#much less distributed memory coherency | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

boobtubedude · 5 years ago

Text

Reposting my original “Lost” series finale review

(Originally posted May 23, 2010, on Zap2It. RIP, Zap2It.)

So here’s the deal: this will not be a complete recap of the series finale of “Lost.” To try to make complete and coherent sense of what just dropped our way would be 1) impossible, and 2) be a disgrace to what just happened. Because what just happened isn’t something you instantly react to, but rather mull over during the course of a few days, weeks, months, or years. After all, that was the final episode. We have all the time in the world to think about its implications until we “move on.”

And yes, I use the phrase “move on” specifically due to the use of the phrase by Christian Shephard in the sideways universe, which we know now to be real only in the emotional sense of the world. All throughout the season, the producers of the show have assured us that what happens over there had stakes and meanings, and this is still completely true in the most basic of senses. Neither the pro-epilogue camp nor the pro-Island timeline had it exactly right, even though both camps had valid perspectives to bring to the table and pieces of the puzzle in hand. What “Lost” brought instead was a third perspective, one that nobody really saw and one that I bet made a core section of its audience completely and utterly insane with anger.

Looking at the finale from a perspective of mythology isn’t the best way to go about it. (I started to jot down “So who put the stone in the devil cave in the first place?” before slapping myself silly.) Looking at the finale from a perspective of plot probably isn’t the best ay, either. (Waaaaay too much time spent on getting Ajira 316 up and running again, especially considering the sideways resolution. And there are enough holes in the overall plot as a whole to dig a few dozen wells down towards the light inside all of us.) But looking at it from an emotional perspective, I thought the finale was a masterpiece.

In a sense, “The End” was a love letter from the show to itself and, hopefully, to the audience as well. But it didn’t pay off donkey wheels and Dharma Initiatives but the core characters of the show themselves. The sideways universe did offer a second chance, but not in the way that those that saw the sideways world as a chance to live their lives free from the Island. Instead, it offered each character a tremendous grace note, one felt both by the characters but also the audience at home. When these people “flashed” to their Island lives, they didn’t flash to epic moments in Island history: they flashed to empty jars of peanut butter and freshly picked flowers and all the small moments that make up a relationship.

If the show had to get one of three aforementioned elements right (character, mythology, plot), then it absolutely focused on the right one. As of this moment, writing in the immediate aftermath of what I just saw, I could care less about what happened to Kate and Company once they left the Island. The point of the show seems to be that what you do is less important than the meaning behind what you do. And moreover, if you live those lives in the correct manner, then the specifics are null and void. In the end, you arrive at the same destination. (In Richard’s case, you arrive there with newly graying hair, and the chance to actually buy the eyeliner you’ve long been accused of using.)

Now, let’s talk about that sideways destination itself. If put on the spot, here’s what I think we’re supposed to take away from it: As Island Protector, Hurley envisioned a way to give a gift back to those with whom he shared his time on the Island. Mother had her style, Jacob had his style, and Jack had his extremely interim style. But placing Hurley in ultimate charge of the Island? Brilliant, and not just because I predicted this last Fall and am happy I got at least SOMETHING right.

He’s the absolute perfect person to take the Island from what it was (something to be protected) into what it should be (something to be shared). In a show full of selfish people, Hurley is the epitome of unselfishness. Go back to the pilot episode: he’s distributing food on the first night (including a double dose for Claire, eating for two at the time). In “Everybody Hates Hugo,” he once again institutes a massive redistribution of foodstuffs. In both the Island timeline and sideways one, he uses wealth as a means to help others, giving away his cash rather than hang onto it. So having him established as the final Protector of the Island that we see (though, I imagine, not the final one by any means) worked for me.

What I imagine did not work for a LOT of you is the fact that we’ve spent one-half of the final season of the show watching events that would have been solved in “LA X” had Haley Joel Osment been on the flight. It’s a feeling that I have sensed coming for a while: the sideways world was doing such a damn good job of providing emotionally resonant moments that it eventually turned into an overwhelming attractive option for both the characters and the viewers. In fact, it turns out that the major players had absolutely no problem moving on once they made their emotional connections/breakthroughs, and instead willingly moved onto whatever lies on the other side of that white light.

As such, I look at the sideways world now as something created by Hurley (with Ben’s help) as a stopping ground for all major players in the “Lost” universe to meet at once, irrespective of when or how they died. As Christian says, there is no “now” over there. Time is just a relative construct created by people who are used to seeing events progress in a linear manner. What does Hurley ever want? For his friends to be happy! So what does he do? Well, he doesn’t build a golf course, he builds a space for them to somehow connect after shuffling off their mortal coil and all end up getting the moments of happiness that eluded them, making connections that had been previously missed, and getting forgiveness once thought impossible. They don’t have to be alive to have these things matter once achieved in the sideways universe, which is why I was behind the ultimate explanation 100%.

In the end, electromagnetism had nothing to do with the sideways world. There was no Faustian bargain between Eloise Hawking and The Man in Black. I’ve spent the second half of the season (ever since “Happily Ever After”) arguing that theory, and I’m delighted to be wrong. Why? It’s easier to buy “Hurley’s gift” as a reason as opposed to trying to throw Schroedinger’s cat as a reason for the sideways world. And that “gift” yielded scene after scene in the sideways world that reminded us all why we care so much about this show: its characters. I’m sure everyone had their particular favorites: for now, I’m putting Sawyer/Juliet in the pole position with Charlie/Claire as a surprising second. I’ll take scenes like this over lengthy exposition of the true nature of the glowing cave any day.

It’s obviously easy to say, “Well, the characters are happy, so we should be happy.” But clearly it’s not that simple. After all, these characters are fictional, constructs of the writing staff, whom I am sure went into hiding knowing that there would not only be questions but flaming torches/pitchforks aimed their way once this episode dropped. If we didn’t care about these characters, then there wouldn’t be such anger. Either you read interviews and now feel deceived, or you’re generally displeased that our characters are all dead. I’m not going to tut-tut you from that perspective, since it’s your perspective and you’re totally welcome to it.

To me, anything in the sideways world ended up being something of a bonus, both a meta-level and a narrative level. The show didn’t do the one thing I prayed it wouldn’t: negate the sacrifices and deaths on the Island timeline for some sort of reboot/do over in the sideways timeline. So, we got to see really interesting combinations and remixes of existing characters in unusual settings, with those settings driven by a combination of subconscious psychological desires and latent psychological holdups. (Kate sees herself as the innocent victim, rather than an actual killer, but is still on the run. Sawyer fashions himself a do-gooder, but is still unable to shake the memory of his parents. Jack invents a domestic life he never had, inserting a new body in his life in the form of a son to replace the father he could never find.)

On a character level, the sideways world allowed these characters the chance to let go in ways that they were unable to do in their actual lives. To fault the show for creating such a space when we have so often lamented the unfairness or abruptness of their deaths seems a bit hypocritical to me. For example, let’s take Sun/Jin. Many howled when they died, unable to believe two seasons apart boiled down to one episode; many others noted that it didn’t move them, due to the couple being alive in the sideways world. Turns out, the sideways world gave them another chance to “be together,” as the latter group suspected, but also honoring the sacrifice that tore up the former. I’d love to call this win/win, but I’m not sure I’d get many takers on this.

Let’s take another example: John Locke. Here’s a man that died a potentially pitiful death in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham,” only to have his life honored and vindicated in the finale. Without inspiring Jack, the good doctor doesn’t return to the Island, and never becomes Protector, and never stops The Man in Black, and never passes off the torch to Hurley who in turn creates a special world in which Locke not only gets to have the relationship with Jack they never had on the Island, but also gets to forgive his murderer. I could give a flying fig about the other people on the outrigger if I get payoffs such as this instead.

And, as many of us suspected, the show closed on a familiar image, in a familiar place. Some might find fault with the heart of the Island being so near the place where the show started, but if The Island has taught us anything, it’s that looking and seeing are two different things. Charlie couldn’t “see” his guitar until he chose to give up his drugs. The cave is no different: Jack couldn’t see it until he was ready to see it. That’s the work he had to do all along. By bookending the series around a man opening up his eyes to the unknown and closing them as a man who learned what it meant to truly live, “Lost” encapsulated its’ primary thematic concern: what it means to live and learn through other people. They lived together, and none of them died alone. Not in the end. Perfect.

I’ve tried to thematically address the biggest issues/ideas of tonight’s episode. I realize I am short on specifics, but I also realize that there’s probably a huge need on your part to talk about this episode as quickly as possible. So I’m going to end things here, but know that this is just the beginning. Over at Zap2it’s Guide to Lost, we’re going to spend all week looking back at this episode, and by extension, the series itself. Next week, we’ll be continuing our look back at this ambitious, epic, emotional, imperfect, messy, glorious, unique show. I look forward to hearing your comments below, and I look forward to continuing the discussion with you further over on the blog throughout the week.

5 notes · View notes

theadmiringbog · 5 years ago

Photo

I had a fragile but agreeable life: a job as an assistant at a small literary agency in Manhattan; a smattering of beloved friends on whom I exercised my social anxiety, primarily by avoiding them.

I wanted to make money, because I wanted to feel affirmed, confident, and valued. I wanted to be taken seriously. Mostly, I didn’t want anyone to worry about me.

Conversation with the cofounders had been so easy, and the interviews so much more like coffee dates than the formal, sweaty-blazer interrogations I had experienced elsewhere, that at a certain point I wondered if maybe the three of them just wanted to hang out.

They wore shirts that were always crisp and modestly buttoned to the clavicle. They were in long-term relationships with high-functioning women, women with great hair with whom they exercised and shared meals at restaurants that required reservations. They lived in one-bedroom apartments in downtown Manhattan and had no apparent need for psychotherapy. They shared a vision and a game plan. They weren’t ashamed to talk about it, weren’t ashamed to be openly ambitious. Fresh off impressive positions and prestigious summer internships at large tech corporations in the Bay Area, they spoke about their work like industry veterans, lifelong company men. They were generous with their unsolicited business advice, as though they hadn’t just worked someplace for a year or two but built storied careers. They were aspirational. I wanted, so much, to be like—and liked by—them.

It was thrilling to watch the moving parts of a business come together; to feel that I could contribute.

What I also did not understand at the time was that the founders had all hoped I would make my own job, without deliberate instruction. The mark of a hustler, a true entrepreneurial spirit, was creating the job that you wanted and making it look indispensable, even if it was institutionally unnecessary.

I wasn’t used to having the sort of professional license and latitude that the founders were given. I lacked their confidence, their entitlement. I did not know about startup maxims to experiment and “own” things. I had never heard the common tech incantation Ask forgiveness, not permission.

I had also been spoiled by the speed and open-mindedness of the tech industry, the optimism and sense of possibility. In publishing, no one I knew was ever celebrating a promotion. Nobody my age was excited about what might come next. Tech, by comparison, promised what so few industries or institutions could, at the time: a future.

“How would you explain the tool to your grandmother?” “How would you describe the internet to a medieval farmer?” asked the sales engineer, opening and closing the pearl snaps on his shirt,

Good interface design was like magic, or religion:

The first time I looked at a block of code and understood what was happening, I felt like nothing less than a genius.

Anything an app or website’s users did—tap a button, take a photograph, send a payment, swipe right, enter text—could be recorded in real time, stored, aggregated, and analyzed in those beautiful dashboards. Whenever I explained it to friends, I sounded like a podcast ad.

four-person companies trying to gamify human resources

... how rare the analytics startup was. Ninety-five percent of startups tanked. We weren’t just beating the odds; we were soaring past them.

While I usually spent sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and worrying about my loved ones’ mortality, he worked on programming side projects. Sometimes he just passed the time between midnight and noon playing a long-haul trucking simulator. It was calming, he said. There was a digital CB radio through which he could communicate with other players. I pictured him whispering into it in the dark.

At the start of each meeting, the operations manager distributed packets containing metrics and updates from across the company: sales numbers, new signups, deals closed. We were all privy to high-level details and minutiae, from the names and progress of job candidates to projected revenue. This panoramic view of the business meant individual contributions were noticeable; it felt good to identify and measure our impact.

Was this what it felt like to hurtle through the world in a state of pure confidence, I wondered, pressing my fingers to my temples—was this what it was like to be a man?

I was interested in talking about empathy, a buzzword used to the point of pure abstraction,

The hierarchy was pervasive at the analytics startup, ingrained in the CEO’s dismissal of marketing and insistence that a good product would sell itself.

He just taught himself to code over the summer, I heard myself say of a job candidate one afternoon. It floated out of my mouth with the awe of someone relaying a miracle.

As early employees, we were dangerous. We had experienced an early, more autonomous, unsustainable iteration of the company. We had known it before there were rules. We knew too much about how things worked, and harbored nostalgia and affection for the way things were.

The obsession with meritocracy had always been suspect at a prominent international company that was overwhelmingly white, male, and American, and had fewer than fifteen women in Engineering.

For years, my coworkers explained, the absence of an official org chart had given rise to a secondary, shadow org chart, determined by social relationships and proximity to the founders. Employees who were technically rank-and-file had executive-level power and leverage. Those with the ear of the CEO could influence hiring decisions, internal policies, and the reputational standing of their colleagues. “Flat structure, except for pay and responsibilities,” said an internal tools developer, rolling her eyes. “It’s probably easier to be a furry at this company than a woman.”

“It’s like no one even read ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness,’” said an engineer who had recently read “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.”

Can’t get sexually harassed when you work remotely, we joked, though of course we were wrong.

I was in a million places at once. My mind pooled with strangers’ ideas, each joke or observation or damning polemic as distracting and ephemeral as the next. It wasn’t just me. Everyone I knew was stuck in a feedback loop with themselves. Technology companies stood by, ready to become everyone’s library, memory, personality. I read whatever the other nodes in my social networks were reading. I listened to whatever music the algorithm told me to. Wherever I traveled on the internet, I saw my own data reflected back at me: if a jade face-roller stalked me from news site to news site, I was reminded of my red skin and passive vanity. If the personalized playlists were full of sad singer-songwriters, I could only blame myself for getting the algorithm depressed.

As we left the theater in pursuit of a hamburger, I felt rising frustration and resentment. I was frustrated because I felt stuck, and I was resentful because I was stuck in an industry that was chipping away at so many things I cared about. I did not want to be an ingrate, but I had trouble seeing why writing support emails for a venture-funded startup should offer more economic stability and reward than creative work or civic contributions. None of this was new information—and it was not as if tech had disrupted a golden age of well-compensated artists—but I felt it fresh.

I had never really considered myself someone with a lifestyle, but of course I was, and insofar as I was aware of one now, I liked it. The tech industry was making me a perfect consumer of the world it was creating. It wasn’t just about leisure, the easy access to nice food and private transportation and abundant personal entertainment. It was the work culture, too: what Silicon Valley got right, how it felt to be there. The energy of being surrounded by people who so easily articulated, and satisfied, their desires. The feeling that everything was just within reach.

We wanted to be on the side of human rights, free speech and free expression, creativity and equality. At the same time, it was an international platform, and who among us could have articulated a coherent stance on international human rights? We sat in our apartments tapping on laptops purchased from a consumer-hardware company that touted workplace tenets of diversity and liberalism but manufactured its products in exploitative Chinese factories using copper and cobalt mined in Congo by children. We were all from North America. We were all white, and in our twenties and thirties. These were not individual moral failings, but they didn’t help. We were aware we had blind spots. They were still blind spots. We struggled to draw the lines. We tried to distinguish between a political act and a political view; between praise of violent people and praise of violence; between commentary and intention. We tried to decipher trolls’ tactical irony. We made mistakes.

I did not want two Silicon Valleys. I was starting to think the one we already had was doing enough damage. Or, maybe I did want two, but only if the second one was completely different, an evil twin: Matriarchal Silicon Valley. Separatist-feminist Silicon Valley. Small-scale, well-researched, slow-motion, regulated Silicon Valley—men could hold leadership roles in that one, but only if they never used the word “blitzscale” or referred to business as war.

“Progress is so unusual and so rare, and we’re all out hunting, trying to find El Dorado,” Patrick said.

“Almost everyone’s going to return empty-handed. Sober, responsible adults aren’t going to quit their jobs and lives to build companies that, in the end, may not even be worth it. It requires, in a visceral way, a sort of self-sacrificing.”

Only later did I consider that he might have been trying to tell me something.

Abuses were considered edge cases, on the margin—flaws that could be corrected by spam filters, or content moderators, or self-regulation by unpaid community members. No one wanted to admit that abuses were structurally inevitable: indicators that the systems—optimized for stickiness and amplification, endless engagement—were not only healthy, but working exactly as designed.

The SF Bay Area is like Rome or Athens in antiquity, posted a VC. Send your best scholars, learn from the masters and meet the other most eminent people in your generation, and then return home with the knowledge and networks you need. Did they know people could see them?

I couldn’t imagine making millions of dollars every year, then choosing to spend my time stirring shit on social media. There was almost a pathos to their internet addiction. Log off, I thought. Just email each other.

All these people, spending their twenties and thirties in open-plan offices on the campuses of the decade’s most valuable public companies, pouring themselves bowls of free cereal from human bird feeders, crushing empty cans of fruit-tinged water, bored out of their minds but unable to walk away from the direct deposits—it was so unimaginative. There was so much potential in Silicon Valley, and so much of it just pooled around ad tech, the spillway of the internet economy.

Though I did not want what Patrick and his friends wanted, there was still something appealing to me about the lives they had chosen. I envied their focus, their commitment, their ability to know what they wanted, and to say it out loud—the same things I always envied.

I wanted to believe that as generations turned over, those coming into economic and political power would build a different, better, more expansive world, and not just for people like themselves. Later, I would mourn these conceits. Not only because this version of the future was constitutionally impossible—such arbitrary and unaccountable power was, after all, the problem—but also because I was repeating myself. I was looking for stories; I should have seen a system. The young men of Silicon Valley were doing fine. They loved their industry, loved their work, loved solving problems. They had no qualms. They were builders by nature, or so they believed. They saw markets in everything, and only opportunities. They had inexorable faith in their own ideas and their own potential. They were ecstatic about the future. They had power, wealth, and control. The person with the yearning was me.

could have stayed in my job forever, which was how I knew it was time to go. The money and the ease of the lifestyle weren’t enough to mitigate the emotional drag of the work: the burnout, the repetition, the intermittent toxicity. The days did not feel distinct. I felt a widening emptiness, rattling around my studio every morning, rotating in my desk chair. I had the luxury, if not the courage, to do something about it.

As I stood in the guest entrance, waiting for the stock plan administrator to collect the paperwork, I watched my former coworkers chatting happily with one another in the on-site coffee shop and felt, wrenchingly, that leaving had been a huge mistake. Certain unflattering truths: I had felt unassailable behind the walls of power. Society was shifting, and I felt safer inside the empire, inside the machine. It was preferable to be on the side that did the watching than on the side being watched.

#uncanny valley #books #best of

3 notes · View notes

berniesrevolution · 7 years ago

Photo

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Review of Economics for the Many (Verso, 2018).

“. . . A New Britain where the extraordinary talent of the British people is liberated from the forces of conservatism that so long have held them back, to create a model 21st century nation, based not on privilege, class or background, but on the equal worth of all. And New Labour, confident at having modernized itself, now the new progressive force in British politics which can modernize the nation, sweep away those forces of conservatism to set the people free.”

– Tony Blair, 1999

“Economics are the method: the object is to change the soul.”

– Margaret Thatcher, 1981

Though they didn’t know it at the time, those who observed Britain’s 1979 general election and the Labour Party’s defeat were witnessing far more than a simple change of government. The Thatcherite ascendency that followed would not only reconfigure the institutions of the British state but establish — through a combination of luck, guile, and brute force — an entirely new political consensus that would consciously reshape British society in the process. By the time Labour returned to power nearly two decades later, a wholesale ideological counterrevolution was underway and its own leaders were among its most zealous partisans.

Perhaps no other European country in the postwar era (with the possible exception of Russia) has experienced a comparably drastic ideological shift, and certainly no working class has suffered such bitter repression and defeat in such a short time. After 1990, much of the global left faced a period of retrenchment but Britain’s political sclerosis, and the widespread sense of defeat it engendered, was particularly acute.

What the late Mark Fisher called “capitalist realism” — the pervasive sense that “capitalism is not only the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” — reigned supreme, simultaneously afflicting the Left and animating partisans of the new order. Henceforth, “progress” was to imply only an ever-more dizzying advance into a global capitalist modernity from which no escape was conceivable and “conservatism” was anything that even momentarily stood in the way.

As a consequence, parliamentary socialists — those who survived — were forced to assume an increasingly defensive posture in a (sometimes futile) effort to preserve welfarist institutions or at very least mitigate damage. Within the Labour Party itself, the initially promising leadership of Ed Miliband ended in disappointment and defeat. Outside the electoral sphere (with a few exceptions) the Left grew more abstract in its analysis of power and less programmatic in its prescriptions for confronting or reconfiguring it. While individual causes and struggles like the anti–Iraq War movement and the 2010 student protests inspired heroic activism, its overall position was nothing short of dire and the malaise ran deep.

As many socialists immediately understood, therefore, Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise 2015 election as leader of the Labour Party opened up horizons of political possibility previously unimaginable. Gone would be the former leadership’s triangulating positions on austerity, immigration, and welfare policy and back on the table were familiar social-democratic objectives around taxation, redistribution, and public ownership.

But as the party’s left celebrated a stunning turn of events amidst historically weak fortunes, critics of Corbynism overwhelmingly saw something primitive and atavistic at work. “A return to the 1970s” quickly became a favorite theme of Britain’s right-leaning press, which cast Labour’s new leadership as both a pre-Blairite and pre-Thatcherite throwback: the desiccated corpse of the “Old Labour” anachronism born anew. Even after the party’s success in the 2017 general election, versions of the narrative have persisted, as has likeminded opposition from the “modernizers” on its now diminished right flank.

Much in this genre of analysis can undoubtedly be put down to poor historical memory, political opportunism, or simple bad faith. But its ubiquitousness, particularly in commentary on the center and center-left, is evidence of how just deeply the dogmas of the 1990s — and the conservative modes of thinking they reflect — ultimately run.

Economics for the Many

“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”

– Clause IV, Labour Party Constitution, 1918

If the Labour Party’s 2017 election manifesto emphasized somewhat familiar (though nevertheless bold) themes like nationalization and redistribution, its next one promises to be considerably more expansive — encompassing, among other things, different forms of public ownership and industrial democracy.

Radical thinking of this kind has only grown more urgent. By virtually any imaginable standard — even those its adherents have set themselves — Britain’s ruling economic consensus has been a failure. Austerity has not, as successive Tory chancellors have insisted with such fanatical certitude, delivered the promised economic recovery. The legacy of the Conservative government’s deflationary fiscal policies can instead be seen in human costs that can only be called catastrophic: stagnant wages, dire and rising levels of poverty among both children and adults, crumbling public services, and a corroded social fabric alongside an ever more gilded existence for Britain’s economic and cultural elite.

The underlying problems, of course, predate both austerity and the 2008 crash. A bloated financial sector with its talons deep in the Treasury has produced lopsided and regionalized growth heavily favoring metropolitan London and largely servicing unsustainable consumption at home and environmentally destructive extraction abroad. Precarity and high levels of household debt for ordinary families, meanwhile, have followed an overall shift from the older manufacturing economy to one structured heavily around services and global finance.

Economics for the Many — a new collection of essays edited by Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell — is simultaneously an intervention into these realities and a programmatic sketch of radical left thinking for the twenty-first century. As its title suggests, the book is also an effort to reclaim economics for the Left, an easily stated though admittedly daunting task amid neoliberalism’s persistence as the economic lingua franca.

Simultaneously localist and internationalist in scope — and encompassing everything from trade, the environment, and alternative models of firm ownership to fiscal policy and the challenges posed by platform monopolies and the data economy — the essays are accessible and minimally abstract, both in their concern with the practicalities of policy and their awareness of the difficulties of implementation in the face of political constraints.

This, however, makes them no less innovative. In chapters on democratic alternatives to private enterprise, for example, Rob Calvert Jump, Joe Guinan, and Thomas M. Hanna explore cooperatives, community-based systems of ownership, social entrepreneurship, and workplace democracy, their analyses including case studies from across Europe, North America, and within the UK. Building on Labour’s 2017 manifesto, which promised to make workers the first potential buyer should a company go on sale, Guinan and Hanna propose active investment by local authorities in the cooperative sector.

(Conitnue Reading)

#politics #the left #jacobin #jacobin magazine #uk politics #jeremy corbyn #john mcdonnell #labour party #democratic socialism #socialism

24 notes · View notes

limitededitionsanderssidesblog · 7 years ago

Text

Speech Impediment - Chapter 9

Ships: Logicality, Prinxiety, platonic dlamp

Summary: It’s December 23rd. Patton’s flying out to visit his family in Illinois that evening, Roman’s driving upstate to see his, Logan is spending Christmas with his family in the city, and Dexter goes out to get tea. They all celebrate their last time together until New Years giving gifts and watching Christmas movies. However, one question is on Dexter’s mind: Why isn’t Virgil visiting his?

AO3 - Here

Chapter One Previous Next

It was getting harder to get out of bed these days. What with class being out for the next three weeks finally allowing him to sleep in as, and the freezing cold hell that awaited him outside the thick blankets. But alas, he had to get up.

Moving as fast as he could to avoid the cold as much as he could, Dexter slipped out of bed and went to the shower and turned the faucet on the hottest setting, so it would be warm when he got in, ran back into the room and grabbed a change of clothes, then practically threw himself under the waterfall of scalding heat. The soles of his feet stung as they touched both the chill bottom of the tub and the boiling water running past them. Dexter shifted around to try to distribute the pain, but was restricted from moving too far away from the shower’s stream in order to avoid the icy air. After a few minutes the room warmed up and Dexter was able sit down and enjoy his shower. Was he the only one who liked to sit down when showering? Maybe that was another item to add to the list of why he’s abnormal.

Dexter quickly stopped that thought. The others would be angry if they knew he was thinking like that. They were such a help in his battle with self deprecation that he didn’t even know he was fighting. When you’ve been called names and told that you’re a bad person your entire life it’s hard to notice when you’re being self deprecating, because you’re so used to it that it becomes the truth in your head. But what the others, Patton and Logan especially, have taught him is that people’s opinion of you doesn’t always translate to reality. So, what Dexter has decided to do to help those thoughts is to ‘meditate’ on them in a way. Dexter’s had enough of therapists to last a lifetime, but he does agree with some of their therapy, so he just uses an app.

Finding it easier to relax in the shower, Dexter simply listens to a voice direct him whilst nature sounds a played. There are breathing exercises, thinking exercises, and much more that helps him with tuning down his negative thinking. Logan was the one who downloaded this app on his phone and set up an account for him. Apparently he had spent a few hours looking through different types of self-help apps until he decided this one was the best for Dexter. Dexter would still get those intrusive thoughts, and sometimes he wasn’t able to talk himself out of his negative thinking easily, but it really did help him. The only important thing was that he was trying to get better.

After about fifteen minutes in the shower, about three of them spent complaining about having to leave; Dexter shut off the water and quickly swiped his towel of the rack and dried off. Stepping out of the tub he wrapped the towel around his waist and reached into his drawer to grab his blow dryer. Usually Dexter liked to air dry his hair, but he didn’t feel like dying of hypothermia today. Funny thing is that after drying his hair, Dexter also dried his skin with the dryer just to warm up a little before getting dressed. Call him weird, he was finally embracing it as a good thing.

This outfit today consisted of a pair of black slacks, a dark grey, long-sleeve button up, and the yellow pair of gloves from his Halloween costume, since they were the only gloves he owned and looked quite dashing on him if he did say so himself.

Cracking the tiny window open and turning on the fan, Dee shut the bathroom door behind him and went back into him room. Patton was away having a breakfast date with Logan, so he had the room to himself for the next few hours.

First things first, Dexter decided to feed Dee Dee. Since corn snakes only had to eat once or twice a week, he had reserved feeding day to Monday, which was today. Now, if you were a luck snake owner, your snake would eat whatever you gave them. Dee Dee, however, was a brat. He loved her, but she was a brat. Dee Dee would eat only if the frozen mouse was warmed in the microwave, dipped in blood, and held in front of her face; she wouldn’t go anywhere near crickets. It was a pain to feed her, but it had to be done.

After that was settled and taken care of, he decided to venture out in the cold and get some tea at his favorite shop, maybe get some work done there as well. The five of them weren’t supposed to meet until noon to have their gift exchange and Christmas party, which was being held in Roman and Virgil’s dorm this time, so he still had a little more time to himself.

Walking to his side of the closet, Dexter pulled out a thick, black peacoat and a checkered scarf to keep warm. Grabbing his wallet and keys, he headed down to the parking lot and got in his bug. The day after Dexter had got stuck out in the cold with his car parked outside the reptile shop, Both Logan and Patton had offered to go jump start it and bring it back for him, as both wanted him to stay in bed and not push himself. Those two really were almost like a mother and father to him.

Plugging his aux cord into his phone, Dee listened to Melanie Martinez and Billie Eilish on his way to the coffee shop, both of them queens to him. The ride was quick as there was no traffic on the road, yet slow as he was trying not to slide on black ice. He pulled up into an easy parking space right outside the front, next to a handicap spot.

Walking to the shop Dexter was meant with the comforting warmth of the building’s heaters, and his nose was invaded by the sweet and succulent smell of coffee and honey. The line to the counter was not that long, only two people ahead of him, a male and a female. The female was currently ordering a peppermint latte from the teenager behind the register. The male after him, and before Dexter, was, for some reason, wearing sunglasses and scrolling through his phone. Once the woman left, the man walked up with a confidence that could only possibly be matched by Roman. And in a clear, smooth, but upbeat voice ordered a caramel cappuccino with a dash of cinnamon and a drizzle of chocolate. Once he had his order written down and paid for, he turned around to take a seat. Their eyes met for a brief moment as he went by, Dexter took note of the color of his eyes, dark cocoa.

A moment passed without him noticing, the annoyed barista had to call him in question to bring him back to the present.

“Oh not sorry,” Dexter apologized, “May I not have a small green tea with a bit of sugar?”

The barista, Melissa according to her name tag, looked thoroughly annoyed with the way he was speaking to her, but said nothing to his face, grumbling as she wrote down the order on the cup.

“Name?” She asked.

“Not Dexter.”

The teen raised an eyebrow and rolled her eyes, telling him to sit and wait for his drink, as if he was a small child who needed help to do anything. Dexter was used to this kind of treatment, that’s why he tried his best to limit talking to strangers s much as he could whenever he went out.

Turning back to the tables and booths Dexter started for his and his friends’ favorite spot, only to find that it was occupied by the mysterious man who was in line before him. Dexter didn’t want to be rude and ask him to move to a new booth, but he also really wanted to sit there. So, trying his absolute best not to look like a total creep, Dee walked to the booth directly next to the usual one, and sat in the closest seat to it, less than a foot away from the other person. This felt awkward on so many levels, he wanted nothing more than to quickly get his drink and run away from this place and burn this awkward moment from his memory permanently.

“Well I’m honored that you think I’m so memorable, I tend to have that affect.” The man spoke from behind him, making Dexter yelp and jump back a little. Whipping around in his seat, Dexter realized that the stranger was turned towards him as well.

“Yes- I mean, uh, I was talking about you, I wasn’t thinking of something else and- and I-” What the fuck am I doing? I look like an idiot! Stop rambling!

Dexter tried desperately to think of a coherent excuse, but instead just shout out words vomit of pure awkwardness and regret. Eventually he was able to shut up, but only when he forcibly slapped his hand over his own mouth. However the other didn’t seem to mind his dumb talking, grinning at him the entire time.

“Not sorry, I wasn’t thinking out loud.” Dexter explained, looking down at his pants.

“So sweat girl, no hard feelings.” He told him, “I like the way you talk.”

“Huh?” Dexter voiced, taken aback, “But I don’t speak wrong. I’m not hard to understand.”

“Nah, it’s adorable, like it’s opposite day on repeat for you.” Dexter screamed him his head. What the hell was happening?!

“Oh, uh, no thank you...” He murmured shyly.

“No problem,” He smiled honestly. A name was called from the front, he got up. “Well, hope to see you again...” He lingered on the last word, asking for a name.

“Dexter.”

His eyes lit up.

“Remy.”

He walked away, grabbing his drink, leaving the store with a quick wave. Dexter didn’t wave back.

...

The sound of Jim Carry's The Grinch Who Stole Christmas played in the background. They sat around a video of a fire in a fireplace on a tablet in the center of the room. Patton had made all of them a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows and snickerdoodles. Before they were to give each other their main gift, they had decided to play some Christmas games. They played Life, Candy Land, and, currently, Secret Santa.

“I had you Virgil,” Logan began, “So I thought it was appropriate to get you a gift card for some audible books.”

“Wow that’s- alright I guess.” Virgil said, taking the card into his hands and acting as if it were nothing special.

“And I had you Logan, so I wrote a story about you helping Sherlock in his greatest mystery yet.” Roman said with glee, handing his cell phone over to the motherly nerd.

“This is a self insert on Wattpad.”

“Yep!” Roman said in excitement, “Do you love it?”

“It is adequate I suppose.” Cue Roman becoming offensive.

“Well I got Dexter,” Patton said with cheer, bringing out a small gift bag, “So I made you and Dee Dee matching sweaters!”

Looking looked into the bad with interest and pulled out a large black, orange, and yellow stripped sweater, with a mini matching tube sweater. It was the cutest thing he ever did see.

“My goodness, I hate it!” Dexter said with a slight squeal of excitement. “I’m sure Dee Dee will hate it to!” As if she was waiting for her cue, Dee Dee slivered out of Dexter’s sleeve, winding her little noodle body around his hand. The others looked on in surprise.

“You brought Dee Dee here?” Virgil questioned.

“Of course not, this’ll be the last time she’ll be able to see any of you for two weeks and she gets attached easily. Right, Dee Dee?” The small corn snake stuck out her tongue and booped her snoot against his thumb. Everyone ‘awe’d at her cuteness. “Here, I didn’t get Roman.”

Roman took the wrapped gift from Dexter’s outstretched hands, and tore it open. Underneath the paper was a box, wow. Opening the box, Roman reached it and pulled out two items, an adult coloring book and a package of over fifty different colored pencils.

“Ah, thanks ‘Fibbiler’ On the Roof.”

“You’re not welcome.”

And that left only Virgil to give his gift.

“Sorry I uh- just got you this card.” He murmured, practically throwing the card at Patton. Dexter didn’t know what the card said, but it must have been interesting because at first Patton looked concerned, then brilliantly happy.

“Aha, I love it!”

“Really?” Virgil asked for confirmation. Patton nodded his head eagerly.

Thus their party games and gift exchange had ended and they all settled down to continue watching the movie. It was quarter to three now, Patton’s plane took off at five and he’d have to leave in an hour. Roman’s would start his two hour drive to his parents’ house at about the same time. Once they’d all leave Logan decided that he too would head to his parents house to stay the week. Dexter sat there in his thoughts, ignoring the movie, wondering what he’d do alone for the remaining time until everyone was back.

Dexter was used to solitude; it’s all he’s ever known for the majority of his life, but for some reason now he couldn’t stand the thought of it. He had gotten so used to being around his friends that the thought of them separating for even a little bit felt suffocating.

Then a question popped into his head. What about Virgil? He wasn’t visiting any family over the break, just like him, the emo would be stuck in the dorms until everyone got back. Which brought another question to his head:

Why wasn’t Virgil visiting his family?

Here’s another chapter, love ya’ll. (Should I have a romantic or platonic relationship between Dexter and Remy?)

Tag List:

@noneed4thistbh @romanasanders @fuckingemoace @bunny222 @sea-blue-child @astraastro@helloitstimetofight @blue-wolfbane @applecannibal @ryuity @anxiouslyfred @i-identify-as-a-mango @shadowjag @scorching-scotch @cyberpunkjinx @im-so-infinitesimal @witch197

#sanders sides #deciet sanders #ts deceit #logan sanders #sanders sides logan #patton sanders #sanders sides patton #roman sanders #sanders sides roman #virgil sanders #sanders sides virgil #ts remy #remy sanders #logicality #prinxiety #princiety #platonic dlamp

79 notes · View notes

fractalism · 5 years ago

Text

Scientists say your “mind” isn’t confined to your brain, or even your body

I feel like this article has implications for tulpamancy. What do you think?

https://qz.com/866352/scientists-say-your-mind-isnt-confined-to-your-brain-or-even-your-body/

You might wonder, at some point today, what’s going on in another person’s mind. You may compliment someone’s great mind, or say they are out of their mind. You may even try to expand or free your own mind.

But what is a mind? Defining the concept is a surprisingly slippery task. The mind is the seat of consciousness, the essence of your being. Without a mind, you cannot be considered meaningfully alive. So what exactly, and where precisely, is it?

Traditionally, scientists have tried to define the mind as the product of brain activity: The brain is the physical substance, and the mind is the conscious product of those firing neurons, according to the classic argument. But growing evidence shows that the mind goes far beyond the physical workings of your brain.

No doubt, the brain plays an incredibly important role. But our mind cannot be confined to what’s inside our skull, or even our body, according to a definition first put forward by Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of a recently published book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human.

He first came up with the definition more than two decades ago, at a meeting of 40 scientists across disciplines, including neuroscientists, physicists, sociologists, and anthropologists. The aim was to come to an understanding of the mind that would appeal to common ground and satisfy those wrestling with the question across these fields.

After much discussion, they decided that a key component of the mind is: “the emergent self-organizing process, both embodied and relational, that regulates energy and information flow within and among us.” It’s not catchy. But it is interesting, and with meaningful implications.

The most immediately shocking element of this definition is that our mind extends beyond our physical selves. In other words, our mind is not simply our perception of experiences, but those experiences themselves. Siegel argues that it’s impossible to completely disentangle our subjective view of the world from our interactions.

“I realized if someone asked me to define the shoreline but insisted, is it the water or the sand, I would have to say the shore is both sand and sea,” says Siegel. “You can’t limit our understanding of the coastline to insist it’s one or the other. I started thinking, maybe the mind is like the coastline—some inner and inter process. Mental life for an anthropologist or sociologist is profoundly social. Your thoughts, feelings, memories, attention, what you experience in this subjective world is part of mind.”

The definition has since been supported by research across the sciences, but much of the original idea came from mathematics. Siegel realized the mind meets the mathematical definition of a complex system in that it’s open (can influence things outside itself), chaos capable (which simply means it’s roughly randomly distributed), and non-linear (which means a small input leads to large and difficult to predict result).

In math, complex systems are self-organizing, and Siegel believes this idea is the foundation to mental health. Again borrowing from the mathematics, optimal self-organization is: flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. This means that without optimal self-organization, you arrive at either chaos or rigidity—a notion that, Siegel says, fits the range of symptoms of mental health disorders.

Finally, self-organization demands linking together differentiated ideas or, essentially, integration. And Siegel says integration—whether that’s within the brain or within society—is the foundation of a healthy mind.

Siegel says he wrote his book now because he sees so much misery in society, and he believes this is partly shaped by how we perceive our own minds. He talks of doing research in Namibia, where people he spoke to attributed their happiness to a sense of belonging.

When Siegel was asked in return whether he belonged in America, his answer was less upbeat: “I thought how isolated we all are and how disconnected we feel,” he says. “In our modern society we have this belief that mind is brain activity and this means the self, which comes from the mind, is separate and we don’t really belong. But we’re all part of each others’ lives. The mind is not just brain activity. When we realize it’s this relational process, there’s this huge shift in this sense of belonging.”

In other words, even perceiving our mind as simply a product of our brain, rather than relations, can make us feel more isolated. And to appreciate the benefits of interrelations, you simply have to open your mind.

#tulpamancy #long post #implications for tulpamancy

0 notes

not-majestic-bluenicorn · 8 years ago

Text

Well, here it is, something I didn't want to do. Before we start with yesterday's episode review, I have to say that... It still feels unreal, and I'm just hoping that something like Pentagon will happen and that in the end, everything will be fine... With that said, I'm writing this as I watch it because I don't have much free time so I hope you understand if it's not very coherent. Let's go.

Watching the cuts from the last episode was painful as hell, it was really hard to not pause it and close the freaking window OTL It was sad to see that neither Jongin, Minho or Felix fulfilled JYP's expectations, specially because I don't even know what he freaking wants anymore. I hate that mnet makes everything so painful, we don't need your freaking drama thank you. Needless to say, I'm crying by this point and I can't even look at the screen, I would have honestly liked it if they had just skipped this whole part tbh, I'm just unable to comment on this further, sorry.

After finishing the extremely sad first 17 minutes and stopping the episode for a while I managed to regain my composure (funny story, there were tears in my tacos) and continued watching. Am I the only one who thinks JYP is very awkward when he speaks? Maybe it's because I'm still angry at him lmao I didn't understand many words in this part but with a bit of help of the dictionary I managed to get he's teaching them some principles like truth, honesty and modesty, which is interesting because you don't usually see idols getting lessons about this very important stuff.

I literally--- These kids have gone on more trips than missions during this whole program and we're already halway through it, no wonder Mnet just makes the missions last longer than they should in the episodes lol I agree kids, the sea is scary, so like, maybe think twice before daring it? Writing the group's name on the sand, a classic; also, Korean programs are like 60% eating Istg, I'm always getting hungry when I watch them.

Someone save Woojin please, instead of laughing XD And Jongin, and about half of them, someone help them before they break something. I'm not sure skating races are the best idea when half of them are like Bambi XD It was really cute though: that shameless CocaCola promotion too.

And for the ending, some camping, because the best way to test friendship is to fight for barbecue and sleep together under the night sky (?) The struggle was real though, I bet that I can do it better, carne asada (barbecue) is basically a tradition in my hometown lol You know, when I watch them feeding the other members in programs I wonder if Koreans actually do that or if it's just for bromance purposes.

We all know campfire means tears so I'll just sit quietly and wait for them to come (?) You know, when it comes to Changbin it's really funny 'cause he's all like "yeah, dark" and all that but in the end he's the softest for his members. And here it comes, Chan you had to mention Minho gdi, and they even got the numbers wrong when ordering food, I can't with this.

Their reaction was literally mine when they mentioned the video letter, this is so unfair... I noticed at first they all tried to laugh and exaggerated their reactions to make it less tense, but in the end... I don't know what was the hardest part, watching Minho apologize and thank them, or watching them trying to not break in front of the cameras. Seungmin was specially hard to look at, and in general all of their memories together were just unbearable. I'm too soft for this sort of stuff.

I'm not surprised the battle with YG won't be until next chapter, I've been thinking for the whole program that the distribution of activities is really weird taking into account it will only be 10 episodes long, but well, I guess we'll have to wait. Seeing them as only 8 members was really weird and hard, I'm surprised I even made it to the end, but then again I am a very hopeful person so I'm just waiting that things will take a turn for the better...

#bluenicorn talks #stray kids #sorry it was so long lmao

8 notes · View notes

habitualdisquiet-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Content is king

We all know that, don’t we? Or is it?

We live in an age where content is not only everywhere, it is also talked about everywhere. It’s part of people’s job titles and the name of their self-help guides. People are making a living out of creating content via YouTube, Instagram and a plethora of other channels, while others are making a living teaching others how to create it. This is a moment in time where increasingly what you say and do is deemed more important than how you say it.

This is the natural evolution of a process that started when we all began to be able create content and distribute it ourselves with little or no experience, training or investment; often from a single device.

This is fantastic. It’s created a demand for, but also an accessibility to, video that we’ve never seen before. We can use it for so much more and how we communicate benefits as a result; not only does video communicate in a way that other media can’t, making it ideal for telling some stories, but it is also increasingly useful in terms of search.

At the same time the value of what we create is often much lower than it might once have been. You can use video for everything and it could also be said that the individual impact and importance of each bit of content has diminished, lost as it is in a sea of others – not only on social media platforms but even on owned channels, be they broadcast/entertainment or digital estate.

We have entered the era of the all-you-can-eat buffet of content. We can consume all we want, gorge ourselves in fact, but, just as it does with food, this very in turn makes it forgettable, disposable, somehow less valuable. It fundamentally alters the parameters by which we judge its worth. No longer do we measure it by the quality of the cooking, but by the amount we can get for our money.

This new reality has come into its own in the times we’re living in. The world is working via low/no cost video – live streamed or the recordings of live streams.

In lock-down I’ve been doing an online screenwriting course at NYU. This is presided over by a very talented writer and hugely effective communicator. He presents live via Youtube using a mic and this works well. On the other hand his pre-recorded lectures are done without a microphone in his poorly lit office. He is indifferently framed and edits are covered by some simple dissolves. I continue to find this ironic, considering his field of expertise. It is, inevitably, a barrier to engagement. To be honest, it makes him look like he doesn’t really care whether he reaches his students or about the course in general.

We’ve created a visual language that reflects the extraordinary times. One formed largely by the limitations it imposes, but one that suits the reality we all share. It works because it reflects the our current situation for us all. The fact is, however, that we are further normalizing poor images, limited visual storytelling, and hitherto unacceptable audio quality.

One can’t help but fear, however, that, alongside so much else, this may create a lasting change; that our expectations of quality, be it in news gathering, television or advertising and branded content, will be altered permanently. That brands and companies will believe they can either do it themselves, or do it on the cheap, and what’s more that this will be doing the job they want it to just as well as the professionally made content they paid for back in the days before the pandemic.

This isn’t helped by the large numbers of people promoting the use of user generated content (often as an attempt to stay relevant and working in a time where film shoots simply can’t happen), as well as all those communicators offering courses claiming that everything you once needed a film crew to do, you can now achieve on a smart phone.

You can’t. A cursory glance at any of the output of such ‘experts’ reveals this with crystal clarity. It takes more than a phone with 1080 or even 4k video capability to make a good film.

A professional might be able to. One versed in the art of storytelling and the language of film. They won’t achieve anything nearly as good as something made with proper production values, but they could at least make a decent film. One that works. One that perhaps knowingly uses the rawness of the format to its advantage, rather than tries to be what it isn’t.

Overall, however, a number of things have been forgotten in the great democratic explosion of content making:

Firstly, it’s never been easier to make a film, but it’s still just as hard to make a good one. It’s actually about so much more than being able to point and press the button, or cut it into a rudimentary shape. It’s about storytelling – the knowledge, creativity, talent, experience of how to use the medium to tell stories. Unless you know not only what story to tell, but how best to tell it using film, you won’t create a great piece of content.

Just because you can operate the equipment doesn’t mean you can create a great piece of storytelling. It would be foolish to think anybody can, but it doesn’t stop this happening. People who feel they have something to say film themselves expecting it to work. Companies and brands hand instructions to employees or members of the public and expect to get back coherent, engaging, rushes.

This is like giving my 11 year old a bunch of ingredients, asking him to cook a meal and expecting it to be restaurant quality. Or it’s like saying that just because it’s easy to make music using any number of apps on an iPad, that we will all be able to write and perform a tune. My eldest son can. I’ve heard him do it, but then again he’s done grade 8 violin and grade 6 piano. He can work out how to play any piece of music he’s heard just a couple of times by ear. I could never hope to do what he can do - I have neither the training, the experience or the talent.

The other thing that people also forget is that it’s not just how you construct your narrative, but how you then use the language and techniques of film making to bring it to life. It’s about tone, pace and that most ethereal and elusive thing – how it feels. It’s about all those things you absorb and learn through years as a practitioner that makes this medium so special, so uniquely engaging.

Partially this is the function of making something inherently hugely complex, that requires input from multiple individuals, look entirely effortless. If you can see the joins, we’re not doing our job properly.

It’s about a whole host of things that individually seem esoteric or unimportant, but cumulatively create something that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s about camera angles and framing, depth of field, image quality, movement, pace, performance, editing, lighting, colour temperature, context, language, tone of voice, music, sound design, grading, casting, production design, wardrobe choices, locations. In other words it’s about the fact that everything matters. Every single, largely invisible or at least unnoticeable, element that contributes to the mood, feeling and engagement of a film; that helps tell your story.

Film making is about creating experiences that are better than life. If it wasn’t, it would be little more than CCTV. It’s about taking what would be much duller lived or seen through two human eyes and making it richer and more comprehensive, more moving, more exciting, more concise and more memorable.

This is the only route to real engagement, rather than to fleeting and transitory experience. It is the only way to permanently, or at least lastingly, affect how someone feels about something; how to help change how they behave.

This is rooted in how we process information. Images are dealt with by our long term memory, whereas words are by the short term. Great visual storytelling gives us a direct route to making a lasting impression.

The irony is that the better you are at making films, the easier the job looks to others. The very function of getting good at what you do undermines people’s understanding of that very fact.

Now I know what you’re thinking. I would say this, wouldn’t I? I’ve made a living making expensive films for people. Not only is it in my financial interests, but you might say I’m also old school, stuck in my ways. To that I would say that I’ve been involved in lots of UGC projects. I actually really like them (something that surprises most people in my profession) and think that the results can be fantastic - when they are properly managed and when this sort of content is suited to the task at hand.

I’m also far from being a luddite or hidebound by method. When I managed a large team of producers I made sure we had no set process to follow, at least in how they made the actual film (it was the civil service after all). I employed them for their expertise and the only thing that mattered was what ended up on screen; was it the best possible use of the budget to make the most effective bit of comms? I didn’t care how they spent the money or what route they took to get to the finished piece.

Now that I am once again a hands-on film maker, I continue embrace new technology and new techniques. I see the accessibility of today’s film-making equipment as an enabler, as something that helps professional, talented people to make even better films. To look at it as just as an excuse to eliminate the experienced and talented is like saying that, since anybody can use Microsoft Word, anybody can now write a novel. Talent is still important.

As is creativity. Whether that is the use of interesting, exciting, innovative ideas or techniques, or taking a different approach to narrative and story. The sort of creativity that makes really memorable films; ones that really pop, that people talk about and share. The sort of creativity that is the first victim of lower production values.

This has been brought into sharp relief for me by the Government’s attempt at engaging and communicating with us about Coronavirus. First off we had Chris Whitty staring woodenly into the camera, then subsequent executions that have cobbled together an assortment of news and UGC footage with an emotive sound track.

This contrasts sharply, and I'm afraid to say unfavourably, with the staged response involving a number of different creative and engaging executions we created at the COI for a possible flu pandemic in 2009. It also contrasts with various other pieces of work from various US states and other countries around the world addressing this pandemic, so there’s no real excuse, beyond the fact that the coalition government managed to amputate a key element of its communications response when it closed COI in 2012.

Anyway, that’s history. Back to today. I’m not denying the validity of cheap, immediate communications. There is an increasing need for quick and dirty bits of content. I also can’t help but accept that some fantastic content is created by amateurs, with the lowest of lo-fi equipment.

I would just ask you to remember that for every fantastic influencer, blogger or Youtuber, there are millions more with just a handful of views, if that. In fact last year 30,000 hours of video were uploaded to Youtube every single hour. That’s a lot of stuff that sinks without trace with barely a ripple.

What I am saying is that it is all about value. If you want to shoot a meeting for the dozen people who couldn’t make it to view just once, that’s low value – use a phone. If you want to record an event for posterity or for the Christmas party video, get someone in the office to do it.

I’m all for clients taking a graded response based on value. I think it behoves us as film makers to enable this by being both responsible and confident enough to turn work down; to say, you know what, maybe you don’t need me and the experience and expertise I bring.

On the other hand, if you have something important to say, and it’s important that people not only hear your message, but also act and think differently as a result, please think about what’s going to be needed to really make that happen.

Also remember that the care and attention that is given to your comms is a direct reflection, in the audience’s eyes, of the value you place on the messages and their impact. Nothing says we don’t care like looking like you don’t think its worth doing properly, nothing turns an audience off more than unengaging storytelling; frankly you’d be better off not doing it all.

So when this madness is over, don’t think of it as an opportunity to permanently adopt a cheaper, more DIY approach to content making. To borrow a phrase from Dominic Raab, don’t make this the new normal.

Instead look upon it as a unique opportunity to inspire, surprise, excite, energise and engage afresh an audience starved for too long of decent visual storytelling.

An opportunity to make an even bigger impact, using film as a catalyst to help us all emerge like butterflies from the cocoon of coronavirus lock down. After all, as Keats said: What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

0 notes

sciencenewser · 5 years ago

Text

75% of TCS are trying to shift employees work from home by 2025

The Coronavirus pandemic has unnatural associations to get their representatives to telecommute. whereas some organizations had. it less complicated to vary to the TCS work from a home model, others are so far adjusting. Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS), that previously had simply twenty percentage its force telecommute.TCS has currently affected 90 % of the teams to telecommute attributable to the internment. The organization has currently needed to maneuver seventy-five percentage or four.48 large integer of worldwide its force (remembering three.5 large integer for India) to telecommute for all time by 2025. Note that TCS has over 448,000 of the advisors in forty-six nations. TCS head operating official nanogram Subramaniam was cited in an exceedingly Business these days report language, "We do not settle for that we'd like over twenty-fifth of our force at our offices therefore on be 100 percent profitable. " TCS has the same that seventy-five percentage or four.48 large integer of worldwide its force can telecommute for all time by 2025, per a Business these days report. "We do not settle for that we'd like over twenty-fifth of our force at our offices therefore on be 100 percent profitable," TCS CO nanogram Subramaniam same within the report. He Told that the move is going to be beneath another model referred to as 25/25, which needs so much less workplace area. #TCS briskly moved 90% of its workforce to work from home through its operating model called Secure Borderless Work Spaces. @TCS https://t.co/BSmzqdGZHM— ET NOW (@ETNOWlive) April 28, 2020 The pandemic but one thing that we have a tendency to look for to achieve by 2025, the organization enclosed. Subramanian told that at some random purpose of your time, simply seventy-five percentage of a task cluster would be in an exceedingly solitary space, whereas the remainder would be scattered. The new model allegedly referred to as 25/25 would force fewer workplace areas than concerned these days. Subramaniam more told the distribution that beneath the new model, each employee would pay simply twenty-five percent of their operating time in workplace importance, of all the colleagues. Simply seventy-five percentage of a venture cluster would want to be in an exceedingly solitary space. In current rationalization with regard to the current model, the organization explicit, "3.5 large integer is AN Republic of India figure however does not speak to the worldwide figure. TCS work from home is targeting transferral this alteration all around. That range is four.48 lakh. this can be positively not a model which will be applied to TCS work from home when the pandemic however one thing that TCS tries to achieve by 2025." TCS energetically moving ninetieth of its force to telecommute through its operating model referred to as Secure Borderless Work areas (SBWS). It is in an exceeding letter to representatives, TCS chief executive officer and MD Rajesh Gopinathan explicit, "We have embarked a lot of grounded and our model is a lot of incontestable than the other time in recent memory." Gopinathan more told staff that SBWS had seen thirty-five,000 gatherings, 406,000 calls, and 340 large integer messages over the stage. It deserves referencing that the practice goliath has place resources into creating SBWS within the course of recent years. "We have embarked a lot of grounded and our model is a lot of incontestable than any time in recent memory," same Gopinathan. Prior to internment, twenty percent of TCS force telecommuted, presently attributable to the internment the organization touchingly ninety percent of the teams to telecommute through its Secure Borderless Work areas (SBWS) operating model. NASSCOM President Debjani Ghosh is the same on Twitter that mixed work models are setting down deep roots. "3 focuses on the fate of labor in tech: blended work models r setting down deep roots. The Economy can transform a key piece of the force. It can improve the sexual orientation hole within the business. what is a lot of, everything of this may compel a big valuate of hour and business methods," she said. Work from home jobs can open a lot of jobs for girls similarly, she enclosed. Previous NASSCOM director ANd WNS cluster chief executive officer Keshav Murugesh same that this creates able to an equal gig economy in the Republic of India, "where innovation empowers effective, remote advisors as a basic piece of the employee power." "The connection of WFH eventually will prompt mainstreaming of a vast undiscovered force the state over. per gauges, over 120 million Indian girls within any event auxiliary instruction do not take an interest within the force. this might be the proper probability to create shrewd approaches to hold them to the extent. As organizations are attending to advanced, this may be a wonderful probability to create new and improved surges of ability," he enclosed. "We have embarked a lot of grounded and our model is a lot of incontestable than the other time in recent memory," chief executive officer. MD Rajesh Gopinathan told representatives in an exceeding letter. per Gopinathan, SBWS had seen thirty-five,000 gatherings, 406,000 calls, and 340 large integer messages over the stage. He was clear, telecommute can proceed with post internment, for a bigger a part of the force. "It assists associations with obtaining stronger, in lightweight of the actual fact that the fully sent nature of this model. This is in and of itself less dangerous and a lot of qualified for business coherence and spryness," he enclosed. Then, IT trade veteran Senapathy (Kris) Gopalakrishnan as these days disclosed to PTI that over 1,000,000 knowledge innovation space representatives needed to stay on employment abundant. The coronavirus-perpetrated internment raised and also the circumstance comes back to regularity. The previous President of the Confederation of Indian Trade (CII) told the workplace. The IT administration's trade has effectively puzzled out a way to progress people to telecommute throughout this era. Read the full article

#2025Tcs #TCS #Workfromhome

0 notes

liliesofpur-i-ty · 8 years ago

Text

Jacques Derrida on Hamlet's "Time Is Out of Joint", from Specters of Marx, translated by Peggy Kamuf

“Cette époque est déshonorée,” this age is dishonored. However surprising it may seem at first glance, Gide’s reading nevertheless agrees with the tradition of an idiom that, from More to Tennyson, gives an apparently more ethical or political meaning to this expression. "Out of joint” would qualify the moral decadence or corruption of the city, the dissolution or perversion of customs. It is easy to go from disadjusted to unjust. That is our problem: how to justify this passage from disadjustment (with its rather more technico-ontological value affecting a presence) to an injustice that would no longer be ontological? And what if disadjustment were on the contrary the condition of justice? And what if this double register condensed its enigma, precisely [justement], and potentialized its superpower in that which gives its unheard-of force to Hamlet’s words: “The time is out of joint”? Let us not be surprised when we read that the OED gives Hamlet’s phrase as example of the ethico-political inflection. With this example one grasps the necessity of what Austin used to say: a dictionary of words can never give a definition it only gives examples. The perversion of that which, out of joint, does not work well, does not walk straight, or goes askew (de travers, then, rather than à I'envers) can easily be seen to oppose itself as does the oblique, twisted, wrong, and crooked to the good direction of that which goes right, straight, to the spirit of that which orients or founds the law [le droit] – and sets off directly, without detour, toward the right address, and so forth. Hamlet moreover dearly opposes the being “out of joint” of time to its being-right, in the right or the straight path of that which walks upright. He even curses the fate that would have caused him to be born to set right a time that walks crooked. He curses the destiny that would precisely have destined him, Hamlet, to do justice, to put things back in order, to put history, the world, the age, the time upright, on the right path, so that, in conformity with the rule of its correct functioning, it advances straight ahead [tout droit] – and following the law [le droit]. This plaintive malediction itself appears to be affected by the torsion or the tort that it denounces. According to a paradox that poses itself and gets carried away by itself, Hamlet does not curse so much the corruption of the age. He curses first of all and instead this unjust effect of the disorder, namely, the fate that would have destined him, Hamlet, to put a dislocated time back on its hinges-and to put it back right, to turn it back over to the law. He curses his mission: to do justice to a de-mission of time. He swears against a destiny that leads him to do justice for a fault, a fault of time and of the times, by rectifying an address, by making of rectitude and right (“to set it right”) a movement of correction, reparation, restitution, vengeance, revenge, punishment. He swears against this misfortune, and this misfortune is unending because it is nothing other than himself, Hamlet. Hamlet is “out of joint” because he curses his own mission, the punishment that consists in having to punish, avenge, exercise justice and right in the form of reprisals; and what he curses in his mission is this expiation of expiation itself; it is first of all that it is inborn in him, given by his birth as much as at his birth. Thus, it is assigned by who (what) came before him. Like Job (3, 1), he curses the day that saw him born: “The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!” (“to set it right” is translated as “rejointer” [Bonnefoy], “rentrer dans l'ordre” [Gide], “remettre droit” [Derocquigny], “remettre en place” [Malaplate]). The fatal blow, the tragic wrong that would have been done at his very birth, the hypothesis of an intolerable perversion in the very order of his destination, is to have made him, Hamlet, to be and to be born, for the right, in view of the right, calling him thus to put time on the right path, to do right, to render justice, and to redress history, the wrong [tort] of history There is tragedy, there is essence of the tragic only on the condition of this originarity, more precisely of this pre-originary and properly spectral anteriority of the crime – the crime of the other, a misdeed whose event and reality, whose truth can never present themselves in flesh and blood, but can only allow themselves to be presumed, reconstructed, fantasized. One does not, for all that, bear any less of a responsibility, beginning at birth, even if it is only the responsibility to repair an evil at the very moment in which no one can admit it except in a self-confession that confesses the other, as if that amounted to the same. Hamlet curses the destiny that would have destined him to be the man of right, precisely [justement], as if he were cursing the right or the law itself that has made of him a righter of wrongs, the one who, like the right, can only come after the crime, or simply after: that is, in a necessarily second generation, originarily late and therefore destined to inherit. One never inherits without coming to terms with [s’expliquer avec] some specter, and therefore with more than one specter. With the fault but also the injunction of more than one. That is the originary wrong, the birth wound from which he suffers, a bottomless wound, an irreparable tragedy, the indefinite malediction that marks the history of the law or history as law: that time is “out of joint” is what is attested by birth itself when it dooms someone to be the man ofright and law only by becoming an inheritor, redresser of wrongs, that is, only by castigating, punishing, killing. The malediction would be inscribed in the law itself: in its murderous, bruising origin. If right or law stems from vengeance. as Hamlet seems to complain that it does – before Nietzsche, before Heidegger, before Benjamin – can one not yearn for a justice that one day, a day belonging no longer to history, a quasi-messianic day, would finally be removed from the fatality of vengeance? Better than removed: infinitely foreign, heterogeneous at its source? And is this day before us, to come, or more ancient than memory itself? If it is difficult. in truth impossible, today, to decide between these two hypotheses, it is precisely because “The time is out of joint,” such would be the originary corruption of the day of today, or such would be, as well, the malediction of the dispenser of justice, of the day I saw the light of day. Is it impossible to gather under a single roof the apparently disordered plurivocity (which is itself “out of joint”) of these interpretations? Is it possible to find a rule of cohabitation under such a roof, it being understood that this house will always be haunted rather than inhabited by the meaning of the original? This is the stroke of genius, the insignia trait of spirit, the signature of the Thing “Shakespeare” to authorize each one of the translations, to make them possible and intelligible without ever being reducible to them. Their adjoining would lead back to what – in honor, dignity, good aspect, high renown, title or name, titling legitimacy, the estimable in general, even the just, if not the right – is always supposed by adjoining, by the articulated gathering up of oneself, coherence, responsibility. But if adjoining in general, if the joining of the “joint” supposes first of all the adjoining, the correctness [justesse], or the justice of time, the being-with-oneself or the concord of time, what happens when time itself gets “out of joint, dis-jointed, disadjusted, disharmonic, discorded, or unjust? Ana-chronique? What does not happen in this anachrony! Perhaps "the time, time itself, precisely, always "our time,” the epoch and the world shared among us, ours every day, nowadays, the present as our present. Especially when “things are not going well” among us, precisely [justement]: when “things are going badly, when it’s not working, when things are bad. But with the other, is not this disjuncture, this dis-adjustment of the "it’s going badly” necessary for the good, or at least the just, to be announced? Is not disjuncture the very possibility of the other? How to distinguish between two disadjustments, between the disjuncture of the unjust and the one that opens up the infinite asymmetry of the relation to the other, that is to say, the place for justice? Not for calculable and distributive justice. Not for law, for the calculation of restitution, the economy of vengeance or punishment (for if Hamlet is a tragedy of vengeance and punishment in the triangle or circle of an Oedipus who would have taken an additional step into repression – Freud, Jones, and so forth – one must still think the possibility of a step beyond repression: there is a beyond the economy of repression whose law impels it to exceed itself, of itself in the course of a history, be it the history of theater or of politics between Oedipus Rex and Hamlet). Not for calculable equality, therefore, not for the symmetrizing and synchronic accountability or imputability of subjects or objects, not for a rendering justice that would be limited to sanctioning, to restituting, and to doing right, but for justice as incalculability of the gift and singularity of the an-economic ex-position to others. “The relation to others – that is to say, justice,” writes Levinas. Whether he knows it or not, Hamlet is speaking in the space opened up by this question – the appeal of the gift, singularity, the coming of the event, the excessive or exceeded relation to the other – when he declares "The time is out of joint. And this question is no longer dissociated from all those that Hamlet apprehends as such, that of the specter-Thing and of the King, that of the event, of present-being, and of what there is to be, or not, what there is to do, which means to think, to make do or to let do, to make or to let come, or to give, even if it be death.

#jacques derrida #specters of marx #hamlet #shakespeare #the book of job #emmanuel levinas

6 notes · View notes

tindang · 5 years ago

Photo

Colorful houses near my new home in Boston.

06/01/20 - East, West, Migration

I moved to Boston in September, a few weeks before my 23rd birthday. it’s been a stressful few months--moving, budgeting, starting my first real job. It's been hectic, but not without reward. In these past months, I've honed my skills as an amateur chef, led a team to win top prizes at a local Hackathon, impressed my supervisors with quality work, and made up with my sister.

I've also been reading extensively. This post marks the beginning of what I hope will be a more successful attempt at journaling my thoughts.

I've been fascinated with the concept of migration for some time now. As I've written before, I am invested in addressing health disparities in immigrant communities. Lately, the question of how has been the source of much stress. It’s led to a lot of reflection, and the more I think about it, the more uncertain I am about my career. Though I am sure I want to be a physician, I feel called to do something else that could put me on the frontlines of systemic inequity. The most obvious answer is public health, but the research bores me. I’m still figuring it out, but the work I see myself doing in 20 years is related to collecting patient narratives and transforming these stories into something concrete. For now, I am focused on learning more about how stories make a place, and how place manifests health.

Mariana Arcaya, a professor of urban planning and public health at MIT, distinguishes between place and space in determining geographic health disparities. Space deals with an individual’s precise location while place refers to membership in a political or administrative unit, such as a school, a district, a city, or a state. It is the complex interplay between these two concepts that gives rise to the unequal, spatial distribution of resources. In this framework of geographic inequality, two neighbors who occupy the same space might exhibit different health outcomes due to their place, by occupation for example; the reverse might also ring true.

Though epidemiologists have shown that both have a hand in determining health status, it is place that is more difficult to measure. Place, as defined above, is an inherently fluid concept. The question of whether a person belongs to a certain unit is preceded by questions of degree: To what degree does this person associate with the unit? To what degree does the unit accept the person? I believe that these two questions should form the basis for any analysis that seeks to link place and health.

As Lara et al. points out in “Acculturation and Latino Health in the United States,” questions of degree were once overlooked. Referencing Milton Gordon’s testimony of the experience of European immigrant ethnic groups in America during the late 19th century, the authors note that the idea of assimilation and acculturation began as unidimensional constructs. Acculturation, Gordon thought, was an inevitable consequence of migration, naturally ending in assimilation, at which time the immigrant would have expunged the “memories, sentiments and attitudes” from her past life and adopted those of the receiving group. In other words, a person’s place was fatalistic.

This unidimensional view of acculturation did not hold water in the wake of the mass migrations that followed after passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which repealed the racist immigration quotas that existed prior. The entry of new bodies of color onto American soil brought with it new stories and new trajectories--the unilinear model split in two.

Though the resultant bidimensional model of acculturation, which proposes that acquiring a new dominant culture is independent of maintaining the original culture, reigns in the modern public health literature, I disagree with its premise. Acculturation is a matter of mixing and blending, a matter of degrees. It is, to some extent, dependent on existing connections with one’s native culture. It occurs at the nexus of a host of factors, which includes not only language preference, generational status, space, and place, but also degrees of code-switching, familial roots to the homeland, belonging, and acceptance--not to mention, a person’s cultural understanding of what it means to belong somewhere, and to be accepted someplace.

Postcolonial theory supports the spider-web model of acculturation (I made this up but I will coin it here). In “On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia,” John Smail writes that despite Dutch domination of Indonesia for 350 years, its social structure “remained coherent while going through a certain amount of change.” This line of thinking is a counterpoint to the idea that foreign control leads to the total submission of colonial centers. In building his argument, Smail calls us to see that “disruption” and “development” belong to the same natural process of cultural growth (i.e. development would occur regardless of Dutch presence). In this framework, cultural change in late colonial Indonesia should be viewed as “creative adaptation,” which allows us to replace the idea of submission with “a picture of a society strong and vital enough to adopt new cultural elements that appear useful to it, to grow with the times, in short to stay alive.” Acculturation was then (and now) a dynamic process that involved an array of transactions in the struggle for power and legitimacy.

Smail briefly alludes to the possibility of “weak” societies that failed to acculturate by pointing to revitalization movements. These groups were presumably lost to history. I bring this up because the specter of failing to “make it” in America casts wide shadows over the lives of many, especially immigrants. Those who manage to acclimate propel their families to opportunity, but what about those stuck in the outer rings of the spider-web?

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth offers a few perspectives on this through the character development of the novel’s first-generation-English characters, who each grapple with multiple dimensions of place. I found Millat Igbal’s development to be particularly memorable because of the trauma that young Millat experienced at the hands of his (well-intentioned) parents. I have no doubt that this trauma resulted in Millat’s embrace of fundamentalism and ethnic essentialism--“He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from”--which, in turn, led him to reject acculturation as a vehicle for place-making. In White Teeth, the lack of place beckons violence, both physical and emotional (re: Irie). At the crosshairs of this violence are those marginalized by society, the colored bodies of immigrants.

White Teeth’s negative take stands in contrast to evidence that suggests that those least acculturated to American life exhibit better health behaviors, at least for Latinos living in the U.S. Returning to Lara et al’s study, we see that more acculturated Latinos are more likely to engage in substance abuse and undesirable dietary behaviors, as well as experience worse birth outcomes compared with the less acculturated. These findings are paradoxical, given the positive associations other studies have found between acculturation and health care access; that is, if more acculturated individuals are receiving health care, why are they presenting worse health outcomes? To answer this question would require us to move beyond the simple models of acculturation used by public health researchers today. Though practical, they reduce the true impact that culture has in drawing the parameters that define our place, and therefore our health.

0 notes

utopianparadoxist · 8 years ago

Note

(1/3)Let me start by saying that I absolutely love your essays on the classpect system, after reading them I felt I was seeing Homestuck in an entirely new light. In fact, it’s because of this that I wanted to run an idea I’ve had about a certain classpect by you. That classpect being Seer of Blood. For the longest time, I considered just how this particular combination would actually work.

(2/3)We know that the Seer class experiences visions of the future through the vector of their aspect(or perhaps guided by their aspect), and this is clearly demonstrated by Terezi seeing the future as the myriads of choices the players can make while Rose seems to be capable of seeing the “true” path or the most fortunate path. So how could the Blood aspect, or rather bonds, be used to see the future?(3/3)I thought about what a bond really was, and realized that a bond is simply the accumulation of shared memories and experiences between individuals, in other words a shared past. Then I remembered Signless, the visions that prompted him to start the revolution were of Beforus, of the past. I think that rather than being a pre-cog like other Seers, a Seer of Blood is actually a post-cog who uses their visions to empathize with their players and unite them.

1) Thank you so much! I’m really glad you liked them, and I hope we go on to learn a lot more about the system together :D I’m sure I’m wrong about some stuff and I’m sure there’s more to learn--it’s part of why I’m so excited for Hiveswap!2) Yeah, I’d say I more or less agree! The only point I’d differ on is that I don’t think Terezi and Rose are specifically Pre-Cogs, and I don’t think a Seer of Blood is necessarily a Post-Cog, though the Sufferer certainly experiences his powers that way. I’d say all types of Seers could likely develop both properties.I say this because time simply isn’t linear in Homestuck at all. Hypothetically, if none of the seers had any limits on their power, then for the Sufferer remembering past bonds would inevitably lead him from Beforus to LE, and from LE to the Alpha kids, from the Alpha kids to the Betas, and back around--though obviously, as his focus is Blood, he seems to cap out with the Beforans.But even that’s more complicated, because the Sufferer isn’t technically remembering the past, but rather an alternate timeline/universe entirely, isn’t he? We saw it with the kids: The beta kid and alpha kid timelines are actually mostly concurrent to one another, despite the fact that the Betas created the Alpha’s timeline. Jake and Jade grow up loosely in tandem.So whether they’re inclined to remember moments related to the future or to the past, what it seems to me all Seers are mostly able to do is see sideways--into other universes, other timelines. That makes the concept of pre- or post- cognition tricky, because different universes’ temporal envelopes are wholly irrelevant to one another’s.Terezi distributes some pretty remarkable recollection of her own timeline and the results of changing it at various points, which seems technically post-cog? Though again we fall into that timeline ambiguity. And while it’s not in canon exactly, it seems easy for me to imagine pre-cog showing up for a Seer of Blood--seeing someone and instantly knowing you’ll be friends or lovers, for example? That kind of thing.anyway none of this is to say you’re wrong at all. It’s definitely correct that the Sufferer has a heavy disposition towards elements of reality that, through various vague and complex mechanics, read as “Past” events from his perspective. I just find the Time mechanics in Homestuck irresistible to think about because they’re so fucking weird x3. I also just don’t want to imply that anything about my view of the Classpects implies any Class ever has to “just” be X or Y, you know? I don’t even think the archetypes I claim the story puts forth for the class pairs work that way, which is something I’ve been thinking about and needing to clarify for a long time because I’m worried I haven’t been clear enough about it. So let’s get into this tangent for a minute, if you’ll indulge me. Maid/Sylphs as Fairies, for example. I do think it’s definitely true those classes are coded that way in the story of Homestuck, and that they flesh out our understanding of what their key verb means, and so what they can do/how they think and process reality. Now, does that mean all True Maid/Sylph OCs, in my view, should parse themselves in terms of fairies? No, I don’t think so. I think Homestuck uses the symbol logic of fairies to clue the reader in, but there are myriad ways you could use mythology--or simply narrative-- to get to the concept of a Player creating their Aspect or being made of it or both. It would be just as evocative and powerful, in my view, to base a “Maker” informed by the mythological idea of Creator Goddesses, or even a specific creator goddess. You could go with Summon Spirits from JRPGs, who embody many of the same tropes of elementals while being a bit distanced from the idea of fairy-dom. You could get more specific. It would be pretty easy to imagine a Fairy class Hope player who literally becomes or already is an Angel--they’re Made of Faith, after all. The classpects are hyperflexible, and I like the Unifying Myth concept because it gives us handy ways to interpret any individual member of a given classpect to specificity. Or, of course, you can use no unifying myth or broad historical archetype at all, or make up your own consistent worldbuilding for whatever you’re thinking of making.To personalize and flesh out the character by drawing on archetypes and mythology outside of the base Classpect system in order to give resonance and meaning to the classpect that is relevant to that specific character, the way furries work for Jade or Trolls for Callie or Rainbow Drinkers for Kanaya or so on.So I definitely think The Sufferer reads strongly as a Post-Cog. I’m way more hesitant to allow myself to say a phrase like “Seer of Blood is post-cog”, though, because I’m unnervingly aware people might be starting to give a shit what I have to say? And I absolutely never, ever want to be limiting. A Seer of Blood can and will be anything. The only limit is what kind of story you want to tell with one, and how much thought and nuance to want to put into the telling of it. Homestuck gives you a lot of tools to build the same kind of compelling nuance it does itself in your own storytelling, that’s all.Sorry if I’m rambling! I wasn’t expecting to come out with this right now, and I’m sure there are more elegant and coherent ways of saying it, but I really felt like I needed to get this out there. Thanks for giving me the chance and sorry for the wall of text!

#long post #Homestuck #Classpects #analysis asks #otaku-misdreavus

47 notes · View notes

impatient-traveler · 8 years ago

Text

War Hero

Pairing: Nyx Ulric/Petra Fortis (I name thee... Petryx!) Rating: Gen (there is one(1) f-bomb) Summary: Last person Nyx expected to run into after the fateful night of the Invasion was Petra Fortis, the Citadel Guard menace and lovable asshole. Time to do something about that awful first impression, right? AU. Insomnia suffers but doesn't fall. Details inside, but basically consider this a post-KG everyone lives AU, where the KG still happened with just some minor tweaks. Warnings: none AO3 link: here

Life was, for better or worse, back to normal. Sure, the Crown City had been invaded, and the Crystal stolen. Their situation, Lucis' situation was by all standards shitty. But that was nothing new, right? They managed to push back in the end, and the city still stood. All things considered, it could have been worse. They lost their primary defense, and they lost their King, and the Glaives, privately, lost their little sister and any sense of security they might've managed to get. Their Captain, their brothers in arms were revealed as traitors, after all. But in a way, it didn't sink in. Not entirely. Perhaps new trauma is less of a problem when one is already woken up by nightmares full of memories of destruction and death on the regular. Perhaps it's just another horror to add to the list. Or perhaps it would hit them, just not immediately.

For now there was so much to do. The Prince had returned the next day, distraught and livid over all of this having gone down without him. Yet in the end he did not shy from his duty and took up leadership. He wasn't King yet, that he adamantly refused on grounds of wanting to secure his betrothed's safety first. Then he would wed, and lead Lucis, he'd said. It would go down in history as probably the least coherent and put together address that any ruler of Lucis ever delivered, but it was hearfelt and honest and frankly, reassuring. The kid they'd watched fumble and shy away from demands of royal life for years... kid they were all fond of, but could never imagine seeing on the throne was now all grown up, it seemed.

Not all of the Glaive were traitors, thankfully. Most of those were still in recovery, though, and with how many people the other forces - Crownsguard, Citadel Guard, police - lost in the invasion everyone who could walk was assigned to keeping the peace and helping survivors. The main thing to actually do at this point was coordinating and guarding supplies, ensuring they were distributed peacefully. And that's how Nyx saw Petra Fortis for the first time since that fateful night: assigned to keeping watch over a convoy delivering relief supplies to further parts of Insomnia.

He noticed the man while getting on the transport at dawn, near the back entrance to the Citadel. They weren't the only ones assigned here, since there were two policemen on the job as well. Being the highest ranking there Petra had apparently assumed leadership before Nyx arrived and decreed the more battle-ready of the two, meaning himself and the Glaive, would take the first and last van, respectively, while the police guys took the middle ones. As such they barely exchanged curt nods and gruff mumbles of "morning" before Petra pointed the last vehicle out to Nyx who got on it before the Guard could say anything else. It fit the mood of their first interaction quite well, so he was pretty sure Fortis would just assume he was being sore after the taunting at the Gate. In reality though he just had no idea how to act. After all the Guard had saved his and the Princess' lives that night, in what looked very much like a suicide move. Until five minutes ago Nyx was certain it was a suicide and Petra was long dead. Well, about a week dead, but still. Seeing him there was shocking, more so for someone as haunted as Nyx was. Felt a lot like his mind was slipping to the point where he now saw the dead in broad daylight (again, dawn, but let's not focus on technicalities).

The convoy was well on its way, carefully passing through streets hastily cleared from rubble and still full of unpatched holes, when it dawned on him. The Guard was clearly interacting with others, right? He'd issued orders, the car up front waited for him while he opened the door and climbed inside and only then it drove off. Ghost couldn't do that, as far as he knew. So, alive after all.

He belatedly realized the driver was speaking to him some two minutes later. "Hey, Glaive! Are you alright?" the lady raised her voice, and it really looked like she'd been trying to get his attention for a while now.

"Huh? Y-yeah. All good." Nyx assured hastily "What were you saying?"

"I was asking what's got you grinning like that."

"...Oh." He'd been grinning? Right, yeah, he might've been. "Just... saw a friend." he covered.

"Friend, huh?" the woman grinned back "Always good to see people who survived this hot mess, right?"

He nodded "Yeah. Really good."

The rest of the trip passed mostly in silence and soon enough they stopped and the drivers and the few helpers they'd brought along began distributing the supplies to the sizeable crowd that had gathered waiting for them. Nyx decided to fix the bad impression he must've made earlier and glanced around to locate Fortis. The man was standing near the door of the first van which was also the first one to be emptied, looking like a godsdamned statue. Funny, considering that during their first meeting it was Nyx who played deaf and blind. He casually took up post right next to the Guard. "Looking good for a dead man, Fortis." he stated, looking straight ahead at the people before them. In his peripheral vision he saw the man scowl, heard him huff.

"Funny, I thought you were the one who wouldn't survive, Glaive." Ah, there it was, the sarcastic way he used that word, almost like an insult.

Nyx chuckled "I'm not the one who went up against an airship full of trained soldiers."

"No, you're the one who went flying off the road less than a minute later."

The Glaive pouted "Aw, you saw?"

"Told you. It's my city you're messing with."

"Yeah, sure. Remind me next time I'm saving it, I'll step right back~"

Petra scoffed but before he could answer one of the drivers waved them over. "Um. Could you help us with this?" they asked timidly. The Guard rolled his eyes and sent Nyx off to deal with it. Carrying heavy ass crates. Just what he wanted to do today.

After that he didn't get another chance to talk to Fortis until they were packing up. At that point everyone was exhausted from hours in the sun and Nyx had pretty much forgotten that he'd been trying to get a hold of the Guard for the better part of the day. All that occupied his thoughts now was the thought of a shower and crawling into bed for a nap, and a much less bright prospect of duty in the evening. Desperate times, as they said, and his schedule these days was murderous. He was climbing back into the van when someone tapped his shoulder.

"This once you're forgiven for the war hero act, Glaive." Petra said and before Nyx had a chance to react he was already marching away to his van. Ulric stared dumbly for a couple of seconds, then shook his head and got into the car. Fucking guards, right?

#ffxvrarepairsweek #ffxv #ffxv fic #kingsglaive #nyx ulric #petra fortis #petryx #ITmade

8 notes · View notes

littlesoufflecafe · 6 years ago

Text

One For The Road | Chapter 14 Cut Scene: “Invites, Grief, and a Faint Pulse”

A/N: Chapter fourteen of this fic was initially going to be much darker than what it ended up being. Instead of Emma waking up Clara, she wakes up by herself, and that scenario in itself grew rather difficult to write. I wanted Clara to have a source of hope in this chapter, and that hope manifested itself in Emma in the final draft.

-----

"Do you want to go to this?" he asked her weeks after it'd happened. Clara was at the kitchen table pushing Cheerios around a bowl of milk, and had looked up to see her father holding an invitation to her Top of the Class Banquet. Her last one before going off to university. "It says here you're allowed two guests."

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, wanting to disappear into her sweater. "Who else would I take?"

"Well, we could ask your Aunt Linda, or Gran, if you like."

Aunt Linda always looked at her as if she were a piece of chewing gum she'd picked up on the bottom of her shoe, and her grandmother lived two hours away. She doubted either of them would appreciate the invite, for they were smart enough to know that their presence would merely serve as a filler for the one person they couldn't have. And the idea of sitting next to an empty seat all night was appalling.

"I'd rather not go," she told him, dropping her spoon into the bowl with a plunk. Flecks of milk flew atop the dark green tablecloth; she tried drying them out with her thumb. "It's on a school night."

"You've never missed an academic banquet before."

"Yeah, well, I've never been without a mum before, so I'd rather not go," she said coldly, averting her father's hurt stare but absorbing its impact nonetheless. He hated when he looked at her like that. It made her feel like a bad daughter. Wasn't she allowed time to grieve? Didn't she at least deserve that? Often times, she wondered if her father thought he could smooth out paper after it had been crushed. Because he was certainly giving her a similar treatment.

Underneath her quiet disposition and snide comments, she knew he was trying to be strong for the both of them. Why that involved bouncing back to normal programming as quickly as possible, she never knew. All she was certain of was that she was the only one looking after him. Buying groceries from Sainsbury's, driving her to school—it provided Dave Oswald with a structure that required him to care for himself in turn. Without it, she doubted he'd get out of bed in the morning at all.

There was a picture on the dresser of her childhood bedroom. Clara was six when it was taken. Her father at her left hand and her mother at her right, she swung between the two of them with the most elated smile on her face. The fact that she could never recreate that picture angered her. Why did she have to be the one to lose someone who mattered to her? She was a good kid—she performed well in school, never partied or drank. Her family was nothing but loving and supportive of one another. Why did the universe feel the need to tear that apart?

At sixteen, she was pompous enough to believe that she had a choice between life and death. That whatever path she chose, she'd never be completely alone.

This was not one of those times.

Her eyes fluttered open and the scent of grass and wet earth filled her nostrils. It took her a few minutes for her vision to adjust to the darkness, but even then, all she could make out were tall, looming silhouettes against a nuanced night sky. Not even the stars were poignant enough to pierce through the dense canopy of trees.

Lifting her head from the grass, Clara felt the weight of her helmet strain her neck and shoulders. A dull pain throbbed behind her eyes, as if trying to find an escape route though the thick layers of padding and synthetic fiberglass. Where was she? Where had they parked the TARDIS? She couldn't recall agreeing to sleep on the forest floor, but given her strangely impulsive decisions these past two days, she wouldn't put it past her.

Suddenly, memories began to resurface. The sputtering sound of the TARDIS engine. The thick odor of gasoline contained between the walls of an auto-repair shop. The unkempt hair of a nineteen year-old boy, smiling at her from the corner of a motorbike license. The Doctor's motorbike license. His name alone was enough to careen her back into reality.

Clara shot up like a bullet, moaning from the stinging pain distributed throughout her body. Her world appeared muddled behind the visor of her helmet, more specifically the dirt streaked across the tinted plastic like war paint. Every breath she took was heavy and amplified. Using the remainder of her strength, the young woman unclasped the buckle and pried her helmet off. The night air never felt more soothing.

It was brighter now; she could see rays of moonlight bending around the trees, illuminating certain parts of the forest floor. Her eyes scanned the terrain with a disoriented perception, until eventually latching on to the helmet in her still-shaking hands. A crack had caved into the surface, branching out in several directions. Had she not worn any protective gear, her skull would've suffered the damage instead. Her stomach recoiled. The helmet tumbled into the grass.

She tried to face the damage spread across her arms and legs. Dark red scrapes appeared on most of her fingers. Her denim jacket was destroyed, bloodied flesh poking out at each elbow. The right pant-leg of her jeans was torn open at the knee, revealing a ghastly wound where skin once held intact. It hurt to move, more so form a coherent thought. Help. She needed help. She needed to know where she was.

"Doctor—?" she called out, her voice hoarse. Clearing her throat, she yelled, "DOCTOR!"

Nothing. Her voice echoed through the trees and sent birds cawing back in reply. She held her head in her hands and tried to stop the forest from spinning. This is not happening. Maybe if she concentrated hard enough, she could break from this dream and wake up where she was supposed to be. At this point, she didn't even know where that was. And each time she opened her eyes, she was met with the same, agonizing fate.

She was so far from anything that felt familiar. And she was alone, without anyone to pluck her out of the chaos like her mother did on Bank Holiday Monday. The panic began rising in her once more, filling her lungs until she began drowning in it—

You need to get up, a voice inside her head hissed. Pull yourself together. Nothing will happen if you just sit here and cry.

Swallowing back her tears, she dug the heels of her palms into her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. She needed to accept the fact that no one was coming to save her this time. She needed to be brave enough to stand and navigate her way out of this. Even without The Doctor by her side.

Pushing herself up off the ground, she winced from where her damaged skin stretched and tore from the movement, but managed to stand without feeling lightheaded. At least nothing was broken, to her knowledge.

Hooking her finger around the strap of her fractured helmet, Clara squinted into the darkness, and began walking. Her gait was stiff-limbed and awkward, and it wasn't long before she spotted the faint outline of a body lying face-down on the side of the road. She didn't need to come closer to know who it was. The pain suddenly became the least of her problems as she broke out into a sprint towards him.

"John!" she cried out, the name foreign on her own tongue. Knees barking in pain as she fell beside him, she mustered up the strength to flip him onto his back, the entirety of his right side bloodied and bruised. A web of cracks adorned the visor of his helmet. She quickly removed it and pushed back the hair plastered to his forehead in sweat. "John, please...wake up. I need you here with me..."

For a few horrifying seconds, she thought he was dead. The sight of his face devoid of its usual smile was enough to make her heart stop. But she refused to succumb to the worst of her thoughts and instead took action. He still had a pulse. It was faint (likely because she was rubbish at finding it), but she could feel it nonetheless, pounding beneath her fingertips pressed just beneath his jawline. Alive. He was still alive.

Lowering her ear to his lips, she could hear his breaths, rhythmic and reassuring. She tried to detect a chest rise and fall but soon gave up, as she couldn't trust her own vision in providing her with a sound resolution.

"You're gonna be okay, alright?" she told him in a whisper, placing a hand over his still-beating heart. "Someone will come and find us, I promise."

Just as he had been there for her, she would be there for him. She owed him that, at the least.

"HELP!" she hollered from the side of the road, cupping her bloodied hands around her mouth. "PLEASE, I NEED HELP!"

This went on for minutes, bile burning at the back of her throat. She must've looked like a lunatic, that is, if there were anyone there to witness her screaming her head off in the first place. But she couldn't care less for her appearance, or sanity, for that matter. Whether she attracted wolves or pulled The Doctor from his unconscious state, she'd shout louder and louder until someone heard her.

It had gotten to the point in which she pulled The Doctor closer, dragging him from the armpits to situate him closer to the road. They needed to be ready for when a car arrived to pick them up. Not if, when. She was determined to get them out of here, even if she had done permanent damage to her vocal chords by the end of it. They'd had so much luck throughout the entirety of this trip. There had to be some of it left.

But it eventually became clear to her that she was only hurting herself. The road remained deserted as far as she could tell. No one was coming for them. No one within a hundred mile radius even knew they existed. They were strangers lost in uncharted territory, with no food or water or shelter. Even her willpower to finish the trip was wearing thin. It was better to fret when there was another person beside you to share the stress with.

At first, she wasn't aware that her pleading had turned into cursing. She cursed everything—from those two men back in Reno to William in Salt Lake City, until she was eventually cursing Wayfarer Industries themselves from bringing her out here in the first place. She hated how much she cared about that stupid interview. She hated how much she had endured in these past forty-eight hours. She hated how much she actually believed that she could do something like this.

"Stars, as much as I wish you were awake right now, I'm a little glad you didn't hear any of that," she told The Doctor, having collapsed beside him out of pure exhaustion and fatigue. "No, you know what I wish? I wish you were the one who woke up. That way, you'd know what to do. You always know what to do."

It was because of him they were alive in the first place. If not for his split-second decision to swerve right, she likely wouldn't have woken up at all. The thought in itself was terrifying to her.

-----

Read the full fic here!

FanFiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12799845/1/One-For-The-Road

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986580/chapters/34731947

0 notes

iasfuturekings · 8 years ago

Text

Questionable Executive Decision: Weapons

All right, let’s begin on this topic that might end up upsetting a few people. Or maybe a lot. I don’t know, I’m no good at gauging the reactions for these things.

If anyone’s ever read the timelines, they’ll notice the small notes where I said that the Brynhildr and Fuujin Yumi were downgraded from status of plot relevant weapons and the Yato no longer exists. This means only the Siegfried and the Raijinto have ties to Valla and therefore the main story. Brynhildr is from a major Nohrian myth, and the Fuujin Yumi is the name Takumi calls his personally commissioned bow. Camilla, Elise, Hinoka, and Sakura don’t get special legendary weapons to compensate. The Fire Emblem itself, which was the Yato in the original game, will be something else. Before anyone takes out their pitchforks in defense of their sisters and little brothers, I’d like to lay down my thought process on this.

Like many people who’ve seen the story for Fire Emblem Fates, I, too, have noticed the obvious disparity in distribution of personal royal weapons among the royal children. The boys get all the wonderful toys, and unless you play as a female Corrin, the girls didn’t have any weapons of their own (or they were the named weapons in the game like Camilla’s Axe and stuff). That really sucks, and I wanted to address that issue somehow.

I decided on eliminating the Yato from the story because like many people, I’m tired of the “chosen one” kind of plots, and not being destined to bring peace or whatever makes a different conflict for Anri because he won’t get a free ticket to solve his issues. He already has his dragon form and weird “undead” status, but even those two aspects aren’t exclusive to him to begin with. I’ll discuss this in further detail in another post all about Anri’s different role. The main focus is the sibling weapons.

There were at least two ways I could go about doing this:

The boys keep their weapons, but the girls get their own personal ones, too, all tied to the precious metals that Kleo and Dion brought with them from Valla. Hinoka gets some special lance, Camilla, an axe, and the younger girls get some special healing/support rod of some kind.

Restrict the number of weapons only to the firstborns in the family. The girls won’t get “divine” weapons, but neither do the boys who aren’t the eldest ones, and it’s fair because Nohr and Hoshido have only one special sword of their own.

There are plenty more ways to resolve this issue, but I liked these two the most. Both are reasonable ideas, but I went with option 2 rather than option 1. Why?

I’ll admit, it’s personal preferences, because option 1 tends to bring up bad memories for me. Kinda like how I don’t like naming my protagonists certain names because people I’ve known in real life with such names have been jerks to me (I won’t share what those names. Ever). Petty, I know.

Also, if I made special weapons for everyone, that would probably mean the deceased siblings would need some special weapons of their own as well. If the Nohrian family had only four special weapons, then it’s going to feel like “wow we got too many family members, gotta cut it down to four people so now everyone can stop fighting bc now no one’s missing out on a MacGuffin,” which can descend into shallow villain territory, and I’d like to avoid that.

One of my least favorite tropes commonly found in the shonen anime I’ve watched is that thing where every single person has a “special” ability. In some cases, it can work! But in the context of a story involving a “chosen one” who saves the world because they would be the only powerful person to defeat the big bad? Not much of a problem when everyone and their grandma has a personal weapon that’s “legendary”. This brings down everyone’s value so no one is special. Being a so called “chosen one” begins to lose its meaning.

Saying 5 weapons is too much is pushing it and probably sounds like unnecessary whining on my part. And yes, Fire Emblem has done the story of multiple divine weapons before, so why don’t I just go ahead and do a plot like the previous Fire Emblem games? I don’t know, maybe I’ve seen that plot done a ton of times, so I wanted to do something else? There’s nothing wrong with that, right?

So, by keeping only the Raijinto and the Siegfried, I avoid the issue of this “special snowflake syndrome” I despise for settings like these, I and also keep the plot grounded and less of a “collect them all” plot, another plot I’m not too fond of. Because how many times have we seen this already as well? Sure, having the Yato glow and change shape is fun and all, but what did it serve other than being Corrin's identification tag? A lot of the time the Yato felt like an excuse for other factions to drop their weapons and call it quits because some coincidentally, absolutely true prophecy said that collecting these special weapons is more important than resolving the obvious problems going on within and between the two kingdoms. Raijinto, Siegfried, Fuujin Yumi, Brynhildr, and Azura’s pendant, all of which are significant objects, are left out of the spotlight.

Perhaps my changes are going to break the coherence of the game because I’m inadvertently erasing the ties to some mythology the games’ weapons are based off (I’m already accidentally erasing the ties between Rajin and Fuujin by denying the Fuujin Yumi its divine status, feel free to berate me on that). Maybe I’m betraying everything that there is about Fire Emblem by doing this. But like I said before, I don’t want to make the story suffer for the sake of adhering to its sources of inspiration.

#fire emblem fates #fe14 #discussion #raijinto #siegfried #yato #brynhildr #fuujin yumi #qd

22 notes · View notes

me-gongoga · 8 years ago

Text

Alliance, Ch. 7 - Cassian Andor x Reader

Pairing: Cassian Andor x Reader/OC, hints of Poe Dameron x Reader/OC, Slowburn Summary: At the General’s will, a begrudging intelligence officer is paired off with a seemingly inexperienced Resistance pilot on a reconnaissance mission.

Ch. 1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 Ao3 - Fanfiction.Net [Reader Replacement Key: “Moira” - Your first name]

The burning had quickly turned into a chilling cold. It cut through her skin and penetrated her bones with a repugnant dampness she could not escape. Moira’s torso was soaked with blood, the heavy liquid seeping out around the gloved fingers as she pressed forcefully into the wound. She was losing precious drops with every step forward in Cassian’s arms.

“My father, he was… a doctor,” she had told him. “His office… there’s still med supplies in it.”

It had been all he needed to hear before scooping her up and taking off back towards the compound - towards her childhood home. She could tell he was moving as fast as he could but the pain was substantial and made every moment drag.

“You’re a kriffing idiot,” he huffed, rounding a bend of trees. “You know that? Why did you do that? Why?”

She knew he was not searching for a response; that he was just venting his own frustrations with the situation, but she did not care. “I’ve never been – been shot before. Now I can… check it off… the list.”

Moira saw him flash a look down at her in the darkness, though she could not say whether it was out of incredulity or irritation.

“We’re almost there,” he told her, tone just as resolute. “Hold on.”

“The frequencies,” she breathed. “You should make sure… Kaytoo is – is getting them.”

He made a noise that very nearly sounded like laughter if not irater. “You don’t get shot and then start giving orders,” he murmured through his teeth. “That’s not how it works, Lieutenant.”

She wanted to respond but found her energy for such things quickly depleting. She settled for a thin smile. Her eyelids were heavy as she rested her head against Cassian’s arm. Darkness was very nearly on her when she was shaken back awake.

“Hey, Moira, stay with me. We’re here, okay? We’re here,” his voice was husky and apprehensive. She felt herself dip in his arms as he moved to type in the security code. And for at least a few moments, the sudden brightness of her home was jarring enough to keep her eyes open.

“Where?” Cassian demanded.

“Off my parents… room,” she pointed weakly ahead of them. “In – in the back.”

Cassian made off in that direction, pounding the opening mechanism with his elbow, lights switching on as they entered. The bedroom was less meticulous than the other rooms he had seen, but still had the edge of perfect preservation. Carefully, he set Moira down on the right side of the master bed. His eyes scanned the three additional doorways in the bedroom before following her gaze to the one closest to him.

“There… should be bacta patches… and Nyex, behind his – the desk,” she muttered.

“Keep putting pressure on it!” Cassian hissed, taking off through the doorway and into her father’s office.

The room was an overwhelming mess. Stacks of datapads and papers and books towered about the small room, each occasionally topped with varying pieces of medical equipment or crumpled notes. It was dark, seemingly only ever lit by a manual light that was too far out of Cassian’s way to bother with. He pushed through the jumble towards the large desk in the corner of the room, flinging open the set of cabinets mounted to the back wall. There were enough medical supplies within it to run a small practice. Cassian focused on what he needed, his eyes quickly finding their way to the familiar items. He grabbed the patches, the pain killer, an antiseptic, and a few other miscellaneous medicines before rushing back to Moira’s side.

She was dreadfully pale but she was still awake. Cassian sat down beside her on the bed, his legs hanging over the side as he looked over her. Moira’s eyes were wide and fearful as she gazed up at him; expression so raw and helpless that it was almost made him feel sick. With a careful acknowledgement, he removed her quivering hands from the wound, examining it for the first time in good light. The dark fabric of her shirt had frayed around it, leaving the wide and searing red area exposed. Thankfully the shot had missed the most sensitive organs, falling just beside her bellybutton. Cassian could only hope that it was not so deep as to unearth her intestinal track. The sudden image of a fellow Resistance spy laying disemboweled on cold steel flashed into his mind and Cassian did his best to suppress the memory. He would feel better once he removed the excess of blood and got a good look.

With adept hands, he took the remaining fabric of her shirt and ripped it open to the wound, rolling up what was left of it just beneath her breasts. He reached quickly for the stack of bacta patches, using the first just to soak up blood from the area – and there was a lot. But as the liquid cleared, he let out a breath. It was shallow.

“It looks mostly superficial,” he murmured, still analyzing the lesion. “Meant to wound, not to kill. I should be able to patch it up.”

There was the smallest, suffocated whimper as he took to it again. His eyes shot up to Moira who seemed near tears and rightfully terrified, blood dripping from her hands as she held them awkwardly before her.

Cassian frowned at the sad site, dropping the supplies to her side for just a moment. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he cooed. Cassian effortlessly slipped off the bloodied gloves from her hands and pushed Moira’s arms down to her sides, forcing her to relax. He then reached up towards her face and brushed away the wisps that had fallen into her eyes; his tenderness almost a surprise to him. He continued, moving to slide his hand behind her head, gently intertwining his fingers with her hair and rubbing a few small circles into her temple with his thumb. “It’s going to be okay,” he repeated to her, tone resilient and low like a prayer. “I’m going to take care of you. I owe you that much, don’t I?”

It was a moment before she gave him one of the weakest of smiles he had ever seen. But it was a smile nonetheless.

Cassian allowed himself to be caught up by his desire to comfort her for a moment more before remembering the Nyex. He quickly pulled away and fumbled the hypo-syringe into his hand while grasping one of her bloodied arms in his other. His eyes quickly found the ideal injection site in her prominent vein and Cassian rubbed the antiseptic quickly over spot. The needle was steady in his hand.

“This should help the pain,” Cassian he told her before slowly injecting the liquid into her system.

“Yeah,” Moira murmured. “I know… what Nyex does.”

Cassian discarded the needle to floor and flickered his eyes back up to her for just a moment. He shook his head before returning to the wound.

Smug as her words were, they made Cassian feel better. If Moira was talking back to him, even just slightly, it had to be a good sign.

After a thorough and deep coat of antiseptic that seemed more painful than the wound itself, he started layering the bacta bandages. Cassian let the blood soak through each layer and absorb the medicine before adding another. It was an intricate process but one that he had seen succeed on other shallow wounds. At first, blood fully consumed each bandage; then, slowly, it began to ease up.

“Oh… that’s right.”

Cassian looked up from his work to meet eyes with a dazed Moira.

“I just forgot how this stuff makes you feel,” she mumbled, her voice an offset monotone.

As he studied her face more thoroughly, Cassian realized the medicine was hitting her hard. The look of fear and anxiety had been replaced by a far more enigmatic expression. She was staring at him, plump lips just slightly agape, and a certain child-like wonder in her dilated eyes. The all-at-once dose he had given her was by no means dangerous, but it was definitely a lot more potent. It was normally distributed at intervals using an IV, but they had not had the time for that. It seemed Moira would just have to deal with the sudden high; Cassian thought it was probably the best thing to happen to her all day.

He heaved a relieved but exhausted chuckle. “So you’re feeling pretty great just about now, eh?”

She grinned back at him. “Yes, Captain.”

Cassian could not deny that the juxtaposition was peculiar; seeing her so suddenly pleasant after such a panicked couple of minutes was a bit shocking. But it brought a genuine smile to his face nonetheless. “I’m glad.”

“Huh. Three,” she muttered.

“What?”

“At least… I think it’s three. Kind of two and a half. Second didn’t really… count.”

Cassian realized she was babbling heedlessly. While the medicine was surely making her feel good, it certainly would not make it easy for her to form coherent thoughts. Or maintain a filter.

“What are you talking about?” He asked.

She lifted a pale hand and wearily pointed it at him. “You.”

Cassian raised an eyebrow at her inquisitively.

“You know, how many times I’ve seen you smile,” she announced proudly. “Twice where you meant it, once where you faked it, but three total. Yeah… Three is right.”

He shook his head and added another layer of bandage, this time hardly any blood coming through. “Why exactly are you counting that?”

“Because you don’t smile a lot.” Moira’s deluded voice told him. “So I think that I’d like to… keep track, of when you do. Because, you know it’s, well, it’s nice.”

He shot a look up at her. “Is this your way of telling me I should smile more?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No.... I mean only if you want. I think you’re good both ways.”

“Both?” Cassian questioned as he sealed the final bacta patch on her wound.

“Yeah, both.” She replied, nodding proudly.

“Care to elaborate, Lieutenant?”

“Well, you have two expressions,” she began, holding up two fingers, like it was obvious. “The first one is all serious and angry looking. That’s the one you have all the time. Like, right now.”

Cassian nodded and did his best not take it as a slight. “And the second?”

“Your smile,” she reiterated, sounding rather alarmed that he had not already caught on. “It’s always one or the other.”

“So,” he began, moving off the bed to collect the trash that had amassed from her care. “To summarize, what your saying is that, most of the time… I look angry.”

“Yeah,” she said almost too chipper. “But you know, a good angry.”

Cassian discarded the supplies in an empty waste bin before returning to her side. He was trying desperately not to play with her too much in such an altered state. But there were some things even he could not resist. So he played into her musings. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as that. I think you’re just trying to nicely say that you don’t like me.”

She looked back at him as if he had just slapped her across the face. “How dare you,” she began in her unbalanced quiver of a voice. “I… I like you quite well. More than you know. You’re the one who didn’t like me.”

It took all his strength not to laugh at her frazzled words. He maintained his constant tone. “To be fair, I don’t like anyone at first.”

She tilted her head to the side. “Well,” Moira darted her eyes away from him. “You should have made an exception.”

“Don’t worry. I have.”

And then Moira was smiling cheerfully once more.

As Cassian sat beside her, he realized how thankful he was for her. Though he had been initially so apprehensive to her presence on the mission, Moira had turned out to be more helpful and skilled than he had given her credit for. Not only that, but he thought they even worked well together – that there was an almost natural back and forth pattern to their interactions. She was warm and lighthearted and had dragged out emotions in him he had long marked off as lost. But, most baffling still, was why she had risked her life for his own having barely known him a day.

“Moira,” he asked, staring into her intricate eyes. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” She asked through a yawn.

Cassian pointed to her bandages.

“Oh.”

Rather suddenly, she turned her head away from him, digging her face into the pillows underneath her. “Come here and I’ll tell you.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she muttered, pointing to the vast empty space nest to her on the bed.

Cassian could not deny that he was intrigued by her sudden furtive behavior. And if anything, climbing onto the sprawling space of the bed beside her seemed like the least dangerous thing he would do all day.

Cassian shook his head but pushed off the bed and rounded to it’s other side. He rather suddenly realized how badly his body had ached for such relaxation as his limbs touched its softness. As he laid down beside her, he thought he was in great danger of falling asleep.

Moira smiled at him, obviously pleased with herself. “Sorry. I’m just tired.”

“I am too,” Cassian admitted as he met her eyes with his own deep brown ones, getting comfortable against the pillows. “So?”

“So you were going to get hurt,” she murmured, her eyes barely open now. “I didn’t want you to be. So… I moved you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he told her.

“I know I didn’t. But you would have done the same thing for me.”

“What makes you think that?” Cassian asked with the smallest edge of bellicosity.

She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes. “I just know. Because you’re a caring person. You just don’t act like it. I don’t think you like that… about yourself. It must make your job harder. Caring… it makes you weak sometimes, makes it hard to let go. So even if you don’t really care about me, even if it’s just the mission you care about. I couldn’t let you get hurt because… I think you’re a good person. And I care about you.”

Cassian could not remember the last time he had associated himself with the word ‘good’. Conniving, audacious, manipulative, ruthless – these were all words that he thought described his actions on a daily basis; words he would more immediately use to describe himself. And yet here she was, seeing into him as good. He wanted to pass it off as delusions of the medicine but it all struck too much of a cord with him.

Caring. She had called him caring. There were certain things Cassian did care about – freedom, the Resistance, Kaytoo. And, occasionally, something else would sneakily add itself to that list. Something that, if Cassian was not careful, ran a good chance of ruining him.

Yet as he stared down at it, hand extending towards his own in such a gentle manner, Cassian could not bring himself to push it away. He instead found himself doing the opposite – slipping his fingers around her own.

A thin smile graced her lips at his touch and she looked thoroughly at peace. Cassian would watch her wound but he more than surmised that she would be alright. So Cassian let it be what it was and closed his eyes as well because he damn well knew that he needed the sleep. And despite the mission, despite the injury, despite whatever was about to begin – Cassian slept better than he had in years.

81 notes · View notes