#given more time i could probably recommend you some readings/philosophers but its been a while since

[valtsv]

Howdy. I know you probably have upwards of like 20k asks or some absurd number like that, but I have a question. My college comp 2 teacher always has philosophical prompts for our essays and the topic for this one is "What does it mean to be a good person? what makes a good person good?" and obviously I'm writing the most commonly listed stuff like open-mindedness and honesty and all that jazz. But all the articles I've read heavily point out Empathy, so wanted to write a paragraph going against that. I'm trying to talk about how having empathy doesn't automatically make you a good person, and that people with low/no empathy are not evil and can in fact be very good people. I'm asking for your thoughts on this because I think you're one of those people (you're also much better with words than I am).

hmmm i'd probably say something about how empathy is not interchangable with goodness, nor is it ontologically good, because empathy alone is just a tool, and tools have no inherent moral or ethical value, it's how we use them that does. you can feel empathy for someone and choose to do absolutely nothing with that empathy. empathy without the choice to show compassion, you can argue, hardly contributes towards a good life for anyone, even the empathetic person. and you do not need to feel empathy to choose to show compassion. i would highlight philosophical arguments which place emphasis on the importance of action/outcome over intention to support your point (although make sure to acknowledge possible counter-arguments).

[imaginetonyandbucky]

The Buy In

Chapter 7: Just One Night

by @dracusfyre

Bucky waited nervously for Tony to show up, forcing himself not to pace but unable to stop tapping his fingers against his knee as he sat on the couch and ignored the show he’d put on the television. In the past few hours he’d come to terms with the difficult realization that he was going to have to go to his handlers and recuse himself from this assignment. Having already made the decision to protect Tony from the raid, he couldn’t trust himself to not tamper with the investigation further, which would violate everything he believed in. Removing himself would set the investigation back for months, maybe even longer – which he couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about – but he couldn’t go through the motions for a mission he didn’t believe in. That was the whole reason he’d gotten out of the Army all those years ago. He knew he’d probably get busted down to traffic cop for his trouble, but it was the right thing to do.

All of which meant that Bucky had given himself permission to not be on duty during this dinner – he wasn’t going to try to glean more information about Tony’s operations or ask any probing questions so he couldn't make the conflict of interest any worse. Instead, Bucky could be nervous about the real matter at hand, which was that he was about to go on a date with a guy that Bucky liked way more than he should.

Not that it could go anywhere, Bucky told himself. He was still a cop, and Tony was still a crime lord, and he’d been lying to the man for months now. In any event, once he recused himself from the case, he would have to disappear from Stark’s life and reach completely; if he was being honest with himself, the smartest thing to do for his career would be to start looking for a new position outside of New York City right now, but he shied away from that thought for reasons he didn't want to think about too deeply.

But all of that was for future Bucky to worry about. For now, he was about to go out to dinner with a man who had been a runner up in People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year contest multiple years in a row and who still made it onto the list of New York’s most eligible bachelors despite his “alleged” criminal ties. A man who liked chocolate chip cookies and fed bits of chicken to stray cats when he thought no one was looking.

Bucky blew out a breath and realized that he hadn’t brushed his teeth, so he got up and was headed for the bathroom when the buzz of his phone against the coffee table made him jump.

Here! The message came from an unknown number, but it had to be Tony. Bucky quickly swished some mouthwash and grabbed his wallet as he stepped into his shoes.

As soon as he got into the car he realized he had been so busy having a third-of-life crisis that he hadn’t even thought about where to go for dinner. “Hey,” he managed, feeling all of the excruciating awkwardness of a first date. Tony was dressed a lot like he had been earlier, with a suit coat over a plain shirt, but tonight it was black on black with a gleam of silver at Tony’s wrist. Bucky did his best not to stare but judging from the way the corner of Tony’s mouth was curling up, he probably failed.

“Hey, yourself, Blue Eyes,” Tony said. He gave Bucky an appreciative glance, lingering on his freshly shaven face, before he pulled away from the curb, which went a long way towards making Bucky feel less awkward. “You like Italian?”

“What’s not to like?” Bucky said philosophically.

“Good man,” Tony said. “My mother was Italian, so when I say this place has the best Italian food in the city, I know what I’m talking about." The drive went by quickly despite city traffic; Bucky asked about his mother’s family and in return got a ton of entertaining stories about Tony’s summers on his mother’s estate, including getting locked outside naked when a girl’s parents came home unexpectedly early. Soon enough they drove past a restaurant with people waiting outside, and Tony pulled around into the alley behind the restaurant that had at least four NO PARKING signs posted with a varying number of exclamation points and underlining. When Tony saw Bucky looking at one, he shrugged. “I don’t count,” he said, which Bucky could believe. They went in the back door of the restaurant and were immediately greeted by a smiling waiter, who escorted them to a private room where a table was set for two. The table was dwarfed by the space; this was clearly a room meant for a wedding or birthday party, but Tony must have reserved it just for them. The waiter took their drink orders (“Your usual, Mr. Stark?”) and as he left pulled a heavy curtain across the entrance to the room and the noise of the rest from the restaurant was muted. The lighting in the room was dim, the table was small, and the intimate feeling was exacerbated by the candle on the table.

Bucky started to say something about it, then realized he probably shouldn’t call attention to how romantic everything looked for the sake of his own sanity. He grabbed his menu and studied it, aware that Tony, having probably already memorized the menu, was studying him from across the table. “Are you going to judge me based on what I order?” he asked, meeting Tony’s eyes from over the top of the menu.

“Yes.”

“So it’s a test.” Bucky narrowed his eyes at Tony, as if trying to read his thoughts. After a moment, he folded his menu. “What do you recommend?”

Tony’s smile was blinding. “The eggplant rollatini with the tartufo for dessert.”

“Sounds delicious.” The waiter came back for their orders, bringing with him a bottle of wine that was so old its label was brittle and peeling away from the glass. He poured Tony a small amount, who tasted it and gave his approval, and then poured them both glasses. Bucky promised himself he would stop at the one glass – getting drunk tonight would be so stupid – but after he tasted the wine his conviction wavered. Whatever type of wine this was, even Bucky could taste that it was the Ferrari of booze. How often was he going to be wined and dined like this, after all? A bottle had what, like two glasses of wine apiece? He would be fine.

“So,” Tony said after the waiter left, crossing his arms and resting his elbows on the table. His eyes glinted with amusement. “Let’s talk about your five-year plan.”

Trying to smother a smile, Bucky crossed his arms as well. “Let’s talk about where you think your organization is going to be in five years, and I can tell you how I think I’ll fit into that plan.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony said skeptically. Then he sat up straight, cleared his throat and became what Bucky could only call Corporate Tony, face serious and tone strictly professional. “Well, I think this organization is best described as embarking on a period of rapid expansion while simultaneously consolidating the gains that we’ve made in the past few years. In many of our key industries we are working on horizontal and vertical integration in order to capitalize on economies of scale. Proceeds are invested back into the capital base and workforce, with the remainder being banked against future shortfalls. At the most recent shareholder meeting, members voted to waive the first quarter’s dividends in order to acquire assets for novel business ventures, putting us in a strong position for next year despite moderate economic headwinds.”

As Tony spoke, Bucky’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher. “Impressive,” he said. “You came up with that on the fly?”

“Well, I’ve been spinning bullshit to board members since I was old enough to vote, so I’ve had a lot of practice,” Tony said dryly, taking a sip of wine.

“Do you really have shareholders?”

“Yep. So many shareholders, for so many different businesses.”

“Is that-” Bucky was about to ask if the shareholder thing was related to the mysterious buy-in, but he reminded himself that he wasn’t working tonight. “Never mind. Well, the truth is, I don’t know where I’ll be in five years. The past few months have made me rethink a lot of things, and I’m trying to figure out my next step.”

“Oh?” Tony leaned forward again, gaze intent. “Want to talk about it?”

Bucky had self-preservation enough to know that talking about his crisis of conscience with the reason for that crisis was a bad idea. “Not just yet,” Bucky said. “I think…I think I need to figure out what I want, first.”

“Yeah, that’s usually a good first step.” Tony opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but he closed it and took a sip of wine. “What would you like to talk about instead?”

The conversation paused as the server brought out an appetizer (“Courtesy of the Chef, he’s trying a new recipe”), the service amazingly fast given the crowd that Bucky knew was on the other side of the curtain. Guess that was one of the perks of dining with the Tony Stark.

“Do you still have time to invent?” Bucky asked when they were alone again, scooping some of the appetizer onto his plate. Looked like calamari. “Like robots and stuff?”

Bucky could tell that he’d caught Tony by surprise with the question. “Someone’s been looking me up on the internet,” Tony accused with a smile, pointing his fork at Bucky.

If Bucky was a lesser man, he would have blushed – googling Tony Stark on his phone before going to sleep had become a guilty habit, from the early articles about him when his parents were alive to his college exploits to the frequent scandals of his twenties. Between all those, however, were periodic articles in scholarly journals attributed to “T.E. Stark” and more substantial think pieces in popular science magazines. “I like knowing who I’m working for,” Bucky said defensively, feeling the back of his neck get hot.

“Uh-huh. I do still tinker in my spare time, what I have of it,” Tony said. “Right now I’m working mostly in artificial intelligence. I have one, his name is JARVIS, that I’ve been tinkering with since college. I think machine learning algorithms are fascinating.”

“I read up about some AI initiatives when I was in the Army,” Bucky said. “For targeting and whatnot.” He had read even more about it once he became a cop, and he wasn’t at all enthused with the projects he’d heard about. “What do you do with it? Him,” he corrected.

“JARVIS helps me with work,” Tony said vaguely, fidgeting with his silverware before spearing a piece of calamari. “I got into AI when Stark Industries got awarded a cybersecurity contract. I kind of ran with it after we fulfilled the contract and JARVIS was the result."

Bucky almost dropped his fork when he got hit with a startling suspicion. Helps me with work. Was Tony’s mysterious accountant, that no one had ever seen or spoken to, that was able to hide his money from every regulatory body in the US government, an AI? The implications were staggering, not just for the case but for the tech industry as a whole. Bucky covered for his stunned silence by eating, washing down the food he was barely tasting with expensive wine. The irony was not lost on him that he just had the biggest scoop of the operation so far, hours after he’d decided that he was quitting the case.

“So how about you? What do you do in your free time?” Tony asked, topping off their glasses.

Bucky stared at him across the table, brain blanking. It took so long for his brain to shift gears from thinking about JARVIS to trying to think of what he did in his spare time that Tony started to give him a funny look. “Uh, nothing special,” Bucky said after a minute. Googling his boss certainly wasn’t a hobby, after all. “After spending so much time in military cafeterias, I’ve been trying to get better at cooking. I work out, it’s a good release. Read. Visit museums when I can. One of my friends is trying to get me into indy games, but we can't play often.”

“That sounds nice. Gotta maintain that work-life balance, right?” Tony said. “Smart.” There was a soft chime and Tony pulled his phone out of his pocket. Bucky tensed; he’d forgotten about the raid until he saw Tony’s phone, having turned off his own ringer so that his notifications wouldn’t drive him crazy. He watched Tony’s face warily, wondering if the chime was related to the raid. Surely there would be a phone call, though? From his lawyer, or his security at the garage? But whatever the notification was, Tony just scanned it briefly and put his phone back in his pocket. “Sorry,” he apologized. “The boss is always on the job.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky said, smiling faintly, but the rhythm of the evening had been thrown off; thankfully their food came out and Tony got them back on track by asking about Bucky’s time in the Army, which got him on a roll of telling funny stories about the stupid things he’d seen as a sergeant. Turns out Rhodes, Tony’s right hand man, had been in the Air Force and Tony threatened to get him on the phone to defend himself against Bucky’s digs against the “chair force.” Before he knew it, dessert had come and gone, the bottle of wine was empty and their glasses had been replaced with tiny cups of espresso.  The sound on the other side of the curtain to the rest of the restaurant had died down considerably, and the check had been dropped off so subtly that Bucky hadn’t even noticed it until Tony picked it up and put a healthy stack of bills in it.

“Want to go for a walk?” Bucky said impulsively, not quite ready for the date that shouldn’t be a date to end.

“Can’t,” Tony said regretfully. “No long walks for me anymore, not in the city at least.”

“Right.” Given the number of enemies Tony had, it was risky enough for him to be out without more protection than just Bucky without parading himself up and down sidewalks. “Guess its time to go home, then.”

“I could take you home, yes.” Tony said slowly, lining up the silverware in what Bucky realized was a show of nerves. After a moment he pushed them aside and met Bucky’s eyes across the table. “Or…”

Bucky’s heart leapt. “Or?”

“Or we could do something that we shouldn’t.”

Bucky’s breath caught in his lungs. There was a hopeful and hungry look in Tony’s eyes that made Bucky flush hot and then cold. It would be such a mad, bad idea to go to bed with Tony Stark; if he got caught, he’d go down in NYPD as the casebook example for how to fuck up an undercover assignment. On the other hand, tomorrow he would be requesting reassignment and would never see Tony again, so there would be just this one night. He could have that, right? Just one night for himself, this one selfish thing he could have before he left for good?

“Okay,” Bucky said. His heart was racing and he suspected if he didn’t have his hands wrapped around his empty espresso cup they would be shaking. “Tony, would you like to have another drink with me at my place?”

“I’d love to,” Tony said with a smile.

[jedi-order-apologist]

I finished reading Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, and I have to say, I really, really loved it! Everyone who recommended it to me was 100% right - this book is great, and especially great in its representation of the Jedi. I think I like it even more than Shatterpoint, and I really liked Shatterpoint.

There are some weak points - it was a little slow to pull me in, and there’s a couple of Weird Legends Things™ that, with me not being particularly immersed in that continuity, don’t quite fit in with my conception of Star Wars (Dooku apparently having had a Master that was not Yoda; the infamous 13-year-old age limit (though I was at least familiar with that one), the Jedi being so far in the public eye that there exists a famous Yoda impersonator, etc), and I was a little iffy on how it handled the “Jedi shouldn’t be in the war” angle (I’m fine with there being Jedi who think that the Jedi shouldn’t be in the war. I’m less fine with an author deciding that other Jedi can’t find the words to defend their involvement, because that’s a cheap way of framing the argument), and a small moment of the “everyone falls in love” stuff I dislike.

But those were very small aspects of the book, all things considered, and pretty much everything else about this book is really, really good, and very Star Warsy - a very healthy mix of the wacky as well as the philosophical sides of the franchise, which suited my tastes really well. This book is fun - Yoda is the grumpy grandpa that he deserves to be, and spends a good portion of the book disguised as an astromech that gets into all sorts of trouble. Obi-Wan and Anakin have peak sibling energy in the handful of scenes that they show up in - Anakin at one point insisting that a woman would have to be desperate to want Obi-Wan, and only a younger sibling could possibly say something like that with a straight face to a man as attractive as Obi-Wan, as well as Obi-Wan lying to Mace Windu’s face to cover for Anakin and then immediately grumbling about it to Anakin that he doesn’t know why he does these things for him is such an older sibling thing to do.

Where this book really shines, though, is the serious stuff - the philosophy and the dark side and especially grief. What absolutely sold me on this story, and what made me sit up and go “this is going to be one of my favorite Star Wars books”, was the part where Yoda speaks to the padawans and helps them address and work through their grief. It was phenomenal, and beautiful, and absolutely everything I want out of depicting the Jedi - especially in the context that only a chapter earlier, Ventress had been hurling those standard accusations of “the Jedi don’t let you feel”, and this book wonderfully, completely demolishes that nonsense. This section is absolutely amazing:

Yoda set his bowl of gumbo regretfully aside. “Hear it working, do you?”

“Hear what?” Whie snapped.

“The dark side. Always it speaks to us, from our pain. Our grief. It connects our pain to all pain, our hurt to all hurt.”

“Maybe it has a lot to say.” Whie stared at the starscape hovering over the projector table. “It’s so easy for you. What do you care? You are unattached, aren’t you? You’ll probably never die. What was Maks Leem to you? Another pupil. After all these centuries, who could blame you if you could hardly keep track of them? Well, she was more than that to me.” He looked up challengingly. Tear tracks were shining on his face, but his eyes were still hard and angry. “She was the closest thing I had to a mother, since you took me away from my real mother. She chose me to be her Padawan and I let her down, I let her die, and I’m not going to sit here and stuff myself and get over it!” He finished with a yell, sweeping the plate of crêpes off the projection table, so the platter went sailing toward the floor.

Yoda’s eyes, heavy-lidded and half closed like a drowsing dragon’s, gleamed, and one finger twitched. Food, platter, drinks, and all hung suspended in the air. The platter settled; the crêpes returned to it; Whie’s overturned cup righted itself, and rich purple liquid trickled back into it. All settled back onto the table.

Another twitch of Yoda’s fingers, the merest flicker, and Whie’s head jerked around as if on a string, until he found himself looking into the old Jedi’s eyes. They were green, green as swamp water. He had never quite realized before how terrifying those eyes could be. One could drown in them. One could be pulled under.

“Teach me about pain, think you can?” Yoda said softly. “Think the old Master cannot care, mmm? Forgotten who I am, have you? Old am I, yes. Mm. Loved more than you, have I, Padawan. Lost more. Hated more. Killed more.” The green eyes narrowed to gleaming slits under heavy lids. Dragon eyes, old and terrible. “Think wisdom comes at no cost? The dark side, yes - it is easier for them. The pain grows too great, and they eat the darkness to flee from it. Not Yoda. Yoda loves and suffers for it, loves and suffers.”

One could have heard a feather hit the floor.

“The price of Yoda’s wisdom, high it is, very high, and the cost goes on forever. But teach me about pain, will you?”

“I...” Whie’s mouth worked. “I am sorry, Master. I was angry. But...what if they’re right?” he cried out in anguish. “What if the galaxy is dark. What if it’s like Ventress says: we are born, we suffer, we die, and that is all. What if there is no plan, what if there is no ‘goodness’? What if we suffer blindly, trying to find a reason for the suffering, but we’re just fooling ourselves, looking for hope that isn’t there? What if there is nothing but stars and the black space between them and the galaxy does not care if we live or die?”

Yoda said, “It’s true.”

The Padawans looked at him in shock.

The Master’s short legs swung forth and back, forth and back. “Perhaps,” he added. He sighed. “Many days, feel certain of a greater hope, I do. Some days, not so.” He shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

“Ventress was right?” Whie said, shocked out of his anger.

“No! Wrong she is! As wrong as she can be!” Yoda snorted. “Grief in the galaxy, is there? Oh, yes. Oceans of it. Worlds. And darkness?” Yoda pointed to the starscape on the projection table. “There you see: darkness, darkness everywhere, and a few stars. A few points of light. If no plan there is, no fate, no destiny, no providence, no Force: then what is left?” He looked at each of them in turn. “Nothing but our choices, hmm?”

“Asajj eats the darkness, and the darkness eats her back. Do that if you wish, Whie. Do that if you wish.” The old Jedi looked deep into the starscape, suns and planets and nebulae dancing, tiny points of light blazing in the darkness. “To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan.” His matted eyebrows rose high over his swamp-colored eyes, and he poked Whie with the end of his stick. Poke, poke. “Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!”

Whie cried for what seemed like a long time. Scout ate. Fidelis served. Master Yoda told stories of Maks Leem and Jai Maruk: tales of their most exciting adventures, of course, but also comical anecdotes from the days when they were only children in the Temple. They drank together, many toasts.

Scout cried. Whie ate. Fidelis served.

Yoda told stories, and ate, and cried, and laughed: and the Padawans saw that life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

I want to show this passage to every hot-take Yoda-critical fan who’s ever leveled that kind of nonsense at him. I want every one of them to read this and still try to tell me that Yoda is detached and uncaring of the galaxy around him. I want every fan who thinks the Jedi are expected to be unfeeling to read this and understand what the Jedi actually say and do and why giving into these feelings is the issue, not the feelings themselves.

The confrontation with Dooku is also amazing. Yoda challenges him to explain why the dark side is so great, and Dooku only gets more and more frustrated as Yoda is unswayed by any of what he tempts him with. I especially love this bit where Yoda lays out exactly why what the dark side promises is false:

“Want something else. Want power.”

“Power have I.”

“Want wealth.”

“Wealth I need not.”

“Want to be safe,” Dooku said in frustration. “Want to be free from fear!”

“I will never be safe,” Yoda said. He turned away from Dooku, a shapeless bundle under a battered, acid-eaten cloak. “The universe is large and cold and very dark: that is the truth. What I love, taken from me will be, late or soon: and no power is there, dark or light, that can save me.”

That then leads into a bit where Dooku has a vision of what a dark!Yoda would look like, and realizes how utterly terrifying that would be.

Dooku also has abandonment issues on full display - lashing out at the lady who had given her son up to the Jedi, getting furious at her on the son’s behalf (but so clearly, his own, speaking of his own resentment towards his parents), and throwing an absolute hissy fit because he’s convinced Yoda likes Anakin more than him. I’m not kidding, he’s so offended by Anakin’s entire existence that just his mere presence in his house is enough for Dooku to stop feeling conflicted about the whole thing and jump right back into the dark side.

And there’s just so many good little moments throughout it all on top of all that. Whie’s dreams - and oh, I knew exactly what his dream of his own death was when he described it to Scout and it hurt at the end when he hugged Anakin while saying “I’m so glad you’re not coming to kill me!”. And Ventress, calling Dooku out on the fact that it’s so obvious that Sidious will end up replacing him (also for a more humorous bit - the fact that she apparently has some petty grudge against Anakin and Obi-Wan for stealing her ships so she goes out of her way to steal their ship at the end), and the droids, and Scout’s cleverness in winning the tournament despite her disadvantages, Jai Maruk’s last stand and refusal to fall when he was at the edge, and...so much, really.

And above all else, the book really latches onto the idea of Jedi as family, and you all know how much I really, really love the idea of the Jedi as a big found family. The idea that they consider each other to be family is driven home again and again, in their words and in their actions, and I absolutely adore this book for that emphasis.

[docholligay]

These are messy, disorganized, and ANGRY thoughts for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Israel) .I don’t get sad about this, I get fucking angry. If there’s anyone I could insult, or blame, that would hurt your feefees, I highly, highly recommend you not click on this. I am not responsible for how you feel. Got it? 

Given the preamble I feel I shouldn’t have to say this, but do NOT reblog this, I’m not having this conversation with some 21 year old with an anime icon who’s never met me. 

There’s a cloud over every Jewish head, and it’s always the goddamn crematorium. 

Today is Holocaust Rememberance Day.  I light a yahrzeit candle every year, and I say Kaddish, every year, and I always do it alone, because I think if God wanted me to have minyan to say it with he shouldn’t have let so many of us die. 

One third of the Jewish population on earth was murdered. Think of three Jews you know, if you even know of three of us, and imagine that one of us, gone. Imagine your friend’s Jewish family of six, and imagine knowing that soon it will be four. Imagine. 

It was worse in some places. In Poland, it was ninety percent of us. A family of ten, with one left, that was the story of the Polish Jews, told over and over again. 

But get over it. It’s fine that we’re talking about the collective trauma of an indiscriminate virus, of the idea of losing ten percent of us, but losing one third of your people is something that you shouldn’t be pulling out anymore. Never mind that we were directly targeted, never mind that this was not the first time and will not be the last that the call to arms is against us specifically. Jews just love to complain. The trauma should be long past. 

And I think the numbers were inflated anyway, and other people were killed too, it wasn’t just the Jews. Never mind that the numbers probably are inaccurate as some of us were mowed down into ditches in Poland by the side of the road, and who knows how many there were, never mind that in Russia they lacked equipment and hired farmers to drown us by hand, and they happily took the money. Never mind that I sat in a second grade classroom as we passively discussed how people wanted to murder me, and how my teacher reduced it to a few hours where kids with brown eyes weren’t allowed to use the water fountain. Never mind that they burned us, against our laws. 

“Jews never stop bringing up the Holocaust” but my great grandmother only ever said of Ukraine, “There is nothing left.” I knew she meant no one, but that to say that was too hard. Better to think of the buildings, of the oxen. 

People love dead Jews. Dead Jews can be exactly the pawn you need them to be, proof of whatever it is that you’re saying is right, and it was the way the other guy thinks that killed the Jews. It’s so easy to make someone the big bad, to remember Jews as weak and simpering mice who simply went to their deaths. That’s how people like us, weak, and dead, a cliff note in history. Something to be used.

They accuse us of relying on the Holocaust, but I’ve spent my whole life watching goyim trot it out whenever they fucking feel like being dramatic. Poor Anne Frank is never going to know rest, the spectre of a child who never got to discover who she was and so is the most convenient Jew of all. Her father was criticized for stripping out parts of her diary that contained sexual thoughts, but he knew what I know, that to make Jews worth protecting, we must be stripped of inconvenience, or complication, or difficulty.  As long as we keep burning, there will always be something to keep them warm. So long as we can be refined to the pile of ash they can mix with any material they wish to build their argument. 

Live Jews are inconvenient. They are a messy and complicated and difficult people. They can still fuck up. They can, and will, disagree with you, with each other, and they won’t be quiet about it. Sometimes, we’re unkind to each other! I more than once have accused another Jew of being judenpolitzei, of siding with those who would let us be destroyed for their own ends. On both side of the aisle. We don’t behave. Supporting us doesn’t give you enough points. 

I can hear the crackling, the burning. It’s been in my chest since I was a child, 

I’m so angry, all the time. Anger has been my bondage for years and years, and I try to remind myself that anger can itself be a form of idol worship, and that anger can cause us to become something we don’t want to be. 

Besides, Jews aren’t allowed to be angry. We’re supposed to be quiet and agreeable and patient, and nod along with however the right or the left wants us to be. We have to have the right opinion on Israel, on the mining of our culture, on Anne Frank, on the Holocaust and its causes, on what is Anti-Semitic, and these are the same for the right or the left. All these topics, a goy will tell you how you should think, and Jews that agree with them are the good Jews to protect, and Jews that disagree with them are the bad Jews. I am fucking tired of only deserving protection when I’m agreeing with someone. 

I remember a few years ago, Giles Coren, a Jewish English food writer of Polish extraction, getting into trouble for saying, essentially, “fuck the Poles’. Essentially but also, literally. I remember reading that, and how immediately I thought that he had told one of our secrets, and it was terrifying and gratifying all at once. I’ve been in Jewish groups more than once where someone quietly admitted “I don’t care what happens to Poland,” the names of every family member they would never know unsaid.  I remember feeling pride at how hard Coren went, how he got nasty, how he was angry, how he brought up that the Holocaust was so successful in Poland because Poland already hated Jews. It my first time ever seeing that bitterness, that desire to hit back, to be filled with that flame. Not making it a quiet secret.  I went and found the direct quote from the whole thing that stuck with me forever, because I knew it was true, and I knew it was what would happen when the whole thing started. "I wrote in passing that the Poles remain in denial about their responsibility for the Holocaust. How gratifying, then, to see so many letters in The Times in the subsequent days from Poles denying their responsibility for the Holocaust." He was so angry. People hated him for it. 

I remember being afraid, too. Shut up, Giles. This is going to come back to bite us in the ass. We aren’t allowed to do this. We aren’t allowed to hate the people that murdered us, even though some of them are still alive, even though Poland murdered the survivors who came back. We aren’t allowed to be angry about it. We have to be good Jews. We have to say we forgive them, oh how they fetishize survivors who say they forgive. Please, don’t tell them about that burn inside of us, like whiskey in your chest. Don’t tell them my great grandmother watched Russia’s horrors unfold with a smile on her lips. Don’t tell them she said they got what they deserved. We aren’t allowed. 

Don’t get angry about America sending a ship full of refugees back in 1939, don’t get mad about Ireland only letting in refugees who agreed to convert, calm your fury about Jewish children being taken into Catholic homes, never to be returned to Jewish communities. The British government stopping a trade that would have saved a million Jewish lives. Of course it’s tragic. But there’s no need to be angry. There’s no need to yell. There’s not need to shame anyone over their culpability. 

We have to cry about what happened to us. We are not allowed to rage about it. 

Besides, if it’s everyone against you, you cannot be mad at the whole goddamn world, Holligay. 

There’s a part of Indecent, a play tumblr and facebook reduced to “lesbians!!” while completely missing the point of what it was about, about Jewish identity and struggle, the search of legitimacy and the role of stories. Sholem, the writer, goes into a deep depression, and is sitting in a doctor’s office, while all of them are acting like this is so clinical, and he snaps. How can he not be like this, in a world where to be a Jew is to be like this? I felt that same flush, that acknowledgment of fury, of the world never getting it. 

Even writing this, I feel I’m letting some secret out. They’ll hate us if they know.  They’ll hurt us if they know. Smiling Anne Frank, who believes people are truly good, that’s what we have to be. Shut up, Doc. This is going to come back to bite us in the ass. 

I light the yahrzeit candle and realize there’s no match in my hand, that somehow it has been kindled from my own anger, from my own white-hot hate. It burns me, too, and the pain of it pricks my eyes with tears. I do not often generalize, about Jews. This is because I actually know them, and we evade an easy box to be put in. We are an asterisk of a people. But I guarantee damn near every Jew you know has this burn inside them, that they might not even themselves understand. Maybe it’s quieter in Jews who got out early, whose families don’t carry the burden of knowing there’s a burnt patch of earth where your family stops. But I don’t think so. 

I think we all know it could happen to us, at any time. And every goy who thinks they are so brave would do nothing in the face of true danger. They would turn you in without a second thought, because that’s what their families did. 

I guarantee some of y’all reading this have your back up right now. Why is she so angry at people who could not have themselves done it? Isn’t she just as bad? Shouldn’t she just let it go? 

Exodus tells us that children and their children will be punished, to the third and fourth generation, and if all God can scrape up is my anger as a punishment, 

My rage is inconvenient to me, too. I tell myself things of all the Jewish philosophers I’ve read, about how we must love mercy, about how the world is desperate need of our loving attention, about how rejoicing in someone’s pain and failure is to spit in the face of what God has made us for. I tell myself these things all the time. I want to find a place where I can hold the truth of this anger, and not let it burn those who hold the community shame of the past. I want to use this fire to warm, and not to burn.

But I will also be honest with you. 

I do not want to hear a single solitary argument against my anger from any Non-Jew. 

You set me on fire. Now you have to let me burn.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

A very very happy Christmas to my lovely girlfriend @spiky-lesbian, I’m so lucky to have you, I hope you like this!

------

Being a father made Vax think of his mother.

Not that he didn’t think of her often already, whenever he’d heard the song she used to sing come on the radio around Midwinter, whenever he’d need something from the back of his closet and find the scarf she nearly always wore, whenever something small and fleeting would bring the grief rushing back so hard it would turn his airways to cement and he’d choke on it for days.

But now every time he’d hold his daughters close, feel them tuck up small and rest their little heads under his chin, every time their eyes would brighten when they saw him, every time they’d look for him when something scared them, he’d think of her. Of how she’d done this for him. Of how she’d felt the same intense rush of love, the dizzying sensation of knowing you’d do anything to protect them, the ache of the impermanence of it all when it had become your oxygen.

Vax thanked the gods for her every day. Without her, the living proof that it could be done, that such a deep and desperate love could be picked up and carried around every day, he had no idea how he would have managed.

Sometimes the thread was so strong in his mind, he could feel her next to him, the warmth she’d always seemed to radiate, the smell of clean cotton and soap. He could feel her hand on his shoulder when he’d sing her namesake back to sleep, whenever she’d fuss in the night, when he’d kiss the many bumps and bruises Johanna collected as she grew up.

He could feel her hand in his hair, fingers stroking through the strands like she used to do when she could sense something on his mind, when he realised he wanted another one.

That was how Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski De Rolo IV arrived, five years after his sisters.

A second child was different to the first. It was like dancing a dance you already knew the steps to but every so often the music would get faster or slower without warning and you’d put a foot wrong. But it was no less exciting, heartbreaking, joyous and exhausting in equal measures.

Now Freddy, nicknamed that way because Vax maintained a child didn’t need a name that took longer to say than they’d been alive, was just over two. He had big blue eyes like his papa and fluffy black curls like his daddy, he was shyer than his sister Johanna but loved to follow her around devotedly and he was in love with reading as his sister Elaina, who read to him every night.

Right now he was sat on the living room rug, the afternoon sun forming a warm little puddle of gold around him, burbling an approximation of an engine noise as he rolled a toy tractor back and forth.

Vax exhaled sadly, feeling that phantom hand on his shoulder again, “He isn’t going to like it.”

“No,” Percy sounded equally defeated beside him, “But he needs them or it will just keep being a problem for him. Damn the shitty eyesight genes in my family.”

Vax nudged him with an elbow, already well aware of where his husband’s mind would be, “This isn’t your fault.”

Percy gave a grunt that was neither assent nor refusal. He anxiously passed the long, thin box from hand to hand restlessly before starting into the room.

Freddy looked up when he heard them come in, smiling his adorable gap toothed smile, “Papa! Daddy!”

“Hello there, little man,” Percy knelt on the carpet beside him, “Got your tractor?”

“Yep!” Freddy waved it in one pudgy fist, “Playing farm.”

“That’s great,” Vax smiled softly, “Can we talk to you about something?”

Freddy seemed to sense the more grown up tone in his voice, looking up curiously, giving a little nod.

They’d noticed it in small ways. How Freddy never seemed sure who was coming into the room, how as a little baby he’d sob until he was picked up, only when held close seeing that it was his dads and he didn’t have anything to worry about. How he would screw his fists against his eyes until they were red. How he seemed unable to follow things when they moved in front of his eyes.

Pike had recommended a trip to the pediatrician who’d passed them on to an optician that specialised in infants. Freddy had seen it as a fun trip, he’d got to sit in a special chair and a nice drow man had asked him to look at a few things and then given him a treat.

And now they had to convince a two year old that was already sensitive to textures and sensations to wear a pair of glasses.

“We’ve got you a present,” Vax explained, taking the box from Percy, “A present that will help you.”

At the mention of a present, Freddy got excited, “Aminals for my farm?”

“Animals,” Percy corrected, smiling, thinking privately that if this didn't go well, a whole fleet of farm animals might be in order, “And no, this is something else. Lets try them on.”

The little blue glasses came on a rubbery band to stretch around his head and keep them in place. Almost as soon as they fixed in place, tucked in amongst his curls and over his slightly pointed ears, Freddy’s face crumpled.

“Don’t like them,” he mumbled, little fingers scrabbling at them.

“It’ll take some getting used to,” Percy looked fretful, his worst fear about this coming true in front of him, “But you’ll see…”

“No,” Freddy’s voice took on that dangerous, wobbly ‘I’m about to full on tantrum and there’s no avoiding it’ quality, “No, don’t like! Gone please. Gone please!”

“Hey, little bud, its okay,” Vax said softly, seeing the panic on his face.

Percy scrambles for something positive, “Love, look. I wear glasses, see? They’re not so bad once you get used to them and then we’ll match.” He reached behind his ears and made his own delicate, gold rimmed glasses bounce in the way that never failed to make them laugh when they were babies.

But Freddy seemed past even that, his rounded cheeks flushed red, upset and angry, “No. Don’t want to, don’t want to match!”

Percy clearly tried very hard not to look wounded at that, hands dropping to his sides and leaving his glasses sitting on his nose all wrong. He tried.

Vax winced internally and gently removed the glasses, “Okay, we’ll try wearing them for little bits at a time and help you get used to them, alright?”

Freddy pouted the way only a two year old could, sinking down into an angry little stormcloud of himself. Percy tried to reach out and bring him into a cuddle but he shrugged him off, mumbling a no under his breath.

Vax took Percy’s hand, knowing his husband would break throwing himself against that particular brick wall again and again. Handing him a problem, particularly an emotional one, with no solution but to wait, was like taking away his hands. So firmly but gently, he picked Percy up off the floor and took him back through to the kitchen.

“I...I hate when this happens,” he eventually mumbled miserably, once a steaming mug of tea had been put in his hands.

“When what happens?” Vax looked over his shoulder from where he was washing the spoon, “Our kids throw tantrums every five seconds practially?”

“No,” Percy groaned, “When they suddenly grow up so a hug isn’t enough to fix their problems any more. It happens so fast, just...just when your back is turned. And suddenly it’s not enough.”

Vax felt a tug deep in his chest and the faint impression of a hand on his shoulder that wasn’t really there. Of course he understood, of course he hated it too.

“Now don’t go all maudlin and philosophical on me,” he murmured, coming over and resting his head on Percy’s chest, wrapping his arms around his waist, “We knew this was going to be tricky but it’s nothing we’ve done wrong. We just have to try something new to help him.”

“Yeah…” Percy sat his mug on the counter behind him so he could throw himself into the embrace, clutching him the way he clearly needed to just for a moment.

And then Percy suddenly seemed to stiffen, like something had grabbed him. He disentangled himself and Vax saw that look in his eyes, the one he always got when he’d had an idea that would mean he’d be in his workshop for a while and reemerge probably with some new burns and cuts.

“I’ll be back in just a moment!” he gasped, heading, of course, down towards the door that had once led to the basement that was still cold, still damp, but was now his workshop.

Vax gave a bemused little laugh, shrugging and claiming Percy’s tea for his own. That happened so often he’d started adding more sugar to Percy’s drinks, enough to suit his taste rather than his husband’s.

Of course not being able to snap his fingers and fix every problem his children collected weighed on him, just like it did for Percy. Back when the girls were very young, he stressed himself to bits over every faded smile and skinned knee and bad mark on a piece of homework. But he’d learned over time, growing as his children did. That was a comforting thought; at least they were all in it together.

And eventually, as he’d hoped, there came the padding of small feet and a red eyed little Freddy appeared in the doorway, clutching his tractor.

“Hi daddy,” he cheeped, a little sadly.

“Hello, little buddy,” Vax smiled, holding out an arm so Freddy could waddle closer and rest his head against his daddy’s knee, like he loved to do, “Feeling better?”

“Mm,” he felt a little nod, “Don’t like them, daddy.”

Vax didn’t have to ask what he meant, “I know, Freddy, I know. I’d never ask if it wasn’t really important but they really will help you. Can you be a big, brave boy for me and try to make it work?”

“Girls don’t have to,” Freddy mumbled bitterly.

“Yeah,” Vax sighed, knowing the unfairness of that would be hard to explain, “Your eyes just need a little help. Like daddy’s.”

Freddy made a frustrated little noise, “Don’t look like daddy’s. Stupid glasses.”

“Now where did you learn to curse like that, little man?” Vax had to laugh, his righteous anger was just too adorable.

Thankfully, he was saved from having to explain what curses were by Percy crashing back into the kitchen, looking a little haggard, like he’d been moving at a hundred miles an hour for a good while.

“Freddy!” the mania melted off his face when he saw his son, “Look what I made!”

Freddy looked delightedly curious, he loved to see what his papa made in his workshop, “Something for me?”

“Kind of,” Percy knelt down and smiled hopefully.

What was in his hands was what clearly used to be his spare pair of glasses. But now they looked very different. A large, thick strip of leather had been hastily attached to them with metal clasps, in place of the usual arms, sized perfectly so it would fit around Percy’s head.

In short, a perfect approximation of Freddy’s glasses, made for an adult.

Percy whipped off his usual pair and attached his new, modified ones, fitting them to his head. Vax had to swallow hard so any sobs that would very much ruin the moment stayed firmly in his throat.

Freddy’s eyes were wide and delighted, “We...we match!”

“Yeah,” Percy’s face split into a wide grin, “We match, love.”

If there was anyone who was good at finding new solutions, interesting ways around problems, it was his husband, Vax thought proudly. He felt that phantom hand on his shoulder squeeze and he smiled softly.

He didn’t have his mother anymore. But he had Percy, and that was everything.

[innuendostudios]

Research Masterpost

This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries.

Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such.

Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, doc by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert*** The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton Neoliberalism and the Far Right, by Neil Davidson and Richard Saull Trolls Just Want to Have Fun, by Erin E. Buckels, et al The Entrepreneurial State, by Mariana Mazzucato

Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Al-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle.

The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube.

(caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments)

Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all  you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video.

(caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence)

How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets.

Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandier A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality.

On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.”

The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus.

Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win.

(caveats: myriad. for one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. he also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.)

Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.)

A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening.

(caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)

Terror, Love and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein A look at totalitarian governments and cults through the lens of attachment theory. While not explicitly about the Far Right, it’s interesting to see the overlap between this and Healing from Hate. Stein stresses that the control dynamics she discusses are not exclusive to cults, and are, in fact, the same ones as in abusive relationships; cults are just the most extreme version. So you can see many similar dynamics in Far Right organizations, like the Aryan Nations or the Proud Boys. It’s made me curious how many of these dynamics are in play in the distributed, less controlled environment of online extremism, and makes me want to look further into the subject before drawing conclusions.

(caveats: book is, as with How Propaganda Works, sometimes a slog and rather repetitive. I clocked a 4-page stretch in chapter 8 where Stein did not say a single thing that hadn’t been said multiple times in previous chapters. also, when talking about people coerced into highly-controlled lifestyles, she offhandedly includes “prostitutes” among them? it’s that liberal conflation of sex work and trafficking which is really not cool. this isn’t a major point, just something to notice while you read it.)

Alt-America, by David Neiwert (livetweets) A look at the actual formation of the Alt-Right, and the history that led up to it: the Militia and Patriot movements of the 90′s, the Tea Party, the rise of Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, and so on. Having been steeped in the rhetoric and tactics of the Far Right for so long, someone doing the work of sitting down and putting it all in chronological order is immensely helpful. Generally clear and well-written, too, and would be an easy read if not for how goddamn depressing the content is. Has an unfortunate final 7 pages, where Neiwert starts recommending actual policy. Falls into the usual “have empathetic conversations with genuine conservatives to turn them against the fascist wing taking over their party,” not recognizing the ways in which conservatism is continuous with fascism, nor the ways that trying to appeal to moderate conservatives alienates the people whose rights they deny. Means an extremely valuable book leaves a bad taste in the final stretch, but everything up to then is aces.

[wheremytwinwatches]

[Where My Twin Watches]: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 4

Tephi: Okay, guys, it's that episode. And, as I told Ranubis, I would like to speak for my discipline and say that we do not condone Tucker's actions. #not all biologists (You know what, it's really hard to try to be funny after reading this recap, so I'm going to stop.) Onwards with Brotherhood! Last time the Elric Brothers revealed a corrupt priest, and now they’re going to report to Colonel Roy Mustang. And learn about bio-alchemy, according to the last post-credits? Let’s get to it!

We get the Narrator recapping last episode, and he says the priest used alchemy and… ‘a’ Philosopher’s Stone? Wait wait wait, what? He had the real thing? ...that raises many questions, some of which I asked last time. I’ll just keep watching to see if I get some answers this go-around. Ok, never mind then. Should have waited a few more seconds until the Narrator said “revealed to be a fake.” Episode 04: “An Alchemist’s Anguish” Well that’s not an ominous title at all. Late at night in Central (is that the town’s name, or just the keep?) with a freaking-huge moon taking up most of the screen. A State Alchemist is walking along a street and good Leto man, what is going on with your mustache?! Hold on, have to take a screenshot.

What, did you strap a boomerang to your face? How much mustache wax do you use to make those razor-sharp points? Really now, that’s just excessive. Ahem. Anyways, Mr. Mustache comes to a stop and grunts. He sees someone? [Scar] “You are Basque Grand, the Iron Blood Alchemist… correct?” Huh. So we’ve got a name for Mister Mustache, but given how we’ve never seen him before, and someone apparently named “Scar” is confronting him at night… taking all bets folks, how long is the Fresh Meat going to last? My money’s on him bowing out in under a minute. Waitaminute, I recognize you from the intro! Your sunglasses don’t fool me, you’re that guy with the white X scar on his face! Appropriate name, I guess. He says Alchemists who have turned against God shall be punished. Another Leto follower? So Basque recognizes him as a “bloodthirsty murderer” who’s been targeting State Alchemists lately… which implies that he’s faced multiple Alchemists, and is here to tell the tale. Uh, Basque? Buddy? You think you might want to call for some backup against someone who’s faced a bunch of… nah, nevermind. You go ahead and equip your engraved gauntlets, I’m sure you can handle it. Ooh, nice power! Punch the ground and summon a bunch of cannons. How effective is it? Not at all! Some chains! The same. Stick him in a vault? Maybe- oh come on dude. “That wasn’t so difficult”? You’re just asking for it now. Yup, grabbed by the face. “Now you perish.” And oh jeez that face-zapping was uncalled for… and right past the minute mark. Seriously, that “battle” went from timestamp 2:54 to 3:54. I think Scar’s credentials have been established. Hey, I know that voice! And THAT voice too! Good to see you guys again, Hughes and Armstrong! And… oh dear. Hughes warned Armstrong to be careful, that he could be the next target, and The Mighty Armstrong… just said “Understood.” No bravado, no boasting, just business. This is serious, isn’t it? Fuhrer Bradley/Fury arrives at the scene, and every Alchemist immediately salutes. Fury looks over the scene, and authorizes Hughes as the officer in charge of the case any additional personnel he needs to track down the traitor. The next day at Central, Riza’s doing paperwork and hands something to a Lieutenant Breda, and ooh a cast of unique characters sitting at a table? Breda gripes about the Colonel letting work pile up, asks for Havoc to help but the blond guy says he’s got enough already. Then [Falman] identifies some guy in the paperwork as a crooked State Alchemist that the Elrics exposed. Messing with a radio is a little guy with glasses, Master Sergeant… aw come on, really? *Sigh* Guess I have to give up on Fuhrer Fury, since we’ve got this little guy named Fuery now. Way to ruin the joke, dude. Anyways, Fuery’s saying he’ll probably have to replace the radio’s receiver… when a familiar white glove in a red sleeve reaches into frame and touches the radio, leaving it good as new. Man, Alchemy sure is handy. Good to see you guys! Now hurry up, the Colonel’s expecting you, and wipe that grimace off your face. Congrats on the Liore incident are in order, although Ed gripes that he didn’t do it for them. And the stone ended up being fake, but Cornello still got power from it. How does that work? Neither brother knows much about the field of bio-alchemy. Roy recommends they consult a specialist, pulls a file on The Sewing Life Alchemist, Shou Tucker, who’s done research into chimera transmutation. Well that’s nice of- for Leto’s sake Ed, stop ranting at your boss. He is your boss, remember? But Roy insists he’s trying to repay them for the Liore case, as “doing you a favor is better than being indebted to you.” Panning across the city now, Roy talking about how two years ago Tucker transmuted a chimera that could understand human speech, earning his certification as a State Alchemist. So it could talk? Huh, interesting. I assumed chimeras were brute-force creatures like the one Cornello used. But bio-alchemy can create communication-capable creatures? Not sure what to think about the ramifications- Oh what the hell. Concerns multiplied. “It only said one thing: ‘I want to die.’” And then it refused to eat until it got its wish. Um. Ok. I am now rather suspicious of bio-alchemy. Standard alchemy that we’ve seen has mostly been similar to basic magic or elemental control. But creating a communicative creature that wishes only for death? That sounds more like the thing a State Alchemist would be sent after to shut down, not say “Nice job, here’s a badge!” Alright, moving on. The Elrics and Roy are at a house now, Ed’s remarking on how big it is- Dog! Giant dog just glomped Ed, Al’s all worried about his big brother who’s stuck under a cheerful dog. Then the door opens? A little girl (Nina) tells her father there are people outside, he gently reminds her this was why she needed to keep the dog tied up. Heh. Inside, the camera’s panning over a bunch of dusty books and scrolls, and some very… used dishes in a sink. Tucker apologizes for the mess, ever since his wife… “ran out”? What’s the story there? Tucker fixes some tea, says that he’s pleased to meet Edward. And he’s more than happy to show his research. However, he does ask that if he’s showing some of his tricks, that Ed could show some as well. “It’s the code we live by - equivalent exchange.” EEC: 7 Outside, Nina’s playing with the dog, braids it a headband of flowers. Daw, that’s cute. Bit of a contrast with the inside, as it seems Ed’s told Tucker the story of their attempted Human Transmutation. Which begs the question, if Human Transmutation is taboo, what makes bio-alchemy different? In any case, Tucker lets the Elrics take a look at his laboratory- gah! Head in jar! Cerberus creature! Lots of other creepy stuff in jars! Guh, I’m not a big fan of biology, sorry. Tucker’s apologizing, saying he’s regarded as an authority on chimeras, but it hasn’t been going well that lately. What does that mean? They move on, reaching Tucker’s library and forget the creepy lab I wanna be there now. Look at all those books! The brothers dive into reading, and Roy says he’ll head back to work and have someone pick them up in the evening. But Ed doesn’t even hear Roy he’s so focused in the book. Tucker chuckles that they don’t even know they’re there anymore… Um, Tucker? What’s with the glasses push and grin? Like, you smiled in the lab at one point and I didn’t mention it, but now here’s a second smile and a glasses-push? Really getting some Bad Scientist vibes here. What’s going on? Uh, ok. Moving on, it’s later and Ed’s surrounded by piles of books now. Al’s over by a shelf with his own and- hey, it’s Nina! The little girl just poked her head around the aisle to look at the giant suit of armor, runs off when Al notices her. Then pokes her head back around to [Playful Music]. Ed breaks out his studies at hearing [childlike laughter], walks over to see Al giving Nina a piggyback ride. Daw. But of course Ed has to be a grump, yell at Al for playing horsie instead of- Dog! And Nina says Alexander wants to play too. Ed enters Dramatic Mode, saying that the dog’s bested him twice, but no more! And Ed races after the “mangy mutt”, while Nina just laughs. Late afternoon now, Havoc is telling the “chief” his ride has arrived. Ah, Havoc was sent to pick the brothers up. And looks like Ed wasn’t very successful against Alexander, he’s down for the count again. Havoc’s walking the boys out now, passes on a message to Tucker that “Assessment Day is coming soon”. What’s that? And why was Tucker so serious when he said that he knew? I’m guessing it’s like a checkup exam for SAs, to renew their certification. *Sigh* Look, Tucker? I’m getting a lot of mixed signals from you. First you made a creature that wished for death, but then you were a kind father, then you smirked and did a Glasses Push, then you made a dog pun, but now you’re all serious about “Assessment Day” and clutching the door handles? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think about you. Nina asks what “Assessment Day” means, Tucker confirms SAs have to do a research report once a year to keep their certification. Last year Tucker didn’t get a very good evaluation, and unless he does something really impressive this year he won’t be a State Alchemist anymore. Nina proclaims that Tucker will do great, with how much he studies. But Tucker just [laughs nervously], says that he’ll try hard… ‘Or we’ll be left with nothing… again.’ Bad feelings keep gathering. Not sure what’s happening. [Sentimental Music] the next day, the Elrics are back and studying. Al’s talking with Nina about her mother, who left two years ago to live at her parents’ house. Why’d she leave? I mean, Tucker said she “ran off”, did they have an argument? Assuming about his studies or something, not sure why though. She was clearly with him long enough to have a child who I’m fairly certain is much older than two, so she would have been around for all the bio-alchemy. So what caused the split? Al remarks that it must be lonely, the two of them in a big house. But Nina’s happy with her daddy and Alexander. Although Tucker’s been studying in the lab all the time lately. Cramming for his exam? Ooh, flashback! Baby!Elric Brothers looking through a door - hey, I know that hair! That’s that blond ponytail guy from the intro, can’t see his face to confirm the beard but I recognize the ponytail! So he’s the absent Elric father? What’s his story? Ed just shut his book? Oh, good for you! He claims his shoulders are stiff, and when Al suggests he move around some Al goes and challenges Alexander again. Daw, props to you Ed, putting aside studies for Nina. That’s really nice of you. As [Goofy Happy Piano] music plays, Ed runs around with Nina chasing him on Alexander. But then he turns the tables, transmuting his arm into a sharp-toothed puppet (complete with the little spring of blond hair) as he chases them! Al serves as a slide for Nina, Alexander gets the drop on poor Ed again… lots of happiness and laughter outside. But inside… Tucker’s sitting at a table, head in his hands. What’s wrong? Why are you so worried about Assessment Day? You’ve done it before, right? And you’ve been studying like crazy. So what’s the problem? Back in Central, Hughes is wondering about Scar, why he’s targeting State Alchemists instead of easier targets like the military police. Armstrong thinks that the fact they’re State Alchemists is the reason he’s attacking them. But for what reason? Their pay, their status? Or failure to uphold their creed: “Alchemist, be thou for the people.” A concern that alchemists are supposed to be pillars of science and truth but are turning into weapons for the military. And there are many people who have not forgotten the role of State Alchemists in the Ishvalan Civil War. There’s Ishvale again, another mention of this mysterious conflict prior to the show. What’s the story there? It’s been mentioned so often I know it’s gotta come up soon, but right now I know next to nothing about it. What was the deal? An orderly interrupts the conversation, reports that a man with a large scar on his face was seen the night before at the train station. So he got away? Later that day, [Melancholy Music] at Tucker’s house, where he’s telling the Elrics about life before his State Alchemist certification. The family was poor, Mrs. Tucker couldn’t stand living like that, and we’ve got a picture of Tucker and the wife yelling at eachother while Nina cowers behind Alexander. Jeez. Tucker’s saying he can’t afford to fail the examination. Hmm, maybe you could ask the Elrics for help? I mean, they’re crazy-good at alchemy, I’m sure they could help with your studying. Or maybe take up Nina’s offer of her and Alexander growling at the test-givers until they say yes. Aw, Tucker just offered to play with Nina the next day. Yeah, there you go, spend some time with Nina, then study with the Elrics until you’re ready! The next day… it’s really cloudy. Why is it cloudy? Oh no. No no no. Do not do this to me, show. You do NOT make things go bad when they were so cute earlier. Do NOT do this. Ok, so what’s going to happen? Doorbell’s ringing, but no-one is answering. Al opened the door, called for Mr. Tucker, but nothing. Al and Ed are walking through the house, calling for Tucker and Nina, but nothing. And I mean nothing, there isn’t even any music playing right now. Door opens to to what no nonono nonononononononononono tucker is kneeling in front of something something with dog paws and long brown hair what did you do what the FUCK did you do “I did it boys. I finally did it.” A chimera that understand human speech. Ed. Al. What the hell are you both doing just standing there. Do you seriously not realize what’s going on. Do you realize where Nina Nina The thing is just repeating “That person… Ed… ward.” I don’t want to see this. “Big Brother Ed.” And the penny drops. Ed asks when Tucker first got his certification. He confirms it was two years ago. And his wife “left” two years ago too. Oh, don’t you act so surprised that Ed figured it out so quickly, you bastard! Ed, kick his teeth in! Did… did you really just say “this is how we progress” in regards to transmuting your dog and your own daughter to make this creature?! To maintain your fucking CERTIFICATION?! Human experimentation as a necessary process? For WHAT?! You’re comparing yourself to Edward, saying you’re the same? Far from it! He made a mistake trying to bring back a family member! You’ve used yours to get paid! Al just grabbed Ed’s arm, said that if he keeps the beating up that Tucker would die. I am really, really having a hard time seeing that as a bad thing right now. Oh. “Edward… no.” Not in front of his daughter. “Daddy, do you… hurt? Daddy?” I can’t. Al’s apologizing to… the chimera. Saying that with all their power, they can’t change Nina back. The chimera just asks if they can play. And Tucker just rants about how he “passed.” Riza and Roy are discussing the case. Ed and All are sitting on the steps outside of Central in the rain. Roy tells the Elrics that they are likely to see more cases like this in the future. And have to get their hands dirty. Then he asks if they’re going to shut down like this every time. Ed says that them being called dogs of the military, cursed as devils… it doesn’t matter, they’re still going to get their bodies back. They’re not devils. They’re not gods. They’re only human. They can’t… “even do anything to save one innocent little girl. So what good are we then?” … In a room, the chimera and Tucker are facing each other. Tucker is whining about how “no one’s capable of understanding me.” And then someone enters the room. It’s Scar. “You’re Shou Tucker, correct?” … … ...do it. But the chimera saw it. Scar walks towards the chimera. “God… hear me. Two human souls have just been returned to you. Please accept them into your loving arms. Please grant these poor, lost souls everlasting peace and salvation.” ...credits. “The rain pours down in East City. Still grief-stricken over the death of Nina, Ed and Al are attacked by the mysterious man, Scar. In a moment of crisis, Ed must make a desperate decision, while the life of his brother hangs in the balance. Next time, on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood-” Episode 05: Rain of Sorrows”

[coffeebased]

I won’t be the first or last person to marvel at how quickly February whizzed past, especially in comparison to January’s gauntlet. To be completely fair to February, it had the ongoing COVID-19 international epidemic, as well as the ABS-CBN shutdown crisis, the anti-terrorism bill, the reminder that historical revisionism re: the Marcos dictatorship is alive and well… and those were just the actual headlines.

I must digress before I spiral.

I read 12 books in February, half of which were newly released in this month. I’ve split my post up into three parts like I did last month: one-shots, parts of series, and re-reads. It seems to be working well for me.

  Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker

The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out—he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

After I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City last year, I knew that I wanted more by Parker. I considered delving into his back catalog, which I still will probably do, but I saw that he was releasing a new book in Feb 2020, so I jumped on that first. Prosper’s is exactly up my alley, what with the discussions of morality and the greater good with demons, and quite a bit of engineering. I’d admired the voice of the main character in Sixteen because he was dry and very caught up in doing what needed to be done, and the main character has the same appealing values. It’s a short read, but it sticks in the teeth and fills the belly.

  Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher

Stephen’s god died on the longest day of the year…

Three years later, Stephen is a broken paladin, living only for the chance to be useful before he dies. But all that changes when he encounters a fugitive named Grace in an alley and witnesses an assassination attempt gone wrong. Now the pair must navigate a web of treachery, beset on all sides by spies and poisoners, while a cryptic killer stalks one step behind…

Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon, tends to write capable and damaged characters falling in with each other and foiling plots. She also tends to write paladins very well, which is a personal delight. I always enjoy a Kingfisher story, because the characters do the sensible thing more often than not, and she deals with trauma very compassionately, from what I suspect is a personal viewpoint. Her books are also usually very funny, very disturbing, and no-nonsense, scratching that Terry Pratchett Witch itch when I miss him very much. Grace is along the same lines, with a good solid HEA that leaves everyone, including the reader, satisfied.

  Kindred, a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings

I lost an arm on my last trip home.

Home is a new house with a loving husband in 1970s California that suddenly transformed in to the frightening world of the antebellum South.

Dana, a young black writer, can’t explain how she is transported across time and space to a plantation in Maryland. But she does quickly understand why: to deal with the troubles of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder–and her progenitor.

Her survival, her very existence, depends on it.

This searing graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction classic is a powerfully moving, unflinching look at the violent disturbing effects of slavery on the people it chained together, both black and white–and made kindred in the deepest sense of the word.

Kindred, the novel, is on my Next 20s list. I had meant to read it before I read the GN, but picked up the graphic novel based on a friend’s recommendation. The graphic novel is searingly painful, and I enjoyed reading it, but there are parts of it that feel slightly disjointed. I’m not sure if it’s because of the time travel, or if it’s an adaptation problem. It made me want to read the novel immediately, which is what I am reading right now. I don’t think that I’ll be able to properly synthesise my thoughts about this book until I’ve read the original.

    Mirror: The Mountain and The Nest by Emma Rios and Hwei Lim

A mysterious asteroid hosts a collection of strange creatures – man-animal hybrids, mythological creatures made flesh, guardian spirits, cursed shadows – and the humans who brought them to life. But this strange society exists in an uneasy truce, in the aftermath of uprisings seeking freedom and acceptance, that have only ended in tragedy. As the ambitious, the desperate and the hopeful inhabitants of the asteroid struggle to decide their shared fate, a force greater than either animal or human seems to be silently watching the conflict, waiting for either side to finally answer the question: what is worthy of being human?

Recommended to me by a new friend who’d heard I was into sci-fi and graphic novels, who absolutely hit the nail on the head with this rec. The art is beautiful, dreamy, and layered, and it keeps you tied to the story as the authors build what is a magnificent construction in your head. The authors do some really lovely things with timeskips that I have no idea how to talk about without spoiling anything, and I only regret that we weren’t able to linger through the second volume. I’m don’t know why there isn’t more of Mirror, but I do appreciate how they tied everything up as well as they could in two volumes. Looking forward to more like this in the future.

  Heartstopper: Volume Three by Alice Oseman

In this volume we’ll see the Heartstopper gang go on a school trip to Paris! Not only are Nick and Charlie navigating a new city, but also telling more people about their relationship AND learning more about the challenges each other are facing in private…

Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem… rather close…?

You can read all of Heartstopper and its future updates here. Heartstopper is a lovely slice of life comic, PG13 at best, that really takes me back to my own mid-teens. The story is centered around the developing relationship of two young boys, Charlie and Nick, and it really deals with it respectfully. It tackles a lot of teen issues without being too preachy about it, which is probably the least inspiring thing I could have written about it, and integrates it deftly into the story. The art style is adorable and really complements the sweet story. This volume, just released this month, revolves around a class trip to Paris, and there are some shenanigans that you’ll have to read for yourself.

  Sixty Six Book 2 by Russell Molina and Mikey Marchan

Kuwento ni Celestino Cabal. Kabebertdey niya lang. Mayroon siyang natanggap na regalo na ngayo’y unti-unti niyang binubuksan. Ika nga ng matatanda, “Huli man daw at magaling, maihahabol din.”

The story of Celestino Cabal. His birthday has just passed. He received a gift that he now gets to open, bit by bit. As the old saying goes, “Better late than never.”

This is the synopsis of the first book. There isn’t an official synopsis for the second book online, and I hesitate to write my own. Sixty Six Book 2 was released during February Komiket, and since I had been waiting for it for a few years, I had to go to the event even though everyone’s been iffy about going into crowded spaces due to COVID-19. I was excited to read this but unfortunately, I don’t think it capitalised on the foundation set in Book 1. The artist was different, and I admired their work on a technical level, as well as their humorous use of WASAK as a sound effect. I don’t know if there’ll be a third book, but the author has made themselves a little leeway for that possibility at the end of this volume.

  Thank You, Jeeves, Jeeves #5 by P.G. Wodehouse

The odds are stacked against Chuffy when he falls head over heels for American heiress Pauline Stoker. Who better to help him win her over but Jeeves, the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. But when Bertie, Pauline’s ex-fiance finds himself caught up in the fray, much to his consternation, even Jeeves struggles to get Chuffy his fairy-tale ending.

This book was in my next 20s! So I’m accomplishing one of my 2020 reading goals, yay! But hot damn there is some racist language in this book. Every time I was finally sinking into the story boom! Racist language! And I know that it was because of the time it was published, like I know that academically, but oof. That aside, the story is solid. It’s a comedy of manners AND errors with Jeeves ex machina, as per usual, but this is the first full Jeeves novel I’ve read, the rest were short story collections, and it was good to see the characters take more space. It certainly made the comedic payoff a lot stronger.

But oof.

  Die Vol. 2: Split the Party by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, and Clayton Cowles

No one can escape DIE until everyone agrees to go home. Or rather, no one can escape DIE until everyone who is alive agrees to go home. The second arc of the commercial and critical hit of bleakly romantic fantasy fiction starts to reveal the secrets of the world, and our heroes’ pasts. Yes, they can’t escape DIE. They also can’t escape themselves. Collects issues #6-10 of DIE

CHARACTERISATION. There’s a lot more breathing space in this newly-released volume of Die and I live for that! The first volume was a lot of the characters running from one place to the next and we, as readers, were being given the sense of setting. But volume two, you can feel Gillen just finally branching out and hitting us with their joined histories. I want to see more of how these older players will be dealing with the actions of their teenage selves, and I think the third volume will really show what the comic’s capable of. I’m really looking forward to that.

  False Value, Rivers of London #8 by Ben Aaronovitch

Peter Grant is facing fatherhood, and an uncertain future, with equal amounts of panic and enthusiasm. Rather than sit around, he takes a job with émigré Silicon Valley tech genius Terrence Skinner’s brand new London start up – the Serious Cybernetics Company.

Drawn into the orbit of Old Street’s famous ‘silicon roundabout’, Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is. Compared to his last job, Peter thinks it should be a doddle. But magic is not finished with Mama Grant’s favourite son.

Because Terrence Skinner has a secret hidden in the bowels of the SCC. A technology that stretches back to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, and forward to the future of artificial intelligence. A secret that is just as magical as it technological – and just as dangerous.

The last Rivers of London book finished the first major arc of the series. It was a succession of explosions contained in a novel. So I was wondering what kind of tone Aaronovitch would be setting with False Value. Would it be all action, immediately? A filler story? I just wanted more Peter Grant. It could literally be an entire novel of Peter going to America to visit the Smithsonian museums and I would be on that.

False Value is a slow story but does a lot of table setting for the next arc. While the case of the book feels very small and contained, you can see that they’re being pulled into the larger world of magic. I did have a hard time with the first few chapters, but I’m not sure if this is a problem of the book, or because I sailed straight into it after the Jeeves book I had been reading.

I finished the book too quickly and now I have to wait for the next one. Bother.

    The Thief, The Queen’s Thief #1 by Megan Whalen Turner

The king’s scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king’s prison. The magus is interested only in the thief’s abilities.

What Gen is interested in is anyone’s guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

It’s March now, so my friends and I are starting on the second book in our read-along of The Queen’s Thief. I wrote last month that I was worried about how my friends would take the series, but really I needn’t have thought about it at all. The book stands well on its own, and my friends all got into the story. I hesitate to say that they loved it because there are four more books in the series, but they were definitely into it. Some of them had a hard time sticking to the two chapters a day schedule because Turner’s prose really just pulls you in.

I still love Gen, and I’m excited to relive his character growth.

  The Farthest Shore, The Earthsea Cycle #3

Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea. As the world and its wizards are losing their magic, Ged — powerful Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord — embarks on a sailing journey with highborn young prince, Arren. They travel far beyond the realm of death to discover the cause of these evil disturbances and to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.

I’m reading Tehanu, the last book of the Cycle, now, and I’m scared of ending the series. It’s given me so much joy and peace these past few months. I slipped right into it after finishing The Farthest Shore, remembering that they overlap slightly, and that’s done a lot to soften the blow of the third book. Re-reading Farthest at this age, when things have been losing their colour and flavour, where I have to fight harder to keep myself honest and keep myself ‘good’, hits differently. I’ve been recovering, and the bitterness that Ged has over the loss of his mastery is too real to me. Of course, it’s a good book, but it hurts.

—

All right, that’s it for now. I’ll probably be popping in to post a little about Komiket and some other things I’ve been reading next week or so, so please keep a weather eye out for that next post!

February Reading Round-Up I won't be the first or last person to marvel at how quickly February whizzed past, especially in comparison to January's gauntlet.

[cthulhubert]

Thoughts, not even a review, of Terra Ignota

recently finished Will to Battle.

(Book 3 of Terra Ignota, preceded by Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders. The sequel and finale, Perhaps the Stars, is expected in 2021.)

So I wanted to post some thoughts, not even a review, really.

The take away is that despite many of its major, fundamental features leaving me cold or even actively repulsing me, I overall very much enjoyed reading it.

This is perhaps a higher recommendation than unalloyed praise. The more I like something, the more I complain. For one thing, it's a kind of eustress: the perfect thing has no flaws to catch interest; for another, if I just plain dislike something, I wouldn't spare much thought on it to begin with, much less linearize so many of them into words.

So my mostly negative venting (consisting of immediate and thorough spoilers) beneath the cut

So right off the bat: I HATE the genius serial killer trope; and I detest SFF trolley problem analogs.

I was so irritated by the one-two punch of these big reveals in the first book that I actually let my hold on Seven Surrenders and read several other books in the interim. (I knew I'd be back though, I put a new one on both 2 and 3 next.)

Mycroft Canner... one who believes themself "free" merely because they can kill. It reminds me of something that's stuck in my mind for a long time: a guy calling other peoples cucks because they used alarm clocks to wake up. "I can't believe you let a machine boss you around."

Because I otherwise liked the writing so much, I kept trying to dredge up another layer of meaning to the treatment of Mycroft as torturer-rapist-murderer. For instance: "Oh, so many people around him being sympathetic and liking him is actually the narrative sneakily reminding us that the core trait of serial killers like this is a manipulative personality, which his savant abilities would only feed." Carlyle Foster even brings this up specifically in the scene where we first learn the specifics of Canner's crimes, but of course, their portrayal in that scene (which, reminder, is literally by Mycroft) is of one hysterical and unreasonable.

Palmer did achieve one of most author's highest goals in emotionally transporting me to one of their scenes, but it just really made me wish I was in Carlyle's shoes. To react with, rather than panic, the cold disdain merited by a creature so broken it is wrong about the ways in which it is broken. To spit on them and denigrate their feelings of uniqueness and specialness, arising both from the murders and from their oh so pitiable martyrdom and servitude now. "If only we could mercifully lobotomize away your personality and still use the savanthood modules so unfortunately stapled to them."

Mycroft: "Everybody seems to have one murder they thought was the worst. I thought yours would be []" Me instead of Carlyle, snidely: "Is that a fun game for you, that speculation?"

(In another scene, the Major's sympathy to Mycroft and Saladin as "fellow killers" somewhat raised my hackles; my experience is military people expressing exaggerated disgust for "civilian" killers, perhaps as a way of mental separation between their acts. Though the revelation that the Major is Achilles, with an ancient's attitudes, perhaps ameliorates this.)

As for OS... if you've invented prophecy, there will be heaps upon myriads upon multitudes of miraculous ways to reshape the world before you reach a best value intervention of cold-blooded murder. I was, at least, amused by considering the linear combination of this limitation between the author and the characters. Palmer was quite clever in making sure that the mystical demographic math must be facilitated by humans (and the very odd set-set humans at that).

I admit I hold this philosophy a bit more strongly than my time investment in the fields merit, but I see it this way:

In physics, infinite, friction-less planes in perfect vacuums occupied by inelastic, spherical cows are a useful tool. They approximate things that are theoretically possible, absent the various extra forces.

In ethics, and in any system that is so truly complex, everything you remove makes for a completely different system. None of the elements are basically orthogonal to the circumstances the way air resistance is to a bullet.

These philosophical sorts of thought experiments are, at best, emotional exercises. They are not simplified tools to build a foundation for more complex issues, they're figments born of the phantasmal conditions possible only in the interior of the brain, and too much work with them will only foul both logic and intuition with garbage data.

As for what merely fell flat:

While I deeply enjoyed so much of the speculation about cultural changes brought about by technology, and travel technology specifically, the "no proselytizing" law felt quite forced. I can definitely believe such a law would be passed after the Church Wars described, but holding so strong for centuries?

There are all kinds of supernatural thoughts and beliefs people accept, and there simply isn't a neat threshold between those and religion. Even in the counterfactual world where there was one, it would be quite concealed by the sophistry that's metastasized through the entire discussion space around it.

I can think of a dozen questions off the top of my head that they'd have to decide. And while flipping a coin or an attempt at a definitional framework could answer them, it couldn't do it in a way that's strong enough to stand the test of time. Imagine Laurel/Yanny, the Dress, or if a hot dog is a sandwich, but with material-security level of investment in them!

I'm areligious (to put it... mildly) but for personal, psychosocial reasons, when I sit down to eat I spend a moment in mindful gratitude towards the plants and animals that gave their life for mine. Is that religious? Are ghost hunter shows illegal because they're proselytory for any animistic religion? Would acupuncturists be able to work, or is that a daoist superstition? Could my neighbor's still paint the ceiling of their porch haint blue? Are scientists allowed to register trials for psychic powers? Can schools teach the arguments for dualism?

That doesn't even get into the subjects that, in real life, yank out all the stops on linguistic-conceptual inventiveness! Europe has had a pestilential outbreak of sophistry around head scarves! Would the Alliance ban them for being religious garb? If so, would they ban clothing that covers the ankles as Calvinist religious garb? Or that covers the nipples? (Oh wait, showing the nipples is of significance in some religions! can't allow that!) Should they ban clothing that contains unmixed fibers for being a religious display!? They don't seem to do any of these things, but that's just as much a choice about the First Law as doing so.

Someone proposes personhood begins at conception; I claim that this is fundamentally a supernaturalist belief. Is one of us in violation of the first law? If a hive outlaws birth control, how are they investigated for whether this is a cultural or religious condition? What happens when, I dunno, a Cousin run campus has somebody that wants to put Intelligent Design in the biology textbooks? Most people (well including the people pushing it) know that it's religion wrapped in plausibly deniable words. So is that proselytizing, or is someone pointing it out proselytizing atheism?

Speaking of, there's a pretty good correlation of peace and prosperity with movement to non-religioun. It honestly doesn't seem like sensayers should have much work.

But we meet Bridger and his miracles right at the beginning of the book, before we know a thing about the Church Wars etc. And it's obviously a central tension of the story, intended to be coequal with the brewing war, and yet it quite failed to rouse my interest. The book would've been stronger without it.

Perhaps this *is* just a me thing, since my mind has held miraculous intervention as a solved problem for most of my life. If I were convinced of an event's miraculous character, the most parsimonious explanation is in the vein of, "We're in a simulation that's only been running for a week or so, either as a game or as an experiment, and now we're running under different rules than the ones our (artificial) memories imply." The probability of that happening is too low to waste time processing any other ramifications or possibilities ahead of time.

There is another, related layer of enjoyable consideration, which is of course the reliability of the narrator and his evidence. In Will to Battle, our author is revealed as explicitly delusional, suffering regular, presumably PTSD (and/or anti-sleep drug) related hallucinations. I wish I'd had the patience to do a very close read, or to do a second read—especially given the revelation that 9A edited some of the delusions out of the first two books. Diegetic skepticism is a regular part of the narrative. And there are lots of "rhymes" in the text to mundane circumstances. We're told Bridger looks like Apollo and Seine, and shown the artificial, parentless children, Ganymede and Danaë (crafted to be such a degree of hyperstimulus that among other things, Ganymede has an entire school of art dedicated to him). We're shown that perceptions are malleable, with Thisbe's "witchcraft" and Cato's magician like showmanship. We're constantly exposed to griffincloth and know that just its presence at JEDD's assassination spread skepticism. We're told that scientists proclaim Achilles to have Ancient Greek DNA and an adult's bone structure, but we're also constantly shown an incredible variety of artificial animals and related wonders, and told Apollo was a great scientist.

And yet, over and over the narrative rebukes skepticism. 9A endorses most of what Mycroft has written, and if we go so far as considering them (along with, eg, the officialese headings and warnings) as Mycroft's delusions too, we're at the point where we have to step back so far that the unreliable narrator is actually this "Ada Palmer" character, who is writing about things that don't exist in a year we haven't reached yet!

I was bothered that nobody who learned about it seemed ready to express the proper amount of disgust at the extra-incestuous politics of the world leaders, and honestly find it simply hard to accept that their consortium worked so altruistically.

Finally, ultimately, the central themes of the novel, about peace and war and complacency seem awfully poorly considered for the current era, where voting age children have never known a world without an official war, and the just grown generation is the first since the industrial revolution to be poorer and less healthy and more stressed than their parents. Not just this novel, but the world in general seems to be sorely missing the concept of the important qualitative differences between distress and eustress.

[cornelisdemooij]

Innuendo Studios Research Masterpost - With More Links

This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries. Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such. Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, documentary by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein <- (currently reading) Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Motion of Light in Water, by Samuel R. Delany Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Alt-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle. The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube. (caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments) Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video. (caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence) How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets. Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality. On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.” The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus. Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win. (caveats: myriad. For one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. He also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. Finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.) Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.) A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening. (caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)

[kermitted-to-read]

Classics to Read Other Than Pride & Prejudice

Hello everyone! Here is a scenario - every once in a while, you would feel tired from the emotional roller coaster rides life brings you or even from fictional worlds that made you feel heavy inside; and you would like to relax and maybe even read something else that is not as heavy and probably would bring you in a bout of nostalgia. Today, I will be sharing my personal favorite classics that I would read during breaks in between work and class. Oftentimes, I would choose to read short stories that are more wholesome and light-hearted. I would not be recommending classics like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Emma so this reading list would also be beneficial for people who do not generally read as well. This is especially so because they may have heard or seen the adaptations of these books before.

Hans Christian Andersen’s Collection of Fairy Tales

I am sure a lot of people had somehow come across one or more works by Hans Christian Andersen, a notable Danish author, whether they are in the forms of ballets, plays and animated and live-action films. To name a number of his famous works: Thumbelina (1835), The Emperor’s New Clothes (1837), The Snow Queen (1844), and The Little Mermaid (1847). All the works I have mentioned had its inspired films such as how the Snow Queen was the inspiration to one of the best animated films of all times, ‘Frozen’ (2012). I grew up watching a lot of these movies and upon reading the actual stories, it really changed my perspectives because not all stories have a happy ending.

Just as a lot of people know these stories, I know a lot of people do not actually know the actual stories that had inspired all those adaptations that they had seen first. I recommend giving them a try because they are so different from their adaptations, especially since these are how the author had originally envisioned the stories with all those famous characters. You might end up liking them.

Winnie the Pooh’s Collection of Stories

The series of Winnie the Pooh books was created and written by A. A. Milne and was illustrated by E. H. Shepard. I grew up watching Winnie the Pooh and it is certainly one of my favorite childhood animations to watch even as an adult. It was only recently when I decided to read the actual books that were written by the author; And I never realised how wise and philosophical Pooh and the other characters can be when you watch the animation adaptations of the stories as a young girl. Those words simply pass by you as you never understood why Pooh or the other characters such as Eeyore and Piglet act the way they do. Now, as a young adult that has gone through some things that life throws at us, I could finally understand the real meaning and appreciate the amount of wisdom that is present within their words. 

One of my favorite quotes by Winnie the Pooh is “I am not lost, for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost”. Even though this one is from the ‘Christopher Robin’ (2020), another one would be “I always get to where I am going by walking away from where I have been”. This particular quote had really given me courage to do some things I would have never considered before in life. By reading the Winnie the Pooh stories, it might even give you some perspectives to whatever is going on in your life. Either way, it would leave you in a wholesome feeling by the end of it. If you are interested in reading more about Winnie the Pooh, consider reading A. A. Milne’s two poetry books ‘When We Were Very Young’ (1924) and ‘Now We Are Six’ (1927).

I hope this blog helps you in some way whether it stops your writers’ block, helps you read more, inspire you or simply use up your time in a good way. 🌼

[renaramblesaboutcomics]

Wednesday Roundup 29.11.18

Another week another grab bag of comics in what might be one of the highest rated weeks of the Roundup since I started over a year ago! But how does everyone hold up? How do they all compare? I’m asking for dramatizing’s sake but genuinely there’s nothing in this week that isn’t immensely enjoyable if they even remotely pique your interests. GREAT week for comics, everyone. GG.

Tesladyne’s Atomic Robo, Image’s Black Magick, DC’s Super Sons, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II, IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light

Tesladyne’s Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow #2 Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Anthony Clark, Jeff Powell

There is a certain amount of dry wit and scientific community knowledge that is instrumental to getting the full experience out of the clever writing and deceptively simplistic design of Atomic Robo, and for the past few months I’ve been making a solid attempt to evaluate these comics and Robo himself based on the entertainment received without much of that. And, in all honesty, the more I’ve looked into this the more I wonder if that’s the wrong approach for “unbiased” evaluation to begin with. 

For example, I’ve been very firm on my description of Usagi Yojimbo as being one of those great comics that only gets more and more enriching as you grow a personal interest in history, Japanese culture, and mythologizing -- it’s far enough removed from our actual realities and accessible enough that I recommend it to people who don’t have those interests, but I find that those interests add so much more to the experience. The simple designs, the consistency, the way the narrative is built in episodic spurts more than long form narrative -- those are all reasons I can in good faith recommend these comics to people outside of niche interests, but those niche interests add so much to any reading that it’s difficult to really express why anyone would want to read without so much as acknowledging it. 

That all said, this particular issue continues that same level of quality and intrigue, but also rewards the emotional investment you may have in the characters involved. PersonallyI relate a lot more to Robo’s sense of self-exile and reclusive depression which only causes more and more problems to pile up far more than I’d have ever thought I would, and I don’t think I’d be alone in that. There’s also the long time readers’ reward in seeing consequences to that stollen crystal from Doctor Dinosaur’s island ages ago. All great stuff which is only more greatly emphasized by the creative use of familiar real world scientific organizations and entities wrapped up in this bizarre and surreal reality of Atomic Robo.

Image’s Black Magick (2015-present) #9 Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott

Sometimes the real value of storytelling lies less in identifying the complete package and more in being able to identify the way it weaves multiple elements and even genres at once to provide a new kind of satisfying narrative. And it’s in that way that I think Black Magick has so quickly become not only one of my favorite Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott comics, but one of my favorite recent publications in general. 

Black Magick follows a noir-style crime drama in structure, but its embrace of the supernatural and, especially, in witching stories provide the sort of edge that makes the tiredness of the former genre feel fresh even in the heavily saturated market for procedurals we have currently, while the latter feels completely reborn from that small but influential boom we felt in the 90s. I have never been closer to re-marathoning The Craft, Practical Magic and Charmed outside of the Halloween season. But each new issue of Black Magick brings me that step closer.

This issue also happens to follow the very specific to this week trend of leaning heavily on emotional stakes to really pull itself and its characters above even the thickest of genre settings however, and Black Magick specifically manages that while maintaining an incredibly tight hold on Rowan’s perspective. Which is fascinating because on reread you really realize how much the POV shifts away from Rowan and onto the other characters and their subplots but in reflection it all feels like it’s only in service to Rowan’s main story more than anything else. 

Nicola Scott continues to prove she is perhaps the most gifted and, really, the most prolific of comic book artists in the modern era and I maintain that seeing the true extent of her talents is best assessed by reading this comic and just allowing yourself to be blown away by it all.

This issue also gets major props for introducing a familiar. Good, comic. Perhaps not as action filled or breathtaking as the last issue which was a nail biter from start to finish, but most certainly deserving of those 4/5 stars. 

DC’s Super Sons (2017-present) Annual #1 Peter J. Tomasi, Paul Pelletier, Cam Smith, HI-FI

If you’re one of those people -- and let me absolutely clear that it is more than understandable to be one of these people -- who find super pets and the absolute general ridiculousness of a storyline that involves super animals in any capacity with a timeline that makes no sense and the only real dialogue that matters being literal growls barks and yips, this is not an issue worth your $4.99, you’ll hate it and be annoyed with people like me screaming from the rooftops that you should buy it and read it and love it. And that is completely and utterly fine and reasonable.

I am not fine or reasonable, however, and this is literally the most rewarding $4.99 I’ve spent on a comic in ages. Because no joke there were several times while I was liveblogging this issue both on my main blog and to my friends in PMs that I was literally in tears crying with laughter because

because

Holy shit guys.

In recent years a continued criticism I have carried for superhero comics is that there is a huge tone problem, in that there is a genre’s worth of tones and atmospheres that could be played off of to give at least each individual book if not each individual issue its own feeling and its own intrigue that would set it apart from the rest of the line that given week. DC, especially, has contributed greatly to this tone problem because as I’ve said many times, there was about five years there where even the color palettes for their comics had no variation between them. And it was maddening. 

So to have something goofy, to have something different, and to have it be fun, enjoyable, full of twists and turns, and not so damn determined to take itself beyond seriously, it makes this comic throwback feel like a breath of fresh air in the most necessary of ways. 

And I should be clear, I don’t mean that this comic is for everyone, or that Super Sons as a comic in general doesn’t manage to strike that cord a lot since it really is one of the most enjoyable comics DC has put out in years, but this really felt like a treat, an additional, ridiculous, hilarious story set so far apart from what’s come before. It’s greatly enjoyable. Genuinely deserve of my coveted 5/5 stars. 

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II (2017) #5 (of 5) Erik Burnham, Tom Waltz, Dan Shoening, Charles Paul Wilson III, Luis Antonio Delgado

We finally come to an end of this second giant mashup of Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, truly the sort of framework and pairing that is as old as time, and I get to reward everyone’s patience with me reviewing these for a month an a half straight with some final thoughts of sorts. 

I compliment both of these writers quite a bit for their respective contributions and the absolute mastery they both have shown for the voices of their respective franchises, but as this week is pretty well summed up with Rena Waxes Philosophically And Is Old, I think both of our times are better spent here by pointing out something a bit different that really came together with this issue. And that’s that for how pitch perfect these writers are for capturing the long expected voices of these beloved characters, the real remarkable compliment I can give them is how they have uniquely captured and redefined these voices to really make them their own.

Despite how much my childhood might have desired these team ups (and believe me, it so did) the fact is that these interactions and these relationships are utterly a modern invention, and what could easily fail outside of the concept states instead flourishes with us here specifically because they are sticking to their guns and not always angling for the obvious route with these interactions. That’s what makes all of this so fascinating and so rewarding as a fan.

In comparison to the predecessor, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II does not have as tight of a storyline with a steady but consistent pacing and understanding of where it’s going. But I think because that set up was taking care of in the original these five issues allowed for more experimentation and more concentration on character development and fun scenarios. So if you’re far more invested in character interactions and in comics taking full advantage of the outrageous and unique tone of its medium, there’s probably all the more for you to enjoy with this compared to the first. But at the same time, it would be lying to say that the main driving plot and stakes, with Darius Dun’s ghost and the Fast Forward Evil Turtles-lite trying to harvest souls in a complicated and underused concept didn’t come off as overall a bit weaker than the original.

All that said, ultimately this comic is a joy for fans and it seems to be aimed quite specifically at that audience either way. And in that case I have to give it my highest regards.

IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light (2016-present) #11 James Roberts, Jack Lawrence, Joana Lafuente

Ever since the last arc of James Robert’s parent series, More Than Meets the eye, there’s been a few gaps in the concept of what happened on the Lost Light during and after the mutiny, whether or not the crew saw the Rod Squad’s las message, and especially curious to people like me who can’t help themselves but love our affable and entirely flawed co-Captain Rodimus, what was his final request for his burial and what not since we saw the rest of the crew’s.

And in the second part of this “Mutineer Trilogy” that we have for Lost Light, we are at long last getting our answers to many of those questions. And for a reveal that was a year coming, the Lost Light manages to pack all the twists, turns, and punches that we could hope to expect! 

It’s fascinating to see Getaway’s sense of grandeur when it comes to himself, his plans, and really the whole driving force with the mutiny, but I really find that where Roberts’ writing and where we as readers get the most out of is the interesting and very layered sense that Roberts has for the lore of the Transformers. It feels like every subtle piece of dialogue, whether it concerns lore and mythology of the universe or not, is really weaved throughout with a submersion in this fictional culture. And that, especially, is really revealing here. It’s a very rewarding way to handle lore and I greatly appreciate it. 

One that does make me apprehensive with the turns Lost Light has taken most recently, however, is that moral grayness sometimes feels really blurred with a light take or even somewhat forgiving light given to what are undeniably and outright stated as fascist and genocidal elements of the Transformers’ past, especially Megatron. Having this issue completely dedicated to Getaway’s perspective while tackling these themes doesn’t really help because he is most egregiously one of the most villainous and traitorous characters the series has tackled, but while it feels like he’s only using the aghast feelings of the crew toward Megatron, ultimately he’s the only one who gives a speech against Megatron’s past of genocide and fascism while also taking over in the most truly reprehensible and fascist ways possible himself. This is further blurred by having some very topical buzz words like “fake news” uttered by Getaway in a... lbr pretty nonsensical way in-universe, but then have him going around imprisoning or hideously killing all of the crew which doesn’t agree with him.

I’m basically waiting for Roberts to fully address all of this in the story but right now it feels very much like “both sides are extreme and bad” mentality that, given Roberts’ politics and statements irl, I don’t think is what he ultimately wants this story to be coming away as, but I’m nervous and would like for things to tread lightly considering the current environment. 

ALL of my apprehensions and concerns out of the way, this is still a fascinating and ultimately fantastic comic that I really truly enjoy and would love to see more of because if Roberts’ Transformers is guilty of anything it’s definitely guilty of raising my expectations and setting that bar so high because of how good and how complicated and interesting all of it ca be in the right hands.

Hey there! We finish up another pretty fun, if not quick, week in comics with lots of stories and characters, and another pretty great time from yours truly. And if you enjoy these write-ups or anything else I do whether it be the Roundups, my Rambles, my personal creative projects, or you’re interested in my upcoming podcast, you can help contribute through donations to my Ko-Fi, Patreon, or PayPal. For as little as $1 per project, you make all of this possible.

You could also support me by going to my main blog, @renaroo, where I’ll soon be listing prices and more for art and writing commissions.

RenaRoo Ko-Fi | RenaRoo Patreon | RenaRoo PayPal

[bnfbc]

Bullshit Jobs - by David Graeber - April 2020 - selected by Jachles

Andy: “This didn’t feel like it needed to be a book to me. It was originally an article and probably could have stayed that way. The author’s argument that a good portion of jobs are bullshit makes sense to me. He claims to have no policy to fix this but then talks about universal basic income for many pages. I would rather have read the article and then maybe a book about UBI.” C+

Gabe: “Bullshit jobs? Bullshit book. This book started as an article, and probably would have been best served had it remained an article, as probably half the book was unnecessary philosophizing. I did appreciate the anecdotes and thinking about a provocative idea, however, especially considering most of our books are about people or events in history.” B

Jachles: “Listen up all you Chief Functionality Planners and Regional Usability Specialists. My communication and rhetoric background helped me get a bullshit job and it’s also gonna help me write a helluva non-bullshit review of this great book. It’s not surprising to me that there are so many people out there that feel that their jobs are useless. It was surprising to me that the average bullshit job holder is deeply unhappy in their job, even though they were essentially being paid to do nothing, but it makes sense when you stop and  think about it. It’s unfortunate that there is no clear solution to this problem, though the universal basic income discussion was intriguing. I loved how the book brought to light how unnatural an 8-hour work day is and how much time the average person wastes while “working” for 8 hours. I really enjoyed the anecdotal stories that people submitted to the author. If only I had known about David Graeber back when I interned at one of America’s premier companies, we could have read an anecdote about how I spent my days listening to Max Kellerman, Brian Kenney, and Paul’s college radio show. There’s bullshit everywhere folks. Lastly, I highly recommend the Anarchist Library free version of this book, both for its price (free) and its excellent footnotes.” A-

Paul: “First of all, I’m totally on board with this theory. These ideas were given extra weight because we were reading it during a pandemic, with unemployment at a near all-time high, and non-bullshit jobs feeling more essential (and more underpaid) than ever. It’s fascinating that western democratic capitalism has somehow resulted in a system where people get paid to waste their time while slowly but surely becoming depressed anarchists who post on message boards. Unfortunately, after the first 50 pages or so, the book totally lost its momentum. It felt like there were missed opportunities to explore the deeper root causes of our current state of bullshitization. The anecdotes were enjoyable, but contributed to the feeling that we were only getting a very limited picture of the situation at hand. By the way, that limited picture consists almost entirely of British anarchists who work dull office jobs and dream of writing novels. Also, I hate to kink shame Graeber, but the part that compared bullshit jobs to S&M sex was just weird.” B-

Tommy: "I was somewhat surprised to enjoy this book in the beginning and even laughed out loud at some of the personal stories. Unfortunately, my enjoyment faded quickly as Graeber blathered on. It seems like Graeber would be better served to direct his intellect to a heavier subject as his arguments and logic were sound. There's only so much to say about bullshit jobs and I felt like the book missed some opportunities to explore some of the more interesting topics that were mentioned, like universal basic income. I wish Graeber had spent more time expanding on how society could possibly fix all of its bullshitization. This was also my first, and hopefully last, BNFBC book on Kindle. I'm still a hater of non-paper books." C+

GPA: 2.80

[stvlti]

11 Questions

i was tagged by @privatekururugi, @espiadimonis, and @transguynoriaki a while ago. each gave me a set of 11 questions to answer, so i will answer these 33 questions. i’m not gonna tag anyone in particular, but if you see this do feel free to have a go at any or all of these sets of 11q’s.

from @privatekururugi:

1) Do you have any specific diet you go by? (Vegan, Gluten-Free, Paleo, etc.) i used to be pescetarian, but then the deficiencies it gave me caused some pretty bad dental / gum problems, so i started eating a bit of lean chicken and pork on the side again... (yeah i know supplements exist, but even my nutrition major of a friend thought a pescetarian diet won’t yield deficiencies, and also supplements are fairly expensive. get off my case)

2&3) Do you have any siblings? If so, how close are you? nope, i’m an only child

4&5) What’s your favourite book and why? (I might want to read it lol) hmm. i still really like 1984, it was the first dystopian classic i read and the concept of Newspeak, tampering with historical authenticity on such grand scales, etc. just blew my mind. so even though i still dislike its weakass character-writing (p much anyone besides Winston has no personality, no distinct personal motives, etc), it’s got a soft spot in my heart. next to that i also liked A Clockwork Orange for the philosophical discussion of the nature of right and wrong (although in hindsight the story is a bit didactic); To Live by Yu Hua (the ill-fated episodes and tragic ends are made all the more absurd by the subtle and simply narration style, but it really is a humbling and informative experience for us readers of a different era and socioeconomic background); and of course, my favourite fable, A Little Prince.

6) Would you describe your personality as dominate or submissive overall? what the fuck kind of question is this. well i’m opinionated as heck, so i’m not submissive “personality-wise”. and that’s all i’ll say on the matter because i’m p sex-indifferent lol, if that’s what this question was trying to get at.

7) What are your dreams usually like at night? oh man. i usually don’t dream normal dreams; as in, most dreams i have is either one big adventure / story, or some bizarre situation that would have been questionable at best, fucked up at worst, in real life context. when i start dreaming about mundane everyday life problems or situations, like failing a test or being stuck with a friend i’ve cut off from my life years ago, that’s usually when i’ve got some kind of stress going on in my life.

(i’ve been trying to restart my dream journal tag actually, but i got stuck on my second entry trying to recall the specifics lol. maybe i should release entry #3 from the drafts first.)

8) Is there anything you’re currently anxious about? well, yeah. my future. my job prospects. being homeless once my parents decide to sell their house off for retirement because the housing prices are through the roof here. pick one.

9&10) Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving? Will you be contributing anything? we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving!

11) Whose your favourite Death Note character (if you have one)?  Light Yagami, even though he’s a slimy fox.

from @transguynoriaki:

1. What kind of music do you listen to?

hmm, i only listen to really slow music or something dark or rock-ish, nothing in between!! muahahaha!! 

okay that’s generalising it; i do love The Honey Trees and The Novembers, which are on opposite ends of the “slow” spectrum (one’s dream pop, the other’s infused with shoegaze and other distortions + some screamy vocals and loud noises at times), with Lana Del Rey and her decadent sounds smack in the middle lol. but yeah i certainly have a taste for the more atmospheric stuff, so aside from the fuzzy feelings of The Novembers’ stuff and the grandness of Lana’s string instrumentals i also like the darker chill vibes you get from The Neighbourhood, some of The Weeknd’s older stuff, etc. 

and I also really enjoy MCR, Muse and the like - i.e. dramatic sounds, that’s the good shit to me haha.

i also like more conventional pop acts like Lorde... and my fave local singer, Ivana Wong, of course!

2. Do you prefer to keep your living space neat and tidy or do you like a certain amount of mess?

i do prefer order and routine in my life, sadly if i can’t do that on a structural level you think i can do that with my desk?! lol. in an alternate universe, maybe.

3. What was the first ship you remember really shipping?

hmm probably TerraxBeast Boy from CN’s Teen Titans. i was lukewarm / indifferent to other canon pairings i’ve seen in media up until that point; but i guess i was more persuaded by the storyline than their characterisations as looking back there are glaring trust issues in their relationship (and that’s an understatement)

4. Do you have a certain show or book series that holds a lot of nostalgic value for you? If so, what was it?

hmm, i guess Courage the Cowardly Dog? (i was a weird kid but shush) and Teen Titans of course. as for books, hmm... ASoUE is definitely one of the ones that just takes me back to middle school. i even bought the Beatrice letters files thingy. tbf the whole Lemony Snicket universe did teach me a lot about cryptography, which i guess if me or a friend of mine were to do an L rp and solve cases it would help a lot (*cough* not saying that’s what’s happening right now because i’ve got other stuff i’m investing my time into. i guess my friend’s gonna make themselves scarce as well hahaha *cue Mariah Carey’s i can’t read gif except it’s L*)

5. What is your favorite type of food?

Italian and Japanese are my fave cuisines! i guess that means i love richly-flavoured foods and creamy stuff. ooh, love those sauces.

6. Was there ever a fad or activity from your childhood that you could never understand or get into?

i wasn’t a gamer at all. we didn’t own a single console and i wasn’t allowed to get a handheld. the most i had was a Tamagotchi. so i guess it’s not so much i never got that ‘fad’, just that i was never given the opportunity to discover the really good games. i’ve only ever played a bit of Mario Kart or Cooking Mama on my cousin’s NDS so yeah. didn’t see the appeal in the more light-hearted games like that.

(now that i’ve played Undertale i’m kinda wanting to explore more PC games though. i heard Papers Please is good, and PJ (@kickthepj)’s been recommending Hyper Light Drifter a lot, and the art looks amazing, so yeah... too broke to get them though... and even if i had the money and time to play them i’d be allocating it towards other stuff you know?)

7. What’s your favorite time of day?

well i got 2 fave time periods. the first one’s the witching hours between midnight and early morning, when the world is quiet and you could do anything and nobody would know. the other one is early morning, just after sunrise, and the air is clear and slightly chilly, and it’s also really quiet but you can just hear the birds tweeting somewhere.

i’m more likely to be awake for the first time period described here though... ._.

8. What’s your favorite type flower and why?

hmm i'm not really a flower person. i’m just gonna steal Luke’s answer and say cactus flowers haha (well i do like cacti, they’re some of my favourite plants; i even named my IG/Twitter and Pokemon Go usernames after the plant; also some of you might remember that i had a pet cactus for 8 months)

9. What’s your favorite cliché/trope in fiction?

lovers running out of time...

10. Did/do you do any extracurricular activities when you were in school and what were they?

(wow Luke that’s a lot on your resume!)

i did bits and bobs throughout school, but perhaps my longest commitment was my Clarinet lessons. started when i was in Year 2, carried on until i obtained a Pass in Grade 8 ABRSM certificate in Year 10. i had to quit and give up on a diploma there because i was starting the IB diploma programme in Year 11...

this commitment is only rivalled by the dance classes i took. i did ballet from a young age until i was about 12~13, quitting just before en pointe shoes were introduced; i had also been in Chinese dance lessons from Year 1, so after quitting ballet i just focused on that until Year 10 as well (again, quitting to focus on my full-time diploma).

i also did Taekwondo as a child and obtained a black belt qualification by age 12. i quit once i did though, because again i couldn’t afford to juggle so many commitments the older i got and the more demanding my studies became.

perhaps the proudest extracurricular i’ve done is in my senior years of high school: i started and chaired the student committee as the editor in-chief for the school’s first student-ran and seasonal (now monthly) publication. it’s not student-ran either anymore because i guess the kids that came after the classes of 2014, 2015, and 2016 just dgaf about slightly more demanding extracurriculars that require organisation as long as they can earn their credits elsewhere (yes i’m salty, i’m allowed to be okay, it was my brainchild but apparently kids these days don’t care about having their voices heard if it means having to negotiate diplomacy with the adults in charge. god, how do they expect to survive in uni or in a workplace?)

11. What’s your favorite piece of work that you’ve ever created and what about it do you love so much?

hmm. i think for sure the prose poem i wrote about Light’s death in the anime. idk, the flow and the imagery is just a good concentrated example of what i could be capable of given the right tone and context. (of course, i’ve been trying hard to branch out in genres and forms, so that sort of language isn’t always applicable. but yeah, it remains my fave as a showcase of my best writing abilities ^_^)

and from @espiadimonis​:

1.If you could have one piece of death note merchandise of any kind, what would it be?

oh man! i’ve been pining after the Hot Topic official DN poker card deck for quite some time! i’ve checked Blue Banana while i was in the UK, but it’s not available there, and it’s not at Tokyo Toys either (they do sell a DN playing card deck, but it’s a lot cheaper in design :/)

2.What’s your favourite 3D animated movie?

does Lego Batman count? if not, then i guess Zootopia.

(there’s a reason these 2 are listed in my bio fandoms list like...)

3.What superpower would you like to have?

i used to always choose levitation / flying, but lately i’m not so sure. i’ve heard a lot of compelling arguments for other powers haha.

you know what, i’d trade for something as simple as better control of my own brain. i don’t care about mind control over others; i just want to be able to harness the best parts of my lightning fast thought processes and out-of-the-box thinking on my best days without being constantly tripped up by executive dysfunction like that on a metacognitive level.

4.Favourite piece of clothing?

my soft furry hoodie, which i’m wearing right now! <3

5.Who’s your favourite Sailor Scout?

i don’t have one, sorry! i was 4 when it aired on TV, so i don’t remember much from those years except the Sailor Moon t shirt i got courtesy of my aunt because it was all the rage back then... i’m sorry, but i have more vivid memories of Pretty Cure and Sugar Sugar Rune!

6.Do you prefer potato chips chocolate?

it is a good combo for sure! we are talking about Royce’s chocolate potato chips, right? (if you haven’t tried it get some next time you or a friend/family goes to Japan! we can buy it locally from like Citysuper or something, but i doubt they export it to any countries beyond East Asia haha)

7.What song makes you feel melancholic?

oh, Six Billion did last week. it left me feeling cold all over. an effect from the combination of the layered vocals and the instrumentals i guess. (is it in minor key? i’m sorry i can’t tell anymore, it’s been far too long since i’ve had any musical training. but if it’s in minor key it would explain why.)

there’s also some of the stuff off The Novembers’ catalogue... mostly 終わらない境界 from To (melt into), which was my daily commuting soundtrack at a time when i had brainfog on a regular basis, so yeah, anxiety and all that fun stuff :/

8.Which dn character would you invite to Spaceland(the amusement park)?

Sayu or Matsuda? they deserve a lot more than the hand canon dealt them. hmm maybe Rem too? but she wouldn’t be able to interact with a lot of the stuff there :/

9.What’s the funniest movie you ever watched?

i guess The Lego Batman Movie? i’m sorry i know i keep bringing this film up, but it’s comedic genius for a “kid’s movie”.

10.You can only choose one pokémon! Which one do you choose?

Blissey was gonna be my go to answer. she’s a tank, have you seen her? but is she really my fave mon? debatable. idk man. i really liked Vulpix/Ninetales as a kid... but dark and ghost types though!! okay i can’t choose, next question 

11.What made you happy recently?

i went to another poetry event last night and i met up with a friend i haven’t seen since September :P

[clonerightsagenda]

This was last minute but I'm a grad student so I was mostly drafting from life anyway. You can tell I was losing steam by the end though. All the library details are from my uni library, although I have never seen any dead Union soldiers, or any other ghosts for that matter. The creepy grad cages are my favorite part of giving tours.

 tuesjade prompt: school

The third floor of the library is so quiet every keystroke echoes. Last time you heard someone walking through, it was the security guard on their hourly late night round. You picked this spot for its isolation.

The door leading out into the central stacks creaks open, and you listen for the student's footsteps passing by. Instead, the curtain between your carrel and the stacks twitches back, and you squint out to see Jade waving at you from the other side of the grating. "I like your shower curtain."

"You would. School mascots are just anthro with a veneer of plausible deniability.”

You don't mention that the curtain is on your side of the door, which means she's pulled it backward (and tied it up with businesslike lashwork) with Space powers instead of with her hands. There's no one else in here, and the security cameras can't pick up that level of fine detail.

"Don't science students have their own library?" you ask. Wait shit, it sounds like you're trying to get rid of her. Which you're not, exactly, although if you wanted company you'd be doing research in your apartment. Still, when it comes to people it's safe to be rude to, even after all these years Jade Harley doesn't make your list.

If she takes offense, she doesn't say so. "They do, but a few of my theoretical readings have mentioned Foucault, and I think I've gone as long as I can pretending I know who that is."

"Yeah, you'll get random Foucault encounters in unexpected disciplines. If it's not him it's Derrida popping out of the tall grass of the lit review. Philosophers were never meant to escape."

"You would know." She glances at the shelves nearby. This section is materials so old they're still in Dewey instead of Library of Congress - another reason you preferred the spot. No one needs this stuff. "How many libraries do all your programs fit into?"

"A couple, but this is the best one." You've got a pretty good setup here, if you say so yourself. Books stacked up on the makeshift shelving unit, your own modem wired into the wall to make up for the library's spotty wifi, and a mini microwave tucked under your feet. Home away from home. "None of the others let you rent carrels."

"Is that what they're called? They look more like spooky library jail cells."

"Some undergrads passed through a few hours ago while I was typing and I heard one whisper, ‘I think there's a graduate student in there.’ They screamed and ran when I sneezed."

She giggles. "They thought you were a ghoooost."

"If anywhere on campus were haunted, this would be it." The third floor stacks are perpetually poorly lit. Thanks to later additions to a library building only Escher could love, the arched windows on the far wall open to nothing but brick. In Roxy's words, "it’s where you go to get some serious ass studying done or to share a hip flask with a Civil War ghost.”

"Actually, I asked Aradia, and she said it's clean. The chancellor's house, on the other hand, definitely registers as harboring some kind of otherworldly presence. We haven't determined whether it's the chancellor yet."

"Take a look at some of the desks and tell me this place isn't possessed by demonic energies." Graffiti springs up faster than the staff can afford to replace furniture, and when the wooden desks are too choked with pen doodles and carved Greek letters, people move to the walls. If they're not sharing their phone numbers, they're swapping insults with rival frats. You take anthropological interest in this detritus, although one time you'd tried to decipher a Sharpie scribble, made out "We fucked here ;)", and speedily left the seat.

"Rose says the building appeals to your Gothic sensibilities."

"If she compares me to Lord Byron, tell her those are fighting words."

Jade peers in, and you make a halfhearted effort to push the clutter of Monster cans and energy bar wrappers out of her line of sight. "How long have you been in there?"

You stretch your legs as far as they can go, which isn’t far. "I can still feel my feet, and if I have circulation that means it's been under ten hours."

She purses her lips. "Dirk..."

You gesture toward your open PDF files. Several are still waiting for you to review their footnotes. "This dissertation isn't going to write itself."

"It won't write itself if you're dead either."

"Overwork is neither Heroic nor Just."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm confident on a philosophical basis."

She shakes her head. "I know I'm up a little late too. I had a night class on campus, and then I had a bunch of grading to do… You know how I lose track of time when I'm working sometimes." When you'd all lived together, both of you would get lost in projects and miss meals, only noticing the time when someone showed up to drag you out of your room. Jade had started setting timers for herself. She recommended the habit, but you hated having a buzzer interrupt your thoughts. Things take the time they take.

"I've heard rumors about your grading." You may not have a vibrant social network, but you keep your ear to the ground on social media. There's a waiting list for section 4 of Physics 1000. If you weren't long past gen ed credit requirements, you'd take it yourself. "Everyone thinks you'll be a soft touch."

You couldn’t teach. It still takes effort for you to spit out “Good job” to a friend. Your brain, conditioned by years of self-criticism, jumps over congratulations to what’s next and what they could do better. If a three-year-old presented you with their fingerpainting, your first reaction would probably be to tell them to wash their hands. No one deserves to be subjected to that. Isn’t Dave living proof?

“They have to learn,” Jade says. She doesn’t love it when people can’t keep up either, but she, unlike you, has historically been able to slow down and let them catch up without beating the lesson into them. "I let anyone who wants come into office hours. We'll walk through the concepts together and then they can resubmit. It's not my fault if they don't want to try. But anyway, I don't make a habit of all-nighters.” There she goes, picking the thread of the conversation back up again. She’s always been good at that, no matter how much people try to dodge. “They're not good for you. So how about once I finish looking up whoever this very important French guy is, I take you home?"

"Isn't that out of your way?"

She snaps her fingers. "The teleportation express runs 24/7 and omnidirectionally."

"Shit, I should have asked you for a ride here. On the shuttle I got stuck between some guy dumping his date over the phone and an octogenarian professor who might've died while we were in traffic."

"Ask me any time. I'm glad I ran into you tonight though, and not just to rescue you from dying in the depths of Web of Science. Jane wanted me to pass on that your resolution for the graduate assembly got voted down."

"Another one for the garbage, huh?" You click out of the open PDFs and drag them into your 'To process' folder. As much as you’ll never admit it, your blood pressure drops along with the number of tabs open. "I've given them the opportunity to be relevant on this campus, but if they want to keep kissing the administration's ass, that's their business."

"It's hard to challenge the people giving you funding. I'm writing grant applications for the lab this semester, believe me, I know."

Money. That’s an aspect of civilization you hadn’t missed growing up in its waterlogged ruins. For an institution allegedly devoted to higher knowledge, this place is obsessed with it.

"Speaking of which,” Jade continues, “Jane also said if you try anything else the board might pass a new resolution to stop letting you submit resolutions."

You snap your laptop shut. "This is homophobia."

She snorts. "I won't be long, I just need to track down a selected works book. Then I'll come back and we can get out of here."

" I can't be held responsible for any losses to scholarship." You stand up and stretch. Something in your back pops, and your head swims. Ok, maybe you've been sitting here too long.

"I'll take the blame from the academy. Just get tidied up while you're waiting." She looks critically at your collection of Monster cans. "You can recycle those, you know."

By the time Jade gets back with a thick-spined book on philosophy, you’re out of your carrel and have brushed most of the crumbs off yourself. The recyclables have been scooped up and dumped into your backpack’s outer pocket. It’ll be a sticky mess later. “Are you ready to go?” she asks

“Sure.” It’s not even one, which makes this the earliest you’ve gotten home all week. You’re struck by an impulse to yawn and almost crack your jaw resisting it. For fuck’s sake, it’s only November. You’re not allowed to get tired until March at the earliest.

Everything flashes green, and before you have time to rub your eyes, you’re standing outside your front door. Part of you expects to walk through together, but you don’t all live under the same roof anymore. Growing older changes things, even for gods.

“You’re coming to the group dinner next weekend, right?” she asks.

You dig in your pocket for your key. There must be some sort of interdimensional portal in there, it’s fucking ridiculous. Roxy probably knows about eldritch creatures that eat housekeys, that’s got to be within the Void’s purview. “It’s at Jane’s place this time, right?”

“It was the last time I checked.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Then I’ll see you later. Have a good night!” She waves and vanishes before you have time to reply. So instead you turn around, stick the key in the lock, and step inside.

 (Dirk would be one of those zombified PhD candidates who you can find obsessively scrolling through 50-year-old dissertations on microfilm at 3 am. He IS the library ghost. He doesn't attend any committee meetings because he's overscheduled but he does send proxies with detailed questions/comments/concerns for every agenda item. If they knew what he looked like, the other committee members would probably kill him on sight.)

[anamsaorreads]

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Hi there. My name is Edel and I've decided to try my hand at writing a book blog. Who knows if anyone will read it, but perhaps it could be a place where I can find my voice. At any rate, I'm unlikely to find it if I don't start speaking. The following is a fairly longwinded account of my life's reading journey so far — feel free to skip it, I'll try to be more succinct in future posts.

My mother has always described me as a big reader, always with a book, always reading something. For the most part I agree with her, but I'm also a relatively slow reader (I think, I've never definitively tested my wpm reading speed), and I've had lulls, and great chasms of readinglessness, throughout my life. To be fair, many of the lulls or pauses or dragged out perusals have occurred whilst I've been studying, either in school or university, and although I read a lot for those courses, the reading involved was of the kind that was extra slow, and always, always, put me to sleep. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my courses — mostly — and although the assigned texts were interesting in their own ways, they were rarely something to get excited about (with a few exceptions). Actually, I must now confess that many of the books I was assigned were never finished, or even started, during the time frames of their respective courses. I have since read and enjoyed some, and others are on my current reading list (someday, I will finish The Iliad!).

As a child, I remember frequenting my local library quite a bit. Writing this has brought back a memory of using it to research a project on St. Brigid - Irish princess-goddess-saint — when I was 8 or 9. I vaguely recall a small, tattered, dark green, hard-covered book from which I copied the interesting facts and folklore (my research/essay-writing hasn't changed much since then...). A couple of years after joining, I began to notice a pattern of not finishing the books I checked out, and not remembering their titles after a few months (the latter frustrated me more I think, because I had an otherwise excellent memory for a 7 year old), so I tended to only check out Asterix and Obelix and Horrible Histories volumes, and read the novels and storybooks that I already had at home (a faded pink-covered illustrated Grimm's Fairy Tales springs to mind) or that I bought. The first book I ever fell in love with was a Don Conroy book about an owl. I can still see it gliding through the night air and grasping up an unsuspecting field-mouse in its talons. Fabulous imagery!

In my teens I got more into fantasy. I adored the Old Kingdom Trilogy (there were only three when I read it and I haven't read the others in the series so to me it's still a trilogy) by Garth Nix. I felt empowered by the strong female protagonists and escaped into the vivid descriptions of landscapes and monsters (the Dead), magic, and hot, naked, petrified men. I remember almost gagging as one of the books described the movements of the Dead, and feeling like I (me, personally) had to turn it into a movie. I haven't. Yet. I also read a few Eoin Colfer books — the code along the bottom of the pages of the Artemis Fowl books were always fun — and dabbled in Discworld. Later, I got into some slightly pretentious, wordy, philosophical books like The Picture of Dorian Grey, which I think I understood, and Catch-22, which I did not, even though I wrote a review of it for the school magazine.

I took English in my first year at university and we were assigned an array of wonderful classic novels to read when it finally came to studying prose fiction, many of which I'm still working on. After an entire semester studying Wordsworth's "Daffodils" for one course and learning how to study, research, and write about it for another, one would think one would be dying to get one's teeth to some variety. However, perhaps irrevocably bored with the course, discouraged by the difference in my first semester grades between English and my other subjects, or as a consequence of struggling to adapt to college life, I ended up reading the bare minimum: Pride and Prejudice and *some* of Joyce's Dubliners. While I immensely enjoyed reading, and even studying and writing about these books, I must say I enjoyed re-reading Dubliners last year, and re-watching the BBC and movie adaptations of Pride and Prejudice far more. 

The course did introduce me to titles I probably wouldn't have picked up as soon but am glad I did — Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, among others I'm looking forward to — and it certainly encouraged my love of books. My other subjects did as well, of course. I picked up Fiche Blian ag Fás for my one of my Irish courses and still haven't put it down, largely because I'm taking an age to read it. One of my Bibstudz (Masters in Biblical Studies) lecturers assigned The Iliad as one of our *weekly* reading and I'm still working on that one, too (he did acknowledge that that was a slightly ridiculous expectation).

Since finishing my Masters, and subsequently deciding that maybe I should take a wee break from formal education for at least a few years I have been making more of a conscious effort to read more, both in terms of volume of books, and variety. I don't think I've ever read more than 4 or 5 books in a year until recently. In 2015, while on an internship with TG4 in the back arse of nowhere, I managed around 5 or 6. One was Baudolino by Umberto Eco, which although fantastical, interesting, and thought-provoking, took at least three months for me to get through. Another was The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I read in two sittings, in roughly 7 hours. By way of a harrowing journey, through poetic prose, beautifully bleak and vivid imagery and description, panic and *a lot* of tears, it quickly became my (current) favourite book. 

Now, when I say a lot of tears I mean A LOT. After beginning to weep about 50 pages in (if you've read it you'll know the point I'm referring to), and continuing to cry constantly for the rest of the Sunday afternoon I had chosen to start reading it, I hadn't quite finished it by the time I had to go to sleep. Since I had only roughly 50 pages left, had read the rest of it pretty quickly, and it wasn't very busy in the office that morning — and since I had decided that I absolutely could not wait 8 hours until I got home, or even the 4 hours until lunch — I decided that I could hide in the library and finish it before any pressing work came up. So I did. And I bawled my eyes out for those last 50 pages. I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that pesky colleague. He didn't say anything but he definitely saw me crying, with my puffy red eyes and my sniffling. I just hope he saw the book and didn't think I was in there crying because I was upset for a real-life reason (I'm sure he would have offered assistance if that were the case, he seemed like a nice guy).

Last year, I blew my personal reading record out of the water. I read 14 books, including another Eco tome, and I enjoyed most of them. Of course I had to read Brooklyn and Room (otherwise how was I ever going to be able to watch the films) and both were fantastic. I have to say though, I really struggled to get into Brooklyn at first, but for an unusual reason. I started reading it the December before around the time the film came out here, or just before that. I read the first 20 or 50 pages and while I liked it, it made me slightly uncomfortable. I felt like Eilis, the protagonist, was very much like me. Too much like me. Not in the sense that she possessed those traits which I admire in myself (we all like to identify with a protagonist by relating to those aspects of their personality which drive the story, or by seeing in them someone we would one day like to become, or be like), nor was it in the sense that I think a lot of people might identify with the not so desirable characteristics of someone like Holden Caulfield (he is a little gobshite, really), but know that we're probably not quite that bad. Rather it was that, in those aspects of her personality that drove the first part of the book mostly strongly — her reticence, her thinly veiled anxiety — I saw a mirror image that I didn't see changing any time soon. I think it may have irked me even more as she did begin to transform, that I was not changing in step with her. 

A friend of mine, who hasn't read the book, but saw the film and did a review of it for his local radio station, mentioned to me that he had seen someone who reminded him of me in the cinema. I flirtatiously replied "Was she pretty?" Of course he clarified that it was more a personality reminiscence and that the girl was on the screen, not in the audience. I knew who he was talking about. I finished the book shortly after Christmas last year and eventually watched the film. To me, book-Eilis is more similar to me than film-Eilis, but it's interesting to see how I may seem to other people.

I'm not really sure why I've given you my entire reading history but I guess that brings me to roughly to beginning of 2016. I don't want to make this post any longer than it already is, so I'll fill you in on what I read during the rest of last year in a future post.

I'd like to use this blog as somewhere to talk about books I've read and want to read — I aim to read 24 books this year, which in comparison to other book-bloggers and -tubers is pretty modest — books I love and didn't, and somewhere to share my thoughts on some of my other bookish interests like languages, Irish history and mythology, movies and TV, photography, the Internet, adventures and more (I know, I'm really carving a niche here).

If you've read this far I'd love if you stay and explore more, say hi, and most importantly, give me your recommendations on books and blogs I should read, movies, TV shows, and YouTube channels I should watch, and anything else you think I should know about.

My plan for the time being is to produce one main post per week, so be sure to follow me and come back next week! (Keep an eye out for random bonus posts! — No promises there though ;) )

Thanks for reading

Edel