children. Mine does not. And even after so many years, my mother is still struggling to recognise the important relationships in my life... But at least she’s trying.

Time-skip: A few years back, my gender-conforming bisexual sister (who was just barely coming to a bi / non-hetero identity at the time as she was starting to experience attraction to women for the first time) told me that she’s more “queer” than me and has more of a right to access “queer spaces” than I do *because* she’s had sex with a woman and I haven’t. This conversation came up initially in reference to a particular queer space that she was also claiming was more for her than it was for me (though neither of us ended up participating in it).

It didn’t matter to her that the particular queer space in question was aiming to prioritise trans and/or non-binary folks (like me, and unlike her). And it didn’t matter that I grew up facing all sorts of homophobic bullying in high school (some of which I’ve written about [here] ) ; that I’d been involved in queer spaces for many years, including as a facilitator for a queer youth group; that I’d had long-term intimate partnerships with women and non-binary people (i.e., non-romantic and non-sexual-- QP ones-- which are valid and “still count” as “real relationships”, whatever that means)... Whereas she’d never done any of those things. In her view, she was still more “legitimately queer” and should have “more legitimate access to queer spaces” than me because she’d had sex with a woman once and I hadn’t (and still haven’t).[1] (Incidentally, the space that prompted the discussion was also specifically a Jewish queer space and she recognises that I’m a whole lot more Jewish than she is, but that apparently didn’t matter either.)

I find the criterion of sexual contact to be a particularly strange ticket into queerness. For one thing, does that mean that people who haven’t had sex with anyone don’t belong anywhere? More importantly, it’s private (i.e., the sex itself, though not necessarily the relationship context in which it takes place). But it is something easy to grasp onto or name, and something very specifically tied to a long history of oppression. It just doesn’t work here, in this very different context

Time-skip: The other day, my sister (who is still very new to the world of dating people who aren’t men and who is still coming into a bisexual identity) learned that homophobia still exists. And she brought this up with me, assuming that I wouldn’t already know about it-- apparently since I’m not out there holding anyone’s hand or anything.

Her: “I wanted to tell you something: casual homophobia sill exists! I was on the subway, holding [ partner ]’s hand and people were actually glaring at us!

Me: “Yes, I am quite familiar with the casual homophobia.

Her: “Oh.” [confused] “Well I had no idea.”

Me [thinking quietly to myself]: “Yeah, I know.”

I experience casual homophobia every time I’m out in public. I don’t think I’ve been on the subway in my entire adult life without having someone glare at me, or hold their children a little closer to keep them away from me... I’m not often  out in the world like that with my sister. She hasn’t had many occasions to notice how people look at me first-hand, and hasn’t been ready to understand the kinds of (negative) attention I do garner when she’s seen it. It’s not that I’d never told her-- I had-- but she wasn’t in a position to understand. Not until she experienced it herself.

One of the biggest differences between my sister’s emerging “queer” and my own “queer” is that while hers *can* be private if she wants it to be, mine can’t: mine is publicly visible even when I’m alone. So I face a lot of casual resistance to mine that she doesn’t-- at least at this point in her life. (My queer is also anti-assimilationst and non-homonormative, and while I don’t think that’s a coincidence, that’s also another story.)

The experiences people have facing things like homophobia (or heterosexism or cissexism or transphobia, etc.) out in the world don’t divide up neatly according to “identity”. Asexual people (and aces more generally) are diverse and have a wide range of experiences. Bisexual people are diverse and have a wide range of experiences. Lesbians are diverse and have a wide range of experiences. There are elements of shared experience and solidarity among these identities, but even so, individuals’ personal experiences can vary greatly.

In order to understand the pragmatic realities queer (or otherwise LGBT+) people face in our lives, it’s not enough to understand our queer (or otherwise LGBT+) “identities” or “experiences of attraction”. There needs to be an understanding of how these things are embodied as we move through and interface with the world. And no identity label or string of labels can communicate that on its own.

[1]  The one sexual experience my sister was referencing, by her own description, was in the context of a 3-some involving her, a man she was dating at the time and another woman she was not. While such situations can absolutely be queer, they’re also situations that some heterosexual women sometimes participate in for “non-queer” reasons... So I find that a particularly odd choice of “proof” for someone to deploy in an effort to police “queer legitimacy” based on “same-gender sex”. But then, I don’t believe in a regulatory hierarchy of queer legitimacy based on sex (or anything else), so I’m no expert on where types of sexual experiences should be placed within one. 

Maybe she wasn’t actually trying to talk about the sex per se, but was instead perhaps trying to tap into some “queer” feelings she had about the experience  that made her “legitimately queer”-- feelings that she couldn’t quite express at the time. Even still, that’s not where she went with that in the conversation. And she couldn’t understand the impact because she didn’t really understand how or why I was (and still am) queer or the homophobia I’d been experiencing for so many years.

[sharkiegorath]

@almaviva90​ thanks for mentioning That Article, the only thing that can make me write coherently rn

I mean, God, if it’d just been called an underwhelming/bad show that would’ve been, like,  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, it’s your opinion, buddy. But personal bias aside, singling Finn out of all the characters in the series, especially the Scotland Yard arc, is??? It’s compounded by how the article doesn’t actually give any reason for why he’s included, unless you count ‘he’s like this one iconic character except not I guess’. So I’d like to examine the subconscious processes behind why Finn is listed as a Great Character while everyone else - cast and character - is disregarded, especially since positive reviews pinpointed the ensemble effort.

anyway I took this as an opportunity to Go the Fuck Off suddenly synthesizing loose scraps of information I’ve had for some time so bear in mind

“The folks who did stick with it mostly stayed onboard for Bertie Carvel’s Finn”??? Where are you getting this information? Since 2014, positive reviews and tweets mentioned the ensemble. For mediocre-to-negative audience reactions, I’d say there was a 50/50 split between people saying they only continued to watch for Bertie versus only continuing to watch for Brit. I’m pretty sure social media suggested there were more people who started watching for one actor then ended up immersed in the overall series.

Anyway.  Anyway.

The reason the article loosely gives for Finn's impressiveness is silly in the first place. Yeah, he's superficially like Malcolm Tucker, they're both spin doctors who go on shouty elaborate tangents. If it's been done before, why's it interesting? What distinguishes Finn so much that he's not just a clone in a different, allegedly weaker setting - which shouldn’t be worth listing - and how can he simultaneously be so similar that the explanation relies on preexisting knowledge of Tucker? 'He's even less charming' isn't a good reason, because intensifying one trait doesn't necessarily make a distinct character. (And based on what I've seen, isn't Finn less intense?)

Oh, and the fun thing is, that implied reason why he’s a stand-out character isn’t that accurate in the first place.

Firstly: we’re socially conditioned to identify with nominally straight white men, even (especially?) when they’re jerks. We create justifications for them in the absence of explicit excuses; we perceive complexity while oversimplifying other characters, even if we feel positively about them. But I’ve seen enough mediocre TV to think Finn is above-average. Until Ep. 5, I was partially willing to view him as complex because I believed everyone else was complex, and everyone else had interesting dynamics with him. I watched along with the original C4 airing. In terms of ‘sticking it through’, no, I didn’t watch just for Finn, and I had only watched the pilot for Bertie. Finn didn’t seem *that* important in the first two episodes of the main series, it looked like he might leave in the third, and his characterisation from the fourth onwards was tied to the overall plot. It was only subsequent marketing that gave away his prominence.

The article mentions (and dismisses) Bertie Carvel’s own opinion on Finn. (Which may have been paraphrased by the interviewer, but was probably still sympathetic.) He's realistic about his characters' flaws, including unambiguously sympathetic protagonists, including those who try to take advantage of institutional injustice. For him to say something along the lines of Finn not being that bad, Finn probably isn't. Babylon takes place over around a month, under uniquely stressful events. Since Liz's escalating issues make her act 2edgier and more unpleasant than usual, I think it's fair to infer that Finn is also not acting entirely like 'himself'; we don't have anywhere near the amount of context about his personal life as we do for Liz or Richard, but we do see his seemingly stable preexisting workplace relationships. Whether any of that justifies his behaviour is up to personal interpretation.

In Babylon, lack/introduction of context is juxtaposed with the transparency debate. (Actual Critic Genevieve Valentine also noted the narrative style, I'm not desperately bullshitting here.) It's ironic having characters argue about transparency when they aren't honest about themselves. It's not a mystery show, but mundane-yet-important details about main characters' personal lives are revealed suddenly, sometimes as surprises to the audience but not to other characters, sometimes as shocks to everyone. When characters learn more about each other and adjust their opinions, they themselves become more sympathetic in the process because it parallels audience reaction. I'm insistent that the series - specifically the Scotland Yard arc - is a team effort because otherwise Finn is just an asshole bouncing lines off people who don't verbally respond half of the time, and that's amazingly boring.

There isn't much evidence that Richard is a good person or Commissioner besides the word of his best friend and an infatuated woman he barely knows. He mistreats both of them in some way. He’s not mean to his family, but he's mentioned and shown as verbally abusive towards subordinates. Delgado may have had a point, since every other hint he gives to Liz is reliable. Yet the overall audience is probably more inclined to perceive Finn as the most-likely-to-be-abusive character, even though the only evidence is A) his interactions with Liz (who's matched him since day one; arguments aren't inherently abusive and they’ve started to Calm TF Down by the end) and B) his annoyance with Tom, which only peaks in the last two episodes.

Why does this happen? Because early on, Mia says Finn is an ‘arsehole’ - never mind how they usually seem to get along. (The only time they clash, his anger isn't actually directed at her.) No one paints a heroic picture of Finn; he describes himself through fictional villains or less-than-anti-heroes. He's not charismatic like Richard. He uses big words and has a severe gum addiction. Those 'undesirable traits' are subconsciously associated with being a white collar villain, while the obviously wrong actions of police characters aren’t as strongly vilified.

Audiences are so conditioned to expect certain story beats or clichés that we automatically assume they exist, or that there's a strong connection between things that aren't inherently linked. It happens with Liz, who might be negatively viewed the way Finn views her, or through a stereotypically rose-tinted ‘strong female character’ lens. It happens with Finn...who becomes most prominent as he’s part of the arcs of white women and a Black man. In his specific case, is that why the other characters aren't interesting, while he mysteriously pops out like a fucking daffodil in the middle of a desert? After Richard dies, only Finn could possibly fit what the protagonist of a satire 'should' look like, if you shut one eye and thought satires can't be humanist and pretended you didn't see certain scenes and turned off your deductive reasoning.

The worst things about Finn are his casual -ism’s and active role in the institution. I wonder if they’re the Bad Things identified by people who view him as an archetypal career-driven sadist, or if they come to mind at all. He’s not manipulative or a jerk as a default, he’s not motivated by money or power for its own sake. He’s arrogant and abrasive - that’s the rule in his setting, not the exception. Yet he mentally registers as a flat archetype at the cost of recognising his actual pressing issues. Not seeing his deeper issues undermines his dynamic with almost every other character - which, if you’re using him as a reference point, maybe explains why they might not appear as compelling, just maaaaybe. 

The trickiness of contextualization is specifically linked to Finn, who’s implied to have some sort of literary background. (Thanks, inexplicable Shakespeare bust!) In another interview, Bertie says Finn would describe himself as a ‘realist’. Finn occasionally brings up facts, but his concept of realism revolves around how other people construct their own fiction. (A neat thing about how Liz and Finn usually communicate: she ‘sells’ ideas, he gives mini narratives.)

It’s impossible to guard Richard while being honest about him or the police. Finn is opposed to Liz’s policies because their ‘story’ doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. He also romanticizes the job, but it’s in a Byronic way instead of straightforward heroism; he knows the truth is ugly and gives people more reasons to hate them, so he thinks they might as well control the narrative while they can. He frames his job as a gritty morally grey drama to justify himself - but it’s the wrong ‘genre’ and he fails to salvage their image anyway. Liz and Inglis have idealized, somewhat self-righteous perceptions of the institution, but they don’t use it to justify really bad things; their morality overrides conventional logic several times and it turns out to be the right thing, or the least wrong thing. They’re the only ones who remotely gain something they want by the end.

The emotional climax or whatever of Finn’s largely background arc is quietly admitting that he needs Liz, that her approach might be better than his, and encouraging Inglis’s interest in transparency - an interest that’ll likely have a long-term impact. Finn’s cynicism begins to recede and it’s largely dependent on them; he represents the shifting status quo, he’s an indication that they succeeded in some way. So he’s quite obviously not static and he can’t exist as effectively as an isolated entity therefore, bite me, Digital Spy.

[anonarat]

Chapter 3 - Sights and Splendour

There was a knock on the side of Aym’s palanquin. Masquerade had gotten used to the guards doing this, so drew back the light curtain shielding her from view.

“What is it,” asked Aym, feigning irritation.

“We are approaching The Rose Court and the city of Ertafye milady, if you wish to witness its splendor,” said the guard.

“One moment. I must compose myself,” replied Aym, drawing the curtain back across the palanquin. Now she just had to hope that her client was telling the truth. Digging into a pocket within her top, Aym withdrew a small vial filled with pills. An astute observer might note that there were enough pills in that vial for a few weeks at most, if one was to take them daily. Said observer would be right. Aym had enough of these pills to last her a month, and not a day longer.

Tipping out one of the innocuous white pills, Aym studied it for a moment, trying to determine anything more about it than what she had been told. No answers were forthcoming, so she threw it into her mouth and swallowed it.

Unlike most human medications and drugs, the pill worked near instantly. Faster still from Aym’s ability to consume glam. Immediately Aym felt a pressure to experience every emotion at once. The grief that she had been using to make her performance more convincing skyrocketed and she choked out a sob. It felt like the world was sharp and keen and tearing at her. She couldn’t keep her emotions in check even if she wanted to. It was a wholly unusual feeling for someone who had kept a tight reign on her emotions since birth.

Tentatively Aym tried to feel something besides grief. Drive, purpose, ambition. It was almost a relief as her emotions balanced out. Now more focussed, Aym began to bring her emotions up and down. As each one went up, she could lower the others. As one went down, the others necessarily rose. It was most disconcerting for her. Yet she had little time to master the vagaries of what the pill had unleashed.

“Open the curtains,” said Aym, the hitch in her voice an unintentional consequence of the sadness welled up inside of her. It felt almost as if she were undone, her body trembled slightly, and tears started drawing tracks down her cheeks. Beyond it all, her mind analysed, trying to balance her emotions so that she might be fit, and trying to understand what had happened to her.

Oh, her client had said that the drug would allow her to blend in with the other sparks, but they hadn’t specified how. The thought of having to consume that riotous cocktail day in and day out was listed quite high on Aym’s opinion of negative sensations. Not surprising really, it was baby’s first taste of always experiencing emotions. Unfortunately for her, it was the only thing that Aym knew about that would keep her from coming under scrutiny. She works it out later, don’t worry. The guards pulled back the light curtains of the palanquin. Ahead stood Ertafye and the Rose Court. Ertafye was a squat, stumbling, haphazard creation of a city, abutting the desert on three sides and the mountains of Ruination on the last. It was grossly impractical as a city location. Much commerce could travel around without needing to go through it. The only water could be gained from deep wells. There was little in the way of natural resources. Yet it was here that the fae of The Rose Court settled. By necessity, humans were gathered to serve.

The Rose Court was entirely and beautifully distinct. High walls grew tall over Ertafye. Graceful spires and curves were hinted at above the elegant crenellations of those walls. Glittering marble, silver, gold and ruby made up the walls, making the court gleam in the sun. It was a demonstration of power beyond mortal hands.

Such a sight allowed Aym to bleed off her grief to wonder without it seeming too out of place, and she relished such an opportunity. The metaphorical weight on her chest began to lift.

“It’s beautiful,” said Aym, almost to herself, yet also because that was what was expected of her.

And so on and so forth. I mean seeing the people of the town might have stirred up some measure of pity in a spark or ordinary human being. Instead Aym used that time to better acquaint herself with the effects of the pill. Mostly that involved spreading her emotions over as wide a range as possible. Even then, everything still felt much more than any humans in her experience could ever really feel. She thought that maintaining this level of emotion must be deeply exhausting day in and day out.

Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret dear listener, her emotions were being boosted to the same level as one might expect from a spark. Where most humans naturally have a fairly dim resting point for emotion, beaten down by the world, sparks are like a bonfire. Why, one spark generates enough emotion, and by extension glam, to be the equivalent of near a thousand humans. Naturally a spark can’t feel all of that emotion, so it all overflows, making it into a much easier to consume substance for the fae.

The palanquin finished its journey for the time, bringing Aym to stand before the grand gates of The Rose Court. Vast doors, made from a wood that Aym could not recognise, were decorated with yet more precious metals. The theme was obvious though, it was a door of roses and thorns, beautiful, deadly and impenetrable. It made a good excuse to shift more emotion to wonder.

Internally, Aym had begun wracking her brains for a way past this wall and gate when the time came to leave. It quickly became apparent that she would likely need another way out. Probably killing a servant and exfiltrating with their body.

A much smaller door opened within the gate, the join where it had met the rest of the wood was seamless. Because the door had glam infused, so yes, I’m being literal here.

In fact, it’s probably better to take a lot of these descriptions at face value, because the fae do so like using glam in their constructions. I’d say they take a perverse pleasure in doing things that mortals can’t do, but that really isn’t the case. Rather, the courts are especially designed to evoke wonder. Emotions fuel glam, and it far nicer to experience wonder than fear, though it does leave one more vulnerable.

A group of what Aym could only assume were servants, who were clad in mostly white, with the design of a red rose wrapping around the body, before flowering over the heart. Such a design was a not so subtle reminder of these human’s place, though time has worn the meaning of the reminder away from human thoughts. Now it was simply the uniform of the servants.

“Greetings Lady Aym, and welcome to The Rose Court. One of the masters is waiting for you, so please step this way,” said the servant at the head of the group.

Aym rose from the bed that had been her transport for the past week, and walked towards the group. She infused herself with some haughtiness, wonder and left some lingering amounts of grief and dread, presuming that this would be what the fae would expect to see. Well not so much see as experience, but you get the idea.

Assuming that the court guards, the bearers and her luggage would be dealt with by the squad of servants awaiting her, Aym simply crossed over to the lead servant.

“I thank you for your welcome. Please, lead the way,” said Aym. At once she realised she may have made something of a gaff, perhaps striding past the servants imperiously would have been more appropriate, but her course was committed now. The lead servant led her into The Rose Court.

***

Aym was led to a large receiving room, domed with a great, stained glass window. Whilst the room should have been in the shade of the wall, it was as if the light streamed through unimpeded. The room had a couple of small water channels that fed lush greenery on either side of the path, and the central circle where one of the fae waited.

Seeing a fae for the first time should fill anyone with dread, or at least, any human. From the outside, they are fickle, capricious things. Powerful, with only unworked iron as a weakness.

Alright, I’ll call it cold iron, I can tell that calling unworked just vexes you. To most folk, there isn’t much of a difference, but the distinction is important. After all, cold iron can mean a number of things, but unworked has a nice specificity to it.

Aym wasn’t just anyone, and she certainly wasn’t human, but she knew well enough to play her part. Dread was allowed to seep into the emotional composite, and Aym’s steps slowed, despite logically knowing that it shouldn’t be an issue.

The fae before her had unnaturally pale skin, near as white as any of the northern barbarians. Rich purple hair flowed down in waves from her head, just barely scraping the floor, and granting the creature modesty. Emerald eyes regarded Aym, the facets of the pupils reflecting the light oddly.

Yes, I am once again being somewhat literal, there was a slight change in hue between the pupil and the iris to differentiate them, but they were emerald. More accurately, I suppose, they looked entirely indistinguishable to emeralds to all natural eyes. Being fae, the creature’s actual shape was rather hidden by this glam that it projected to the world.

Aym took to one knee, and bowed before the fae on one knee as she had been taught by her client.

The fae walked towards her soundlessly, even lacking in the sound of breathing or the displacement of air. It stopped a couple of paces in front of Aym, and she could feel it looming over her. At the edge of her senses she could feel the faintest hint of emotion coming from the fae, trying to invade her with yet more dread and reverence. Remarkably prudently, or perhaps with part of her survival instinct kicking in, Aym let herself be dragged into the currents of emotion that started flooding her for a short while.

“Greetings Aym, formerly of The Court of Heights. I am Ythna, Queen, Sister to the king, and his consort. Be welcome in The Rose Court.”

“Your majesty, I do not deserve your presence,” replied Aym, replying as she had been taught. A high pitched laugh cut the air between the two.

“You need not worry so much about titles here, Courtier of the Heights. We are not so strictly delineated as your court is, we are not in constant competition with each other. We regularly mingle amongst the courtiers, instead of having them seek our approval,” said Ythna, her voice like silk, though silk with a viper beneath it, “We are a court of love and romance. Though your heart may ache at the absence of your lover, perhaps you can find another here who can soothe that ache.”

“I hope it to be as your majesty says,” said Aym in response, with no other option seeming particularly viable.

“Oh, lighten up Aym,” said Ythna gently, “I feel that we shall become the very best of friends, if not something more.”

Then, Ythna leaned down to whisper in Aym’s ear, “after all, I am the one to whom you shall be reporting your findings.”

Aym shivered involuntarily as Ythna drew a finger down her bare arm, pleasure radiating out from the touch. Ythna spoke again.

“What was lost, shall be found. What was old, shall be new again.”

To Aym, this sounded worryingly like a sign, so she had to put her faith in the fact that there was no countersign. Given that she was the only person coming from the Court of Heights; it seemed possible that there wasn’t one.

“As you say my lady,” replied Aym, weighing up possible escapes, and discarding them. The original Aym had kept rather tight-lipped about who her contacts would be, and what communication methods she would use with them once in The Rose Court. There was a near insufferable pause, almost as if Ythna was weighing up whether or not to kill Aym.

“Good,” said Ythna eventually, sounding pleased, though whether she actually was or not wasn’t clear. Ythna once again drew herself up to her full, impressive, height, and then extended a hand to Aym.

“Come. I shall introduce you to some of the other fae of the court and to the other courtiers,” Ythna’s tone brooked no refusal.

***

Ythna led Aym out of the receiving room that she had been in and out into the court proper. It was filled with wonders, both large and small. Plants grew, water burbled and the whole place was pleasantly warm. Statues of surpassing beauty were placed in small plazas. Light streamed through the walls, though no sun could be seen at present due to their height. Near to the walls was many a building, though one dominated the view.

It was a cross between a giant manor and a wizard’s tower. Not that wizards actually exist, but it gives the right sort of image. Many smaller towers branched off from it, making the top seem like a forest of spires. The whole thing was in green marble, accentuated with a bit of red.

There seemed to be a reasonable number of humans and things that were probably not human milling around near where Aym was being led. Given how barren the parts of the court that were further away were, Aym suspected that they had all come to view her, and now were acting nonchalantly.

Ythna raised the arm that was not currently holding Aym’s hand, and pointed to the impressive building.

“That is The Rose Court proper Aym. Do not enter it unsupervised by one of the Lords or Ladies of the court. If you do… unfortunate things shall happen to you, and I would prefer to prevent that.”

Aym nodded in agreement. Despite the fact that it was probably a bad idea in terms of thoughts, Aym had added befuddlement into the mix of her emotions. If she was supposed to be feeling things in greater excess, it seemed safer to have apparently natural reactions, even if logically it hurt her.

As Ythna led Aym through the general courtyard, Aym noted that the hedges and plants had been carefully cultivated to provide a number of hidden nooks and crannies. Based on what her client had told her of The Rose Court, these were no doubt for secret liaisons and trysts. Further, based on the numbers of people and fae she had already seen, there would always be a slight risk of being seen. It was possible this was to add a frisson of danger, but also provide fuel for any rumour mills within the court.

Whilst Ythna didn’t fully understand why this would be desirable, she had so far gotten the impression that whilst the fae seemed to do a number of things on whimsy, there was something calculating behind that. The exact nature of what the fae wanted was mysterious to Aym, but given her experiences so far, they likely wanted people to be emotional. She reasoned through the problem quickly deducing that there was some link between emotion and glam, though what that link was, was still open. Aym was right, of course. Given my emphasis on such things, no doubt you have also deduced this fact as well, but here is some out and out proof. That is, if you believe that I am telling you the whole truth.

“Over here is the recreation building,” said Ythna indicating a large, squat building with a ring of packed dirt around it, “Inside you may find playing areas for various games. I realise that it won’t be on quite the scale you are used to, but we don’t play for rank, only pride. No doubt you will be able to find others to give you game… provided you give them a suitable handicap. There are some others originally from the Court of Heights, and we try to encourage all our courtiers to do at least some exercise. A word to the wise though, sometimes it is more politick to lose a match.”

“Thank you, my lady. I shall make certain to take advantage of this kind provision.”

“Think nothing of it my dear,” said Ythna, running another tantalising finger down Aym’s arm, causing her to shiver slightly as her nerves went into overdrive, “whilst not so much as our… friends… in the Court of Heights, we do still love a good game of skill and athleticism.”

“Come now, I shall show you to your quarters. I think you will find them nicer than the barracks where you lived. I understand that you were mid-tier in your former court. Here, everyone is treated equally, and well,” said Ythna as she led Aym further into the court.

[negativerain]

This moment in time.

I wish I had someone to talk to. There’s a lot that goes on in my mind.

I want to talk about more than what’s on the surface. I think a lot and I think deeply and I have so much to say but nobody to talk to. There are people around me, friends and family, but either I try talking to them until we reach a point where they can’t understand me, can’t even humour me; or they’re too busy for me to find it practical to go into the lengthy conversations that would be required to reach an understanding about what’s going on in my mind right now.

So there’s a problem in my mind. I go along just about fine, barely meeting deadlines but meeting them all the same, getting average grades where I could do much better if I were able to break out of the forces that keep me only just chugging along at terminal velocity on these train tracks. (The physics might be mistaken on that one.) However, every so often I keep reaching a frustrating dead end at which point I end up voicing some concerns - “I’m struggling.” It keeps getting worse and not getting any better, so today when I voiced my concerns I was as transparent as I’ve ever been.

In public, joked about how I’m “having a midlife crisis”. This was an over-dramatisation left my lips without a second thought when a caring friend asked me how I’m doing. I regret voicing this in the company I was in at the time, because now I might have left two other people worrying about me (or thinking something else). Anyway, maybe I really needed to say it, or maybe it’s all I could honestly say in response to her question about me. Aside from my slight regret about the circumstances in which I said this, as I wish I had kept up my regular “I’m okay” response until privacy was reached, I feel some relief that I was able to take the opportunity to spit out a hint of the overwhelmingly negative thoughts that have been clouding my mind lately at this new dead end. i was able to get a little advice about overcoming a complete lack of motivation when studying.

In private, in different company, I was more transparent. I talked more directly than before, although still not fully directly, about my lack of motivation in more than one aspect of my work. I moved on to how my attitude is so much more pessimistic these days - where did my always positive, hopeful and reassuring attitude go? I talked about how anyone at my age should be able to talk about themselves and name a couple of good qualities or personality traits that make them who they are, and that I’m unable to because of my dedicated focus on my shortcomings (which is not just a simple curse, because I find it necessary for self-improvement). I went back to the thoughts of school and teachers that have come to me a few times - I was always a good student, a top student who needed no help, or so teachers will have thought throughout my school career. I think school is an essential time for people to learn about themselves, and I feel like I missed out on that opportunity, one of the reasons being how easily I was fully ignored due to not needing assistance in class. I had only ever received one comment from a teacher about a skill I had - interestingly, it was that I was an exceptional writer, but the point is that I wanted to be noticed. (I partially have regret that I didn’t speak up more in school seeing as this should be the most obvious method in getting noticed, but I know that my near silence had its causes, including that I may be introverted, more of an analytical thinker than a talker, and self-confidence and self-esteem were not so much instilled in me.) I wanted to know who I was - I have wanted to know for some time, and I still want to know. I have my own ideas, of course, that swirl around in my mind, but I wanted to hear it from anyone’s mouth (particularly the mouths of those who are close to me) so that I could know that people don’t see me as a personality-less zombie (the way I feel) and recognise something about me.

After a long (and somewhat unpleasant at times) conversation filled with frustration and misunderstanding, I managed to finally hear about myself that I’ve always been serious (and was always mature for my age, which is only an elaboration of the previous point, according to this person). It was so nice to finally hear something, anything, that showed that someone knows who I am that I almost cried. It’s up to me whether to take it as a compliment, but I wasn’t looking for compliment. I suppose I crave conversation with someone who has an interest in me - the inner me. I have enough interest in myself (I should think so, with all the thoughts of self-improvement and ideals to strive for collected in my mind) and I have interest in others (maybe not enough...), so all I would want is someone who cares about me to take an interest in me. I wouldn’t have thought that it’s too much to ask for, but maybe it’s not an easy task. This is possibly an area I need to reflect on, and I may need to humble myself to the fact that it’s not as simple as wanting to know what someone’s thinking and, thus, listening to them.

I don’t think this simple comment (almost something like a backhanded compliment) that I’m a serious person has helped me feel recognised as a person with a personality, but it did something to me if it almost made me cry in gratitude for hearing it. (I’ve had concerns before that I’m too serious in some ways, and also somewhat accepted that it’s a part of me and that I can defend it from, or explain it to, those who criticise it - but this is all much more complex than I believe the person had intended the comment to be.)

What I’m having now is, I think, relative to a breakdown. I dislike using that word because when I think about my life in perspective, nothing’s wrong. Inside my mind, though, I’m not okay. And my mind is a complex place. (I tend to assume the same about other peoples’, but there’s no way of actually knowing anyone’s mind but one’s own. I like to be accurate, so I must only write about knowing my own mind, which - even then - I can’t even say I really know.)

I just want to talk. Not necessarily with the intention of emptying my mind, although that could be an incredibly useful side effect because my mind has become clouded and I can’t find a way to clear it. Talking to people who are philosophical or have some deep thoughts is so invigorating. It makes me feel a hint fresher than anything else could make me feel in this mundane, same-old life.

This here is my alley when there’s nowhere left.

Writing has, once again, helped me somewhat. If I hadn’t ‘broken down’ publicly (’public’ here meaning outside of my mind) and had come to writing instead, would that have been a better solution? Or do I not have a choice? When this dead end occurs, is the only way to rid my frustrations to blurt out a confession that I’m not okay and ride the wave that follows? I can say one thing: this whole scenario is a serious waste of a day.