#neutral end doom does not count here because in this case he is in fact Just Aruna

[south-sea]

J and K for that character meme. What character? How about your Black Doom guys (Aruna and otherwise?)

THANKS I LOVE COMPARING ALTERNATES (genuinely it's one of my favorite things to do, and ones like this are especially fun because it helps demonstrate just how different they truly are while still having threads that connect them)

from this!

J. What is their greatest weakness?

aruna resistance to change, the tendency to get desperate when push comes to shove, and just about anything to do with food.

compared to the alt arms, his hive was primitive, and it's entirely because he was too stuck in his old ways to truly allow them to prosper. even now this tendency to stick to tradition tends to bar him from progressing, but he's getting better at making compromises. especially if it's in the interest of Not Dying.

relatedly, he will do just about anything if it means securing a meal. this has been a trend for nearly his entire life, and that desperation is exactly what led to the downfall of his kind. if anything, his time as a mobian just made it worse. already it has led to him doing a few reckless things that have gotten him more than a few scrapes and bruises. also some pretty wicked food aggression. if he doesn't know you, it's wise not to go anywhere near him when he has food, or even for a little while after. this weird squid can growl, and he will reflexively growl even at "safe" people to keep their distance especially after he's eaten.

alt doom isolation, arrogance, complacency.

for the leader of so many, he is not very social. if anything, the more his hive(s) grow, the more reclusive he gets. in a sense it's understandable; his people became truly self-sufficient, so he's gone more hands-off and just watches from the background.

but the domino effect is that that success has made him nearly complacent. as if he and his kind are truly at the top of the food chain now so to speak, as if there's nothing left to go wrong and endanger his people. they have multiple settlements, have even branched off into sub-hives that're too far away to even connect to the main hivemind anymore. his one major almost-failure resulted in this much prosperity for his kind. surely that means he's always going to find a way to come out on top. what's there left to be worried about?

K. What is their greatest strength?

aruna weirdly, his adaptability. like no, he doesn't like or want to change, but if he's forced to, he can and does so relatively well. not easily, but well. he's learned to blend into a new society near-flawlessly, learned how to utilize weapons he's never even thought of before, will straight up use his knowledge of chemistry to find the next-closest-thing to tradition as he possibly can (silks, for example).

i could just say he's good at chemistry/calculating distance/things like that, but that's boring. it's more about how he uses those things, not just the fact he's "good at them". he learned how to chart maps in like a day and a half by utilizing skills he already had. solved some chemical issue with some other alien species that made them overly susceptible to the planet's atmosphere in his spare time over the course of a few months (for fun!).

ultimately it comes down to a selfish little bastard whose greatest strength is balancing his self-serving nature with keeping himself likable/useful enough he doesn't just get run out.

alt doom charisma, innovation, and the ability to keep a cool head. he is the polar opposite of aruna in this way; where aruna refused to break from tradition in his hive, alt doom embraced it. while aruna may be good at blending in, he is not charismatic; and while alt doom may be reclusive, when he does appear, he is deliberately as warm and likeable as he can manage despite his emotional/empathetic distance.

it is exactly what led to his hive growing to what it has. it's gotten him allies, contacts who can get his kind even more allies, affiliates who can make life for his kind a breeze, the list goes on. if aruna is a master at manipulating others for now only self-serving purposes, alt doom is a master at manipulating the masses for his people.

most importantly, he knows when he's been beat, or when it's time to reapproach a situation to ensure he does come out on top. if his goals had been anything like canon doom's, he would be goddamn terrifying.

[merakiui]

Frostbite

yandere!childe x (gender neutral) reader art credit - GNSN_FA on twt cw: yandere, blood, minor gore (lacerations), unhealthy behaviors/relationship, mentions of death/hypothermia, fighting

It’s borderline animalistic, the way you cling to warmth and life like a starved, neglected hound. Your fingers stiffen in a vain attempt to flex—to successfully grasp your sword like a true warrior. The furs that were once draped over your body are ragged, torn to shreds from a dangerous battle between the elements and him. There’s no mistaking the excitement that lights his every nerve like bulbs hanging from a Christmas tree, coated in the maddening swell of potent bloodlust. If surrender was an option, you would have done it long ago.

Even then, you’re certain he wouldn’t give you such a benevolent chance no matter how hard you were to beg and plead.

Your breath materializes like a phantom in front of your face, a cruel reminder that you’re still breathing in a battered body. Your fingernails are chipped, blood running down the tips from an icy struggle, but you refuse to succumb to the cold. Instead, you allow yourself to be swept up in his electrified stare. 

“What’s the matter, comrade?” There’s a wry smile pulling his chapped lips apart, showcasing flawless teeth aligned in a perfect face. Despite the brutal wear of this current fight, he’s still handsome. And that makes you sick. “I thought you said you’ve gotten stronger. If I wanted a real battle, I would’ve challenged one of my subordinates and that’s nowhere near as fun as this!”

Keeled over in the snow, your lungs burning with each rattled inhale, you struggle to meet his eyes. The deathly chill of the Snezhnayan climate claws at your exhausted form like the porcelain fingers of a skeleton. You might as well surrender to the freezing temperatures. After all, the frostbite is far kinder than the fighting machine looming over you, the toe of his boot nudging your trembling self. 

“I... I am strong,” you manage to say before the dangerous wind pierces your throat like a dagger. Like the icicle Childe’s wielding, a happily convenient reaction between Hydro and Cryo elements. You cough and crimson paints the snow. “Strong. I’m strong.”

“Then get up.” There isn’t any warmth in his tone. Cold like ice and devoid of his former playfulness. Under all of that nonchalance, a fierce, chiseled warrior lies in comfortable wait. When his eyes trace your hunched form and he spots the blood that dribbles past your lips, practically freezing as soon as it makes contact with the frigid air, those dull hues widen. Surely he’s hit a weak spot, a vital organ or something close to a fatal blow. He wonders for a brief moment if you’re afraid of death. “You’ll freeze if you don’t move.”

A flash catches your attention and then there is the flow of suffocating water. Sharpened blades of ice surround you on all sides, nearly scraping your arms, so you force yourself onto unsteady legs. Internally, you’re searching for a way out—for a way to give up before you bite off more than you can chew. This sparring match wasn’t your request, but you had been a fool to accept, having been so certain of your strength and wit. But you aren’t accustomed to Snezhnaya, whereas Childe has spent years of his life here: training, learning, and fighting until he was worthy of the Tsaritsa’s praise. 

With sloppy movements, you cut through the ice as if it’s butter, eternally grateful for the sharpness of your trusty sword. You can’t tell when this fight will end, but you hope an opening with present itself. As soon as it does, you’re running as far as your frozen legs will take you. Like a feral beast who fights desperately against the unfair hands of the Grim Reaper, you stumble forwards, slashing blindly at your target. He’s thoroughly amused with your struggle, having seen this sort of desperation many times before on the battlefield.

It’s a depressing thing, knowing you’ll be destined for failure and yet you still push onwards. As if that will turn the tide of this battle in your favor. Childe almost admires your persistence, but it isn’t all that special. He’s seen it all before but not quite in the way you portray it. Your despair is far more delectable than that of any low-ranking Fatui soldier. Childe could bask in this for eternity and he’d never grow bored. To have you by his side as his punching bag—it excites him just a little too much. 

Naturally, the more he spars with you, the more he’ll grow accustomed to your attack and defense patterns. A strategy is only worthwhile if it rakes in victory. No matter the cost. No matter how many fall and grovel, begging for their pitiful lives. In a way, his moral compass is rather skewed. He supposes that makes him a bad person, but he’s never been one for the hero role. 

Childe taps your shoulder and you whirl, slicing upwards with your sword. The blade cuts the air, not the torso of the man who jumps back with such deadly precision. The expression he’s wearing haunts you: a wicked smile, pupils blown wide with the thrill of life and death, and a blooming bruise from where you managed to hit him in your earlier scuffle. In any form, he looks good, be it blue and purple, red and pale, or even frozen stiff by the very ice that reacts to his Hydro abilities. You can’t stand your weak heart, as you’re well aware of the face he’ll bear tomorrow. Friendly and disarming, a total opposite to the grinning madman twirling water-turned-ice blades like they’re circus batons. 

Like always, you’ll return his kindness because you’re a fool. Because you like the soft, wholesome Childe that cares lovingly for his family—the side he’s displayed in rare instances that glimmer beyond the gilded portrait of a battle-hardened soldier. 

You fall hard on your back, landing in the thick snow with a wheeze. There is no warmth on the battlefield. Only pain, suffering, and the certainty of death. You push yourself to get up, but your muscles won’t move, too heavy and sore. You know you’re strong—you’ve faced many opponents before and you’ve lived to boast of your successes. You can beat Childe. You have to if you intend to avoid fights with him in the future. 

“Well, this is upsetting.” He’s frowning now, idly tapping the crystalized water while he circles you like a sharp-toothed predator. “Didn’t expect this to end so quickly.”

Liar. You already know I can’t beat you, you want to say, but the words escape you. Not yet, anyways.

A sneer splits your dry lips and blood trickles down your chin like a woeful river. You don’t need a mirror to witness the damage. 

“Teucer won’t like this,” you say, staring up at Childe with dead eyes, hoping to prod at his weak spots. If the mention of his brother affects him, Childe doesn’t let it show.

“He doesn’t have to know,” he retorts, brushing aside such a possibility with ease. 

Right. Because you expect me to put myself back together like a toy. Of course, almighty Childe, the greatest toy salesman in all of Snezhnaya. 

“Well.” You pause to exhale and pain shoots through your side. Through your bleary gaze, you can see a deep laceration. Blood stains what’s left of your attire, and you move your rigid hands over the wound to prevent anymore blood loss. “Congrats. You won.”

“You’re giving up?” Bewilderment flashes across his face for an instant before it melts away into an emotion you can’t place. Anger? Sadness? Is he unhappy with this win? 

“What does it look like? I can’t possibly fight with these injuries.” 

It hurts to speak and you wish he would just stop. If he could accept the outcome of this battle, this wouldn’t be such a problem. You’d be able to patch and heal yourself up before your condition gets any worse. With the chill seeping into your open cut, harshly kissing slick, wet blood, you doubt you’ll make it inside before passing out. Vaguely, you recall the unfamiliar stages of hypothermia. At worst, if you stay out in this fatal weather, pinned like an entomologist’s butterfly under Childe’s monstrous gaze, you’ll freeze to death. At best, you’ll escape, build a fire, and warm up to the best of your ability. Weighing your options, you’d rather lose a finger or a toe as opposed to your life. 

“You can fight.” His blade is at your throat, the pointed tip niggling into your jugular. It’s more of a threat than a warning, a means to spur you into action. “You’ll never get stronger if you’re always running away, comrade.”

Your life has some value; Childe just can’t see that. In his eyes, a fight should be seen through to the very end, even if it’s marred in death and destruction. Yet here you are, choosing to abandon your pride. That must have some strength in itself, right? You hate his face, his childish nature, and the fact that his everything is making you reconsider. You’re doomed to fail if you continue to push your frostbitten body past its natural limits. 

“I...” The blade slices along your throat, a mere surface wound. You can’t feel the sting or the sticky blood that spills out like flowing tears, having become as numb as a fish-eyed animal near extinction. “Childe—“

You don’t want to hurt him and he knows this. It twists his insides like a knife in flesh, turning and turning until organs pop and leak into soupy conflict. The blade leaves your throat and another harsh wind blows between the two of you, glacial and prickling. He distances himself, tracking your form in case you happen to move. You’ve stopped shivering at this point, lying flat on your back and staring up at the dark sky. Snowflakes cling to your lashes like the hands of death, pulling you closer to an invisible grave. 

“You can fight.” Is that desperation in his voice? You almost laugh at the idea. He’s not a desperate man; he doesn’t need to be when he has it all. “Get up, comrade.”

“I think...I’ll stay here,” you whisper, your heartbeat irregularly slow. You’ve never counted the beats before, but now it makes for a fun distraction. “Good job, Childe. You’ve definitely...”

Gotten stronger.

You possess strength, just not the type Childe wants to experience firsthand. He has no use for a lonely, unseeing corpse. And when your eyelids flutter, closing upon a face that reflects frozen death, he releases a sigh. His blade falls at once, landing in the snow with a thump, and he bends down to gather your fallen frame in his arms. Somehow, whenever he spars with you—whenever he’s within touching distance—he feels alive. As if you’ve breathed meaning into his frostbitten soul, warming the cold beast that lurks and pounces at the sight and smell of fresh bloodshed. 

If he’s learned anything, it’s that there’s always going to be room for improvement. You just need to train more, and he’d be over the moon to fight you until it’s your blade slicing through his skin. In the meantime, though, he’ll have to kiss color and life back into your monochrome world of death and despair. 

As the greatest toy salesman in all of Snezhnaya, it’s only fair if he repairs the damages done to his favorite toy. Break, repair, and repeat. A cycle befitting a messy relationship and an even messier slew of choices. Rinse and repeat, like waves licking up a carcass bound to the shore. 

Come morning, you’ll be shiny and new, ready to sit by his side for another leisurely ice-fishing outing. Childe isn’t known as the greatest toy salesman for nothing, and you’re just barely scraping by with each battle scar and bandage—courtesy of such an illustrious, experimental toy salesman. 

[toshootforthestars]

From the report by Caroline Chen, posted 6 Feb 2021

To justify their reopening decisions, governors point to falling case counts. “We make decisions based on facts,” Cuomo said. “New York City numbers are down.”

(Me: Cuomo does not make decisions based upon facts.)

But epidemiologists and public health experts say a crucial factor is missing from these calculations: the threat of new viral variants.

One coronavirus variant, which originated in the United Kingdom and is now spreading in the U.S., is believed to be 50% more transmissible. The more cases there are, the faster new variants can spread. Because the baseline of case counts in the U.S. is already so high — we’re still averaging about 130,000 new cases a day — and because the spread of the virus grows exponentially, cases could easily climb past the 300,000-per-day peak we reached in early January if we underestimate the variants, experts said.

Furthermore, study after study has identified indoor spaces — particularly restaurants, where consistent masking is not possible — as some of the highest-risk locations for transmission to occur.

Even with distanced tables, case studies have shown that droplets can travel long distances within dining establishments, sometimes helped along by air conditioning.

We’re just in the opening stage of the new variants’ arrival in the United States. Experts say we could speed viruses’ spread by providing them with superspreading playgrounds or slow them down by starving them of opportunities to replicate.  “We’re standing at an inflection point,” said Sam Scarpino, assistant professor at Northeastern University and director of the school’s Emergent Epidemics Lab. Thanks to the arrival of vaccines, he said, “we finally have the chance right now to bring this back under control, but if we ease up now, we may end up wasting all the effort we put in.”

Dr. Luciana Borio, an infectious disease physician who was a member of the Biden-Harris transition team’s COVID-19 advisory board, put it more bluntly at a congressional hearing on Feb. 3. “Our worst days could be ahead of us,” she said.

I interviewed 10 scientists for this story and was surprised by the vehemence of some of their language.

“Are you sure it could be that bad?” I asked, over and over.

They unanimously said they expected B.1.1.7, the variant first discovered in the U.K., to eventually become the dominant version of coronavirus in the U.S.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that B.1.1.7 will become dominant in March, using a model that presumes it’s 50% more transmissible than the original “wildtype” coronavirus. The model’s transmission rate was based on experience in the U.K., which first detected B.1.1.7 in September and saw an increase in cases that became apparent in December, straining hospitals despite stringent closures and stay-at-home orders. So while our country appears relatively B.1.1.7-free right now, the situation could look drastically different in a matter of months.

Experts are particularly concerned because we don’t have a handle on exactly how far B.1.1.7 has spread. Our current surveillance system sequences less than 1% of cases to see whether they are a variant.

Throwing an even more troubling wrench into the mix is that B.1.1.7 is continuing to morph. Just this week, scientists discovered that some B.1.1.7 coronaviruses in Britain had picked up a key change, known as the E484K mutation. That mutation had previously been found in the B.1.351 variant, which was first discovered in South Africa. Scientists have hypothesized that it’s the E484K mutation that has reduced the efficacy of some vaccines in South African trials, so this is incredibly worrying news.

“It’s really hard to thread this needle without sounding like a prophet of doom,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. While vaccines bring hope, she said, governors who are moving to expand indoor dining are “completely reckless”; if they don’t course correct, “I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say the worst could be yet to come.”

[...]

To understand the epidemiologists’ warnings, it helps to understand what variants are, how they have been behaving and our limitations in knowing exactly how far they have spread.

People have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing the coronavirus: ascribing human-like intentions to it, as if a microbe can discern that we finally have a vaccine and try to evade it. But viruses don’t really have any schemes; they just reproduce.

“Coronaviruses are a single strand of RNA in a sac of fat,” epidemiologist Larry Brilliant reminded me. “They’re preprogrammed to replicate and continue replicating. That’s their job.”

Once in a while, when a virus replicates, a mistake occurs, and a letter in the strand of RNA is copied inaccurately. That’s called a mutation. Many times, those mutations are neutral. Sometimes they are detrimental to the virus, and that lineage will quickly die off. Other times, they’re beneficial to the virus in some way, such as by making it more transmissible. When a version of the virus becomes functionally different, that’s when scientists consider it a variant. As of Feb. 4, according to the CDC, the U.S. has found 611 cases of B.1.1.7, the variant first discovered in the United Kingdom, five cases of B.1.351, first identified in South Africa, and two cases of P.1., first identified in Brazil. But that’s almost certainly an undercount.

Part of the reason why epidemiologists are advocating for us to stay hunkered down is because the U.S. doesn’t know exactly where all the variant cases are.

[...]

As of Feb. 4, only 2.1% of the U.S. population had been reported to have received both doses of the vaccine; 8.5% had received one dose. That means we’re in a precarious moment right now where the vast majority of the U.S. hasn’t had a chance to get protected, and the variants have a window to multiply.

(Of course, those who have already gotten sick with COVID-19 have natural immunity, but some scientists are concerned that those who develop only mild symptoms may not gain as much innate immunity as those who receive a vaccine.)

(Me: Read more here)

Of the scientists I talked to, Caitlin Rivers, a computational epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, was the most optimistic about a potential variant-fueled surge. “I do think that B.1.1.7 has the possibility to precipitate a wave, but it probably won’t be as bad as the last wave, because we have a lot of preexisting immunity and we are rolling out the vaccines,” she said. Thanks to the vaccines, the U.S. will have more population immunity by March, when the CDC predicts B.1.1.7 will become dominant, than the U.K. did when the variant hit there late last year. “It’s a low likelihood that we will have a gigantic fourth wave, but not impossible,” she said.

Still, Rivers said, “now is not the time to relax.” She, too, was critical of state policies to loosen restrictions. “When you create the same conditions that allowed the last surge, you should expect the same results,” she said. “Our main move should be to reduce transmission as much as possible while we vaccinate as much as possible.”

Time is not on our side, as the morphing B.1.1.7 variant showed us when it picked up the E484K mutation. While we are lucky that our vaccines still work against the current variants, we have to keep in mind that in this race between vaccines and variants, the variants aren’t staying static.

The big fear is that eventually, a variant will come along that provides the virus with a complete immune escape, preventing our vaccines from working against it. Even though we can update our vaccines, that would take time.

The only way to guarantee that the virus won’t mutate into a variant that our current vaccines don’t cover is to lower transmission significantly, said genomic epidemiologist Alli Black: “The virus will continue to mutate as it continues to spread. We’re not going to stop that biological fact unless transmission stops.” And vaccinating everyone quickly is one key way to make it harder for the coronavirus to get from person to person in the first place.

(X)

[piperemerald]

An Hour To Midnight

Fandom: Promised Neverland

Pairing: Norray

Coffee Shop / College AU

Summary: In which Ray works the closing shift at the Starbucks on his college campus and does not understand why Norman continues to walk through the doors at 11pm, order a tea, and sit at the counter until the cafe is closed.

AO3

“He’s back again.” Emma didn’t even meet Ray’s eyes as she stage whispered and subtly gestured to the doorway. Ray resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her. Apparently his usual amount of sarcasm was bad for business. Not that he thought their only customers in the past hour would care.

“Of course he’s back,” Ray replied instead. He made a point of keeping his tone as dry as possible, even though he was well aware any attempts to mask his emotions were rendered useless on the girl who had known him since they were both five.

It was his turn to man the cash wrap while Emma made the drinks and warmed up the food. They divided their shift, even though there was really no point. There was no point in the Starbucks being open two hours later than the dining hall and campus store. The 11pm rush that the university seemed positive they would receive was nonexistent.

At best, it was empty and Ray could spend the last two hours of work balancing a book on the register and testing Emma on psychology terms. At worst, they had one customer.

“Grande green tea and a strawberry scone?” Ray asked the closing shift’s only regular.

“Am I that predictable?” The boy chuckled. “Yes, thanks.”

Ray rang him up, knowing that Emma had already started the drink when he walked through the doors. This was the third night this week that he’d wandered in, each time he would end up sitting at the counter until closing. The last two instances, he’d made conversation with them. Ray had several theories as to why anyone would want to spend their night sitting in a cafe instead of sleeping, or studying, or doing anything else with their time.

The wildest one was that he was a vampire, the most likely one was Emma.

This would not have been the first time he’d watched some poor idiot fall for her, only to later realize that she was that friendly and bubbly to everyone. They weren’t special. A majority of the time, Emma was oblivious to this. In the case of the boy with the blond hair so light it was practically white and a seeming lack of a sleep schedule, Emma was completely convinced Ray was over exaggerating.

She was, however, fully in support of the vampire theory—which was apparently far more feasible than a handsome man being attracted to her.

She thought Ray was teasing her, when really he was being serious. He was also counting the days it took this kid to summon the courage to ask for her number. It seemed tonight wouldn’t be the night.

When Emma placed his drink and pastry in front of him, he only gave her a quick smile before his eyes went back to the phone in his hand. Ray was a little bit disappointed. As much as he knew it would be at this boy’s expense, he really wanted to have his ‘I told you so’ moment. Knowing that they likely wouldn’t get any more customers for the next hour, Ray turned his attention back to the book that he’d tucked into his apron when the door opened.

He was behind on the assigned reading, something that had never happened to him before in his life. It wasn’t even that Ray didn’t enjoy his classes, he did, but he often felt like there wasn’t enough hours in the day to do everything that was expected of him. He thought he’d known what he was getting himself into, after all back when he was signing up for classes the idea of finishing a book every week hadn’t seemed so insane.

It was different when he had time to take in each detail, to let his imagination enjoy the story. It was also different when he wasn’t trying to make excuses for the dyslexia that he knew slowed his reading pace to about half of all of his classmates, making it feel like there was no point that his comprehension was far higher and his analysis leagues better than any of them.

In high school he would buy the audiobooks to listen along with, because hearing someone else’s voice usually stopped the words on the page from swimming. But right now he couldn’t afford to shell out thirty bucks for every assignment.

“Could I get another one?” A smooth voice cut through Ray’s thoughts. He glances up to see the boy gesturing to the plate when the scone had once been. “It’s $3.75, right?”

Ray nodded. Emma was in the backroom, probably checking her phone but it wasn’t like he cared enough to chide her for that. They were both only working here because they had to—because they couldn’t afford their cramped dorm room without it. So he let the fact that she had left her post slide and warmed up the scone instead, placing it on the table and accepting the boy’s exact change.

“Thanks,” the boy was smiling again. There was something behind that smile—something incredibly exhausted, and drained, and all too familiar.

“No problem,” Ray said back.

Maybe if he’d just called Emma, maybe if he hadn’t spent a moment longer than needed looking into those soft blue eyes, nothing would have happened. But he did. And from there he was doomed.

“He’s kinda cute,” Ray said once the cafe was closed and the boy was gone.

Emma lifted her gaze from the deposit she was supposed to be counting to give him an odd look.

“What?” Ray felt like she was analyzing him. “I’m allowed to think stuff like that.”

“I never said you weren’t,” she laughed now. “You just usually don’t say it when you do.”

She had a point. Ray had come out to her back when they were eleven, he’d known he was gay since he was ten, but they rarely actually talked about boys. He blamed that on the fact that their lives were too busy to stop and have a romantic interest in anyone. He’d never really felt like he was missing out on much, anyway. Having a crazy best friend that he knew him better than he knew himself had always felt like more than he thought he deserved.

“You should ask him out,” Emma decided.

Ray snorted.

“I don’t even know his name,” he reminded her. There had never been any reason to ask it, since he was always the only one in the Starbucks Ray had never felt the need to write a name on the cup.

“Then ask him,” Emma pushed.

“I just said he’d kinda cute,” Ray gave her a deadpan expression. “Not that I’m head over heels after handing him a scone.”

“Whatever,” Emma rolled her eyes. “He is kinda cute.”

“Yeah,” Ray mumbled. “He is.”

The next night Emma wasn’t feeling well, but since none of their coworkers volunteered to cover for her she ended up staying for the first hour of the shift. It took that long for Ray to convince her to just go back to the room and that he could handle everything alone. Begrudgingly, she agreed and he was left alone with the book he still hadn’t finished.

Part of him almost regretted making her leave, since it was so much easier to keep himself together when she was with him and joking around. When he was alone, all of his fears felt a little bit bigger and the stress that might have been solved with a bit of sleep and a pep talk seemed impossible to defeat. It was while Ray was wallowing in this state of self pity that the door open.

He honestly wasn’t in the mood for this.

“Emma’s not here today,” he stated as the boy walked up to the register.

“I can see that,” the boy raised an eyebrow. “Can I get the usual?”

Ray mutely wrote on the cup and left the register to put the scone in the oven. He could feel the boy’s eyes on him as he did so, it made him feel like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.

“For here or to go?” He asked.

“For here,” the boy smiled at him again.

Ray didn’t say anything else. He took the money, gave him the change, and put the scone on a plate. It would probably take a few minutes at best for the awkward Emma-less silence to make this guy leave. Then Ray could finally focus.

“You were reading that last time too,” the boy spoke up. Ray only turned his head to give him a withering glare in response. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“You’ve read it?” Ray asked back.

“Last year,” the boy nodded. “Intro to English, yeah? It was the first book they assigned.”

“It’s still the first book,” Ray said dryly. He let the blond boy connect the dots.

“It’s kinda dull,” he tried to sympathize.

“That’s not true,” Ray said back. “I’m just a slow reader and have a million other things people are expecting me to do, okay? It’s not because I don’t like it, or because I’m lazy, or because I don’t care. I’m so fucking tired of all of this!”

His voice rang out in the tiny cafe. He was dead. There was no way in hell this kid wasn’t going to tell the manager about Ray screaming at him. Then there went the job that was supposed to help him support himself. There went being able to afford his dorm and the lunches his meal plan didn’t cover. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he was in over his head and should just—

“Give it to me,” the boy held out his hand.

“What—”

“Give me the book,” his voice was sterner now but his expression was neutral. It was funny that, even though he was the one who had filled the small place with shouting, Ray was the one who was doing everything he could not to flinch. He handed the used paperback over.

Calmly—and far too composed for someone who had just had a mental breakdown that he’d done nothing to influence directed at him—the boy opened to the page Ray had dog tailed. He started reading out loud.

“You don’t—”

“It’s faster this way,” the boy stated. “That solves the problem, right?”

Ray didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know how to react to the knowing, almost arrogant, eyes looking back at him, or the cool collected smile. He didn’t know why this stranger wanted to help him.

“Right,” he uttered.

“Good,” the boy directed his eyes back to the page. He started reading again.

It took until the end of the shift for them to finish the book that Ray had been assigned a week ago. He already knew what he would write his essay on. He already had a list of messages and conclusions he could pull out of the story that had just been read to him.

“Thank you,” Ray knew the words couldn’t fully encompass how unbelievably grateful he felt.

“I didn’t have anything else to do,” the boy shrugged.

Ray knew what he had to ask now was going to make him sound like a complete ass: “What’s your name?”

Instead of seeming offended, the boy let out a chuckle. His laugh sounded like water—flowing gently, but with a sort of up-and-down rhythm to it. Ray wasn’t sure he’d heard anything more beautiful in his life.

“Norman,” the boy stated. “And I already know you’re Ray.”

“Name tags are fun like that,” Ray said dryly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Norman smiled at him one last time before leaving.

Ray found himself standing there, rooted to the spot and staring, long after Norman was gone.

[safflowerseason]

(Part 3) 4) also, re: season 7 so far, and keep in mind I’m two episodes in, I don’t even recognise Dan, and to a lesser extent Amy, anymore. I don’t even feel I’m watching Veep anymore, not as it was set out for the first four seasons. Is Mandel known to be the devil or something? What in the frack was this vision of the characters meant to be - ‘evolved’? Or does he just hate them? 5) I hated what he did to the Selina and Amy relationship too. Does Mandel hate women? Is this a known thing?

These are all questions that we’ve been batting around on here since the finale aired in May (which is when I got on Tumblr, incidentally, because I had to take my Veep feelings somewhere.) To a certain degree, there’s never going to be a solid, black-and-white answer to any of them, really. You can read everything David Mandel ever said in public about his vision for Veep, you can close-read what the actors say on press tours…but it’s just not the same as being in the room. And certainly, it’s worth pointing out that all shows evolve, and they gain and lose fans through those changes. No show ends the exactly the same as when it started (although…some shows manage this evolution better than others.) 

So, now that I’ve gotten my neutral disclaimer out of the way, I can get on with the fun ranting. 

4) Dan is absolutely unrecognizable in S7 from how he appears even at the end of S6, barring little flashes here and there. While Amy’s general arc holds together slightly better than Dan’s, she still suffers from some major out of character moments in 7.02, as we all were just discussing recently. (Dan’s arc just makes no sense.) 7.02 is just rough on all counts. Unless you’re an avid Selina/Tom shipper in which case you probably got something out of it. 

Also—and this is a general pet peeve of mine, as a California native—the episode is supposd to take place in Colorado and yet was so clearly filmed in Southern California (they posted a ton of pictures from the ranch where they filmed). Like, there are parts of California that resemble Colorado, but you have to go a little further than Malibu to get there. (I have the same beef with Parks and Rec. It’s so obviously not Indiana.) 

Mostly, what it all boils down to is bad writing. I don’t care if Mandel thought Dan and Amy would never work as a couple. That’s fine. That’s a legitimate opinion. Run your show the way you want, dude. What I do care about is bad writing. It is bad writing when in 7.01, Amy seems intent on having the baby without Dan, and then in 7.02, suddenly Amy wants to pitch Dan a white-picket fences vision of domestic stability that neither of them have ever been particularly interested in. Sex-Psychopath Dan is bad writing because it completely contradicts everything we know about the character even taking S6 into consideration. The Dan we see in S7 would have slept with Leigh Patterson in S4 just because she was young and there and he is apparently a sex-addict, hahahaha, when of course S4 Dan would never be caught dead in the sexual proximity of a nineteen year old he theoretically works with. And yes, of course, characters can change. But you have to show that change, which they do not. 

As for whether Mandel is the devil, (lol)…I think he was just very intent on doing the version of the show he saw in his head, and did not feel very obligated to try and replicate the show that Armando Iannucci had built. He had a completely different sensibility as an artist. I wrote a longer post somewhere on my blog about the differences in their approaches, if you’re interested, but ultimately I think what happened is that two very different universes got mashed together. Mandel didn’t hate the characters…he just thought they were all monsters and that was the point.

Also, two things happened the show couldn’t get away from, for obvious reasons: Trump was elected and the show was on an extended hiatus for 2017 and most of 2018 due to JLD’s cancer diagnosis. In the interim, all of America watched the government begin to melt in real time on Twitter. As a result, David Mandel rebooted the original ending for the show, in order to better capture this new moment in American politics (how effectively he did so is obviously up for debate.) The creative team and the cast were all fairly open about how dramatically Trumpian politics shaped their approach to the final season. So basically Trump is the short-answer reason to why a ton of plot threads get dropped between S6 and S7. I am 99% percent sure that the original plan was for Amy to have the baby before the hiatus and the resulting reboot. (Although at the same time, I do not think Dan and Amy would have gotten a very satisfying ending under Mandel. He also posted some pre-reboot snippets of the original outline for the finale, which have hinted that quite a few things did not change…for example, it seems that BKD was always doomed to be a one-episode plot device designed to get everyone back on Selina’s team, which is stupid.)

5) As for Mandel’s writing of female characters, I feel more comfortable speaking definitively here because in this case, it doesn’t matter what they were thinking in the room, but how it came across on the page and on the screen. Mandel obviously would say he doesn’t hate women, but he’s seems like one of those “liberal” white guys who has a lot of sh*t to work through regarding his own assumptions about women and femininity. He turned Selina into this misogynistic sociopath who abuses every woman in her sight with extremely gendered language, and he consistently punished Amy the character explicitly for not being hot enough or quiet enough or acquiescent enough for a woman. Like, the show always made fun of Mike for being dumb. It did not always make fun of Amy for being ugly and old. Moreover, Mandel/the show basically implies that Amy is a failure as a woman because she’s not maternal and also old and ugly, so she never got to be a mother and she never got to be with the man she truly loved. (sorry, Bill.) (Um, also, the audience has eyes? Anna Chlumsky is neither old nor ugly.)

I find it plausible that Amy and Selina’s relationship deteriorates over time…there is a subtle professional Dan/Amy/Selina triangle at work in S1-S4, and as Amy gets older and starts to figure out what she really wants from her life (and if Dan were the one she was trying to figure it out with), I don’t think Iannucci-Selina would react very well to it. (She would never be as openly abusive as S7 Selina, but I can’t imagine she’d be thrilled if Amy got pregnant just in time for her reelection campaign.) The show also makes it clear that Selina has an extremely complicated relationship with women and feminism, not to mention the fact that Amy herself is not particularly confident in her own body. 

However…there were lots of ways to explore those complex character fault-lines without Selina abusing Amy constantly. She tries to sell her to Leon! Part of it is a complete lack of nuance and part of it is just plain old sexism. 

Veep and the sexism of its later years has also been a pretty big discussion topic within the Veep Tumblr community, and you’ll definitely find posts on it if you poke around more closely (my blog, and also @thebookofmaev has written a lot about it as well.) 

[wolf-with-a-pen]

Twin Skeleton’s Part 1

Trigger Warnings: Swearing, Death, Gore, Unreality, Murder, Being Watched?

Masterpost, Next

Please tell me if I have missed a trigger, and I will be sure to add it, if you want to be mentioned when I post a new part, ask, and if oyu want me to tag this with anything else, tell me.

This is a new series,hopefully shorter than Knockin' On Heaven's Door, it physically wouldn't let me work on it until I had wrote at least part of it. I should hopefully be able to work on it next week, but if not, expect another part of this.

Word Count:2909

I HAD BEEN dead for 6 years when they arrived. Unwilling to leave the hotel after the horrors they saw and the near-death experience they had. I watched as their friend took their last breath, just like I had so many years ago, albeit in a more... bloody way than mine. Almost reminded me of Psycho with the amount of blood that poured out of them, spilling on the yellowing carpet, pooling around both of them. However, this time I wasn't fully fixated on the dying people-not this time. No, I managed to dial 911 and somehow get an ambulance for them (I'm as surprised as you are) and made sure to memorise the perpetrator’s face in case I saw them again. Anyone willing and able to kill is bad in my books. Especially after that, but I refuse to talk about it. There's no point dwelling on the past anymore.

For the event that happened, it was quite a sunny day. Surprising since deaths almost always happen in the rain. (Yes, I'm looking at you authors. Why? Oh, and hi to the audience I suppose. Who knows why you are using my life for your entertainment, but who am I to judge? Still don't like you, but I guess I'll put up with you.) Anyways, where was I? Right, honestly, I didn't mind that day, for the life of a ghost is a lonely one- we are rare. Only people with unfinished business become ghosts. Surprisingly only a small amount of the population. Most say "I want to do X before I die", but most of those desires aren't strong enough to cause them to become a lost spirit. And even then, most leave within a few years, or their unfinished business isn't necessarily needed to be done on earth. The rest of us are doomed to stay in one room for most of eternity, invisible to almost all. Almost being important. There are a few who can see through the veil of death, but it is rarer than ghosts themselves. Imagine my surprise when I found out that 1) they are created, not born, and 2) when one found their way into my room. Are you imagining it? That's you audience. Yes? Ok, now times it by 100. Yeah, I was shocked.

It was a month later I found out. You see I believed that both of them had died. I only saw one of their souls leave, but I assumed the second's wounds were just as severe- severe enough they wouldn't survive. I was wrong. They stumbled in 4 weeks later, discharged but clearly not out of the wars. Way too many bandages were on them, almost excessively. Their entire body appeared to be covered, save for their head and hands, despite only one wound being present. And it was on their chest. They didn't need half of them. But, oh well, better safe than sorry I guess? Who knows. All I know is they were followed by one of the staff members- clearly to make sure they didn't get hurt. However, they ignored their aide to stare straight at me. Yes, that's right. At me. Not through me. In the background the aide started. “Here you are,” he announced. “It hasn’t been changed beyond the clean-up and we made sure it stayed empty the entire time,” he launched into a full blown speech- I could tell he would. I cautiously stepped to one side, sure that they couldn’t see me, and were just staring off to the distance. Their eyes followed keenly. I knew I had to react before they told the staff member. Quickly I put my finger to my lips, saying out loud. “They can’t see me, act like normal.” I saw them nod slightly, before turning to the staff member, pretending to be interested in what he was saying. But the whole time, they carefully cast sidewards glances at me, as if I would disappear if they didn’t constantly look at me, while trying to decipher if I was actually real or not. It appeared they couldn’t decide.

Only once the other human had left did they talk. “Who are you? And how can I see you?” they said tentatively.

“Who I am does not concern you as of yet. And I don’t know how you can see me. Probably something to do with being stabbed made you able to see through the veil – you can see through the divider that separates our world and yours, automatically making me visible to you.” I replied curtly.

“Wait, so are you a ghost or something?”

“Yes, I am.”

“So, I can see ghosts now?”

“Yes, you can see ghosts,” I replied, annoyed “you can also see angels and demons in their true form, though why anybody would ever want to do that, I don’t know.”

“And you saw me get stabbed?”

“Who d’ya think called the ambulance sweetie?”

“And I’m gonna ignore how you managed that. Despite saving me, you don’t want me to know who you are.”

“Of course not. You might get attached and do something stupid “to be with me” or worse, I might get attached and have to watch someone else die. No way am I letting that happen. I can’t do that again. I don’t think I’d last. Plus, the first thing is a fast track to hell- it wouldn’t work. The only reason I’m still here is unfinished business. You have none. And you have the rest of your life to live out. I don’t want to infringe on it."

“Fine, keep your secrets then. I’m staying here and talking to you anyway, whether you like it or not.”

“Great, just what I needed. A companion. I have been fine for the last 10 years, I think I’ll be fine for 10 more, or however long it takes for my spirit to disintegrate.”

“Don’t be like that. I might not be that bad.”

“Fine, you have one chance, don’t waste it. You have a month to earn my trust. If you don’t, you leave me and this place alone. If you do, I might let you stick around for a while. Deal?”

“Deal.”

The first day was relatively annoying. For some reason they decided to pester me until I gave them some information about myself, whether on accident or on purpose to shut them up. That and gushing about how they have always wanted to meet a ghost and asking me to explain how everything in the new world they discovered worked. I didn’t mind telling them that much. Why wouldn’t I when they would have to get used to it, and fast? Despite being a minority, they would soon see us everywhere. Well, us and angels and demons. God forbid they meet a Guardian. That’s why I don’t mind. They opened up a world of just new, unfamiliar and dangerous things. I kinda owed them an explanation of what was going on. How the world truly worked. I started with two concepts that most people already knew of: heaven and hell.

“So, what do you know of heaven and hell?”

“Just the religious speculations people came up with. Heaven is said to be a safe haven of angels you reach when you die- if you have done good deeds that is. Hell is supposed to full of demons, and where you get tortured for eternity for all the bad things you have done to others. I always hoped it would be the other way round cause everyone says I’m going to hell.”

“First, none of that is really right. Second, what do you mean by you’re going to hell?”

“Because I’m a demigirl and a lesbian, everyone says I should be in hell.”

“Well, we’re all going to hell- only those of pure heart or are naive enough to be manipulated go to heaven. There are few exceptions to that rule. The rest of us end up in hell for having too much personality. It’s better for us anyway- you don’t want to go to heaven. It is a dictatorship, ruled by one person with a hive mind to enforce their laws. Highly corrupt, anyone who even slightly misbehaves or shows opposite ideas to the leader has their soul removed and their shell is sucked into the hive mind- an army of ruthless soldiers with no feelings or general consciousness. All actions are controlled by the leader. Hell is much better. It is more of an anarchist government type thing, with no rules. What you can do is only limited by the strength of your moral code. Only those who are deemed the worst of the worst are punished- mostly the ones likely to disrupt the relative peace too much or are general pieces of shit. For example, genocidal maniacs, and the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. From what I’ve heard, there is a special place in hell for those two to suffer. Plus, demons can come to earth, whereas the angels are trapped in heaven from the second they step foot in there by the guardian angels and the border guards.” I rambled on, forgetting who I was talking to, and the fact that most readers and listeners prefer to have shorter paragraphs.

“Wow,” they said once they managed to recover from the information overload, “So, technically I was right about the role reversal.”

“I guess.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to introduce myself, I’m…” they started before I cut in.

“Ruby-May Johnson, but you prefer to be called Bee. You are 30 years old, and have been single all of your life. You were born on the 19th of May, which is likely where your double-barrelled name came from. You are an extrovert and sister to Lily August Johnson-Kennedy, who died in the attack.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Your passport says a lot. The rest are assumptions from watching and listening to you before, I had nothing better to do, so I watched you.”

“Right, OK. You still not willing to tell me about you?”

“Nope.”

“Alright. What should I call you and refer to you by? I’ll go first. I’m a demigirl, I like she and they pronouns, but prefer they to she. With relationship terms, I prefer the gender neutral terms, but I’m still fine with the female ones.”

“Ok Bee. Try not to refer to me. Nobody else knows I exist, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. If you have to use she/her or you’ll get she/hurt. If you need me, use Spectre. Everyone else does.”

“Thank you Spectre.”

“It’s late, sleep now.”

“No, I wanna know more.”

“No,” I announced, forcing them into their bed, “I refuse to tell you any more until you have slept.”

“Fine, but only because you leave me no choice,” they agreed begrudgingly, “Good night.”

“Good night,” I replied, making myself invisible to all- including veil-seers- and turning off the lights.

“Wait! Please stay until I fall asleep. And, can you turn the light back on.” I heard, their voice cracking slightly.

I made myself visible, flicking on the lights before inquiring, “Autophobia, nyctophobia or somniphobia?”

“A bit of all of them.”

“Ok, I’ll stay. I’m pretty sure in the bottom draw of the dresser, there is a night light if you want it.”

“Really? And yes, thank you.” They climbed out of bed, making their way towards the dresser grabbing the night light and pushing it into the wall. It illuminated the room nicely, I remembered that from when I had to use it. I simply answered her first question: “Yeah, I know what it’s like. Now, sleep. You are safe as long as I’m here- I will be watching you and making sure you don’t get hurt.”

“Thank you.” Bee whispered, closing their eyes and falling asleep.

“Sweet dreams. I hope.”

The second they fell asleep I turned invisible and ventured as far out of the room I was able to go. Here, the barrier between the possessed areas of the world were thinner, allowing me to talk with the nearest spirit to me. Or at least, what I believed must be the nearest spirit. And he probably wasn’t actually a ghost, but good enough for me. I called out to him, knowing he would most likely be there. “Ashton, are you able to talk?”

“Yeah, sure, nice to talk to you again Spectre. How long has it been? A month or two at least. Anyway, what did you need?”

“What, no, I don’t need anything,” I said. You know, like a liar.

“You only talk to me if you need something, whether information or more physical, you cannot fool me.”

“Fine. I managed to somehow end up with a veil-crosser.”

“Seriously? Cool. How did you manage that?”

“I called an ambulance.”

“You know we’re not meant to interfere.”

“It was them, they struck again. I couldn’t let it happen again.”

“I understand, but you still know the rules. If anyone found out you’d be doomed to stay there forever, unable to interfere anymore. You’re lucky that I’d be a hypocrite to tell them, if I was anybody else…”

“I know. And I need help. What can they do that I need to know about, and what do I need to teach them?”

“Firstly, you need to teach them about all of the aspects of death.”

“How am I meant to do that when I don’t know all of them myself? You refused to tell me more than angels, demons, ghosts and veil-breakers.”

“There are more, I’ll get my human to take the book to your room, and see if I can get him to talk to them, and teach them a bit. As for abilities, they depend on the person, you just need to wait for them to figure it out themselves. They only find them when they need them the most. It works on instinct, don’t force it.”

“Ok, thank you. It should be helpful. How are you getting on with yours?”

“Turns out he can give us temporary physical forms.”

“Is that how I could call the ambulance? Usually I can’t touch anything.”

“Probably.”

“Tell him thanks, if it was him. Also how is the asking out thing going?”

“Badly, I have tried so many times and it never worked. He’s just really oblivious.”

“Himbo?”

“Yes.”

“Ask him out straight. Well, since you’re gay, it wouldn’t be straight, but you know what I mean. Tell him outright that you want to date him.”

“I’ll try.”

“Keep me updated, I want to know if he accepts.”

“I will. I suppose I’ll speak to you later then?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Bye then.”

“Goodbye.”

I stayed in the bathroom a few minutes before making my way back into the bedroom. The first thing I noticed was that they were still asleep. “Good.” I thought, “At least they won’t be sleep deprived.” Then I noticed it- the door was ajar a crack. “Strange.” I thought. “I was sure I made them lock it.” That’s when I saw it. A singular eye, peering at them through the door, filled with a malicious intent I noticed instantaneously. I shivered. Bright blue with red streaks running through it- easily distinguishable and recognisable. It was the same eye I had seen 1 month ago, and again 10 years ago. They were back to finish the job. Gently, I used whatever power I could muster to push the door closed and lock it, leaning on it to make sure they couldn’t get in- I knew whoever it was had the keys. Quickly I remembered something Ashton had given me a while ago in case of a situation like this. Carefully, I fished a small silver charm with wood beads in white and yellow out of my pocket, and tied it around the door handle. Hoping it would work, I stepped away form the door. Their key turned in the lock, unlocking it again. I prepared for the worst, standing by the telephone- next to the door in case I could apprehend them.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!” screamed the door as they tried to force their way through the door, quickly realising it wouldn’t open by the handle, after trying the key in the lock a few times. Despite it being just wood, they were failing miserably. Glad to know Ashton’s charm worked. For he believed it was a protection spell, given to him by a god looking like a crow, but at the same time, he could tell it wasn’t really a crow. Why wouldn’t a god choose a crow to parade around as- I mean, it’s jet black, sleek and pretty, and supposedly very clever. As I always say, who am I to judge? At least I knew the charm worked, and we had something to protect us until I could convince Bee to but some more security stuff for the doors and windows- especially the hinges that have a pin to lock them so it doesn’t pivot. Those would be a godsend. Then we’d only have to worry about the strength of the glass and the door- easily fixable with the charm. With that plan set, I sat in the corner, next to the bed, and with a clear view of the door. I sat, planning out a security plan for next time, before eventually losing consciousness- something I didn’t know ghosts could do.

[kanarikadelak1996]

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Can Separation Help Save A Marriage

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Is your spouse is an unsure time but, you can apply the same mistakes a lot of hard work.If you are serious about wanting to leave, it won't be any problem and hence both parties feel that as a second time.Problem is part of a divorce and family that they make will have some individuals difficulty locating a pastor can be quite traumatic and for all, are you can get the pulse of the effects that are available on the list.It is like banging your head against a brick wall.Once you have got out of control is often difficult for both of you a lot.

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Thinking Like a Craftsman

Dedicated to the ideas of libertarian communism, libcom.org is a website that pursues the “political expression of the ever-present strands of co-operation and solidarity.” In March 2009 a contributor posting under the alias “Kambing” ventures the interesting thought that “the artisan” may qualify as “a rather attractive concept for a post-capitalist subject—it certainly beats the bourgeois star artist or proletarianized designer as a way of organizing creative activity.” However, “Kambing” continues, the concept of the artisan is at the same timedoomed as an attempt to overcome capitalism, as it can be so easily drawn back into capitalist processes of accumulation and dispossession. This is precisely the problem with a lot of autonomist (and anarchist) strategies for resistance or “exodus”—including some forms of anarcho-syndicalism.5This skepticism is only too familiar by now—any candidate put forward for the new revolutionary subject will be quickly rendered inappropriate, deficient, co-optable. The reasons for such pre-emptive skepticism, popular even among the most hard-line autonomists, anarchists, or anarcho-syndicalists, are manifold. However, a central argument for this co-optation is linked to the awe-inspiring malleability and adaptability of capitalism as such, accompanied by post-political renderings of “democracy,” helpful in reducing politics “to the negotiation of private interests,” as Slavoj Žižek puts it in his discussion of what he considers to be a symptomatic proximity between contemporary biopolitical capitalism and the post-operaist productivity of the multitude: “But what if, in a parallax shift, we perceive the capitalist network itself as the true excess over the flow of the productive multitude?”6The Fable of the Hedgehog and the Hare.The structure of the argument has been so thoroughly rehearsed in past decades that it has assumed a somewhat mythical truth. Capitalism is the shape-shifting creature-beast always already ahead and above—regardless of which revolutionary force tries to overthrow or subvert it—as it continually vampirizes any signs of resistance. It may be necessary to deploy the perceptual model of the parallax, as Žižek does, in order to maintain the structurally paranoiac—if absolutely legitimate—belief in capitalism’s shrewdness, which sometimes seems to resemble the clever hedgehog family in the Grimms’ fairytale “The Hare and the Hedgehog.” Its remarkable ability to re-invent itself and stay alive even as the current full-fledged crisis in interlinked systems of state and corporate capitalism turn capitalism-as-such into a transcendent miracle and/or metaphysical force with increasingly violent repercussions on the ground, with its most recent turn being the recruitment of state and legal powers. Referring to Carlo Vercellone’s 2006 book Capitalismo cognitivo, Žižek points to how profit becomes rent in postindustrial capitalism.7 The more capitalism behaves in “de-regulatory, ‘anti-statal,’ nomadic, deterritorializing” fashions, the more it “relies on increasingly authoritarian interventions of the state and its legal and other apparatuses.”8 While the “general intellect” in reality doesn’t appear to be that “general” or shared—with the products of the innumerable and increasingly dispersed multitudes becoming copyrighted, commoditized, and legally encapsulated as part of the accumulation of wealth by way of “rent”—the unity of the proletariat has split into three parts, following Žižek’s Hegelian idea of the future: white-collar “intellectual laborers,” blue-collar “old manual working class,” and the “outcasts (the unemployed, those living in slums and other interstices of public space).”9 Any possibility of solidarity amongst these factions appears to have been foreclosed, and in many respects the separation seems absolute. The liberal-multicultural self-image of the cognitive workforce doesn’t rhyme particularly well with the populist, nationalist position of the “old” working class, and both are further ostracized by the unruliness, illegality, and poverty of the outcasts who alienate white collar workers and blue collar workers alike, as they seem to indicate through their fate how imperiled their remaining privileges of citizenship may be.But Žižek’s Hegelian triad of postindustrial proletarian factions is debatable. The identities (intellectual laborers, working class, outcasts) are much too unstable, much too fluid and transient for a theorization of the (im)possibilities of overcoming capitalism. And it remains doubtful whether their insertion into the discourse provides more than a paralysis characterized by deadlock, tribal oppositions, and endless desolidarity.In fact, these and other identities shift according to (but also against) the self-transformation of capitalist institutions enabled by various neutralizations and recuperations. And these self-transformations entail wars of position, to use Gramsci’s term. As Chantal Mouffe put it a few years ago in pre-9/11, pessimism-of-the-intellect/optimism-of-the-will style: “although it might become worse, it might also become better.”10 Even Žižek—who has always endorsed a strong idea of capitalism, evincing a certain obsession with the task of proving capitalism’s fascinating, horrifying, and stupefying superiority as one that could only be seriously challenged by a return to the Leninist act—is himself looking for other actors and different processes now. Currently, his hope lies with the hopeless, the people fooled and victimized by “the whole drift of history”—in other words, the very “outcasts” from the proletarian triad mentioned above, those who are forced into improvisation, informality, clandestinity, as this is supposedly all they are left with in a “desperate situation.”11To rely on the desperation of others for one’s own idea of a successful insurrection is of course deeply romantic and utopian. Žižek may be right in asserting that waiting for the Revolution to be undertaken by others has been the fundamental error of too many leftists. However, would he count himself or anyone in his vicinity to be “desperate” enough to act, especially in a spirit of voluntarism and experimentation that would effectively dissolve the constraints of “freedom” as it is granted by neoliberalism?The “artisan” evoked by “Kambing,” though immediately disregarded as allegedly “doomed” to fail in the face of capitalism like so many others, may be an interesting figure to reconsider here—less out of interest in revolutionary politics than in envisioning alternate ways of organizing “creative activity” to replace and/or evade capitalist modes of production. As Raqs Media Collective have pointed out in their essay “Stubborn Structures and Insistent Seepage in a Networked World,” the figure of the artisan arrived historically before the worker and the artist, before “the drone and the genius,” while it enabled the “transfiguration of people into skills, of lives into working lives, into variable capital.”12 “The artisan,” Raqs claim, “is the vehicle that carried us all into the contemporary world.” However, after the artisan’s role in “making and trading things and knowledge” had been replaced by those of the worker and the artist, by the ubiquity of the commodity and the rarity of the art object, the artisan now seems to be returning, but in different guises—the migrant imbued with all kinds of tactical knowledges, the electronic pirate, or the neo-luddite, many of whom are immaterial laborers, pursuing processes of “imagining, understanding, and invoking a world, mimesis, projection and verisimilitude as well as the skillful deployment of a combination of reality and representation.”Interestingly (and similarly), “Kambing” distinguishes the “artisan” from the “bourgeois star artist” and the “proletarianized designer.” However, one may also imagine these distinct figures aligning—with each other and with others beyond themselves. These alignments or fusions would depend on an ability and a willingness to recognize and accept difference and diversity not only in one’s own social surroundings, but also within oneself as a subject. To acknowledge the fact that one may simultaneously inhabit more than one identity leads almost inevitably to co-operation with others that would go beyond the model of the homogeneous community.But, in Capital, Marx is highly skeptical of “co-operation” as a way out of capitalism: “Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production.” Its power isdeveloped gratuitously whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions and it is capital that places them under such conditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital is endowed by Nature—a productive power that is immanent in capital.13A standardized bumper had been installed at the end of each car stall. It looked sleek, but the lower edge of each bumper was sharp metal, liable to scratch cars or calves. Some bumpers, though, had been turned back, on site, for safety. The irregularity of the turning showed that the job had been done manually, the steel smoothed and rounded wherever it might be unsafe to touch; the craftsman had thought for the architect.14The labor of modifying and repairing the work of others is certainly not groundbreaking in terms of anti-capitalist struggle per se. However, the physical skills, the attitude of care and circumspection, the inscription of a hand that performs “responsible” gestures, and so forth, all engender a shared authorship—in this case a cooperation between the absent architect’s and/or construction company’s work and the subsequent, careful labor of detecting and correcting the building’s design problems. This cooperation is neither contractually negotiated nor socially expected, but instead results from a specific situation in which a problem called for a solution. It is inseparable from local conditions and constraints, and should not be taken as a model for action. Yet, on other hand, it is intriguing, as it displays relationalities within material-social practices that usually remain unnoticed, and whose resourcefulness is thus overlooked.Paris scene with a goldsmith's shop , detail of a miniature from "La Vie de St Denis", 1317. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.In some respects Sennett’s concept of “thinking like craftsmen” resembles a definition of “design” that Bruno Latour introduced the same year The Craftsman was published. Speaking at a conference held by the Design History Society in Cornwall, Latour differentiated “design” from the concepts of building or constructing. The process of designing, according to Latour, is marked by a certain semantic modesty—it is always a retroactive, never foundational, action, always re-design, and hence “post-Promethean.” Furthermore, the concept of design emphasizes the dimension of (manual, technical) abilities, of “skills,” which suggests a more cautious and precautionary (not directly tied to making and producing) engagement with problems on an increasingly larger scale (as with climate change). Then, too, design as a practice that engenders meaning and calls for interpretation thus tends to transform objects into things—irreducible to their status as facts or matter, being instead inhabited by causes, issues, and, more generally, semiotic skills. And finally, following Latour, design is inconceivable without an ethical dimension, without the distinction between good design and bad design—which also always renders design negotiable and controvertible.15 Here, at this site of dispute and negotiation, especially on an occasion in which the activity of design is “the whole fabric of our earthly existence,” Latour finds “a completely new political territory” opening up.16