#its not THE same but its similar enough to be an apt comparison

[youreaclownnow]

I finally finished bucchigiri and holy fucking shit was that ever good. 11/10 at minimum it was FANTASTIC

Highly highly recommend to any fans of angsty fighting anime like G gundam or yu yu hakusho. Not to just whip out my faves here but those are the closest comparisons I can make

[monstersdownthepath]

A weird but curious question similar to one I asked you a long time ago about Outsiders with alignment subtypes that shift alignment, but since the Aeons are supposed to be more or less a cold, unfeeling cosmic collective consciousness/immune system, how do you think What would an Aon with personality would be like? (yes, like an actual individual personality, perhaps even with deep thoughts and feelings beyond his purposes and goals).

Asking this because, at least in my campaign, there is a case of an Aeon whose whole purpose for being summoned is to act as a persistent, free-willed, cosmic observer of certain creatures, but to observe and record the stories and adventures of the creatures he observes, he needed to understand them. He needs to be able to know what they feel and how they feel it, something in which a normal, cold Aon and calculating, it would not be totally good. At least I've played it as someone growing up; At first he was childish, impulsive and curious, but as he distanced himself and learned, he quickly became colder, more mature and wiser, but always referring to himself in plural forms ("we").

Weird question I know! But I would like to read your opinion and response anyway.

------

This is a difficult answer, but not an impossible one. Aeons with so much as individual names are nearly nonexistent, with Concordance of Rivals describing them as though they were forces of nature or wind-up toys rather than individual creatures. Indeed, they essentially are; as you stated, aeons are shed by the Monad as an immune response to an imbalance in the cosmos (or an imbalance fated to occur), and when their duty is complete, they fade back into quintessence to rejoin their creator. Not exactly conducive to the development of individuality or a personality!

Even in cases where their mission takes many decades or centuries to complete, aeons rarely deviate from acting as they've been programmed, spend very little time interacting with other beings (one gets the sense that they communicate only out of obligation, rather than any desire), are incredibly difficult to communicate with due to their Envisaging ability, and are nearly impossible to reason with in any meaningful way.

They possess no society and no individuality. The one named aeon I recalled from the Extinction Curse Adventure Path was given a name by someone else, and its "personality" a mere anthropomorphized projection by that person, rather than the aeon itself having any part in it beyond accepting the name.

However, with the recent retcon revelation that axiomites and, thus, inevitables are themselves descended from aeons sent on a specific mission and grew into an independent society, it lends a lot to your proposed aeon gaining a name and personality for itself. Given enough time and with enough interactions with other beings, one could expect an aeon to change in the same way an emergent AI would if exposed to the same stimulus, with all the same qualities.

... In fact, as I type this with one hand and hold open Concordance of Rivals with the other and stroke my chin thoughtfully with the third, I believe describing aeons as programs, as well as cells, is also an apt summary. I've already called the Monad the "win32 of the multiverse," so it's not that much of a logical leap. I might have to make a second post about this, actually, because the comparison of aeons and machine-learning-AIs is hitting me like a ton of bricks.

[vickyvicarious]

Since The Beetle was a best seller for years I wonder if it influenced contemporary horror lit

You know, that's an interesting question. While most of the horror lit I've read is typically older and I have definitely read several from that same era, I'm not familiar enough with the full breadth of the genre to say much on the subject. There's a degree of 'survivor bias' where for the most part, the actually good books are the ones that kept getting printed even a hundred-plus years later. So it could be that there were tons of awful Beetle-inspired books floating around, and they just didn't make it to most audiences today.

I think the main reason The Beetle even did is only because it was published at almost the same time as Dracula, and sold better at the time. That makes for a good tagline on the cover of the book, you know? It's still here because it's a comparison point, not because most people want to read it for its own sake.

But if I had to guess, I think The Beetle played into the same kind of pulpy, easy quick genre read niche as... airport books, for example. Beach reads. Think of any genre fiction (detective, romance, etc.) that is associated with having lots and lots of fairly formulaic books that are always easy to find, even when most of the time they aren't well-written. A more contemporary comparison would be the penny dreadfuls. They could be well-written, but most of the time you wouldn't expect them to be. And they might be incredibly popular, but most people wouldn't seriously consider them much of a literary achievement (back to modern comparisons, but say... Twilight, or a more apt comparison with the weird horny story that's a bit scandalous, 50 Shades of Grey).

Again, I don't know the stats enough to speak on it. But that's just my general impression from the book itself. Maybe The Beetle stood out for catching the right wave at the right time to get popular, and maybe it did influence other similar stories, but probably in a way that fed into existing genre fiction tropes/expectations of the time.

[nicklloydnow]

“Watching events unfold this weekend in Israel, I thought back to a feeling that I first felt more than two months ahead of Russia launching its war in Ukraine. That same sense of dread is, if nothing, more firmly entrenched in my chest today. The feeling is still nebulous. It’s as if we are all watching a catastrophic car crash and simply don’t have the vocabulary to describe it.

(…)

“Autocracy versus democracy” does not usefully describe the moment. It feels like a discarded line from some kind of late-night brainstorming session. Its purpose was ostensibly to organize thinking — to name a threat and to allow for collective action. In the cold light of day, it reads like self-regard.

(…)

But many woke up on Saturday to the palpable fear of a real threat. Towns and small cities overrun by well-organized militia. Scores of civilians shot dead. Hostages abducted. As I write this on Monday night, the IDF is still fighting battles in Israeli population centers. Soon enough, it will be waging a Stalingrad-like fight in Gaza, doling out horrific human costs in pursuit of retribution. And that’s if no other nasty surprises are looming. The prevailing consensus is that 9/11 is the correct historical parallel for Israel. If Hezbollah enters the fight in the coming days, the 1973 Yom Kippur War will be a more apt comparison.

(…)

No, it’s not about democracy versus autocracy. The wheels are coming off. Our predecessors bequeathed to us a period of unprecedented tranquility. They were not infinitely wise in getting us here — no wiser than we are. But we grew up used to it in ways they could never imagine. We assumed order was normality, that peace was what naturally arose when power-hungry hyperpowers minded their own business. A better and more just world was there for the taking, if only we were moral enough to push for it.

The overarching metaphor in one of Robert Kagan’s recent books is fundamentally correct: order is a garden to be tended, but the jungle is the norm. I still hold that his moralistic “authoritarianism versus democracy” paradigm is misguided. Morality has nothing to do with it. Pessimism about progress — a conviction that nothing is permanent — is a far better guide.

My friend and former colleague Walter Russell Mead penned a prescient column earlier this year. He put his finger on the failings of the Biden administration’s fundamentally optimistic worldview. He pointed out that China, Russia and Iran are eating away at the existing order.

From the outset, the administration knew that the American-led world system was in trouble, but it underestimated the severity of the threat and misunderstood its causes . . . Two years later, the Biden administration is struggling to manage the failure of its original design . . . Russia isn’t parked, Iran isn’t pacified, and the three revisionists are coordinating their strategy and messaging to an unprecedented degree.

The Biden folks really are the third Obama administration. They fundamentally believe that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. At the limit, they see our primary task is to make sure we don’t stand in the way.

It’s time to abandon those good feelings. Our holiday from history is over. Or at least it needs to be over.

The Wall Street Journal ran a strong editorial today calling on the United States to get on a solid war footing. I’ve made a similar case for months now. Given how the Ukraine War has progressed, I’ve argued that President Biden needs to stand in front of the nation and tell the American people that the free lunch is over. We can no longer enjoy the massive “peace dividend” we reaped in 1991. It’s time to embrace that the world is dangerous and unforgiving. Prepare for the storms that are coming.

(…)

The Europeans were perhaps rattled in the first weeks of the war, when everyone thought Kyiv would fall in a fortnight. Even German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was saying how German thinking about security was undergoing an epochal transformation. That didn’t last. And even reports that Russia is by some measures now militarily outproducing both the United States and Europe combined hasn’t altered the mood.

Make no mistake, this isn’t just European decadence. We here in the United States are no less complacent. We talk about shared values and how we must support the Ukrainians until the end. But (not-so) secretly, we are glad that they are dying instead of us. Apart from a handful of military veterans and foolhardy enthusiasts, there are a vanishingly few people putting their lives on the line for a common moral cause. Though we say this is our fight, it’s really not.

Why? We come full circle. “Democracy” is not a real cause, “autocracy” is not a real threat. Or, to put it more carefully, that binary does not resonate today in ways that would have you put your life on the line. Not in the way it did during the Cold War, anyway. Safe peaceful street protests against domestic despots-in-waiting? Sign me up. I’d love to re-enact 1989. But as a unifying narrative with real stakes? It’s misaligned. It misidentifies the problem in some non-trivial way. Everyone feels that disconnect, and shrugs when it is invoked. This is not an assertion, just an empirical observation.

But something is happening. I feel it. I think many others feel it. The jungle is growing back. And we naive civilized folks, we couldn’t even start a fire without matches, much less feed or defend ourselves in the wilderness.”

“The larger context is that the U.S. and its allies now face two regional wars provoked by rogue states that are increasingly aligned. Israel and Ukraine are on the front lines, but the risk of an expanded conflict is real. Iran is feeding weapons into Vladimir Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. Mr. Putin is a junior partner of the Chinese Communist Party, which could try to exploit the moment in the Pacific.

The strategic and political point is that the return of war against Israel isn’t an isolated event. It’s the latest installment in the unraveling of global order as American political will and military primacy are called into question.

The President now has an obligation to increase the defense budget and stop treating the U.S. military as a political wedge to feed the American welfare state. For three years Mr. Biden has proposed cuts in defense spending after inflation, even as the world has become more dangerous.

The President can stop the budget games—the demands that every dollar on U.S. forces be matched with another for solar panels or food stamps—and work with Republicans to rebuild U.S. military power. That package should include aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. It should feature a generational effort to expand U.S. munitions inventories, from 155mm artillery to sophisticated long-range antiship missiles. Ditto for a plan to build more U.S. attack submarines for the Pacific.

Already officials are leaking that the U.S. may struggle to supply both Israel and Ukraine with artillery or other weapons while also deterring China. But America can either meet the moment or regret it later when the world’s rogues attack other allies, or U.S. forces deployed abroad, or even the homeland.

(…)

As for Republicans in Congress, they will have to get serious about governing and elect a new Speaker with dispatch. They need to isolate the Steve Bannon acolytes who treat shutting down the government for no good reason like a personal power play. Americans may be among Hamas’s hostages, and the GOP should support Mr. Biden if he sends a military mission to rescue them. The world needs to see that the U.S. can unite in a common security purpose.

(…)

The growing global disorder is a result in part of American retreat, not least Mr. Biden’s departure from Afghanistan that told the world’s rogues the U.S. was preoccupied with its internal divisions. But too many Republicans are also falling for the siren song of isolationism and floating a defense cut in the name of fiscal restraint. The Hamas invasion should blow up dreams the U.S. can “focus on China” and write off other parts of the world.

Donald Trump didn’t rebuild U.S. defenses as much as he claims, and his political competitors should say so. Former Vice President Mike Pence was correct when he said over the weekend that the awful scenes abroad are what happens when political leaders are “signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.” Nikki Haley sounded similar notes.

They seem to know what time it is. The rest of Washington needs an alarm clock.”

“Exactly 37 years ago, on a bleak outlook overlooking the Atlantic, the two remaining Cold Warriors met in Reykjavik and proposed the almost unthinkable — to rid the world of all nuclear weapons.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev began a dialogue that set in motion a series of summits that would ultimately not achieve this bold objective but resulted in what many historians cite as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

However, the question remains: to what end?

While the Cold War came to a close, the threat of nuclear war did not. The global nuclear arsenal had reached its peak in 1986 with over 63,000 weapons in circulation compared to 12,500 today, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

But the number of missiles is immaterial, as today’s weaponry is five times more lethal than Big Boy and Fat Man — the two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII.

In addition, the range and mobility of the current arsenal have expanded significantly with the ability to reach any destination — from London to Moscow to Washington — in a matter of minutes, wiping out millions of people instantaneously.

(…)

The subsequent arms race that ensued between America and the Soviet Union led to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, that served to handcuff both sides with the premise that “if you fire on me, I’ll fire on you.”

A flawed concept to be sure. Yet the MAD strategy (which it truly is) remains the primary nuclear conflict deterrent today.

Adding to this MADness is the nonchalant manner that a large part of the world has adopted toward the threat of a nuclear conflict.

The possibility has shifted to the back of our collective psyches allowing us to focus on more important issues crowding our agenda.

A case in point is the most recent Republican presidential debate. While there were several questions around Taiwan and Ukraine, there was no specific reference to the “what if” of a nuclear engagement.

(…)

As a child of the Cold War, I can still remember the air raid drills in my community and hiding under my school desk.

That clear and present danger had lurked over the civilised world’s head but has since dissipated into the ether.

One would hope bright minds in political capitals around the world are gaming how to avoid a nuclear conflict.

But that notion calls to mind a moment when President Reagan after being briefed on the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction posed the simplest of questions, “What is Plan B?” to which his advisors had no answer.

And today as we celebrate their famous meeting in Iceland almost four decades later it is time again to ask our leaders — “What is plan B?””

[antiterf]

(Prefacing this to say that I'm not trying to convince you to move from neutral to pro transandrophobia- i think you being neutral is ur right and I can definitely understand why you are neutral. Just wanted to state my own perspective as a trans man, esp. As a trans man of color. Feel free to delete if necessary!)

I'm personally pro transandrophobia as a term because just as Trans Women have unique experiences due to their intersection of being Women and being Trans, and Black Trans Women experience a particularly unique blend of issues due to being Women who are Trans and black, Trans men also face a unique set of issues. Of course these issues can vary depending on where Trans men live, what their race is, how well they pass (as BS as passing is as a concept)and other factors, but so too might a Trans Woman's experience of transmisogyny/transmisogynoir vary based on similar criteria. Until recently, I've felt that there has been a major lack in information/discussion of transmasc specific issues, especially as a black Trans man. I've always felt like the specific intersection of transness and agab of transmasculinity causes unique issues combining misogyny and transphobia that isn't the same as transmisogyny. On top of that, Trans men of color like myself have the added issue of racism, adding to the bigotry stew we face. imho there just hasn't been adequate language to describe these issues until the introduction of transmisandry followed by the (more apt imo) term transandrophobia. I feel like this term adds to the toolkit we need to break down the systemic and societal issues we face. Ofc this is just my personal perspective, but I feel like the transphobia, misogyny, racism, and homophobia I face varies greatly from the same issues others face due to my identity, and I feel like discussing transandrophobia helps Bring light to how differently Trans men may be affected by these issues.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense, and apologies if my thoughts are all over the place, but hopefully this adds a perspective that others can see and take into account in the conversation surrounding transandrophobia...

I felt the same with lack of discussion around the issues trans men face. And I've thought about how I can make many shallow excuses, but overall I think I simply don't know enough about what's going on to speak on it.

I'm only 21, and what you get from everyday interaction with other trans people in activist spaces when learning about 20+ years ago in written history is limited if not non existent. Much of it focuses on a broad view that would be put through the individual lens of the historian or the person recording it, and there aren't many of those people. Basically, I can't relate to what I've learned of queer history back to this because the most queer history we have with trans men is "look, a trans man, or a possible one" and nothing about theories or activism from other trans people. This also applies heavily to trans women. So what we end up with is a cisnormative lens of what gender and how one gender is oppressive against the other, without much solidly believed theory from actual trans people.

This is part of what transandrophobia does. Its taking the issues of being men and having masculinity, but not as what we expect in a cisgender world, and the struggles that come with it. This can possibly applied to men in other minorities, like Black men or in my case disabled men, but much of that I've seen is surface level ("oh, look how masculinity hurts these groups in different ways" rather than "so how about we theorize how we see structural gendered oppression through this"), and that would be my responsibility to find out more for comparison about how this can work out.

I think transandrophobia has potential to finally take "but what about men?" And actually make it productive in the examination of gender rather than anti feminist nonsense. But what it seems to do as of currently is focus on the inner LGBTQ+ community more than anything, especially trans women for some fucking reason (transmisogyny, blaming them for hypervisibility), rather than the cisnormative societies that mainly hurt us.

Like, the other day in the gay trans men being called fujoshis post, someone added these tags. I never mentioned trans women once. I've always focused more on the experiences of trans men because I am one, but the fact that I talk about it now and shade is thrown at trans women is incredibly worrying.

And what I said there is probably inaccurate because right now it's so new and there hasn't been a common ground established. Everyone that is loud about it, either for or against, are automatically biased and will show extreme negatives with each group. I don't know how the community is doing as a whole, what's going on as a whole, and do it reliably. That coupled with a lack of history doesn't sit well.

And I kind of wrote that rant because its really not because I don't see the use of transandrophobia, and I think it can be important especially with trans moc or honestly any of us who have intersecting minority statuses. I genuinely hope it can carry on to be critically looked at and discussed. But right now it's just chaos and please don't compare it to transmisogyny because thats on the basis of intersectionality, and transandrophobia would not fit under that same concept.

If something clicks from the research I do either in school or my free time I'll definitely talk about it.

[sigmaleph]

today, on absolutely meaningless comparisons:

Gaius Appuleius Diocles was a Roman charioteer, born in what is now Portugal. He was apparently very good at charioteering, and sometimes people call him "the highest-paid athlete of all time".

Now, modern day athletes can make a lot of money. If you look at that Wikipedia article, it mentions various comparisons for how much his winnings in 2nd century Roman sestertii would be in modern US dollars, including "roughly equivalent to US$7.3 million in 2019" (based on the price of wheat) and "worth between approximately $60 million and $160 million in equivalent basic goods purchasing power". If you click through to the highest-paid athletes article, you'll notice 160 million, while a lot, is not enough to compete with people like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, who've made over a billion dollars throughout their careers. No, Diocles' claim at being the best paid of all time is because of yet another comparison, landing at an astounding 15 billion equivalent USD.

How did they come up with that number? Well,

His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period—enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year. By today’s standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion.

source

Impeccable logic, I think we can all agree. It seems an incredible oversight that the standard basket of goods doesn't include "a month's worth of wages for the largest military force in the world".

[original post]

[bellaslilpapercut]

hello! i hope you're well. i love reading your metas and theories. how do you think the scent of bloodsingers work? like, for Emmett who we know had 2, do you think his singers had the same sent to him? idk if this was ever explained in canon.

Hi thank you for the kind words!! This is a tough question mostly because I also don't know if it was explained in canon as I never made it to midnight sun in my reread haha. I'll do my best though!

I think the most apt comparison for blood singers would truthfully be favorite foods. I had an initial inclinement to compare blood singers to amortentia from HP but 1) I don't think it's actually very romantic and 2) I don't think blood singers are that specific.

It is likely that a blood singer is unique to whichever vampire they "sing" for but we know from the saga proper that other vampires (James is the first that comes to mind) also think that Bella smells tasty- just not as tasty as Edward finds her. So from that I assume that blood singers may smell good to a wide range of vampires and could very possibly be a blood singer for more than one vamp at a time but since there are likely fewer than 1000 vampires in the twilightverse, probability makes me think it would be very rare for a human to "sing" to more than one vampire, even rarer still that that singer would be discovered by both vampires.

Also, while blood singers might smell pretty tasty to multiple vampires, we know that it's a unique enough phenomenon to warrant its own phrase- la tua cantate- and at least one translation. So that rules out blood singers being just Especially Tasty Treats for any vampire who happens upon them.

I say it isn't romantic because Edward is the only meyerpire I can think of weird enough to fall in love with a human let alone his blood singer. The Denalis are bizarre in that they sleep with humans but AFAIK they don't feel love for these men in the way Edward "loves" Bella (or maybe they do but recognize that it isn't love? That's a whole other discussion though haha). So a blood singer would be like if someone set the finest cooked plate of your favorite meal in front of you- maybe other people around you would say "mmm that smells delicious! Can I try a bite?" But it wouldn't have the same specific appeal to them as it does to you because it's your favorite dish.

I can't really speculate on what might cause it because I don't know much about blood to begin with but there must be some combination of blood type, iron, pheromones, and hormones stewing that yields a delectable scent for some vampire in particular. Not every meyerpire has met their own blood singer, there are far too many humans and too few meyerpires for it to be a perfect match and chance plays a massive role in these meetings. Bella was in the wrong place at the wrong time, as were Emmett's two blood singers.

Also to answer your question about them: I think they must have smelled remarkably similar if not identical. I think pheromones must play a huge role in this and we know genetics has an impact on pheromones- emmetts blood singers could have been distantly related for all he knew.

TL:DR- Blood singers are a rare phenomenon and not every vampire will have one. What makes someone's blood "sing" to a vampire is probably entirely physiological and not a strong fated connection. For vampires with multiple blood singers, those singers probably smelled almost identical or at least identically delicious!

[midnightactual]

Kurayami’s Perspective

To understand Kurayami, it’s important to understand what a typical zanpakutō even is in the first place. Most of the available evidence in the series revolves around Ichigo, who is obviously unique, but it still gives us some insight into what the average zanpakutō is like.

ZANPAKUTŌ IN GENERAL

Ōetsu has the following exchange with Ichigo in chapter 523:

Ichigo: Oh yeah?! So these guys are the embodiment of asauchi! But... why are we being attacked by them?! Ōetsu: So close!! Ōetsu: Embodiment, huh? Yes, yes, yes. So close, so close. It’s a bit different, but that’ll do for now. But what’s more important... is that they’re angry at you. Ichigo: Angry?! About what?! Ōetsu: The way you two use your zanpakutō. Ichigo: How we use it...?! Ōetsu: You don’t understand? I don’t blame you. How you fight? How you swing it? No, no. Then what? It's something more fundamental! Ōetsu: Have you been using it as a tool? Have you been interacting with it as a subordinate? Have you been relying on it like a partner? As a family member? As a friend? A superior? A junior? Pet? Acquaintance? Lover? Mistress? Ōetsu: GIMME A BREAK!!! Ōetsu: This how they feel about you. This is what I mean by more fundamental.

Just from the way this is being discussed, we can say that zanpakutō are none of the things that Ōetsu lists off. When Ichigo eventually returns in chapter 538, the asauchi he selects takes on his appearance and hairstyle. In chapter 540, when Ōetsu disintegrates the asauchi for forging, it starts with a hole in the heart, like a Hollow. In chapter 541, “THE BLADE AND ME 2″, we get the following:

Ōetsu: Have you figured it out, Go-Ichi? Ōetsu: The reason why this asauchi turned white... the moment it touched you? Ichigo: ... No... Ōetsu: Perhaps you thought to yourself that... it’s just like... the Hollow in you. Ōetsu: That's right. This guy is... the Hollow inside you. I had that asauchi become the catalyst to draw this zanpakutō out. Ōetsu: Do you understand what that means? Ōetsu: This Hollow is... your zanpakutō, Go-Ichi. Ōetsu: The Hollow named White that Aizen created is made from layers of many Soul Reaper souls. Oddly enough... that is also how my asauchi are created. Ōetsu: That Hollow entered your body... and melded with your Soul Reaper powers. It became your zanpakutō. Ichigo: Wait a second... so then... Ōetsu: That’s right. I know you know... Ōetsu: ... About the man who's been... pretending to be a zanpakutō inside your soul!

We go on to learn that “Zangetsu”, the Old Man, is a manifestation of Yhwach, and Ichigo’s Quincy powers. Ōetsu and Ichigo then reforge both Zangetsu in chapter 541, “THE BLADE IS ME”, and Ichigo bids farewell to both, giving the following internal monologue before the title drop:“I won't ask... for your help anymore. I won't tell you to stay out of my way either. Nor will I ask... you guys to fight with me. I... will fight on my own. Thank you. Zangetsu. You are... me.”

All of this is very unequivocal: asauchi are created in the same fashion as artificial Hollows and become zanpakutō upon fusing with Shinigami powers. Once fused in such a fashion, they are their wielder and there is no real distinction between the two. It would seem from the actual Zangetsu’s behavior that he generally represents instinct, impulses, killing intent, and self-preservation instinct, although he is no mere “Id” given his relatively cordial interactions with “Zangetsu” in chapter 112. All of the talk of him being a Hollow and “taking over” Ichigo is just that: talk to motivate Ichigo through fear. (Which is necessary for evolution, remember?) Zangetsu has no real interest or desire in taking over Ichigo any more than Zabimaru wants to take over Renji. He also can’t, since he’s already fused with Ichigo’s Shinigami powers and is Ichigo.

“Tensa Zangetsu” in chapter 409 tells us, “I don’t care. I don’t care what happens to things you want to protect. [...] Make no mistake, Ichigo... What you want to protect... is not what I want to protect!” In chapter 420, White Tensa Zangetsu says, “Tensa Zangetsu is you,” and “What I wanted to protect was... you... Ichigo!” This not only foreshadows what Ōetsu says, but given that both Zangetsu are fused at this time, we can discern that this is the desire of both, to include his “actual” zanpakutō. This reasoning is presumably why Isshin’s Engetsu refused to teach him the Final Getsuga Tenshō in the first place.

(This is not an Ichigo analysis, but it seems evident that Isshin and Ichigo’s Final Getsuga Tenshō would not be the same. The existence of White Tensa Zangetsu suggests that Ichigo’s Quincy, Hollow, and Shinigami powers are acting in unison and that what he uses against Aizen is in actuality likely a combination of what Isshin called the Final Getsuga Tenshō, Letzt Stil, and Segunda Etapa. It is unclear whether what Isshin called Final Getsuga Tenshō is available to all Shinigami, only Shiba, or only himself and Ichigo. By comparison with Letzt Stil and Segunda Etapa, presumably all Shinigami should have something similar as a final mode, but perhaps it’s a Shiba specialty, as it seems unlikely only Isshin would know of such a thing, and if ever there was a time for people who did know to use it, Thousand-Year Blood War was it.)

(This is also not a Tōshirō analysis, and I don’t presume to know what’s up with Hyōrinmaru in chapter -16, let alone The DiamondDust Rebellion if it’s taken as canon, but suffice it to say, based on what Ōetsu says his experience is clearly not typical in any event. Nor is it a Kaname and Kenpachi analysis, as it’s not clear what’s up with taking the zanpakutō off someone else who died. Nor is it an Arrancar analysis, as their zanpakutō seem very different.)

All this still raises several questions, such as ones like: why does an old and experienced Shinigami like Shunsui treat Katen Kyōkotsu in chapter 649 in exactly the sorts of ways that Ōetsu mocks over a hundred chapters earlier? That’s unclear. It could be that what Ōetsu reveals isn’t widely known, and that Shinigami are allowed to labor under false impressions of what their zanpakutō actually are for some reason (such as to limit their strength). Or maybe Shunsui just finds it entertaining despite knowing the truth.

Anyway, to recap, in general:

asauchi are created in the same fashion as artificial Hollows, and effectively are themselves weaponized Hollows (which fits well with the zanpakutō which Hikone used, Ikomikidomoe, which was made from a primordial Hollow)

the asauchi facilitate drawing out the “instincts” of their wielder into a manifestation which is similar to but distinct from Hollowfication, creating a zanpakutō and its attendant spirit (or at least manifesting this spirit if it existed a priori) while leaving the wielder seemingly unaltered

zanpakutō spirits are their wielder at base, and a zanpakutō is an extension of its wielder

zanpakutō view the protection of their wielder as an overriding priority

KURAYAMI IN PARTICULAR

Accordingly, it should be understood that Kurayami, like most zanpakutō spirits, is a reflection of Yoruichi’s base impulses and desires. Unlike most Shinigami, by virtue of her high office and family pedigree, Yoruichi knows this. She was thus increasingly horrified by what she saw as a result, and internally continued to otherize Kurayami...

... But she probably missed some things in the process, because she was too close to see them clearly for what they truly were.

Kurayami is a hardliner. Her attitude toward Yoruichi is similar to Zangetsu’s attitude toward Ichigo. As discussed, Zangetsu postures in the fashion he does to try and compel Ichigo to take steps that are necessary, but which Ichigo refuses to take. The ultimate examples of this are Zangetsu taking control of Ichigo’s body in an attempt to take down Byakuya, and likewise fatally wounding Ulquiorra. Kurayami’s constant admonitions of Yoruichi, advocacy of first strikes, and appeals to violence are her version of the same idea, as Yoruichi’s preferences for socializing, toying with her opponents, and avoiding killing might get her killed instead one day. (See also: Askin.) She always pushes for the maximal use of force, for overkill, because as Ripley says in Aliens: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

Kurayami only cares for Yoruichi’s continued existence. Despite being perfectly aware of Yoruichi’s guilt regarding what occurred during her time in the Onmitsukidō and Gotei 13, Kurayami would happily kill a million, a billion, or a trillion people if it meant that Yoruichi continued to live. The lives of others aren’t meaningless, but they simply do not matter to her in comparison. It’s not exactly that she only views Yoruichi’s compassion, empathy, and sympathy as weaknesses, as they can be tactically advantageous, but she believes Yoruichi is too committed to them even when it imperils her.

Kurayami largely disdains others. Being Yoruichi herself, knowing everything she knows, Kurayami can reflect upon Yoruichi’s life and judge it from a somewhat different point of view than Yoruichi herself. What she finds isn’t great. Kurayami’s perspective is that others have used and abused Yoruichi, either blatantly to get what they wanted, or subtly through needing her. Her position is thus that almost everyone else can fuck off and die. “Leave Yoruichi alone,” and “You all don’t deserve her,” are fairly apt summations of her point of view. While this hostility isn’t (usually) actively violent or lethal, she is unlikely to treat most of those Yoruichi knows in any fashion other than condescendingly.

To summarize: Kurayami is actually Yoruichi’s biggest advocate and booster, just in her own way. She’s hard on and critical of Yoruichi because Yoruichi has been trained to be predisposed to learning best from that kind of input, and because Kurayami cares enough to settle for always being cast as a villain if it means Yoruichi goes on and succeeds. She believes that almost no one is worthy of Yoruichi’s time and attention, let alone her blood, sweat, and tears. And finally, she has an infinitely negative amount of compassion for anyone who would oppose Yoruichi, regardless of any and all reasons involved in any dispute or conflict.

She loves Yoruichi (and how can she not, since they’re one in the same?) and would gladly turn the universe to ash for her to keep her going even one more day. Lobbying for murderous rampages is in effect a posture she adopts to make a point rather than a desire she lusts for. She’s never actually at risk of losing control or going berserk—it’s always only ever about doing what needs to be done with minimal risk.

[cynthiaandsamus]

Death Note/Code Geass Retrospective

(So going into the Custom Toonami Block last year between watching people lampoon the live action Death Note movie and the amazing one-shot that came out I really was ready to re-watch the original Death Note and it was one of the main reasons I started this little block. However once I finished it, the next logical step was Code Geass, it gets comparisons all the time between Lelouch and Light (usually from crazy laugh compilations on youtube in the early 2000s) and going into the Code Geass rewatch fresh from the Death Note rewatch I did kind of want to see how apt those comparisons were with a fresh perspective.

It’s not hard to see why they get compared despite being such different series, between these two I kind of see the same sort of dichotomy that Evangelion has with Gurren Lagann where they weirdly feel like they’re talking to each other. Obviously Code Geass is first and foremost a mecha anime and Lelouch’s crazy bullshit schemes are rarely as complex or manipulative as Light’s but at the same time Lelouch being on the backfoot more and having to roll with the punches makes him a much more fun character to root for.

Death Note starts off great and is a bleak series that has an ending that’s a bit more than contested I would say. Meanwhile Code Geass has a good start and an amazing end though it drags a good bit in the middle. I’d go so far as to say Code Geass’s ending is nearly perfect and despite both series essentially ending with their evil masterminds dying for their attempts to change the world, the tones couldn’t be more different.

There’s a scene early on in Death Note where Light tells Ryuk his plan and Ryuk tells Light that if he murders his way to the world being a better place, he’ll be the only sinner left alive. Light brushes this comment off because he’s a narcissistic sociopath but you get the feeling this kind of mentality is something Lelouch takes with him long before the series even begins. He’s absolutely aware that radical change to a cartoonishly unjust system will force him to do terrible things (and things usually get a little extra terrible just to kick him in the dick) and that in doing so he won’t be fit to live in the new world he plans to create. And because of this idea that Light holds the opposite ideal in that his world isn’t worth creating unless he’s alive to enjoy it, hence why he doesn’t take Ryuk’s eye deal, his and Lelouch’s mirrored endings take on exact opposite meanings, and in fact while Light fucks up in ways that should’ve been obvious to him, Lelouch’s plan goes exactly the way he wants despite everything going bonkers towards the end.

Death Note has an ending that I would argue is at least somewhat intentionally unsatisfying, it’s not a series meant to make you feel good, death is a sepctre that no mortal can really overcome and Light is ultimately isolated by his callousness for human life in pursuit of detached and increasingly foggy ideals. Meanwhile the last bit of Code Geass is commenting on despite Lelouch trying to isolate himself and pushing the entire burden of the world on himself, he has made a lot of connections with people that have survived the Pirates of the Carribean level of backstabbing we get towards the end and the world has become weirdly idyllic despite Lelouch not being alive to see it.

So back to the original question of whether it’s fair to compare Death Note and Code Geass, it’s a bit of both, they’re vastly different series in a lot of ways, Death Note prides itself on being a meticulously intricate display of intellect that eventually ends up caving in under its own weight while Code Geass is messy and silly and weird but ends up with an ending that is honestly one of the best in anime and has stuck with people long enough that it’s on everyone’s mind when Eren Jeager starts doing similar things. It’s just kind of interesting, like the Evangelion/Gurren Lagann comparison earlier, that usually the bleak version is taken more seriously but the over the top fun tends to offer a more complete package while they go back and forth with each other on ideas.

[animatedminds]

Let’s Get Dangerous Review!

It’s dangerous. In a good way. <cue dramatic music> Okay, obviously there’s more thoughts than just that. I’ve been waiting for it for weeks, and it arrived just as awesome as I hoped. For the first time, let’s give my full movie style review to the double length Ducktales special: “Let’s Get Dangerous.”

The spoilers are open and widely discussed, so maybe don’t look past the following image if you haven’t seen the episode yet.

To note, I’m not entirely convinced that this was actually meant to be a pilot. It definitely does introduce a new status quo for the Darkwing trio of characters (minus Honker for now, here’s hoping they haven’t forgotten him), but it’s also a very remote story that still tries to take place within the context of Ducktales’ universe, so it really depends on what they choose to do.

But let’s just get down to it.

First off, as I mentioned in my earlier post… Taurus Bulba. He was maybe the biggest and most eye-catching aspect of the first part of the episode, as one of the few elements we hadn’t already seen yet, and his reputation as a really, really bad guy has quite preceded him. As I may have gushed somewhat about, he’s one of the best parts of the special.

James Monroe Inglehart, for those living away from the Disney scene for a decade, is an actor and voice actor most famous for being the original Genie on Broadway’s Aladdin. A grand, bombastic presence, he generally plays characters who - much like the genie himself - a big, jolly, kind but maybe a little mischievous souls that take the attention of a room and brighten up the characters’ day - like Lance, in Tangled the Series. The most interesting thing about Bulba is that Inglehart brings that exact same energy to the role, and so Bulba keep that jollity and lofty personality in a package that becomes increasingly less nice as the story goes on. As someone who keenly remembers Taurus Bulba as cruel monster willing to hurt kids and capable of crushing Darkwing like nobody’s business, the contrast was immediately fun to watch - and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In this story, Bulba is recast from a crime lord intending to use a super weapon go on an endless plundering spree to a FOWL scientist with a respectable reputation who intends to use a super weapon to take over the world, and the transition goes off fairly well. The end result is a pretty standard mix of superhero fight and Bond plot, as Bulba ends up holed up in his lab with his squadron of elite supervillain minions - all plundered a particular fictional universe - with the heroes having to break in / escape from his captivity and stop him before he destroys everything. It’s very Silver Age, with Bulba in the role of maniacal villain, and he’s contrasted very well with Bradford - who is as always an antagonist who prides himself on pragmatism. This contrast leads to some great moments: Bradford’s increasing frustration with the cavalier attitude of both the heroes and the villains gives him the best stint of characterization he’s had since the beginning of the season - he basically spends the whole episode arguing with everyone about how badly thought out their actions are, while also badly hiding his own secrets.

The Fearsome Five (of which Quackerjack is voices by his original actor) are great to see, though used minimally. If you’re expecting to see classic show dynamics between the villains and Darkwing, that’s not really what they’re used for. Mostly, they’re minions with personality, and they’re more there to establish both to the audience and to Drake the character himself that he is ready to take on really big threats even with his lack of superpowers.

But enough about the villains, on to the heroes!

A couple episodes ago, with the Halloween episode, I criticized that story for not balancing its A and B plot all that well. This episode does not have that problem. The story is actually maybe about three fifths Darkwing’s story, and the rest of it is Scrooge and the nephews as they figure out what Bulba is up to independently of Darkwing and try to stop him themselves. It’s somewhat similar to Timephoon, where they’re there constantly and are doing their own bid to solve the story but the focus isn’t primarily on them. Instead, we have some of the best “HDL actually matter to the story” bits of the show, where they escape Bulba’s prison on their own and lead Bradford out, all the while slowly figuring out that something is shady about the guy. Meanwhile, Scrooge gets stuck in the original Ducktales universe’s most memed scene, which was a fun gag (but not the best gag - that would be the one and only Bonkers D. Bobcat as the Harvey Bullock-style cop in the Darkwing show).

Which I suppose can lead to a digression about the mad science bit here. The alternate universes here are… interesting. I always pay special attention to how things like time travel or other dimensions or alternate universes work in a series, and this one reminds me the most - I think - of DC’s Dark Multiverse: a collection of universes that are both explicitly fictional but made real because people created them. Ultimately, it’s less as if the OG Darkwing universe exists independently of the Ducktales universe and more that the in-universe Darkwing show as a world based off of it that the characters can reach into. I wish the episode had delved into that more, and now you’ve got people trying to use it to look for more establishment of OG Darkwing elements (though I was fine with it being separate, perceiving anything else as rather needlessly inexplicable), but ultimately that is not specifically what the episode is about, and is kept rather separate.

So what is the episode about? Like you didn’t already know…

As always, Gosalyn Waddlemeyer is a little girl whose grandfather was done away with by Taurus Bulba, and who falls into Darkwing’s lap over the course of his adventure with him. Here, her grandfather is (possibly) still alive, just lost in the ether a la Gravity Falls’ Grunkle Ford. And like the mighty glazed McGuffin, Darkwing’s goal in the episode is less strictly defeating Bulba as it is helping her get her grandfather and her home back. Gosalyn here is self-sufficient and action oriented (it may be my inner Brooklyn 99 fan talking, but I loved Stephanie Beatriz as her, and kind of wish she had gotten a wider range of lines), taking on her own crusade against Bulba until she realizes she can go to Darkwing for help, and is constantly trying to pull him into the fight - even while he is reluctant, and no matter what the danger - so that they can win and she can get justice. But in the end, she has to accept that they might not be able to.

As a longtime Batman fan, I immediately recognized a plethora of Robin references with Gosalyn. She’s a kid who’s family was taken from her by a villain, given a surrogate home by the hero - like Dick Grayson. She’s a street tough who originally met the hero committing a crime, and who is both skeptical of his heroism and heavily critical of his flaws - like Jason Todd. And she’s a young genius with a lot of scientific knowledge, tech skills and common sense - just like Tim Drake. There’s even elements of Carrie Kelley or Terry McGinnis there, in her determined if not gung-ho approach to heroism despite her circumstances and the hermit-like behavior of the hero.

And in the end, this is a fairly apt comparison, because Gosalyn essentially ends the story more as a Robin figure than previously, now as Darkwing’s more of a ward and official sidekick alongside Launchpad. The story does not, to note, involve her being adopted by Drake or becoming Gosalyn Mallard. Indeed, they don’t really end up having that sort of relationship. They’re distant and don’t really know how to relate to one another, and not about to broach the subject of family except in distant terms. There’s ultimately far less emphasis than before on Gosalyn and Drake being similar and hitting it off on a personal level, or even really Drake keying into Gosalyn’s potential and spirit as a person vs an element in his adventure. Throughout the story he regards her as a victim to be saved, then ultimately as an ally with potential to be respected, and in the end he gives her an offer to take up the mantle along side him while they search for her family… which ultimately creates something very different.

For people expecting something a little more akin to the implications the show made with Gyro and BOYD, Gosalyn here. The implication that they could be a family is brought up by Launchpad, but neither Drake nor Gosalyn are really there at the end of the story - I want to say they’re not there yet, but the way the story goes gives off the impression that the dynamic duo dichotomy is the relationship for the two the writing is most comfortable giving them.

Again, I’m a longtime Batman fan, so I understand and appreciate the nod. It gives them a really cool status quo that’s distinct from what came before it. Still, the strong father/daughter relationship between the two was very much the heart and soul of the original show, an endearing quality that created the character traits we love about both characters, and ultimately one of the primary characteristics that set the Darkwing family apart even from most comic book superhero stars - so even if they made something great out of it, it’s a shame to see Ducktales ultimately keep that relationship at arms’ length.

But that’s less a criticism and more just something I wish they had chosen to do differently - and it makes sense for the 2017 team’s take on Darkwing, which has always been more focused on “irrepressible hero who doesn’t give up” - a pluckie rookie growing into his competence - than “former fool whose great potential is unleashed through the people around him.” The latter is there, sometimes, but it’s not prominent. Original Darkwing was a man made better by his daughter, while the modern Darkwing doesn’t quite need that to find the hero within.

The only (and I mean only) criticism I have is the way the characters kind of jump around in how they respond to things. Drake wanting more crime, and then freaking out when super crime shows up and it’s way more than he thought he can handle is fine, and is one of the better character bits in the special. It being unclear whether Drake is against fighting supervillains because he thinks they’re too powerful vs because he doesn’t want to risk Gosalyn’s safety is another thing, though - it seems the show intended to imply the latter but forgot to include the line somewhere, so it’s not inferred until later and Drake suddenly benching Gos towards the end lacks set-up.

For her part, Gosalyn is suddenly and quickly afraid to fight for a brief moment so Launchpad can inspire her to face impossible odds, even though it was hardly the first time she had done so in the special. The ending I think wanted the characters to be somewhere that the rest of the special hadn’t gotten them to yet. But it’s all good - it ends well, so all’s well. Best gag of the episode, btw? Fenton, who is awful at keeping his secret identity secret, has hooked up Darkwing with his own hi-tech hero lair. Darkwing, despite supposedly being a detective (or at least an actor playing a detective), ends up as one of the two or three people remaining on Earth who hasn’t figured out that Fenton is Gizmoduck. Darkwing considers himself good friends with Fenton, despite hating Gizmoduck. It’s actually very funny.

It’s as of now unclear what is coming up for Darkwing. We know the St. Canard characters are going to factor in more as the FOWL plot progresses, and this episode kicks that plot into high gear - the characters now know about FOWL and their intentions, and are preparing themselves for a far more dangerous fight than usual. In short, with the midseason comes the renewed focus on the primary plot of the season, as per the usual. Like I said before, while I’m not as on board as most with the idea that this was a pilot, St. Canard was definitely established here - with series regular Zan Owlson as it’s new mayor, and a general aesthetic and set of protagonists. It wouldn’t be remiss for a future episode this season to take place there (though we know Negaduck isn’t happening this season).

The new few episodes, however, are focused more on the quest for Finch’s treasures and FOWL, so that’s going to have to wait for a while. We’ve been promised, as I recall, an episode that brings all the kids together (unless that’s part of the finale), which is nice - I may have mentioned before that the best episodes of the series have been the ones that put the kids (who are the characters with the most focus throughout its run) together and let all their personalities run through an adventure together - and with the cast growing somewhat constantly, it’s nice to know that no one is being forgotten.

Either way, I give the episode a great deal of recommendation - I only had a couple things that bothered me, and a few wishes for different choices, and ultimately I’m planning on watching it a ton of times just like I did the first Darkwing episode. From a classic Darkwing fan, and in the words of Bat-Mite, it’s a different intepretation to be sure, but not at all one without merit.

So thanks to Frank Angones, Matt Youngberg and the Ducktales crew! I hope my virtual thumbs up reaches them somehow, but either way, it was a good day to be dangerous.

[kosmosian-quills]

Approaching

My first piece of solid, uninterrupted writing for my story in over a month was a rewrite of a scene XD I’m trying to make use of some of the @yourocsbackstory​ scenes in the prequel, and this one is from the Week 2 - Friends prompt. I rewrote it to fit more chronologically with the story, and to include a little more worldbuilding.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Bidding farewell to my father, I leave his study and proceed back down the corridor. Karolina is waiting for me, as she usually does, ever diligent in her duty.

The sunset makes this part of the castle seem much darker than it is. The winter months of course do not help things in this regard, but at least the sweeping hallways are lit up earlier to compensate.

There’s no one here at this time of evening, except the occasional guard patrols every now and then, as well as us. It’s lonely, almost, with how the only sounds being our own footsteps and the echo of steps far away from us, ricocheting down the stone to us.

My thoughts are plagued with grandfather’s words, his encouragement, for me to speak up and say something to my Maidens of Honour. If not all of them, just one of them. After all, dividing a daunting task into manageable chunks is an apt way to solve the problem.

It’s just me and Karolina here.

I decide then and there that we’ll take the long route back to the residential wing of the castle. I don’t want to cut our journey short by arriving back at the room, and I would rather not be interrupted by passers-by. Somewhere private. I don’t voice this intention to her, simply keeping it to myself. For now, at least.

I slow my pace as we pass one of the windows on the very outside of this building, the dusk skyline a strange mixture of orange into grey, feeding into a rich, midnight blue. Karolina matches my pace, maintaining the few pace distance between us, yet slowing down all the same, not questioning my action at all. Not that I expected her to either way.

It doesn’t feel right. How do I even break this silence we have? It feels strange to simply start a conversation. What can I even say? I slow to a halt in the middle of the corridor, trying to will myself to say something, anything to break the silence. But I don’t have to, because she speaks first.

“Is something the matter, your highness?” she asks, voice rich with a genuine concern.

I close my eyes, take a silent breath, before forcing myself to answer her question.

“Actually… there is just one thing, Karolina,” I open my eyes, hold my left hand in the grip of my right hand, trying to hide just how nervous I am about this whole thing. “I apologise if this is forward of me, but may I ask you a personal question?” I turn around to face her, looking right into those deep emerald eyes of hers.

She nodded slightly, "of course, your majesty."

I took a moment, looking at her, stood there perfectly straight and tall, long hair stretching down the length of her back.

"My name is Anjelika," I fully turn my body around, so I am not looking over my shoulder, to face her properly, "please, call me Anjelika. In private, I don't mind. Please."

"Y-yes, Anjelika," Karolina seemed surprised at my request. Was this an odd one? I don't know. The only people in my life that have ever called me by my name are my family, no one else does. Karolina is the first person outside of my family to ever call me by my name.

“Let’s walk, Karolina,” I say, inviting her to come up beside me so that we can converse.

We aren’t moving quickly by any means, just slow steps down the corridor together, passing the various windows, banners, statues. Everything that decorates the hallways with life and colour.

“Do you… enjoy it?” I asked, watching her mesmerising emerald eyes for any kind of answer as we walked. She furrowed her brows to a slight questioning frown, so I continued quickly. “Living and working here, Karolina.”

“Of course, your – Anjelika. Why do you ask?” she tilted her head slightly, her bright red locks resting just so on her shoulder.

“Please, be honest with me,” I hold up a hand towards her, before returning it to its original position in my own grip, “I don’t know what you think of your positions, because you’re all so… quiet, about it. You don’t talk about it with me, and I’m… worried that I’m failing to uphold my end of the vow I made to you.”

She looked surprised at this, at my strange, odd request. My heart is racing as I watch her, and I can only hope that I haven’t offended her. But oh no, I’ve put her in a precarious position. She knows there is no consequence when I have insisted that she be honest with me, but… does she truly believe that? Does she think that I will dismiss her, based on my request? Is she thinking quickly, only trying to be honest enough that I don’t suspect anything is amiss? Does she want to try to placate me, to give me the answer I want to hear?

“If I may be honest…”

“Please, please do.”

“Anjelika… perhaps the reason we keep to ourselves is because we think you prefer your solitude.” She started almost hesitantly, carefully, not even looking at me yet. She had her hands clasped together in front of her, and nodded slightly as she spoke, before she finally looked me in the eyes and continued. “It’s not because we don’t want to be with you, that isn’t it at all, but you haven’t spoken to us much, nor initiated any kind of conversation with us.”

I listen closely to all of her words, both immensely relieved of her honesty, and a little hurt by it. Truth is always a bitter taste – you want it, you need it, but once you taste it, you wish you were still enveloped in your own blissful ignorance. But I can’t ask her to stop, I have to listen to everything she has to say. I still absolutely want to learn to be better.

“Maybe you could… try and be a little more involved, talk to us, and the others will open up just as much with you.” She shrugged lightly. She still seemed very nervous about how she spoke with me, and just what she was saying to me.

“I suppose you’re right, Karolina,” I replied, looking away from her and at the door to the main wing in the distance,  “I never thought of it that way. But what on earth do we talk about?”

There was something dancing on her lips, something like a smile, one that finally broke through the nerves. She seemed more comfortable, more at ease, and I… I like it this way.

“We have a lifetime to figure that out, because honestly, starting conversations is sort of hard for me too,” she explained, a nervous laugh edging the end of her sentence.

“I guess we both have a lot to learn,” I returned her smile, before looking down and away from her, taking a silent breath just before I continue, feeling that smile waver ever so slightly.

The nerves in the air somehow seem much lighter, not as overbearing. The atmosphere seems brighter despite the ever growing darkness in the world outside us. Taking a longer route somehow doesn’t seem as daunting. It’s nice to know that we’ll have this extra time together.

But there is one place that I didn’t consider in this particular route, a corridor that simultaneously gives me a feeling of tremendous pride and overwhelming pressure all at once.

Lining this stretch of hallway, equidistant apart from one another, are portraits. 8 of them, so far, to be exact. Each of them are painted during one very specific instance, and so every portrait shares an unmistakeable similarity. We come to a stop at the very end of the line of paintings.

Ever since our country was founded, the family that ruled in this castle have had portraits painted of the immediate family when the eldest child – the Crown Prince or Princess – turns 10 years old. Every single portrait on this wall has at least one child with the reigning monarchs behind them. The proud parents. It continues on to the next portrait, when that very child becomes the reigning monarch. It’s beautiful, in a way, that you can follow our family history right back in a very cohesive manner. You see them as a child, and then as an adult with a family, and then their child with their family.

My generation is no exception. The very last portrait here is one of me and my parents, painted on the very day I turned 10 years old. Stood between my parents, in a navy coloured dress, the golden tiara perched on my head. I was small back then, at least in comparison to some of the other 10 year olds in these paintings. Skinny, big brown eyes staring back at me, that small smile on my face. Father’s hand rested on my right shoulder, with my mother on my other side. My hair was longer back then, just about longer than my shoulders. I haven’t had it that long in years. This painting is also one of the three that have only one child featured. Even my father has his younger brother – my uncle - next to him in the painting next to ours.

The striking innocence in that painting, when life was so much simpler, it’s so strange to look back on.

But then, the pressure fills me with an overwhelming dread as I catch sight of the empty space next to them. The empty space that a portrait of my family will fill, somewhere in my future. Looking at the long line of my ancestors, one after another, all playing a very important role in this country.

I wonder, did all of my ancestors feel this way when they looked upon the many paintings before theirs? Of course, a swell of pride, but a deep rooted anxiety that their rule will be remarkable for the wrong reasons. I would hate to shame my family like that, to crash everything to a grinding halt. But then again, many of their reigns were unremarkable. Is that the goal? To be so unremarkable that I’m not a blemish on my family name, or to be so remarkable that my impression is left for generations to come?

I don’t know. I suppose I’ll never find out.

But honestly, I also wonder if my Maidens think the same way about their role.

“I never did like this painting,” I say aloud, almost to myself, looking myself in the eyes as I do. Those wide, innocent, brown eyes. “That dress was itchy, I hated the fabric. I had to stand there for a long while until the artist had enough of my details. I remember I couldn’t wait to get out of it.” I finish on a slightly amused chuckle.

“I think it’s a lovely dress, Anjelika,” Karolina compliments. “It suits your eyes.”

“That’s what mother said. That’s why I had to wear it,” I smile at my companion, and she returns it. It’s so nice to see, it feels so warm.

And yet, something is still plaguing my thoughts. All we’ve talked about, until now, is me. About my situation and my position, and I feel awful that I haven’t even extended the slightest courtesy to Karolina of the same respect. But she will have been told not to expect to tell me anything. After all, according to the older and wiser people who run the household, I don’t need to know about them. They just need to know me.

But that’s a lie. I do need to know them. I want to.

"Karolina, I feel like I don't know any of you.” I break our eye contact for the first time, feeling immensely guilty about it. “You all know me. You were told everything about me the moment you were accepted into your role."

She’s watching me, not interrupting or even making any kind of indication that she wanted to speak next, so I continued, hoping she’ll understand, hoping that this will not backfire exponentially. I was taking her earlier advice, after all. The best I can do is to prove myself to her, that I want to know her better.

"We perform the activities we do because they are the ones I chose, but I want to know what you all like to do. I..." I hesitated, my gaze fixated on the vase just over her shoulder, on the table over there, "I want us to be friends. I don't want my only human interactions with you to be on a hierarchy. I want us to be…”

I had to actively fight to stop me saying something too forward, too serious. This was such a vulnerable conversation and I want nothing more than a real friend, but I just can’t say it. This also seems to private to be talking about in this place, but I know that if I don’t do it now, I never will.

"I would love to be able to laugh with you, cry with you and do everything that friends do, but… I’m sorry, I don't know how. I've never had a friend before, just my cousin, and he, well..."

I didn’t have to continue, because she interrupted me before I could totally humiliate myself.

"Gardening."

I looked up at her.

"I love to garden," she said, smiling at me warmly, "back home, our garden was full of crops year round. We would harvest the apples and make szarlotka, and the strawberries made the best fruit tarts. It tasted better knowing our hard work made them possible."

I could feel that same smile creep back onto my lips, and for the first time in ages I felt truly at ease… truly happy, "I'm sure if we asked, we could get our hands on a portion of the grounds and we can plant some crops together."

"That would be lovely, thank you, Anjelika."

"You’re welcome, Karolina.”

[necropsittacus]

 @red--thedragon​ asked me to post my shin godzilla paper from last semester on here. i don’t want to publicly link to google drive so i’m pasting it in here. sources available upon request. 

Godzilla (1954) is famously and somewhat blatantly a metaphor for the atomic bomb. It was also released during what is sometimes called the “Golden Age of Japanese cinema” (Kehr), not all that long after the end of World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Probably not coincidentally, it was wildly successful and left a significant mark on pop culture and consciousness. This paper will focus on the 2016 reboot Shin Godzilla, which takes this well-established nuclear metaphor and ties it instead to the Fukushima disaster of 2011. Shin Godzilla is a darker, less campy piece than we may have come to expect from monster movies. It feels closer to the original Godzilla tonally than most modern takes tend to, and focuses much more on political or bureaucratic drama than on monster fight scenes. It is, however, still very recognizably, and crucially, a Godzilla movie in the spirit of what has come before. This paper will examine how Shin Godzilla invokes Fukushima, what points it is trying to make by this, and how the resignification benefits us--in other words, why what the directors are trying to say needed to be said in specifically a Godzilla movie, already tied by implication to the older nuclear narrative of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The major points of the argument are material parallels to the events of Fukushima in Shin Godzilla, prominent themes of politics and media, and the construction of Godzilla himself. Additionally, one might speculate that Shin Godzilla is about narrative itself, or Godzilla as a narrative. 

It is worth commenting briefly on the tagline in connection to the idea that this movie is in some way about narrative. The tagline for the Japanese release of the film is written as both “Japan vs Godzilla” in katakana and “Reality vs Fiction” in kanji, with the katakana above the kanji in a way that implies they are the same word or being equated in some way. Framing the text this way makes it a statement both that this fight is between: (a) Japan and Godzilla, (b) reality and fiction (a narrative), and (c) Japan and fiction (a narrative) (the fourth possible reading, that the film is about a struggle between reality and Godzilla, seems less apt except as an extension of (c)). The English tagline, on the other hand, is “A god incarnate. A city doomed.” This is in line with “standard” Godzilla imagery and is not in itself anything surprising. The fact that the English version is not anything close to a direct translation of the Japanese version is surprising. One might speculate that this is because the “reality vs fiction” concept, with a Godzilla movie, was seen as less meaningful outside of Japan (and thus Western audiences might want something a little more traditional for a monster movie?) Using this kind of wordplay in the tagline is setting us up for a movie that is in some way about signification or meaning; it is also setting up an idea of Godzilla as a cultural construct or narrative, as well as just a monster. 

In several places the plot and imagery of Shin Godzilla directly parallel the events of Fukushima. The damage caused by Godzilla manifests in blackouts, airport closures, water (and blood) leaking into train tunnels, and leveled buildings (Shin Godzilla).  Like the original, and unsurprisingly for a popular nuclear metaphor, there is a heavy focus here on danger from radiation. However, unlike the original movie, one of the government’s first responses to the discovery that Godzilla is radioactive is “it’s not enough of a spike in radiation to warrant evacuation” (Shin Godzilla). Another major parallel is the focus on mass evacuations, specifically the SDF’s inability to evacuate Tokyo in an organized manner and an increasingly wide area requiring evacuation. The initial suggestion that the disruptions observed might be due to a monster is treated as ridiculous; the more “respectable” politicians tend to assume it must be an underwater volcanic eruption or an earthquake (Shin Godzilla). For comparison, in the original Godzilla the first assumption is that there must be a “drifting sea mine, or an underwater volcano” (Gojira). The underwater volcano idea is repeated in both films, but where the original has a mine (more linked to the aftermath of war), Shin Godzilla has an earthquake (part of the actual Fukushima disaster). Obviously, in the case of the real-life disaster, part of the problem was an earthquake, not a giant monster rising from the sea, but the government’s ignorance of, or refusal to acknowledge, what is going on is evocative. This idea that the government does not know what is happening and cannot be relied upon is repeated in other ways. Scientists working with the bureaucracy initially assume that Godzilla would be unable to support his own weight on land and cannot come ashore; immediately afterwards, he comes ashore (Shin Godzilla). 

One of the major themes of the movie is its focus on politics, red tape, and bureaucratic incompetence. This is probably unique to Shin Godzilla within the Godzilla franchise; it certainly does not play such a prominent role in the original. More time in this movie is devoted to scenes of bureaucrats arguing with each other, while Godzilla lays waste to Tokyo, than to any attempt to fight the monster. As in the original Godzilla, the military is powerless to help; unlike the original, this is partly because of red tape (at one point a comment is made that the Self-Defense Forces are not authorized to fight Godzilla because he is not an invading army (Shin Godzilla)), as well as physical inability to stop the monster. Repeated attempts are made to calm the public via press releases and the like, despite the fact that the government is at this point not actually doing anything to help the situation (Shin Godzilla); this speaks for itself. At least one bureaucrat has made a statement that the Fukushima disaster was as bad as it was because of “reflexive obedience...reluctance to question authority...devotion to ‘sticking with the program’” (“Fukushima report”). These are, by and large, the same things being pointed out in the bureaucracy here. Those in power are reluctant to act; there is no protocol for this kind of catastrophe, so no one actually deals with it, except for the characters who are able to disregard protocol and act outside it. One of the final lines is “The fact remains that casualties were high. Accountability comes with the job” (Shin Godzilla). This feels like an unsubtle comment directed at the government--it is a statement that yes, government accountability for what happened is important. Given the rest of the ending (discussed later), and the tonal implications of changing the actual narrative of the aftermath of Fukushima, could this be a way of constructing a scenario in which the Japanese government is held accountable for its failure or inability to act? 

Another way politics play an important thematic role is the issue of international relations, specifically between Japan and the US. This plays into some of the statements Shin Godzilla is making about narrative and continuity. It ties less directly to images of Fukushima (the US did intervene in that disaster to some degree, but in a very different way) than the rest of the movie, but is relevant to its ties to Hiroshima. Following the failure of the SDF and government to stop Godzilla, the international community, and, in particular, the United States, attempt to become involved (Shin Godzilla). The US’s idea of how to fix the problem is to drop an atomic bomb on Tokyo to kill Godzilla; much of the conflict is centered around how to stop Godzilla before that happens (Shin Godzilla). There is a line “post-war extends forever” (Shin Godzilla), in a discussion of the political ramifications of the situation. This explicitly links this movie (and thus Fukushima) to what happened in and after World War II.

Another major point distinguishing this from the original Godzilla and tying it to Fukushima and the modern era is the way Shin Godzilla uses media and social media. We see people filming the initial stages of the disaster on cell phones as it is happening (Shin Godzilla), even while the government does not know what is happening and refuses to comment on it. The internet seems to distribute information faster than the bureaucracy. At some points, there is an overlay of social media commentary on the screen, over footage of disaster (Shin Godzilla). Scenes cut between politicians arguing and either the news. This is a mass-information-era take on Godzilla, a modern reinterpretation in ways that go beyond aesthetics or the addition of color. It also suggests parallels to other discourse around Fukushima, notably Ryouichi Wagou’s Twitter poetry. 

While the basic concept of the monster and his origins remain similar, there are some notable differences. This Godzilla, like the original, is created by nuclearity in some way; both versions are prehistoric survivors somehow brought into contact with humans by nuclear weapons or nuclear energy. However, the original Godzilla was created by nuclear testing in the Pacific (Godzilla), while Shin Godzilla evolved rapidly to feed on nuclear waste following unregulated dumping (Shin Godzilla). It is worthy of note that this Godzilla also must periodically reenter the sea to cool his internal nuclear reactor (Shin Godzilla). Additionally, he is eventually stopped by exploiting this need for temperature control. The need for cooling, and specifically cooling by seawater, seems to be referencing the actual means by which meltdown is contained. 

There are significant visual differences between the Shin Godzilla take on Godzilla and more traditional depictions. Some of this is attributable to improved special effects, but not all (this Godzilla does not look much more like other contemporary depictions of Godzilla than he does like the original). The most significant change is the theme of mutation and multiple forms, discussed in more detail later. All his forms look somewhat unlike more traditional versions of Godzilla; the second in particular is notably unsettling-looking, resembling a gilled sea animal barely able to move on land and who routinely dumps blood from his gills, while the third and fourth can, unlike the original Godzilla, unhinge their jaws. It is likely that these differences are related to a commentary on narrative, and drawing a contrast with the other ways Godzilla has been reinterpreted over the years. We have become used to the “traditional” Godzilla, in a way people in the 50’s would not have been. Because he is such a fixture of pop culture, the image of Godzilla no longer provokes fear. A new version is better able to provoke a visceral reaction, as well as to indicate that this is not, for all its similarities, quite the same narrative, or the same disaster, but something new, something we should be afraid of. Additionally, the way Godzilla looks has always been some kind of radiation metaphor (for instance, the original Godzilla’s scale patterns resemble scars from radiation poisoning). Is the unsettling appearance and seeming injury here part of the same idea? Are we meant to take the monster leaking blood from his gills as a form of radiation sickness? Is the monster, too, now suffering from the disaster? This could be an interesting reinterpretation of the monster-as-nuclear-metaphor narrative; it would require more space to analyze fully than is available here, but is worth mentioning.   

Perhaps the most significant difference between Shin Godzilla’s take on the titular monster and any older material is the idea of mutation. This Godzilla can rewrite his own DNA and take new forms to adapt to new circumstances. While all five forms are recognizably distinct from any other take on Godzilla, the first two in particular look nothing like any other depiction. As the crisis gets worse, he mutates gradually into something much closer to the recognized nuclear symbol that truly ties this to what’s come before. This can be taken as saying essentially, “this started out looking like a brand-new problem, but now we see it is the same pattern repeated.” As for the mutation itself, there is the obvious connection between radiation and mutation. Also, by mutating, Godzilla can adapt to his circumstances and survive, but the government status quo cannot. There is also plausibly a link between the significance of mutation within the film to a commentary on changing narratives themselves: narratives of disaster, the “Godzilla narrative.” Even the title of the film, which literally translates as “New Godzilla,” backs this idea of change. Calling it simply Godzilla (2016) would have been in keeping with the norms of the franchise. The choice to call it “New Godzilla” instead suggests that the creators are deliberately framing this film as a shift in the narrative of disaster (and of Godzilla movies) they are using, even though thematically, tonally, and in terms of actual plot, Shin Godzilla is closer to Godzilla (1954) than many of the newer movies that might bear the name “Godzilla.”  

The last major element that merits discussion here is the tone of the ending. Shin Godzilla ends slightly differently from the original Godzilla; while the original Godzilla is eventually killed, with concerns that if nuclear testing continues another Godzilla will rise (Godzilla), Shin Godzilla is only frozen, not killed (Shin Godzilla). The idea that the threat is still there, cooled beyond the capacity to act, immobilized, but ready to start moving again, reads as a parallel to the need for continual efforts to contain radioactive leakage. However, it is established that if he starts moving again, the countdown to annihilation from nuclear weapons will also start again (Shin Godzilla). This raises the question of whether that element is really about Fukushima. On the one hand, containment of a meltdown would have the “constant threat that this will become an active problem again” element. On the other, that significance would already be covered by the idea that Godzilla is frozen, not dead; bringing in US involvement, and specifically the threat of nuclear weapons, suggests something else is being referenced here. You cannot talk about dropping an atomic bomb on Japan without invoking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The ending, while not happy by any means, does have an oddly hopeful tone. Scientists discover that a new radioactive isotope associated with Godzilla has a half-life of only 20 days, and will disappear completely in at most 3 years (Shin Godzilla). This stands in sharp contrast to how we normally think of radioactive contamination, and, significantly, to the actual timescale of Fukushima. As of March of this year, eight years after the original disaster, containment and cleanup efforts were still underway, including difficulties in storing or disposing of contaminated water (Takahashi). The choice to have the radiation go away suggests that there is an “after” for this disaster, when the damage will truly be over and Tokyo will be safe again, in the same way Shin Godzilla elsewhere implies there is not truly an “after” for Hiroshima. This time, reality, or Japan, wins over the narrative. At the same time, changing the real narrative of what happened at Fukushima, and is still, in a way, happening, to one with a happier, more certain end could be taken as narrative winning out over reality. Thus, this question is both answered and unanswered. The same idea of a true post-disaster space is suggested by the prospect of a new set of politicians, who may be less paralyzed by protocol in the face of catastrophe. Ending the movie this way seems to be a means of coping with the disaster, of reanalyzing it as something that can be defeated and truly go away, in a way the reality of nuclear catastrophe cannot. 

There is one more minor point relevant to this interpretation. Shin Godzilla was very well-received in Japan, winning 7 Japan Academy Prize awards (Dominguez), but received a much more mixed response in the West (Bellach). Much of the criticism focuses on the movie being boring, confusing, or too heavily focused on the bureaucratic elements. This difference can likely be attributed to two major factors. First, we may have certain expectations for monster movies; as mentioned above, while the original Godzilla was quite depressing, the tendency over the years has been more towards campier, more monster-fight-focused action movies. Evaluated in that genre, Shin Godzilla definitely does not meet expectations. Second, the Fukushima disaster itself, and the government’s response or failure to respond, are likely much more active in people’s minds in Japan. Western critics might not even be aware of some of the details, and would be less likely to have a strong reaction to the parallels than someone who had seen the impact more up-close. 

Shin Godzilla is at once a criticism of the Japanese government’s response to the Fukushima disaster, a means of placing Fukushima as part of the same cultural legacy as Hiroshima, a means of coping with the aftermath of Fukushima, and a commentary on the narrative of disaster itself and other Godzilla movies, all, crucially, dressed up as a Godzilla movie. While the primary point here seems to be using the format of a Godzilla movie to critique Fukushima, it is important that this is a Godzilla movie. There is work being done by the images of Hiroshima inherently referenced by this comparison that would not be filled by a new, Fukushima-specific monster, let alone a realistic disaster movie. The same point is being made by explicit references to the atomic bombing of Japan, and the idea that we are still in the “time after” or “aftermath” of Hiroshima. This is both an attempt to process that idea and to cement Fukushima as a continuation of the same narrative. However, the narrative is not set in stone; we are using a rigid narrative to talk about continuation, but the need for change is a major theme, and Japan wins over the "narrative,” if only barely. Changing the way the disaster ends is both a criticism of how the government actually responded to Fukushima and a means of coping with Fukushima, or suggesting hope for the future. Additionally, there are suggestions of commentary on how Godzilla has evolved as a concept that are difficult to separate from the political commentary; this gives an overall impression that in some ways, this is a movie about narratives as much as anything else. 

[splashesdarling]

A comprehensive evaluation and ranking of all Mariah albums:

Y’all want to dive deep into Ms. Mimi’s discography? Well too bad, we’re doing it anyway (skip to the end for rankings).

Mariah Carey (1990) Mariah’s debut is a great collection of songs, but a great collection of songs and a great album are not one and the same. The songs individually (with the sole exception of Prisoner) are fantastic, but there is no real album cohesion, in either sound or theme. Its main purpose was to introduce the world to Mariah’s voice, and it does so with admirable panache. 

- Album Highlight: Alone In Love. Album Lowlight: Prisoner.

Emotions (1991) Mariah’s Debut album introduced the world to her voice, Emotions introduces the world to Mariah THE ARTIST. Her skills as a songwriter and music producer are on full display, as is her voice, which is allowed more freedom and spontaneity her second album out. Carrying the listener to dizzying highs throughout a distinctive yet cohesive album.

- Album Highlight: Till The End Of Time. Album Lowlight: None.

MTV Unplugged (1992) Its sole reason for existence was to prove Mariah’s voice was not a studio creation, MTV Unplugged proves it, though the performances are held back by some sloppy music cues and Mariah’s obvious stage fright. There are some lovely live instrumental rearrangements and vocals, but there are better live performances from Mariah. 

- Album Highlight: Negligible. Album Lowlight: Negligible.  

Music Box (1993) Serving as a transitional period for Mariah musically, Music Box sees Mariah experimenting with new sounds and singing styles, most of which work wonderfully and those that don’t are at worst only forgettable. Much like her Debut, Music Box is a great collection of songs, but as an album experience it’s lacking. The album doesn’t inspire you to listen from beginning to end, rather you skip to the songs you want to hear. 

- Album Highlight: Everything Fades Away. Album Lowlight: Hero.

Merry Christmas (1994) Do you like Christmas music? Do you enjoy talented vocalists? Do you like when talented vocalists sing Christmas music? You’re in luck, but the rest of us will have to wait for a real new album.

- Album Highlight: AIWFCIY. Album Lowlight: It’s a Christmas album, the entirety of it is a lowlight.

Daydream (1995) The title is apt, this dreamy album is a pleasure. Though cohesion is still an issue, it's not so blatant here. Many of the songs tie into a central theme, and soundwise there is a through line. That is not to say the songs that deviate bring the album down, quite the contrary. For the first time Mariah’s hip hop, r&b, and soul inspirations and deep-seated love for the genres are coming through clearly, but they’re somewhat held back, which would become blatant with the subsequent release of Butterfly.

- Album Highlight: Always Be My Baby. Album Lowlight: (If only for me) One Sweet Day.

Butterfly (1997) Mariah Carey crystallized. Her first album to truly capture the woman she was and the phenomenal artist she is when unrestricted and allowed to express herself freely. From the lyrical artistry, to the pitch perfect production, Mariah’s breathtaking vocals and the depth of the album as a whole, Butterfly still stands as Mariah’s magnum opus. The album is cohesive, while still allowing each song to stand easily on their own. Some will argue the exception is her cover of The Beautiful Ones, but I wholeheartedly disagree. If taken on its own perhaps, but within the context of the album it is as essential and beautiful as each of the other tracks featured.

- Album Highlight: Outside. Album Lowlight: None.

#1′s (1998) A celebration of Mariah’s (then) 13 #1′s. The inclusion of I Still Believe, When You Believe, Sweetheart, and a newly duetted Whenever You Call, along with her established hits makes this a worthwhile listen. 

- Album Highlight: When You Believe. Album Lowlight: Do You Know Where You’re Going To.

Rainbow (1999) Often overlooked due to its busy musical production and the arguable disappointment at its relative weightlessness in comparison with Butterfly, Rainbow is underrated but undeniably disjointed. A half and half of an album, with half cohesively flowing from one song into the other (this is even the first use of interludes by Mariah) while the other half stumble the album’s momentum and flow. For the most part it’s an easy listen, the melodies, vocal layering, and production making for an enjoyable experience, but the album’s failings sadly result in a missed opportunity on the whole. 

- Album Highlight: Bliss. Album Lowlight: Did I Do That?.

Glitter (2001) Intended as a soundtrack more than a traditional Mariah album, however it doesn’t embrace the concept or style of a soundtrack enough to differentiate from the rest of her body of work. Glitter contains the absolute peak of Mariah’s ballads, while the non stop party anthems are fun enough to bring the house down, and there are touching dives into the somewhat autobiographical story of the character Mariah plays in the film from which the album takes its namesake. Audio clips from the film are included only sparingly towards the start of the album, uncommitted interludes if anything, they add nothing to the listening experience and serve only to undermine the album’s strengths. 

- Album Highlight: Lead The Way. Album Lowlight: If We.

Greatest Hits (2001) Released a scant three months after the critical and commercial flop of Glitter, the message couldn’t have been clearer. Ironically the strength of Mariah as a vocalist, songwriter, and music producer highlights exactly why writing her off as they did with this release was a resounding mistake. 

- Album Highlight: Take your pick. Album Lowlight: Here in the UK we had Against All Odds feat. Westlife included, soooo.

Charmbracelet (2002) The only album to close in on Butterfly’s position atop Mariah’s discography. Generally overlooked and ignored by even the lambs themselves, Charmbracelet is a criminally underrated masterpiece. The revised priorities of musical production and vocal arrangement following the somewhat overproduced Rainbow and erratic Glitter, Charmbracelet is a bracing reminder of Mariah’s overwhelming talent and ability to imbue her music with such beauty and poignancy, to invoke both personal evaluation and universal truths. It is also, incidentally, my favourite Mariah album, just in case you hadn’t guessed it.

- Album Highlight: Yours (fight me). Album Lowlight: None.

The Remixes (2003) Much like the release of a Greatest Hits album following Glitter’s critical and commercial failure, so too was The Remixes released following Charmbracelet’s lukewarm reception. A reminder of Mariah’s talent and decade long stretch of hits across Billboard’s various music charts, another plea for listeners to realise you can’t write off talent like Mariah. The first disc of this two disc set features the club remixes (most courtesy of longtime collaborator David Morales), the only real stumbles are the Heartbreaker/If You Should Ever Be Lonely Remix, which doesn’t blend together or sample each song well enough to justify itself or its inclusion here, the other is the Hq2 Remix of Through The Rain. I appreciate the need to promote the newest album of original content but we know Mariah can do better. The first disc is somewhat of a letdown, as the exclusion of certain club remixes are especially egregious (Always Be My Baby and The Roof specifically) The second disc (featuring the commercially released singles remixes) fares far better, and probably would have been better served being released separately. 

- Album Highlight: Thank God I Found You (Make It Last Remix). Album Lowlight: Through The Rain (Hq2 Remix).

The Emancipation Of Mimi (2005) Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, which is amazing given how needlessly bloated the album is. The album benefits from the cohesive sound and style utilized throughout and from containing an abundance of chart ready songs, but ultimately the experience is dampened by all the throwaway filler. There is no justification for the inclusion of To The Floor when we have Get Your Number, no reason for a Part II to So So Lonely when Part I was so forgettable, Circles, Joyride, and I Wish You Knew are too similar in sound and lyrical content to appear almost one right after the other. The highs of TEOM are likely to make you giddy, but the interruption from second-tier material drags the album down. The album is 19 tracks long when it should have been a brisk and memorable 13.

- Album Highlight: Fly Like A Bird. Album Lowlight: Makin' It Last All Night (What It Do).

E=MC² (2008) Much like Rainbow, E=MC² is often overlooked due to its busy production, and make no mistake the album is very busy production-wise. The album lacks the restraint even Rainbow was capable of. That is not to say the album is bad by any means, far from it. The biggest issue of the album is the lackluster beats. Generic for the most part, missguided in certain cases, and overall a less engaging and original sound than we’re used to from Mariah. What saves the album is the infectious fun of it all, Mimi’s celebrating and you’ve been invited to the party. Not that it’s one long party record, there’s an array of lyrical depth to be found hiding within the deluge of uninspired beats, that is if you’re willing to stick with the album long enough to hear them. 

- Album Highlight: I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time. Album Lowlight: Cruise Control.

Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel (2009) THIS is how you do a long album. 17 tracks long but, unlike TEOM, there’s no filler, no redundant repeats. The album is long but tight and cohesive, flowing effortlessly between songs, rewarding for those willing to listen from beginning to end. The first time since Rainbow that Mariah had used interludes (Glitter’s half-assed attempt does not count), though they’re more satisfying here. Mariah is telling a story with this album and the languorous pace and the breathers the interludes provide enhance the album’s listening experience. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the lyrical skill on display throughout the album, it’s deep but Mariah still has plenty of fun here, the line ‘it's going down like a denominator’ is a personal favourite. 

- Album Highlight: The Impossible. Album Lowlight: None.

Merry Christmas II You (2010) Do you like ‘modern’ Christmas music? Do you like iconic artists slumming it? Do enjoy watching music icons try desperately to reinvent Christmas classics with a ‘modern’ twist? First, what is wrong with you? And second, please don’t come to my house during the holidays. 

- Album Highlight: When Christmas Comes (it’s actually sweet, just avoid the duet version). Album Lowlight: All of it.

Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse (2014) The album delivers on the epicness of its audacious title. One of her best albums, period. Many balk at the 62 minute run time (74 if you go Deluxe) but it’s well worth the time. This album is an experience, Mariah said that if this were to be her last album she wanted to say everything she needed to say with it, and she does (and then some). It’s a beautiful and inspiring album, managing to balance that classic Mariah sound while still sounding fresh and new. The album is a tour de force, and had this been Mariah’s last album? She would have been going out on a high note. 

- Album Highlight: Meteorite. Album Lowlight: None.

#1 To Infinity (2015) For the love of God, stop releasing greatest hits compilations whenever her albums underperform. Yes, sadly MIAM...TEC failed to grab the public’s attention (for context, the biggest songs of that year were Happy, Dark Horse, All Of Me, and Fancy, soooo, there’s clearly no accounting for taste that year) so we got an updated #1′s album, given that by this point her initial 13 had increased to 18. If you enjoy her #1s the album’s a great way to have them all in one convenient disc, Infinity the song is fine but nothing special. Fun fact, the UK release swapped out Someday, I Don’t Want To Cry, and Thank God I Found You for Endless Love, Without You, and Against All Odds feat. (SIGH) Westlife. Because when you’re buying a disc featuring Mariah’s record breaking 18 American #1′s, obviously you don’t actually want those original songs of hers, you want 3 song covers because they went to #1 in the UK!

- Album Highlight: Take your pick. Album Lowlight: (Why do you keep doing this UK?!) Against All Odds feat. I hate you talentless bastards.

Caution (2018) Mariah could have gone out with MIAM...TEC, but thank God she didn’t because then we wouldn’t have been blessed with this gem. A brisk 11 tracks (only 10 if not for the internet, because apparently Mariah doesn’t want us to have nice things) go by far too quickly, they’re each so enjoyable you don’t want them to end, and though they each have their own distinctive sound they blend together to form a cohesive whole. Mariah is clearly through trying to appeal to the general mass public in any way, shape, or form, and Caution is all the better for it. Mariah has nothing to prove at this point, and she knows it. This is an album made entirely from a place of self-assuredness and an unsuppressable love for writing, singing, and producing music. May she never grow tired of doing so. 

- Album Highlight: Giving Me Life. Album Lowlight: None.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Overall Album Ranking:

#1 Butterfly

#2 Charmbracelet

#3 Me. I am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse

#4 Emotions

#5 Caution

#6 Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel

#7 Daydream

#8 Mariah Carey

#9 Music Box

#10 Rainbow

#11 Glitter

#12 E=MC²

#13 The Emancipation Of Mimi

#14 MTV Unplugged

#15 Greatest Hits

#16 #1′s

#17 The Remixes

#18 #1 To Infinity

#19 Merry Christmas

#20 Merry Christmas II You

[markswoman]

fool | dsc

but you can’t fall in love for the first time, you realize, if you’re already in too deep. you can fall in love for the second time, or the third, or perhaps, you realize, it’s something continuous. falling in love, maybe, never ends.

pairing | sicheng x reader | angst | 16.7k |

an: @sofhyuck since you wanted this so bad :)) [edited repost]

You only open your eyes because there’s a crow outside of your window. It’s jet black and it’s loud, caws grappling around your consciousness and ripping you out of your slumber. The crow’s noises cling to your eardrums, ringing over and over, even after the crow has flown away.

You sit up blearily. Sleep dangles on your bottom lashes, and your mouth is sticky. You part your lips and shut them several times to warm them up from the rusty feeling of exhaustion. Your jaw seems to creak as you move.

Late morning light streams in through your cotton curtains, just soft enough that it doesn’t burn your eyes as you slowly pry them open with your fingertips.

It’s almost noon, but the city seems just as tired as you are. There’s no rush of traffic on the street just outside of your fourth story window. You’re used to waking up to rush hour’s stragglers, honking noisily as they hurry to a day at work.

You peel yourself from off of your bedsheets. There’s a fine layer of sweat between your bare back and the silk. Your face feels sticky, like you’ve just come back from a run. Standing up is difficult, and moving to the bathroom is the challenge of the century. You groggily feel around for your toothbrush, jamming it into your mouth, then your cheek before blindly patting around your counter to find the tube of toothpaste.

Brushing your teeth is a chore. You squint into the fluorescent lighting of your bathroom and slowly let your eyes adjust to the day and what’s to come.

What really wakes you up is the cold water you splash over your face after you’ve brushed your hair and put your toothbrush off to the side. It jolts you awake, and suddenly your eyes are focused on your reflection in the mirror.

You look curiously into the polished glass. The person reflected back at you is thin, but you don’t look like a wafer. If you squint, you blur away into pale cream, almost paperwhite, and a mundane smudge of color for your hair. Pink lips, bright from the aftereffects of mint toothpaste, grow blurry until they’re barely noticeable on the pale oval of your face.

You tilt your head up, cradling your own chin in between your thumb and index finger to inspect your face. The skin is smooth and untouched.

Your favorite feature on yourself has always been your nose. It slopes nicely, and you think your lips are a little too thin, your eyes a little too wide when you’re not focused on controlling your expression.

You only have one clock in your house. It’s digital and made of stainless steel with a tiny little pocket of shined metal in the back to store the batteries and the gears. If the clock is hung up properly, the mechanisms aren’t visible at all, but you have never gotten around to putting a nail in your unmarred white wall.

It’s because you only have one clock that you don’t know what time it is until you step out into your living room. You balance the machine on a stack of books and leans it against the wall.

It’s eleven instead of nine, which means the city has been so kind as to hit the snooze button for you this lovely Saturday afternoon.

You only know it’s Saturday because your clock displays the date and weekday alongside the time.

Saturday, your favorite coffee shop is closed. You frown. You need a cup of coffee, and your machine broke down two weeks ago. You scratch your head idly and stand in the middle of your kitchen. The tiles are cold against your toes, so you curl them up, stumbling back out into the living room area.

You should go out to get coffee, you decide. It seems like a fairly sound plan of action, so you nod to yourself once and go back to your bedroom, throwing open your closet and tugging on a gray hoodie to go with your jeans. You smooth your hair down once with your palms, and toes on your shoes at the door.

It’s spring, and luscious green dusts along the edges of the sidewalks, spilling over from the designated areas for flowers and shrubbery. The air is damp, like the last rainfall, and you take care to step over the straggling snails that had surfaced after the last rain.

The city is like a coloring book, with little patches of green that never pass the beige lines of the sidewalk. The blades of grass shimmer with remnants of morning dew.

You walk with no real aim, just one foot in front of another. You never look down, and you never look back. You trust there will always be ground underneath your feet to catch you and that every step will somehow, someday, take you somewhere.

You don’t come to a stop until you find a cafe. In the part of the city where you’ve been walking, cafes are not a regular occurrence. It’s all metallic skyscrapers and high end shops.

You tilt your head and peer in the window of the coffee shop to get a better look before turning on your heel to walk up to the entrance. You wrap your fingers around the metal doorknob and pull. The front door chimes.

The cafe is shaped like a pyramid tipped on its side, half buried into sand that time has glued into cement. The base of the pyramid is a straight wall made of pine, starting from the ground and shooting straight into the sky. It would go on forever, but it’s cut short by an intersection. A three dimensional intersection is an edge. The ceiling of the shop cuts the wall short, sloping down at a straight, but drastic angle.

There’s no hallway to the coffee shop. The door leads straight into the massive, right triangle prism, but it has the same effect. Darkness leads to light and compression leads to release. It’s a step from the strangle of the city into the fresh breath of another world.

You stumble upon the shop on a day when the sky is a pale lilac, and the clouds are grey pencil smudges against the hazy sun.

The one upright wall is made almost entirely of glass, with pine pillars keeping up the integrity of the structure so physics can’t crush the cafe into little pieces. There’s a seam where the glass wall and the sloped ceiling meet and light fixtures hang by braided metal ropes, laced with ivy leaves.

There’s one barista, leaning with his hip against the counter. He’s holding a white cloth and rotating it against the inside surface of a mug. His eyes are hidden under a mop of almost white hair.

You glance around the shop once more. The light catches the surfaces and reflects, creating a subtle, dream-like effect. The cafe seems to be permanently etched into a fleeting moment and every second is just different enough. The sun never captures the world the same way twice.

“Espresso,” you say to the barista.

The barista nods his head in acknowledgment before turning away to fiddle with the machine. You have been to enough coffee shops that you really should know the inner workings of the coffee building process, but you’ve never looked into it with too much detail. You back away slowly from the counter to find an open table amongst the masses set up in the shop.

You settle for a seat near one of the large expanses of glasses, drumming your fingers along the tabletop and humming through scales as you glance idly out the window. Spring is the season in which everything is supposed to wake. There’s very little nature in the city, just concrete jungles and metallic high rises. The comparison doesn’t seem quite as apt. You think that the city in the spring looks very much like the city in the fall, and it’s a pity that a world dying is so similar to one coming to life.

The coffee shop is relatively empty, with the exception of a couple making quiet conversation on one of the couches towards the back of the shop. The barista steps out lazily from behind the counter, thick lashes brushing against his skin as he tries to swipe the sleep from his eyes with one hand while holding your coffee in the other.

“Espresso,” the barista says blandly, putting the saucer down in front of you with a clack.

“Thank you,” you murmur quietly. The barista turns away without a second look, stalking back to his post behind the counter.

The mug for the espresso is clear, made of glass, resting on a matching glass saucer. The drink itself is split into two layers, one a deep brown, nearly black, the other almost a caramel color. you watches as the layers keep their balance even after you lift the cup to your lips and take a slow sip.

You like coffee. The first time you tried it, you had spat it out into your father’s lap. Your father had lurched up and roared at you while maids hurried to pat his pants dry.

“It’s bitter,” you had complained.

Your father had frowned until the wrinkles were deep set lines in his face before shaking his head and walking out of the room.

Coffee is one of those things that, you think, is an acquired taste. It’s naturally fragrant, and the smell of coffee beans is almost universally pleasing. But the taste itself isn’t quite as easy.

You like coffee because it’s real. You drink it black, with no sugar and no cream, because it’s best in its raw state when you can really taste the bean as it’s meant to be. You suppose your love for coffee was inevitable. It runs in the blood.

You sigh and take another slow sip of your espresso and decides that you like this place. They make the coffee just thick enough and just potent enough. It has substance. You will come back.

You wonder if your father ever sold beans to this venue before deciding, no, probably not. It’s not a chain, and it probably doesn’t generate enough revenue to warrant your father’s attention. No matter how much of a coffee lover your father is-- was-- he was always first and foremost, a businessman.

The espresso disappears quickly enough, and as the taste begins to fade away on the tip of your tongue, you feel extremely dissatisfied. You order another.

Time disappears somehow with a sun that slowly rises and slowly sets, no longer in the center of the sky when you shake yourself out of your daze.

You glance around to find that the couples that were here during your arrival are long gone, empty seats left in their places. There’s someone new in the store, leaning against the counter as the barista grinds the beans, a grating whirring noise of the machine before the soft sound of hot water trickling through the filters.

“One espresso,” the barista says, just as dully as before, sliding the saucer over the counter into the new stranger’s grasp. You check your watch. It’s just past three in the afternoon. Your stomach growls in protest to lack of food.

You watch blankly as the stranger fetches his espresso and settles into a table for two, propping his feet up on the other chair. You watch for just a moment too long and the man meets your gaze, giving you a look of confusion and curiosity before shrugging off his shoulders and glancing away.

The man is wearing a business suit, and there’s a briefcase leaning against his chair. He looks young and his hair is slicked back into a clean part. He’s handsome, almost strikingly so, but you find yourself continuing to stare, not because of his face, but because of his attire and the way he sits.

This man is an intern perhaps, you can tell by the way his sleeves are rolled up and his tie is loosened, several stray hairs coming loose from stiff gel while the man leans his weight back on the chair. He’s not entirely professional, not clean and pressed like your father was. He’s messy around the edges.

At last, you look away. You’ve been here for hours already, there are four identical cups stacked on top of four identical saucers. You figure if you order another it would be unnecessarily strange. Your stomach is sore because you drank the espressos on an empty stomach and it would be wise to go and find yourself a late lunch.

You stack all your cups and dishes neatly and leave them on the table to be cleaned up. You stand up slowly, stretch, and make your way to the door.

–

You tell the story of your life in snippets. You were born into a family of three, as an only child, the precious child of a businessman and a housewife. Coffee beans were a family trade, passed down from generation to generation. Your life is all facts and information, you think, because there’s really not much to tell. All good stories root from a main character with some sort of disadvantage, and you have none. Your greatest tragedy is that you have no tragedies at all.

A year after university, you quit your office job and told your father that you needed some time to find yourself. Your father had put one hand on each of your shoulders and looked you directly in the eyes. You aren’t sure what you saw there, but it must have been more convincing of an argument than the one you had formulated in your head. It took less than a minute for your father to slacken his grip and agree.

“Do what you need to do,” your father said, patting you on the head twice before walking away.

It’s difficult finding oneself. If you were to describe the feeling, you’d liken it to the feeling of being stranded in a body of water, paddling just enough to keep one’s head above the water. No matter where you turn, all you can see for miles and miles is the same thick, black, rippleless expanse of sea. No matter how far you swim, you won't find anything and there’s no resolution. You just grow very, very tired.

You can’t remember when you didn't feel lost. There was a time, of course, reason says it can only be so long since you had begun to feel this way, but you can never remember. It’s a dense fog that settles over your memories and filters what you figure was a much brighter reality. You know other people can tell, when they rock back on their heels and give you a look of pity. The worst part, is you can't even justify this feeling. It strangles you daily, but there’s no definite reason. You’re happy, you should be, you just can’t explain why you’re not.

You lease an apartment in the city and portion off your savings to last you through the year. You never call your parents and they never call you. It feels as if the nothing is eating you alive. Slowly, it’s become this meandering between home and coffee shops, somehow hoping that one day you’ll find solace amongst the beans and answers in espresso.

–

The next morning, you wake up slowly, eyes adjusting hesitantly to the light streaming through your windows. You find sleep never cures your exhaustion, but you indulge yourself in as much of it as possible. Your comforter is indeed comforting, you muse.

Aside from the warm nest that is your bed, there’s not much to look forward to throughout the day. You indulge yourself in coffee shops almost daily because you can't entirely forget the life you must return to, but also because it’s something you genuinely enjoy. You’ve never had anything but good experiences at coffee shops.

The cafe that you stumbled upon slowly becomes a favorite. You begin frequenting it until you remove your previous favorite from your list entirely. It’s a shorter walk anyway, you reason. The barista never changes his poker face, greeting you with a nasal “Hello, espresso?” before making the cup for you and passing it to you over the counter. He never asks for your name, and you never ask for his.

The shop fits seamlessly into your routine and you begin to look forward to your daily routine. You leave just before noon, and leave a little after two. Sometimes you stop for a sandwich in a shop just before, and sometimes, just after.

The first week that you visit the shop, you accidentally fall asleep once. You wake up with your cheek plastered against the window, steam billowing out from your mouth and fogging up the glass. When you pull your head up straight, you can see your own print against the glass. You’re groggy and disoriented. You straighten yourself up slowly, groaning softly as you feel a crick in your neck. You really prefer falling asleep in your bed.

You wince, cracking your jaw and glancing down at your half empty cup of coffee, far too cold to drink now. You sigh and look at it idly until you hear a soft chuckle from your right. Your head snaps up and you glare at the source of the laugh, pinpointing immediately on the man you recognize from before.

It’s the intern, you realize. The same slouchy style and the same sly grin. He’s watching you shake yourself awake and much to your embarrassment, he’s laughing. This man is chuckling with the side of his index finger brushing against his bottom lip and his eyes brashly directed at you. He doesn’t look away when you return the gaze.

It annoys you that this man is laughing at you without the slightest bit of shame. You stand up in a huff, smoothing your hair down the best you can, and gather your dishes in order before storming right past the laughing stranger and out the store.

On your way back to your apartment, you find your mind fluttering back to the thought of that strange young man. There’s something about him that bothers you. He’s the kind of man that you would have known at your workplace before you quit, young and ambitious with that sprinkle of boyish playfulness that has yet to wear away. Still, you can’t help but feel that something is a little bit off.

–

You don’t really know what you’re doing. Coffee shops and sleep are a routine, but not anything with purpose. The issue is that you aren’t so sure that you want a purpose. It makes you tired to search for something you don’t care for. You have so much time, and nothing to do with it.

You think, that this is the curse of your generation. The privileged with too much time have no purpose, because they don’t suffer. A painting with no shadows is flat, two dimensional. If there’s nothing to contrast excellence with, no sense of relativity, how is one to know what is truly good?

Days blend into nights, and you find that just three months into your respite and two weeks into frequenting this new coffee shop, the routine isn’t enough to keep you grounded. You lose sense of time and much like everything else, it becomes a meaningless expanse of nothingness that branches on forever from your fingertips.

It’s two weeks after the odd stranger first laughed at you that you see him again, or is it three weeks? You would never know. You fall asleep again, this time on one of the couches towards the back of the shop, and over a cup of latte that you don’t even manage to take a sip of before you’re lost to dreamland.

You jolts up suddenly, squinting immediately to block the sunlight searing through your eyes. You check your watch and finds it’s half past three. you’ve been sleeping in the shop for three hours, and you haven't even had a sip of your coffee. How pitiful.

You feel like you’re being watched, so you slowly lifts your head and glance around the cafe. There’s a boy sitting at the centermost table, leaning back with his feet propped up on the chair across from you. He’s wearing a uniform for a local high school, your old high school. The boy is covering the bottom half of his face with his hand, with his elbow resting on the table, but his eyes are definitely focused on you. You furrow your brows and the boy looks away.

You look back down at your now cold latte and silently debates as to whether or not you should attempt drinking it. You did pay for it after all. At last, you grit your teeth together and lift the cup to your lips, taking a hesitant sniff before sucking down a mouthful of it. It’s cold, as expected, and not all that appetizing, but it’s bearable. You suck down the rest of the cup and scrunch your nose as you swallow.

When you leave the shop, you glance back into the store, just as the door is swinging shut. That boy in the uniform is staring at you again, but this time, you stare back. The boy is definitely the same person as the intern from a couple weeks ago. How bizarre.

~

You could have sworn the man you first saw in the suit was long out of high school, out of college even. However, you’ve also positive that you’ve not mistaken, the boy and the man had the exact same face. Logic reasons that they are the same person.

You have questions, but you don’t want to ask directly. It would be strange, especially if you were to be mistaken. Instead, when you get home, you devise a plan. You’ve only ever seen the man when you’ve fallen asleep, or stayed around late. Tomorrow you will go to the coffee shop later.

As you peel open your package of instant noodles and put a pot of water on your stove to boil, it occurs to you that it’s a bit absurd. Perhaps it’s just a boy who is particularly advanced and has an internship. Maybe it’s a man with a thing for prancing around in his old high school uniform. As the water starts to bubble, you put your thinking on hold to slice up the mushrooms, tofu, and scallions that are lying unchopped on your cutting board.

As you toss the mushrooms into the pot, you decide that the only reason you are so fascinated with this man, or this boy, is because he’s so lost within his world of nothing that he’s willing to grasp onto anything at all to distract him. He just wants a sense of adventure, you reason.

The mushrooms soften and you unleash the entire packet of flavoring into the broth, stirring it twice with a wooden spatula before tossing the brick of dried noodles in two. You aren’t interested in this stranger for anything more than his abnormalities and because you desperately need something to do. You’re finding yourself, you decide, and every little step means something.

You sigh and stir the pot slowly, squinting through the steam floating out of the pot to see if the noodles have softened enough to toss in the scallions. After a couple of minutes, you toss them in and add in a cracked egg for measure. You watch as the clear goo instantly solidifies and turns white, billowing out to catch the rest of the egg, like an exploded airbag. You turn off the heat and reach for your oven mitt to pour the food out from the pot into a big ceramic bowl.

You feel oddly satisfied. Here, you have dinner, and tomorrow, you have something to do.

–

The next day, your internal alarm clock wakes you up bright and early, long before six. You frown when you realize that you have risen before the sun, and make yourself a cup of tea, accidently stewing the earl gray just a tad too long and drowning the bitterness with milk.

The windows in your living room have no curtains, so you get a clear view of the sun rising, coating the sky with a thin wash of pale orange as you spoon sugar into your tea. You feel around for your remote, and turn the volume down on low to the local station. They’re doing the weather. The weatherman tells you that it’s Sunday, and that today is going to be sunny.

The television is a dull hum in the background as you bang around your kitchen, popping bread into the toaster and eggs into the pan. Slow breakfasts are the best, because mornings are the time between sleep and human interaction, it’s that stretch of time before you need to start having pretenses and before you need to think about what words to say.

You deposit your toast and fried egg onto a plate, shaking your pepper grinder twice before twisting the knob and sprinkling crushed peppercorns all over your fried eggs. You add a pinch of salt and pull a fork out of the silverware rack before sweeping your food back up and returning to your spot on the couch.

You don’t particularly enjoy watching the morning talk show on the local channel, but you also don’t particularly enjoy anything else on television at this hour, so you don’t reach for the remote.

One in the afternoon comes slowly. It takes a severe amount of discipline for you to try and stay awake. The glimpse of your white sheets that are visible from the sliver of open door to your bedroom seem so inviting. It takes every bit of will that you have to keep yourself from diving into their warm embrace.

At last, it’s two, and you stand up the instant that the clock switches it’s numbers to report the target time. It takes you almost no time at all to shrug on your jacket, tuck your keys into your pocket, and head out the door.

It’s relatively cold, especially considering that it’s long since been spring already, and if anything, summer weather should be seeping into mother nature’s veins. You bury your chin deeper into the collar of your jacket, protecting what you can of your face from the biting wind.

By the time you reach the coffee shop, you push open the door in a rush and sink into the warmth. Your boots clack against the hard, weathered wood of the floor and you shake your hair out of your face.

The shop is empty, with the exception of an old man set up with his laptop in the far corner. You look around again, just to make sure the stranger isn’t there, before heading up to the counter to confront the barista with your order.

“Espresso,” you say, and the barista nods.

After you pick up your drink, you go to your usual spot by the window and watch.

You wait quietly as the minute hand on your watch creeps by. Soon, it’s two thirty, and even the old man in the corner has long since left.

The sun sets slowly, in a perfect arc across the sky. It’s nearly summer, so by three it hasn’t quite set, but it’s on its way there. There isn’t much artificial lighting within the coffee shop, it’s almost entirely dependent on the natural lighting that streams through the transparent wall of windows.

The longer you wait, the more the shop dims. you wouldn't describe the feeling as losing hope, for you have long since forgotten the term, but as each minute ticks by you feel disappointed. This stranger, whose name you don’t know, has failed you, and although it doesn’t quite make you sad, it’s a lost opportunity for you to feel happy.

It’s been a long time since you’ve done even the littlest thing with conscious purpose, and when the barista walks over to your seat at four thirty to inform you that, “Ma’am, we are closing down. I’m going to have to ask you to leave the store.” You slip into your jacket and go back home the way you had come.

–

You have trouble sleeping that night, which is something that you rarely have an issue with. The wave of comfort never comes and you feel uneasy, tossing and turning in your blankets to try and ebb yourself into sleep.

It’s the first night that breathes of summer, an almost stickily humid breeze trickles in through your open window. Your blankets stick to your skin until you pry yourself out of them and shove your window shut. You debate turning on the air conditioner and when you finally goes out to adjust the thermostat, you frown to find that the switch is stuck. You curse quietly and slip back into your room and try to find a cooler spot in your covers.

It’s as if there are little creatures stapling your eyelids open; it hurts them to close them and it hurts to keep them open. You finally drift off when there’s a pale light outside. You don’t dream.

You wake up late, jolting up abruptly. Your sheets jerk up with you, plastered to the skin on your legs. You’re groggy and everything is sticky, damp with sweat. You groan, back cracking audibly as you climb out of your bed. Your palms hit the floor first so your torso is dangling over the side of the mattress. You’re stuck in the position between being on the floor and being on your bed and you pause for a moment before deciding how to proceed. You end up flopping onto the ground ungracefully, lying there for a long time before peeling yourself up off the floor.

The sun sears through the windowpane and it’s even hotter than last night. You rub at your arms, but the thin sheen of sweat won’t rub away. You need to shower; you feel disgusting.

You’re slow in the shower, rubbing gently at all the knots in your back and closing your eyes while the hot water soothes the layer of stickiness off your skin. When the hot water runs out, you step out reluctantly and towel yourself dry, heading back to your room to get dressed.

It’s hot, so you walk around in just a tank top and a pair of shorts for as long as you can, until you glance at the clock and realize it’s already two thirty and you should go out to get something to eat.

You groan and slide a cotton t-shirt over your head. Black, it attracts heat, but your white one is in the wash. Your hair is still a little damp, but you figure it’ll just help you keep cool. You slide your keys into your purse and step out the door.

There’s a sandwich shop about a fifteen minute walk from your apartment that sells hot pressed turkey paninis for half price on Mondays. You make sure that your wallet is in your purse, then hurry down the stairs to start walking.

When you walk places, you do it with a purpose. you never look into other stores and you never watch people. For some reason, when you pass the coffee shop, you tilt your head just slightly, to toss your hair out of your face. You catch a glimpse of the shop in your peripheral vision. You stop in your tracks. There’s a figure at the center table, leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on the seat across from him.

It doesn’t even take a moment of hesitation for you to backtrack and head for the cafe door.

The man sitting there is the same one as before, except this time, he’s someone completely different. Same sly smirk as his gaze surely meets your from behind his sunglasses, same body language, and same oozing confidence. This man, today, is wearing his pants hanging so low on his hips that you can see a sizable strip of his briefs. He’s wearing a uniform, a high school uniform, but not the same one as before. You don’t recognize this uniform.

“What are you today?” You ask directly, standing behind the chair across from the stranger and leaning against the table. You fingers are splayed out on the table and your brows are furrowed.

The stranger slides his sunglasses down his nose and peers over the top of them, smile never sliding off his face, “What do you mean?”

“I want to know why every time I come here, you’re dressed as someone different.”

The stranger chuckles and slides his feet off of the chair across from him.

“It’s a project,” he pauses to stretch pale pink bubble gum between his teeth and his fingertips. The elastic candy snaps back as he sucks it back into his mouth, pursing lips and raising an eyebrow before chewing again. “Feel free to sit.”

“What kind of project?” you ask. You’re surprised that you ask out of genuine curiosity rather than courtesy. Typically, if someone brings up a subject, it would be impolite not to ask, but here, you actually want an answer. You’re surprised to find that this stranger’s response yanks you out of your routine state of unfeeling into true interest.

“I–” The stranger pauses to frown, his eyelids darting shut for just a moment as he takes in a deep breath, shoulders falling with the breath’s release, “I wonder if I should tell you?”

You notice how it isn’t a question directed towards you.

This person sitting in front of you, be it a boy, or a man, or a god, or a king, rubbing his left thumb in small circles on the surface of the table between them. He looks incredibly frail. He looks incredibly lost.

“You don’t have to tell me,” you say, stirring your coffee slowly with the little sliver of wood that came out with it on the dish, “It doesn’t really matter if whether or not I know.” Your mind is backtracking, desperately trying to reverse your confrontation towards this stranger. The questions had been wracking your mind for days, but now, you wonder if these are some of the questions best left unanswered.

The stranger looks up sharply, “What do you mean?”

“I mean it doesn’t matter,” you clarify, “because it was silly of me to ask.”

The stranger tilts his head curiously and purses his lips. He looks at you curiously before the sly smile returns to his face, “Maybe you should get something to drink.”

There’s an exchange that seems to happen between the two of them, one that requires no words. You are a bit staggered by the immediate connection between them. You’ve barely just met this guy and they can already communicate without words. How bizarre.

You nod and stand up to go place an order. By the time you return, you don’t even remember what you said to the barista.

“I think,” the stranger runs his index finger around the rim of his cup. He never finishes his sentence.

You offer your hand over the table for a handshake while stating your name and you wait for his response.

The stranger looks at your hand for a moment before returning the gesture, “My name is Sicheng.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

Gazes are cautious, sizing each other up, like they’re playing one grand game of poker and trying to raise the other twice their money.

“So who are you today?”

“Kid with too much money,” Sicheng answers immediately. Your eyes trace along the high school uniform as unbuttoned and slouchy as the clean lines will allow. Sicheng has paid attention to detail, his watch is really quite nice.

“Last week?”

“Kid with not enough money.”

“The week before.”

Sicheng snorts, “Yuppie.”

You lean back.

“I bet you’re wondering why?” Sicheng prompts, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m wondering,” you glance up as the barista calls your order, “For whom.”

Sicheng presses his lips together.

“I think... This might be a good idea,” Sicheng smiles.

–

The cafe closes every day at 4:30, so you end up leaving together right after you finish up your coffee.

“What do you do?” you ask.

“Nothing,” Sicheng replies as they turn around a corner.

“Your profession is nothing?” you frown.

“I do nothing,” Sicheng smiles, “What about you?”

You blink, “I guess, I do nothing as well.”

“Unemployed?” Sicheng raises his eyebrow.

“No,” you shakes your head, “Not working by choice.”

“Me too.”

“Where are we headed?” You ask abruptly, changing the subject, just as Sicheng’s expression gets more serious and the smile slips right off his face.

“I don’t know,” Sicheng says, looking away.

“I know a sandwich shop--”

“Let’s go,” Sicheng interrupts, “You show the way.

The street that the coffee shop is located on is relatively quiet because it’s a small back alley, quite a bit away from the main streets. Sicheng walks normally for a couple blocks, but as passersby increase in number, his gait seems to shift. His steps grow wider, and he sways more from side to side, like a real teenager who is trying to find himself and is trying on different personas.

“This way,” you step a little quicker, taking the lead, and Sicheng follows.

The sandwich shop is tiny, literally a large indentation on the side of a building. There’s a large circular shape cut out of a wall that intersects at the very bottom region with the ground. There’s enough room inside for a counter and a little space behind it. It’s incredibly minimalistic, with the hot grills right by the cash register and a large stainless steel refrigerator positioned next to a counter with a strip of cutting boards for the ingredients. The walls are black and all the instruments are silver. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean quality is diminished. It’s your favorite sandwich shop and the pretty young cashier always knows your order.

Sicheng stands hunched like an adolescent without confidence, gnawing on his lip and fiddling with his belt buckle.

“Can I have two of my usual?” you order, forking over the cash. Sicheng fumbles for his wallet, but you stop him with a shake of your head.

“Thanks,” Sicheng mutters. You blink in surprise. The confidence of the man back in the coffee shop is completely gone, sublimated into the muggy air, replaced by the jittery nervousness of an adolescent trying to find his identity.

You get your hot sandwiches in a paper bag and leave together.

“Let’s eat these in the park,” you suggest, “There aren’t many people over by the trees.”

“Yeah,” Sicheng shrugs, muttering under his breath, “Sure.” You can’t take your eyes off of him like this. Something about the way Sicheng is acting rings true with you. He reminds you of yourself as a teenager, too lost in trends and the rich world of money and opportunities to figure out who you really are.

There’s a park across the street from the sandwich shop, enclosed within high brick walls. Walking in through the gates is like walking into a world far from the city, brimming with foliage and life. There are tall trees and fountains of cool water trickling down rock structures. Although it’s never really silent, it’s never loud either, not like the city is, with all the honking cars and shouting people. The light tinges green as it streams through the cracks between the leaves, and once they reach an empty bench along the pathway, they can barely hear the noise of the city outside the tall brick walls.

You unwrap a sandwich and put it in Sicheng’s hand. Sicheng glances around and visibly straightens his posture. The man you met in the coffee shop is back.

“Tell me about this,” your sandwich wrapper crinkles as you peel it back to reveal the toasted bread inside, “thing of yours.”

Sicheng still seems hesitant, and he rips back the paper on his sandwich more slowly than necessary.

“Or tell me about yourself,” you offer, “Who are you?”

Sicheng answers much more quickly after that, “I pick a persona once a week.”

“Why?”

“People are idiots,” Sicheng takes a large bite of his sandwich, cheese oozing all over his fingers, “They always make assumptions on me as a person by superficial things like clothing and social status. My question is as to how people treat me if I become one of them on the surface and how that changes how they act.”

“So you dress up as different--”

“Different cliques of people,” Sicheng nods and takes another chomp from his sandwich, “Then, I try and assimilate into their culture and see if I can fool them all.”

“But--”

“My goal,” Sicheng says, a look of determination glazed over his eyes, “is to make every fool believe.”

Your sandwich is untouched, melting in your hands, cheese dripping over the edges and down the lines of your arms.

“You should eat that quickly,” Sicheng points out with a nod of his head.

You take a massive bite.

“I took a break from–From real life,” Sicheng says, peeling the sandwich wrapper back more, “I found myself lost. I thought that taking a break would help me decide who to be.”

“It didn’t help,” you whisper.

“Hm?” Sicheng glances, “Did you say something?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, I felt more lost than before. It was this freeform bullshit excuse of a life, revolving around sleep and food. I wanted to fix it, not waste my time. I figured I should do something trivial, stupid almost.”

“Doesn’t seem that stupid,” you say, taking a small nibble of the crust of your bread, “You’re questioning society. It’s practically an art.”

“It didn’t start off that way. It started off as, if I dressed like this, would I get treated differently? It wasn’t structured.” Sicheng has stopped eating, crumpled wrapper and last remains of sandwich dangling off his fingertips like an accessory. It looks almost like a cigar, steam blowing off of the toasted bread like puffs of smoke. “But I think when you do things off of impulse, they’re very reflective of the things that really bother you. Stereotypes were part of what pissed me off to no end before, and even if I run away, it’s still coming back, you see?”

You wonder if what Sicheng says is true. What do your impulses say about you?

“Anyway, yeah,” Sicheng shrugs and tosses the last bit of food into his mouth, chewing slowly, “Some would say it’s a bizarre pastime, and I say it’s a way to reconcile things with myself. All the things in the world that piss me off, I want to figure them out from the inside out and then, maybe I’ll understand.”

You don’t think you can conjure up a response to that, so you take a big bite of your sandwich and nod earnestly as you chew.

“Anyway,” Sicheng glances at his watch, “The kids at the high school get out of classes relatively soon, so I need to head on over there if I want to see if I can blend in.”

It takes you a moment to realize it’s an extended invitation. Sicheng is asking if you’d like to come with.

“Yeah, I don’t want to hold you up,” you say, swallowing quickly, “I’ll head home then.”

“Thanks,” Sicheng says as you stand up and wipe the crumbs off your pants.

“For what?” You glance back, “The sandwiches were pretty cheap, don’t worry about it.”

“No,” Sicheng shakes his head and chuckles, “Thanks for asking. Nobody has ever asked before.”

–

When you finally get home, the sun is setting. You still want something to eat because one sandwich is not enough to satiate an entire day’s worth of hunger. You frown at the lack of groceries in your refrigerator. It looks barren. You grumble and fish out a pack of tofu and dumps the cubes into a bowl with vinegar and soy sauce to soak.

You sit on one of the stools by your kitchen counter as the tofu cubes marinate. You wonder, in this stretch of time away from your family and from the world you grew up in, why the first semblance of true interest in something was voiced through excitement, and why this excitement was for something as simple as asking a strange man in a coffee shop why he was so strange.

You expected the feeling to go away after you left Sicheng in the park, but it hasn’t. There’s still that thrumming sense of expectation within you and you’re honestly confused as to what you’re expecting. The adventure is over, after all.

As you drop the blocks of tofu into a hot saucepan, you wonder if tomorrow morning, everything will be back to normal.

–

It’s not. The next morning, you wake up with that same nagging feeling in your gut, urging you to do something, reach for the goal. The problem is you don’t know what you should be searching for. You buy a clock for your bedroom, an old style kind with two massive bells on the top of it and a small hammer in between the two of them to make blaring noise when it’s set to go off. It’s really just a trivial purchase, but as you set it on your nightstand, you see it as a momentous change in your mentality. Who needs an alarm clock if they have nowhere to be, right? But at the same time, the first night with the clock, you don’t use the alarm setting on it. You never flip that little switch from off to on, and it serves simply as a timepiece. You spend a lot of the next week indoors. You leave twice to go the the mart and drag back bags of groceries, but other than that, you spend most of your time on the couch watching television or surfing the net, lazily jumping from video link to video link until you end up watching pointless cat videos for hours on end. You buy a calendar when you’re at the mart buying tomatoes. When you get back, you pin it on the plain expanse of wall just above your nightstand, dangling about a foot above where the silver alarm clock rests, silent. You buy a thin, red marker when you’re at the mart getting pepper paste. You set it just to the right of the clock and mark off the date every day after you wake up. On a Wednesday, you’re sitting on your couch, as usual, and it’s two forty five. You’re watching one of those channels that is half infomercials and half shows for middle aged housewives. “It’s important to stay active!” the host says. They’re talking about retirement plans. “Don’t stay inside all day! Go out! It helps keep the mind young and active!” You stare blankly at the screen. There’s something about watching a wrinkly old retirement planner encourage the osteoporosis plagued generation to be more active and more youthful that forces you to turn the tv off and slide your feet into your shoes. You walk out of your apartment in a daze. You don’t even react when the first burst of muggy summer air punches you in the face. You let the heat curl around you and drag you out into the massive blanket of drowsiness. You stumble along, half asleep and half melting, until you come upon that coffee shop. You glance at your watch. It’s three. You glance inside, and Sicheng is there. It’s hot, you decide, and the cafe has air conditioning. It’s also been a long time since you’ve had a coffee that you haven’t made yourself. If you go inside, it’s not because you want to see Sicheng. You’re strangers again. All your questions have been answered. You’re going in for coffee and nothing else. With that thought, you shove open the front door and noisily makes your way inside. The barista glances up at you and tips his head as if to ask for your order. “Espresso,” you say, but you’re not looking the barista in the eye. Your eyes are trained down on your wallet, which you’ve put on the countertop. There’s a metal piece on the clasp, shiny and reflective, and you’re staring down at it, using it as a mirror of sorts. Sicheng is there, leaning back in his chair, and he’s watching you. You realize, bemusedly, that Sicheng is watching you watch him and watch him on to infinity. As the barista slides your cup to you over the counter, you decide to stop thinking about it. It’s a paradox, you decide, and there’s no use twisting your head around something you can never solve. When you pick up your little saucer, balancing your cup in its spot, you’re hit with a wave of panic. Are you supposed to sit down next to Sicheng? Sicheng’s sly smirk and confident gaze seem to suggest that’s what’s expected. Naturally, you breeze right past him to your normal spot by the window. You can see out of the corner of your eye how Sicheng’s head swishes along with your line of movement. You chuckle underneath your breath. There’s immediate tension, but it’s not hostile or unpleasant. As you two sip away at your beverages, you steal poorly concealed glances in each other’s direction. You catch Sicheng staring at you more than once, and at a certain point, Sicheng stops trying to play it off as looking out the window behind you. It’s a bit ridiculous, you think, but it’s also a bit fun. It’s silent playful banter, and there’s something about the massive glass paneling and the way it filters the bite out of the heat and dulls it into something comforting that adds to the atmosphere. The bright sun reflects off of the small hanging plants within the shop, adding a soft green tinge to the beams of light. At last, when all you have left in your cup are the tasteless foamy bits, Sicheng walks over. He’s dressed casually today, in a large, wrinkled shirt and slightly baggy jeans with stains of something that you assumes is paint. “What are you today?” You smile as Sicheng sits down across from you. “What do you think I am today?” Sicheng counters. “Starving artist,” you eye the sharp line of Sicheng’s jaw as he turns his head briefly to glance out the window. “Hm,” Sicheng smiles, “I wonder.” “You’re not going to tell me?” You place your cup into your saucer with a clack. Sicheng looks at you, eyes skimming up and down your face. You feel like you’re being analyzed, a bug under a microscope. At last, Sicheng grabs your wrist and pulls it towards him, lying your arm across the table. Sicheng pulls a black pen out of the front pocket of his shirt, shakes it twice, and then pops open the cap. You holds your breath as Sicheng presses the tip to your skin. Sicheng is close enough that you can smell the linseed oil wafting off of Sicheng’s skin. Starving artist for sure. Oil paints. Sicheng’s handwriting is rough, and the press of the pen against your skin is hard enough that it verges on painful. “Come to this address on Sunday, three o’clock.” Sicheng says as he presses the last several characters into your skin, “Bring a camera.” With that, Sicheng stands up and puts the cap back on the pen, slipping it into his shirt pocket and turning away. “I’ll expect you there,” Sicheng says, not turning back to look at you. When the bell at the door chimes to signal Sicheng’s departure, you stare at the black letters written on your skin, each line traced by the gentle reddening of your pale skin. Defiance urges you not to go, but as you trace the lines on your arm, you have this sinking feeling that curiosity is going to win out this time. –

Sunday comes quickly, but you convince yourself into thinking it’s forever. You wait like a child, expecting a visitor, clammy hands, nervously looking at the address that you’ve transferred from your arm to a sheet of scrap paper. The intrigue is back, full force, and you are staggering in its wake. You rip through your cabinets to find that old camera that your father had gifted you for one of your birthday’s. It’s unused. Cameras, especially digital ones, are made to capture instantaneous moments that need to be held onto. You have no need for that, but it was a gift, and Sicheng said to bring a camera. You sit there during that time between the night of Saturday and the morning of Sunday. There’s a massive cup, filled with ramen. There’s an egg half submerged in the soup. Yellow and white in a big sea of red. The noodles are already gone because you finished them, but you left the egg there, untouched and treading in broth. The camera is out of its box, and you have fitted it with batteries and an sd card. It looks almost alive, except for the bits of dust that you couldn’t clean out of the cracks. You fall asleep on the couch, egg uneaten and dust settling further into the inner workings of your camera. You wake up with a sudden lurch, terrified that you’ve overslept. Your clock tells you that it’s barely eleven and you relax. You take your sweet time getting ready, showering slowly even though you don’t need to. You love slow mornings, you think to yourself, as you turn your toast over in your hand and use a knife to spread raspberry jam all over it. Summer rain, you notice when you glance out the window. You expect it’ll be cooler today. The droplets hit the window pane and it seems to fit, like some sort of perfect orchestral composition. Strangely, it lifts your spirits as you toss your dishes into the sink and strap on your watch. You stand in the center of your living room and wonder if you should wear a raincoat. But you have an umbrella, you decide, so it seems unnecessary. You hate the waterproof material against your skin and you’re wearing long sleeves today. You leaves your apartment at five past two, shaking out the umbrella before stepping out into the rain. You have the slip of paper tucked into your purse. You recognize the street name. It’s actually not all that far from where you live, but knowing yourself, you expect to get lost within the first five minutes. You do. You have to loop back three times before getting back onto the right track, and by the time you finally find that fateful street sign with the same words etched with ink into that piece of scrap in your pocket, it’s already almost three. When you start down the street, you fish the paper out of your pocket and try to match the numbers to the numbers on each building door. You aren’t actually sure what you expect, but it isn’t an apartment complex. It’s a tall, sleek building– surely incredibly high in property tax. You stand in front of the sliding doors, checking to make sure it’s the right place. It is. The doors slide open and you slide your umbrella shut. You step in cautiously and check the address on the paper. You wonder if you copied it down wrong. You step into the stairwell and climb up three flights of stairs. There’s a security pad at each level’s door. You stand, puzzled, and stare from the slip of paper to the keypad and back. You press the four digits written at the end of the address into the keypad and it makes a satisfied click. You pop open the door. You peek in through the door, expecting to find a hallway. Instead, you find a door, with a waiting area. There’s no mistaking your destination. You’re supposed to be here. You breathe in and out twice before rapping your knuckles on the door in time to your exhales. You knock five times, then stop, clasping your hands together in front of your lower stomach. Your camera is in your purse. You’re standing in front of this big gold-emblemed door. There’s a massive doorknocker, the head of a lion, but you use your knuckles instead. The floor is a checkerboard of black and white squares underneath your feet, and everything that isn’t the door is white. It’s as if the door is saying, “Hey, I’m what you’re here for. I have to be. There’s nothing else here.” And it is. You are here for that door and as you wait, you’re here for the sound of footsteps on the other side of that grand door. There’s this sense of claustrophobia in that little white excuse for a room. It’s not meant for anyone to stay long, it’s a waiting space and nothing more. When the big door finally opens, it’s more than relief, it feels like a blessing. Sicheng’s face is there, smiling, eyes crinkled up at the corners and teeth bright. He’s not wearing anything bizarre. There’s no costume today, it’s just a heavy blue sweater, hanging just barely off his left shoulder, and tattered jeans. “You look nice,” you say, awkwardly shuffling your feet and Sicheng holds the massive door open. Sicheng laughs, sound resonating off the walls, “Come in, come in. Take your shoes off in here.” He gestures to a shoe rack on the other side of the gigantic door frame. You step through it and take off your shoes. “I bet you’re wondering why I called you here,” Sicheng says, turning his back to you and beginning to walk. You follow him. The apartment doesn’t match the door, but it does. It’s so minimally furnished, but it’s so maximally designed. It’s a very expensive, but very empty space. “I am,” you say as Sicheng leads you into another room. There are no doors, it’s one big space separated by partial walls. There’s a table in this room, and a couch big enough to sit five. Neither of the pieces of furniture match the room’s design. The architecture suggests a grand dance room, There’s a wall that’s entirely mirrors, and a wall that’s entirely windows, not unlike the cafe. The table and the sofa look out of place, as if dragged off the streets. They’re not arranged nicely around the edges of the room, but haphazardly placed in the center of it, just slightly off skew. The sofa faces the door they entered from, and the table is placed diagonally so that the long edges face the corners of the room. There’s a bunch of miscellaneous items on the table. You squint at it. They seem to be little pots full of cream color. Sicheng is by the table at this point, using a wooden stick to stir a pot of something viscous. “You’re here for this,” Sicheng says, lifting the stick into the air. The substances drips like hot, thick sap from the sad little popsicle stick onto the surface of the table. “What would this be?” You ask as you step closer, taking the camera out of your bag. “This is how it happens,” Sicheng smiles. “How...” “I’m starting a new one today,” Sicheng says. Now his smile has meaning. You place the camera and put it on an empty space on the table. “And you’re going to help me make the transformation.” “Why me?” You blurt. Sicheng looks at you like you’re crazy, “Who else would I ask?” “I don’t know,” you shrug, “a friend?” Sicheng’s smile is mysterious, “There’s no one more fitted to call than you. I’m glad you’re here. Aren’t you?” You don’t answer. You shrug. “You are.” Sicheng laughs. The sound rings echoes. “I’m glad.” “What am I helping you with?” You ask, eyes skimming along the pots of color and slime all over the table. “I’m going to show you how I do this, and you’re going to help me.” “What specifically?” You frown. Sicheng holds up his index finger, as if to say, “Wait here just one second.” Then, he dashes out of the room. He comes running back with a leatherbound book in his hands. “What’s that?” “This is the journal that ties it all together,” Sicheng says, opening the book to the first page. He passes it to you and you run your fingers along the first set of open pages. The first two pages are blank, the two pages that you’re not supposed to write on. “I need to do some serious makeup for this one,” Sicheng says, stirring that sticky fluid again, “and I figure I’ll have some trouble taking the pictures.” “Pictures?” You question. “Open the book.” You peel back the next page. Sicheng’s handwriting is gorgeous, like script, it loops to form elegant words. My goal is to make every fool believe. The words don’t fit the penmanship, you think. You flip the page. There’s a polaroid picture pasted in the center of the lined page, held on with four flimsy pieces of scotch tape. Sicheng’s loopy handwriting names the event just above the picture. Project Homeless Sicheng is entirely unrecognizable in the picture, decked out in rags for clothes. He’s not just playing dress up. There’s something genuine in those eyes, staring up into the lens. He would fool anyone. You imagine him sitting in the rain, smiling up into a polaroid camera he’s holding by himself. A homeless man taking a picture of himself when nobody else looks, just to document the fact that nobody looks. Nobody looks long enough to see through the facade. You stare for a moment too long. “There’s more than that one,” Sicheng chuckles. You glance up to find Sicheng holding the stick above his face, letting that mystery substance drip all over his face. His eyes and mouth are closed shut. “You know,” you breathe as you turn the page, “There’s something about memories and identity that I read in school.” “Hm?” Sicheng keeps his mouth shut as he dips the stick back into the container and scoops more onto his face. It looks like raw honey. It’s probably some sort of rubber. “People, if they keep lying to themselves, can convince themselves of a new identity,” you says as you flip the page. Every page has a polaroid picture, always taken by Sicheng himself with whoever he’s with. He stands out, but he blends in. Sicheng chuckles. “Say, what is that you’re putting on your face?” You ask. You close the book because you’ve reached the end of the content. The book is still half empty. “Homemade concoction,” Sicheng says, tilting his face back up. The stuff seems to harden as it dries, dripping down his face in globs. It looks like amber colored sagging fat. “What are you supposed to be?” You ask. Sicheng applies more to the sides of his face. “Project senior citizen,” Sicheng says through gritted teeth as he waits for the substance to harden. You blink. “There’s foundation on the table,” Sicheng says, “Help me put it on. There’s a sponge somewhere too. As soon as it’s dry. I’ll tell you when.” You find the bottle of flesh colored makeup and the little circular sponge. You stand next to Sicheng, the book and the camera on the table, waiting for further instructions. “Now would be good,” Sicheng says stiffly. You nod and pour some of the makeup onto the sponge. “Just pat it on?” “Yeah,” Sicheng shrugs, “Doesn’t have to be perfect, I’ll fix it up later, this is just the base.” You scrunch up your nose and pat the sponge on Sicheng’s strange jelly face. Sicheng takes one glance at your expression and barks with laughter. “It’ll look better later,” Sicheng says, taking the bottle and the sponge from you and taking over the job himself. He’s done within the minute, his entire face washed over one, yellow-toned color. “You look really yellow,” you comment. “It’ll look more natural once I get to add some finer details. In the room to the left there’s a black bag full of clothing. Can you fetch that for me?” “Yeah,” you shrug and pad off to the room. You spot the bag in the corner and sweep it up before returning to find Sicheng squatting in front of a mirror. He’s holding a palette of assorted colors and using a brush to sweep them across his face. You stand back with the black bag still in your hand as Sicheng leans over the mirror, painting years onto his face. He’s good, the wrinkles look realistic, and those sagging lumps of jelly turn into sagging skin. The more Sicheng adds to his disguise, the more realistic it becomes. Every layer of fine powder comes with more of the moldable jelly, forming little marks and dents into Sicheng’s new skin. At last, he steps away and spins towards you with a vigor unbefitting of his appearance. “How do I look?” “Old,” you say, “But your voice--” Sicheng corrects his voice, letting it squeeze from his throat in broken crackles, “How do I look?” He says again. “Perfect,” you breathe in awe. Sicheng grins, the mask moving with his face. It looks just a little bit off, but only if looked at closely. “Give me the bag,” Sicheng reaches out. “Nobody ever notices?” You ask as you pass the bag to Sicheng. “Nobody looks long enough,” Sicheng says. He pulls a massive shirt out of his bag, something to button up over his sweater. It’s very plain and very old. He tugs off his jeans and replaces them with a pair of dinky looking corduroy pants. You glance away politely as he changes. The transformation is complete. Sicheng’s shoulders begin to sag as if he has the weight of an entire lifetime on his shoulders. “Your job,” Sicheng says, voice creaking, “is to take pictures. I’ll tell everybody you’re my granddaughter.” “Granddaughter? Don’t you think that’s pushing it?” Sicheng shrinks even more on himself, “No, I think nobody will ask.” He smiles. Sicheng looks in the mirror and fidgets with his clothing, pulls on a wig, messes with his makeup. Then, he nods once. “Let’s go!” He encourages. You follow blindly as Sicheng bursts out of the apartment, racing down the stairs. The second the front door to the complex is open though, Sicheng’s pace drops steeply. He staggers like an old man, clutching at his back and grasping and you for balance. They walk slowly to the nearby park. You breathe in the fresh air and drink in the greenery. There’s a set of chess tables by the children’s sand pit and a duo of old men arguing over the pieces. Sicheng takes your hand and carefully hobbles over. Then, once the two old men take notice, Sicheng is the perfect actor. “This is my granddaughter,” he smiles shakily, “Do you have room for two more players?” The two old men exchange a glance and shrug, “Sure, why not?” It’s almost like magic, the way Sicheng seamlessly slips into the role. It’s not until they’ve been playing chess for an hour that you realize that Sicheng isn’t acting at all. Sure, the appearance is different, and the voice, and the small mannerisms. However, although you’ve known Sicheng for such a short time, you feel that everything that comes out of his mouth is something he would say, regardless of costume. The other old men tell stories about their lives. Times that you and Sicheng have not lived through, but Sicheng fakes right through it. You take pictures. This is insane, crazy, extreme, but you are utterly fascinated. When it gets dark, the other two men leave and Sicheng and you head back the way you came. You stand at Sicheng’s front door and you look at each other, both searching for something within the other’s eyes that may or may not be there. “Come back tomorrow,” Sicheng says firmly, “One o’clock.” You do. Every day of the week from Sunday through Friday, you end up coming back. You don’t return to the chess playing duo of old men in the park, but Sicheng always manages to find a little group that is more than willing to adopt them into their little family. Every day is the same, but your interest never dwindles. It’s utterly fascinating to see how different Sicheng is treated, just because of appearances. “Come back tomorrow, one o'clock,” Sicheng tells you on Thursday, “But Saturday, I don’t do this. Saturday I stay home.” “What do you do on Saturdays?” You wonder. Your camera is heavy in your hand. There are hundred of pictures stored on the sd card, you’re sure of it. Sicheng smiles, “I do nothing at all.” –

It’s Friday. The last day of Project Senior Citizen. You and Sicheng are walking back from the park and you watch carefully as Sicheng becomes more and more himself on their way to the coffee shop. By the time they push open the door, his back is completely straight, and he’s walking like a young man despite the wrinkles on his face. The barista looks at him funny, but doesn’t ask questions. You sit together at the table by the window, making small talk over the men in the park. There’s no meaning to their words, nothing deeper than surface level, and years later, you finds that you can’t recall any of it. If you do, it’s a snippet, and a snippet of something much more important. “Say, you only ever keep one picture, right?” You ask, taking a sip from your ice coffee. “Yeah,” Sicheng nods, he uses a fork to split a scone down the middle, “Only one.” “What do you do with the rest?” You wonder. “I throw them away.” “It seems like a waste.” “Does it?” Sicheng stirs his coffee, “I don’t think it is.” “Do you mind if I keep the ones you don’t use?” You say. You’re flipping through the pictures on your camera. “Yeah, do what you want with them.” “Can I put them online?” Sicheng glances up, meets your gaze, then drops it again. “No?” “Yeah, you can, so long at the one picture I pick is seen by nobody but me and you.” “Yeah,” you agree quickly, then you hesitate, “But why?” Sicheng leans across the table and rotates the camera so the both of them can see it. He slides his thumb against yours and presses down so that the pressure of your finger holds the next button down. “I like this one,” Sicheng says, “If you could get it printed, I’ll put it in the book.” “Oh,” you blink, startled by the sudden contact, “Yeah, sure.” You can see Sicheng smiling through the makeup and the mask. “Besides, if everyone can see that one picture, it isn’t special anymore.” Sicheng smiles brightly, the makeup is cracking at the corners of his mouth. He looks up suddenly, smile falling off his face, “We should go,” he says, glancing nervously out the window, “It looks like it might rain.” You leave together, headed back in the general direction of both your apartments, when it begins to pour from the sky. As the rain hits Sicheng’s face, the mask seems to come off with it. The jelly is solid, so it doesn’t melt off. Instead, that thin film of adhesion holding Sicheng’s face to his face breaks apart so chunks of fake flesh fall to the ground. Sicheng doesn’t make an effort to salvage the pieces and instead leads the charge towards a bus stop foryoulter. He takes your hand, pressing warm, dry palms together to protect them from the rain. When they’re under the safety of the small plastic roof, Sicheng peels off what remains of his fake face, grinning broadly at your look of disgust. “Gross, huh?” Sicheng taunts. “Ew,” you agree as Sicheng rubs off the little flakes of makeup near his hairline. Sicheng laughs at you and makes a cup with his hands, extending them out from under the shelter to catch some of the rain pouring onto the streets. He splashes it onto his face and pops out his fake teeth, rinsing the pieces with rainwater and stuffing them into his pocket. “I don’t have an umbrella,” Sicheng says. “Neither do I.” “We could run home?” Sicheng suggests. You look at him with such distaste that Sicheng laughs and mocks you. “I don’t look like that.” “Yeah you do,” Sicheng fights back, “Don’t worry, it’s cute.” “I’m not cute,” you say stiffly. Sicheng raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything else. At a certain point, with the two of them standing together in silence, Sicheng unbuttons his massive button down shirt, leaving him in the same sweater from before. You eye him rolling up his pants before looking back out into the droplets of rain pelting down onto the sidewalk. There are no people, no cars, just gallon after gallon of never ending water. “It’s better with company, you know,” you say, eyes not wandering from the pouring rain. “It’s better with your company,” Sicheng amends. His eyes don’t meander either. “Uh,” you aren’t sure what to say, “Thanks?” There’s a long pause. “Would you like to come again next week?” Sicheng asks. You look at him, “What?” “Do you want to come and help me with my project for next week too?” It’s almost funny, because Sicheng is asking you this question like you’re both in school again. Will you come help me with your project? It’s hard to decide if this is more or less sad, because on one hand, it’s something so much bigger, but on the other hand, it’s something so much bigger than they can ever be. “Yeah,” you shrug, “Sure.” Sicheng smiles so genuinely that you can’t help but stare. “Same place, same time,” Sicheng laughs, “and I’ll see you Sunday?” “Yeah,” you whisper, “Yeah, I’ll see you then.” “I’m glad,” Sicheng says, delighted, “No one can walk a path entirely alone. It’s good to have a partner in crime. Crime against social structure!” You decide that Sicheng is right. The rain stops. –

You begin to accompany Sicheng on all his adventures. You’re there as a piece of the background. A daughter, a friend, a sister, whatever is needed for the occasion. The only constant to your identity is your camera. You take hundreds of pictures and upload them all online. You organize each set and label it accordingly. It’s simple, just a method of collecting images and memories. Weeks pass slowly. You find the sense of anticipation never leaves, but the feeling of emptiness does. Slowly but surely, you start waking at a set schedule. You aren’t sorry to let your old routine go. Sicheng is a fascinating creature, not just in what he’s doing, but also in his philosophies and his way of living. You finds yourself captured by Sicheng’s words. You can’t help but stare when Sicheng smiles. Your favorite image of Sicheng is when Sicheng is getting dressed for the day, putting on his costume. It’s always when Sicheng looks the most engaged. You try and take a picture of it once, but Sicheng swats you away and forces you to delete the picture. “Only of the project,” he insists. Sicheng is adventurous, every project is something entirely different. After senior citizen, he dresses himself up in drag and sees what it’s like to walk around if everyone assumes you’re a housewife. You follow around as a daughter, constantly impressed at how good Sicheng is at makeup. After housewife is dentist, then plastic surgeon, then mailman, and then after that you can’t quite remember exactly which one is next. You know somewhere in the mix Sicheng tries to see what it’s like being a prostitute and hauls you around as his pimp. There’s a point in which Sicheng pretends to be dying on the street as a rich man, and the reactions from passersby are horrifyingly different from the reactions when he pretends to die on the street as a poor man. With each project, Sicheng seems to affirm his theory about humanity, that people are awful because they design their morals and their actions all around aesthetic qualities. Every project makes him more horrified, yet more determined. You watch with your camera, snapping a picture at every moment when Sicheng seems to slip, just a little bit, and every moment when he doesn’t slip at all. Your little website for storing the pictures grows massively, and you find that people have discovered it. People wonder what it is. People ask questions, but you never answer. At last, there comes a query that you can’t quite ignore. In the winter, just over six months since you first met Sicheng, you get a phone call. There have been dozens of projects since then, every set uploaded and organized on your website. The call is from a museum. They want to have an exhibition of Sicheng’s work. “No,” Sicheng snaps when you tell him, “Absolutely not. I told you, all the pictures in that book are special, nobody else can see them. Just you and me.” “But that’s not the pictures they want,” you frown, “They’ve been looking at the other ones, the ones I’ve uploaded onto the internet.” Sicheng stares at you, “Oh?” “Yeah. They called me last night.” “But it defeats the purpose of this entire thing. You’re making something that outs societal norms into a display for people trying to fit into societal norms. Nobody goes to galleries for shits and giggles! It’s all pretending for approval from others.” You’re quiet for a moment, letting Sicheng’s words sink in. Sicheng is about to leave the room in a huff, when you gently rest your fingertips on his wrist. Sicheng freezes. “But wouldn’t that be great?” You wonder, “To out the social construct in front of the social construct?” Sicheng is hard headed, single minded, and impossibly stubborn, but those words get him. You stand there, fingers wrapped around Sicheng’s left wrist, as Sicheng changes his mind. “All right,” Sicheng decides after a minute. The preparation for the exhibit is all very much a blur. Sicheng and you end up not being all that involved in the actual construction or design of the exhibit and end up just continuing on their own way, continuing to fill up Sicheng’s book of projects as the museum workers do everything for them. Opening night is in January. There are hundreds of people flooded into the new exhibit to see the work. Sicheng and you are both there to greet people, but once the first couple people trickle in, Sicheng pulls a vanishing act and disappears. You are left fending off the questions and find that you can answer almost all of them, just as Sicheng would. Eventually, the exhibit closes for the night. As seas of people ebb back with the tide and out into the moon of the night, you’re left by yourself. You thank the curator, go the procedures, and then you feel strangely alone. The feeling of nothing seeps up like smoke from the edges of that exhibition room, creeping in long, spirally tendrils, threatening to draw you back in. “Sicheng!” You shout. There’s no response. You storm into the next room, searching for any evidence of this life. Sicheng wouldn’t have left you here alone, no matter how uncomfortable he is. “I’m here.” You find Sicheng seated on the floor in the very last room, right by the very last photograph. He’s sitting there, back hunched, head just a couple inches from the wall. If his face were cut off and placed into a nice black square with a nice white border, that expression could be one of the pieces in the exhibit. The project maker could be a project within himself. “They got it wrong,” Sicheng says, just loud enough that you can hear. You walk over to him, standing and looking down as Sicheng sighs. “What did they get wrong?” You ask patiently. “Here, in the brochure, they don’t get it. This blurb about the entire exhibit, it’s wrong.” “What’s wrong about it?” “Dong Sicheng has engaged in a series of projects. Changing himself to fit a series of stereotypes that he himself doesn’t belong to in order to create a captivating image of metamorphosis and become a true chameleon.” You say nothing. “They got it wrong,” Sicheng says, rolling his head back and shutting his eyes. His forehead crinkles. “It’s not about fitting yourself to other people. It’s not me changing myself. I don’t change, it’s the superficiality that changes. They’re missing the point.” You rest your hand on Sicheng’s forehead to smooth the harsh lines out. “It’s not project,” Sicheng whispers into your ear, “It’s project. I want to be a projection of society, just changing the first layer of skin, the first layer of identity. I’m not transforming, I’m not changing as a person, it’s just–It’s just perception and– They’re wrong, they got it wrong. They got the entire point wrong.” They’re here, on the floor of some museum’s gallery after the visitors have left and lights are all off. There’s just a few lining the darker corners, protecting against robberies and vandalism. Except for the color washing through your cheeks and the warmth of Sicheng’s skin, the entire room is black and white. “You know, I say this. I say I want to project a persona, in every single picture, every single project,” Sicheng says, his voice crackles like an old recording, threatening to break with every turn and twist. “I’m here, and I’m doing this, but it feels almost like I’m lying to myself. You know, we’re here because we’re showing these rich, privileged people that once you put on the mask, all that respect and justice goes out the window based on such superficial qualities. But,” Sicheng takes your hand, “Oddly enough, I don’t feel like I’m getting the last laugh. It feels wrong.” If there’s any moment to fall in love, you realize, it’s here. Lost in the melancholy beauty of this situation, two people falling together by defying social structure, finding themselves in a place where social status is admired and revered. The audience of the entertainment is also the source of the joke. It’s a loop of satire, and it’s cynically beautiful. You think that this is exactly what Sicheng started out to do. Imagine how beautiful the image would be. These two figures, torn out of the loop of their own game, sitting together in a gallery after hours. Imagine how much more beautiful the image would be if they fall in love for the first time. But you can’t fall in love for the first time, you realize, if you’re already in too deep. You can fall in love for the second time, or the third, or perhaps, you realize, it’s something continuous. Falling in love, maybe, never ends. “It doesn’t matter,” you say, sliding down to sit next to Sicheng against the wall, “Because it’s not about who gets the last laugh. It’s an ideal, and it will always stand. Even if the man behind the idea is gone, it’s still there.” Sicheng glances up. Maybe that’s why breakups hurt so much, you realize, because if love were to terminate, if it didn’t accumulate, it wouldn’t hurt at all. It only hurts because it keeps on going. “I’ve always wanted to ask,” you whisper, “What happens when the book is done?” Sicheng stares at you for a moment in the darkness and presses his palm to your cheek. “I’ve thought about it a lot,” Sicheng whispers, “and I had this plan when– I had a plan.” “What happened to the plan?” You ask, eyebrows furrowed. “It’s still intact,” Sicheng says slowly, “I’m just not sure if I want to go through with it anymore.” You brush your fingers against Sicheng’s, still resting on your cheek. Sicheng’s hands are abnormally warm, like he has a fever, but when you rest your foreheads together, he’s not sick. Just his hands burn hot, wrapping themselves tight around your fingertips. He pulls your fingertips up to his lips and just holds them, suspended in a kiss that’s not quite there. “Funny thing is,” Sicheng chuckles weakly, “This is nothing like what I expected it to be. I thought I would find myself and there are less and less pages in the book now. I thought I’d grow more detached, but--” Sicheng glances at you, “Then there’s you. It’s like I have a limited amount of time to decide what is me and what isn’t, and decide what’s obsolete.” You wonder why Sicheng seems so affected by the mortality of his little leather notebook. Why he seems to look at you with a pained look. It’s not like you’re going anywhere. “There’s a time limit on everything,” you point out. Sicheng stares at you. “Yeah,” Sicheng sighs, “Yeah I know.” –

After opening night, Sicheng and you don’t return to the exhibit. Three weeks later, Sicheng gets a shipment to his apartment. All of the photographs are given to him, in their frames, with the plaques. There’s a note sending the museum’s deepest most sincere thanks. You arrive at Sicheng’s apartment on Sunday and when you knock, nobody comes to the door. You knock and knock and knock, but nobody ever answers. You see all the boxes, stacked at Sicheng’s door, with the thank you card right on top. You check the shipment slip. It says it’s been here since yesterday. Since Saturday, the only day that the two of you don’t meet. Has Sicheng not come out of his apartment? You stand there, slamming your fists against that big, ornate door for half an hour. Nobody ever comes. Should you call him? You don’t have his number. At five o'clock, you walk away and take the stairs back down out to the street. Disappointment is harsh, and Sicheng has never let you down before.

–

You wake up on Monday in a fit of frustration. You glance at the clock, the digital nine barely registering before you’re out the door and storming down the streets. You need coffee. It’s your last solace. You arrive at the coffee shop at ten in the morning, just for a cup of coffee, nothing else. Instead, you find Sicheng sitting at his usual table, head cradled in his hands with four cups of coffee sitting in front of him. All the anger in youe body seems to magically disappear. You eye Sicheng cautiously as you place your order, wondering if he has even recognized your presence. There’s no motion, so you assume not. When you get your coffee and drag out the chair across from Sicheng, only then, does Sicheng look up. “You moved,” you say. It’s not a question. “I did.” “The museum shipped the exhibition pieces to your–” “It’s fine, they can keep them. Someone will take them.” You squint at him, “Are you running away?” You ask. No answer. “Are you running away from your method of running away?” You sit at the coffee table, knees locked together as you peer up at the man at the table across from you. It’s the same table where you first met, but this time, it looks like Sicheng doesn’t want to be there. He’s looking everywhere but at you, eyes darting desperately away from the point. “You need to finish,” you say directly, placing your palms on the tops of Sicheng’s hands, pressed flush against the surface of the table. Sicheng stares at their hands, joined together on the table. “There’s only one page left before the last one. I– I’ve had the last one planned for– for a long time.” “So then it’s only one more,” you encourage, “Sicheng, you can do this.” “What if I don’t want it to end?” Sicheng whispers. “Why wouldn’t you want it to end?” you frown, “This is the whole point, you know, the finale.” “There’s a lot of things,” Sicheng breathes, “That are best left unfinished.” You lean back in your chair and cross your arms over your chest, “Like what?” “I don’t know,” Sicheng mutters, “Books, movies–” “But if they don’t end--” “Life? Love?” Sicheng is quiet again. You don’t really have anything to say. “But,” you try, “If you leave something unfinished, isn’t it tragic? It’s a dream for eternity. It’s like Peter Pan, the boy who loses everyone to time because he’s doomed to forever.” You think that Sicheng says, “There are some things that are best left for forever,” but you’re not sure. Sicheng turns away. “Do it?” you try, one last time, “Please?” Sicheng looks at you, face motionless. Then he nods. “I promised myself that I needed to finish. I can’t run away from reality forever.” “Yeah,” you grin, “Every project is fake, some role that you can play. The second this is all over, you can play yourself again.” “Yeah,��� Sicheng agrees. He doesn’t seem too spirited. “I have a proposition,” you say. Sicheng glances at you hesitantly. “What?” “I’ll build your last project for you.” “How?” “I’ll show you,” you point at Sicheng and then point to yourself, “How to be me.” Sicheng still looks reluctant, but intrigued, “What do you mean?” “Remember how I told you that my father sells coffee beans for a living?” “Yeah.” “I do too, and I want to show you how I was. How I am, I guess. Or at least who I was before--” “You don’t have to,” Sicheng says quickly. “I insist, Sicheng I want you to finish this, and I think you might actually enjoy it this way.” “What makes you think that?” Sicheng scoffs. “Because I’m going to show you how to be me.” “Why would that interest me?” “I think it’s something that comes with love,” you say, “You want to learn everything about the one you love, right?” Sicheng says nothing. “I want to learn everything about you,” you shrug, “It only makes sense to return the favor.” “You’re going to show me your spot in the social infrastructure,” Sicheng says. “Yes.” “Because you love me.” “Yes, and because you love me too,” you purse your lips, “Don’t deny it.” Something seems to change within Sicheng, and he smiles weakly, it’s as if he’s let something go. “Yeah, yeah, I do. Let’s do it.” You are pleased that Sicheng has agreed, but you can’t help but see the same sort of “off” quality in Sicheng’s face at that exact moment. The same “off” quality in every one of his pictures. You forget about it because Sicheng stands up, leans across the table, and kisses you right on the mouth. –

You begin on Tuesday. Sicheng says that they can do it on Saturday this week too, since it is the second to last one. You are elated. You bring Sicheng to your house and show him the photobooks that you’ve kept stashed away in the back of your closet, effectively walking him through your entire life. You tell Sicheng about coffee beans, the flavor, the roast, the blend, and all the complexities of the passion passed down your family for generations. Sicheng listens, absorbing the information. Sicheng fits into the role perfectly. He dresses the way you used to and as Sicheng is reciting the list of coffee beans that you gave him, you remember when this all started. You remember being so confused at Sicheng’s intentions, confused as to how to help. Things have changed a lot. The disappointing thing is that although this is probably the best week of your life, Sicheng seems to grow increasingly weary as time passes. The more he learns about who you were, the more tired he seems to be. It’s as if he’s sick. He seems to be desperate for something, but you don’t know what. Whenever you ask what’s wrong, Sicheng just shakes his head and says he wants to sleep. The entire week, Sicheng doesn’t go home. He sleeps on your couch for an hour before climbing into your bed. His arms snake their way around your shoulders, pulling you in closer. It’s nothing more. Sicheng just holds you to his chest, breathing soft and steady as he settles back into sleep. It seems to comfort him. It’s the only time that there aren’t lines of stress imprinted into his forehead and you treasure those moments. You love being so close to Sicheng all the time, love the soft brushes of Sicheng’s lips against your temples when you’re trying to explain something, or trying to make dinner. You love the prospect of forever, the suggestion that although the two of them are so fucked up and so lost, you can find yourselves here, in each other. It’s horrendously pretentious, and disgustingly cliche, but you still yearn for the things you hate. You want to be happy and you want to feel safe in the way you are. You wonder if Sicheng feels the same way. You ask on Thursday, “Do you like staying here? Do I make you uncomfortable? You don’t have to force yourself if you want to go.” Instead of answering, Sicheng lifts you up and kisses you. You take Sicheng to all your old spots, the bar where you used to meet your friends, the coffee shops you used to sell beans to. You watch as Sicheng plays you. Sicheng kisses you often, as if to make up for all the time you spent together and wasted by being cautious. You kiss him back, feeling the warmth of his touch and sliding your lips together comfortably, only pulling away when you’re both out of breath. Friday night, Sicheng has a crisis. You go to the mart only to return home and find Sicheng gone. You dump the groceries into the fridge and run out into the street, screaming Sicheng’s name. You find Sicheng at the park, sitting on the bench quietly. “Why’d you leave?” “I’m a bad person.” Sicheng says blankly, looking off into the distance. “What?” “I–” he glances at you, “It was a test.” You are confused, “What test?” “I wondered how you would react if I left.” You frown, “Don’t leave again.” “Yeah,” Sicheng stands up slowly and takes your hand. You walk back together.

Saturday evening, Sicheng says he needs to go home. “I’ve already been here a week, I should probably go and take care of my place. At least a little bit.” “Yeah, okay,” you shrug. “The projects are over. You’ll find out what the last page is for,” Sicheng says brightly. You squint at the way his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll meet you at the coffee shop?” You ask, “Three o’ clock? The coffee house around the bend?” “Yeah,” Sicheng smiles weakly and presses a kiss to your forehead. He’s about to walk out the door when he turns around and takes your hand. “I’m not sure how I feel about ending it. I promised myself I’d return back to reality. Everything that is a project has to cease as soon as I’m done.” “Yeah,” you smile encouragingly, “But all the projects, all the disguises are still you, deep down. You are all those things, but you’re not at the same time. It’s little bits and pieces that make Dong Sicheng who he is.” “But I have to forget,” Sicheng says, “Every person that I pretended to be. Every project in that book is supposed to be someone I’m not. A facade that I play the part of for a period of time before dropping the role in favor of something new. So it’s all a lie.” “But lies are built on truths. You can’t have one without the other,” you counter. Sicheng shrugs, “When it comes down to it, it’s still a lie that I need to let go.” He leans down to kiss you on the nose. He spins on his heel and opens the door. “Bye.” “I’ll see you at three,” you say. –

You knew the day would come when Sicheng would find a way to break their routine of breaking routine. You’ve always been excited for Sicheng’s last entry. It’s a surprise that you have anticipated for a long time. Sunday, you wake on your own with no assistance from your alarm. There’s a crow perched outside of your window, peering in at you curiously, cocking its head when you meet its gaze. In all honesty, the crow is probably looking at the contents of your room, but you can’t help but feel that the bird is staring directly at you. The creature shudders, shaking off the remnants of morning dew, before spreading its wings and dropping out of sight. You blink slowly before pulling yourself out of bed. You stumble into the coffee shop five minutes before three. The light does something almost enchanting in the wintertime, light bouncing off of the icicles that drape off of the shingles, dangling like ornaments along the wall of windows. The rays bounce off of so many reflective surfaces that it creates the illusion of a thousand sources of lights, like there are tiny little suns illuminating worlds of their own in every corner. You stand for just a moment too long at the welcome mat of the store. The barista gives you a look and you wipe off your boots on the provided rug, rushing to order your usual. The wood always smells a little bitter with coffee, a bite of sap sweetness that naturally forms in older wood. You suck in a lungful of air and blow into your palms, breathing life into your trembling pink fingers. The barista slides your mug to you over the counter and you thank him, gently looping your finger through the handle and hobbling off to your usual table. You’re early, and it’s not unlike Sicheng to be late, so you ready yourself for a long wait, relishing in the feeling of warmth curling in your stomach as you sip down the liquid from your cup. “That guy wanted me to give you this,” the barista says, holding out Sicheng’s notebook, “He told me to say sorry.” The leather book is worn. Inscribed on the very last page of Dong Sicheng’s leather journal is his last entry, in the same format as all the others. Sicheng’s loopy handwriting starts about two fingers-widths away from the left border, beginning with a massive, ornamental P. Project, it says. Project, as it always says. You hold your breath as the tips of your fingertips brush against the smooth edges of the polaroid picture pasted into the center of the very last page. It’s the picture they took at the museum. The one they took together on Sicheng’s flimsy old polaroid camera because it was just a stamp of a memory and not something actually important. “My goal is to make every fool believe” is inscribed on the first page of this journal, and it’s the thing you think of first when your eyes draw back to the top of the page to reread the words panned out in Sicheng’s sloping penmanship. Just to make sure your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. They’re not. You read the words over and over again. Project “in love” Lies, you remember. Let every lie go, you remember. Make every fool believe, you remember. You look up at the cafe around you. You’re all alone. He made every fool believe.

[artificialqueens]

Fall in Time (Chapter 2) (Branjie) - Somesilverreply

When Brooke Lynn Hytes was 21 years, 0 months, 0 days, 0 hours, and 3 minutes old, she felt the weight of a beautiful woman on top of her for the first time.

It wasn’t exactly glamorous or nearly as polished as she willed her first time to be, and she had certainly not imagined it as alcohol-induced, but it was happening. It was real.

She was real.

Brooke was working toward her BFA in dance, and this allowed for almost no time to relax, let alone think about any type of human contact that didn’t come from the light brush of her shoulders, willing them back into perfect posture from her dance teacher. Her schedule was tight: 8:00am on the dot for ballet (7:30 to stretch), contemporary at 10am (12pm lunch), 2pm tap, and 5pm rehearsal for whatever show she happened to be in at the time, rinse, repeat. But on the eve of her 21st birthday, when she felt her friends murmuring in rehearsal and glancing back with a fit of giggles in Brooke’s direction, she knew something was amiss.

As she walked back to her campus apartment that evening, the chill of an Illinois March brings her to her senses and makes her feel a flush of heart-stopping whirls.

Any mention of her birthday that day was immediately followed by a knowing glance from one of her dance sisters, and the need for control within Brooke was shuddering at the thought of any unexpected changes.

“Okay, come on, you turn 21 once, you’re not doing that,” her best friend Yvie eagerly pushing her away from the modest champagne toast and movie marathon Brooke had suggested.

“Brooke you’ve got to be kidding me,” Alyssa remarked, barely glancing up from her phone.

“I think you’re all forgetting that it’s MY birthday,” Brooke looked at them with warning, albeit a little hurt they didn’t understand her enough by now to know she wasn’t the type to have a 21st that met society’s checklist.

“Whatever bitch, suit yourself.”

Yvie’s face softened, if only to tell Brooke it’s okay, I understand, before giving her a light squeeze on the arm and retreating to bed.

Her friend’s face from the night before burned in her brain as she fumbled to get the door open to 11 W Charles Ave (Apt D), suddenly replaced by a half-apologetic smile and an uproar of everything Brooke hadn’t wanted.

She feels the room spin slightly as she feels the vague softness of the “21” sash Alyssa places on her, and looks to find familiarity amongst the faces in the clear fire code violation that was their dingy campus apartment.

If there’s one thing Brooke has never been more thankful for then in that moment - it’s tequila. She lets Yvie mutter an apology in her ear whilst slipping the shot of liquor in her hand, Brooke feeling equally resigned and anxious enough to throw it back. She’s always found alcohol ironically incredibly sobering, just never at the right times.

The night goes as predictably as an episode of The Bachelorette but elicits the same spectrum of surprise and drama from the party guests, and Brooke is even seen losing a layer of clothing (just her sweater, but Alyssa feels she succeeds nonetheless). But it’s all empty. Brooke should feel young and accomplished and proud, but she’s suddenly suffocated by the distant thump of bass and roaring laughter, a familiar symphony she’s always found to break her down in all the ways she’d tried to avoid. She sees someone throw up in her kitchen sink while Yvie is ten feet away, taking a shot off of someone she wasn’t sure she even knew and why would they even let people in their house if they didn’t ask Brooke and suddenly she was outside and had no idea how her feet had lost all communication with the conscious of her brain. It was too much, and the cool night air was enough to elicit a sharp shock through Brooke’s system, fighting against the uncomfortable lack of control brought on by the wavering tequila.

“You smoke?”

Brooke looked to her left to find a girl, alike in build to herself but that was where the list of similarities seemed to stop. She had nearly raven black hair, impossibly long legs painted by dark skin so smooth she seemed to glow in the moonlight of their deck.

Brooke had never seen her before. And on any other day, in any given minute, she would’ve never let herself slip like this. But she did.

“Yes,” she relied on the ounce of tequila playing both angel and devil to will her body to find a spot near the girl, intimidated by her beauty but proud enough to exist alongside her.

The girl studied her for a moment, a growing smile suddenly brimming at the edges of her mouth as she slowly retracted her hand, bringing the cigarette away from Brooke.

“No you don’t,” she said simply, even going as far as placing the case back into her purse beside her.

“Do I know you?”

Brooke couldn’t remember if she was a friend of a friend, or a cousin of a guest who wasn’t a friend, it didn’t really carry much weight.

That wasn’t the important part.

“I’m Naomi.”

“Brooke.”

“Brooke like birthday girl Brooke?”

“That’s, uh, yeah” Brooke chuckled, scolding Yvie in her head but simultaneously forgiving her careless planning in favor of her somehow allowing this beautiful woman to make an appearance.

“Shit, maybe you do need a smoke,” Naomi laughed, casually brushing her knee to Brooke’s, and she swears no amount of dancing has ever made her legs feel that on fire.

They talk about everything and nothing, until the casual brushing has them practically begging to move into each other’s laps, casting away glances as guests begin to exit from the party, piling into taxis and obliviously offering varying goodbyes to the birthday girl as they left, unable to identify the situation they were interrupting in their stupors.

“Brooke,” Naomi said lowly and simply, and Brooke felt a shiver go up her spine she swears came from the passing breeze. “You got a boyfriend?”

Brooke’s initial incredulous sputtering of “no’s” slows into a terrified glance in Naomi’s direction, reading her face like she had the answers to the secrets of the universe.

“Relax, baby,” Naomi rubbed a hand on her knee and Brooke tried desperately to shut off the incessant higher, higher, higher that pounded in her head as the alcohol began to wear down.

When Brooke Lynn Hytes was 12 years, 3 months, and fuck if she knew exactly how long because she thinks she’s always just been that acutely aware - she knew she was gay.

In her brain there was no comparison. A woman’s body was art. It was why all the famous paintings throughout history that are worshipped along the walls in the European cities she longed to trace her fingers across were of women. Women’s skin. Women’s hair. Women’s breasts.

Women’s bodies moved in all the ways she’d longed to find a rhythm with.

There are certain markers and signs in a young person’s life that point in the direction of sexual preference, she supposed, but to her it was unclear how she could ever live a life that wasn’t dedicated to discovering all the ways a woman’s body could exist in space. Dance. Arch. Scream. Cry.

When she would let her mind paint pictures of women as vivid as the European portraits made with delicate hands, as her own hands drifted to explore her own body she felt like she could see the stars when she felt herself finally release.

It was freeing. But no one knew that. Until now, she realized.

They had moved inside at some point, Brooke was in a lustful, albeit terrifying haze as she felt herself led into her own room as if she hadn’t been the one living there.

She wasn’t used to this. She wasn’t used to feeling so out of touch with her own thoughts, her own body. She was always in control.

So when she felt the weight of Naomi’s slender, disgustingly tantalizing figure so impeccable it belonged amongst the works of the collection of paintings she’d formed in her adolescence slide into her lap, she surrendered.

“I’m gonna make you feel good baby, just relax,” Naomi cooed in her ear, and for the first and last time during sex Brooke let herself completely be at her partner’s mercy, relishing in the comfort of her weighing her down and worshipping her with her mouth.

When Brooke Lynn Hytes was 33 years, 3 months, 19 days 2 hours, and 1 minute old age became acutely aware of how she’d never let that feeling of surrender affect her again, even if the warmth that had spread through her body was begging her to act otherwise.

She pushed the notion from her mind, upholding her poise and motioning for the young girl to take a seat, moving past the initial niceties to look again at her photo.

“So Vanessa, this headshot -“

“They’re brand new, ma’am,” she interrupted, Brooke torn between being taken aback and impressed by the bold initiative.

Brooke studied her for a moment, carefully eyeing her and calculating every syllable that came out of her mouth.

The girl was striking. She’d seen a lot of beautiful young women saunter in and out of her office but never with the same fervor that Vanessa had. She wore her hair in loose waves around her shoulders, her impossibly deep brown eyes enhanced with a delicate stroke of black on her lid. The modest black of her mock neck dress seemed to scream for air against the delicate dancer’s muscles she carried with her. Her red lips emblazoned against her caramel toned skin that seemed to hold its own in the harsh fluorescence of the casting office. The thick smell of industrial Chicago seemed to fall to the wayside with the light linger of Vanessa’s lavender perfume. Lotion? Shampoo?

Shit.

“I don’t think they’re right for you,” Brooke spoke, the words stinging in the air. She didn’t like the sound of her voice the moment it came out of her mouth but she needed to say something, anything to get her to snap her back into place. She watched as Vanessa’s face fell and quickly tried to get anything to recover the nervous smile from the brunette.

“But that’s… we can worry about that later, right?” Brooke smiled, waiting until she got one in return. “So tell me about you, why representation, why this agency?”

Brooke knew she was grilling her, and it wasn’t that she liked to see people squirm within her grasp, but rather she thought the added pressure was a necessity. She constantly felt the burning “Brooke, a little straighter,” “Brooke, turn your foot out, darling,” “Brooke, don’t you think you could skip the extra piece?” she’d grown so accustomed to. Being a professional dancer demanded near perfection. She knew it was unfair and unrealistic as she’d gone home and cried about it silently enough times in her life, but Brooke had to endure it. And so would she.

Vanessa takes a breath before pulling her skirt down, folding her hands nervously before beginning.

“Well, I grew up here. In Chicago. And I uh, I didn’t go to dance school but that don’t, doesn’t mean I’m not trained, I’ve been dancing forever,” she babbled on and Brooke looked at her with a glint of knowing.

“Relax, Vanessa, I see your resume here. You seem very talented,” Brooke told her. She glazes over an impressive list for a 22… 23… not-sure-year-old, “But there’s a lot of talented girls that come through here. Can I ask you something?”

Vanessa nodded, plastering on a smile through her cloud of tense anxiety.

“Can I ask how you got this interview?”

She looked pleased at this question, like she had the answer tucked in a zip drive waiting to be extracted from her mind.

“Mr. Matthews has seen me perform before, ma’am. Said I had a lot of potential. Told me he was tired of all the basic ballerina shit, needed some fire,” she told her proudly. Vanessa went on to tell her more about her background, a polished verbal dating profile of dance and life experiences, but Brooke couldn’t hear her. It wasn’t the ballerina comment, she told herself, it was Vanessa. She felt a burning in the back of her throat she couldn’t explain and she cursed herself for it. She was overcome with every awful thing she’d ever been told. Every failure. Every -

“And I promise you I’ll get more headshots, if that’s what you think, I just gotta wait on my paycheck to come through and maybe in a couple of months I can, if you have any suggestions.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she said suddenly, standing up with a heat shocking her through her body, from the impeccably practiced bun on top her head to the bottoms of her feet.

“I’m sorry, did I do something?” Vanessa looked at her curiously, unsure of her next move.

“Sometimes I just don’t think someone is the right fit, Vanessa. I’m sorry, Scarlet can help validate your parking -”

“Ma’am, I can prove you… prove to you I’m an amazing dancer and I work really hard,” Vanessa trembled, her words shaking the foundation of Brooke’s core.

“I’ll leave you my work email, Vanessa,” her name slipping off her tongue like it was caught every second it was escaping her mouth. She moved towards the door as every inch willed her not to. Resigned, Vanessa followed, softly turning around and reaching to hand her a flyer.

“Come watch me. Come watch me and I promise I won’t bother you no more,” Brooke grabbed the flyer wordlessly, her chest flooding with recognition as she met the smaller girl’s eyes.

With the soft click of the door behind her, Brooke made her way back to her desk with a heavy thud down in her desk chair, the once safe retreat now feeling like a throne of unrelished and unwanted power. She grabbed the near-empty bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer of her desk, paying no mind to the glowing 10:31 am glowing on her computer screen like a highway caution sign. She took small swig before turning the flyer around in her hand, eyes grazing over it until the blurry letters became clear.

Tonight. 9pm. Pay is donation based. Showcase.

Tonight.

She couldn’t register what her hands were doing before she was reaching on her desk for her phone, desperately looking for a lifeline to save her and give her any excuse not to go.

When Brooke Lynn Hytes was 33 years, 3 months, 19 days, 7 hours, and 19 minutes old, she missed her train stop.

Totally by accident, of course.

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - Run With the Wind

Definitely one of the best in its class.

Run With the Wind initially seems like a pretty obvious show to make in this day and age - sports stories starring hot guys are very in - but is kind of surprising in a few ways, starting with its source material. It’s not based on a light novel, like Free!, or a manga, like Haikyuu!, but instead a singular, normal-length novel published over a decade ago. (It was later adapted into a manga, for the record, which was concluded in 2009.) Having a finite work with an already-plotted beginning, middle, and end works wonders for the pacing - I tore through this show in three days - and, bonus, means that this is a finished story. There won’t be a sequel - we get the whole thing in one go, and that’s honestly satisfying in and of itself.

It’s also set at a college, not a high school, which is always fine by me - having seen so many of these works set in high school, the idea of following characters with more freedom and capacity is novel by itself, and it also solves the problem I sometimes have with the dramatic weight placed on things like a third-year’s final tournament - in a show like Yowamushi Pedal, the graduates could (and do) just move on to competing in college and starting from the bottom, but for our secondary protagonist Haiji, this is his last year of school. He’s not at the level of being an Olympian, so this really is it for him, and it gives extra meaning to his desperation to get a group together to run the world’s most grueling race.

Background: The race depicted, the Hakone Ekiden, is real, and it’s so brutal that it ends a lot of runners’ careers before they even reach the finish line. But it’s also the pinnacle of college-level track, and something many aspire to participate in, and so Haiji gathers up our cast of underdogs and sets off to whip nine newbies and one disgraced prodigy into a team fit to take on the champions.

What follows is a gorgeously-produced and very honest depiction of the sport of cross country running. Comparisons to Yowamushi Pedal are apt - Run With the Wind does not shy away from just how much of a task it is to get a normal person ready to run a 20k, and what kind of toll it takes on people.

But that plays pretty well to its advantage, too - we become more invested as we watch the characters train, and improve, and suffer, in order to achieve this singular goal. We get to watch their motivations develop into a team mentality - some of these characters have been living together for years, others are complete strangers - and ultimately form into a band of brothers.

All of this positive buildup probably leads you to think that I’m about to give Run With the Wind a perfect score, but unfortunately, there are elements that detracted enough from the experience that I can’t leave them aside. A few members of the team never quite actualize into memorable individuals - two of them are identical twins with a crush on the same girl, and it’s not until late in the game that the show commits to having them interact with other people individually to try and differentiate them, and even after 23 episodes, I absolutely could not tell them apart. Another - the glasses-wearing Yuki - never manages to develop a subplot, merely having him act against the optimistic Haiji for the first half of the show before he gives in and fights for the team’s goal.

My other big issue involves a bit of a spoiler, but in shows like this, it’s usually pretty obvious that we’ll get to see the team make it into The Big Tournament, so I don’t count it as too much of a spoiler that yes, Kansei does get to run the Ekiden over the final few episodes. My issue comes with a major adaptational change - the protagonist in the novel is Haiji, but the protagonist in the anime is the previously-mentioned prodigy Kakeru. Reframing him as the the hero works just fine, right up until the end, where the dramatic buildup of the race fizzles, because Haiji is the character who runs the final leg of the race. From a screenwriting perspective, this was the wrong choice - despite Kakeru being the main character we’ve followed the whole time, his character arc concludes before the deuteragonist’s, downplaying its importance because it doesn’t come last. When they changed the point of view character, the race should have been changed so that Kakeru ran the final dash to the finish against the reigning champion - it would have been similar to Yowamushi Pedal, but I still think it would have been better than not following through on the biggest change from the source material. As it stands, the end of the race is a little underwhelming.

That being said, the epilogue is satisfying enough of a finale that I’m more than willing to give Run With the Wind a 9/10 and a strong recommendation to everyone.

Also, it has SUCH A GOOD BOY.