#i meant for this to just be a sketch for a process sharing thing we're doing at work but i accidentally stayed up late and coloured it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saiilorstars · 3 years

Text

Metamorphosis

Ch. 3: Reborn

Current Masterlist // Previous Story // Masterlist of all OCs

Fandom: Doctor Who // Pairing: 11th Doctor x Female OC

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother @anotherunreadblog @maaaaarveeeeel @stareyedplanet @perfectlystiles

[If you would like to be added to this specific OC’s taglist, let me know!]

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Chapter summary: Renata and the Doctor finally return to pick up their companion, Gabby Gonzalez. While Renata gathers her things from Zhe's gallery, the Doctor makes one trip to the past to say goodbye to...Renata?

Gabriella Gonzalez was deep in her sketching book. She had come to sit in the garden of their good friend Zhe. Being an eccentric alien garden, Gabby was often inspired to make doodles and drawings of what was in it. Huge statues lined the cobblestone pathway. Not even the beautiful sparkly blue grass would make anyone take their eyes off the statues. Gabby's own statue—her first statue ever since she learned how to wield the Block Transfer—of Renata as the Vortex Butterfly proudly stood at the front. It was that statue that kept pulling Gabby's attention off her sketchbook every now and then.

She was doodling Renata and the Doctor, her mind not letting her think of anything else. Renata had regenerated then left one day ago to find their Doctor. There was trouble - as the other Doctor had told her and Renata - on Earth and so of course Renata would go find him. Gabby hadn't been too thrilled staying behind but she didn't have much of a choice. The new Renata was just as authoritative as the last. Something about a 'Master' and 'there's no way I'm letting you near him!'. Gabby still didn't understand but then Renata and the Doctor came back...only for Gabby to learn that the Doctor was going to regenerate. He had come to say goodbye to her. Tears still came to Gabby's eyes when she remembered his face. He was going to die and he was saying goodbye to everyone, including her. That had been one day ago and now Gabby was going crazy waiting for some type of contact from the two Time Lords. She didn't know if Renata and the Doctor were safe nor where they were.

The owner of the gallery where Gabby resided, and once Renata, had done her own digging with her contacts. They confirmed that the Earth was just fine, still rotating normally and still in its right orbit. Zhe was more than just the owner of the gallery, she had become a close friend of Renata and Gabby and so Gabby had no reason not to trust Zhe's words. Gabby just wasn't sure where Renata and the Doctor were now.

But then she heard it.

She froze when she heard the first light noise of wheezing.

Please be real. Please be real.

Gabby put her pencil down as she heard the second louder wheezing. She looked up and nearly cried out of joy when she saw the TARDIS materializing in the garden. She dumped her sketchbook on the bench and raced towards the garden. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Her vision was blurred from tears but she kept laughing like a little girl who'd just seen something magnificent. Because she had.

Renata had barely open the door and stepped out when Gabby collided with her in a big hug. "Woah!" Renata barely kept on her feet from such a hug. "Gabriella, what's the mean—"

"Shut up, just shut up! I thought something happened to you!" Gabby hugged her so tight that she might actually crack some bones.

"I'm sorry. We were in a rush and—"

"It doesn't matter," Gabby squeezed Renata one more time before finally letting go. "You're here, you're alive and—" she suddenly stopped and peered inside the TARDIS from where she stood, "Where's the Doctor!? Is he okay!?"

"Uuh...so there's been a change…" Renata was just beginning to explain when the Doctor walked out of the TARDIS.

"That's an understatement!"

Gabby loudly gasped and stumbled back a few steps. Her eyes were as wide as could be. "Doctor!?"

"Am I that bad looking this time?" the Doctor brought his hands to his face. He'd finally had a proper look at himself and he thought he was pretty good looking. It would do.

Gabby's eyes blinked fast while they looked the Doctor over. "It's you!"

"Why are you acting so surprised? I understand this isn't the first time you've seen me," the Doctor fixed his tweed jacket.

"Yeah but...that was the future you! That's what you said!"

"Hello, future!" the Doctor waved a hand. Gabby deadpanned him. "Oh alright," he dropped his hand to his side. "I'm sorry."

"Oh Doctor, I'm so sorry," Gabby's face slowly softened. "You died…"

"We all have to go sometime but in a matter of speaking I did die. But I'm here—"

Gabby didn't let him finish. She walked over and hugged him tightly. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

The Doctor hugged her back. "I had Renata with me. She took good care of me."

"Still, wish I could've been there when it actually happened."

"No, you really wouldn't have," Renata's words broke them apart. "Because being the Doctor, he of course had to send us directly into trouble."

"Again, I'm so sorry I couldn't die the right way!" the Doctor rolled his eyes at her.

"What happened?" Gabby asked them, fairly amused as they started to bicker over some aliens and a crack and...something about a Prisoner Zero? They sure seemed to be acting normally for them.

"It's a long story, Gabriella. How about we talk it over while we...pick our stuff up?" Renata's eyes flickered to the gallery.

Gabby soon beamed when she understood what it meant. They were finally going back to the TARDIS after such a long time. Renata's illness had finally faded with the regeneration! "Oh yes! So we're all...we're all going back!?"

"Well, we are like a family right?" the Doctor asked and Gabby didn't miss the way his arm curled around Renata's waist.

"Uuuh…" Gabby's eyebrow went up without her trying. She was definitely taken aback when Renata shared a smile with him and leaned on him. "I think...we have a lot to discuss." A lot indeed.

"Why don't you two go ahead and start packing?" the Doctor suggested. "I need to take a quick little trip on my own."

"What? But you just got back!" Gabby was terrified that they would leave again without her. She understood why Renata did it the first time but she wasn't interested in letting it happen again.

"It'll be quick for you. I have to do it," the Doctor shared a meaningful look with Renata.

Renata gave him a nod. She knew where he was going. "Go ahead. And thanks."

"Thank you," the Doctor countered. He dove down to her lips for a quick kiss.

Gabby gaped. Renata, meanwhile, smiled at him with an actual blush! Gabby almost rubbed her eyes to make sure she was truly seeing this.

"Be back!" The Doctor exclaimed and hopped Gabby's head. "Start packing, Gabby-Gabbs—oh," he paused for a second, "I like that! Gabby-Gabbs! Gabbs!" He snapped his fingers a bit too close to her face that she flinched back, not that he would notice. He spun away and rushed into the TARDIS.

"Yeah, he seems to like using his hands more this time around," Renata commented while the TARDIS de-materialized. "We'll see how that goes. C'mon then! We got some packing to do and some goodbyes to say!"

"Wait a minute!" Gabby exclaimed as Renata took the lead towards the gallery. "Are we not going to talk about that!?"

Renata smiled knowingly ahead of her. "About what?"

"Ooh no!" Gabby almost laughed at Renata's attempt to deflect the topic. "You're not getting out of this so easily Renata! I'm serious!" She trailed after the Time Lady into the gallery.

~0~

Zhe's Gallery, 1 day ago.

Gabby ran out of Renata's bedroom, shouting for the Doctor. She heard the TARDIS materializing from inside the room. It was him! He had finally come back and with any luck, he had a cure for Renata. She hated to think that Renata's time was coming to an end.

"Doctor! Doctor!" Gabby yelled all the way down the hall, and to the TARDIS but she nearly crashed into the door when somebody opened it inches from her face. Gabby fervently shook her head and blinked fast to get her sight back. When she did, she saw who had come. "...Doctor?" It was the Doctor alright, but not the version Gabby knew. "Who...who are you?"

The eleventh Doctor smiled kindly at Gabby, though it was very strained. "Hello Gabby. It's the Doctor, don't worry."

But Gabby still didn't look convinced. "No...he's taller. And he wears suits. Plus, you look nothing like him!"

"I regenerated, Gabby. I'm from the future. I got your call but I'm a little late."

Gabby blinked at him, deciding if it was really true what he was saying. She looked back towards Renata's room. "...she's dying. Renata...she's dying…"

The Doctor gave a small nod of his head. "I know," he said grimly. "That's why I'm here."

"Did you find a cure?" Gabby asked him with hopeful eyes. The Doctor remained grim. With his intense gaze, Gabby knew that he hadn't. Tears formed in her eyes as she looked back at the room again. "She's going to die!"

"She will but she'll regenerate," the Doctor gently touched her arm. "And I'm going to be there with her. Thank you for taking care of her."

"Will she be okay?"

"Afterwards, yes. I'll make sure of it."

Gabby sighed. "What's going to happen?"

"I'm going make her last minutes as comfortable as possible," the Doctor gave her a quick hug and a kiss on top of her head.

He left her in search of Renata. He made it down the hallway and walked into the room where his Renata would be, her previous incarnation. His hearts nearly stopped at the sight of her writhing body on her bed.

Zhe was holding her hand tightly, trying to calm the Time Lady down.

"Renata," the Doctor hurried to the other side of the bed, ignoring Zhe's suspicious stare. He brushed Renata's blonde hair our of her face, feeling the sweat from her skin in the process.

Renata was swaying her head, coming in and out of consciousness. "I want...I want the...I want...the Doctor. Where is he?"

The Doctor grabbed her hand tightly, once again feeling the beads of her sweat on her skin. She was close, alright. "I'm here, love. I'm here."

Renata stopped moving to look at him.

Zhe's eyes had widened on him too. "You're…?"

The Doctor gave her a nod just to ease her suspicions on him. He then smiled softly for Renata. She was squinting her eyes as if she couldn't see him when in reality she was trying to process his words.

"I'm here," he told her and kissed the back of her hand.

"You're late," she said, sounding as if she wanted to huff. It made him laugh. Even when regeneration loomed over her, she would always have enough energy to scold.

"Yeah I am. And you have no idea how sorry I am. I should've been here - the other me - he should be here, but he's not coming. I'm so sorry."

Renata struggled to smile without making it seem too strained. She felt her entire body close to bursting. "No...it's my fault. I waited too long to change my mind. I wanted to die alone. But now that I'm here…" fresh tears filled her eyes, "I don't want to die by myself. I want you with me. How selfish am I? To think that you'll always come to me like you're at my beck and call."

"But I am, and I have no problem with that. Anytime you call, I'll run to you. Always."

Renata sniffled. He was always much too kind to people who didn't deserve it. She definitely didn't deserve it.

"C'mon," the Doctor slid his arms under her body to pick her up.

"Doctor, she can't go anywhere," Zhe rose from her seat. "She won't make it to—"

"We're just going to take one last trip to the garden." He told her while he settled Renata's body in his arms. "My Renée deserves at least that. She shouldn't die surrounded in a bland old room. No offence."

Zhe rolled her eyes but couldn't help but smile. It was definitely him alright.

"She's going to see the flowers one more time." He kissed Renata's forehead and headed out of the room.

He took Renata to the garden in the back, the same garden she would take walks in each day she stayed in the gallery. It was her favorite pastime. Hopefully it could bring her some peace in these last minutes. He wanted to help her as much as she had helped him during his regeneration.

Despite her worsening condition, Renata felt the change of air around them when the Doctor brought them outside. He walked over the blue grass and stopped by a beautiful flower bed he had no doubt Renata planted.

"Here we are," the Doctor lowered himself to the ground, keeping Renata close to him but in more of a sitting position so she could see her flowers.

"Thank you," she whispered, for it was as high as her voice would allow.

"Of course. I wish there was more I could've done for you. If there had been a cure I would've gotten it for you, no matter the price."

"I wouldn't deserve that, Doctor." She tilted her head up at him, allowing him to see the usual guilt that often plagued her. It sat in her eyes like it belonged there. "You have dedicated too much time to me when the truth is I never deserved it. Look at you, I dread to think that you regenerated because of me."

"Hey, that's not true," he lightly scolded her. "You want to know the truth? The truth is we have spent far too many centuries trying to erase what happened between us. We tried pushing it away and in doing so, we built a mountain of lies. But none of that means that I would ever stop loving you."

"Even when I wasn't been honest with you?"

"I don't care, Gala. I love you and no matter what you do, that will never change."

Renata couldn't help but cry in that moment. "I wanted to die," she blurted, immediately reminding the Doctor what the present Renata had said. She'd wanted to die in her last body, truly die without regeneration.

He looked at her with a pained expression. "Why? Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I never learned how to live, especially in this body. I was just so tired of everything going wrong. I thought that it was best if I just...stopped. Forever. But you...but you still love me even after I hurt you so much and I thought...maybe if I survived, we could actually happen. The right way this time. I wanted to live in the end but it was too late."

"It's never late," the Doctor told her. "Because if you put all of your efforts into this regeneration, I'll be waiting on the other side."

Renata brought a hand up to his cheek, gently stroking his skin. "You would want to be with me again?"

"Very much," the Doctor gave her a nod. He lowered his head to capture her lips in a kiss, proving his words true.

Renata welcomed him despite her doubts. No matter where she was, who she was, who he was, it would always be the same old story. She would love him until the end of her life.

They pulled away to share soft smiles with each other but a few seconds later, Renata's hands started glowing with regeneration energy. She groaned and nearly fell out of the Doctor's arms if he hadn't held onto her.

"It's time…" she took in a shaky breath. "Let's see if this is what wipes the slate clean."

"Good luck, love," the Doctor pressed a kiss to her forehead and then helped her stand up. She wobbled for the first few seconds but she ultimately got her balance.

"I'll...try…" she flashed him a tired smile. The months of expelling Vortex and toxic energy had finally taken its toll on her.

She swallowed hard and raised her hands to see them glowing brightly. There was a second energy, one that she recognized as the same energy she used on the Daleks and their Reality Bomb. It wrapped around her like a present. She could feel the ripple of pain strike her once again before the energy took her over. She screamed as the regeneration finally began.

The Doctor shielded his eyes from the brightness, hoping it would be a quick process. He couldn't stand hearing her agonizing screams. He tried peeking through the light and saw the silhouette of the energy forming butterfly wings behind Renata. The Vortex Butterfly was finally finding the balance it needed to rest within Renata.

Slowly, the light faded and the energy dissipated from Renata to leave a brand new woman in its spot. It was the same Renata that the Doctor left in the future. His Renata with long dark hair and matching eyes. She blinked pretty fast as she gathered herself from such a process.

"I...I'm alive…" she spoke hoarsely and touched her neck, her throat specifically. "And I sound younger. Am I younger?"

The Doctor chuckled and rushed to hug her, leaving a bunch of kisses on her new dark hair. "You're beautiful."

Renata smiled and hugged him tight. "Thank you for coming back. I don't deserve you."

"You have got to stop saying that, Renee," the Doctor said with a heavy sigh. "No more of this stuff. I can't bear to hear it."

"But it's true!"

"So I'm completely innocent in all this? I have nothing I should feel bad for?" The Doctor waited for her to try and lie with the answer. She couldn't because she knew that he had some faults in their past.

"I'm sorry," she said in a whisper. "I'm am so sorry."

"I know, dear," he raised her chin up to him. "But this is a new life you have, one free of illnesses. Don't you think you deserve a new chance to live freely?"

Renata bit her bottom lip. "That...that would be nice."

"If you really want to make things better, then just do that. Live the way you want to live. That's all I want from you."

"Wouldn't that be nice?" Renata smiled for a moment. "This is my eleventh regeneration, my twelfth incarnation, and I'm only now going to try and live the way I want to. Isn't that funny? Nearly at the end of my first cycle of life and it's only now where I can try to do something I haven't been since my very first incarnation. I can be happy. It's in my name, actually. Renata. It means 'to be reborn' and I promise that this time I'm going to try and be someone good, be someone better than what I've been in the past. This new me is going to do big things."

The Doctor smiled with her words. He cupped her face gently. "I promise, if you give me a chance, I will do everything I can to add to that happiness."

"But first I have to find you," Renata reminded him. As much as he was the Doctor, he wasn't hers yet. "Where's my Doctor?"

The Doctor was reluctant to answer but he knew that she had to find him in order to get to where they were now. "I swear that he would've came but...he had a mishap..."

Renata pulled away from him, concern etching across her new face. "Is he alright?"

The Doctor wasn't sure how to answer that. His other self was probably on his way to Earth right now to stop the Master from returning. "There are some things I need to tell you before you meet with him. C'mon," he took her hand to lead her back to the TARDIS, only for him to remember something. "Oh wait!" He let go of her and rushed to the flower bed. He looked through them for a couple seconds while Renata watched him in confusion. "This one!" He had picked a beautiful red tulip from the flower bed and returned to Renata. He gently set it behind her ear and admired the sight of her. "Beautiful."

Renata touched the flower and blushed. "Thank you, though I could use a total change of clothes." She looked down at her clothes and realized that they no longer fit with her.

"I've got just the dress for you!" the Doctor promised. He had his current Renata's flower dress neatly folded on the Captain's chair. "C'mon!" He pulled Renata by the hand towards the gallery.

~0~

Present Day, Zhe's Gallery.

Renata picked up her golden pendant from her old bed stand and brushed her fingers over it. Her late husband had given it to her so long ago. She never took it off from the first day he gave it to her but now wearing it didn't seem quite right.

"Renata?" Gabby cautiously called her name. They were having a conversation when Renata spotted the golden pendant and suddenly the room went eerie quiet. Gabby wasn't all that surprised. She knew how important that pendant was to Renata, she just wondered how things would change now that she and the Doctor were apparently starting a relationship. That must be what Renata was thinking about.

Renata turned around to the girl. "Sorry, where was I?"

Gabby's smirk reminded her perfectly. "You just finished telling me about this Prisoner Zero fiasco and this Amy Pond girl and were saying how you and the Doctor finally talked."

"Right," Renata said, her eyes drifting to the side as a deep blush room her face over. They talked alright, followed by a good amount of kissing...on top of the console.

Gabby had come to know Renata really well, so she could see the red face from where she stood. "Hey Ren, something you wanna tell me about?"

"Hm? No!" Renata fervently shook her head and exhaled a shaky breath. "Why-why would you think that?"

Gabby set a hand on her hip and stared at the Time Lady for a good long minute. "Mhm. Is this how it's going to be, then?"

"Be like what?"

"Be like that whenever you and the Doctor make out." Gabby laughed when Renata went into a choking fit. "Oh my God! I knew it! I didn't think you were capable of making out with someone!"

"Stop saying that!" Renata exclaimed.

"What? That you made out—"

"Stop it!" Renata hissed, but the fact that she still had a red face made it impossible for Gabby to stop.

"I'm sorry, I'm American. I should say you 'snogged' instead, huh? Right term for you guys."

"Please, for the love of God, stop saying that!"

"Why? It's what happened, isn't?"

"Well, yeah, but...it just sounds weird," Renata crinkled her nose. It sounded childish and what she wanted with the Doctor would not be childish. "I don't 'snog' and I don't 'make out' with anyone."

Gabby giggled. "But you kind of did."

Renata deadpanned her. "Gabriella!"

"What? Look Ren, there is nothing wrong with having a little fun. And being serious, I am so happy for you and the Doctor." Gabby smiled at the Time Lady. "It was about time. I just wish Donna was still around to see it."

Renata could agree there. They both lamented the loss of their friend, especially since they had become like a little family and Donna was always trying to help the Doctor speak up about his feelings for Renata. If she could only see them now.

"So you guys really want me around?" Gabby inquired after a moment. "You don't want some, uh, alone time in the TARDIS?"

Renata chuckled. "God no! He'll drive me crazy! Plus, I might drive him crazy too. I don't know how these new bodies—" she gestured to herself, "—will interact with each other. Brand new us after all."

"Well, you're already making out—" Gabby giggled when Renata glared, "—so I think you'll be just fine."

"Yeah," Renata whispered as she looked back to her pendant in her hand. She turned away again and walked towards the bed. She didn't have a lot in the gallery to begin with, but the little clothes she had were now packed into a suitcase. "Did you finish packing yet?"

Gabby nodded her head. "Mhm. Just waiting for the Doctor now. Where exactly are we going?"

"I think we'll be going back for Amy Pond," Renata answered distractedly. Her fingers were still brushing over her pendant. "There's something not right about that girl."

"You mean because of the crack in her bedroom? Not really her fault though, is it?"

"No, not at all. But we want to be cautious and make sure her life wasn't affected by a crack that shouldn't have been in her bedroom."

"Good thinking," Gabby nodded again.

There was a light knock on the door a few seconds later. The Doctor poked his head into the room. "Hey! Are we done?"

"Yes!" Gabby beamed. She was more than ready to finally start travelling again. "But where did you go right now?"

The Doctor walked into the room with what Gabby could only describe as a grim smile. He'd been so happy before leaving, what could have changed his mood so quick?

The Doctor went directly to Renata who seemed to know what he would do, for when he hugged she already had her arms open for him. He hugged her tight and swayed her body. Gabby wasn't sure what he was saying but it sounded like he was apologizing for something. Renata had mumbled an 'I'm okay'. She wasn't sure if she should slip out of the room to give them privacy but before she could make up her mind, the two Time Lords pulled away.

Renata held onto the Doctor's hand afterwards. "Thank you," she whispered to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

The Doctor smiled at her until he noticed the pendant in her other hand. He didn't mean to react at it, but it was impossible given who it was from.

Renata followed his gaze to the pendant and sighed. "Gabriella, can you take my suitcase out please?"

Gabby came for the suitcase on the bed and pulled it onto the ground. "I'll be outside then."

"Thank you," Renata nodded for her to go. When Gabby closed the door, Renata apologized to the Doctor. "I'm just a little unsure of what to do with it." She gazed at the pendant, turning it over and over in her palm.

"It's alright. I know how much that means to you. And actually, I do have something else to give you. It's only right you have it back." The Doctor reached into his jacket's inside pocket to take out a familiar necklace with a diamond hanging from it.

Renata gasped and instinctively took it from his hand. "My Whitepoint Star necklace." Tears came to her eyes as she remembered the horrid day her sister yanked it off her neck to give to Rassilon and establish the link between them and the Master. "I thought I'd never see this again." She turned the diamond around to see the old Gallifreyan names on it; her name, her late husband's name and their unborn child's name.

"I went back to Naismith's mansion when we left. The Assessor stole it from you and I thought I could do a little good. I know how much that necklace meant to you." It didn't matter to the Doctor that the necklace had come from Renata's husband, Elek. He'd been a good man to Renata, loved her, and had almost given her a child. "I hope you can find some peace now."

Renata broke into tears with the Whitepoint star in one hand and the pendant in the other. The Doctor wrapped his arms around her for a hug and kissed the top of her head.

"I don't know what to do with them now," Renata admitted through her tears. "I used to wear them all the time but...it doesn't feel right anymore."

"Don't think that I'd be upset if you wore them again," the Doctor said just to make sure she wasn't making a decision based on what he would think. "I know how much Elek meant to you."

"Yes but it's not right," Renata raised her head to meet his gaze. "I know it's not. It doesn't feel right. I used to wear the pendant because I was a devoted widow...because I swore to myself that I would never move on. But here I am...wanting to be with you. I can't wear them anymore. I...I don't want to."

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"I would like it if you did…"

"I have a room specifically meant for my previous companions, people I have cared for who are no longer with me. You could add these two necklaces to that room, give them a final resting place."

"I like the sound of that," Renata admitted. Elek was long gone and deserved to rest in peace just as she deserved to move on with her life too.

"Yeah? We can do that as soon as we get back to the TARDIS," the Doctor took her hands and closed them over the necklaces. "Shall we go?"

Renata nodded. "Yes."

They left the room without looking back.

~ 0 ~

"Please visit me soon," Zhe stood just outside the TARDIS with the trio of travelers. The humanoid blue woman was happy that everything turned out fine in the end, only lamenting that both Renata and the Doctor had to regenerate for it to happen.

"We will, I promise," Renata said, taking two of the woman's four hands into her own.

"I still have to continue my training anyways," Gabby chimed in, referring to her Block Transfer abilities.

"Of course," Zhe nodded. "I'll be waiting for you."

"Thank you for everything, Zhe," the Doctor said to her, truly grateful for all the support the woman had given them while Renata was ill. "I will never forget that."

"Me too," Renata agreed. "I don't have a lot of friends—actually, I only have three friends. Gabriella, Martha and you."

"Oi," the Doctor huffed in offence.

Renata gave him a light whack against his chest. "You're more." That certainly made his face brighten up.

Zhe smiled knowingly at the pair, just like Gabby was. "I'm glad it worked out for you two."

"Would you like to come with us for a trip?" asked the Doctor. "Could be fun."

Zhe chuckled. "Oh no. I'm good, thank you."

"Well then, I guess this is it," Renata gave Zhe a tight hug, thanking the woman over and over for everything she had done in the past.

Zhe was then hugged by Gabby and the Doctor. She wished them good luck on whatever adventure they had planned, because she knew they had something planned. She watched them go into the TARDIS and waved as the box de-materialized into thin air.

~ 0 ~

"NO WAY!" Gabby laughed almost deliriously when she saw the new interior of the TARDIS. It was nothing like the previous one. She spun around to catch all the bright orangey details of the walls. "This is too cool!"

"Yeah?" the Doctor chuckled as he watched her stumble after spinning so much. "You approve then?"

"Uh, yeah!" Gabby tapped on the glass floor to see if it was strong. "And we get a new glass floor!? It's so elegant!"

"I thought so too," the Doctor hummed in agreement. He then clapped his hands and turned to the console. Gabby scurried beside him, watching him work the new controls. "So, I know Renata told you about the little girl we met?"

"Yup! Amelia Pond, right? Er, Amy? Yeah, that's really weird what happened with her room. You think she's still in danger?"

"Don't know, but I'd like to keep her around to find out."

"So...is she, like, going to stay with us?"

"Would you mind?" the Doctor asked her, fixating a serious gaze that warranted an honest answer from her. Gabby wasn't just any ordinary passenger, nor companion, she was family and he wanted her to know that he truly valued her opinion, especially after Donna's departure. Nobody new had come aboard since then.

Gabby swayed her head as she thought about the idea of having someone new in the TARDIS. "Well...it could be fun not being the newbie this time. I could take some notes and be what Donna was for me. How old is she? This Amy?"

"Uh, she was 19 I believe."

"Oh! She's one year younger than me! I think it could be fun," Gabby gave a firm nod of her head. "Bring her in, Doctor. Let's see what Amy Pond brings to the TARDIS."

The Doctor laughed with her and that's how Renata found them. She had left her pendant and Whitepoint Star in the room the Doctor told her about. She felt a strange wave of peace when she closed the door, like she was finally moving on from that moment in her life. And seeing the Doctor and Gabby so happy and laughing made her feel even more sure that she was right where she wanted to be.

~ 0 ~

Amy Pond had memorized the TARDIS wheezing on the first night it left her for 'five minutes'. Now when she heard it for the third time, she jumped out of her bed without a second thought. No more pretending with costumes! She bolted down the staircase and into the backyard, almost laughing when she realized it was once again night time and she was in her pajamas! Well, a nightie but it was otherwise the same.

By the time she reached the TARDIS, the Doctor and Renata were already standing outside the box...waiting for her.

"Did we wake you up?" Renata wrinkled her nose as she gazed up into the night, starry sky. They'd been gone for more than a few hours again, she was sure.

"It's you, you came back!" Amy basically confirmed the suspicions. She was staring at them in awe, like she couldn't believe it...again.

"Sorry about the running off, got a bit lost in the moment," the Doctor sent a quick smirk to Renata who rolled her eyes in response. "Plus, we had to pick someone up. But don't worry, brand new TARDIS is ready for the big stuff now!"

Amy looked him over and made a face that didn't quite fit with the usual response someone would get seeing the TARDIS. "You kept the clothes."

Renata laughed to the side while the Doctor deadpanned the ginger. "Well, we just saved the world, the whole planet, for about the millionth time, no charge! Yeah, shoot me! I kept the clothes."

"I did not," Renata gestured to her very gray dress.

"And you left the bow tie too…" Amy once again made a face.

"Yeah, I wasn't sure how to feel about that as well…" Gabby emerged from the TARDIS, startling Amy. "Hi," Gabby waved a hand. "Gabby Gonzalez. And yes I agree with you: the bow tie is ridiculous."

"Hey!" the Doctor cried. "Bow ties are cool!"

"Yeah, the jury's still out on that one!"

The Doctor mocked them with a sway of his head. "Gabby, you can go back inside now!"

Gabby laughed and wiggled her fingers at Amy. "See you in a moment."

Amy slowly wiggled her fingers at her even though she still didn't quite understand how Gabby was even there. "Is she...are you...are you all from another planet?"

"We are," Renata gestured to herself and the Doctor. "But Gabriella's from New York. She's quite human...ish." After the birth of the Vortex Butterfly and the Cosmic Butterfly, both she and Renata still needed to run extensive exams.

"So what do you think?" the Doctor asked Amy. Her eyes flickered to him after studying the outside of the TARDIS. It was still as blue as she remembered it.

"Of what?"

"Other planets. Want to check some out?"

"What does that mean?"

Renata smiled at the woman. "It means we'd like for you to come with us."

"W-Where?"

"Anywhere you'd like. First trip is always your choice!"

Amy's eyebrows seemed to knit together for some reason. "All that stuff, the hospital, the spaceships, Prisoner Zero…"

"Oh, don't worry. That's just the beginning. There's loads more!" the Doctor promised but also meant to warn Amy of what was to come.

"Yeah, but those things, amazing things, all that stuff…" Amy's face suddenly darkened with anger and annoyance. "That was two years ago!" She promptly smacked each Time Lord's arm, getting a sense of satisfaction hearing them yelp.

"Oh not again!" Renata let her head hang. "Doctor, you're seriously messing up my track record!"

"Sure, it's my fault—"

"You piloted us! On both occasions!"

The Doctor's mouth opened to argue but shut it at the last moment. Alright, so maybe it could've been been his fault.

"So...um…" Renata awkwardly met Amy's upset stare, the ginger woman having folded her arms over her chest. "What's it been, then?"

"14 years!" Amy spat and just a second after she said it, Renata did the same with a weary sigh.

"Really sorry about that."

"Fourteen years since fish custard. Amy Pond, the girl who waited, you've waited long enough," the Doctor said exactly what Renata had been thinking.

Amy's upset expression faded as curiosity took over, as well a bit of doubt. "When I was a kid, you said there was a swimming pool and a library, and the swimming pool was in the library."

"Yeah. Not sure where it's got to now," the Doctor murmured as he had still yet to locate each room that'd gone missing. "I'm sure it'll turn up."

"It better if you know what's good for you," Renata remarked without a hint of playfulness. The Doctor winced and silently begged the TARDIS to help him out there.

"So... coming?" he asked Amy again since she hadn't said anything.

"No!" she exclaimed, or perhaps meant to shout at them like she knew exactly what she was doing.

"No?" Renata wasn't sure to laugh there and then. Amy was obviously trying to put up a front that she was no longer interested in the TARDIS. "You wanted to come 14 years ago."

"I grew up!"

"Don't worry. We'll soon fix that," the Doctor promised her with a smirk, only for Renata to say he would leave her right alone.

"Just be you, Amy Pond," she told the woman just as the Doctor snapped his fingers to open the doors behind them.

Amy was immediately bathed in the orange glow of the TARDIS interior and before she knew it, her feet were taking her into it. Hearing her coming in, Gabby poked her head from the console to see Amy's reaction. It was a whole other thing being on the other side now. Gabby wondered if this is what Donna felt when she first walked in and Donna watched her take it all in. Gabby smiled warmly at the memory of that day, though bittersweetly too. How times changed.

Amy's eyes had widened like dinner plates as she took in the whole room. She always wondered what it would look like on the inside, but it didn't compare to what she saw now. There were no words to describe how she felt, even if she tried she was sure nothing would come to mind.

"Well...? Anything you want to say?" the Doctor walked past her, missing the way Renata rolled her eyes behind him. He had no concept of being modest in anybody. "Any passing remarks? I've heard them all."

"I'm in my nightie," Amy said for some reason then quickly checked herself to make sure it was true. Yes, it was.

"Oh, I've been there," Renata laughed. "But don't worry. Plenty of clothes in the wardrobe."

"You'll love it!" Gabby exclaimed. "I got lost in there the first time I went in. Played dress up!"

Amy's smile seemed permanent at the moment. She gazed at the console with fascination. She could hear a faint hum within it and wondered if that was part of the engines.

"So, Amy," the Doctor called on the other side of the console. "All of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will...where do you want to start?"

"You are so sure that I'm coming," Amy once again tried playing casual and failed miserably.

"Yeah, I am."

"Why?"

"Because if not he'll just kidnap you," Renata said with a wide smirk on her face that threatened to turned into a laugh as soon as the Doctor huffed.

"We're still doing that!?"

"You kidnapped me," Renata reminded him then looked at a stunned Amy. "Yeah, he kidnapped me. Threw me right over his shoulder and dragged me in here."

The Doctor's mouth was wide open in offence. So that was true...but it didn't mean she had to go telling that to everybody they met. "Oi! You're still here!"

"Because I've been kidnapped!"

There may have been a vein protruding across the Doctor's forehead when Renata turned to him. "That was a year ago! When are you going to get over it!?"

"How does somebody get over being kidnapped?" she arched an eyebrow at him, still smirking knowing that she was getting under his skin.

Gabby shook her head at the two—clearly, that hadn't changed at either—and moved around the console to Amy. "So Amy," she pulled the girl's attention away from the bickering couple, "What do you think? It's fun out there...up—" her eyes briefly flickered to the ceiling to refer to space, "—there. I've gone to see the Star of Orion and I've lived in a space gallery. Oh, and I got to go into some interdimensional weird information link thing belonging to a Block Transfer Matrix." Amy blinked wide at such a complicated list. "Where would you like to go first?"

Amy bit her lower lip and glanced at the couple still going back and forth about the kidnapping fiasco - whatever that was. "Can you get me back for tomorrow morning?"

"Of course, it's a time machine," Gabby answered, wondering why Amy would be so specific about that. Maybe she had an appointment? "I won't say 5 minutes like those two over there but you have to know that they do try. Is there something important tomorrow?"

Amy's mouth opened but she didn't know how to put 'I'm getting married tomorrow' into a casual conversation. "Uh...just stuff."

"Alright then," Gabby motioned her to get close to the console. "Wanna see something funny?" Amy nodded. Gabby winked at her then took over the controls. The Doctor had long ago taught her how to pilot the TARDIS in case of emergencies. She had the laugh of her life, as well as Amy, when the TARDIS lurched and sent both Renata and the Doctor to the ground.

Serves them right for still bickering when they had a new passenger aboard.

Author's Note:

Didn't I say we'd get to see the previous Renata's final moments? We finally get closure and a hopeful promise for Ren's new life! Will she get it, though? Hmmm...

Okay, so the next chapter is super important for Gabby and Amy and I just now realized that the chapter is 18k? Do you guys want me to separate it into 2 chapters instead? Or give you the whole content in one? xD.

#ocappreciation #doctor who #11th doctor #fd: doctor who #dw imagines #11th doctor imagines #11th doctor fics #doctor who fics #dw fics #oc: Renata Cartwright #gabby gonzalez #amy pond #fic: metamorphosis

11 notes · View notes

jmrphy · 7 years

Text

“I Think We're Really Onto Something:” Mark Fisher and My Revolutionary Friends

Mark Fisher was a revolutionary, but I do not mean his writings were revolutionary (although they were); I mean that Mark Fisher was a revolutionary in a very specific sense of the word, a sense that does not necessarily apply to everyone who happens to be sympathetic to radical ideas or causes. We know this because, over the past two years, we have not just been friends with Mark. A number of us have been, together, in the process of concrete, organized, revolutionary political transformations. These transformations remain somewhat obscure, and before Mark’s death I did not fully comprehend what he and all of us in Plan C have been doing over these past couple of years. But now, for me at least, Mark’s death has been like a flash of emotional lightning that suddenly illuminates a dark forest pulsing with life, revealing with undeniable clarity where one even is. In an email, Mark once wrote to us: “I think we’re really onto something…” I think he was right, in fact I think he was more right than any of us have known what to do with. With Mark’s passing I believe I can see more clearly now than ever what exactly we have been onto. To be honest, I did not know Mark well, and I have only a passing familiarity with his writing; that I have so much to say can only be attributed to the political processes that have been, over the past few years, sweeping a few of us away, together.

Mark always struck me as the type whose opposition to the status quo was such that he sincerely thought, felt, and lived as if it could not be so. For some people, opposition to the status quo can be a form of adaptation and survival. For these people, activism provides socio-psychological supports that make the experience of the status quo tolerable. But others are plagued with a humanity that will not go away no matter what you offer it, a certain inability to accept the status quo, an incapacity to integrate oneself into its consistency, resulting in a kind of maladaption risking rather than securing survival. For these types, entry into radical politics is not about making life livable under unlivable conditions, it is about figuring out how to produce genuinely livable conditions at any cost. This is a subtle but crucial difference: the former model waters down the definition of what is considered “living” in order to survive and claim we are “living,” while the latter admits plainly the unfortunate but real challenge of an unjust political order: either overthrow unlivable institutions and make life together possible immediately, or we will already be dead.

In my own view, everything seems to suggest that the truly revolutionary life today must be of the latter type; it would seem that revolutionary politics today could not be anything other than a kind of minimally sustainable, reproducible type of militant maladaption, the capacity to creatively occupy oneself as something that consciously and purposely does not belong to nearly all of that which is currently and falsely called reality. But obviously individual human organisms have limits and this tendency can lead to self-destruction; one question we have therefore been grappling with is, how to sustain this kind of creative maladaption over time, how to make revolutionary maladaption socially reproducible.

It seems to me that, in his intellectual work, Mark sought actively to inhabit this heady, scandalous mental space in which everything people call real is, clearly, not real. Exciting and true, but anyone who has ever sought to engage in radical intellectual work over a period of time learns quickly that this parallax is quite a load on the nervous system, because every interaction in our really existing Boring Dystopia will require far more emotional and cognitive stress than would be required if one simply took the Boring Dystopia to be real. Now, if we have any hope of living a true life together then we must at all cost hold onto this heady, stressful, critical distance. But I think one thing Mark understood was that there do exist tactics and techniques for making true life possible despite everything. I think Mark was a maestro of such tactics, not just because I got to observe him performing them (as I will sketch below), but because to do his kind of radical theory over any period of time. you need them. That he was able to write all of those words on topics such as mental health and capitalism, in that dangerous and difficult mental space he was most known for, is evidence enough that he possessed some mastery of how to power a life that is not being fueled in the conventional way through complacent, adaptive negotiation with the status quo.

I should say at the outset that I am not interested in claiming Mark for any particular thesis or agenda; like any genuine, radical intellectual, I am sure he thought many different things that he never brought to perfect coherence. Yet I do believe, for a number of reasons I will try to articulate, that Mark was especially interested in this question about the interpersonal and social tactics that transform individual and group consciousness into weapons that perform concretely revolutionary work (however slowly and invisibly at first) on even the largest-scale political and economic institutions.

One reason I know Mark was keen on this point is that he told me so. I remember one time he was telling me about the most recent book project he had been working on. I asked him about the thesis. He summarized it by saying something to the effect of, ”Basically, 1970s socialist feminism had it all figured out.” We can debate what he might have meant by this, but I believe he had in mind especially the feminist consciousness-raising groups prevalent at the time. Even more specifically, I think Mark was interested in how these groups—dedicated to the sharing and making visible of once silent, privatized struggles—really worked, not just for “therapy” or the now more chic “self-care” but as a bona fide methodology for producing large-scale, revolutionary political change at the systemic level. The various movements of this one particular historical moment were crushed, yes, but the point is that it worked, as far as it went. Of course, there will be opponents and enemies, but the basic method is a real, concrete, and reproducible way for even lonely individuals and small groups to immediately begin the overthrow of dominant institutions.

My memory of his characteristic, nervous excitement seemed to be saying, like, “We already know what to do! Next time, this time, we just have to figure out how not to get crushed!” That is, we have to figure out a number of auxilliary questions that our revolutionary predecessors had not fully worked out—such as how to expand, aggregate, and materially reproduce consciousness-raising dynamics against powerful reactionary forces and agents—but as to the basic nature of revolutionary movement, its primary source and destination as an actual activity human beings can do, we already know it. It is the concrete, immanent process of human beings seeking, through each other, their true consciousness. That might sound woo-woo, but I will argue that the status quo reproduces itself in large part by making this proposition seem woo-woo. Our fear of being naïve, our fear of wagering too much on our own immediate shared consciousness—more and more I think this is the enemy, or at least the single most real and vicious tenterhook that status quo institutions have successfully lodged in our bodies. It seems to me that radicals and activists today may be scrambling to find what is already under their noses, in the historical sense that the 1960s already demonstrated how to produce massive, global, political shockwaves, but also in the immediate interpersonal sense that all we need is exactly whoever is right in front of us.

Another minor exhibit. Within the group, I once wrote an essay that argued consciousness-raising is effectively strike action, the real and concrete withdrawal of cognitive and emotional energy from the status quo. The essay was critical of many basic assumptions of contemporary leftism and I know that Mark was sympathetic to the essay. Interestingly, he was very worried about the backlash I might receive, most likely due to his own ghastly experiences taking risks on the internet (which I consider in more detail below). Of course nothing happened, my article received the much harsher fate of a generally tepid response. Nonetheless, this all suggests to me that what I was trying to articulate in that essay overlaps, at least in some degree, with what Mark had been thinking in recent years. Something difficult and apparently sensitive, something that progressive folks either don’t care about or get very angry about. It all seems to indicate that we are getting closer and closer to understanding what exactly we have been onto.

When one speaks the words “consciousness-raising,” the connotation is so strongly one of New-Age spiritualism that, from a political perspective, the conversation is usually over before it starts. I think the coming years will show this to be an error. Nonetheless, for this reason, I prefer to speak of the physiological and biochemical effects of consciousness tactics; how shared consciousness—if all parties truly take that shared consciousness to be more real than official reality and allow their future thoughts and behaviors to morph accordingly—produces concrete attitudinal and behavioral effects that immanently decrease the power flowing into the institutional center while increasing the autonomous power circulating in the commune of those who compose it. Even better, these tactics come with the exceptional virtue of being immediately palpable in the body and mind when executed correctly, and so they are self-guiding and self-reinforcing. Relationships conducted in this fashion become veritable collective revolution machines capable of spanning vast distances, but only if they are done correctly. Such relationships can and will take infinitely different forms, but I think there is perhaps one hard rule. There will be various implications from this rule, implications which will have to be identified and dealt with creatively depending on the situation, but only one hard requirement. In my own view, I summarize it with the word “honesty,” similar to “conscience” but more secular and relational, like “truth” but less formal and more pluralistic.

In a nutshell, I would venture a possible definition of consciousness-raising as interpersonal communications, on any scale, motivated by nothing but honesty and unconcerned with consequences. By doing this, conciousness-raising is a form of direct action, immediately available between any two people (or more), that withdraws one’s labour from the status quo and immanently produces what you are welcome to call freedom, energy, joy, or power. At a certain resolution these can all be thought of as interchangeable. While this might sound too simple to be serious revolutionary politics, the truth is it’s very difficult and extremely rare. Consider the extraordinary fact that such an orientation is almost impossible to find in activist circles; almost the entirety of contemporary activism is organized around the pursuit of certain consequences, to such a degree that in activist circles if your thoughts and speech are not perceived as contributing to some future consequence, or if you are not minimally able to produce speech that has certain immediate consequences (e.g. making people feel “hope” or appearing “useful”) then you might as well not even be there.

There is massive problem in the activist instinct to organize your thoughts and actions around producing consequences (a fancier term for this is “instrumental rationality,” and it is basically the rationality of modernity and capitalism). The problem is that, in your attachment to those consequences, you are liable to make mistakes and tell lies without even knowing it. And once errors or lies are circulating, however tiny, everything you try to do with anyone will be doomed. First, it leads to the crucial error that you see other human beings as means to some end, whereas in fact the truth is they are ends unto themselves. Humans are not valuable for some purpose, they are the creators of these odd things called values, and if you think about it, that is one of the main reasons why we believe all humans must be free and equal in the first place. But this error is not merely an ethical mistake that does violence to others, it is a practical political mistake also because it blocks revolutionary dynamics before they even have a chance to begin. The whole problem of alienation under capitalism is that we have all been reduced to objects in a system we have no say in. We have to learn how to become revolutionary, from the starting point of having been born as objects, but when we assume that activism means making yourself an object or instrument useful for the goal of producing social change, then we are prohibiting exactly what we really want and need and the only thing that fuels macro social change anyway.

Therefore, it stands to reason that the only possible first step toward transforming the currently existing social system is to create minimal spaces, with at least one other person, in which both parties serve absolutely no purpose. And the only way to create a zone in which all parties serve no other purpose is by committing to the only criterion than can possibly attune diverse atomized individuals: honesty. Honesty converts the most diverse individuals to the only unification that preserves all of their differences; everyone can be as radically different as they please, and yet attuned around the only thing they truly all share, namely, the objective fact that none are objects to any of the others but all are their own autonomous ends, that all are recognized as the creators of themselves, ultimately subordinate to nothing. If this feels uncmofortably “individualistic” for altruistic types, I need only remind you that this only works as a collective activity, and the truly autonomous individual immediately recognizes this individuality as a gift of the community. If this feels too simple or easy to be a serious revolutionary politics, I need only remind you that this is harder than you think, so accustomed we are to constantly calculate consequences. Yet it is only in this unique situation of purposelessness that one can exit the state of objecthood under capitalism, in order to experience, if only for a minute, what it feels like to be free. It is horrifying but I genuinely believe there are many people today who have never felt what I am talking about, because the constant mental chatter that is constantly calculating consequences has hijacked our experience of each other to such an extraordinary degree that we don’t even realize it.

Nobody wants to admit their mind and body are so fully hijacked (in part because people won’t like you, etc., i.e. the consequences), so we all continue this horrible state of things in which we actively push away from ourselves and others the only really desirable thing. The other reason I believe there exist many people who have never really grasped or cannot remember this experience is that, feeling or even remembering such an experience forces one to be a revolutionary. If you really know or remember this feeling, you cannot not find yourself foaming at the mouth in opposition to the absurdity, stupidity, and brutality of almost everything currently existing under the label of “reality.” That the average person appears to at least publicly speak and behave as if the offical reality is real—that is data supporting the inference that the very experience of true autonomous existing is itself going extinct. Or maybe everyone knows it, but we’re all too afraid to truly speak and act accordingly. Either way, the upshot is the same: revolutionary politics, in the first and perhaps even final analysis, means nothing other than the immanent production of autonomous communal social power through the basic principle of radical honesty, which implies immediate de-objectification followed by all parties becoming whatever they are (i.e. flourishing). By gaining a collective mastery over this production, how it works and how it breaks, we expand the commune indefinitely.

It is worth remembering that the world-historical revolution of capitalism itself, which overthrew feudalism, operated on precisely these terms. Whatever we might say about the inhumane consequences of capitalism, the pioneering individuals whose attitudes and behaviors would lead to generalized capitalist society were: highly creative, courageous individuals (in the sense of defying social expectations) who met in new and uncharted zones (the cities), who acted to manipulate the nature of reality by leveraging new forms of knowledge and new forms of technology that the traditional status quo repressed. They started in small groups, sometimes as individuals and sometimes in small networks of oath-bound individuals. Fearlessness, creativity, trust, and the purposeful alteration of social reality in a way that no one’s ever done before, produced a world-historical revolution. There’s no reason capitalism can’t be overthrown by the same type of operations, this time geared toward the the truth of our being rather than dishonest material interests in commanding nature and each other.

Most of what most people do generates nothing but their own misery, and bad faith converts this misery into only a minimally tolerable survival (and even this minimum appears increasingly hard to maintain). Almost everything that passes for education today is essentially false. Most human relationships, at least in the overdeveloped world, range from empty to shit, as the number of our weak relationships has increased and the number of our deep relationships has decreased. And even the best benefits you can get from the status quo—if you’re really lucky, privileged, and/or do everything by the rules—don’t even give you that much security nowadays. These are some reasons why today, it is in some of our own lived relationships that we see not merely potential, but rather the site of currently unfolding revolutionary dynamics we are only beginning to decipher.

I am writing this on the day that Donald Trump is being inaugurated as the President of the United States. There is something significant in the fact that I’m thinking far more about Mark Fisher and my revolutionary friends than I am about Donald Trump and the government of the United States.

There’s this long-standing assumption that educated, progressive individuals should pay close attention to national and international news, but if high-level politics and what is called the news are both institutionally and ideologically locked down to an unprecedented degree—as I would argue they are—then I believe that today, educated and progressive individuals will increasingly learn the courage to unhinge their attunement from what is effectively at this point mere noise in the social system. I think one of the discoveries some of us have been making recently is that, when you do this, in conjunction with doubling down on your attunement to dearest friends and comrades, so long as they are also honestly attuned to you, then fundamentally new energies emerge into this new collective entity-machine-project that feels quite literally out of this world. I don’t mean this in a woo-woo, spiritual way, I mean fundamental physiological, biochemical effects are triggered that then ripple out into speech and behaviors in organic ways tending to the overthrow of institutions.

For people who see short and easy proclamations on social media as the key gauge of someone’s political life, I am happy to give you 30 seconds to type that I think Donald Trump is very bad and, whatever it is, I’m against it. But I’m conserving my energy for larger projects; for my living, intimate accomplices and my revolutionary friends dead and alive. The big center is a massive, empty zone filled with little more than the fears of those who incorrectly believe there is still something there. Mark’s death is teaching me that, more and more I want to wager everything on my friends, and that means moving investments away from the big empty center of this dead society into the spaces, times, and experiences that you have the concrete ability to fill with power. None of this is an attack on other styles, it’s just to remind everyone that silence is not always complicity and indeed it is sometimes the mark of a groundswell you may just not know how to interpret.

That Mark and many of us have been onto something different, ever so slightly different but crucially, categorically different, is nicely measured by the reception of Mark’s infamous essay on the Vampire’s Castle. First, I think time has shown that essay to be way more correct than incorrect. I’m very sorry but anyone I know who has half-honestly watched the sociology of left internet discourse evolve over the past few years will agree on this point in private. Many remain afraid to say it, but with Mark’s passing this feels more important than ever to just put on the record. I remember following the whole fiasco when it happened, before I even knew Mark, and I thought it was absurd but I didn’t dare to say so. That’s shameful and embarrassing. Any self-respecting adult has to call bullshit wherever they honestly see bullshit, in public, without apologies. I know way too many people, myself included (although I’m trying to end this), who won’t say in public really important thoughts and feelings they have about various habits and tendencies prevalent in what passes for radical or progressive politics today. I won’t argue it here, because anyone who would be offended by what I’m suggesting almost certainly won’t be convinced and most people whose opinions and judgments I know and respect know what I’m talking about or at least accept and respect my comradely right to say what I think without apology. And here’s where this gets real: the truth is I wouldn’t even be writing this if I wasn’t at this very moment embedded in real liberatory dynamics with others who I know have my back because they are themselves flying on the same winds.

A little story I haven’t told many people. I have this draft book manuscript and Mark once invited me to share it with him. He was one of the first people I had ever shared it with, and honestly it is a pretty scrappy and highly idiosyncratic project that I could not have imagined appealing to anyone. But of course he loved it, or at least pretended to love it. His encouragement could not have come at a better time, it was a really long and dark period of nothing but rejections and failures on all other fronts, intellectual and personal. His interest in the book was maybe my most positive achievement I had in the entire year of 2014 – 2015. And again, where many people might only see a minor act of kindness, I think there is something much more substantial, if we can learn to see it.

Dispensing encouragement to younger people can be a world-transforming political action. And if there’s one thing that emerges from all of the beautiful tributes that have been written recently, Mark appears to have done this on an almost industrial scale. I was somewhat humbled to learn I am not so special, but impressed to learn that Mark appears to have been on some kind of mission to push forward everyone he possibly could. And you know what, lots of notable radicals or intellectuals or academics are nice people and they try their best to be “supportive” of others, but there are levels to this. This is where, if you look closely enough, you’ll see that people like Mark are not just kind or supportive; he was practicing a revolutionary politics much harder and far more interesting than just being kind.

If you meet someone you admire and they give you some general positive feedback or words of encouragement, the actual transforming effect is going to be conditional on a series of other factors. Typically, you might find it vaguely uplifting and inspiring for a little while. But when someone you admire goes to the same political meetings as you, and sits around before and after just like you, somewhat awkward, somewhat terrified of recent news, and personally, vulnerably desperate to change everything that currently exists, with you, well you know what? It changes everything. The effect is totally different, far more powerful, far more lasting. And it matters when radicals are also respected in more status quo hierarches—while of course there is so much to criticize about those hierarchies. When people such as Mark, who could be off writing cool books or seeking an academic promotion, are going to the same meetings as you because they genuinely want to make revolution now, it produces a unique effect. And I think that’s because no matter how radical we are, we cannot help but be affected differently depending on where a signal is coming from within the social status hierarchy. Placement in the social status hierarchy should mean nothing whatsoever for how we value or treat each other, my point is just that when people possess status quo cultural capital and they are choosing to invest themselves in the hard work of organized revolutionary politics, this is something relatively rare and it produces unique effects that deserve to be appreciated.

It is these types of interpersonal activities that generate irrevocable anthropological transformations. Mark’s interest in my book was not just “encouraging”—it effectively supported my entire will for almost a year at a time when so many rejections were really making me wonder whether I was maybe just dumb or crazy. But also it altered the course of my life, to make me more invested in the real, immediate actualization of revolutionary political change, because our relationship was one defined by a revolutionary organization and if I felt indebted to Mark’s support what that really meant was I was indebted to keep figuring out how to make revolution. I’m fully aware how absurd this might sound to others, but think about it. Since that time, I’ve had some modest academic success in my bullshit bourgeois career, which means my precious ego and income are pretty secure at the moment, so this is exactly when most people start to drift from their youthful radical politics toward a comfortable integration with the status quo. I have every social, financial, and cultural reason to now just kick back and enjoy my permanent academic post. But now I can’t do that, and I’m happy I can’t do that, but the reason is because through my revolutionary friends I am increasingly and irrevocably indebted to figuring out how to make revolution—to pursue my own liberation means pursuing the liberation of those others who are the concrete, direct generators of the power that has animated me over the past two years.

This is what we are onto. True attention and care, radical honesty and making shared/public that which is hidden, not to make a watered-down life possible within unlivable conditions but as a necessary path to making true life occur now. The politics of “consciousness-raising” is the material process of overthrowing oppressive political institutions at the only point they really exist (where they enter our bodies), by treating each other honestly and never as instruments, thereby generating irrevocably bonded yet autonomous agents and collectives incapable of being consistent with status quo institutions. In my tiny little corner of contemporary Western radical politics, this is exactly what I’ve been doing with Mark and a number of others.

Something about all of the lovely tributes that has given me pause is the tendency to see Mark with somewhat rose-tinted glasses. Don’t get me wrong, Mark was a first-class intellect, an excellent writer, and he made quite an impact on a sizable audience. Many people knew Mark and his work much better than I do, but from where I’m sitting I don’t even see Mark as primarily a writer. To me, Mark was an active revolutionary first and foremost, he just happened to write a lot of things down. I think this is really important because, how do you think anyone becomes an important writer? It’s certainly not by choosing to become an important writer; it is by having some above-average source of interest or energy toward certain questions and writing things down along the way because you need to make sense of things as you go. Personally, I think Mark was interested in how such a rotten set of institutions can perpetuate themselves, and of course the question of how to overthrow them. I see his writings as by-products of the much larger qualities, attitudes and behaviors that made Mark the uniquely important figure he was.

In a comradely way, I would even wonder if there is not something possibly ideological in some of the glowing obituaries of Mark as a writer. As if his obscure, independent k-punk blog became so valuable and influential because of his way with words? I doubt that. And if you want to grow up to be cool and valuable and influential then just start an obscure, independent blog with good words? Maybe, but I think the real reason Mark made a lasting contributon to late 20th century British culture is because he fucking hated capitalism and it was killing him and he actually dared to say so, and to explain how and why, and to actively find others with whom he might take an honest shot at changing everything. If that’s the type of person you are, if that’s how you live, then anything you scribble on the back of a napkin is going to be fascinating, inspiring, useful, and impressive. Not because you’re a good “writer” but almost the opposite, because you care so much more about seeking liberation than being a successful “writer” that you have the freedom and energy to do something real with words. This is a crucial lesson for those interested in pursuing their own path of radical cultural production, but it’s one that tends to be erased in the tropes our cultural industry uses to describe important writers.

No doubt I liked and admired Mark’s writings, but I think Mark would understand my wish to make clear that he was not some sort of super rare genius talent. He wasn’t: he was you. Of course he was smart, and a good writer, but he was also weird and awkward and nervous, like you, like me. I have met certain towering intellects whose mental function is in fact probably something incomparable to what you and I have. Mark was not that type, he was something far more dangerous. He would often say interesting and brilliant things and also things I hardly understood or did not agree with or did not find interesting. I’ve heard people call him a great speaker, and he was certainly quite a speaker, but “great speaker” risks a crucial misunderstanding. He was great fun to listen to and talk with, but he was not a great speaker in the classic sense most people associate with that phrase. He was often quite disorganized, mentally cluttered, elliptical, stuttering, longwinded, and—if we are being honest, and of course we are—sometimes downright incomprehensible.

I remember at a Plan C Congress he gave a talk on some ideas from Operaismo and I left the room with almost no idea what he was trying to say. But the radical insight here is that that can be more politically powerful and sometimes even more fun and cool than “great speakers.” This is exactly the political-psychological mechanics of punk, where it is a lack of certain skills combined with a kind of passionate carelessness that triggers real excitement and empowerment in others, more so than mastery. So to call Mark a “great speaker” risks the very same media-spectacle recuperation that pacified Punk. I’m overjoyed to see Mark becoming a legend even sooner than I would’ve predicted, given the remarkable outpouring of acclaim in the aftermath of his death. But if the effect is to increase the perceived cognitive or performative distance between the average reader and Mark, then that would be unfortunate. What made Mark so interesting and powerful was that he thought what he thought, and he said what he said, because he wanted to, because he was irrepressibly moved to overthrow an intolerable state of things. And he said what he said despite that he had all of the shortcomings and deficiencies of the average person. To hear someone like Mark think all this radical shit, and make all these crazy statements, was so politically electrifying exactly because he was not super gifted and had to struggle against obvious normal difficulties. But he didn’t give a fuck, because he was a revolutionary, and that could be you tomorrow, today.

Or consider what is probably his most famous work, Capitalist Realism. It’s a totally cool little book that’s fun to read and I think it was really useful to a lot of people. But it’s crucial to celebrate it for the right reasons, and avoid those that distort Mark’s unique powers. It was not super original, certainly not systematic or comprehensive, and it gave very little direction on what any of us should do next. Mark wasn’t a genius, he was an interested, passionate, creative person on a search for something real, and that’s so much more revolutionary than mere genius. Again, his work was something you could do, if only you could find the courage and energy to pay attention to what really interests you, and write down what you think, for your friends, precisely without really giving a fuck if its original or systematic or impressive. This is the secret recipe of radical culture that actually produces effects on people, and I’m pretty sure Mark would not mind me reminding people of this.

From my view, I think Mark had a few key insights and I would summarize them as follows. All of this is temporary and it’s not supposed to be like this, but if you look closely you can always find glimmers of life. And it’s necessary to find those glimmers of life and invest in them, and if we all do this honestly and openly than we can and will find a way to change everything. These insights are insights that many of us have deep down inside, he just went after them as if it were a matter of life and death, because it was a matter of life and death, just as it is for us today, whether we feel like facing it now or later.

Mark’s death is teaching me that our revolutionary moment today is so much more real than I thought. Not an abstract potential, but something that is already operating wherever radically true relationships are being formed, if you only know how to pay attention, be honest with yourself and others, and invest your energies wisely. The more you take your attention and energies away from status quo fixations, and divert them into those people genuinely attuned to liberation, then as the dynamics of genuine bonding and belonging take hold, larger collectives can be spun from the two, to the three, and so on. If Mark’s readers trust him as an authority on the political nature of depression, then we should also trust him as an authority on the real and immediately available road to revolutionary transformation that he and I and others have been stumbling down together for the past few years.

There’s nothing magical or sacred about Plan C, which is only one particular group trying to figure these things out; it’s about the discoveries many people are making and are continuing to make, discoveries which anyone can pursue in their own way and on their own terms with anyone around them. This is not a vague appeal for everyone to “come together in love” with everyone around them, not that at all: it is an appeal to break away from all that is wrong and false with ony those you can trust to make of yourselves whatever it is you need to make of yourselves in order that life may occur together now. Not a universal love, but a highly careful and discriminating love—which might very well produce some enemies in the short term—based rigorously only on those principles you honestly believe to produce real dynamics of liberation, and an unflinching refusal of anything else. Not a circle of people singing kumbaya, but a real uprising that honestly feels like an uprising and which creates, almost out of thin air, the very thing you have been seeking all along.

At least for me, this is how it’s working. It’s sad to say, but it might’ve been Mark’s death that has really driven this home to me once and for all. During my last visit to the Plan C group in London, I had the good fortune of spending some quality time with several of my closest friends in that group. In a few moments, spread throughout my visit, I had the distinct feeling that, with those people, I’m truly embedded in a life or death struggle, but at the same time, in those very moments, I felt fully 100% alive and doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. You can’t call it liberation or revolution exactly, because no one is liberated until everyone is liberated, but it was a really unique and overpowering quality or experience of life that I used to think was something that would only come after the revolution, as it were. In these moments I sincerely felt like it was already here, or presently swelling like a wave, like it was actually happening in my body, like we are really doing the only thing that revolution could possibly be: our radically honest best, together. Interestingly, the only time I can remember having this feeling was in the headiest days of Occupy. The reason this is remarkable, and more evidence that indeed we are onto something, is that feelings of revolutionary power are supposedly short-term, fleeting, unsustainable rushes that only come about in rare insurrectionary upsurges such as Occupy—but here I am feeling them in a random pub with E, in another pub with N and A and J and W, on the overground to Tottenham with S, with C and T and A and J and A and S and everyone else at the same Misty Moon where I first met Mark Fisher before a Plan C meeting in 2014. And I still feel them right now, weeks later, even though to the naked eye “nothing is happening.”

In a way that I wouldn’t have said even two weeks ago, it really now does seem to me that we are already doing it. I’ve never seen it so clearly. I do not feel any hope for the future, which I firmly believe is a conservative affect. What I have is an interpretation of where I am and what is going on around me and who exactly are these different people. And I have increasing reasons to believe that my interpretation is true, while the socially dominant interpretation is false. What I also have are concrete tools, reproducible tactics and techniques to make energies flow inside our bodies, tactics I have discovered with my revolutionary friends, whether we have fully realized it or not, tactics that I can now creatively employ to remake every part of the world that I touch. What’s even more remarkable is a peculiar strategic assymetry about these tactics: these are tools that only real revolutionaries can learn, for the simple reason that today one must enter a revolutionary attitude to even access certain basic human experiences prohibited by what is currently called normalcy. Not least of these basic experiences is the one I mentioned above regarding “consciousness-raising,” that most primordial experience of being present with others for no ulterior purpose whatsoever.

That simple and immediately available place of radical honesty and being-unto-ourselves, easy as it sounds, is available only to individuals and groups able to see that it is effectively barred to normal humans adapted to the status quo. Also it is only through radical relationships, attuned and bonded around the honest search for liberation, that currently atomized individuals can gain the courage to take the risks necessary for shooting down this path. When I speak of risks I don’t mean anything grand, I mean even just that blog post you’ve been meaning to write but for some reason you’re just vaguely afraid to post. With honestly revolutionary friends, you stop caring what the Big Other will think, and you say a little more, do a little more, than you normally would—because you actually believe you’re onto something, as your friends are onto it also, and you might be crazy or stupid but you can’t all be crazy and stupid.

Last but not least, you begin to realize that even if everything fails and everything goes wrong, nobody can really touch you, because the truth is most people won’t even know what you’re talking about. At first one’s fear is always that people will respond negatively and punish you for sticking your neck out, but as you learn to do so, buoyed by revolutionary friends, you realize something at once more horrifying and liberating: you are much more likely to be ignored or misunderstood, possibly forever, than maligned and punished. If you’re honest path brings malice against you then you should count yourself lucky, for it means you are certainly onto something. See the Vampire’s Castle. Of course you could also be veering toward evil, always a risk, but again that’s why you’ve invested so much into your revolutionary friends. They will keep you honest without oppressing you.

And let me tell you one of the most beautiful things. If I haven’t made myself clear or you just don’t understand what I’m talking about, I am sorry about that but I also don’t need to care or worry because I know with certainty that at least a few of my comrades will. I’m able to know this with certainty because the only reason I’m able to write this is because of them, so almost by definition they will find themselves in it. Radical political groups are often mocked for being self-referential little spheres, but the only reason this is mock-worthy is because we feel like we have to be accountable to something or someone else outside of those circles. So the inside of those circles can feel sad and guilty and lacking something. What exactly are they lacking, though? Nobody can ever say. We feel like we need to do something more, or do something bigger or better outside of ourselves, and we mock ourselves for being tiny and self-referential only because we judge ourselves from the perspective of some stranger in the big dead center who in fact is not looking at us, and never looks at us. Ironically, the really perverse thing about our little circles is that they are not radically circular enough.

There’s nothing wrong with a small group that makes time and space to see nothing but itself. But the crucial condition for this to become revolutionary, the condition which is so hard to meet, is that such a circle must dare to make its own judgments about what is true and not true, real and not real (not in the sense of one objective truth but in the sense of diverse honesties or consciences), without apology and without paranoia and with absolutely zero respect for the millions of idiotic responses that might come from the massive dead center of society. And then it must dare to really believe and live by those judgments. The capacity to generate charmed circles is an extraordinary political power. All that is necessary from there is to make that circle expandable with a scalable membrane, not to self-loathe the inherently circular nature of a shared world, constantly fearing that we are not already enough for each other.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2k9yK3F

0 notes