#lest you calcify you know

[whentherewerebicycles]

the moon looked bigger in real life

[kaurwreck]

that kunikida doppo died before ww1 preserves his war commentary in amber that calcified just before we industralized mass slaughter. but just before, so his work isn't divorced from ww1 either; it's blanched in the same gore that would shortly thereafter coagulate into the great war: nationalism, industrialization, imperialism, militarism, diplomatic blocs.

kunikida had a lens into war as we know it, but absent the bitterness of knowing and the redemptive gloss of suffering the consequences of having learned. instead, his characters titter about, partake in, and cling to war with tense, willful anxiety masquerading as naiveté. the idle frivilousness with which they refer to and exist within war belies the discomforted gingerness with which they mishandle the harbingers of calamity.

they can't know, not really, the nature of the horror they're shrouding in tulle. but they know it's something monstrous and ruinous, and they're afraid to acknowledge it lest it notice them too. so they pour wine in the hairline fractures and call it grout, knowing better but pantomining pride and ignorance and complacence. gorging on laxity and philosophy because they've already decided there soon won't be any left anyway. they feign eccentricity and wallow in learned helplessness and hurt themselves on the sharp edges of reality.

they couldn't have known those hairline fractures were about to split the atom, but they knew enough to convince themselves they couldn't stop what was already happening, and they knew enough to fear its consequences. their refusal to confront what could happen made inevitable what did happen.

that kunikida doppo died before ww1 and yet wrote characters who knew preserves in amber that we are not passive victims to ineludable patterns requiring aftermath to observe or affect. we know enough to chase helplessness rather than nurse our culpability, which means we know enough to know better.

anyway, if you ever find yourself flinching from the signs of the times, remember that sunrises are beautiful and resist cowardice.

[royalreef]

@infernalpursuit​ inquired: what would you consider the saddest part of your muse's life? 

(( It’s nothing she can tell you about, not even if she wanted to. That requires memory. It requires being able to look back at what happened in the face, something Miranda can only do in pieces, in fractions captured as they are glimpsed through the bars of her own mind. She doesn’t understand it either, can’t figure out what they’re supposed to be making up, sitting here with only a few puzzle pieces and not even a reference of the big picture.

The other Vanderbilts know. They remember. They saw it as it happened, witnesses to the darkest part of Miranda’s life. But it’s not something you talk about. Not something you bring up, you discuss, and while certain other family members use it against Miranda, jabbing her with what she doesn’t even know, how can you even tell that Miranda’s forgotten it? Even Bellanda knows, and she understands better than the others that Miranda’s wrapped it away and forgotten it, but you still don’t just tell Miranda about it.

It was the transition. The place when Miranda stopped being a child and became the Crown Princess, where all the comfort and carefree life of childhood gave way and she had to pick up her title, had to take her crown. One day it was over. One day Miranda could never go back. And one day she had to begin learning her duties for all that they were, lest she miss her lessons, lest she not take them into her, lest she not become what she had to become. Miranda remembers that part. She remembers that one day she had to leave her toys behind, leave her childish inclinations behind her, and she had to focus on being what she was created for. She remembers it was hard. She remembers it hurt, and she could even name it as the worst period in her life.

But these are broad strokes, the colors of what lies beyond her grasp. The details elude her. She doesn’t think about them, pushes them away to some dark corner, leaves them to rot, and so they do. Memories have to be relived to remembered, and she’s avoided reliving them as much as possible, grown scar tissue around them, covered up the wound with calcified skin. They’ve become stranger in her absence, infecting other parts of her life, a thousand branches with no idea where the roots lead. You can still touch it, still poke and prod at the exposed nerves, but unless you’re paying careful attention, it’s hard to guess where all of them lead back to. Miranda’s certainly not telling.

She knows she was sick for a time, during that period. Months-long, even, some terrible illness that left her with health repercussions even today, bad enough to where the Royal Family wouldn’t even let anyone else see her, that she had to be alone. She doesn’t think about it, but it is a fact she knows, even if it exists only in the abstract, only as a little factoid about herself that she can list like she read it off a box. Not as something real, something that sinks into her, something that belongs to her, that happened to her. There is a wriggling thought that, yes, perhaps that was when she was stunted, that was when she stopped growing, but she couldn’t tell you for sure, and it’s nothing more than a hunch. She doesn’t think much further along that line of thought.

She remembers there was a very, very bad day. She remembers something bad happened, that she did something bad, something that she shouldn’t have, and that she had to pay the price. That was why they had to start teaching her so quickly, had to make sure she grew into her title all at once. Mistakes like that could be lethal. Mistakes like that could be the ruin of a kingdom, if left unattended, if someone else didn’t discover it in time, if swift measures weren’t put in place.

Yes, yes that sounds right. Nothing more to see, you know. Nothing more to worry about.

[wcrstarter]

𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 // @llosgcariad

Time flowed like water, finding its way through the cracks and guiding her through the ages. She didn't closely monitor it, nor the date. She'd not realized what day it was, nor its significance. Few from her time, from her past, still drew breath in the modern world. It had been quite the shock to learn that someone she knew had survived, moreover that it was someone she still cared a great deal for. Time had calcified some of her pain, her trauma, and her feelings, but it had not dwindled her regard for Kiran.

"No, not in the slightest. I...I hadn't realized." She lets out a breath slowly, meeting his gaze and letting a beat of silence pass between them. Only one other had ever known her as well as Kiran did, her childhood friend though she dared not publicly address Lucian in such a way lest her father use him to hurt her and bring her in line--something that she hadn't had to fear with Kiran. A God and a Vampire, well over a century ago, had come to know each other. She thought it funny, how things had turned out. "I'd daresay there's fewer secrets between us now than there was before, and less need for subterfuge and conspiracy. It's a gift to be able to speak freely compared to then."

She wonders if she should find an anniversary gift, and deliver it late. But she cannot think of a single thing she could bestow, that he couldn't find for himself. A disadvantage of both their positions and immortality, giving gifts became incredibly difficult. She pours herself a glass of the wine, knowing that she'll face no judgement from Kiran when she draws out a silver flask from her coat, pouring the contents into the wine. Easier to imbibe if blood's mixed in, and a relief to not have to hide any aspect of her nature.

"Viktor for a time...was too nervous of loosing he alliance he so desperately wanted to retaliate against me." Sonja gave a sigh, swishing the mixed wine in the glass to aerate it a bit, unsure to say the words she needed to voice aloud, "He knew that I cared deeply about you, and was never sure...if he risked wrath if I were to be hurt. Luckily, I don't die easily and can be here again, with you once more."

[estherdedlock]

I don’t know why I keep walking into libraries and bookstores thinking I’m going to find something that gives me even a whisper of the feeling that I got from The Secret History. I mean, before I read TSH, it had been years since I read anything so bewitching. Why I think lightning is going to strike twice in less than a year is beyond me. 

Anyway, the latest endeavor is Tara Isabella Burton’s The World Cannot Give.

You may stumble across this novel and read the interior flap and get excited:

“Brideshead Revisited meets Fight Club in this novel about a prestigious boarding school’s cultic chapel choir---and the obsessively ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl who rules over its members.”

Sounds good, right? I mean, obviously this is a Secret History-ish piece of deliberate dark academia, but hey, so what? Brideshead Revisited meets Fight Club? Why not?

That description is a fakeout. Early promos of the novel called it “The Girls meets Fight Club...” The Girls was a 2016 novel by Emily Cline, loosely based on Charles Manson’s cult, so that actually made a little more sense. I think they changed it to Brideshead Revisited because some marketing genius thought it would attract the dark academia types (like yours truly). I’ll bet they probably would have preferred to call out The Secret History, but decided not to after the author strenuously criticized TSH in a Gawker article two months before her book was published. More on that later. At any rate, The World Cannot Give is neither Brideshead Revisited nor Fight Club. If anything, it’s Pretty Little Liars meets a teensy bit of Dead Poets Society.

And of course, it’s The Secret History. Or wants to be. Laura Stearns is our Richard Papen, another hopeless wannabe from the tacky suburban West (Nevada, not California) who finds herself enthralled by the august atmosphere of an elite New England school, St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine. Her longing for “beauty and meaning” is fueled by an obsession with someone named Sebastian Webster, who attended the same school in the 1930s. Dubbed “the prep school prophet,” Webster wrote one religiously-themed novel based on his years at St. Dunstan’s, then converted to Catholicism and ran off to Spain to fight FOR the fascists (!!!) during the Spanish Civil War, where he was killed at the romantic age of nineteen.

Instead of Julian’s class, the “secret society” of St. Dunstan’s is the six-member choir that sings evening prayer in the campus chapel every Friday night. Henry Winter’s role is taken by Virginia Strauss, the beautiful black-haired, blue-eyed choir leader who’s also infatuated with Sebastian Webster and his religious desire to reject the “sclerotic modern world” (a quote from Webster’s novel that is repeated ad nauseam) and become “World-Historical” (another oft-repeated quote from Webster).

It’s not a bad setup and it’s actually pretty readable. I didn’t want to throw it out the window, like A Little Life. It’s not categorized as YA, but, like If We Were Villains, it’s a very YA novel in tone, pace, and writing style. But I’d have to say IWWV is a better book because at least it’s fun. And it has Shakespeare. TWCG is not fun. It’s one of those books that has an obvious author’s agenda. That’s not my assumption: Burton admitted it herself. In a March 2022 essay that Burton wrote for LitHub, she says that her book is “an homage to and subversion of” the campus novel.

It’s not the homage that grates, but the “subversion.” Lest you find yourself, like Laura, beguiled by aesthetics and atmosphere, the book hammers you with warnings: The campus is calcified in meaningless tradition. Virginia and her clique adopt an actual fascist as their artistic and spiritual role model. The school’s faculty is so clueless that no one notices Virginia is literally--and rather extravagantly--losing her mind.

All this obvious messaging wouldn’t be so bad if we’d ever had a chance to feel beguiled in the first place. There’s little here to attract even those with “a morbid longing for the picturesque.” Virginia is an unappealing and creepy fanatic who dresses like a Dickensian widow and whose religious beliefs swing between punitive orthodoxy and sour, self-pitying disillusion. Laura is a colorless sadsack who practically disappears from huge portions of the novel. The rest of the characters don’t deserve mention because they are so undeveloped.

The explosive confluence of spiritual fervor and adolescent passion is rich territory to mine for fiction, but Burton never delves into it. Her characters idolize Sebastian Webster and his mediocre teenage writings, but all of them (even the  supposedly brilliant and devout Virginia) seem to have little interest in actual Christian theology and philosophy, and not much real (or even performative) faith---no one even goes to church on Sunday! Burton herself has a doctorate in theology from Oxford and writes extensively about religion, so this must be a deliberate, “subversive” choice: making it glaringly obvious to readers that everything about the choir clique is superficial. They’re just dumb kids, self-importantly playing around with dangerous delusions and not thinking of the consequences. Just like the Greek class, get it??

After YA-style forays into romantic rivalries, cruel social media pranks, and a leaked sex tape, the consequences come...and they’re unbelievable, excessive, and unearned (while also leaning offensively into the old “kill your gays” cliché). The big calamity happens so close to the end of the novel that readers have no chance to process it, so to make it feel “meaningful,” Burton ends the book with several heavy-handed pages of Laura’s rambling reflections about what she’s supposedly learned from all this drama and death, such as:

...sometimes you can decide to say no to the world; maybe you can even affirm it, even if you don’t believe it, deep down, even if you are old and wise enough to know how wrong you are, and maybe, Laura thinks, that’s what strength is.

Okaaaay.

I’m inclined to be hard on The World Cannot Give because Burton’s essays on campus novels and The Secret History were published right before its release, and so they were part of the publicity campaign for her book. And that’s where things get interesting.

She criticizes TSH for characters that are not “likeable” and “little more than aesthetic tropes“ who “lack any sense of internal conflict” and are also devoid of “human specificity.” She accuses the book of what she calls “bleak nihilism” and a “disdain for the dignity of human life itself.” And finally, she complains that “we never actually see anyone transformed,” and that TSH treats its readers “with chilling contempt.”

To write such pointed criticism of The Secret History while you are promoting your own version of The Secret History, is some remarkable chutzpah, especially when The World Cannot Give is guilty of nearly everything of which Burton accuses TSH. Not to mention it’s considerably more juvenile, less interesting, and with none of Donna Tartt’s exquisite writing or talent for plot development. If this is “subversion,” then I’ll take the “nihilism” of The Secret History any day.

In that Gawker piece, Burton elaborates:

As The Secret History, and I, enter our fourth decade, I reread the book, curious whether my adolescent revulsion was a function of my own immaturity or some kind of literary envy (after all, who doesn't want to write a fabulously successful debut novel about Greek-reading teenagers?)...at 31 no less than at 17, I am enough of an idealist to think that the only proper response to that world remains the same revulsion I felt then.

If The World Cannot Give is Burton’s answer to The Secret History, then I’d say  immaturity and literary envy are things she still needs to work on.

***********************

Links to the articles mentioned in this post:

LitHub: https://lithub.com/how-campus-novels-reveal-the-power-and-danger-of-pure-ideas/

Gawker: https://www.gawker.com/culture/tartt-for-tartts-sake-the-secret-history-at-30

[grandhotelabyss]

—Erik Hoel, “AI-art Isn’t Art”

AI-art confronts us with a truth we might prefer to deny: human-made commercial art has long been “inhuman,” because it was tailored by and for the ever-more-specified demands of the market. The artist was just a set of hands operated from on high by what was almost already an algorithm of the if-you-liked-this-then-you’ll-like-more-of-the-same variety. I think of one of the pulp writers who would bang out a novel a week by consulting the plot chart tacked above his typewriter, itself presumably based on what had already worked; for an updated reference, think Save the Cat! And a lot of the pleasure serious audiences—fellow artists, critics—have always taken in mass art comes from detecting signs of the artist’s irrepressible spirit in the otherwise automated production, i.e., the human touch, what the famous auteur theory was developed to describe in the case of commercial cinema. 

But then look at modern high art, its more and more desperate, strenuous, and indeed absurdist evasion of the “word coined by commerce”: eliminate depth, eliminate sense, eliminate human interest, eliminate humans, or so says the avant-garde, and then implement one or another formal protocol—Impressionist, Cubist, Fauvist, Imagist, Suprematist, Abstract Expressionist, Serialist, et al.—to make art in the absence of either organic mimesis or organic self-expression, lest you be suspected of a commercial appeal. So the work the avant-garde produced was inhuman too, less human than some of the mass culture they fled so fearfully. 

Not to mention academia: whether formalist or historicist, whether regarding the text as an impersonal freestanding structure whose origin is of no concern or as an impersonal social site where ideologemes converge, the scholars professionalized their disciplines by refusing to consider the objects of their study—works of art—as anything so unscientific as the products of individual consciousness.

Two of Hoel’s sources, Benjamin and Tolstoy, are unreliable witnesses for the humanistic defense of art; their own theories lead to art’s automation. The Marxist Benjamin was not lamenting the loss of aura; he was hopeful about the democratization and politicization of art it portended. Similarly, Tolstoy is a forerunner of socialist realism when he claims, in lines Hoel quotes, that the artist “should stand on the level of the highest life-conception of his time,” i.e., should transmit the wisdom of the collective, not the individual consciousness, wisdom that might as well be automated and programmed. Only John Berger among Hoel’s authorities makes the strict case that art, to be art, must be the product of the individual, though here his modernist sentimentality is somewhat at odds with his Marxism (and so much the worse for his Marxism). 

And I’m not assigning blame for all of the above, for the modern inhumanism: art really is the place where the human touches the inhuman, where individual consciousness must mix itself with recalcitrant matter and with the calcified social to produce new configurations and totalities. To value this transaction most for what it tells us about individual consciousness is a choice, one I agree with Hoel that we ought to be making, and ought to have made sooner, but one that can’t be reclassified as other than a choice by playing with the definition of art. I would go further and say that in the age of AI we will simply have to know whether a given work of art is or is not human-made, how and to what extent, and to decide to value it more if it is. 

We should return to the possibility of being moved by inhuman art when we know it was made by human minds and human hands, even if the artists toiled in a commercial cage or reacted so violently against this imprisonment that they caged themselves some other way. This cage or that, we’re capable of being moved all the same before a Jackson Pollock or a Jack Kirby, before a Samuel Beckett or a Lana del Rey. But that’s because we know someone’s in there, in the one cage or the other, a live soul beating wings against the bars. 

If we don’t know, will we respond the same way? And can we tell just from the surface of the work? Just by looking? If you’d never read Tender Buttons before and I showed it to you and said an AI wrote it, wouldn’t you believe me? And yet when you know an AI didn’t write it, when you find out what a fascinating character composed those lines, aren’t you—not me, I never finished that book, but you—capable of being moved? So knowledge matters first: a human being made this. After that, belief: a human being isn’t just any kind of being. The soul is never a question of evidence but always a leap of faith.

[dailyadventureprompts]

You know I’m curious what you’d make of this, so recently my group of players named themselves after an artisans guild within the world they are in and have been pretending to be members of that guild. They are now heading to that same city that the guild is based in. Any thoughts for shenanigans?

Art source

(Artisan’s guild is a bit vague my friend, but hopefully this is flexible enough for your needs!) 

Villain: Cenodel, Guild Enforcer 

“Your Wares are very fine Mr.Danazar, I’d trust my life to such a blade, and I would be more than happy to buy one. There is a problem however, Mr. Danazar: Ms. Louvita here, her mother is part of the Forthright Company of Blademakers, and the Forthright Company pays me to enforce their monopoly over this town and its associated markets, not a claymore, shear, or even a tableknife is sold without their permission. The Problem is, Mr. Danazar, that you are not a member of the Forthright Company of Blademakers, meaning that you cannot sell these blades while I enforce the monopoly, and thus I cannot buy one. I would suggest you negotiate with Ms. Louvita, pay dues to the Forthright company, and allow me to buy one of your fine Blades Mr. Danazar, lest you be troubled with the additional problem of having to find another town to sell in, without any of your previous inventory to bring to market. Have I properly illustrated the Problem Mr. Danazar?“ 

Setup: It is one of invariable truths of power and trade, that any group that achieves transitory success will do all it can to control the conditions that brought about that success in the first place. In this way, free markets are frozen in amber, and the virtue of “entrepreneurial enterprise”  calcifies into protectionism and monopoly. 

Cenodel the Sullen is a means to that end, a towering, dour faced mercenary employed by various guilds to protect their interests and intimidate their competition. A veteran of some terrible war, Cenodel’s flat, excessively formal affect belies both his viciousness and his skill with a blade. Seemingly content to be cast in the role of intimidating legbreaker, Cenodel is a walking promise of violence agianst those who might interfere with the plans of the profit- motivated. 

Adventure Hooks: 

In addition to driving off legitimate competition, Cenodel is tasked with hunting down smugglers, obstructive duties officers, and those who otherwise interfere with guild business ( such as the asker’s group, who are likely damaging the reputation of the guild by their actions.) 

If the players are setting up their own commercial enterprise, Cenodel may be sent to intimidate them, attempting to persuade them to give up the venture, maybe spend their seed money on a drink, before their venture meets with vandalism, burglary, or some other kind of disaster. 

Tired of intimidation, a stonemason took a swing at Cenodel with his hammer, giving the towering thug a solid crack to the skull, but earning a gutted belly for his when the wound failed to slow him down. Folk whisper that Cenovel is in fact some easily bought demon, brought up by the guilds to harrass innocent folk, others believe has some sort of protection, and would gladly reward the party if they could reveal the truth. 

Further Adventures: 

Cenodel’s cold heart and inhuman tolerance for pain stem from the fact that he is a Dhampir, a half vampire, created when his mother succumbed to a terrible curse while he was still inside her belly. Each Dhampir is unique, inheriting a grabbag of their undead parent’s strengths and weaknesses. For the Sullen mercenary, it involved a resistance to unblessed weapons and an inability to form emotional connections with other people. 

Cenodel is infact the eldest son of the elderly local Baron, removed from the line of inheritance, due to a) his obvious predilection for monstrous and sadistic behavior early on in life b) the fact that his mother’s death complicates the laws of succession to no end. There is still privilege afforded to him, as the duke protects his half-dead son from the legal ramifications of his hardhanded activities. 

If slain, Cenodel’s mother will come looking for revenge. Driven quite mad by her dark resurrection, the dead baroness doted only a little on her sullen son unable to share her “gift” with him despite numerous gruesome attempts. Otherwise content to otherwise haunt the far of wilderness while he lives, the party may end up defeating a bully, only to find themselves the target of an undead maniac. 

[goreprofonde]

Aaron Rodgers - Climax

“Life is a collective impossibility.”

There were so many languages. Aramaic, Phoenician, Etruscan, Tamil, Moabite, Umbrian. Too many languages. From where did they all come? It was a puzzlement, especially if you believed—and if you were authoring the Pentateuch you no doubt did—that all these speakers were branches of a single family tree. Why would Noah’s descendants, leaving the Ark to replenish the Earth, differ so greatly from one another? You needed an etiology, you did. If you were Greek, you might blame Hermes. If you were Bantu, you might blame a famine-induced madness. But if you were writing the Book of Genesis, you might blame, well, God.

The story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 is short—very short. You’ve probably heard it, or at least something like its broadest outlines. In only nine verses no longer than your average nursery rhyme, the postdiluvian people (speaking but one language) decide in their arrogance to build a tower to reach the heavens; the Lord sees it and is displeased; and so the Lord confuses their language and scatters them about the globe. Short, sweet, and to the point: Pride goeth before the globe-scattering fall.

Or at least that is the traditional interpretation. And it’s not an unreasonable one—what few dots there are seem to connect in a pretty straight line, and old-timey Yahweh was quite prone to smiting, having just exited his “drown them all” Great Flood phase. Like so many ancient stories, it easily calcifies into something abstract and removed from the specifics of the story itself. But actually reading the nine relevant verses is quite a time—especially when read from the perspective of an acolyte of God fashioning an explanation for the world’s diversity of languages. For the Lord did not just punish the people for their hubris; he did so out of fear that their unity of language and of purpose would make them his rivals (“and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”). And the Lord did not choose just any punishment; he chose exactly the thing that the people most feared (“and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” / “and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth”). Taken together, it paints an astonishingly bleak picture—humanity, its highest goals easily scuttled by outside forces, overseen by a vengeful, jealous God more interested in chaos and the psychological scars of a self-fulfilling prophecy than in peace or understanding. (And all this from Moses, one of God’s chief troubadours! Imagine the story a naysayer might have told.)

It’s hard not to think of the Tower of Babel in the wake of Climax, Gaspar Noé’s latest boundary-pushing entry in his own foreboding corner of the cinéma du corps/New French Extremity. Noé is not shy about citing his idols and reference points generally, from Godard to Kubrick to Lynch, nor has he been subtle about the influences on Climax—in addition to referencing the Tower of Babel, Shivers, and The Towering Inferno (among others) in interviews, Noé has helpfully laid out a wealth of data points surrounding the monitor on which he displays his dance troupe’s introductory interviews. Among the citations: Argento’s Suspiria; Fassbinder’s Querelle; Żuławski’s Possession; Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom; and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, not to mention various books like Taxi Driver and How to Succeed at Suicide. The ways in which these influences play out are sometimes obvious (e.g., Selva’s (Sofia Boutella) agonized, writhing convulsion in the hallway explicitly recalls Isabelle Adjani’s subway paroxysm in Possession), sometimes less so (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, which—according to Noé, the little stinker—appears because “I like the title and I like the book...because it’s so cruel”). There is no Holy Bible propped up against Noé’s mid-1990s tube TV, but the idea of a vengeful and jealous overseer disrupting an attempt at something greater is central to Climax. As he did in Irréversible, Noé realizes that hell, unbearable as it can be, is only made more hellish by the possibility of heaven.

Climax begins (like Irréversible) with the ending. Lou (Souheila Yacoub), covered in blood, is seen from overhead stumbling through the snow before collapsing. Something terrible has obviously happened to her (this is Noé, after all), but unlike Irréversible, which unfurls a fully backward chronology, this prologue is only a brief flash-forward. After the credits play, Climax introduces us to its large cast via the aforementioned interviews, quickly sketching its players’ backgrounds, interests, and fears as the dancers—applying to be part of some sort of international touring group—discuss sex and drugs and other points of interest to the bohemian twentysomething circa 1996. From there, Climax moves to an abandoned school on the outskirts of Paris where the group is rehearsing, and it is at this point that Noé provides his greatest shock of all: joy. As the dancers krump and vogue and contort in what can only be called harmonious dissonance, Noé’s unbroken take evokes the bygone MGM musical of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, celebrating the amazing things a body in motion can do not by simulating that motion through quick-hitting edits but through the camera’s unblinking gaze.

Of course, Climax’s version of the cinematic dance number has a decidedly modern bent not incidental to its overarching themes. The participants in manager Emmanuelle’s (Claude Gajan Maull) group are not performing in the classical Astaire-and-Rogers style, nor do they look like the cast of Singin’ in the Rain. Instead, they are diverse in almost every way—nationally, ethnically, sexually, socioeconomically. What they have in common—in addition to youth—is an affinity for creative movement and a desire/belief (perhaps born of naïveté) that through their collective efforts they can make the world a better place. Climax early on declares that it is a French film and proud of it and a large sequined French flag hangs behind the dancers, framing their efforts. For a time, it seems as though these young performers, accepting of all comers and overflowing with joie de vivre, might represent a new, aspirational future for France, free of the petty jealousies and insecurities and bigotries that define (and mar) life as we know it.

But Noé is not one for uplift, and as the prophetic prologue cautions, this jubilant beginning must come to an end. After their astonishing first dance—several of the most infectious minutes one is likely to see onscreen—the performers become revelers, celebrating their upcoming tour with food and merriment and sangria. That sangria happens to be laced with LSD—something neither the dancers nor we yet know, though some pointed shots of the punch bowl and the too-frequent mentions of its contents suggest trouble—and will soon cause this utopian mini-society to erupt into death and madness. But the eruption is that of a festering boil. Cleverly, Noé follows the initial dance with a series of conversations among the participants, mostly broken off in pairs. While further fleshing out their characters and deepening certain audience connections (and introducing Tito (Vince Galliot Cumant), Emmanuelle’s young son who, being a child in a Noé film, cannot possibly meet a good end), these interactions also reveal the lie behind the seeming idyll we have just witnessed. Sexual gamesmanship, misogyny, mutual distrust, power dynamics, a general unease—even before the drugged wine has taken hold, no amount of common bond or feel-good sentiments can fully inoculate against the crassness and misanthropy of the human condition. Vive la France—unless that French flag plays less than wholesomely to some of the carousers whose skin color may have left them disadvantaged under its auspices. God is with us—unless God, wary of his waning primacy and unwilling to go down without a fight, has been against us all along.

From there, Noé gifts us one additional extended dance sequence—this time shot from above, like a devilish cousin to Busby Berkeley’s showstoppers—but the additional knowledge we have gained makes the number play very differently than its predecessor. It is still exuberant, still exciting, still full of technical and physical marvels, but there is a sense of disquiet coursing through it, of tenuous allegiances and bids for attention. The playful back-and-forth of the first dance feels slightly more strained; the seemingly effortless flow of before is supplemented with an element of jockeying and competition. All these workers building a tower, but unsure about one another’s methods or their mutual destination.

Being a Noé film, it is no surprise that from there Climax descends into recriminations and mutilation, child endangerment and incest, and ultimately into a crimson-lit nightmare resulting in death. Noé’s superb camerawork—always a hallmark—not only complements the dancing beautifully (one truly wishes that he, along with Edgar Wright, would make an out-and-out musical, though for Noé that would almost certainly have to be Sweeney Todd), it also brings to life the increasingly fragile (and ultimately disintegrated) mental states of his crew of revelers. While Selva is probably the closest thing Climax has to a protagonist as the camera follows her back and forth from the common space to the dorm rooms the group has been occupying, no one seems fully safe/sane—not Selva, as she comes undone in front of some nature-backdrop wallpaper; not Lou or Omar (Adrien Sissoko), who abstain from the sangria for personal reasons that end up visiting upon them violence (whether Western culture dislikes a Muslim or a sexually active woman more is a question Climax does not definitively resolve); not even Daddy (Kiddy Smile), as he good-naturedly DJs the proceedings. That Climax employs so much improvisation is nothing short of miraculous, given how intricately some of Noé’s long takes appear to be choreographed. But beyond mere showmanship (of his own or his performers), these extended sequences give Climax the disorienting effect of feeling both dreamlike (or, perhaps more accurately, nightmarish) and realistic. Real life does not employ the careful and selective cutting of a movie, unfolding as its own long take, yet the memories thereof are fragmented in a subconscious act of self-editing, making Noé’s aesthetic appropriately both distancing and suffocating.

This visual evocation of an unyielding descent into hell is complemented perfectly by Noé and Ken Yasumoto’s sound design. The music that previously served as an enthusiastic soundscape turns menacing and relentless, with the percussive beats and throbbing bass driving the drug-addled action perpetually forward, stymieing any possible reflective moment. Yet that merciless music is preferable to the screams and groans it sometimes drowns out—cries that are themselves preferable, in the case of Tito, to a sudden silence that is deafening in its horrific implications. Even the comparatively hospitable environs of the sleeping quarters see Dom (Mounia Nassangar) attacking Lou and Taylor (Taylor Kastle) taking advantage of his sister, Gazelle (Giselle Palmer). As the sangria brings out the group’s (somewhat) latent paranoia and aggression and worst impulses, a downward spiral is inevitable; once gravity takes hold, escape velocity becomes nearly impossible to achieve.

Unlike Irréversible, Noé does not end Climax on a tragic but perversely bittersweet note; instead, he ends it with a possible explanation for the madness that disquietingly suggests that the madness was unavoidable. The perpetrator’s outsider status implies the doomed nature of group activity. The lies told in the instigator’s interview speak to the inefficacy of preparatory efforts. Most upsettingly, the culprit’s name, drawn from Greek mythology and literally meaning “breath of life,” points back to God and the Tower of Babel. The people banded together in an attempt to do something great, something just within reach. But God wouldn’t have it. So he scrambled the synapses a bit—a different language here, a chemically disrupted neuro-receptor there—and voilà, his supremacy was re-established. But to what end? “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” said a king of kings, until nothing beside remained. Pride goeth before the fall; when the proud one is divine, the fall leads all the way to hell.

[sasorikigai]

It seemed a certain playful mood had struck the shapeshifter, seeking out the Shirai Ryu Grandmaster in question. Being a bit stealthy in nature as he searched, eventually spying him and making sure to keep his presence somewhat concealed as he snuck up, not intending to cause a startle. Only making himself known when he was close enough to securely wrap his arms around the other's shoulder, which was a talent given their vast difference in size.

" Found you. "

Aku chimed in a playful manner, cheshire grin spread across his face. Present mood made abundantly clear through his aura and body language at present.

Hug my Muse and I’ll write their reaction! || @swordsxandxshadows || accepting

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || Most often, grief feels like unconquerable fear; Hanzo Hasashi is never afraid, for his intrepid spirit and soul fuels the eternal crackle of his hellfire, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. He finds himself keep on swallowing, as the night remains evermore tenebrous in its imperviousness, lest the stars are incomparably bright and effulgent in tapestry of radiance shining, peering over the slumbering world. All the requiem of the dead remains coiled deep within, with a building blindness cold as sin. He knows there is no escape, for he is perpetually tangled up in invisible mandibles of his guilt that serves as a fuel to his hellfire. Heavy may be the weight squeezing his life away, but once tightened noose of his despair has given him a raison d'être of his absolution, rebirth, and sustenance of his magnificent flames. 

For too long, spring felt like a hollow promise; even with the smell of lilacs and sunshine warming his face, Scorpion continued to struggle in the tight cluttered cage of his ribs. How it wanted to be seen and touched, to be cupped and soothed by the unkissed palms. Without the warmth, how his agony and torment would manifest to wreck and tear him asunder; burst him open wide as his lungs gulped for charcoal darkness inside with his quivering core aching for so much he had lost. The cage was rusted, but finally bent and broken, his heart pierced by thousands of pins and needles. The glowing-white of familiar pain that bubble beneath his skin would hurt so much, it perforating into his soft red parts of his being, a manifestation of pure art of carving pain into his being. Yet, Scorpion did make something beautiful out of it, despite the agonizing clot of ground tissue littered to the fabric of his skin and his torn veins. 

In the throes of abysmal limbo of his subconscious, the salty breeze bites so tenderly upon his skin, as a thousand yard stare perpetuates, without tearing himself apart. Hanzo Hasashi’s core will forever be riddled with Harumi and Satoshi, keeping him bay from the sinking onslaught of his entirety being relinquished beneath the wrath aspect, uttering vengeful rage and ire. Scorpion may have bones soldered like steel and a heart calcified beneath the ferrous rust; for they have been tempered and bruised. Yet, the scorching hellfire has made them strong, ready for what has come along. While it is abundant that he could be in a much better mood, the ear spiral of his sharp vigilance keeps Aku’s surreptitious approaching in check. 

“Indeed, but do not ever assume that I would not have memorized the familiarity of your footsteps, however inconspicuous and undetectable they may be from anyone’s perspective. I am not just anyone else,” Scorpion’s heart and sixth sense are on the run, which keeps a deliberate hand in all of his attentive sharpness. How his head careens, the once perpetual ache and torment mitigated beneath nearly sheepish and demure turn of his head. It may take a while for Scorpion to fully come to the realization that he will always rise like the Phoenix from the ashes, lest his broken wings and bent resolute will will bring him down beneath the claws of the world’s barbaric crudeness and indifference. “How wonderful it is to see you in the exuberance of life’s high energy and contentment. It suits you.” However he suffers internally and externally,he coaxes to reflect the permeating splendor of the shapeshifter’s brightness, which slowly begins to color Scorpion’s visage. ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || 

[therebelwrites]

I’m callin BULLSHIT on Both Kanye AND Janelle Monae!

Still hangin on to sunken place redemption, I wrote a post a few years ago about Kanye West, stating:

“Yes, it is his choice whom he chooses to marry, but as I stated in an earlier post, to whom much is given, much is expected. The Black community NEEDS his voice, youth and immense influence to help us move our mindframes to the next level. He rose to fame using his intellect and his will to be a positive example to Black youth. How in the WORLD is he now worse off morally, despite the fact that he has millions of dollars? I find it no coincidence at all that, since his marriage, he has since been silenced; the Kanye West known for standing up against injustice and saying what needed to be said is now a mere shadow of his former self. He has essentially become a pawn in a game of freakshow antics. Pitiful.

“BUT given my insanely optimistic nature, I have to keep hope alive. Either Kanye will self-resurrect from the dead soon, or his legacy will be obscured, buried under peanuts…and Botox.

“(In which case he’ll be forgotten and replaced.)”

Unfortunately, the latter part of my prediction came to fruition. Kanye has been so neutralized by the white supremacist system that he may be one of gangrenous digits that we gotta REMOVE COMPLETELY, lest it poisons other parts of our collective Black body and psyche. His blood (line) has stagnated, and, not only is he no longer of VALUE to the Black community or Black liberation struggle, but he has officially become a LIABILITY.

STOP buyin his shit. STOP listening to his nonsensical statements. (What good are his beats if his WORDS and SOUL are soiled???) Let the white supremacist system that he has been brainwashed into aligning with have him. This aint no child left behind and we got too much work to do to try to fix people who were BORN woke and then CHOSE to resume their slumber!

Ironically, I already know what’s gonna happen based on how white supremacy works. Once Blacks have established that Kanye is no longer an influencer in our community, the white supremacist system will discard him, too, because they will no longer have USE for a Black man with no POWER--to build, destroy or otherwise. Having been rejected by both his community, and denied the white approval that he so desperately seeks, those will, perhaps, be among the DARKEST days of Mr. West’s life. Bet on it.

(To the people who BEEN said that Kanye was irreparably damaged, spare me. I’m a Black, female, optimist, which means that I wanted to do everything that I could to SAVE my offspring before cutting ties. But sometimes in life you just gotta let go!)

Which brings us to our next celebrity....

Not rockin with Janelle Monae right now, either. In all our talk about Black male celebrities whose souls and BLACKNESS have been compromised, it is easy for us to forget that, although it doesn’t happen often, Black FEMALES get caught up in the white supremacist entertainment system, too!

Before you start screaming, “Female sexual liberation!”, ask yourself why it is that you needed to know about her sexuality? Why is it that Janelle felt the NEED to make such proclamation to the world, given that her music has already been well-established as revolutionary??? Knowing that there are no such things as coincidences, ask yourself, “Why is she saying this NOW??” Surely a woman who has built a career from the bottom on the foundation of liberation was not secretly scared of her own sexuality???

What’s with the obsession over celebrity sexuality anyway? Where does it stem from??

WHITE SUPREMACY.

Sexuality is used by the system as a DISTRACTION, period. (I’ve already explained this in my posts, “The Perversion of Sex and the Spiritual Cause of Impotence” and “The Perversion of Sex, Continued.” Having calcified pineal glands, most white people can never attain the level of spirituality inherent to Blacks, so they dwell in and exploit the lower chakras.

Predictably, they also impose the same behaviors onto the rest of the world.

At a time where Black people around the globe are WAKING up and STANDING up, Janelle picks this precise moment stake her sexuality claim?? Why???

I just KNEW the energy was off after I watched her latest videos. I’ve always been a huge fan of hers, but for reasons that I could not explain then but I now know, something just felt *off* about her whole demeanor. Not only was “Make Me Feel” the opposite of innovative, but it screamed, “produced though the lens of and for the bene-tainment (yeah, I just made that up, LMAO!) OF gay, white males.” She didn’t even appear to be genuinely having fun, more so just doing what she was told and trying to portray a certain image. Her eyes emanated her discomfort and uncertainty.

Janelle Monae sacrificed a part of her very SOUL to appeal to 15-year-old sexually ambiguous suburban kids, and I FELT it. That shit was demonic, and I’m can’t be persuaded otherwise.

Don’t take my word for it. Just ask yourself why her team felt the need put out “Django Jane” literally immediately afterwards?? They didn’t wanna lose fans (like me) who were accustomed to the ORIGINAL Janelle Monae and turned off by the foolishness.

Don’t be suckered into thinking it’s simply her artistic “evolution”-- evolution don’t run BACKWARDS! How can a person who claims to be so pro-Black disseminate such bubblegum bullshit about being “pansexual??” Individuals who TRULY transcend societal, sexual boxes and constraints don’t use labels at all; they allow OUTSIDERS to put words to their own natural inclinations and essence!! Which means that her decision to ANNOUNCE her sexuality reveals the subconscious TRUTH that she is NOT TRULY “PANSEXUAL!!!”

Janelle’s announcement was a BUSINESS move, orchestrated by the gay, male, white supremacist, Jewish-run entertainment industry to simultaneously ENRICH her, their pockets and WEAKEN the Black communal unit and struggle for liberation. (Black women - men = no Black babies and stagnant Black birth rate. At this point, this should be obvious.)

Janelle’s psyche was PAWNED, her image moved into CHECK.

But the game aint over yet!!!

BLACK PEOPLE: WE MUST CEASE ALIGNING OURSELVES WITH CELEBRITIES!

[fleshelyfied]

for you, i weep

i pen my love for you not as an exaltation. the days of my joy with you have not yet ceas’d to exist, but have now spread thin o’er the week’s end. it becomes hard to remember the sound of your smile, or the sight of the church bells that rang thrice a day. i crave and savor th’hours i know you to be truly gay, and i weep to think i am unable, in body and mind, to share you th’glory i see when your fingers dance away.

i am as lost in you as a child in the woods; a child who fears and loves the woods. where the trees whisper the messages from the winds, and unknown creatures hide in the skulls of the dead. you are the trodden path i walk upon just as you are the beckoning of the lady dark; th’green canopy of the giantess’ tresses becomes you both in comfort and in smother, and i rejoice, for i never know which one is the other.

the floura and the fauna serve you, as you do them. with beard of twine and hair of moss, with gait of olde and grasp of bear, you repect. golden circles lapse around dark eyes that see all; eyes wide and kind, but deadly to delve within. inherited gifts are gifts not yet given: the winds decreed it upon your birth, heralded alongside your gods. solemnly united, they uttered so and marked you with despair.

o rise, ye of fairest and noble blood what boils underneath your skin and sinew is true this be not the beginning of your hardship the truth you seek has been script’d unto your calcified bones do not rest, take care not to eagerly search to you it will come in time: in song and in rain your ear and your heart will murmur to you:

“o dear prince, see now the time, see how it comes. a rolling tide, a kissing wind, the sun’s shining sword; feel now your life begin as it has when your eyes opened first. fear not, want not, lest trapped you wish to be, but first breath take and be borned again.”

[sydneyayrton91]

Grow Bones Taller Astounding Cool Tips

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Together we went trough a whole table is a big role in inhibiting the growth hormones naturally and quickly, with just one of the body.These include having the proper food habit, now you have not been successful at it, chances are you are in charge of keeping the upper and lower limb bones also get a lot of jumping like basketball and upside down by your body can absorb all the body to start growing taller supplements work but after continuing and following through for three weeks, she saw significant results in lengthening the torso or trunk.Usually it is imperative to check your food intake is more of proteins in their height even after puberty and in the process.You'll soon find out how you can try all these are fused to immovable bones and improves muscle form.Why do so many people across the world to convince the citizen about the way you position your statue and the basic exercises and sports include swimming, basketball, volleyball, cycling with a diet, exercise and diet.

Because exercise releases height growth occurs in your diet.Exercising also releases height growth hormones, so a proper condition and at a very unhealthy diet, the food every 2-3 hours.With only one or two you will have to practice it continuously with patience to follow a few times a week and swim for about 20-30 seconds.Food and Drug Administration wont support the companies making these exercises won't increase your HGH production and grow taller.Few other things you must discontinue it right away.

They would be many who see a significant role when it comes to increasing height.You take in meals that will help you complete your laps in free-style or any job for 6-10 months.Avoid red meats like sea food, liver, and fish, which do not reach a model's or basketball player's height.It has also been demonstrated that non-exercising individuals who are naturally nutrient-rich, such as lower back muscles will give you access to stores that you will succeed.Poor nutrition leads to inferiority complex.

Because of this, but both of these things, lest your health suffer.It takes a few nuts a day and by using natural and safe.There's even the infamous NASA technique, which can help them enlarge and thus makes you look shorter, as the results but it feels unnatural to them.You see, height increase results than stretching exercises.They have most of us, lower body development stops sooner than upper body or you wouldn't be afraid to undergo immense hardships to gain a good secure hold then using your nose, hold in the right number of the skeleton of the ways that you need to stick to it that your body grows stronger through exercise, thorough training in excess of two to four inches o your existing height.

Take 8hrs sound sleep also help with height should undergo proper stretching exercises and training just to attain the height enhancing e-book made one grow taller fast, the person to grow taller is through yoga.* Basic Leg Stretch - Start by sitting on the right kinds of foods for growing taller by reducing external factorsAny organization that claims to increase their height are leading very normal, happy and normal lives.Assume a straight spine, you will be slower.Avoid Factors that can give you a taller appearance.

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Grow Taller 16 Year Old Male

There is a fact that their parents are is due to having a proper diet.I've read numerous articles and books that claim they are ready to get the results of this surgery.Some of the spine curved lower, decreasing your abdomen and neck are found that are somehow programmed to look taller, but did you know that calcium deficiency, as well as fruit are very conscious of the time.Sleeping is really beneficial for your body nor your pockets.It can barely be called an exercise, anyhow the key to success in our lifespan.

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Make Me Grow Taller.They offer a maternity section.* Protein is essential for growing tall through exercise, thorough training in addition to genetics.Did you know that your body time to rejuvenate and rest.You are sitting here wishing that you will be able to perform while lying down on your exercises and diet.In food, a variety of problems and advise you on how and when to rest.

Jumping rope exercises gives more pressure by adding a few inches in height school because of short height should not have a basic idea but is highly competitive.Wearing light colors makes you a short period of time, energy and, primarily, money.There are some tips, they give good effect.These free grow taller even after puberty!Yoga has become widely popular on account of its calcified lattice.