#imagine them both at their first year of science camp! young and excited but also nervous and already feelin homesick on the first night

[the-terrible-theys]

(trans!)zach and aviva were bunkmates at science camp. i know because i was there

[tealin]

Basler to the Beardmore 2: Errands

As always, no matter what Tumblr does with it, this post is available in its intended presentation at twirlynoodle.com/blog along with the rest of my Antarctic travel diary.

On this flight to the heart of Antarctica, I was only a hanger-on.  We had two errands to run before entertaining me and my historical interests, the most important of which was restocking a fuel depot at the base of the Transantarctic Mountains.

There are many busy science teams in Antarctica, and while some renewable energy sources are starting to be used, the fact is that everything runs on a reliable supply of fossil fuels, mostly petrol.  The aircraft that keep people and their essentials moving around the continent have a network of fuel depots, both for relay stops and for emergencies.  Contrary to some conspiracy theories, anyone can fly to and around Antarctica if they have the money and resources to get there, and many do.  As the national science programmes have a very tight margin, and their fuel depots are expensive to maintain, they cannot afford jet-setters raiding their supplies, so the locations of these depots are kept secret.  Therefore I am not going to tell you where our first stop was.  The chances of a private pilot reading this blog are slim, but it may be possible to deduce from my photos where this particular cache is: if you are that outlier, I hereby ask you please to do the decent thing and leave the fuel alone – or if you absolutely must access it, then let the USAP know what you've taken and make good on it as soon as you can.  Everyone in Antarctica looks out for each other, and that includes you.  OK?  OK. 

So, we've taken off, and done our acrobatics to get the skis up, and are now facing a couple of hours' flight time before we reach our primary destination.  There is, quite frankly, nothing between Williams Field and the Transantarctic Mountains, besides hundreds of miles of the Ross Ice Shelf. This was known as 'The Barrier' to the early explorers, because when James Clark Ross sailed down to explore in 1840 it was a great while wall that prevented his ships from going any further. In later years it wasn't so much a barrier as a highway – clear and flat, and not much off sea level, it provided a route deep into the high latitudes without the perils of the high windy Polar Plateau.  Among people who frequently travel out there, it is sometimes referred to as 'the Flat White' – my impression is that this term came from the Kiwis, and the espresso drink of the same name is also antipodean in origin, so I wonder which came first.  It is undeniably Flat, and White (though the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals makes it look anything from peachy to periwinkle, depending on the angle), but none of its various names communicate just how big it is.

I have flown over the Canadian tundra many times, and over the Greenland ice cap, but the view from 35,000 feet is like looking at satellite view in Google Maps compared to flying at cloud level, where the parallax with the horizon gives you a much keener sense of distance.  The Barrier is BIG.  In fact, 'big' is too small a word to communicate it.  'Massive', 'mammoth', and 'gargantuan' are more melodramatic than descriptive.  Its vastness puts all of human consciousness, never mind vocabulary, in proper perspective.  For my money, it outdoes the night sky as a visual approximation of infinity. 

Getting a sense of its size, especially in a still photo, is difficult without an object for scale.  For your education and my good fortune, we happened to fly over the RAID convoy as they made their way from the Minna Bluff site to where the Ross Ice Shelf meets the Antarctic continent.  Rapid Access Ice Drilling has been supporting various scientific projects for a few years now, whether their interest is in the ice itself (its trapped air gives a record of Earth's atmosphere in millennia past) or what's underneath (marine environments far removed from the open sea; the bed of an accelerating glacier).  Their units are about the size of a shipping container, and are pulled by enormous tractors, so if they are this dwarfed by the Flat White, imagine how much more puny a sledge party would be. 

Before too much longer we were at the depot.  Landing at an Antarctic field airstrip is even more complicated than taking off: we circled once, to do a visual check, then skimmed it with the skis to make sure no hidden crevasses had opened up since the last time someone landed here, then finally touched down for real on the third go-round.  The plane crew rapidly got to work unloading the fuel drums; I offered to help but was assured I wasn't needed, so spent the time taking photographs and mucking around in the snow.

The first thing that struck me was how beautiful the mountains were in colour.  The best photos I've seen of them have been black and white, so the rich variety in shades was remarkable.  What you can't see in this small photo was how the lighter rock was banded with strata of blue-grey and orange-brown sandstone, giving it a luxurious marbled effect. 

I've read a lot about how conditions on the Barrier are so much different than on the coast.  This was far deeper into it than I was ever expecting to set foot, but I was surprised how tame it was.  Now, it was an idyllically calm and sunny day – had it been any different we would not have been there – so the only time I realised that it was actually much colder than McMurdo was when a slight breeze wafted past my bare hand and broke the warm spell that the sunshine had cast.

 What was different was the snow.  Around McMurdo, the snowbanks which did build up had been repeatedly blown over with volcanic dust which warmed up in the sun and made the snow gritty, icy, and rotten – if you live in a snowy city, think of the texture of snowbanks alongside busy roads.  Out here, there was nothing but snow, all the way down to where it became ice – powder blown off the mountains, maybe even off the Polar Plateau, deposited here to be compacted in the sun and polished by the wind.  The crust made by these processes was smooth and, in many places, thick enough to support my weight, so I hardly left a footprint – a 'good pulling surface' as sledgers would have it – but without warning there would be a thin spot where my foot would break through and sink in the sugar-like snow below.

Before long, the crew had finished their restock, and playtime was over.  After our exciting takeoff manoeuvres, we started climbing the mountains to the second of our tasks for the day. 

The Transantarctic Mountains, according to our pilot, are still something of a mystery.  They are a very high mountain range, but unlike the Rockies for example, they show little or no sign of buckling or other geological forces – they seem to have been lifted whole, keeping their layers of sandstone and coal and fossil-rich deposits mostly flat, with occasional intrusions of igneous rock. The range acts as a sort of massively oversized dyke, holding back the miles-deep polar ice cap from spilling over West Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf, and the Ross Sea, as the mountains cross the continent.

Ice appears to be solid, but it actually behaves more like a stiff jelly or fondant icing – if it finds a change in altitude it will flow, very slowly, downhill.  This is what a glacier is: snow gets deposited over many years without melting, turns to ice, and when its volume can no longer be held at elevation, starts to creep down the valley. The ice of the Polar Plateau finds gaps in the Transantarctic Mountains and pushes through them, forming glaciers which pour out onto the Ross Sea and, merging, form the Ross Ice Shelf.  The Beardmore Glacier is one of the largest of these, but there are hundreds of smaller ones, and many tributary glaciers that feed these.  In flying over the lower Transantarctic Mountains, there were plenty of opportunities to see ice dynamics at work: 

Our destination was up near the head of a narrow glacier, where it broadened out into a snowy plain called the Bowden Névé – névé being a term for young snow which has not yet compacted into glacial ice but is in a position to do so.  This was CTAM (pronounced see-tam), a geology camp established to be a hub for teams doing work in the Central TransAntarctic Mountains. The névé afforded an open, soft, flat place to land planes carrying supplies and people, who could then move on to less accessible places overland.  At least, it did, until a wind event a few years ago scoured deep furrows in the landing strip.

As we flew over, doing the visual check, I was astonished the site could be spotted at all, as it was only a small clutch of bamboo poles in the vast expanse. 

Having proven that the landing strip was landable, the next task was to see what condition the building was in.  What building, you ask?  Why, the one completely covered in snow, under the markers.  Once upon a time it was a couple of modules standing on the surface of the glacier, but Antarctica gradually swallowed them up, so now one has to dig down through the snow to reach the roof hatch, eight feet above the floor. 

On the way from the Basler to the camp site, I was treated to one signature snow effect I had missed out on, at the depot.  'The Barrier Hush' is frequently mentioned in journals: it was described as a 'whoosh' or a 'hush-shh-shhhh' that sighed out from underneath the walker as he broke through the top crust into a pocket of air underneath, where the loose snow had settled after the top crust was formed.  The pocket could sometimes extend quite a long way from where the crust was broken and the sound followed the exchange of air as far as it went.  It would startle the ponies and excite the dogs, until they learned there was nothing to chase and catch.    

I was walking some way behind the plane crew as they made for the camp with shovels, and suddenly heard what I thought was a small whirlwind – a sharp and intense, almost whistling sound that seemed to race across my path.  This being the sort of place one would expect to see dust devils (or snow devils, I suppose they would be) I looked around to see where it was, but the air was as still up here as it had been down on the ice shelf.  It was only after the second or third time it happened that I realised what it was – it was so completely not how I had imagined the Barrier Hush to sound.  If you make a little whirlwind sound by whisper-whistling whshwshywshwhwwsh with your lips really quickly, that's what it sounded like.  Having heard it, now, I can completely understand how the dogs would have thought there was a small creature scurrying around under the snow.  It sounded much more animate than it had been described.  I felt so lucky to be let into that secret. 

The crew got the hatch open and the first of them climbed down into the pitch darkness to report everything OK.  The rest followed, and invited me along, but I am not the most coordinated travelling artist, and couldn't see a way down for me that didn't end in a concussion.  So I stayed above while they explored the submerged camp, and enjoyed the view.  It was really spectacular – not just the stunning mountains but the thin, brittle blue of the sky and the hardness of the sunlight, as if the whole world were a taut drumskin. 

And, best of all, from here the horizon was the Polar Plateau – another Flat White stretching to the South Pole and beyond.

[rahenning]

Forgotten and Overlooked Cartoon Movies

On this week’s discussion we will explore two cartoon movies that you either may have watched when you were a child and got you disturbed giving you nightmares or you watched as an adult but probably had the same reaction as if you were a little kid. Or maybe it was just me who felt very confused watching it. This brings to my mind a thought. Are cartoons/ animation movies strictly designed for a young audience? Can a cartoon that is designed for children bring themes that may bring valuable discussions at home and teach good lessons to a little mind in development? Finding Nemo suggests to kids that step out of your comfort zone is important and to never give up even having so many obstacles on your life journey. Mulan is a great representation and inspiration for little girls to know that they can and should fight for their rights with confidence and independence. The list of animation movies that can be very inspiring for children is extensive. Although not all the cartoons/ animations movies have a young audience target. Titles such as “Fritz the Cat” (1972), “South Park” (1999) and the outstanding autobiographical “Persepolis” (2007) are definitely movies that probably wouldn’t be a good idea to have your child sitting next to you in the living room while you watch it.

   Some movies sometimes either get forgotten or overlooked in the history of cartoon movies. Today we will give the attention necessary and deserved to two adult cartoon masterpieces; “Fantastic Planet” (1973) directed by Rene Laloux and “Watership Down” (1978) directed by Martin Rosen. Both movies are incredible on bringing to the table topics such as violence and power, authoritarian leaderships, division of social classes, democracy, the seek of home and belonging. We will cover that in a moment but excuse me on giving you some spoilers first. Both movies are modeled and gives to the audience historical lessons about specific times, events, and political aspects in society.

“Fantastic Planet” (1973) was a landmark in the history of European animation directed by Rene Laloux. The movie is a completely though-through science fiction vision which may be for many breathtaking or an unnecessarily experimental miserable detour. The movie resonates with historical allegories and radical politics based on European aesthetic principles. I personally find the aesthetic of this movie very surrealistic and resembles Salvador Dali’s artworks. The film takes place on the planet Ygam and shows two tribles of organisms that live against each other. The gigantic, intellectual, and blue Draags and the small and pinkish Oms that were removed by their masters Draags from their planet. The Oms are domesticated and enslaved by the Draags. The story unfolds and is narrated by Terr, one of the members of the Oms who grows and matures being domesticated next to the Draags. Terr learns about the culture of the Draags and their strange rituals of learning, meditation, wisdom, and development. Through mental inducement devices to transmit knowledge to future generations the Draags open the collective wisdom of their race. Terr escapes his captors and joins a renegade group of Oms. As the Draags try to control the radical Oms the film concludes in the final confrontation between the two groups and a satellite known as the Fantastic Planet.

In 1968 the film faced obstacles in the middle of its production. Soviet tanks invaded Prague, where the film was being produced, and occupied the city. After the invasion, the production of the film was extended for four years and was only released in 1973. In many ways the film represents these events. The communist occupation not only in Czechoslovakia but also in other Eastern European countries, is directly reminiscent of the convenient enslavement of the Oms by the Draags. In addition, the analogy of the relationship between owner and animal is effective between representing the relationship between the Soviet Union and its satellite states. While animals and Oms experienced modest degrees of autonomy, this was always monitored and limited by their masters. In both cases these masters maintained the fate of their servants. During that time, the illusion of this need was fabricated and often promoted to praise the positive attributes in the master. Besides that, the illusion of freedom has always been available at a distance, but it was collected in small doses. The masters reinforced and affirmed the hierarchical relationship that subordinates had with their servants. Two other elements are also symbolic of social and historical phenomena. Firstly,the tactics and techniques used by the Draags to destabilize the Oms and the camps where they lived that resemble the Nazi concentration camps and gas cameras. The film does an excellent job portraying the terror that the Draags cause in the Oms. The threat is greater than the attacks themselves. Didactically shows how to psychologically demoralize a society. Fear and oppression can have much greater causes and penetrate the coincidence of their victims. The film is then a provocative incursion into the state-sponsored psychological terror and its behaviors.

The second movie in discussion is “Watership Down” (1978) by Martin Rosen. The movie is a British animation based on the novel “Watership Down” by Richard Adams. The film was successful in the UK but not so much in the US. The controversy around it is what brings more attention. At first the audience may think it is a movie about cute bunnies living on a field. Well, its not extremely wrong but it goes far beyond it and its sensitive and explicit content is what labels the movie as an adult animation. The plot focuses on a group of rabbit living in the countryside. The group learns that their land is being invaded and poisoned by a construction company. They try to persuade the chief to evacuate. The chief refuses and they make a breakthrough with other members of their community. Many altercations happen between the group and makes the plot more excited and intriguing. The violence and the rage of the rabbits are shocking for many viewers. This film was U rated, which means it is suitable for all ages. And that’s what makes it more controversy. It creeps adults out and I can only imagine all the nightmares kids would have after watching it. The story is simply enough to follow with some tips of comedy in between the dramatic violent and swearing scenes.

 What most of the viewers may not know is that “Watership Down” was inspired by its novel author Richard Adams real life personal experiences. He revealed that many of the animals in the movie were designed and based on officers that he, as a lieutenant, commanded in the World War 2.  Not just the characters but many of the stories lived by the bunnies were also based on his real-life experiences and specifically the Battle of Arnhem, which he fought for over nine days in September 1944.  Many soldiers were killed, and it answers why we see so many deaths and violent scenes in the movie. The character Hazel was inspired in his commanding officer Gifford. Gifford survived the war, and so did Hazel. According to the author, Bigwig was based on Captain Desmond “Paddy” Kavanagh. Adams describes him as “afraid of nothing and sensationalist”. “Good stories ought to be exciting and if they are exciting, they are inevitably scary in parts”- Richard Adams.

Learning more about the two films and its context, I believe it is easier now to understand and visualize the shared topics prior mentioned. Both movies are a tremendous critic to abuse of power and the use of mental and physical violence by the leaders in both fictional and real society. Our contemporary society lived and still experiences all these aspects. The movies simple used real-life events to base their narrative on. The division between social classes is clearly visible specially on “Fantastic Planet”. In todays age we still see and fight against this variance. Socio-economics class division happens in every and each country around the globe and it can be even more endured when we add race and sexual orientation for example. The seek of home and belonging are also very well covered in both movies. All the groups in both films wanted a place to be free from oppression and without fearing for their lives. I believe that everyone around this planet first goal in life is to feel secure, free and have a place that they can finally have this feeling of belonging inside their hearts.

Movements such as the Black Lives Matter are a great example of an oppressed community who is (and has always been) standing up for themselves, making them and their stories heard and fighting against an oppressive system in order to gain equality, safety and freedom.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

In reference to the movie “Watership Down” I would like to also use the MST (Landless Workers Movement) as an example of fighting for the right of obtaining living and a sense of belonging. The Brazilian social movement defines it’s as goals access to land for the poor workers through land reforms.

To learn more about the movement please visit their page.

https://mst.org.br/english/

We already know that in “Fantastic Planet” the system the Draags kept the Oms in is oppressive and limit their capability of learning. They were labeled as savage and domesticated Oms. This system pretty much reflects the society we live in. The system intentionally takes out the chances of the less fortunate on learning and growing as people. It creates a division either in the movie and in our society between the “intellectuals” and the “anti-intellectuals”. What happens is that most oppressed group does not even have the eager of gaining more knowledge and that is all a consequence of the system they live in. It is all meticulously orchestrated by the system and it only makes the so called “intellectual” group of society more powerful over the other groups.

  To be able to overcome their reality, the Oms had to finally come together and unite against the Draags. They had to listen to the domesticated and now more educated Oms who had more information and knowledge at the time. Without uniting, the Oms would not be able to defend themselves and attack the Draags.

Back to “Watership Down” we also see how internal conflicts inside a group or community may ruin or delay a common goal. In the movie we have characters that could fall into the label of intellectual and anti-intellectual. The protagonist of the movie, Hazel, may fall into the label of “intellectual”.  He is the lead of the group and his actions were always to benefit all the band of rabbits and specially protect the small ones. Blackcherry is Hazel’s main source of knowledge and guidance. For this reason, he can also be called an “intellectual” in the group. In other hand we have Strawberry, a large rabbit but with no knowledge of how to live in the wild. He wanted to learn, although his lack of understanding of the wilderness could always affect their group.

   To make a quick correlation to our society, we could divide the rabbits into a younger and older group. For example, in the younger group we have Hazel, Fiver, Strawberry and Dandelion. A group of young but very loyal and fierce rabbits. All of them with their specific positive characteristics that could be substantially important to a success of a group. In the older group we have General Woundwort, Captain Campion, and Captain Holly. Although they may be strong and experienced some of their actions may be destructive to the well being of the group. The older group often questions if the younger really knows what they are doing by their lack of experience. It is often seeing in our society too. An example is how our society keep only trusting in old candidates for important positions in our government. Why not to trust in new faces and new ideas for our society? The chances to keep repeating the problems are high. Maybe new minds and new ideas can make a lot of positive changes.

[onestowatch]

girl in red Is Telling Her Truth [Q&A]

Photo: Jonathan Vivaas Kise

In 2018, the final new artist discovery piece we wrote was on an artist that we championed as the rainbow flag-waving anti-pop star of 2019. 2019 would see that artist tour across the world, release a highly-praised sophomore EP, and establish herself as a definitive voice of Generation Z. girl in red, the artist in question, is the bedroom-produced project of Norwegian artist Marie Ulven, who has been heralded as a painfully authentic queer icon for queer teenagers the world over. 

Her music speaks to the heartbreaking and euphoric nature of young queer love, fleeting feelings of isolation, and the overall inner turmoil of growing up and attempting to figure out life. By no means is it unexplored territory, but the level of candor, delivered in a fashion that blurs the lines between her bedroom-produced contemporaries and the garage-rock heroes of yesterday, can at times feel groundbreaking.  

As our final new artist discovery of 2018, it only seems fitting that our first interview of 2020 is with girl in red. We sat down with the artist hours ahead of her final US show of 2019 to talk about the tangible effect her music is having on people, the revolution Greta Thunberg and Billie Eilish are leading, and painting the world in red.  

Ones To Watch: Does it ever begin to feel larger-than-life knowing the palpable impact your music has had and is having on people?

girl in red: Yeah, it comes out of nowhere really. I make songs and stuff, but I don’t realize what kind of impact it has on people. Because I’m just living my life and that song is just out there, and I don’t know what people are doing with it. So, I think that it’s really cool and weird to suddenly meet a real person that has listened to one of my songs and be like, “That shit saved me.” It’s really weird because I didn't know any of that was happening, but it was, and I like that.

Was there a certain point in time where you started noticing that impact? 

I mean, I think I started noticing that things were happening, maybe like, when I released “girls.” That’s when things started getting even bigger, and I got like 20k followers, and I was like, “Woah that’s two digits right there.” I was really excited then. “girls” has been one of my strongest anthems for people to use to embrace themselves. I feel like after that song there have been a lot of people sending me messages like, “Hey, I came out to this song. I used it in the car with my mother.”

Given my walk today here, it’s not terribly surprising. There is already a line of girls down the block camping out to get into the show.

Wow, already? It’s mostly girls. I like to meet boys too; I like seeing boys out there. I think it’s super cool there’s people out there so early because that’s what people do for like really cool artists and stuff, and I’m just like whaaaat? Because I don't feel... I just feel what I’ve always felt. And now people look at me in a weird way that I don’t see myself. Sometimes I'm on stage and someone wants my towel and II don't see myself as someone that people would want a used towel from. 

I imagine people fall in love with your music due to the level of candidness in your songwriting. 

Yes! And we need that! Just some normal people that are making music and telling their truth. And I think that maybe I’m doing that. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing something that I think comes naturally to me and then people sort of gravitate towards it for some reason.

With that being said, is it hard to just put it all out there in your songs? You’re opening up to millions of people after all.

But when I make music, it’s just me. I’m just being honest with myself when I write and then it happens, I just happen to put it out. In some ways, it’s affected my thinking. Are people going to like this song? I can’t lie and be like, “Yeah, I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel like I'm writing to anyone.” I definitely have had some unsettling feelings, like is this line too graphic? I have a line now that is like, “Was she good? What you like? Did you cum? How many times?” And that’s a pretty like, you know, I haven’t heard that in a line before. It’s a pretty vulnerable and jealous feeling. When I write that, I’m like can I put that in a song? I’ve met girls at meet-and-greets that are like 12-years-old and listen to my music. Like, what are people going to think? But, this is something that came to my head. I’m just going to block out all these questions from people because that is just going to mess up what I’m trying to do. 

How do you feel about being placed in this new wave of “bedroom pop” artists?

This bedroom pop thing? In the beginning, a lot of people called me that, but I don’t feel like a bedroom pop artist but a lot of people put me in this bedroom pop movement because it's easier to understand something if you put it in a box. I think this is happening because music equipment is getting more affordable. Obviously, I’m very privileged. I live in the richest country in the world. I’ve always had a roof over my head and grandparents and shit. I’ve been lucky to have equipment available and stuff and I also think that some people that also have that same privilege get the equipment and start messing around because they’re bored or something. I don’t know why people start making music.

Why did you start making music?

I don’t know. It’s not like I wanted to be Taylor Swift or some other artist at the time. I just wanted a guitar and I wanted to make music, I’m not sure where that came from. I just had the urge to make something. I didn’t get my guitar and start covering songs. I was like let me start writing. So, I think it’s cool what’s happening now because equipment is so affordable and putting it out is so easy. There are so many online distributors you don’t need to be signed anymore. Like, I’m still indie you know? I’m working with a distributor like I have signed something, but I don’t have like a big ass label behind me. And I think it’s like as long as you make good music you’re going to go somewhere. That’s the only thing. I just want to make good music, and I think everyone can make good music and put it out.

Do you mind explaining the chapter element behind the music you have released thus far?

I don’t look at them as EPs. I look at chapter 1 as 2018, and the reason I have chapters one and two is I’ve just been making music and putting it out as I move along, so I want the songs to be like, chapter 1 is the beginning of something. I didn’t want it to be like, “Okay. Now I can make an album.” I wasn’t in that state of mind, I just want to continue this, because this is what felt natural to me. They’re more just like labels, ironically. This is 2018. This is 2019. I’ve now got other types of ideas, my head is working in a different way, so now all my work I see in a different bigger body of work. I didn't with the other songs. I didn’t see them in like an album. But now with the stuff I make, this is like track number four, number one. That’s how my mind works now. That’s what the music has been about, just progressing as a songwriter and a producer.

What do you hope 2020 holds for you?

2020. What the fuck. That’s so weird. I’m definitely going to be making a lot of music. I know the first few months I won’t be touring, I’ll just be making music and then hopefully I’ll release an album. That’s like world domination, world in red, just make an album, JUST make an album. Then probably some touring, some really cool festivals would be nice. Oh, I’m getting a dog!

What kind of dog?

Bernese Mountain Dog.

What are you going to name it?

Burner, very original!

As we move into 2020, music and politics as a whole are becoming more female. So can we talk about two people you avidly admire, Billie Eilish and Greta Thunberg?

Greta Thunberg is blowing up. Not long ago she had a couple hundred thousand followers, and I was on her Instagram the other day and she had like 3.3 million followers. Then I checked later that day and she had four, then after her speech at the UN she had six. She is so cool she is literally the front figure of the biggest revolution right now. Like, I consider this a revolution it’s crazy. I was thinking about it, you know the French Revolution and the American Revolution? I’m pretty sure at that time they didn’t necessarily think that of it as a revolution. I feel like we’re in the middle of something that is going to be really, really big and it’s so cool that out of nowhere this little Swedish girl comes out. And there’s so many old people personally attacking her because they don’t have anything to I don't know, they can’t fight the science. I think she’s really cool. 

I think Billie Eilish is really cool also. She’s also leading some sort of revolution, right now. They’re kind of similar, they’re both really really important people, and they have great voices. I was talking to Isaac [Dunbar], and we were just talking about Billie, she’s like literally the biggest star on the planet right now. And it happened so quickly. I followed Billie when she had 200,000 followers in 2017, and I listened to her EP, dont smile at me, and she was my most listened to artist that year. And that’s so weird, she’s changed so much. Artists that can just renew themselves like she’s doing are the most important. Like David Bowie, he was renewing himself always, making cool music and making new characters and shit. She’s going from dont smile at me to WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, like such a big cool change. And FINNEAS’ production is the future! He is so talented. I met him at a festival in Belgium and he was so nice and he smells really good too.

What does he smell like?

I can’t describe it. It’s like I’ve never smelled anything like that before. It’s like some next-level future perfume. They’re a power duo.

Who are your Ones To Watch?

I’m definitely excited about this one artist called BENEE, from New Zealand, she is really cool. beabadoobee also has some cool stuff going on. We’ve grown sort of a lot this last year. I'm excited about Clairo because she made a really good record. I’m just excited about all of these people that I have been following for the last two-and-a-half years that are suddenly blowing up. I remember I followed Clairo when “Pretty Girl” just came out and had like 9000 streams on Spotify. I’m so excited, because I followed these people so long ago and they were so small then, and now they’re so much bigger. I wonder where they’re going to go.

Anything else you want to say?

World In Red

[21secondsofchristoph]

Here is a full translation of the interview with the FAZ:

Mr Waltz, statistically you're a rarity. Only five percent of all actors in Los Angeles manage to get enough jobs to get accepted into the SAG. And out of that group, only about five percent earn enough to make a living out of their art.

Becoming an actor is like becoming a father: really easy. Being and staying an actor is much harder.

We're meeting today, because you're not playing the villain for once, but some kind of action-hero in James Cameron's Manga movie "Alita: Battle Angel"

As a futuristic doctor you revive a cyborg from Mars, so you're basically working on the interface of human and machine

Haha, you could put it like that! I like that!

When the story was published as a comic in 1990 it was considered Science-fiction. Today, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos actually work on brain implants and dream of colonies on Mars. Have you dealt with such things as preperation?

I don't take Elon Musk seriously. His behavior strikes me as ridiculous and you can't forget that he has a commercial interest in the topic's sensation. I've already watched moon landing's and flights into space as a child. Is it really necessary to introduce billionaires into space tourism? Well, we will see what happens. I am interested in new technologies but it's difficult to seperate them from journalism of sensation, even if it's dressed seriously.

In time, a lot of things might be possible that I can't even imagine right now. But there is another question: the question of necessity.

The market economy drives our world into an orgy of uselessness. It damages our planet and our lives on it. Who wants to live on Mars? That we will all be unemployed and the environment destroyed is in no relation to any use.

Can one stop the progress if it's useless?

Not as long as someone benefits from it.

What about the desire for disruption?

Disrupting something is an easy action, replacing it with something useful is not.

I'm always ready to disrupt something if there is a useful counterproposal. Not necessarily until then.

A lot of things are turned upside down in film industry. Netflix not only revolutionized the concept of television, it also produces exciting movies. And Youtube even has its own celebrities among the new generation.

Over the past few months I've watched some movies which hadn't been produced without Netlflix. For example the winner of the Venice Film Festival "Roma". Movies like that wouldn't run longer than 3 weeks in theaters. Through the premiers and prices it now receives the attention it deserves. And after that it's on Netflix. As superficial as I can see that, it's not the worst thing.

In contrast to that, I don't have a hard time with not watching Youtube. It's probably a cultural matter and depends on how we want to shape our lives. Of course it's also a generational matter. But why is that? Just because someone is younger, it doesn't mean they are predestined for entertainment through videoclips.

You have 4 children. You have to be familiar with this world. Where do you see the difference to your generation?

In school we were always confronted with things we didn't like, but which we couldn't dispose of.

That's where the wonderful word "Bildung" comes from, which doesn't exist in English. Education refers to an information value. "Bildung" goes further than education through its cultural formation. When I was in school I also didn't understand why I had to study Latin. But not wanting to learn Latin would have never occured to me. Just because no one speaks it anymore and learning it seemed uncomfortable.

And did you like it?

It created connections within a language, trained precise phrasing, as well as logic and discipline. It's certainly more challenging to learn an abstract language than watching a funny Youtube video.

About for or five years ago you warned Facebook might be a breeding ground for the fast growth of terror organisations. Are you surprised that it also seems to threaten western democracies now?

Not at all. History has taught us that medium and structure can be more dangerous than the message, because it's easier to handle the problematic movement than the well oiled machine that keeps it going. Especially when algorithms control the dynamics in the networks, those networks can become independent.

Some hope that societies might improve through a "Wutbürger"-culture and a crazy government.

At best, all of that just has entertainment value.

So maybe not anyone should always add their opinions?

If you don't have anything clever to say you should shut your mouth. But actually it's the other way around. Apart from this choir of stupidity being really annoying, people who haven't developed the resistance and sensors might fall for the noise. Whoever shouts the loudest ends up being heard.

You are known for keeping your private life private. How does that match marketing's and fan's expectations?

Fame is an unsolved problem, not only for me.

You either remain an anonymous observer without a bigger platform to present your realizations. That is an unfortunate paradox because the people who get the chance to move in public have to deal with growing fame while they also distance themselves from the influences and experiences of real life.

Studies have shown that introverts would handle most jobs better. But they tend to get cast out by the loudmouths.

I can imagine that. Self- and foreign perception are a tricky thing. I can remember the first Loveparades in Berlin which I saw on TV. I always avoided the event myself. In the interviews, people were saying things like: "We celebrate our individuality!" And there were one million people that all looked the same. The music was a monotonous bum-bum-bum and I always tried to spot a moment of individuality.

You've been living in the centre of individuality for a while now. Do you still consider the United States of America governable?

Maybe not as a federation. The question I'm interested in is whether the USA as a federation are still worthy of governance. California alone is the fifth largest economy in the world.

In an interview from 2003 you talked about posing, about film makers who eroticise themselves and about how to stand yourself

Oh God, I remember.

Are you currently able to stand yourself?

Sometimes. But it's not easy.

At that time you weren't a Hollywood star and you made yourself very clear in interviews.

"Schindler's list" is mendacious because Spielberg might have thought "that type of movie still lacks from my collection of movies about dinosaurs and UFOs

Or that Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" is "crap" because it communicates that it's alright to laugh about concentration camps. "when it's a tender laugh"

Do you still dare to say such things now that you constantly meet other Hollywood stars?

In Germany, yes. In America, no.

Do you believe it's better to become famous later in life? And does aging feel better when you're at least famous while you're aging?

Hopefully both, right? As a young man you often experience the world through tunnel vision, because you impatiently want to experience everything, even though you can't sort a lot of things right. If the attention hits you at that point in life, you get in danger of stirring towards a dead end where you don't develop well.

Do you believe you became more careful and more lenient over the years and success?

You're becoming more careful and more lenient. I never thought of that before. I thought: Now I suddenly step back a little. You become more lenient when you connect yourself to it. In a strict German way you could call it cowardice, because you gain another point of view, the insight. And apart from the experience and the success it might be due to the abrasion of the testosterone-related edges.

[bonesloveeverandemilyanddavid]

Emily Deschanel on Biggest 'Bones' Lessons, Working With David Boreanaz and Returning to TV

  June 04, 2019 9:45am PT by Jean Bentley

  The actress formerly known as Temperance Brennan is returning to television in TNT's 'Animal Kingdom,' and discusses the evolution of her career with The Hollywood Reporter.

When Emily Deschanel graduated from theater school, she planned to spend her career doing off-Broadway shows and the occasional indie film. The actress, who is best known for the 12 years she spent starring on Fox procedural Bones, chuckled on the phone while remembering those early career goals.

"I remember somebody laughing at me, like, 'OK, if you never want to make any money, then great,'" she told The Hollywood Reporter.

While her earliest credited parts include small roles in not-so-indie films including Cold Mountain, Glory Road and The Alamo, Deschanel's big break came after being cast in Stephen King's ABC miniseries Rose Red. A couple of pilot seasons later and she was the No. 2 on the call sheet for Bones, behind former Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel star David Boreanaz, where she'd spend the next decade-plus of her life.

                          Two years after her Fox drama ended, Deschanel now finds herself headed back to television in a recurring role on TNT's crime family drama Animal Kingdom. While she spent 12 years playing forensic anthropologist and straight-laced FBI collaborator Temperance Brennan on Bones, she's on the other side of the law as recovering addict Angela on Animal Kingdom.

Deschanel spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about her nearly two decades in Hollywood — including following in the footsteps of her younger sister, Zoey Deschanel (their parents are both in the industry; their father is the Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and their mother is Twin Peaks actor Mary Jo Deschanel), working with occasionally difficult co-workers, the Bones lawsuit that has made her wary of signing contracts, and deciding to return to the small screen after a hiatus.

When did you start acting?

When I was growing up I always wanted to be an architect, for whatever reason. I guess it's the perfect blend of art and math and science, which, to me, was really appealing. But then I went to Crossroads for high school and I discovered theater and discovered acting, and I really loved doing it. I think I wouldn't have become an actor if I hadn't gone to the conservatory at Boston University for theater. You get to do four plays a year there, and I think I wouldn't have had the experience to give me the confidence to pursue being an actor after college if I hadn't done something like that. Of course, I look back and wish I'd gone to a liberal arts school and got a more well-rounded education, but there's always time to educate yourself, I guess. I think it was probably the right path for me because it gave me the experience, it gave me the confidence to try and pursue acting. My sister was already [acting]. She was always a natural performer, so she didn't need an external source to tell her she could pursue something.

I just loved theater, I loved to study, I loved Shakespeare. I'm the kid that went to Shakespeare camp three years in a row. Of course when I left school I was like, "I'm going to do Off-Broadway theater only and maybe independent film. And that's all." I remember somebody laughing at me, like, "Okay, if you never want to make any money, then great." It was such a specific thing. I can't say that I had a grand plan of what my career would be. Clearly I had one idea that changed completely, and I've done television for many years.

I moved back to L.A. after a period of time in New York and I finally got representation that sent me out. I had representation in New York but I think I got zero auditions for a whole year, so I was just working in a restaurant there, but it was still fun. A few months in, I think it was six months after moving back, I got this miniseries: Stephen King's Rose Red. Such a big job to get, where I was in Seattle for many months and it was so exciting to me. It was not a main character but it was a character that was in the show a lot. It was so much fun and I quickly loved being a complete sellout. [Laughs] I met one of my best friends, Melanie Lynskey, on that. We're still so close. I love the camaraderie with the actors — I love working on set and being on location too, you get to know people even more because you're kind of stuck in a place far away. I loved it.

Then I did a pilot after that and I did a Law & Order: SVU, so my first several jobs were all in television, and then I did some independent films and small parts in other films.

   What was it like when Bones came along? It was probably exciting to book a pilot, but obviously at the time you have no idea that it's going to last more than a decade.

I had zero idea, and that was not my plans for things, either. I had done a couple pilots before and this was towards the end of the pilot season, or the end of their casting of the show, and I got a call to come in and audition for it. I met with Hart Hanson, who created the show; Barry Josephson, the producer; Greg Yaitaines, who was directing it. They laughed at my jokes, so I thought they were really nice people. Especially Hart Hanson loved my stupid jokes, so I'll always remember that.

I remember loving the dialogue between the two characters, really quick witty repartee, and I liked that relationship. I liked that it was a strong female character. When you sign on to do a TV show you have to think about the long term, especially in the beginning when you're doing the pilot, what kind of message you're putting out there for people. Of course this is like the opposite of now what I'm doing — Animal Kingdom is like the worst thing that could ever happen to a person for what you put out there. On Bones it was a different show. Younger people watched it, so you have to think about young girls watching the show and seeing female role models and scientists who are really smart and accomplished in their careers, and are successful.

I thought about all of that and I really responded to the script, and then I met David Boreanaz. He already had the part when I auditioned for it. I remember thinking, Oh, this could last us three years. That would be the longest I could ever in a million years imagine that it could ever last. And then it kept going and going and it was a lot of fun, with some great people. I look back with such fondness.

I [spoke with] a friend recently who was an actor on the show as well, and he was saying, "You seem so might lighter than when you were on the show!" And I'm looking back on it thinking I was so easy-breezy but apparently I was like "I will stress out about every single thing that I could possibly stress out about." It's a lot to be the lead of a television show. It's a lot of responsibility and it's an honor, but you do have to set a tone for a set, and there's pressure to keep the show going and be good. There's all kinds of things that I was probably holding on to that I wasn't realizing, and I look back just remembering all the fun times we had on set with the other actors — like the times in between when they say "cut" and before they say "action" — and of all the conversations we had. I look back thinking I was so easy-breezy but was usually very stressed about everything.

 She's also a character who is not very emotional, so you probably also had to tamp down your own feelings more when you were playing her.

Yeah, that's true. I remember the first season doing takes where there was some things that were super upsetting. I remember there was an episode about a girl in foster care and my character was supposed to be in foster care and I was just bawling crying. We couldn't use any of it. I was so upset but my character was so cut off emotionally. I loved, like I was saying, that we had these strong female characters. Hart Hanson, who created it, was a feminist himself and we talked about how my character would never be saved by the male lead until I saved him first. We had things like that, and my favorite thing ever was when I met young girls who said they wanted to become scientists or they were in the process of studying science because of watching the show. That just makes me so happy that we had that kind of impact on people in such a positive way.

What was it like working with David Boreanaz, who had come off of a decade of successful shows with Buffy and Angel? What was it like for you as a relative newcomer to be paired up with someone who can be notoriously prickly sometimes?

No comment. [Laughs.] No, he was very respectful of me. He respected me from the very beginning, and I will always appreciate that. We had a great relationship. I had worked for several years but I'd never been a regular on a TV show before, so it was very new to me. He never tried to tell me what to do, never tried to school me in any way or make me feel like I didn't belong or like I was learning and new. We went to an acting coach, so we basically had therapy every week together which is kind of hilarious, in certain ways, 'cause we would talk about our lives as well in the sessions.

We also had an agreement: We spent more time with each other than we did with our own spouses — with anybody else, really — and we fully acknowledged that we would drive each other crazy. We gave each other permission to walk away at different times, or just say "you're really bothering me right now," or "you're annoying me, I have to get away from you." And we rarely used that because we gave each other permission and we talked about it. It really helped us to get along better in that way, and he always respected me and I love that about him. We would laugh about a million things and he became like a brother and played jokes on me and stuff. For some reason it became a joke that if someone was acting badly, you give them a Diet Coke. I don't drink soda, so if somebody brought me a Diet Coke, I knew it was because he would tell a PA to bring me a Diet Coke as a joke. I didn't do that to him every often. He was more of the mischievous one of the two of us for sure, but we had a lot of good times together.

That sounds like a healthy way to approach that type of relationship.

People have work husbands and work wives at their jobs. I think that's not uncommon, but it takes it to another level playing opposite each other and being married to each other, for sure.

You and David still have a lawsuit pending against Fox for withholding profits from the show. Is there anything you can say about what you learned from that whole experience, and how it has impacted your deals going forward, or even advice to other actors dealing with that issue?

I can't really talk about it because it's still going on. It's not over. I would love to talk about it at some point, but I can't talk about it now. I can talk about it with my friends, but I can't talk to the [press] about it. We can talk in a couple of years. It makes me nervous to sign a contract.

                   What's your biggest takeaway from your experience on Bones?

Oh, there's so much. I loved playing that character for 12 years. I loved the people I worked with, not just the cast but the crew. I loved telling the stories. I loved all of it. For me, going forward, I just don't want to do the same thing twice. At this point, I have no interest in doing 22 episodes of a television show. I want to play different characters, I'm open to anything — I'm not going to say that I'm not doing television because I'm currently filming television, but I'm not a series regular. That was a plus to me going in. I have flexibility. When you're a guest star you can come and go, and there's no contract, which is great going into my first job after doing Bones. And I don't want to take too much time away from my kids. So that's basically how I see things now, but I'm not anti-television by any means. It really is the golden age of television right now; there's so many amazing things going on, so many stories that are being told, and people doing it so well. I would never write off doing television.

You produced and directed on Bones, is that something you want to do more?

Yeah, all of it. I loved being a producer on Bones. It gives you a say in things, and I really appreciated that. Directing I really loved, and I'm very much interested in doing more of that in my life, but it takes up time. It depends on the time and finding the right project, because you don't want to spend all that time producing or directing something that isn't something you are completely passionate about. It's about finding the right project, and the right timing, with family and everything, I could do that again.

Your character on Animal Kingdom is very different than we've seen you play in the past.

I was really interested in having the conversation about addiction. The character is a recovering heroin addict, and this is a big issue in our country right now. This is a character you're seeing enter the show at rock bottom: She's just come out of prison, she's got nowhere to live, and she's trying to establish herself. This is a character who is sensitive to things, has seen everything in life, has done all kinds of things in her life, like a lot of people who have dealt with addiction have. This is a character who is a survivor. She's trying to find her way in the world and she's doing to do whatever it takes to establish herself to get what she needs, basically.

So she might come across as manipulative. She always has the reasons for doing what she does, but that's like all the characters on the show. They're like criminals, addicts, sociopaths,and she fits in with all that. My character is the best friend of Ellen Barkin's character's daughter so I've known the family for years and years and years, and I see it as an opportunity for myself to get in with the family and see what I can get out of it.

It sounds like there might be a throwdown between Angela and Smurf, Ellen Barkin's character.

Yeah, my character and her character did not like each other. I blame her for her daughter's death, and she blames me, essentially. There's no hiding how we feel about each other. It gets very intense between the two characters for sure. I'm the woman coming in for her territory and I move in to her house. She is not happy about that. I can't say that there's a throw-down fight between us, but it gets intense. Which is always uncomfortable because I love Ellen Barkin so much as a person and as an actor, so I hate the fact that our characters don't get along. But at least we get along off camera!

Animal Kingdom airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on TNT.

x

[hrrytomlinson]

here are a bunch of fucking fantastic fics I’ve enjoyed and loved reading throughout the month of october. I recommend that you read these great fics in november, if you haven’t already!! also check out the Reverse Big Bang and 31 Days of Smut!

(all fics with a star are my favorites and if there are two stars then it was a favorite favorite)

1. Damn the Dark, Damn the Light 20k

“Why is this face of beauty ringing so true?” The genuine confusion in Harry’s voice causes Louis’ chest to painfully twinge. “You’re a complete stranger in my eyes, William Shakespeare, but not in my heart. How is that possible?”

Louis wants to live out every romance plot he has ever written in his own life. He wants to be the protagonist of his own narrative, the hero who finds true love and gets his happy ending. Instead, Louis is stuck with only dreaming of such wild fantasies and writing them down. He can create entire romances in his dreams, yet he can never live one.

2. Threadbare 20k**

Harry Styles was eight years old when Louis Tomlinson kept him from falling into a machine in a Manchester textile mill. He was 18 years old when nothing, not even the threat of death, could keep Harry from falling in love with Louis.

3. Don’t Come Down 6k

Louis takes Harry home to meet the family.

4. I’ll Take Your Pain 2k*

Or, soulmates have the ability to feel each other's pain, and Harry finds his after getting his arse waxed.

5. We'll Never Be Lonely in the Dark 6k

Detective Louis Tomlinson keeps getting blocked when he tries to use his psychic gift to locate a missing child. One late night he manages to get through but instead of finding who he's looking for he lands in the bedroom of a mysterious man.

Harry Styles, nursing student, baker, and all around exhausted medium, thinks he's having the best sex dream he's ever had when his fantasy man shows up in his subconscious. But is that really what's going on?

6. Aquarius 6k

Louis realises he's slept with a man of every star sign except for Aquarius, and that just won't do.

7. Forget-Me-Not 26k**

“I- I can't move” the elder one finally croaked out, and with more distress Harry came to see that the vines had wrapped itself around the lad's ankles.

With a dumb nod Harry took a couple of steps forward. He could see Louis flinch with his sudden movement but he tried not to think about it. Instead, he lifted his hands, and tried his best to concentrate, hoping his power would listen to him just this once around the other man and untie him.

Ever so slowly, the vines started to detach themselves from Louis's calves, and soon enough, the man was free. With shaking legs, Louis stood up from the position he was in, and suddenly the air around them got thicker. “You're- you're a witch.” Louis hissed under the harsh wind, making Harry flinch at the accusation in his voice.

Or, where Harry had something he did not wish to have. Louis was just trying to figure him out.

8. Gem and the Hunters: The Treasure of Babylon 34k**

Louis Tomlinson wished, for one thing, his whole life: to find the ancient city of Babylon. After one failed attempt, he swore to never again attempt a search for the city. His friend, Niall Horan never pushed the issue, but when his family finds themselves in trouble, Niall’s only option is to convince Louis to try and find Babylon again.

Niall enlists the help of two famous treasure hunters: Harry and Gemma Styles and their friend Liam Payne. Harry and Gemma love ancient cultures as much as Louis and would give anything to find Babylon. Liam is just along for the ride, running from a shade in his past.

The five embark on the adventure of a lifetime… and find much more than any of them bargained for.

9. I Never Did Believe in the Ways of Magic (Through I’ve a Feeling It’s Time to Try) 54k*

Louis can’t shake the feeling that there’s something in the woods, pressing close and watching him with a heavy gaze. It makes him antsy, fills him with jitters. He wants to run, or scream, but he knows to do so would only put him in danger if there’s actually something out there after all. He’s sure he’s just imagining it, but his heart nevertheless pounds in his throat.

When Louis Tomlinson goes on a songwriting retreat to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada, this isn't how he expects his evening to go.

Or the au where Louis is a singer who has been cursed to never make music again and Harry is a reclusive witch of the Canadian mountains who's going to help him break the curse.

10. Cancel Your Reservations, No More Hesitations 10k

Louis still has his eyes on the bill when he barges into Harry’s room without knocking because he doesn’t want to get evicted and the smell hits him first.

It’s overly sweet and unnatural, and his stomach drops because it smells like an omega. Louis eyes widen and he looks up and - Harry’s on his hands and knees, a half spilled bottle of synthetic omega slick next to him and a huge, knotted dildo pressing into his hole. Harry’s face is flushed and he looks fucked-out and -

“I’m sorry!” Louis squeaks out and quickly backtracks, face red, because he wasn’t supposed to see that and Harry’s an alpha but he - Louis isn’t going to judge him.

Louis is an alpha and so is Harry, but Louis helps him through his rut anyway.

11. Foothold 18k

Louis has crossed the galaxy with a ship full of crystals; they’re the only thing he has to offer in exchange for safe harbor. He thought getting to his destination would be the hardest part, hoping that once he got his family to safety everything would fall back into place; Louis struggles to adapt while his sisters thrive. Louis suspects Emperor Styles may have something to do with it.

12. Don’t Want Shelter 76k*

Louis and Harry have known each other all their lives. Friends as children, they danced around each other as teenagers, and have spent the last twenty-five years either screaming at each other or not speaking at all. Except for that one time ten years ago…

When Hurricane Nicole threatens the coast, they end up stuck together in their families' old vacation home that they begrudgingly co-own.

During the storm, and in the months after, they’re both forced to reevaluate their history and what they mean to each other.

13. Wasted Like a Memory 4k

Six years before Hurricane Nicole forces Louis and Harry together, Fizzy gets married. Harry wrestles with reconciling the different versions of Louis he knows. (Part of Don’t Want Shelter)

14. Taste and Plead 3k

Or, the one where Harry wants something, and Louis' never been one to deny his boy anything.

15. Home For Christmas 22k**

The Shameless Hallmark Movie AU you probably didn't ask for.

Or, the one where Harry didn't think he wanted a family, but with a little Christmas magic (and maybe one Louis Tomlinson) he realizes that he is very, very wrong.

16. A Million Stars 2k

Louis watches Harry perform at the Tower Theater, and the events of the night unfold in an unexpected manner.

17. No One Like You 19k**

Where Liam and Niall are art historians discovering the truth about two nineteenth century painters on opposite sides of an artistic divide.

18. Howls Like A Beast (You Flower, You Feast) 16k*

France, 1754. Château de Versailles.

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

Louis had rolled his eyes, exasperated and flippant in the way only beautiful, young boys could be when faced with the affections of a baby prince. He had run his finger down Harry’s cheek then, had forced him to look into his eyes as he delivered the final blow.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.

19. You Flower, You Feast 18k**

He's King of the Underworld, but don't assume Louis has it all. He could stand for some excitement in his monotonous, eternal life and maybe, even.....a soulmate.

(Despite not having a soul.)

And along came "Harry".

20. The Dead Things We Carry 25k*

September ‘49

He hasn’t seen him since that day in France, that horrible muddy day where for one terrifyingly long second, Louis really thought he was going to die. He winces with the phantom pain, the hand not holding his cane going to his stomach automatically, remembering the franticness, the tenderness, of Harry’s hands while Louis was bleeding out. This is the man who saved Louis’ life.

For one second, Louis fears Harry won’t recognise him, but his eyes widen when he turns to his left and they meet Louis’. He takes a step forward, reaching for him with a shaky hand before stopping himself.

“Louis,” Harry says with a shudder and Louis doesn’t think his name has ever carried more weight. This is the only man Louis ever thought about kissing for real.

“Oh,” Mrs. Padley says, clearly taken aback. “You two know each other?”

There are some things people never fully come home from. Until, one day, if they’re lucky, home comes to them.

21. Do You Like My Sweater 13k

When Harry's alpha fraternity decides to host a Sadie Hawkins dance, outspoken omega Louis has a thing or two to say about it.

22. Yellow 84k**

The city of Gotham turns blood red with a new, mysterious criminal element, a beautiful woman named the Blind Cupid. She threatens to tear the fabric of the city apart, aided by her deadly protégé, the Cat. Can Batman stop them? Will he resist the bewitching allures of the Cat?

A Batman/ Catwoman AU

23. Things That Go Hump in the Night 6k

Louis goes camping. Something horrible happens. Louis is miserable.

It’s science.

24. This Thing Upon Me (Howls Like a Beast) 8k

Harry and Louis weren’t meant to be together. They’d met when they were put together through their university’s AO MatchUp, a program that set up alphas and omegas based on the schedules of their ruts and heats so they had someone to help them through it. It was pure luck that they were put together.

25. Hands Clasped Tight 44k**

Or the one where Harry and Louis are high school teachers and their students have been playing matchmaker for over a year. Little do they know, Harry and Louis are already married.

26. And the Truth Shall Set You Free (...Maybe) 17k

Betism: A religion based on the belief that the beta gender has been chosen by God to protect and defend the purity and dignity of the human race by resisting and condemning the lustful ways and flawed biology of the alpha and omega

Harry is a Betist and Louis is an alpha who runs with a bad crowd. This is what happens when two worlds collide.

27. (We Will Be) As If Chosen 35k**

There's not a royal in the world who doesn't carry some sort of secret, and Prince Louis has more than his fair share. To protect himself and his family, Louis withdrew from the public eye and tried to live a quiet life, biding his time until his sister Lottie could take the throne in his stead. Unfortunately for him, the national media and the worst person Louis has ever met team up to bring him kicking and screaming back into the spotlight.

Under the watchful eyes of millions, Louis has to figure out how to keep his carefully constructed house of cards from falling, and the first step to accomplishing that is to keep from falling in love with the irritatingly charming Prince Harry, who just won't stop showing up and trying to whisk Louis out of the constraints of his boring life.

Or: the course of true love never did run smooth, because sometimes people are stubborn and sometimes people are scared and sometimes, just sometimes, love can cause just as many problems as it solves.

28. It’ll Be 13k

Louis has always wanted children and he decides he's done waiting for love to come first. However, after adopting a baby girl just days after she's born, he quickly realizes how hard parenting is. Louis hires Harry to be his Nanny, and it all works out great. Until Louis falls in love with him.

[edoubt]

emerging

Here are some ways the Universe appears to be "talking" directly to me. i have no memory that is conscious about exactly when Katie Mottram's book _Mend the Gap_ first came to my attention. But sometime (in mid 2018, possibly quite a bit earlier) i must have read something on-line that caught my attention and caused me to add it to my "to-get" list of books that is ever lengthening (but i still manage to chip away at (enjoying the hell out of the process of reading about all sorts of interesting (to me) topics) over time). In late November or early December of 2018, my adult kids shared their Xmas lists with their aunt, uncle, my wife Michelle, each other and me. For reasons i still don't understand, i chose to jump in and interject my own "request" for a handful of books that i selected from my 'list' that i desired to possess. _Mend the Gap_ was among the half dozen or so that i submitted to my close family members at that time. Presents are opened Xmas eve (traditionally in my wife's family) at my parents' in law's place, just a few miles from our own home. This year was no different. Upon opening presents, i discovered that my sister in law Anna, her husband and my neice had gifted me _Mend the Gap_ and as i read the covers and promotional material on the first few pages while everyone was continuing to open presents, i became greatly excited. You see, i had had my own history of mental health issues, seemingly "started" by my mother's death in a car crash, which happened in April of 2009 (on a Thursday). As the rest of 2009 wore on, i became more and more dissassociated from consensual reality. Until now, i had thought that this was a road to delusional thinking. But what i experienced at that time felt more real than anything i had previously ever experienced in my life, though in hindsight at least some of what i thought and believed was in fact truly delusional. In late November of that year, things came to a head following 4 days during which i only managed to get a total of 2 hours of sleep or so (and prior to that i was also sleeping infrequently as insomnia became a bigger and bigger issue for me). At some later point, i may share more details about my story and all of my "delusions" but for right now, the main point is that i ended up in the hospital (my ride there taking place handcuffed to a gurney of an ambulance, a truly surreal experience for me, as it felt like i was in a movie when i 'woke up' and looked up at the ambulance personnel and a state police officer all trying to prevent me from hurting myself further (i had been 'medicated' at home in my bed after my father in law talked me into dropping the electric bass i was holding at the time to block the view out the window where i'd placed a computer in my back yard near a fallen tree -- i was under the impression at that time that the Universe was in danger and that without my active engagement and participation, everything would end up in an even more terrible mess than things seemed to be heading towards already -- as a result i had broken out my bedroom window and climbed in and out of it several times (cutting my left elbow pretty severely))).

In 2011 a young relative of mine, Joseph Alan Kennedy, was killed in combat in Helmand Province Afghanistan. i felt tremendously guilty because prior to that time, his mother (my cousin in law on my mother's side of my family) had asked everyone to pray for Joe and i hadn't (except for the fall of 2009, i've been an avowed atheist/agnostic my entire adult life). That event, combined with some other life circumstances, had me very close to 'falling down the rabbit hole' of insanity again. Thanks to the psychiatrist, Dr. Laurence Schweitzer, who'd been on call at the hospital where i was transported in November of 2009, and with whom i'd begun to develop a trusting relationship under his subsequent care, i managed to get through the spring of 2011 and following summer without another hospitalization. Nevertheless i felt in extreme distress and needed heavy medication to get through that period of time -- both anti-psychotics and sleeping aids.

In December of 2013, i had cut down my antipsychotic dose to a miniscule level. Dr. Schweitzer advised me at the time to just stop taking this medicine (haloperidol) completely. And so that's what i did. And i managed without it for several months. But in the spring of 2014, i disregarded Dr. Schweitzer's advice to not engage further with my grief over my dead mother. Which led to another psychotic break in early June immediately following a week-long work trip to Cleveland OH during which i swam in Lake Erie every morning. i ended up as an inpatient at the Four Winds facility in Katonah NY for three days right after my 49th birthday.

i no longer believe i'm in danger of another psychotic break. i don't hear voices, but especially over the last week following my reading of _Mend the Gap_ i have a stong feeling that everything happens "as it is supposed to". i don't know for sure what the future will bring, but i'm pretty sure that i will end up a more spiritual being than i ever would have imagined was possible. i have a stong affinity for science, which has not diminished, but i find myself now believing that there is a lot that science doesn't yet explain.

i have recently had Kazimierz Dąbrowski's theory of positive disintegration brought to my attention and have read a bit about it just in the past month or so. i'm not sure exactly where i'm at with regard to this paradigm, but my suspicion is that i'm either experiencing multi-level disintegration, or perhaps even beginning secondary integration. There are other possible "names" for this transformational process: Stanislov Grof referred to it as spriritual emergence; others might label it a Kundalini awakening. Whatever the nature of my transition, it is incredibly profound.

i care deeply about humanity and the planet and the current trajectory we 7 billion + are on scares the hell out of me. i'm not sure how any truly sane person can cope with the existential threats posed by environmental and ecological destruction, and the awfulness of various political strife between different nations, factions and other groupings of persons.

Saving the planet and honoring the Universe fully is imperative. i frankly don't have a clue how to solve such an enormous problem in terms of the specific details. But thanks to Katie Mottram, Eben Alexander IV, Karen Newell and a large number of other authors i've read and also to the many loving friends i've had and the processing/thinking we've done together, i'm convinced that the best way to proceed is to find like-minded folk and combine our energies in order to try to accomplish what seems ultimately to be an impossible task from where i sit near the east coast of the north american continent on Spaceship Earth.

Contradiction is inherent. Practically everywhere. In _Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy_, Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone advocate adopting the 'hero's journey' paradigm for one's own life, while in _Small Arcs of Larger Circles: framing through other patterns_ Nora Bateson makes a compelling case that 'leadership' is an idea whose time has come and gone due to what we understand about how much everything and everyone is interrelated. While these two thoughts are seemingly at odds with each other, the fact is that they are (at least as i see it) completely reconcilable. Heroes of story, fable and myth all have one thing in common: none of them accomplished their initially seemingly insurmountable goals alone. Universally they assembled bands of varying sizes to aid them in their quest. Bateson makes the point that every famous 'leader' from history or the present was and is not an island, but rather came to be the person they matured into due to the influences of some combination of their communities, families, upbringing, peers, environment and the world itself.

Even the very concept of hope itself is fraught with contradictions. Charlotte Joko Beck, in her book _Everyday Zen_ makes a strong case for "discarding hope" and doing without it completely. And yet Macy and Johnstone put the word in the title of their book on coping. i think the key is the modifier "active" they preceded it with. Passive hope is nothing to strive for or try to use in any way. But by *activating* hope we can overrule Joko Beck's advice, creating a useful tool in the process.

When i was five years old, my parents moved our family from New York City up into the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Our nearest real neighbor was more than a mile away from my house, and so i spent a tremendous amount of my childhood out in nature, often accompanied by my beloved viszla Czela. Exploring and fishing and living on a farm, helping out with chores as i got older and being in the woods every fall with the adults for white-tail deer hunting season gave me a lasting understanding of the natural order and interlocking cycles of life. When i was slightly older i became involved in scouting and went on camping trips regularly at all times of the year. i came to appreciate the power and majesty of the seasons as especially winter in these latitudes can be a thoroughly awesome and humbling force. For several years in a row, i also spent a full month each August at Camp Merrowvista in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where i further developed my love of and connection with nature and wilderness.

During my adult life i gradually fell out of the habit of escaping back into the wilderness. Though in recent years as i've struggled with my mental health, i've been drawn back to nature and have done more hiking, paddling and swimming out under the open skies, which has proved to be as much of a healing force as anything else.

On the morning of the final day of 2018, i was up ridiculously early sitting beside a roaring oak fire i'd made in my back yard. While it was still dark, i set off for the trailhead right where the road closes for the winter which provides access on the "back side" up in the hills between Bear and Race Mountains. i left my vehicle just at first light and while the ground was clear down in the valley and at my home, the surface of the earth was covered with snow up there at elevation. Descending down into Sage's Ravine proper, which is one of my favorite spots on the planet, a wonderful section of the marvelous Appalachian Trail, i found myself profoundly touched by the almost overwhelming beauty around me. The environment spoke directly to my soul and provided me with a calm that was previously inaccessible. As i listened to the Universe talk through the trees, rocks, rushing water, moss, snow and even my own being, i had the sudden realization that my previous bouts with manic states had become part of my past and would no longer intrude on my future. i could feel and almost catch glimpses of entities in amongst the forest and stream. i didn't and still don't completely understand what i experienced, but i see it as an important milestone on my journey to becoming a more stable, able and authentic person. My soul feels day by day that it's getting more and more in tune with the Universe as my purpose here on this planet becomes clearer and clearer. It's still a struggle dealing with so much more unfiltered input with regard to my newly opened perceptions, but i have faith that i'll gradually become more accustomed to the full force of true reality making itself directly available to me in this way.

i've always been drawn to music. Once upon a time i was a competent trumpet player. And nowadays (just in order to amuse, calm and please only myself) i sometimes noodle around on a bass guitar. But the music of others really speaks to me. i can hear and feel the Universe giving me explicit advice through song lyrics:

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose i gotta be cool, relax None but ourselves can free our minds

The timing of when i hear specific songs has been directing me with advice that seems so obviously tailored to my internal state at that particular time. It's hard to explain, but it's very real and resonant, and gives me confidence that the Universe is actually explicitly guiding me. With love and compassion towards a better instantiation of myself. Even melody, harmony and rhythm speak directly to my soul and i think always have. It's an experience that i'm not really able to explain properly with prose, though none the less real for that.

Let's make this world a better place together.

While the name(s) below that i'm signing these thoughts with are as real for me as any i've ever used, i'm choosing not to put the names that were given me by my parents here. I'm absolutely interested in making contact with any and all of you who've ever wondered if there isn't more that could be done to improve the fate of humanity, the environment, the planet and the Universe. Send me an email at ernstdoubt25@gmail.com or contact me via instagram where i use the handle calloquillick

  namaste, and endless love to all,       ~earnest 'bearfoot' doubt

[generalkenobi22]

Charted: Domesticity Stateside - Part 2

It’s been nearly a year since I posted the first part of this series, Charted: Domesticity Stateside, which documented my need for a happy, domestic ending for the Adventure Family even before I played Uncharted 4. Since then, I’ve played U4, let it change me as a person fundamentally, and almost immediately started on a sequel, which after close to a year, I’ve finally completed. So please enjoy Charted: Louisiana, Libertalia, and Lemurs! (Or, the running tally for life after Libertalia goes as follows: one marriage salvaged, two family members gained, and three attempts at trying to convince your wife that a lemur is a suitable house pet.) 

It can also be found here: AO3 - Fanfiction

The move to Louisiana is an exciting and somewhat stressful affair.

The offer for their current house comes in on a Tuesday at the close of the business day in early June. It comes in at a decent amount over their asking price, so even though they haven’t finalized anything on the new home—let alone put in an actual offer yet—Elena assures the realtor on the other end of the phone (through the smile that’s threatening to split her face in two) that she and Nate accept. When Nate hears the news, he spins Elena around, his smile mirroring hers.

“We’ve never had a plan before,” he says in response to her concerns about the timetable for the move. “Why should we start now?”

So Elena hands in her two-weeks to WFTV ABC 9 that Wednesday, much to the disappointment of Gary, who works in editing (“Viewership is gonna go down without you providing a weekly dose of explosions overseas.”), while Nate focuses all of his energy on packing up the inordinate amount of books and artifacts they’ve come to accumulate within the last three years (“How do we have seven copies of The Science of Adventure?”). They try to goad Sully into helping by offering a box of Cubans and a bottle of really good scotch. Eventually, he caves, but only in helping them load the packed boxes into the moving truck (“There’s not enough treasure in the world that could convince me to get in there; Nate’s a damn hoarder.”). They try the same thing for Charlie and Chloe, but they’re both in Berlin, no further details given (“Keep us updated though, will you?”)

Before they know it, Elena takes one last video of the old place—including reactions from Nate and Sully (which she promptly uploads to Instagram, Chloe and Charlie her first two likes)—and they’re traveling down I-12, everything packed and ready for Louisiana.

About an hour into the drive, Elena receives a call with a ‘225’ area code. Over speakerphone, the realtor tells she and Nate that their offer has been accepted, and they’ve barely hung up before Nate comments, “Guess this means we can cancel the hotel arrangements, huh?”

It’s nearly dusk by the time they finally arrive at the new place, legs and arms stiff from the close to ten-hour drive. Once they’ve done the walkthrough of the new place, they make a pact to start tackling the unpacking tomorrow. In the meantime, they both collapse on the front porch, grinning lazily into the setting sun. Nate procures a small bottle of champagne, that’s regrettably lukewarm since the ice in the cooler melted about two hours ago. He pours it into their empty Popeye’s soda cups, and they toast to their luck and their new home.

“You know what would make this place even better?” Nate eventually asks. Elena’s at his side, her head on his shoulder. He kisses the top of it.

“Hmm?” she asks as she snuggles up against him, her eyes closed against the deep orange glow from the horizon.

“If we got a pet lemur.”

ii.

Admittedly, leaving the life and moving to Louisiana ends up affecting Elena more than she thought it would. She still writes, of course, and everyone in the neighborhood is pleasant enough, but it doesn’t take long for a desire for the familiar to set in, which is how she ends up buying a pre-owned PlayStation 4 after she runs out of excuses to give to Chloe and Charlie for not getting one in the first place.

Apparently, Chloe and Charlie play shooters online

“I’m telling you,” Chloe says over Bluetooth. Elena’s still trying to work out how to turn the system on, not quite able to wrap her head around how the machine has changed in a few generations. “You’re going to love it.”

After randomly pressing buttons, Elena hears the faint beep and sees the blue light turn on when she presses the right one. She smiles at the PlayStation logo that appears on the screen and the low hum of the console. “But I don’t play competitively.”

“Yet,” Chloe assures, her voice tinny over the earpiece. “You don’t play competitively yet.”

“I don’t know, Chloe,” Elena counters. The screen is asking for her login information and a bunch of different setting preferences, and since when did a game need to be connected to the wireless? Apparently, video games became a lot more involved than the last time she played. “I think I might just be a bandicoot and fruit collecting kind of girl.”

Chloe sighs. “You’re only saying that because you’ve yet to experience the utter satisfaction of completely destroying insecure men at virtual combat and then trash talking them afterward.”

It had felt pretty great schooling Nate with Crash Bandicoot. Maybe Chloe has a point.

“Fine.” Elena’s shoulders sag as she lets out a sigh, her eyes on the screen. It’s asking for some kind of username? She wracks her brain for a moment before settling on Sunshine. The screen informs her that the name has already been taken when she hits enter, so she amends it to Sunshine07, adding the year she met Nate and Sully. That works. “But you can’t make fun of me when it turns out that I am terrible at this.”

Chloe laughs on her end. “I can make no such promise!” she protests, as if the mere thought goes against who she is fundamentally as a person. “But if it makes you feel better, Charlie is absolute rubbish at it, and I keep him around anyway.”

Another line emits static as it comes to life. “Oi, watch it!” Charlie’s voice comes in over the mic. “I hold my own well enough, thank you very much.”

“Oh, is that what we’re calling it?” Chloe asks, her smirk audible.

Charlie shrugs, or at least, that’s what Elena imagines he does. “Absolutely we are,” he assures her. “And it’s no worse than bullying children online, which I believe is your claim to fame.”

“That is absolutely not fair; it was one time!” Chloe protests, immediately on the defensive, despite Charlie’s laughter in the background. “How was I supposed to know? The foul nature of his username suggested someone nearly twice his age. All the more reason, I say, to keep young children from playing games made for adults.”

“Oh, sure,” Charlie says, still laughing, “blame the parents.”

Elena lets their back and forth play out, before focus naturally swings back to the game they’re trying to play. Turns out, she has to friend both of them before they can start playing. Within moments, she receives friend confirmations from brighteyezz and Charles_of_Arabia, and after a minimal amount of coaching, she manages to get the game inserted and loaded.

“Okay,” she says, Bluetooth mic in place, her legs pulled up and under her on the couch, and the game’s home screen illuminating the TV, “let’s take these knuckleheads down.”

There’s only a minimal amount of snickering that comes through her mic in response.

iii.

“Tango on my six. Someone take this douchebag down.”

“Say no more,” Chloe responds. Like clockwork, the guy behind Elena takes a head shot. She watches the screen as his skull explodes in a truly gratuitous display of violence and guts.

“Oh, beautiful,” Charlie chimes in. “That guy’s been a right arsehole since we started, camping at all our spawn points and mowing us down, no mercy whatsoever. Humiliate him, Bright Eyes.”

“With pleasure,” she coos, changing her mic from their private party chat to the general lobby. When she finishes, they’re down one player in the lobby, and Elena beams.

As it turns out, Elena’s really good at shooters. To the point where Chloe and Charlie actually begged her to join their clan after a few months and play with them regularly. And even though it’s only ever been about having fun and relieving stress for her, Elena can’t help feeling a sense of pride that the three of them have developed a bit of a reputation in the online community for being pretty unstoppable. Her personal stats alone are enough to keep most trolls off her back, so she generally doesn’t have to verbally retaliate. But even if she has to, she can hold her own, thanks to Chloe’s tutelage. Charlie, on the other hand, is embarrassingly bad at trash talk, much to Chloe and Elena’s amusement.

Her attention is momentarily torn from the game when she hears the front door open. Nate’s not normally home this early, and Elena’s never been fully upfront about her new gaming hobby, so it takes him a moment to adjust to the sight before him, after he toes his shoes off and dumps his bag on the floor next to them. Elena’s sitting on the edge of the couch, her body leaning forward, her headset (a minor upgrade) on as she issues commands to Charlie and Chloe. She smiles widely when he sinks into the couch next to her.

“You miss me that much that you’re talking to yourself?” he asks as he wraps his arm around her shoulders, planting a kiss on the top of her head. It’s distracting enough that she misses her next shot, giving her opponent the chance to shoot her, which he does. Chloe has a stream of expletives in response, which Elena pointedly ignores.

“Hey, you. You’re home early,” she says, covertly muting the mic and snuggling into Nate’s side. He tightens his grasp in response,

“Yeah, pretty light day for salvaging,” he explains, idly tracing random lines on her shoulder. It’s super distracting, which is how she misses another shot. On cue, Chloe and Charlie have some choice words for her. Nate’s gaze is trained on the screen, which is how his next statement comes to pass. “Did that fox with pants join the army in the sequel?”

Elena snorts. “It’s a bandicoot,” she says reflexively. “And, no. This is a completely different game.”

“It looks violent,” he concludes, which she can’t help noticing the irony after everything they’ve been through. After a beat, he adds, “Can I try it?”

She hands the controller over to him willingly (recognizing this match as a rare failure at this stage, anyway) and watches in awe as Nate somehow outdoes himself by playing abysmally. Amazingly, his hand-eye coordination is pretty terrible for someone who used to require precise dexterity to swing across buildings and caverns. Hiding her laughter becomes an impossibility when, after five deaths in a row (two of which happened as a result of pushing the left joystick too far, so his character just kept running in circles), Chloe and Charlie go ballistic.

“Elena. Sweetheart,” Chloe says slowly, trying in vain to restrain her fury and failing. “Have you hit your head and become concussed? Because that’s the only explanation I can conjure for the shit show that is your current performance.”

“Absolute bollocks! Get your head out of your arse and play like you know what a video game is,” Charlie demands, decidedly more forthcoming with his frustration.

“Guys,” she finally chimes in, switching the mic from mute. She’s giggling too hard for anything to be very coherent, but she presses on. “It’s not me, it’s Nate.”

The sound of their collective outrage (“Bloody hell,” barks Charlie) is so loud that Nate can hear it, even over Elena’s laughter. When he asks who she’s talking to, she wordlessly switches her mic to external audio, the sound of Chloe and Charlie making fun of him now projected into the living room. Nate’s ears go slightly pink, and Elena only feels a little guilty for being unable to stop laughing.

“Ha, ha, laugh it up, guys,” he shoots off sarcastically, tossing the controller back in Elena’s lap. “I may not be able to play video games, but I did discover Shambhala, you know.”

Charlie groans, and Elena pokes Nate in the side, booing at him. Chloe actually blows a raspberry in response.

“Oh, come off it, Nate. That excuse lost its appeal the first thousand times you used it.”

“Yeah,” Charlie adds, “don’t make us dislike you anymore than we already do for you being a shit player.”

iv.

When Jamison’s wife, Carla, invites Elena to join her for her yoga class late one Thursday afternoon, Elena can’t say anything but yes. Jamison and Carla were the first ones to make Elena and Nate feel welcome when they moved to Louisiana, and they consistently invite the two of them over for dinner every month. Elena can’t ignore the small amount of guilt that may or may not be playing a factor in her decision.

She can, however, ask a friend to come with her. A friend who arrived from Berlin two days ago and is currently sleeping on their couch. A friend like Chloe.

“I simply don’t understand suburbia,” Chloe says, saying the last word as though it’s the most repulsive concept she’s ever heard.

“First of all,” Elena counters through laughter, “where we live hardly classifies as ‘suburbia,’ and second”—she gestures to her stomach—“you go surprisingly soft when you’re not running for your life from some mythical, collapsing city.”

“Yes, but why must I suffer because of your choice to leave the life?” Chloe demands as she holds the studio door open.

Elena thinks for a moment. “Because you’re working on being a really good friend?”

Chloe’s head falls back as she barks with laughter. “And you are apparently working on being a really bad liar?”

“Oh, come on,” Elena coaxes. She goes so far as to link her arm with Chloe’s before they enter the studio. “It’s gonna be great!”

v.

It’s not great, for the record.

Carla neglects to mention that the yoga class she attends is hot yoga, which Elena can only compare to doing yoga smack dab in the middle of the Rub’ al Khali. Just when her body adjusted to the temperature inside the studio, the ventilation system would pump even more hot air into the confined space. She doesn’t even bother with the showers afterward, just pushes her way out through the front entrance, where she braces her hands on her thighs and gulps in the clean and comparatively cool air.

“It’s…gonna be…great, huh?” Chloe gasps, following suit as she slides down the side of the building, her legs sprawled out on the ground. Much like Elena, she’s drenched in sweat, droplets of it dripping from her hair into the red, water wicking material of her tank top. “Please be sure to engrave ‘it’s gonna be great’ on my… tombstone once they scrape my body off this sidewalk and…bury me in a shallow grave.”

“I’m so sorry,” she apologizes, unable to laugh like she normally would due to exhaustion. Unlike Chloe, Elena has on an old, baggy t-shirt, which is now plastered to her body, almost obscenely. “Remind me to—” She has to stop momentarily, her lungs stubbornly not cooperating with her desire to breathe. She collapses next to Chloe. “—Remind me to…forget it. I’m so exhausted, I forgot what I was going to say.”

“I won’t…hold it against you,” Chloe promises, trying in vain to keep her breathing even, “if you promise to never do this again.”

That makes Elena laugh. Then, it makes her cough violently. “Deal,” she wheezes.

Carla, freshly showered and rejuvenated, exits the studio, glimpses the two of them and chuckles, not unkindly, before going to get the car started.

vi.

Not even a week after arriving back stateside from Libertalia, and Nate refuses to drop the subject. Madagascar did nothing to change his mind.

“Elena—” he begins, still engrossed in whatever National Geographic article he has pulled up on the computer in her office. His furrowed brow and overall determination make her shake her head.

“No way,” Elena interrupts. One glance at the computer screen, and she knows. She just knows what her well-meaning, but beating-a-dead-horse husband is about to say. “We are absolutely not—”

“But they eat mostly plants, they’re mostly solitary, and,” Nate continues, as if Elena wasn’t speaking, “it says here…that many of them exhibit female dominance, so…y’know,” he explains by way of not explaining when Elena stares at him blankly, “they’re obviously feminists.”

Elena snorts so loudly, it covers her laughter. Mostly. “Sure, obviously feminists.”

“Yeah,” Nate says in response, grinning infectiously, “girl power and all that.”

“Nate, you are actually exceeding the levels of crazy I expect from you,” she admits. When it looks like he’s about to protest, she places her hand over his mouth. “I love you, but we are absolutely not getting a pet lemur.”

vii.

“Not it!”

Nate looks at his wife, exasperated, once they both realize they said it at the same time. Elena, mouth contorted into an ‘o’ of surprise and finger pointed accusatorily, tries to stop the grin that breaks out onto her face, but she fails.

Miserably.

“I totally said it first,” Elena claims, though it doesn’t help that she is laughing.

Nate scoffs. “You totally did not.”

“Oh, come on,” she tries again, nudging him with her shoulder. “I meant it when I said we would have to share doing paperwork.” She sighs. “If only you would carry your half of the weight.”

This time, Nate starts laughing. “Elena, you are so full of crap. I just finished a week’s worth of phone calls and permit applications for our dig in Malaysia yesterday, so don’t you start.” He scrubs a hand over his face before he catches sight of something behind her, and his eyes light up. “Okay, how about I play you for it?”

Elena’s eyebrows rise. “You sure that’s the smartest move there, cowboy?”

“Nuh-nuh-no, I learned my lesson last time,” Nate replies, leaning back in the desk chair. He gestures to the bookcase behind Elena. “No, I’m talking about those.”

She follows his line of sight to the off-brand Nerf pistols that had somehow migrated from the attic to their living room. Her smile grows larger.

“I guess if we’re completely overlooking the fact that I’m the better shot, then sure,” Elena concedes. She walks over to grab the guns and once she has, she tosses one over to Nate. He catches it singlehandedly. “Let’s get your humiliation over with quickly.”

Nate gets up from his chair and vaults over the couch, proceeding to load ammo into his gun. “You’re going to live to choke on those words, you know,” he informs her.

Elena just rolls her eyes. “Three hits,” she says. “The first one to shoot the other three times wins, and doesn’t have to do paperwork.”

viii.

Nate gives her a head start, but when he goes to search for her, he finds her almost immediately in their shared bathroom. Using some impressive gymnastics, Elena rolls past him, but he’s hot on her trail as they take their shenanigans throughout the entire house. Eventually, Elena ends up behind the couch, her gun trained squarely on Nate, who’s standing behind the island counter, his gun aimed at her.

“Well!” Nate booms, a cocky grin stretched wide across his face. “Look what we have here! Ruggedly charming adventurer, Nathan Drake, appears to be up by two, while his lovely, but losing wife, Elena, is preparing to fill out paperwork for the rest of the week.”

Without another word, Elena fires a round at him. Nate ducks, but the shot goes wide. When he comes back up, the annoyingly smug grin on his face is enough to give Elena an idea.

“Any last words?” Nate prods, spinning the toy pistol around like he’s some kind of outlaw. He has the nerve to come out from behind the counter. “Besides groveling for mercy?”

It’s Elena’s turn to grin smugly, as she watches her husband still in his tracks, the expression on his face fearful for a split second. Only when she undoes the second button on her blouse does he say something.

“What are you doing?” he asks evenly.

She responds with a full on smile, undoing another button in the process. “Let’s just say that in a war of sticks and carrots, I’m going with the latter.”

Nate’s Adam’s apple bobs once, his growing discomfort obvious. Elena takes advantage of his frozen state to approach him. “Hey!” he blanches when she undoes another button. His mouth suddenly feels dry. “We never agreed to partial nudity!”

“We never not agreed to partial nudity,” Elena corrects him, undoing the final button. She’s close enough to him that she can touch him, which she does, placing a hand on his chest. His heart pounds erratically. “I’m just playing up my strengths,” she explains with a wink.

He punctuates rolling his eyes by grasping her wrist, but he can’t seem to bring himself to actually remove her hand. “Yeah, your strength of cheating, you mean” he admonishes half-heartedly, his voice faltering as his gaze inadvertently lowers.

Sighing dramatically, Elena pulls away, and slowly starts to button her blouse. “Well, alright. I guess I can do the paperwork this week since you won. It’s only fair.”

Ignoring his pride, Nate tugs Elena back toward him and hoists her up onto the counter. “You’ll be the death of me, you know that?” he admonishes before situating himself between her legs with his hands resting dangerously high up on her thighs.

“I’m just willing to sleep with the co-owner of D&F Fortunes if it means I get out of doing paperwork for the week,” Elena admits, her smile wide.

Nate breaks into a matching grin despite all the extra forms he’ll have to fill out. It’s hard for him to think of paperwork as a loss, though, when his wife is kissing him as thoroughly as she is, their toy pistols in the foreground, completely forgotten.

ix.

“Hey—whoa, sorry!…Nathan, have you always had that birthmark on your ass?”

“SAM!”

“Elena, good to see you again. Although, admittedly, last time it was with more clothing—”

“GET OUT!”

When the door slams in his face, Sam takes his pitiful dish of green bean casserole down to the kitchen. He finds Sully’s down there among various pies and side dishes, filling a tumbler with liquor he’d helped himself to from the cabinet in the dining room.

“Can you believe all that, Victor?”

At his questioning glance, Sam tells him about his run in with his brother and Elena.

Sully slams his glass down in disgust. “The hell? What, do they have a yearly standing appointment?”

And that’s the story of how Sam accidentally walks in on Nate and Elena in a physically compromising situation the day before Thanksgiving.

x.

“So in conclusion—” Sam begins, hands held behind his back as he rocks back and forth on his heels. He and Sully had just finished up a job and gotten back from Argentina last night, but his niece had been texting him back and forth about this presentation since before then. Sure, he was exhausted, but who was he to turn her down? Especially when her preparation work had been so impressive?

“What Sam’s trying to say,” Cassie interjects, looking over at her uncle for some guidance. He imperceptibly nods, and she finds the courage to press on, “is that a lemur would actually make a really great pet, given their herbivorous diets and our house’s close proximity to exotic flora, among other things.”

From her spot on the couch, Elena narrows her gaze, first at her brother-in-law, then at her daughter. It's hard to respond with much of anything when Cassie even included a visual aid in the form of a bar graph, which is propped up in front of the TV in the living room where they all are presently. Out of her line of sight, Nate gives two thumbs up, and Cassie uses all her self-control to stop herself from beaming proudly.

“Did your father put you up to this?” Elena finally asks, fixing her gaze at Cassie, then Sam. “Or your uncle?”

“Of course not,” Cassie blurts a little too quickly. Sensing her discomfort, Sam wraps an arm around her shoulders, squeezing.

“Look, Elena,” he says, giving her his most endearing smile. Nate clearly rolls his eyes in his periphery, but he still doesn’t have a pet lemur, does he? “I think if there’s one person who has really been advocating for this all along, it’s Victor.”

“Oh, no you don’t!” Sully pops his head out from the freezer, ice cube trays in hand. He pops a couple into his tumbler on the counter, and puts the trays back where they belong. It’s not until he’s pouring liquor into the tumbler that he adds, “There’s a reason I have no horse in this race, and it’s because, I’m staying far the hell away from this. For what it’s worth though, Cassie, your mother is smart enough to see through your father’s harebrained schemes.”

Immediately, Sam deflates, and Elena turns on Nate, poking an accusatory finger into his chest. “You are the worst liar,” she accuses him at the same time Sam says to Sully, “Way to not get involved, Victor. Truly inspiring.”

Sully goes on about how Sam started all of this, but it’s Nate that addresses his wife’s accusation by saying, “I couldn’t stand by and let Cassie’s dream of having a pet lemur be broken.”

Elena doesn’t budge. “You mean your dream?”

“Technically,” he amends, lacing his hands behind his head, stretching his legs out on the ottoman in front of him, and grinning, “she’s our daughter, so really it’s our dream.”

She snorts. “You are impossible. And you,” she directs at Cassie, “despite your solid argument and blatant treachery, my answer still stands. No lemurs.”

Sam whistles, long and low. “Tough break, kid.”

Cassie crosses her arms over her chest and huffs. “Well, can we at least get some kind of pet?”

xi.

Later, when Elena finally relents and says—after speaking with Sully, who used to have one—they can get a dog, Cassie fist bumps her dad and her uncle, her smile threatening to split her face. She tells Sully they’re going to name it after him for his central involvement. He offers her a cigar to celebrate, which Nate promptly and emphatically puts a stop to.

Eventually, curiosity gets the better of him, and Nate asks Cassie how she knew she could get her mom on board with a pet.

“Well, Dad, you always say that the best way to run a con is to get the other person to believe it was their idea in the first place,” she admits.

Nate pulls her into a hug, practically beaming.

[i-am-a-fan-of-empty-spaces]

in which i revisit everything i’ve written in the past year to mine for quotes. don’t bother reading.

romance goals: no jealousy, no insecurity, no pressure, no forced friendships, no pursuit. just me, like i always am, only full of fawning adoration

“1P-LSD was a very emotional experience, intense for a guy like myself who considers himself something of a tough guy and an egghead. I had many moments-- thank God nobody saw me--- of simultaneously laughing and crying with extreme intensity. The very things in life that are pathetic... are staggeringly hilarious, and vice-versa. And for the same reasons. The crying had to do with becoming aware of how all creatures hurt and suffer at times... and the laughing is all about my instinctive knowledge that 'God' is always there with infinite forgiveness. So one minute, I'd find myself crying with shame and pathos... then the very next moment finding it all uproariously, staggeringly, cosmically funny, because I knew that God always loves me and forgives me.”

i have a fascination with fungi. the way they sprout out of bodies, the way they turn bodies into these blooming colorful gardens no longer living but also not quite dead. i dream a lot about dead things, sick things, blind and naked writhing things, things covered in beetles and ants and beautiful fungi.

“I've got a really detailed fantasy world that I escape into in my imagination when I'm lying in bed at night or driving alone, where I've been in an accident and my life was saved by transplanting my brain into the body of a ten year old girl. She was in a vegetative state and her body had been donated to medical science. The doctor performed the operation illegally and therefore had to pass me off as a real ten year old girl. In my new life, I get placed into foster care and then adopted by a family whose ten year old daughter I go to school with, and have a lesbian relationship with. I have been having this fantasy for over ten years now. I could fill thirty seasons of a bad harem anime...”

“The first time we had dinner together, I told her a story from high school about sitting on a porch swing and thinking about all the things that might happen to me, and how I never thought I'd end up in Chicago across a table from Sarah Urist. And she said, "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia," which I put in my book Looking for Alaska.”

“Pedal, since just a you when you’re sucking beneath shut a grinning wriggling, trembling spruce over nothing arms. “

“[Ikuhara] On this point, Anno-san and I differ in our way of creating. I'm not trying to connect anime and voice that much. But if I have a sentiment close to that, I think it's the complex about the body. I have moments where I think that, not just anime, but nothing can win against the human body. A while ago I was watching the Nagano Olympics on TV. There was this girl who was nothing special during her interview, but who became sublime when she started skating. It was only for instant while she was doing it, but I felt like God was dwelling in her body. A moment when I thought there was nothing more beautiful in the whole world. And it's not like her body changed, either. It's that kind of complex towards the human body that I've got. Even though my work is in anime, I have moments when I doubt we matter compared to a real body. When counting on the actors to do something, I wonder if what I'm actually looking for is corporeality.”

if i were a ghost who couldn’t move on to the next life, it would be because i wouldn’t be able to stop watching the people i love. i would be so unable to look away and so filled with longing for them and enthralled by their actions that i would forget i was dead. i would stir shit up in their lives and bring in fun and excitement. i would throw things off their shelves and cause a commotion so loud they would know it’s me.

“ The last thing I can recall while inside the van was everything switched to a birds eye view. I saw the entire accident occur but from about 50ft in the air. This is likely a vivid concussion of some sort but I can't at all remember "feeling" the crash just observing. I woke up in some random ladies arms whom was crying immensely trying to comfort me, all while I had no idea what happen. When I was watching from above I saw myself in my mothers arms but woke up to a stranger.”

“Sandwiched in-between the enthusiastic, conversation-seeking Ne and the opinioned, action-driven Te, is Fi. It’s pesky, because it’s not a dominant, so often at the time, they don’t know how they feel about things. Unlike Fe-users,talking about how they feel won’t help them solidify their feelings; they find it uncomfortable to discuss their deepest feelings. Even though they are extraordinarily kind and loving, their inability to fully put their feelings into words can make them look “cold” to outsiders. ENFPs would rather take an outsider’s perspective to their own emotions, in an attempt to understand them; they’ prefer to discuss how they reacted to something (through action … Te) than how it made them feel. Typically, when something bad goes down in their life, they work through it alone. Sometimes, they might want to open up to someone and talk about it, but the idea of doing so is so deeply uncomfortable that they suppress it, or never send that e-mail, or tear up that letter. Because their Te is such close friends with their Fi, though, they are more obviously emotional than their introverted cousins, since they’re not as good at hiding their feelings. It channels into Te, which kicks into action (and can make us cry, dammit, even if we don’t want to).

Fi is private, but it’s also directly behind Ne, which is very forthcoming in “sharing,” while channeling into Te “directness,” so often they can “over-share” when they are young, and as they get older, may become more reserved and private (particularly if being too open with their views in the past has caused them pain). They’re most comfortable using metaphors and indirect ways of expressing their emotions and although they can be very kind and helpful in a bad situation, are somewhat envious of Fe’s ability to say the right thing at the right time. Their Te enables them to act on their feelings, morals, and principles, and be confrontational if necessarily, but typically these confrontations are objections to shutting down ideas (Ne), moral judgments they disagree with (Fi), or general unfairness (Fi), rather than confrontation on their own emotional behalf. If you hurt an ENFP, they will turn on passive-aggressive behavior rather than call you out on it like a Fe-user might.”

we were stopping at a place to rest for the night. the town wasn’t right, it was probably a town of vampires. this house we stopped at had doors raised a foot and a half above the ground. inside, the window curtains were sown shut. a door leading to the next room was only a foot and a half high. a song was playing, some kind of folk song. the place was empty.

god was not there in the beginning. god robbed our mother of her children. god killed mother and cut her into 21 pieces, now she lies asleep at the bottom of the world. on the last day she will climb back to heaven, she will eat his flesh and drink his blood, she will carry us home.

“When I was about 10 my parents sent me to summer camp in Minnesota. It was a large establishment right by a thick forest. The first night we played capture the flag, and I got lost in the woods. It was getting dark out and I distinctly remember the fireflies starting to light up around me. There was one in particular which was larger than the rest, so out of juvenile instinct I thought I should try and catch it. Every time I swiped for it it would disappear and reappear further in the woods. I did this for about 5 minutes when I finally looked up and realized I was deep in the woods and it was almost pitch black. I started screaming out of fear and luckily people came to my aid. Looking back at it I know deep down that I was not chasing a firefly. I frequently look up what it could be, but honestly haven't the slightest.”

i want to tell a story about a world like where i am right now, in a town that is warm even in january, with big skies and quickly moving clouds. it will be about me and my spirit friend smoking cigarettes on roofs, and a friendly android that works at a cafe in the neighboring town, and a train that passes through the town every so often, and huge storms in the spring, and an old schoolhouse, and the smell of wet grass. we will pass our days like this for a while.

if i were to write like a manifesto for what i want to do in life, i think it would be to experience the intensity of feelings in the moment and hold them close to me and know that i’m alive, and to watch this aliveness in other people, and to celebrate it, and somewhere in there is the hope that everything, morality and God and truth, will unfold from this if I hold it closely enough.

i think when i'm sad the world and God together become this beautiful thing for me. some non-self that i want very badly to consume the self. to transform it through suffering and sex and beauty and horror. i want to throw myself into the open arms of the world. i feel very much like i'm in love a lot of the time, but not with any person. just an intensity and excitement that grows and grows and when i'm sad looms over me like the weight of heaven

“I came to this dilapidated temple when I was thirty-two. One night in a dream my mother came and presented me with a purple robe made of silk. When I lifted it, both sleeves seemed very heavy, and on examining them I found an old mirror, five or six inches in diameter, in each sleeve. The reflection from the mirror in the right sleeve penetrated to my heart and vital organs. My own mind, mountains and rivers, the great earth seemed serene and bottomless. The mirror in the left sleeve, however, gave off no reflection whatsoever. Its surface was like that of a new pan that had yet to be touched by flames. But suddenly I became aware that the luster of the mirror from the left sleeve was innumerable times brighter than the other. After this, when I looked at all things, it was as though I were seeing my own face. For the first time I understood the meaning of the saying, "The Tathagata sees the Buddha-nature within his eye."”

NEXT TIME I GO ON VACATION I WON’T BRING GLASSES OR CONTACTS. I WON’T BE ABLE TO READ ANYTHING OR SEE ANYONE’S FACE. THE WORLD WILL BE A MUDDLED BLUR. I WILL HAVE TO PRACTICE THE ART OF SURRENDER AND TRUST IN MY LOVED ONES. IT WILL BE FUN.

“writing is catharsis. it aids the reader in catharsis. it must be written as an act of catharsis. in doing it, you must feel absolutely compelled to do it by some divine force. it must be written with a beating heart if it is to have a beating heart. the best writing comes when in moments of unspeakable joy you write letters in gratitude to everything and everyone around you, without pausing to press backspace, then hide the writing away for future selves to read. it comes when in the midst of drunkenness you ramble incoherently about everything that has been happening in these past weeks because you’re sick of keeping it to yourself. it is like deep conversations.

writing is a description of the self and requires that you live honestly and keep your gaze fixed on yourself. feel intensely, spend time with your thoughts, pinpoint and dissect them in pictures and words and conversations. every feeling in your life is part of a larger map of something holy that can’t be described in words, some feeling of the Fullness of Being Alive. maybe you’re on the bus coming back from a town in the mountains late at night, and you pass by a forest, and something about it feels strange and sick and wrong. hold that feeling close, take a shitty picture of trees in the dark, let yourself feel the sickness and wrongness so much that it scares you, remember that moment. you read a poem about a stream divided by rocks, and it makes you fall apart and cry, and you don’t know why—it doesn’t matter why, copy that poem, write it on your shirt, write it in abandoned buildings, make it a manifesto. you see a picture on tumblr that’s absolutely angelic and holy. get that picture printed on a poster. hang it in your room, look at it often. over time the picture of that Something Holy will slowly become clearer. you’ll become more loving and accepting of the darkness in your own heart and in the hearts of others, you’ll become more comfortable expressing it.

writing is performance. when i was in in 9th grade, my art teacher loved absolutely everything i drew and believed i was special among her students. she asked me questions about my life, shared moments from hers. i felt like she was seeing me through my art, and that i was an interesting person, and perhaps this wasn’t true or healthy, but i was compelled by this to keep creating, creating interesting things, pretentious things, bold things. angels with holes in their hearts, flocks of crows, haunted dolls. that was the year i wanted to be a manga artist. i felt like i had something interesting to say that nobody else could say. if you want to create, you must be brave, you must believe that you’re interesting and that the contents of your heart are interesting—to yourself, to friends, to the General Public, to God? i don’t know. but if you can believe that, and art becomes a way of breathing for you, letting yourself into the world, i believe that you’ll one day write well, or express the contents of your heart beautifully however you choose to do it. 

technique does matter a lot, sure. it’s a tool for conveying, it’s how you speak to the public and to yourself. writing is an act of clarifying, technique gives you the skills to express with greater clarity. but the message you bear, the beating heart of art, that’s the real point. if you focus on making what you think is good, the technique will always follow, as you try desperate to shake out that feeling of not being able to write how you want, as you search for the right words and images in the quiet moments of your life. “

What is the creepiest thing you have witnessed out at sea? “When diving, a huge seiner net drifting towards you. It wasn't anchored or attached to anything. Just a huge whirling cloud of death, full of barnacles and dolphin skeletons and decomposing fish.”

“When you were born, your mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you cried to fill the vacuum.”

“When I was coming round from the operation, I remember the light they shone in my eyes to check for pupil contraction. It was like staring up at a moonlit sky from the bottom of well. People moved at the summit but I could not tell if you were one of them.”

after an accident, whenever a man closes his eyes, he sees a hole in a wall looking out to an opposite wall in a hallway. this persists for several years, and then one day it goes away. years later, he comes across a hallway with the same wallpaper. disturbed, he looks over the wall for holes.

“When a person relies too heavily on Fi at the expense of Te, their outlook will be too subjective. This leads to feelings of isolation or disconnectedness because you will feel like an island, i.e., you will have no way of verifying whether what you believe or value is appropriate or healthy or adaptive because you have nothing outside of your own experience to use for comparison or measurement. This is why high Fi users have an underlying need for validation. They need some way to verify the worthiness of their own beliefs and values. What they actually need is to learn that all humans share certain universal values and, until they can get in touch with those universal values through better balance with Te, they will be very prone to developing some form of low self-confidence, or they will easily fall into feeling insecure or uncertain about things.”

i think that one of my greatest assets is my ability to communicate honestly to others about my own feelings. i’m able to express my discomfort with a situation while not placing blame on them. “i feel this way right now,” but also “i have this motivation here and it might not be right and i feel bad about it” and “i understand you might feel this way and i’m not trying to invalidate that, i just want to talk”. it’s something that takes a lot of effort to act out, usually. my gut reaction is to get defensive or angry or abrasive when i feel something threatening my values or identity, and it takes quiet time alone and deliberateness and urgency to feel the need to communicate more nuanced and honest feelings. usually, it’s something that happens after a whole lot of frustration has built up with no resolution. but the fact that i can, that i have in the past put my defensiveness aside in talking to my parents and to people who have hurt me, i think it’s something i’m glad i can do. i also think it’s about a state of security, as in, there are states where it’s absolutely impossible to do this. it takes a safe place alone and security in my own worth for me to reflect without feeling my identity threatened. i don’t think suffering automatically creates moral strength—that’s an idea that gets tossed around in the bible study. i think in most people who lack self-worth already it further hardens the walls around them against the world. but i think when you finally do find a place of security, suffering can reveal who you are. the security is important, though.

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”

i am getting tired of drawing and i tried drawing today and it seemed so pointless like lines on paper, and maybe writing lacks the INSTANTANEOUSNESS and REALITY i am looking for. on nights when i am especially reckless my main thought is always that i need something new something LOUD, that broadcasts the message like a punch, that knocks the SPIRIT out of you. practice is boring, patience is boring. they say dig a six foot well instead of six one foot wells. i say dig one hundred million one foot wells with speed and recklessness until the entire top layer of soil is gone then dig another hundred million one foot wells and then continue until there is no surface and the ancient seas are all that remain. this requires no skill, only sincerity and a willingness to scream.

i think there's a tendency for some people to want to look for reasons and lessons from events in their life so they have a sense of control over what went wrong, so they can feel that it’s no longer a problem for them. the problem with this is that you’re looking for reasons as a defense instead of thoroughly figuring out what this event means to YOU. like, you may be totally right, but WHY do you need reasons for what happened? why do you need a lesson from the event? why is your first instinct for every small event in your social life to find a life lesson to learn from it? is this self-serving in any way? i would say: logic is a terrific tool for self-deception. don't look for lessons first thing. the real lessons you need to find will find you if you examine yourself enough. never have unshakable faith in these moments of insight. entertain the thoughts, let the thoughts pass and if they're right they'll show themselves to be right. it’s more important to ask the right questions than to find the right answers.

there are events in life that will absolutely change your perspective and stay with you forever. when you come across them in life, give thanks to God. but your whole life has become an attempt to maximize these moments and that misses the point. you will not climb your way to heaven through these moments. if you let go of all of these moments, the things that you need to find you will still find you. once in awhile, learn to let go of everything entirely and let God come to you.

“Artaud expressed his admiration for Eastern forms of theatre, particularly the Balinese. He admired Eastern theatre because of the codified, highly ritualized and precise physicality of Balinese dance performance, and advocated what he called a "Theatre of Cruelty". At one point, he stated that by cruelty he meant not exclusively sadism or causing pain, but just as often a violent, physical determination to shatter the false reality. He believed that text had been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique language, halfway between thought and gesture. Artaud described the spiritual in physical terms, and believed that all theatre is physical expression in space.”

“I am not ashamed of reading self-help books, or of liking them despite the fact that they do not possess the subtlety or nuance or pacing of the classics. "Show, don't tell" kind of disappears: you are being told more often than you are being shown in these sorts of reads about how to deal with feelings and emotions, which can be off-putting to like-minded fiction buffs, but I feel like my readings in fiction led me here. This is in part because I was seeking counseling in my fiction: counseling in sadness, wisdom on relationships, insights into how to stay enriched in life despite how awful life can be. Fiction can do this for sure. But at some point I felt like the slow-drip of self-help for which I was exploiting fiction - and the pressure I was placing on the form of the novel to grant me these answers - was a means by which I was misreading fiction and doing a disservice to myself.”

“at the risk of sounding super kiss-ass, though i think this is true - i don't think your personality punches people in the face. i think your personality is super magical and amazing and externalized with an uncompromising honesty and stark clarity that makes it difficult to not be changed by”

It is Thursday, April 14, 2016. I am on a bus returning to Taipei from Taichung. The ride has put me in a strange mood. I wish I could capture it for you. I’m passing by these buildings lit by colored lights, bright blue and green and red, and the night is foggy, and the lights bleed into the fog and make it glow strange colors. There are big concrete highway overpasses weaving over and under each other, illuminated by rows of street lamps giving off an orange glow. I will attach a picture if I have the time. I’m happy. The world is holding me close like a womb. I am thinking of people I know and love, people I do not yet know but would love, I’m thinking of wandering into this night with them, sitting in cafes and looking them in the eye,

excerpts from hearn letters:

i am living in a sea of endless chaotic ideas, flying from one to another at seeming random, unable to zoom out. my spirit animal is a magpie, collector of shiny objects, trapped and dying in a box of christmas ornaments.

everything in life is so terrifyingly uncertain and every rule has its exception, and i am paralyzed by the complexity of it all. my other spirit animal is the trilobite: immobile, thoughtless, asleep for eons under petrified oceans.

i float above the tops of the trees in the night and arrive at your door by morning

salvia:

“I noticed the entire courtyard starting to shift, not with my eyes. But with a very strong feeling, akin to a grand Ferris wheel starting it's cumbersome first spin after a season of dormant winter.”

“The first time I thought I was a book and my pages were flipping in the wind. Turned out I was spinning in the kitchen against the wall.”

“With eyes closed, I could see these spinning wheels diving left to right, and the force was there, a very carnival-like yet child-like force I must say.”

“The wheel is something all too common. I always get the impression that this wheel is rolling over our reality, or creating our reality in its wake.”

there’s an answer somewhere in the tangled mass of thoughts in my head, and i keep reaching in that direction, trying to bring this thing out of myself and lay it out before the both of us, but i don’t know, i feel like it’s not making sense to you. i don’t think i’m speaking the right words. when it makes sense to you, it does only in bits and pieces. i’m sorry if this comes off as harsh: sometimes i feel like you’re grabbing for familiar reference points in order to understand me.

“Honestly though, I think sometimes people just dislike someone, maybe for a legitimate reason, but then constantly look for more reasons to justify it and find it in things that don't really matter.”

“Sentimentality is simply emotion shying away from its own full implications. Behind every sentimental narrative there’s the possibility of another one — more richly realized, more faithful to the fine grain and contradictions of human experience. The distinctive characteristic of sentimental art is not, as is sometimes claimed, that it “manipulates” (all art does this in some measure) but that it manipulates by knowingly simplifying, Photoshopping or otherwise distorting the human experience it purports to represent. It isn’t sentimental for Dickens to want us to feel compassion for Jo, the homeless street sweeper; it is sentimental for Dickens to try to secure that compassion by making Jo more virtuous, humble and forbearing than any boy who ever lived.”

maybe to make art requires a kind of discipline, a kind of insistence that everything else must be sacrificed for the product, for the beauty, and i lack this discipline. i want too badly to satisfy other, momentary impulses.

“I think that sometimes people place their faith too readily in the ways in which consuming narrative or art makes us more empathetic. I feel like The New York Times puts out an op-ed every six months about empathy and reading! But Empathy and the Novel, by Suzanne Keen, basically poses a skeptical view of that and even suggests that there’s a way in which empathizing for fictional characters relieves—we feel like we’ve done our work, but there weren’t really any stakes to that work. Because empathizing with a fictional character didn’t necessitate any kind of action.”

“Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. ... Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle.”

a few years ago i went back to virginia with my parents and i thought everything would have disappeared but it didn’t. everything was still there, the people in my church hadn’t changed at all. i was invited to play tabletop RPGs with my friend again. i took a walk to my high school. the hallways there were all the same. that week i was filled with all the feelings i used to feel, that guilt and loneliness but also the longing, and i didn’t want to leave.

“In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person.”

“We have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.”

dipping hands in cool water in an empty garden. wet leaves stuck to skin.

there is a sort of joy in the scrambling of the tarot cards, like the scrambling of the contents of the mind. then in the drawing of the random cards, saying "the truth is for sure this" and believing it. surrendering the self to novelty. every act of magic is a surrender of self. the results are irrelevant.

a few gods of light and countless primordial gods

“Days, weeks, or sometimes even years later, such people may suddenly emerge from the fugue state and find themselves in a strange place, working in a new occupation, with no idea how they got there.”

“Jones (1909, as cited in Kihlstrom & Schacter, 2000) studied a patient with dense amnesia and found that although he could not remember his wife’s or daughter’s names, when asked to guess what names might t them, he produced their names correctly. “

one of inio asano’s techniques is those moments where panels are suddenly cut away but a huge spread of a single frozen moment. speech is cut away by a shocking reveal, extraneous actions of people are frozen by shock, etc.

“The first time this happened to me was when I was pregnant with my 3rd child. I heard what I thought was my husband coming home (our bedroom was upstairs), I heard the door shut and him run up the stairs, i laid in bed w my eyes closed waiting for him to get back in bed, i figured he got rained out at work. Well he didnt get back in bed and when i lifted my head to look for him there was a man standing in front of me in a running suit, he had his hood on and no face, it was shadowed out, i was sooo scared and couldnt move! then he leaned down to me with his hand reaching out to my belly--i closed my eyes really tight as i was so scared and felt sumthings weird as if something went inside my stomache.(this happened 8 years ago) throughout the pregnancy there would be times when my body would vibrate and I was unable to move, the day I gave birth to my son it happened again in the hospital only this time felt like something left my stomache”

maybe i would say at its core i see religious belief as a language that can be used to sacralize concepts. religion makes things holy, religion creates worlds where these holy-fied things become the central pivot for their reality. i want to play with this language, write stories with it, change my world over and over again in interesting and beautiful and scary and fun ways.

rule: overkill is always better than underkill. everything should always be a little bit too much. beauty should be overwhelming, sweetness sugary and cloying, music so loud it hurts. things aren’t effective on the psyche unless they have the power to threaten. the mind’s natural inclination is always to fight to remain in control, but the problem is that so long as the mind is in control it will make things ugly, because to exist is ugly. art is effective when it crushes you in between its teeth.

if someone genuinely loves something deeply and is changed by that thing and you don’t respect their love as sacred then i think you’re doing something morally wrong

maybe you ARE fucked up, but maybe (i don’t yet agree, but MAYBE) it’s not important to find out a standard for ultimate good and bad or to fix everything about you that’s bad, and instead maybe you should just do what you can to make you feel okay about yourself and group off with other people who are more or less okay with your fucked up ness. and if you still get in other people’s way and ruin stuff by oversharing or crossing boundaries or saying mean things accidentally then maybe shrug and say whatever.”

“Go higher than every height and lower than every depth. Collect in yourself all the sensations of what has been made, of fire and water, dry and wet; be everywhere at once, on land, in the sea, in heaven; be not yet born, be in the womb, be young, old, dead, beyond death. And when you have understood all these at once—times, places, things, qualities, quantities—then you can understand God.”

reading pun pun has made me more aware of just how little control we have over who we are… like, shimizu who joins a cult, and pun pun who can’t seem to connect to other people for any good reason, their lives are not all that different from mine. i think of the very real possibility i could go down some dead end road, it feels realer than it did before. usually i believe that if we follow goodness and beauty we will find fulfillment in our lives, and that this is something we can reach by being honest about our feelings. but lately i’ve been thinking that we need help from outside ourselves and a whole lot of blind luck to get there.

“York’s comment—his criticism of New Age shamanism because those shamans do not fear—is the key to understanding the unique features of this modern spirituality and the reason it has become so compelling. The person who practices modern magic doesn’t fear the jaguar’s claw or anything else (like dark supernatural forces) because on some fundamental and basic level, the person knows that the magic may not be real and so magic can be simply fun. This is not an ontological claim about magic but an observation about secular modernity. Those who practice modern magic are acutely aware that other people like themselves do not believe in magic. They set out to make the magic real in the face of a presumption of its non-realness. They are not describing an enchanted world but a re-enchanted one, which is a very different proposition, because the baseline—for practitioners—is non-enchantment.”

“Media theorist Jonathan Sterne, writing of early sound documentation and reproducibility as a result of the advent of phonography, explains how progress in aural archiving coincided with improvements in archiving the human body through embalming techniques. He writes, “…if sound reproduction simplifies vibration in new ways, if we learn to ‘hear’ other areas of the vibrating world, then it would make sense that we might pick up the voices of the dead. In this formulation, the medium is the metaphysics. The metaphorization of the human body, mind, and soul follows the medium currently in vogue””

THE BLACK BOX: in the story, there will be something like a computer terminal that connects to something like the internet. the catch is that when people use it, they go into a trance state, and because of this, what they see will be SLIGHTLY distorted by their own dreams and fears.

people who spend too much time inside the box are immersed in their minds to a degree where they begin NOT to see who they really are, they begin to get USED to seeing with their own cognitive distortions. when this happens they get more disconnected from reality. this is a type of burnout that happens frequently with the people who use the box—they have to take a break and use grounding exercises to remain grounded in reality.

one subject of collective fascination is the contents of the box from hundreds of years ago. this stuff is distorted beyond recognition, and many people believe that the distortions have turned it into something like a holy book for the collective unconscious.

one way to avoid the distortions is to fragment your personality so that the part of you that’s consciously in control of your body isn’t the part receiving information from the box. this is the origin of familiars in this world—fragmented selves who are always connected to the box, who become feral and alien but also holy and fearsome because of prolonged exposure to it.

great paradox of life: the more stuff i CAN do, the more bored i am. i'm like "yeah this is alright but i could be doing something better". but when i'm on a vacation with no internet, every game and anime i have on my computer is suddenly way cooler. boredom relies on the promise of better things.

“A mandorla is a vesica piscis shaped aureola which surrounds the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary in traditional Christian art. It is commonly used to frame the figure of Christ in Majesty in early medieval and Romanesque art, as well as Byzantine art of the same periods. The term refers to the almond like shape: “mandorla” means almond nut in Italian. In icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the mandorla is used to depict sacred moments which transcend time and space, such as the Resurrection, Transfiguration, and the Dormition of the Theotokos. These mandorla will often be painted in several concentric patterns of color which grow darker as they come close to the center. This is in keeping with the church’s use of Apophatic theology, as described by Dionysius the Areopagite and others. As holiness increases, there is no way to depict its brightness, except by darkness.”

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Space 1889, Barry Windsor Smith, Tokien, Prydain

Popular Culture (DVS Press): If you needed more proof that the obsession with fictional corporate franchises has a religious overtone to it, here is a major filmmaker advertising just that. When my viewers were upset about the corporate destruction of Star Wars, calling the franchise a cultural institution, I thought it a bit hyperbolic – after all, these are just stories, and you can’t uncreate what George Lucas did. I see things better now. Star Wars is part of the religious reverence for popular franchises.

RPG (Matthew J. Constantine): Way back in the 80s when I was a wee lad and just getting into tabletop RPGs, I used to see Space 1889 on the shelf at a local game store and I thought it looked pretty cool. Somewhere around there, my father picked up a copy, and I used to thumb through it a bunch.  There was something in the setting that really hit a lot of my buttons. I was an Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne fan, so that was probably enough. But the setting had something that drew me in.

Comic Books (ICV2): Marvel Comics announced Conan the Barbarian: Coming of Conan, the first volume of collected Conan books restored for The Original Marvel Years Epic Collection, for release into trade in June 2020. Conan’s adventures would become legend, but before he became king, he was Conan the Barbarian. In this new trade paperback, Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith bring Robert E. Howard’s barbarian to four-color life, and have restored the art to match the epic majesty of their original editions.

Cinema (Amatopia): So this Birds of Prey movie didn’t do so hot. The usual suspects are blaming misogyny among the movie-going public. The other usual suspects are blaming a marketing campaign that specifically told men that this movie was not for them. Now, both are apocryphal, as I have not found men telling other men not to see this movie because it features women, and I have also not found people involved with the making of the movie telling men “This movie is not for you.”

Tolkien (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): we now know that Tolkien was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least three times: in 1961, when he was nominated by C. S. Lewis. in 1967, when his name appeared on the (alphabetical) long list as #58 of 70 nominees. In 1969, when he was #90 on the long list of 103 names. So far as I know he did not make the short list any of these times.

Weird Fiction & Appendix N (Goodman Games): Without August Derleth (1909-1971), you probably wouldn’t have that Cthulhu bumper sticker on your car, that Cthulhu for President poster, and certainly not that Plushie Cthulhu you have staring down at you from your geek-memorabilia shelf.  Not that Cthulhu would not exist, but he (it?) would be just one more forgotten character in a series of stories by an author unknown except to the most ardent of horror literati. Howard Philip Lovecraft’s greatest creation and most if not all of his fiction would have passed into obscurity if not for August Derleth’s founding of Arkham House publishing.

Fiction (DMR Books): These are stories of Jean Ray, who was known as “The Belgian Poe.” Other writers he was similar to are H. P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, and Guy de Maussapant. I first read Ray’s fiction in the doorstopper anthology The Weird by Jeff and Anne VanderMeer which reprinted his stories “The Mainz Psalter” and “The Shadowy Street.” Reading these stories, I felt like I did when I first read Lovecraft. They were tales of cosmic horror of immense power and imagination. I decided I would seek out more of his fiction.

RPG (Black Gate): For twenty years, the folks at Privateer Press have been creating games, primarily set in their Iron Kingdoms steampunk fantasy setting. They began with a series of RPG volumes, including an award-winning trilogy of adventures from 2001. These adventures, later collected into The Witchfire Trilogy, was built on the D20 System from Dungeons and Dragons 3E. Then Privateer Press really came into their own with the introduction of the Warmachine miniature wargame, focusing on armies that control massive metallic warjacks, one of the iconic creatures from their Iron Kingdoms setting.

T.V. (Dark Worlds Quarterly): When I was in graduate school, one of my

favorite television shows was Highlander.  I’d seen the first and second movies, and while I’d enjoyed them, it was the TV show that really captured my imagination and made me think about immortals and immortality. A movie is limited to approximately two hours. By contrast, a weekly show has a lot more time to develop characters, backstory, plots and subplots, and story-arcs that can last for months or even years.

Fiction (Epoch Times): In 1907, the man who composed these verses won the Noble Prize for Literature at the remarkably young age of 41. He also wrote hundreds of short stories and several novels. Many of these were made into films in the 20th century, among which were “The Jungle Book,” “Kim,” “Gunga Din,” “Wee Willie Winkie,” “Captains Courageous,” “Soldiers Three,” and “The Man Who Would Be King.” (Reader, if you haven’t seen this last film, starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer, treat yourself to a great movie this winter.)

Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): A couple of years ago, Superversive Press announced a series of 12 volumes each containing short stories based on the classic planetary system. 9 were based on the planets, and two were based on the sides of the moon. Each volume would contain stories science fiction, fantasy, horror, and weird fiction, with everything in between. No genre style was off limits. All that mattered was matching tone and theme. As a themed series of short story anthologies, it was quite ambitious.

Retro-Science Fiction (25 Years Later): There are two closely-knit, though not necessarily always interchangeable, subgenres of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Raypunk, or in architectural design circles referred to as Raygun Gothic, is the retrofuture with an eye for a bright future. Atompunk generates dystopian vibes and warns of a dreaded future in which the atomic bomb desecrated all humankind. Atompunk is bleak and afraid. Raypunk is quite excited for what tomorrow has in store.

Cinema (Jon Mollison): Bollywood often gets bandied about as an alternative to Hollywood fare by those cut back on consumption of it’s anti-American resentment.  Taken in by the flashy colors, the obvious national pride of the productions, and for some strange reason the song and dance numbers that break out on the regular, they seek solace in alien spectacle.  Personally, I find the sheer foreign-ness of Bollywood off-putting in much the same way I find anime incomprehensible. . . Enter Furious, the Russian made story of 17 brave warriors who stood up to a full Mongol horde.

Art (Down the Tubes): The Windsor-Smith Studio announced the completion of Monsters, the long awaited graphic novel by Barry, last December, and that the project is on track for a mid-2020 release, but a publisher was not revealed. Assuming it will be launched through traditional distribution routes and not solely through the Windsor-Smith Studio official web site, you’d expect a solicitation through Diamond Previews might soon be in the offing.

Fantasy Fiction (Superversive SF): To both spend time with my children and give them literary food to build their minds, I recently read to them THE CHRONICLES OF PRYDAIN. For them, it was the second reading, but they were too young to remember the first. This time, they were begging for me to read more each night. The stories of Taran and the companions, Fflewddur Fflam, Gurgi, and Eilonwy not only filled their imaginations with adventure but taught them how dragons can be slain (paraphrasing of G.K. Chesterton).

Tolkien (Tentaculii): In August 1955 L. Sprague de Camp reviewed new Conan books and The Fellowship of the Ring, in Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1955. Worth reading right across the spread, as it’s ‘all of a piece’. For those who have somehow not yet enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, note that his review has plot spoilers for the first volume. At that time the second volume was not yet published. Camp must surely have here been the first to draw the comparison between the modus operandi of the ring in the Conan novelette “The Phoenix on the Sword” (1932) and The Lord of the Rings.

Sensor Sweep: Space 1889, Barry Windsor Smith, Tokien, Prydain published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[bluewatsons]

Maria Bustillos, Lester Bangs: Truth-teller, The New Yorker (August 21, 2012)

Every reader, starting from childhood, draws his own map of the world of letters. There is liable to be some outside guidance here and there, naturally. Certain landmarks are supplied to us, say in English class. But teachers aren’t found only in school. As a kid, my chief literary mentor was the rock critic Lester Bangs, who wrote for Creem magazine and The Village Voice in the seventies and early eighties. He shaped my nascent taste, and taught me to read much the way I still read now. And as much as I relied on his irresistible humor and wisdom for advice on how best to blow my birthday money at the Licorice Pizza record store, I sought him out still more to learn about books, in particular the forbidden and arcane books no conventional teacher would ever mention.

Lester Bangs was a wreck of a man, right up until his death in April of 1982, at the age of thirty-three. He was fat, sweaty, unkempt—an out-of-control alcoholic in torn jeans and a too-small black leather jacket; crocked to the gills on the Romilar cough syrup he swigged down by the bottle. He also had the most advanced and exquisite taste of any American writer of his generation, uneven and erratic as it was.

Bangs, who was born in 1948 and grew up in El Cajon, California, had been driven out into the wider world by a complicated, shambolic family: his mother, Norma, was a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and his father, Conway, was an incorrigible drunk. Many imaginative kids who feel trapped in oppressive surroundings find solace, pleasure, excitement, and every other kind of relief in music and literature: in Bangs’s case this tendency was exceptionally pronounced. The community of Witnesses Bangs’s family belonged to believed in an end-is-nigh ideology, and they disapproved of Christmas presents, birthday parties, and education beyond reading the Bible. Here is the root, perhaps, of the seductive ease and fluidity with which Bangs riffed on culture high and low. As the Witnesses equally rejected Coltrane, Miles Davis, Superman comics, and science fiction, so did this rebellious son love and accept them all equally and on the same plane. Bangs’s biographer, Jim DeRogatis (“Let It Blurt”), described Bangs’s nascent rebellion—and his growing sense of the untrustworthiness, incompetence, and hypocrisy of authority.

“The drawer where I kept my Classics Illustrated collection was subject to stringent, arbitrary and rather sudden swoops of censorship,” Les wrote at age twenty. “Things like ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells and ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ by Jules Verne, my literary mentor of the third grade, would suddenly appear in ripped piles atop the ashes when I’d go out to empty the trash into the incinerator on a winter morning. My mother thought science fiction was demented nonsense; all the Witnesses do. They hold that since the Bible never mentions life on other planets, there must not be any, and no one can sway them from their conclusions.”

And yet Norma indulged Lester enough that he seems to have managed a childhood of nonstop reading, listening, writing. “Days home from school faking flu I would put Trane on loud … and stand up on a hassock reading Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’” he wrote. But there are indications, too, that mother and son were very close. When Bangs found himself broke and washed up, his mother and sister would enclose sawbucks along with the Watchtower tracts they sent him. They had all shared Conway’s disgrace and death: they loved him, it seems, but he died in a fire, drunk and alone, having fled the family in shame.

The adult world outside Bangs’s childhood home bore unmistakable evidence of the same weaknesses he’d discovered inside it. The false Donna Reed visions of a happy, healthy, snow-white America of the postwar years, the disillusionment of the Vietnam war, and Nixon’s downfall; everywhere, the rebellion that had begun to precipitate in the Summer of Love now saturated the air and fermented. Bangs developed a pure hatred of the lies and whitewashings of religion and government, his mutiny balanced against a bone-deep love of the truth—no matter how messy or unpretty it might turn out to be—which he equated with the refuge he’d found in literature and music. In fact, the messier, the more “real” art could be, the better. He talked about this in what might be his most famous review, of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks”:

[T]he fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled almost to none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid … [“Astral Weeks”] assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what’s more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction. It sounded like the man who made “Astral Weeks “was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison’s previous works had only suggested; but … there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work.

Along with many of his contemporaries, Bangs concluded that if “authority” was not to be trusted—and clearly, it wasn’t—then whatever “authority” detested must be O.K., or probably great. Hence the reactionary excesses of the nineteen-seventies, the chancy legacy of “don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Cocaine: a pure plant-derived substance that wouldn’t hurt you. Government: barely worth ignoring. If the squares were in favor of monogamy, then monogamy must be avoided at all costs, whether it appealed to you or not.

As for Bangs’s audience, the children of those years were far more sheltered from adult culture than they are now. While the rock stars whom we so admired were getting high and indulging their vast sexual appetites, the adults who were in charge of children were hell-bent on terrifying us with tall tales about sex and drugs and rock and roll: take acid and you might throw yourself out a window, certain you could fly, or become permanently convinced that you were a glass of orange juice. The cruel fates of these mythical victims were transparently bogus even to ten and twelve year olds, particularly those whose older siblings were already getting us stoned. Growing up at that time felt something like “The Truman Show”: the young intuited that they might break through the papier-mâché walls at any moment and into the “real world,” which probably really was scary but at least would be real. We sought reliable guides who wouldn’t lie to us, infantilize us, or sugar-coat anything, however flabby and wild-eyed they might be.

Sure there were other magazines and there were other writers. But for a certain cohort of bookishly-inclined kids, there was only one magazine and only one writer. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to learn that my contemporary, the late David Foster Wallace, had dedicated his first co-written book, “Signifying Rappers,” to Lester Bangs.

Bangs, then, was a moralist. He understood that what young people wanted was something still more than to break free of parental bonds. We wanted to know exactly what was being hidden from us. Bangs’s great gift to the kids who formed his most passionate following was the news that this information was available to us; it could be found in books.

It would be difficult to say where the expression of Bangs’s moral universe was clearest, because he’d habitually compress a sublime insight into any old photo caption or throwaway remark, in whatever throwaway piece about whatever throwaway band. But a lot of fans, I suspect, would nominate the aforementioned review of “Astral Weeks” for the honors.

“Astral Weeks,” insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boils down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.

All this would send the questing reader straight to “Les Fleurs du Mal.” There was scarcely a book mentioned during Bangs’s tenure at Creem that I didn’t eventually hunt down (including a new edition of Borges’s “The Aleph”; I couldn’t make head or tail of that.)

In this way, a whole generation of kids was led to see “subversive” or countercultural literature through the lens of rock and roll—and also to become attuned to a new kind of critical voice, a voice far more intellectually honest than that of the academic critics. Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” holds itself at a lofty, self-regarding remove from its determinedly hip subject matter, but Bangs never held anything at arm’s length in his life; he was rushing headlong into the sea of the world, arms thrown wide open, to embrace it, to drown in it.

Let’s take “Of Pop and Pies and Fun: A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review, or, Who’s the Fool?,” published in Creem in 1970. I was too young to have read this when it came out; I would have read it in one of the thick bound volumes I used to spend summer afternoons with at the library, some years later. This is just to give an idea of the fun that Bangs could provide in such an afternoon, if you were a young teen-age fan fiendishly devoted to the Stooges and their “crazed quaking uncertainty.” Because Bangs had already won you over with his uncannily exact description of your own love of the Stooges: “an errant foolishness that effectively mirrors the absurdity and desperation of the times, but … they also carry a strong element of cure, a post-derangement sanity.”

The perfection of this assessment led you breathlessly through the rest of the piece, which mentioned: Malcolm Muggeridge, the Panthers, the Yips, Holden Caulfield, “I took acid four days ago and since then everything is smooth with no hangups like it always is for about a week after a trip?” (ugh, speak for yourself, Lester); “fantasies of a puissant ‘youth culture,’” “Jimmy Page’s arch scowl of supermusician ennui,” Mountain, Cream, Creedence, “imagine throwing a pie in the face of Eldridge Cleaver! Joan Baez!” “the onetime atropine-eyed Byronic S&M Lizard King,” an MBE returned, “a giant pie stuffed with the complete works of Manly P. Hall,” “that infernal snob McCartney and those radical dilettante capitalist pigs the Jefferson Airplane,” Marxists, A. A. Milne, Mick Jagger (“a spastic flap-lipped tornado writhing from here to a million steaming snatches and beyond in one undifferentiated erogenous mass, a mess and a spectacle all at the same time”), “the bastion (Bastille) stage,” “the oppressor is fat and weak, brothers!”

Artaud, Tinkertoys, épater la bourgeoisie, Ed Ward, the “I Ching,” sock hops, “A.B. Spellman’s moving book ‘Four Lives in the Bebop Business,’” “Trout Mask Replica,” “the essence of both American life and American rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Mark my words.”

“Some peglegged Golem hobbling toward carny Bethlehem,” Porky Pig, “beautiful Pauline Kael.”

It ends like this:

Some of the most powerful esthetic experiences of our time, from “Naked Lunch” to Bonnie and Clyde, set their audiences up just this way, externalizing and magnifying their secret core of sickness which is reflected in the geeks they mock and the lurid fantasies they consume, just as our deepest fears and prejudices script the jokes we tell each other. This is where the Stooges work. They mean to put you on that stage, which is why they are super-modern, though nothing near to Art. In Desolation Row and Woodstock-Altamont Nation the switchblade is mightier and speaks more eloquently than the penknife. But this threat is cathartic, a real cool time is had by all, and the end is liberation.

Don’t even doubt that I looked up every single book, every musical reference, hell every single word I didn’t understand. You bet your sweet bippy, I did.

Bangs openly lamented having been born too late to hang with the Beats, but he loved William Burroughs and wrote about him constantly. Suburban librarians generally hadn’t the faintest clue what was in any of these books (or maybe, just pretended not to) and any curious teen-ager could borrow them freely at the public library, or buy them at a bookshop, head shop, or thrift shop. “Naked Lunch” certainly made a striking contrast with, say, “The Catcher in the Rye,” a book you might be reading at school. I was surprised to find, returning to “Naked Lunch” just a few years ago, how full of sap and hilarity it still is. The funniest thing is that “Naked Lunch” turns out to be a moralistic book, making a better, truer, scarier case against becoming a junkie than whatever nonsense you were liable to be hearing in health ed.

The literature of mysticism and the occult, representing as it did the anti-religious, was also of interest during this time; parents were still attending church regularly. Hence the popularity of unreadable Satanist tracts, astrology, Aleister Crowley, and assorted metaphysicians of all nations. What did the anti-religions have to say? I can still remember the pseudo-mystical mantra-recommendation sung by Todd Rundgren on the album, “Initiation”: “Steiner, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, and Boooo-dah.” I went dutifully along to the library to investigate and was soon bored out of my tree. By golly, that Madame Blavatsky is a pill. In general, you were liable to get some crackpot literary recommendations from your favorite rock stars. But Bangs could draw the marrow forth even from the metaphysicians. In the essay, “James Taylor Marked for Death,” he wrote:

Number one, everybody should realize that all this “art” and “bop” and “rock-’n’-roll” and whatever is all just a joke and a mistake, just a hunka foolishness so stop treating it with any seriousness or respect at all and just recognize the fact that it’s nothing but a Wham-O toy to bash around as you please in the nursery, it’s nothing but a goddam Bonusburger so just gobble the stupid thing and burp and go for the next one tomorrow; and don’t worry about the fact that it’s a joke and a mistake and a bunch of foolishness as if that’s gonna cause people to disregard it and do it in or let it dry up and die, because it’s the strongest, most resilient, most invincible Superjoke in history, nothing could possibly destroy it ever, and the reason for that is precisely that it is a joke, mistake, foolishness. The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. I could even be an asshole here and say that “Nothing is true; everything is permitted,” which is true as a matter of fact, but people might get the wrong idea. What’s truest is that you cannot enslave a fool.

Here was one of Crowley’s favorite notions (“Nothing is true; everything is permitted,”), by way of Nietzsche, but Bangs brought it out of occult Thelemist incomprehensibility and into the question of discovering a practical intellectual justification for the satisfaction of every appetite. This was the way the twenty-somethings we admired were living. Why these strictures? What good were they? What if we simply chose to live real life in the U.S.A. entirely unhampered by any of them at all? It took some time, but eventually one inevitably blundered into Nietzsche himself, and asked the old question from a philosophical or logical, rhetorical or moralistic perspective. Was nothing true? Was everything permitted? What was spiritual freedom? Was Kerouac free? Was Burroughs? Was Bangs?

What he was really leading us to was the one true church of intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness. There was subtlety and elegance in his reasoning, generosity, and the best kind of skepticism: the skepticism that turns back on the author himself. This last aspect of Bangs’s writing was the most revelatory to me. It was the virtue I sought most to emulate, then and now.

Indeed no other writer gave me this feeling again so purely until I ran across David Foster Wallace, so many years later, and found he’d learned the very same thing; I suspect he learned it from the same doomed, messed-up, wounded, alcoholic genius of a teacher.

In 1977, Bangs accompanied the Clash on tour, which resulted in an immense three-part interview published in the NME.

Finally [Mick Jones] looked me right in the eye and said, “Hey Lester: why are you asking me all these fucking questions?”

In a flash I realized he was right. Here was I, a grown man … motoring up into the provinces of England, just to ask a goddamn rock ‘n’ roll band for the meaning of life! Some people never learn. I certainly didn’t, because I immediately started in on him with my standard cultural-genocide rap: “Blah blah blah depersonalization blab blab blab solipsism blah blah yip yap etc. …”

“What in the fuck are you talking about?”

“Blah blab no one wants to have any emotions anymore blab blip human heart an endangered species blah blare cultural fascism blab blurb etc. etc. etc. …”

And even though this was meant for kids to read, note that there’s not a particle of condescension in it. That, too, made young people love and trust Lester Bangs with unswerving devotion. Indeed I’ve never swerved once in all these years.

[evnoweb]

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind

There are a lot of options if you want to bring programmable robots to your classroom. One I discovered this summer and have fallen in love with is Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind. It is a build-a-robot kit designed to introduce children ages six and up to coding and robotics as well as the fun of problem-solving and creative thinking. The robot starts in about thirty pieces (there are so many, I didn’t really count them). You don’t use all of them in one robot, just pick those that will make your robot do what you want. The completed robot can move around on wheels, make sounds, light up like a flashlight, sense distance and movement, twist and turn, follow a maze, or whatever else your imagination can conjure up.

But don’t be confused. The goal of this kit is as much about building the robot as having fun exploring, experimenting, and tinkering.

What is Robo Wunderkind

Robo Wunderkind is an award-winning robotics kit that lets young children build an interactive robot and then program it to do what they want. It can be used at home, in school, or as an extracurricular tool for teaching STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). The box includes a bunch of color-coded parts, a few instructions, and a whole lot of excitement. The builder’s job is to connect the pieces into the robot of their dreams, program it to do what they need, and then start over.

Fair warning: This robot doesn’t look like the famous humanoid robots of literature–C3PO or Marvin the Paranoid Android (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), with arms, legs, and a head. It’s more like something you might construct from Lego Mindstorm though easier to set up, build, program, operate, and decode. I’ve used both and hands down would start my younger students with Robo Wunderkind. I agree with Tech Crunch when they say:

“You won’t build a robot as sophisticated as a robot built using Lego Mindstorms. But Robo Wunderkind seems more accessible and a good way to try robotics before switching to Arduino and Raspberry Pi when your kid grows up.

How to get started

If I were to rate myself with robotics, I might be closer to a 5 than a 10. I approach the task of building my own with a small degree of trepidation. I tell you this because, if I can build a robot with this system, any six-year-old (and up) can.

To get started, I needed a mobile device (like an iPhone, Android phone, or an iPad–the latter is recommended), a Bluetooth connection, and a risk-takers mentality. That’s it! No plugs, electricity, logins, registrations, software, or magic codes. The kit I received from Sunburst included all the basic pieces like wheels, sensors, motors, a cable, connectors, and lights.

I started with what’s called the Main Block–a big orange rectangular shape with a battery, CPU, accelerometer, and a speaker. Everything else will be attached to it. Since it needed to be charged, I plugged it in and downloaded the two apps while I waited:

Robo Live

Robo Code

Once the Main Block was fully charged, I activated Robo Live, planning to complete one of its starter projects. The first step was for the app to recognize my Robo, which it didn’t. Turns out, I needed a quick firmware update, delivered via WiFi. That done, I started building the Driver project detailed in the Robo Live Workshop. It couldn’t have been easier. It listed all of the required parts and how to connect them. When I did this properly, the app beeped, like a congratulations. When the project was completed, I could swivel the 3D image and compare it to what I had built.

Spot on.

The process was quick, intuitive, and easy to understand. The connections between the parts are snug–no danger that they will disconnect.

Robot built, I moved on to the first app, Robo Code, where I program my robot to do something clever. Robo Code simplifies this activity by placing all of the coding tools at the bottom of the screen. All I had to do was drag-and-drop, connect them the way I’d like, customize where that was available like changing colors or making a light brighter or dimmer, and then test it with the Go button. When I got stuck (once–really, only once), there was a help button that explained what each icon means and what the underlying choices provide.

After running through a few more sample programs, the concepts snapped into place. From then on, I could build the robot quickly and program it to do a wide variety of simple actions.

Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind Education Robotics Kit is robust with plenty of projects and robot parts to entertain students. The Advanced Upgrade Kit includes six more parts similar to what is found in the Education Kit–like a light sensor, motion sensor, LED display,  and RGB LED. This is perfect for longer robotics programs and/or older students.

Suggestion: I started on my iPhone but quickly switched to my iPad. The code symbols are a bit small for a smartphone screen and become hidden under the iPhone’s lower coping. 

The apps

Two apps are recommended to get started–Robo Code and Robo Live. These can be located quickly in the App Store or Google Play by scanning the QR code included in the instructions:

Go ahead–scan the image above on your smartphone or tablet to get one of the apps. I’ll wait. Done? OK. With these two apps, students can build predesigned projects as well as customized projects that they invent themselves.

Robo Code

Robot Code allows students to code everything from simple to complicated as they bring their robot to life. Its visual drag-and-drop interface, similar to other coding apps students have probably used (like Scratch or Lightbot), makes coding Robo Wunderkind quickly accessible. With this app, students can build a flashlight, a distance meter, a distance alarm, an obstacle avoider, and a driver.

Robo Live

Robo Live lets students control the robot they’ve already built in real time using easy drag and drop functions located on the app’s dashboard.

Robo Wunderkind Curriculum

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is fifty+ hours of activities that teach and reinforce core robotics skills. Lessons are each about five hours and cover topics like road safety, math, art, and nature studies. There’s also a separate set of activities for afterschool programs, summer camps, and workshops.  The curriculum includes a comprehensive teachers’ guide that trains educators in the Robo Wunderkind robots, the apps, the projects, and the activities. Each lesson is categorized according to its focus and includes the difficulty level, goals, vocabulary, materials required, activity stages, big ideas, age level, steps, and expected learning outcomes. There’s also a helpful Student Journal available so students can take notes, review, quiz themselves, and track their progress.

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is aligned with Common Core Math, Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening Standards; ISTE; CSTA Computing systems and Algorithms & Programming Standards; and NGSS Standards.

What I really like about Robo Wunderkind

It’s Lego compatible. With Lego adapters (most sold separately), kids can build a hybrid robot of Robo Wunderkind modules and Lego bricks.

It’s not one piece. You build your own robot so each student’s is different.

Module parts are color coded according to their actions so you won’t confuse connectors with sensors.

App instructions are very clear. They show exactly what to put where and the app pings at you when it’s done correctly. The ability to rotate it in 3D–I can’t overstate how useful that is.

The robots aren’t just for play. For example, I made a flashlight–a torch–with a green light, and it works magnificently.

Just to spotlight how intuitive Robo Wunderkind is, some of the projects took me less than five minutes to complete.

It comes in German, Swedish, and English–excellent.

Who will love this robot

kids who love Legos

kids who think outside the box

kids who love fiddling with mobile devices

kids who like remote controlled toys but always want them to do something they aren’t designed to do

teachers looking for clever STEAM and STEM projects

***

If you like Legos but wish your creations moved, talked, and could run through a maze with you, you will love Robo Wunderkind.

Want a little more? Here’s a clever video:

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind published first on https://medium.com/@DigitalDLCourse

[corpasa]

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind

There are a lot of options if you want to bring programmable robots to your classroom. One I discovered this summer and have fallen in love with is Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind. It is a build-a-robot kit designed to introduce children ages six and up to coding and robotics as well as the fun of problem-solving and creative thinking. The robot starts in about thirty pieces (there are so many, I didn’t really count them). You don’t use all of them in one robot, just pick those that will make your robot do what you want. The completed robot can move around on wheels, make sounds, light up like a flashlight, sense distance and movement, twist and turn, follow a maze, or whatever else your imagination can conjure up.

But don’t be confused. The goal of this kit is as much about building the robot as having fun exploring, experimenting, and tinkering.

What is Robo Wunderkind

Robo Wunderkind is an award-winning robotics kit that lets young children build an interactive robot and then program it to do what they want. It can be used at home, in school, or as an extracurricular tool for teaching STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). The box includes a bunch of color-coded parts, a few instructions, and a whole lot of excitement. The builder’s job is to connect the pieces into the robot of their dreams, program it to do what they need, and then start over.

Fair warning: This robot doesn’t look like the famous humanoid robots of literature–C3PO or Marvin the Paranoid Android (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), with arms, legs, and a head. It’s more like something you might construct from Lego Mindstorm though easier to set up, build, program, operate, and decode. I’ve used both and hands down would start my younger students with Robo Wunderkind. I agree with Tech Crunch when they say:

“You won’t build a robot as sophisticated as a robot built using Lego Mindstorms. But Robo Wunderkind seems more accessible and a good way to try robotics before switching to Arduino and Raspberry Pi when your kid grows up.

How to get started

If I were to rate myself with robotics, I might be closer to a 5 than a 10. I approach the task of building my own with a small degree of trepidation. I tell you this because, if I can build a robot with this system, any six-year-old (and up) can.

To get started, I needed a mobile device (like an iPhone, Android phone, or an iPad–the latter is recommended), a Bluetooth connection, and a risk-takers mentality. That’s it! No plugs, electricity, logins, registrations, software, or magic codes. The kit I received from Sunburst included all the basic pieces like wheels, sensors, motors, a cable, connectors, and lights.

I started with what’s called the Main Block–a big orange rectangular shape with a battery, CPU, accelerometer, and a speaker. Everything else will be attached to it. Since it needed to be charged, I plugged it in and downloaded the two apps while I waited:

Robo Live

Robo Code

Once the Main Block was fully charged, I activated Robo Live, planning to complete one of its starter projects. The first step was for the app to recognize my Robo, which it didn’t. Turns out, I needed a quick firmware update, delivered via WiFi. That done, I started building the Driver project detailed in the Robo Live Workshop. It couldn’t have been easier. It listed all of the required parts and how to connect them. When I did this properly, the app beeped, like a congratulations. When the project was completed, I could swivel the 3D image and compare it to what I had built.

Spot on.

The process was quick, intuitive, and easy to understand. The connections between the parts are snug–no danger that they will disconnect.

Robot built, I moved on to the first app, Robo Code, where I program my robot to do something clever. Robo Code simplifies this activity by placing all of the coding tools at the bottom of the screen. All I had to do was drag-and-drop, connect them the way I’d like, customize where that was available like changing colors or making a light brighter or dimmer, and then test it with the Go button. When I got stuck (once–really, only once), there was a help button that explained what each icon means and what the underlying choices provide.

After running through a few more sample programs, the concepts snapped into place. From then on, I could build the robot quickly and program it to do a wide variety of simple actions.

Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind Education Robotics Kit is robust with plenty of projects and robot parts to entertain students. The Advanced Upgrade Kit includes six more parts similar to what is found in the Education Kit–like a light sensor, motion sensor, LED display,  and RGB LED. This is perfect for longer robotics programs and/or older students.

Suggestion: I started on my iPhone but quickly switched to my iPad. The code symbols are a bit small for a smartphone screen and become hidden under the iPhone’s lower coping. 

The apps

Two apps are recommended to get started–Robo Code and Robo Live. These can be located quickly in the App Store or Google Play by scanning the QR code included in the instructions:

Go ahead–scan the image above on your smartphone or tablet to get one of the apps. I’ll wait. Done? OK. With these two apps, students can build predesigned projects as well as customized projects that they invent themselves.

Robo Code

Robot Code allows students to code everything from simple to complicated as they bring their robot to life. Its visual drag-and-drop interface, similar to other coding apps students have probably used (like Scratch or Lightbot), makes coding Robo Wunderkind quickly accessible. With this app, students can build a flashlight, a distance meter, a distance alarm, an obstacle avoider, and a driver.

Robo Live

Robo Live lets students control the robot they’ve already built in real time using easy drag and drop functions located on the app’s dashboard.

Robo Wunderkind Curriculum

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is fifty+ hours of activities that teach and reinforce core robotics skills. Lessons are each about five hours and cover topics like road safety, math, art, and nature studies. There’s also a separate set of activities for afterschool programs, summer camps, and workshops.  The curriculum includes a comprehensive teachers’ guide that trains educators in the Robo Wunderkind robots, the apps, the projects, and the activities. Each lesson is categorized according to its focus and includes the difficulty level, goals, vocabulary, materials required, activity stages, big ideas, age level, steps, and expected learning outcomes. There’s also a helpful Student Journal available so students can take notes, review, quiz themselves, and track their progress.

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is aligned with Common Core Math, Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening Standards; ISTE; CSTA Computing systems and Algorithms & Programming Standards; and NGSS Standards.

What I really like about Robo Wunderkind

It’s Lego compatible. With Lego adapters (most sold separately), kids can build a hybrid robot of Robo Wunderkind modules and Lego bricks.

It’s not one piece. You build your own robot so each student’s is different.

Module parts are color coded according to their actions so you won’t confuse connectors with sensors.

App instructions are very clear. They show exactly what to put where and the app pings at you when it’s done correctly. The ability to rotate it in 3D–I can’t overstate how useful that is.

The robots aren’t just for play. For example, I made a flashlight–a torch–with a green light, and it works magnificently.

Just to spotlight how intuitive Robo Wunderkind is, some of the projects took me less than five minutes to complete.

It comes in German, Swedish, and English–excellent.

Who will love this robot

kids who love Legos

kids who think outside the box

kids who love fiddling with mobile devices

kids who like remote controlled toys but always want them to do something they aren’t designed to do

teachers looking for clever STEAM and STEM projects

***

If you like Legos but wish your creations moved, talked, and could run through a maze with you, you will love Robo Wunderkind.

Want a little more? Here’s a clever video:

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow

[courtneytincher]

The biologist in a race against time to save the Great Barrier Reef

Could pioneering research by a young marine biologist from Essex save the embattled Great Barrier Reef?  Guy Kelly meets her to find out. I’ve never considered what the collective noun might be for a group of explorers – a compass? A khaki? A smug? – but whatever it is, I have discovered a large one, gently grooming one another in a lecture theatre in downtown Washington, DC. They convene here every year, at the National Geographic Explorers Festival, to revel in their triumphs, network furiously, and share concerns for a planet in desperate need of their kind to save it. By mid-morning on the second day, those gathered in the auditorium at National Geographic’s headquarters have heard from people who’ve viewed Earth from space and plumbed the dark depths of the oceans. We’ve listened to NGOs that have come together to save the Sumatran rhino and learnt why protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030 is essential to preventing the next mass extinction. Many of the speakers have been American and many have been confident, experienced figures who’ve fought to become the leaders in their (often literal) fields. Then, refreshingly, come a group of innovators with new solutions to age-old problems – beginning with a young marine biologist from Brentwood, Essex. Wearing an aqua-blue summer dress, 32-year-old Emma Camp strides out looking calm and composed. She hits her mark, takes a deep breath, then delivers the bad news. ‘The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is home to over 7,000 marine species, has huge economic and cultural value, and supports essential ecosystem services, such as fisheries. But this underwater city, full of life and colour, is turning white and derelict,’ she says. The audience is hooked. ‘Climate change is compromising not just the Great Barrier Reef, but reefs globally. Warmer, more acidic, low-oxygen seawater is fundamentally affecting the biology of the corals, and this is compromising whether they’ll be able to exist in the future. In just three years, over a third of the Great Barrier Reef has been lost.’ Camp isn’t just here as a harbinger of doom, however. She’s also come with a plan. Through her research, she tells us, she has discovered that in certain areas of the planet there are corals that already exist in the kind of hot, lower pH waters we’ll see all over the world, unless action is taken. And remarkably, some are adapting to survive. Camp has had the idea of ‘transplanting’ clippings of ‘super-survivor’ coral (think of grafting tree branches) to reefs being devastated by rising sea temperatures, then seeing what happens. Camp is the first speaker – and sole Briton – from the 10 finalists for this year’s Rolex Awards for Enterprise. In 1976, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rolex Oyster, the world’s first waterproof watch, the Swiss company launched a biennial programme to support explorers, scientists and entrepreneurs who have a project that could make the world a better place. It continues today, as part of the brand’s ‘Perpetual Planet’ campaign. This year’s group – chosen from 957 entries by a jury that included Jonathan Baillie, the chief scientist of the National Geographic Society, and the British geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford – will be halved after further jury consideration and a public vote. The five winners will then become ‘laureates’, each receiving a significant grant for their project (in the region of 200,000 Swiss francs) and, naturally, a watch. All 10 finalists will also enjoy the vital publicity that attends the awards. Studying resilience in coral at a mangrove off Port Douglas Credit: Franck Gazzola/©Rolex They are eminently impressive, and as varied as in any year. Previous winning projects have included turning discarded rice husks into energy; establishing a travelling school to help a nomadic culture survive; and, in 2016, a proposal from a British man, Andrew Bastawrous, transforming eye care in sub-Saharan Africa using a smartphone-based examination kit. This year’s competition features everything from conservation to disease prevention.  ‘It’s all been a bit full on,’ Camp admits, when we meet for coffee in a nearby hotel the next morning. The night before saw her attend the National Geographic Awards and the rest of her time has been taken up by speaking events, interviews, photo shoots and ‘associated admin activities’. ‘I had to just go for a walk yesterday, just to be outside,’ she says, sinking into an armchair. ‘I’m not used to being around so many people. It’s usually fish and coral.’ Camp is tall and willowy, with long brown hair and the healthy tan of somebody who spends half her life dangling off boats in the world’s most beautiful places. I ask for the down-the-pub-chat version of her pitch. ‘Well, climate change is killing the reefs, and we risk losing them in our lifetimes. But there are naturally resilient populations we know very little about. My project aims to find out how they’re doing it, and whether they could help save other reefs.’ For a long time Camp’s work was largely general: looking at the impact of climate change on coral in different waters. But one research trip in 2016, to mangroves in New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, changed her focus for life. ‘Nobody [in marine biology] outside of our little community bought into the idea that there could be something exciting there, but we went and there were corals everywhere – full reef structures, in water where the pH reading was extremely low.’ The public’s greatest misconception about coral is that it is a plant. Really, it is a sessile (fixed, like a barnacle) animal, a marine invertebrate related to sea anemones and jellyfish. Corals rely on algae that live inside their tissues, photosynthesising and giving the coral its colour. Under stress – due to, for example, warming waters and changing pH levels – the algae will leave, eventually killing the coral. The process is known as ‘bleaching’ because it goes dull and pale. A good pH level for coral is around 8 to 8.5. In certain mangrove lagoons in New Caledonia, where tidal cycles and unique physico-chemical conditions create a swirl of warm, deoxygenated, lower pH water, Camp didn’t expect to find such healthy coral. The water was 1 to 2C warmer than nearby. So she tested the pH – it was below 7.5. ‘My colleagues said the pH meter must be broken. So they tried and got the same. We ended up trying five sensors before we accepted it. It completely challenged our understanding.’ It was the kind of lightbulb moment scientists only experience once or twice in a career. The water conditions in the lagoon are more extreme than many of the worst predictions for the warming of the world’s oceans over the next century. So if corals there have managed to adapt, could they hold the key to saving the Great Barrier Reef? The biggest reefs in the world Camp’s team now hope to expand a project that involves transplanting ‘super-survivor’ cuttings to at-risk areas. She has already set up a ‘multispecies coral nursery’ off Australia (imagine a mesh fence with cuttings of different types of coral fixed to it, weighed down close to the sea floor), but requires further funding and support. And it may not work: after all, the Great Barrier Reef – one of the seven wonders of the natural world, visible from outer space, and worth about £3 billion in tourism each year – is about the same size as Italy, and subject to all manner of different stresses. But it might. ‘There’s a real art to getting the message across. We fundamentally have to lower carbon emissions to save coral reefs, that’s number one, but we also need to look at alternative strategies we can use in addition to that,’ Camp says. She is intensely aware that her messaging needs to be drenched in caution, lest people hear of her discovery and declare the problem solved – or worse, lest climate sceptics hoist it as an example of us underestimating the planet’s ability to survive, whatever the conditions. ‘Some people look for any excuse to do less, so we need to be honest but not give a false sense of security. Think of it like a toolbox. The main tool we have is lowering emissions, but that’s not working well enough alone, so what else do we have?’ Camp has been fascinated by coral reefs since childhood. The daughter of local-government workers, she grew up in Essex with two brothers (both are still there; one has his own business, the other’s a policeman). When she was seven, her father took her snorkelling during a holiday to the Bahamas. It was all she needed. ‘I vividly remember putting the mask on and for the first time seeing this whole life you couldn’t see from above the water, this complex coral network. At the time I just appreciated its beauty, but as I got older I started to understand how important that ecosystem is. That so many people and animals rely on it. A third of all fish stocks interact with the reef. They need it.’ As a teenager, she spent most summers in Spain, where she earnt her diving qualifications. By the time she was an adult she was a divemaster, but balanced that passion with one for basketball (she went on to play for Great Britain). On a basketball scholarship, she completed an environmental science and chemistry degree at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, before a master’s in environmental management and business at Sheffield Hallam University, then a PhD in marine biology at the University of Essex – most of which was spent in the field, studying reefs around the world. Today she is based at the University of Technology in Sydney, where she is one of the leading researchers focusing on climate change and coral reefs. Camp – whose vowels occasionally slip into a New South Wales twang, especially when talking about her life in Australia – lives in Sydney with her husband, Rawiri, a banker from New Zealand. They married in January, and she is teaching him to snorkel. Seeing his appreciation of the underwater world has ‘reinvigorated’ her love for it, she says. Camp now reckons she’s completed ‘over 1,500 dives, most of them about an hour at least – I stopped counting’. By my calculations, she’s spent two months of her life underwater. ‘Probably about a quarter of my day job is in the field. The rest is in the labs, testing samples, or writing it up. But more and more important is the science communication, making sure people understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.’ It’s why accolades like making the Rolex shortlist are so valuable, as they allow her both to gain extra funding and to promote her work before people she might not normally reach. ‘For me, it’s about raising awareness of what’s going on in our oceans, so it’s more about exposure than the money. These are global issues and a brand like Rolex can facilitate that message.’ Last year she was also announced as one of 17 ‘young leaders’ for the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. It’s a two-year position, and has seen her address the UN General Assembly once already. Do they listen? ‘Yeah, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. There’s an eagerness to have intergenerational discussions. We are the next custodians who will inherit the planet and give it to our children, and there’s a real commitment to make sure young people’s voices are heard.’ Britain seems to have embraced the anti-plastics message Sir David Attenborough and others have pushed into the mainstream. Australia is similarly filled with activists, Camp says, but the Queensland government hasn’t helped by recently approving the construction of an Adani coal mine – to be one of the largest in the world – in the Galilee Basin, near the Great Barrier Reef. Are we putting too much energy into banning straws? ‘The analogy I like to use is that if somebody has a terminal illness and breaks their leg, you obviously deal with the broken leg, but you don’t stop treating the illness. You can deal with short-term issues without losing sight of the bigger picture.’ By the end of the Explorers Festival in Washington, it’s been announced that Camp has narrowly missed out on becoming one of the five Rolex laureates. Those lucky few are João Campos-Silva, a Brazilian fishing ecologist who has devised a plan to save the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish, the arapaima; Grégoire Courtine, a French medical scientist with a method of allowing people with broken backs to walk again; Brian Gitta, a Ugandan IT specialist who has developed a new weapon in the war on malaria; Indian conservationist Krithi Karanth, who works to ease conflicts between people and wildlife; and the Canadian entrepreneur Miranda Wang, with her plan for plastics. Copy of More from Tel Mag Moon landings 18/07 Not all is lost for Camp, however. Rolex was so impressed with all 10 finalists that the remaining five have been made ‘associate laureates’, meaning her project will still receive support. Besides, the networking opportunities have been invaluable, not least a dinner at a mansion in the historic Georgetown neighbourhood, where the world’s leading explorers gathered to meet and celebrate one another, again. There, Camp met her hero, the legendary marine biologist Sylvia Earle – a woman who has spent a year of her life underwater. Camp hopes she’s still diving and working at 83, too. There are days ‘when you think, this is really tough’, she says, ‘especially when you see the political scene, but what’s the option? You can give up or be one of the individuals who make it their commitment in life to do everything they can to protect the reefs.’ So she is optimistic about the future, but knows the planet is now at a crossroads. ‘The best case scenario in 50 years is that we have coral reefs that are still biodiverse, serving their function, and we have an even healthier marine environment than we do now, respecting biodiversity not just for its value to us as humans. The worst case scenario is that we’ve lost coral reefs as we know them. I don’t want to tell my future grandchildren that this was a privilege I had, but they won’t, and it was all because we didn’t do enough.’ Every time I see her in Washington, Camp is wearing a large bone necklace in the shape of a fish hook. It is a traditional Maori hei matau, made by her husband’s late uncle, and means ‘safe passage over water’. A wearer is considered a strong-willed provider and protector, determined to succeed. Camp clutches it to her chest. ‘It’s seen better days,’ she says, ‘but I wear it on every dive.’ Rolex is now accepting entries for the 2021 Rolex Awards for Enterprise

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Could pioneering research by a young marine biologist from Essex save the embattled Great Barrier Reef?  Guy Kelly meets her to find out. I’ve never considered what the collective noun might be for a group of explorers – a compass? A khaki? A smug? – but whatever it is, I have discovered a large one, gently grooming one another in a lecture theatre in downtown Washington, DC. They convene here every year, at the National Geographic Explorers Festival, to revel in their triumphs, network furiously, and share concerns for a planet in desperate need of their kind to save it. By mid-morning on the second day, those gathered in the auditorium at National Geographic’s headquarters have heard from people who’ve viewed Earth from space and plumbed the dark depths of the oceans. We’ve listened to NGOs that have come together to save the Sumatran rhino and learnt why protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030 is essential to preventing the next mass extinction. Many of the speakers have been American and many have been confident, experienced figures who’ve fought to become the leaders in their (often literal) fields. Then, refreshingly, come a group of innovators with new solutions to age-old problems – beginning with a young marine biologist from Brentwood, Essex. Wearing an aqua-blue summer dress, 32-year-old Emma Camp strides out looking calm and composed. She hits her mark, takes a deep breath, then delivers the bad news. ‘The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is home to over 7,000 marine species, has huge economic and cultural value, and supports essential ecosystem services, such as fisheries. But this underwater city, full of life and colour, is turning white and derelict,’ she says. The audience is hooked. ‘Climate change is compromising not just the Great Barrier Reef, but reefs globally. Warmer, more acidic, low-oxygen seawater is fundamentally affecting the biology of the corals, and this is compromising whether they’ll be able to exist in the future. In just three years, over a third of the Great Barrier Reef has been lost.’ Camp isn’t just here as a harbinger of doom, however. She’s also come with a plan. Through her research, she tells us, she has discovered that in certain areas of the planet there are corals that already exist in the kind of hot, lower pH waters we’ll see all over the world, unless action is taken. And remarkably, some are adapting to survive. Camp has had the idea of ‘transplanting’ clippings of ‘super-survivor’ coral (think of grafting tree branches) to reefs being devastated by rising sea temperatures, then seeing what happens. Camp is the first speaker – and sole Briton – from the 10 finalists for this year’s Rolex Awards for Enterprise. In 1976, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rolex Oyster, the world’s first waterproof watch, the Swiss company launched a biennial programme to support explorers, scientists and entrepreneurs who have a project that could make the world a better place. It continues today, as part of the brand’s ‘Perpetual Planet’ campaign. This year’s group – chosen from 957 entries by a jury that included Jonathan Baillie, the chief scientist of the National Geographic Society, and the British geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford – will be halved after further jury consideration and a public vote. The five winners will then become ‘laureates’, each receiving a significant grant for their project (in the region of 200,000 Swiss francs) and, naturally, a watch. All 10 finalists will also enjoy the vital publicity that attends the awards. Studying resilience in coral at a mangrove off Port Douglas Credit: Franck Gazzola/©Rolex They are eminently impressive, and as varied as in any year. Previous winning projects have included turning discarded rice husks into energy; establishing a travelling school to help a nomadic culture survive; and, in 2016, a proposal from a British man, Andrew Bastawrous, transforming eye care in sub-Saharan Africa using a smartphone-based examination kit. This year’s competition features everything from conservation to disease prevention.  ‘It’s all been a bit full on,’ Camp admits, when we meet for coffee in a nearby hotel the next morning. The night before saw her attend the National Geographic Awards and the rest of her time has been taken up by speaking events, interviews, photo shoots and ‘associated admin activities’. ‘I had to just go for a walk yesterday, just to be outside,’ she says, sinking into an armchair. ‘I’m not used to being around so many people. It’s usually fish and coral.’ Camp is tall and willowy, with long brown hair and the healthy tan of somebody who spends half her life dangling off boats in the world’s most beautiful places. I ask for the down-the-pub-chat version of her pitch. ‘Well, climate change is killing the reefs, and we risk losing them in our lifetimes. But there are naturally resilient populations we know very little about. My project aims to find out how they’re doing it, and whether they could help save other reefs.’ For a long time Camp’s work was largely general: looking at the impact of climate change on coral in different waters. But one research trip in 2016, to mangroves in New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, changed her focus for life. ‘Nobody [in marine biology] outside of our little community bought into the idea that there could be something exciting there, but we went and there were corals everywhere – full reef structures, in water where the pH reading was extremely low.’ The public’s greatest misconception about coral is that it is a plant. Really, it is a sessile (fixed, like a barnacle) animal, a marine invertebrate related to sea anemones and jellyfish. Corals rely on algae that live inside their tissues, photosynthesising and giving the coral its colour. Under stress – due to, for example, warming waters and changing pH levels – the algae will leave, eventually killing the coral. The process is known as ‘bleaching’ because it goes dull and pale. A good pH level for coral is around 8 to 8.5. In certain mangrove lagoons in New Caledonia, where tidal cycles and unique physico-chemical conditions create a swirl of warm, deoxygenated, lower pH water, Camp didn’t expect to find such healthy coral. The water was 1 to 2C warmer than nearby. So she tested the pH – it was below 7.5. ‘My colleagues said the pH meter must be broken. So they tried and got the same. We ended up trying five sensors before we accepted it. It completely challenged our understanding.’ It was the kind of lightbulb moment scientists only experience once or twice in a career. The water conditions in the lagoon are more extreme than many of the worst predictions for the warming of the world’s oceans over the next century. So if corals there have managed to adapt, could they hold the key to saving the Great Barrier Reef? The biggest reefs in the world Camp’s team now hope to expand a project that involves transplanting ‘super-survivor’ cuttings to at-risk areas. She has already set up a ‘multispecies coral nursery’ off Australia (imagine a mesh fence with cuttings of different types of coral fixed to it, weighed down close to the sea floor), but requires further funding and support. And it may not work: after all, the Great Barrier Reef – one of the seven wonders of the natural world, visible from outer space, and worth about £3 billion in tourism each year – is about the same size as Italy, and subject to all manner of different stresses. But it might. ‘There’s a real art to getting the message across. We fundamentally have to lower carbon emissions to save coral reefs, that’s number one, but we also need to look at alternative strategies we can use in addition to that,’ Camp says. She is intensely aware that her messaging needs to be drenched in caution, lest people hear of her discovery and declare the problem solved – or worse, lest climate sceptics hoist it as an example of us underestimating the planet’s ability to survive, whatever the conditions. ‘Some people look for any excuse to do less, so we need to be honest but not give a false sense of security. Think of it like a toolbox. The main tool we have is lowering emissions, but that’s not working well enough alone, so what else do we have?’ Camp has been fascinated by coral reefs since childhood. The daughter of local-government workers, she grew up in Essex with two brothers (both are still there; one has his own business, the other’s a policeman). When she was seven, her father took her snorkelling during a holiday to the Bahamas. It was all she needed. ‘I vividly remember putting the mask on and for the first time seeing this whole life you couldn’t see from above the water, this complex coral network. At the time I just appreciated its beauty, but as I got older I started to understand how important that ecosystem is. That so many people and animals rely on it. A third of all fish stocks interact with the reef. They need it.’ As a teenager, she spent most summers in Spain, where she earnt her diving qualifications. By the time she was an adult she was a divemaster, but balanced that passion with one for basketball (she went on to play for Great Britain). On a basketball scholarship, she completed an environmental science and chemistry degree at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, before a master’s in environmental management and business at Sheffield Hallam University, then a PhD in marine biology at the University of Essex – most of which was spent in the field, studying reefs around the world. Today she is based at the University of Technology in Sydney, where she is one of the leading researchers focusing on climate change and coral reefs. Camp – whose vowels occasionally slip into a New South Wales twang, especially when talking about her life in Australia – lives in Sydney with her husband, Rawiri, a banker from New Zealand. They married in January, and she is teaching him to snorkel. Seeing his appreciation of the underwater world has ‘reinvigorated’ her love for it, she says. Camp now reckons she’s completed ‘over 1,500 dives, most of them about an hour at least – I stopped counting’. By my calculations, she’s spent two months of her life underwater. ‘Probably about a quarter of my day job is in the field. The rest is in the labs, testing samples, or writing it up. But more and more important is the science communication, making sure people understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.’ It’s why accolades like making the Rolex shortlist are so valuable, as they allow her both to gain extra funding and to promote her work before people she might not normally reach. ‘For me, it’s about raising awareness of what’s going on in our oceans, so it’s more about exposure than the money. These are global issues and a brand like Rolex can facilitate that message.’ Last year she was also announced as one of 17 ‘young leaders’ for the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. It’s a two-year position, and has seen her address the UN General Assembly once already. Do they listen? ‘Yeah, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. There’s an eagerness to have intergenerational discussions. We are the next custodians who will inherit the planet and give it to our children, and there’s a real commitment to make sure young people’s voices are heard.’ Britain seems to have embraced the anti-plastics message Sir David Attenborough and others have pushed into the mainstream. Australia is similarly filled with activists, Camp says, but the Queensland government hasn’t helped by recently approving the construction of an Adani coal mine – to be one of the largest in the world – in the Galilee Basin, near the Great Barrier Reef. Are we putting too much energy into banning straws? ‘The analogy I like to use is that if somebody has a terminal illness and breaks their leg, you obviously deal with the broken leg, but you don’t stop treating the illness. You can deal with short-term issues without losing sight of the bigger picture.’ By the end of the Explorers Festival in Washington, it’s been announced that Camp has narrowly missed out on becoming one of the five Rolex laureates. Those lucky few are João Campos-Silva, a Brazilian fishing ecologist who has devised a plan to save the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish, the arapaima; Grégoire Courtine, a French medical scientist with a method of allowing people with broken backs to walk again; Brian Gitta, a Ugandan IT specialist who has developed a new weapon in the war on malaria; Indian conservationist Krithi Karanth, who works to ease conflicts between people and wildlife; and the Canadian entrepreneur Miranda Wang, with her plan for plastics. Copy of More from Tel Mag Moon landings 18/07 Not all is lost for Camp, however. Rolex was so impressed with all 10 finalists that the remaining five have been made ‘associate laureates’, meaning her project will still receive support. Besides, the networking opportunities have been invaluable, not least a dinner at a mansion in the historic Georgetown neighbourhood, where the world’s leading explorers gathered to meet and celebrate one another, again. There, Camp met her hero, the legendary marine biologist Sylvia Earle – a woman who has spent a year of her life underwater. Camp hopes she’s still diving and working at 83, too. There are days ‘when you think, this is really tough’, she says, ‘especially when you see the political scene, but what’s the option? You can give up or be one of the individuals who make it their commitment in life to do everything they can to protect the reefs.’ So she is optimistic about the future, but knows the planet is now at a crossroads. ‘The best case scenario in 50 years is that we have coral reefs that are still biodiverse, serving their function, and we have an even healthier marine environment than we do now, respecting biodiversity not just for its value to us as humans. The worst case scenario is that we’ve lost coral reefs as we know them. I don’t want to tell my future grandchildren that this was a privilege I had, but they won’t, and it was all because we didn’t do enough.’ Every time I see her in Washington, Camp is wearing a large bone necklace in the shape of a fish hook. It is a traditional Maori hei matau, made by her husband’s late uncle, and means ‘safe passage over water’. A wearer is considered a strong-willed provider and protector, determined to succeed. Camp clutches it to her chest. ‘It’s seen better days,’ she says, ‘but I wear it on every dive.’ Rolex is now accepting entries for the 2021 Rolex Awards for Enterprise

July 27, 2019 at 07:00AM via IFTTT

[idle-flower]

dear yuletide author - 2018

Thank you for your time and attention, and I hope your wishes are granted this holiday!

Likes:

I prefer plot and angst and adventure to fluff, though a nice warm fluffy scene can make a good dessert at the end of the pain and suffering. I lean more to f/f and m/f than m/m. I enjoy forbidden relationships. I love exploring the 'what if' spinoffs of a small change in a canon. I swoon for lovers who take dramatic risks to protect their loved ones.

I also enjoy detailed description of clothing/furniture/jewelry/pretty things in general. Not just heaping up brand names, but sensory detail.

Dislikes:

Please avoid sweeping tropey AUs like 'what if noir' or 'what if everyone was in high school'. I'm REALLY picky about comedy so it's probably not a good idea to go for wacky funny stuff. No excited rambling about pregnancy or babies. (Older kids are okay.) While I am okay with pretty dark stuff, please don't gorily torture characters to death on screen. If people gotta die, limit the details! I am generally not keen on crossovers. I dislike PWP unless it is exceedingly hot smut (see below).

Smut:

I don't require it, but I do read a good bit of filthy porn.

Kinks I find interesting: mild bdsm, pain mixed with pleasure, dubcon, sibling or cousin incest, strap-ons, futanari and other magical appendages, teasing, teenagers, drugs/magic with interesting effects, people making terrible decisions due to being emotionally overwrought or really really horny

PLEASE NO: 

rape or painful sex that one party is not enjoying at all, inserting anything edible (licking off boobs is okay), aggressive face-fucking, choking, degradation, scat/watersports, bukkake, parental incest, anyone younger than teen, emphasis on 'virgin blood' (some writers make it a huge deal with tearing pain and fountains of blood, please don't).

Mathnet / Square One TV

Kate Monday

Kate Monday was my idol and unrecognised crush. Her solving any short mystery and being awesome will please me. 80s, modern, California, globe-trotting, whatever. Could even go for a bit of an X-Files gag, where Kate and George are assigned to something really spooky and he believes the mystical explanation and she sticks to logic and numbers (and is proved right in the end). No shipping needed.

Optional crossover: Inspector Gadget. Penny Gadget grows up and joins the Mathnet team and Kate is her mentor and they do nerdy things together with NO BLONDE JOKES. No sassy Legally Blonde stuff, no overcoming sexism, just pure competence porn where they are good at what they do and everyone takes them seriously and it never occurs to anyone to doubt them just because of their hair/gender. I'm not shipping them together romantically though, too much age gap for my taste. But if you wanted to indulge me ridiculously, Kate could have a wife and Penny could be inspired to consider a girlfriend.

PLEASE NO KATE/GEORGE. George is married and I prefer Lesbian Kate.

It would be weird to go smutty here honestly. Keep it T?

Poison Ivy (1992 film)

Sylvie Cooper, Ivy

I was struggling through the confusions of puberty, Ivy was hot, this film left an impression on me. In a way it's perfect as it is, and trying to build any sort of happy ending for Ivy feels out of place, but on the other hand there's a lot of loose ends left after the story.

Throughout the film, there's a lot the audience never knows about Ivy, including her legal name. Did Coop know it? (Maybe, probably.) Did her father? (Quite possibly not). How do they handle all the legal responsibilities of her death? Were Ivy's stories about the aunt she was staying with true? How do they break the news?  How does her funeral go?  

What do Sylvie and her father have to say to each other about Ivy after the truth comes out? Does he admit everything that he did? How does he handle the guilt? How do they rebuild their relationship?

What is school like, afterwards? What rumors escape? How does Coop handle them?

Or - what if Ivy survives the fall? Seriously injured, possibly paralysed, but alive? How do they deal with her, once the truth comes out? Do they cover up her crimes? Do they keep her in their home? What happens to their relationships?

For AUs, what would have happened if Ivy had met Coop when they were several years younger, so she couldn't get her hooks into Darryl as easily? What if they met at summer camp and Ivy was just as messed-up and needy but the situations were different? What if the movie plot is actually a fantasy younger-Ivy spins about her future to her fascinated-and-appalled friend, who then has a chance to react to it?

Smutwise, I'm fine with Sylvie/Ivy, I'm okay with Darryl/Ivy but I would rather he not be the focus of the story (Sylvie catching them having sex has possibilities, or Ivy thinking about Sylvie while seducing Darryl)

The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills version)

Sharon, Susan

Two girls who are rivals clashing with each other are exiled to a camp cabin together to learn to get along. What better setup for sparks to fly?

Yes, that's right, I'm requesting twincest. I want the girls to develop a romantic and/or sexual relationship, BEFORE they realise they're actually related.

Ideally I'd like to read the whole trajectory from them being sent off together, the attraction building, and once they're established as a relationship, THEN have them find out they're twins and have to deal with the repercussions. Are they horrified, or determined to stay together? How does that affect their plans for their parents?

But I'm also fine with just plain smutting this and leaving the rest of the story for another day. How might these two get together, when they don't know any better? Catfight that turns into hatefucking that turns into something deeper? One of them is sick/injured/sad and the hurt/comfort melts their hatred for each other? They get curious about how alike they really are and check each other out naked, because 'we're both girls so it doesn't really count', and events get way out of hand?

If the incest squicks you, I will settle for after-the-film fic showing them trying to settle into their new lives together, dealing with each other's old school friends and so on. "Surprise twin" must lead to some interesting reactions, surely, and sharing everything won't always be easy when they don't have a common enemy to gang up on.

Darkangel Trilogy - Meredith Ann Pierce

Erin, Aeriel

OTP territory here.

I read the first book when I was fairly young and was, like many, drawn into the dangerous romance between Aeriel and Irrylath (though surely even then I must have felt it was slightly unfair that the text 'okayed' it by saying he wouldn't be beautiful if he wasn't still good inside?). I didn't find the other two books until much later, when I was older and more dubious about the 'romance' of a beautiful but abusive vampire whose true character she knew nothing about. Imagine my amazement as rivals and uncertain feelings began to cast doubt on that original romance... and maybe, just maybe, ended with the girl getting the girl. (And beyond that, letting me eat my cake and have it too, by building up Irrylath a little and giving the lovers of my childhood a brief beautiful moment together.)

So, okay, I have a lot of feelings about this canon. In my personal version of what-happens-next, Erin and Aeriel totally become lovers, Irrylath goes on a quest to try and win her back and in the process of his journey of personal discovery finds that he's actually happier elsewhere, and he and Aeriel at last meet again and then part as friends, content... but that's a whole novel in itself, at least.

Possible prompts:

A love scene between them in the series's poetic style (no need to be kinky here! just romantic)

One of them telling the tale of how they fell in love to their daughter? (These two can totally have science babies together.)

Some of Erin's adventures on her own in the time that they're separated during the books, and how she discovers and deals with her feelings about Aeriel?

Or the love epiphany on Aeriel's part, after the books - how does she realise her feelings are more than friendly, how does she reconcile them with her feelings for Irrylath? Perhaps while Erin goes on a trip alone to visit the Sea-of-Dust and Aeriel is alone with her thoughts?

World-building, figuratively and literally! What is life like in NuRavenna? How do they go about the process of restoring the world? What tools do they use and what do they look like? Spin me a picture!

While I dislike pregnancy fluff, pregnancy angst/drama might be possible here. What if that one night with Irrylath had a very unexpected result? Given Aeriel's new position and the history of the water witch, would she be panicked at the prospect? Would she be pleased to have a part of Irrylath with her always, or tormented by the reminder? How would Erin feel? Would Aeriel feel compelled to give the child away because of her responsibilities? Given her own history how would she feel about that? Will it even be possible for her to carry a child to term without more intervention, given her new body and all its changes? What if she ends up needing Erin's input somehow to stabilise the baby, resulting in a child born from all three of them?