#no one tempt me to do an analysis of this line specifically because i fucking WILL. that’s a threat.

[sunriseverse]

literally constantly i go insane over the exchange hxz and wx have where wx says 我的心早就不会动了 RIGHT AFTER hxz says his own heart isn’t like those of the zhang clan. choices were made there and they make me violent.

[itsdanii]

i loved the rejecting and regretting series!! could you do one with akaashi and osamu? thanks again!!

Hey, bub. Thank you so much for requesting. I'm happy that you're loving my works, it makes my heart soft 😭♥️ Here's your request! I hope you have a good day and stay hydrated. Mwah!

Rejecting you and regretting it pt. 5

genre: angst to fluff

warnings: rude behavior (resolved), cursing

a/n: Do read the warnings before you proceed. Warnings have been put there for a reason.

ft. akaashi keiji, osamu miya

Title says it all

Akaashi Keiji

With your grades in literature almost at the brink of destruction, you had to swallow your pride and ask one of your classmates to tutor you

While you're the best in most subject areas, you sucked when it comes to literature

You didn't see the point of studying articles, analyzing literary pieces and using poetic words

But for the sake of graduating, you had to take the subject

But it seemed like the subject hated you just as much as you hated it

And so, one afternoon, you slammed a limited edition book you knew Akaashi, your classmate and your crush, liked on his desk and stared at him with pleading eyes as you begged him to tutor you

At first, he rejected the offer, opting to pat your head before leaving the classroom

But you were persistent

It wasn't long then when he started taking pity on you

All your papers had red marks in them and everytime there was a test, you would stare blankly at your paper and jot down nonsense ideas

At the sight of you in the  brink of tears, Akaashi sighed and decided to help, given that you have to focus and not do random stuff during your sessions

And that's how you found yourself in this current situation - hand holding the pen tightly, your eyes focused on the man in front of you instead of the story analysis he's explaining, and your heart beating as if you just finished a 5km run

"Are you even listening?"

You blinked your eyes at him and smiled sheepishly before scratching the back of your head. You knew that a small blush was probably visible on your cheeks now but of course, you had to play it cool.

"Of course," you said with a confident nod. "You were uh, talking about young love."

Akaashi rose an eyebrow at your answer as if challenging you to elaborate.

"The main character was in love with the guy... and the guy doesn't like her? And she-" you paused for a moment and grabbed the book you were reading, eyes scanning between the lines before continuing your probably wrong answer. "She died?"

With a sigh, Akaashi stood up and sat beside you, your elbows pressing against each other as he leaned down to write something on your book.

"Okay, first and foremost, she didn't die. She left. This part here-"

As he continued explaining, you felt yourself getting lost once again. Your eyes scanned over his features, taking notice of how long his lashes were and how flawless his skin was that you were almost tempted to caress it. His scent surrounded you for being too close which tempted you to shut your eyes.

"I like you," you blurted out unconsciously.

The both of you froze as soon as the words escaped your lips, eyes widening and lips parting as you stared at each other with shocked expressions.

Fuck.

Aaashi, who was the first to compose himself, cleared his throat before sitting upright. "Y/n-san, I'm really flattered by your infatuation but you do know that I'm only here to tutor you, right? We agreed to focus. We're supposed to be studying, not flirting with each other."

"I know but..."

"I can't accept your confession, I'm sorry," Akaashi said before sighing. "How about we end this session already? I don't want your mind wandering while I talk here knowing that you're out of focus."

You immediately shook your head no. "It's okay, Keiji. You don't have to like me back, you know? Just let me like you. You can just pretend that nothing happened. I promise I won't do anything that'll make you feel uncomfortable."

Despite your facade, Akaashi knew that you were forcing yourself to act unbothered. It wasn't really hard to figure you out. Like a book, he could read you within seconds and know exactly what you were thinking and how you were feeling, and at this moment, he knew that you were just pretending.

For the sake of not making you feel uncomfortable and guilty, Akaashi nodded before continuing his explanation regarding the story.

Surprisingly, you stayed true to your words. You didn't say anything out of the line nor forced your confession to him. Akaashi admired you for that since most of the girls whom asked him for help from the past were only after his looks and the sake of getting in his pants.

As your session came to an end, you stretched your arms out. You released a breath of relief before smiling at him. "Thank you so much for teaching me, and I'm sorry for taking so much of your time."

You started keeping your things and piling up the books you're going to borrow from the library. Standing up, you gave him a small bow before grabbing your bag. "I'll see you around then?"

Akaashi just nodded and watched as you made your way out of the library, not knowing how hard you were gripping the books you had in your hand.

That night, you cried your eyes out. Sure, at your age, it may seem childish to cry over someone, but this was Akaashi we're talking about.

The Akaashi Keiji.

The one whom you've liked ever since your first year in college. The one you've liked the moment you saw him sleeping inside a nearly empty library, several cups of coffee and littered paper surrounding his table as if he had been studying the whole night. The one who never noticed you but you never failed to notice.

Your Akaashi, or at least in your dreams, he was yours.

You stared at the now empty tub of icecream on your lap and sniffled. Grabbing another roll of tissue, you began to wipe your tears and your runny nose before playing another cliche romance movie to soothe your broken heart.

-

Your study sessions with Akaashi continued for a couple more weeks but unlike your previous meetings, you weren't as enthusiastic.

You were focused and attentive, but it just wasn't the same. Akaashi noticed how you would try to put a bit of distance between the two of you, how you would avoid looking at him in the eye, and how you avoided touching him.

But what he noticed the most, were your swollen eyes the day after you confessed to him. He knew that there was only a 50% chance that it was because of how you were rejected by him, and yet he felt an immense feeling of regret. The moment he saw you, he realized that he never wanted to see you like that again.

But he didn't know how to approach you. No, you didn't ignore him like the other girls do. You also didn't say any nasty remarks nor talk shit about him.

What you did was pretend as if everything was okay, as if nothing happened. It felt normal... too normal.

And it terrified him.

One time during your break, you slipped a test paper in front of him, a big A+ written on the sheet of paper making Akaashi lift his eyes from the paper towards you.

"You did good," Akashi said with a proud smile.

"Mhm, I guess I did," you said before taking the paper from him. "I wouldn't have gotten this score if it weren't for you though. Thank you."

He shook his head no before leaning back on his chair. "That was all on you. All I did was guide you."

"This might be our last study session."

"What?" Akaashi said as he stared at you with an expression you can't quite decipher.

"I mean... I don't think I need any more help. I feel like I can manage on my own already and I've no one to thank but you." You looked away from him before continuing, "I think it would benefit the two of us if we stop this already. While I'm grateful for you, I don't think that it's good for me anymore. I thought that if I acted like it didn't matter then it wouldn't, but Keiji..."

"No," Akashi said with a shake of his head.

"What do you.."

"I don't want to stop this." Gripping his hair, Akaashi, took in a deep breath before reaching for your hand.

"Y/n, I don't want to go back to how things were before. I don't want to be just your classmate. I'll miss how you would stare off into space and daydream while I'm explaining to you and I'm going to miss how you would make up answers just to prove that you were listening when in fact you weren't. I'm going to miss you, and I know that if we stop this study sessions... I may never get the opportunity to be this close to you again, and I don't like that."

Akaashi squeezed your hand in his and intertwined your fingers. "I like you. I like you so much that it scares me."

"Keiji.. look at me, please," you said softly as you tried to take your hand back.

Feeling your movements, Akaashi tightened his hold on you and shook his head no. "Y/n..."

"I'm not going to leave," you assured him and smiled when he finally let go of your hand.

Akaashi watched as you stood up from your seat and made your way to his side. He was then surprised when you suddenly sat on his lap and wrapped your arms around him.

"Did you really mean what you said?" you asked which made him immediately nod.

"Of course. I really do like you." Akaashi carefully wrapped his arms around your waist, watching for any negative reaction, and pulling you closer when he didn't receive any. "You're sitting on my lap and basically hugging me. Does this mean that you still like me?"

"Of course, Keiji," you said with a smile.

"Then..." Akaashi collected your hair to one side and gently placed his hand on your nape, his eyes traveling down from your eyes to your lips. "Can I kiss you?"

With a simple nod from you, Akaashi pressed his lips against yours.

a/n: yes, you made out in the library. This is Akaashi were talking about and there's no way I wont take the opportunity to make out with him in the library lmao.

Osamu Miya

You were one of the lucky fans of the Miya twins, specifically Osamu's

Why? Because you're Aran Ojiro's sister and that meant that you can freely see your crush any time of the day

The team basically treats you as their own sister

Although it gives you a lot of perks, it also had its disadvantages

Because no matter how much you try hinting your feelings towards a certain Miya, he just won't acknowledge it

In fact, you didn't get along with him

Unlike the rest of the team, Osamu would always pick on you

You actually didn't expect it to happen because you thought that Atsumu was the playful one among them

But boy did Osamu prove you wrong

There weren't any time of the day that you won't pick at each other, spouting remarks here and there until the other gives up

It never went overboard though. You both knew your limits and when to stop

Or at least that's what you thought

Because today, he chose to target the wrong topic

You were currently seated in the middle of the court with the rest of the team. All of you were in the form of a circle with an empty bottle in the middle.

It was Atsumu's idea to play a game of truth or dare before you all go home. According to him, it would be effective on "cooling" off their bodies from the intense practice. Even Kita was forced to participate, thanks to Atsumu's constant whining.

With a wide grin, Atsumu spun the bottle which made most of you take in a deep breath due to the anticipation.

Finally, the bottle stopped. The tip was pointed at you while the other side was pointed towards Atsumu.

"Y/n! How lucky of ya! Truth or dare?" he asked with a wiggle of his brows.

"Truth." You couldn't help but roll your eyes after that, knowing that what's to come will probably be something silly.

Except it wasn't.

"Then... If yer given the chance to date someone from the team, who would it be?" Atsumu asked proudly, giving Osamu a side glance before focusing on you again.

You heard your brother groaning from beside you making you giggle. Placing his arm on top of your head, Aran gave each of the members a glare.

"Hm... I'd probably date 'S-"

Before you could even finish your sentence, Osamu let out a loud chuckle. All eyes snapped to his direction, watching him in confusion.

"Sorry, sorry," Osamu said after composing himself. "Did ya really have to ask that? Of course she'd pick Suna. Haven't ya notice the way she looks at him every practice?"

"Huh?" Suna muttered absentmindedly, his eyes lifting up from his phone towards Osamu.

"Don't even try denying it, y/n. Plus, even if ya try, I know Suna will basically reject ya. I mean, I can't even stand ya. If it were me, I'd reject ya on the spot. Yer annoying and too loud and that thing ya do with yer hand when yer explaining? Super annoying. Ah! And don't ferget the way yer nose scrunches when yer deep in thought," Osamu said without any pause.

Once he was done, he titled his head a bit to the side, trying to peek at your face that was now casted downwards, your hair covering most of your face. "Oh, are ya crying? Did I ruin yer confession?"

To his surprise, there were indeed tears streaming down your cheeks when you lifted your head up. Everyone grew silent, completely shocked at the sight.

"I was going to confess to you, dumbass." With that, you stood up, grabbed your bag and ran out of the gym.

Aran immediately stood up to follow you, but not before throwing a glare to Osamu.

Atsumu, who was the first to break the silence, turned towards his twin. "Okay, I know that I'm dumber among the two of us but that was a real jerk move right there, 'Samu."

Osamu could only stare at the gym doors with shock and regret written on his face.

"You're on the bench until I'm sure that you and y/n-san made up," Kita simply said before standing up. "Game's over. Let's all go home."

-

The following days, you avoided Osamu like a plague. It even reached the point that you have to eat lunch inside your classroom instead of eating with the team like you usually do.

Even Aran was pissed at Osamu. Aran knew that a playful banter was normal between you and Osamu but never had it ever reached this point.

You were basically crying all night when you arrived home and if not for Aran's patience, you wouldn't have went home in the first place. When you left the gym, your brother found you in a nearby park, your knees up to your chest and your head hidden from view.

He wasn't oblivious about your feelings towards Osamu but he never mentioned about since he wanted you to tell him or any of the members when you're comfortable enough. It was only unfortunate that the moment you felt confident enough to confess, Osamu had to pull that shit on you.

"C'mon, Aran. I need to talk to them," Osamu pleaded as he tried to get pass your brother.

Aran stood firmly infront of your apartment, his arms crossed over his chest and his figure blocking the door. "You really have the audacity to march your way to our apartment after the shit you put my sibling through? What, you got tired of sitting on the bench during matches? Can't impress your fanclub anymore? Go home, Miya."

"I'm sorry, okay? I wanted to apologize to them but they've been avoiding me. This is my last resort." Osamu said and gripped his hair in frustration.

Once he saw a peek of you trying to hide yourself behind a wall, Osamu immediately grabbed the opportunity. "Y/n, I'm sorry! Talk to me, please!  I... I don't know what to do anymore. I'm sorry..."

You soften at the pleading voice of Osamu and revealed yourself from behind the wall. Walking over to the door, you placed a hand on Aran's shoulder. "Give us space to talk, please?"

Your brother threw a glance at Osamu and sighed at the determined look on his face. "Alright," he muttered before turning towards you. "Call me if anything happens, alright?"

Upon hearing you hum in agreement, Aran placed a hand on your head to ruffle your hair, chuckling as he heard you whining before he went out.

You invited Osamu inside your apartment, making sure to close the door before settling yourselves on the living room.

"Water?" you asked out of courtesy but Osamu only shook his head no. "Talk then."

Osamu felt an unsettling feeling inside him at your dismissive tone. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"I was used to havin' banters with ya that I didn't realize that I was already sayin' too much. I didn't mean to hurt yer feelings, y/n. I know that it may sound ridiculous considerin' how harsh I was to ya but I really didn't mean those words."

You listened attentively to him as he continued to apologize, your tears once again flowing down your cheeks as you remembered everything that happened. "I really like you, 'Samu. I don't even know how or why but I just do and I guess I was hurt, not only because you rejected me but also humiliated me. I don't deserve that," you said and brought your knees up to your chest, clutching the throw blanket as you sobbed.

Osamu was beside you in an instant, his arms enclosing you as he pulled you to his lap. "I know...I know. I'm sorry," he whispered as he rubbed your back soothingly. "I guess I got blinded by jealousy. I thought that ya were going to say Suna's name so I assumed that ya like him."

Wiping your nose with the sleeve of the hoodie you're wearing, you looked up at him with a frown. "Jealousy? I thought you hated me. Why would you even feel jealous?"

"Do I really have to spell it out fer ya?" Seeing you nod, Osamu sighed and pressed your face to his chest in order to hide his flustered cheeks. "I like ya, okay? I always pick on ya because I wanted yer attention. I didn't actually expect ya to fight back but ya did. That's why I was intrigued by ya, and if ya still like m-"

"Yes," you answered without even letting him finish. With your face still buried to his chest, you could hear his heartbeat picking up. You pulled away from the hug and looked up at him, you cheeks still slightly damp from crying.

"Yer not kiddin'?" Osamu asked as he stared at you, his hand reaching up to wipe your cheeks with his thumb.

"I'm not. I'm still a little hurt so you have to make it up to me, but my feelings? They're still here," you answered honestly.

A smile made its way to Osamu's lips upon hearing what you said. Pressing his forehead with yours, he tightened his arms around your waist to hold you closer. "Thank ya fer givin' me another chance, angel."

After making up and stealing kisses here and there, you and Osamu decided to cuddle on the couch, your back against his chest and his arm resting against your waist.

It safe to say that when Aran came back, the most sour expression made its way to his face. It hadn't even been two weeks when he witnessed you literally crying your eyes out and now, he comes back to you sleeping on the couch with the man that made you cry.

"Fuck my life," Aran muttered with a groan.

Likes, comments and reblogs are appreciated ♥️

[subwalls]

Tales from the SMP Presents: The Haunted Mansion

An ongoing exploration of how the Inbetween drives my Kingdom Hearts brain crazy with paranoia! Less of an analysis this time, because we got confirmation (VALIDATION!!), and more of speculation, but yeah!

First of all! I was right not to trust this fucker.

Just kidding, that’s not the first thing we’re gonna talk about here. First of all, a gentle recap!

As I’ve mentioned before, the Inbetween has some uncanny resemblance to the Kingdom Hearts world known as Castle Oblivion. Castle Oblivion is known for being the place where the main series protagonist lost all of his memories, and even had false memories implanted while he was getting deeper and deeper into it. 

You might be curious as to how the Kingdom Hearts protagonist escapes.

He doesn’t.

He needs outside help, and a lot of it, to get him out of that situation. Even then, it takes a whole year. He drove his own heart into the bottom of the abyss in his desperation to save someone he was tricked into thinking he knew, and he didn’t even regret it, because he was saving someone.

... A lot of people on Dream SMP have different ideas on what it means to save people.

Also, the castle also had a very plot-twisty secret where it used to be the lush and wonderful home of these three friends before they fell apart; one was lost to the Evil Dark Side™ (not real name), the other was trapped in the Realm of Darkness (real name), and the last one fell into a coma for TEN (10) YEARS and his body was left to be protected in the heart of the land, which was then locked and turned into Castle Oblivion.

So, pretty fucked up place! Not inherently evil, but the place of great misfortune and just... not very good for everyone there.

Let’s start at the beginning!

Welcome back indeed. Take notice of the wither rose in the pot, by the way, I’ll come back to this in a bit.

The first thing that stands out to me on this page is the smiley face, of course. It’s not the ever-iconic, ever-evil “:)”, but it’s similar enough that I think the callback is intentional. The smiley is c!Dream’s icon, of course, which... honestly makes me think that “:]” might be DreamXD, but that might be because I’m very very biased for the server god who simps for a dangerously apathetic cottagecore once-king.

Of course, it does also look kind of like Quackity’s face, and cc!Quackity has said something about big lore coming for him, but until further evidence is presented I’m disinclined to draw a connection there.

The Inbetween, as we’ve come to know the author of some of these books to be, being happy that Karl is continuing—it reminds me of the KH protagonist being told yes, good job, keep going, as he stumbles deeper and deeper into the castle that strips away memory after memory from his heart. Why does the Inbetween think that Karl’s time travel is important, his careful documentation of every story? Is it because the more he does it, the more he becomes attached? The more he becomes reliant on the Inbetween to feed the missing pieces of his memory?

Is it because the Inbetween, in parallel to c!Dream and c!Wilbur, prioritize the concept of story over the characters?

Things to think about. 🤔

Also kind of interesting that the Inbetween thinks Karl will eventually uncover “all [he] needs to”, which continues to make me think that the more c!Karl comes to the Inbetween the more he becomes... either dependent or over-trusting of it. Not sure. But weird things happen when it’s magic that tampers with memories, rather than trauma.

Basically, I’m getting “there is no war in Ba Sing Se” vibes.

The book continues to say that Karl probably has a lot of questions and that it would love to answer :] but never actually does. It’s trying to come off as helpful without actually being helpful. All it does is tempt him with the prospect of answers, and then draws him in deeper. “Continue onward, Karl.” But why?

Another wither rose pot.

Sidestepping the very innocuous, very surface-level information offered here (because that’s it, it’s nothing about the workings about the Inbetween, it’s just a little sweet carrot to distract with), I cannot even begin to convey the absolute terror that consumed me at the word “sleepy.”

I mentioned earlier that one of the original characters who lived in the land that would become Castle Oblivion went into a coma, right? But it’s more commonly referred to as sleeping. The game is even called “Birth by Sleep”, and there’s a whole thing about trying to get him to “wake up”. So the idea that time travel can take something out of the traveller that makes them tired, the idea that there is one specific room for sleeping quarters within the Inbetween, paired with that not-quite-right smiley face—I am traumatized, I tell you.

Yes it could be a “haha look what I did with the sentence, because day is a form of time and they time travel so long day is a funny term” kind of smiley, but. Kingdom Hearts has trained me to be suspicious of any talk of sleep.

There’s something just mildly unsettling about the way it continues, with the references to the “many Karls” and the “many many great stories” that sounds borderline condescending.

And now we get the, uh, “other” author. Notice how this one actually did not have a corresponding wither rose in a pot. I’m starting to think that the flower might actually be an indicator of the not-this-author-pictured-above, the probably-Inbetween-itself, so the fact that this book was found separately from a wither rose pot and it was tucked away under a tree... A tree, under which c!Karl will later find a bit of a refuge... yeah, different author. Or at least an author from a different time.

I’ll elaborate in a moment, but I do think that there’s three (3) mindsets/authors happening here: the sickly sweet Inbetween pretending to be good, the person trying to get c!Karl to distrust the Inbetween, and... someone who desperately wants c!Karl to stay in line.

This is the third... I don’t want to say author, because it too has the wither rose pot and is trying to keep c!Karl playing along with the Inbetween, but it’s much less coherent and much more desperate.

No “:]”, either.

Some possibilities I’m considering:

the Inbetween, but it’s like, a security subroutine or a glitch in the system,

the Inbetween, but it’s from a future wherein c!Karl has fucked it up to the point of desperation,

Karl / the other author, but it’s from a future, where trying to stray from the Inbetween resulted in something traumatic happening and they don’t want it to happen anymore.

Some fun possibilities to keep in mind. Anyway!

Ooh, the return of the wither rose pot.

For this part, the only thing I really have to say is that the repetition of the Inbetween trying to present itself as “a place to feel at ease” is... Well, as the lovely Fear has said in this post linked here, a place that tries and makes itself seem safe probably isn’t, because a genuinely safe place wouldn’t need to announce it all the time.

Very much sounding like a Ba Sing Se thing.

More importantly, the book actually says that it’s “wild” how the Inbetween is “so beautiful that even time travellers who go anywhere at anytime ever and they still choose here” with a good old “:]” tacked on at the end. That’s... that’s not just me thinking like that sounds kind of threatening, right? Like, time travellers can see anything anywhere, and they keep coming back to the Inbetween. Why?

Is it because they forget the beauty of anything else? Is it because it’s not beauty, but rather attachment and emotion that keeps someone going back to a place? If someone forgets their loved ones and precious things, then why would they go anywhere but the place where they’ve put all their stories?

Why did KH’s protagonist keep going deeper into Castle Oblivion even though he knew that the castle was taking apart his memories? Because he had one thing left: the fake, implanted memory, which told him that in order to save someone, he needed to push on no matter the personal cost.

So the real question is: are the time travellers coming back to the Inbetween because they want to, or because they no longer have a choice?

It regards all the different Karls with such... distant affection, too. “How beautiful,” it calls them, for wandering the blank halls with blank stares and blank hearts, none of which react to each other. It says that they “choose” to walk the halls, uncover mysteries, and tell stories. But what was the other choice? Was it really a choice at all?

Hmm.

Karl goes on to explore, and finds another book that does not have a wither rose pot, which tells him he has to go Under The Tree.mp3 and informs him that he “can’t afford not to”. Cool. Not ominous at all.

He finds another, which says the same thing.

Definitely not ominous. /s

The phrasing here is interesting, because it’s also phrased like a threat. Usually, when someone tells you that you “can’t afford not to”, you’re either looking at a scam or at the business end of a weapon. But the empty pages tell you that the author is trying to keep it down low. That’s one of the ways Minecraft players have found to express tone in the very limited form of Minecraft books, and it works splendidly.

Not to push my DreamXD agenda, but like... the door was iron. Iron doors are a weakness for Dreams and dreamons and, mayhaps, Dream’s dreamon.

I know it’s probably just because the iron door keeps in line with the color palette of the build but let me dream, alright.

Anyway, book content! And an interesting point of order: there is a wither rose pot. I said earlier that it might be an indicator of the Inbetween as an author, but that doesn’t make much sense now, does it? This is meant to be a place hidden from the “it” that I assume to be either the Inbetween itself or the one/s controlling it.

So why the wither rose pot inconsistency?

Unless it doesn’t mean that. Unless it’s just a metaphor for, say, memories withering away or something. Or maybe it’s just a pretty plant, for funsies! Who knows. If I had to guess, I’d say that (after much reflection) it’s likely less a mark of author and more a theme of, mm, memory status. The withering away of memories. It fits in with the Inbetween, because that’s what might be responsible for it, but the author/s of the book aren’t immune, either. They get blinks of clarity, with the hidden, tucked-away tomes, but they might not be completely free.

The next book, however, again lacks the wither rose pot. It might not be a coincidence that the one without the potential mark of a withering memory is the one that actually divulges some more information.

This book goes into slightly more detail about the warning, though not about whatever actual threat it is that the castle (which... Castle Oblivion, you know) presents.

It says that 1) it’s not what it seems, 2) the "truth about the other forms of you”, 3) this place “is not okay”, and 4) get in that portal we saw that was blocked off before.

We know that the Inbetween isn’t what it seems, but the “truth” about the other forms... Hm. This is, in fact, another Kingdom Hearts Thing. There’s a running joke that everyone on the very large cast of characters in KH that in the end, every person is actually either secretly a version of the antagonist (through possession or body splitting or whatever), or a version of the protagonist (through similar concepts). Multiple bodies and other forms is definitely a Thing in KH, though it’s not as oh-god-not-again definitely-bad as the sleeping thing.

I think the other forms have either become reliant on the Inbetween or have forgotten everything but the Inbetween, or both. Maybe more of the prior, since the warning is against trusting the place.

And, uh, this? Fucking terrifying. I love it to pieces.

Every single one of these books has a wither rose pot, and this is kind of why I think that the Inbetween or its master/s is, in some way, possibly functioning via routines and like... an AI. Or a genius loci kind of thing.

But good news, there aren’t 13 books, there are 14! This is important for Kingdom Hearts reasons, because Kingdom Hearts has a big thing about the numbers 13 and 7 (13 is the number of pieces of darkness, and 7 is the number of pieces of light, and this is equal somehow, don’t question it).

Now, 14 is an important meme number in the MCYT fandom, of course, but I don’t think it has terribly too much to do with the lore beyond a fun easter egg.

The books themselves trying to tell c!Karl to, essentially, go with the flow and the path that the Inbetween has set up for him is... something. I like the idea that it’s some future version of something trying to stop something from happening, but we all know it’s probably not going to work. Fun times.

And finally, this.

The Inbetween is a bit of a narcissist, huh? It won’t shut up about how it’s so pretty and irresistible and the whole definition of, like, a honey trap. Oh my god it even describes it as ~mysterious~ as a good trait, that’s hilarious.

More pertinently, it also calls the Inbetween “a time traveller’s dream”.

A time traveller’s. Dream.

Again, not to push my DreamXD agenda, BUT—

But! Getting back on track, the book expresses its eagerness to see Karl again, says their relationship is gonna be great, reminds him that his stories are important, and then tells him that he needs the Inbetween/author just like the SMP needs him.

Uh. He’s going to need the Inbetween?

Hello?

Why? How? So far it’s presented itself as being pretty and perfect but it never said anything about necessity! What’s going on!

Very much reminded of how Castle Oblivion was presented as “you need to keep going in even though it takes your memories away because there’s someone you need to save [fake but you don’t know that because you don’t remember anything]”, and I am afright.

Talk about subtle strings being tugged at here. I’m really seeing the beginning seeds of a dependency thing being sown, and if it weren’t for the side books painting giant neon warning signs everywhere, I don’t know if it would’ve caught on. An artificially cultivated concept of how important and great the Inbetween is, and don’t you just want to take all those stories from that messy world elsewhere but come back here in the end to take a break and exist and explore and oh, isn’t the Inbetween great, isn’t it wonderful?

Man, c!Dream wishes he was this good at subtle manipulation.

tldr; there are multiple authors trying to tug c!Karl in different directions via those books. The Kingdom Hearts parallels predict that his memory will be at stake, and he might not be able to escape without help.

[heyjude19-writing]

Im the list anon again and boy do I have more for you but this time I also have some questions as well if your time allows and you are willing to answer of course. First with the other things I loved:

1) the fact that Ron warmed up to Draco so quickly! I genuinely think thats so much in character. Ron is not a distrustful person and as a middle child as they come is very easygoing and would for sure make stupid jokes at Draco

2) The patronus. My god the Patronus. I seriously put the phone down and made a small slow clap during that chapter. At first I was like hmmmm *insert unsure kombucha girl face* because almost all fanfics have him with a dragon patronus and leave it at that (and lets be honest at this point my expectations of you were quite high dont blame me blame your bloody brilliant writing) but then, and I dont know if you did this on purpose or not (I have a feeling you did) but the fact that the dragon was the same (pale white) wounded but still feral dragon that Hermione FREEED (!) from a bank (£££) dungeon, malnourished and used for its nature, surrounded by darkness, wealth and misery!! And it was Hermione who broke its chains!!!!! Is just *chefs fucking kiss* slow clap*

3) the way you describe sex scenes are so natural! Ive never read a fanfic or book that doesnt make me gag a little bit (I am not a fan of smut at all but ill go with it because of a good story) until I read yours. Its so simple but yet intricate and you make the entire act so intriguing and normal and intimate. Bravo.

4) I LOVE SASHA. I love that Theo fell for her head over heels and the way you portrayd her reminded me of a friend of mine who works as a sous-chef in London so I always pictured her when reading it!

5) Dracos inner voice is ON POINT. Like I genuinely think you shoud own the rights to that character now.

6) Ill say it again. I love Ginny. You should also own the rights to her character too.

7) my interest for Quiddich (even when reading the books/wathcing the movies) was on par, if not lower than Hermiones. You managed to get me interested in that too so yes another slow clap to you

7.1) Also such a clever career for Draco!! Made si much sense!

Now to some questions

A) What was the deal with Malfoy referring to Ginny as Weasly and refusing to aknowledge her Potter surname. And why did everyone kept correcting him? It was hilarious granted but I wanted to know whether the reason you included this time and time again had to do wih something deeper? Or was this included as just a funny recurring joke?

B) Why did you choose for Draco to have a “fantasy” to produce a patronus and not for example for him to have had to do that after theyd exchanged “i love yous”. Very interesting angle and i liked that it was sort of a loophole to all the ‘death eaters cant have patronuses’ but quite curious on the thought process

C) Why did you opt for Draco to remove his mark? Do you think that stands as reward for him more or for Hermione? Very smart solution by the way

D) if you have the time- Could you please elaborate a tad more on what the soul-bonding means? Why was it so taboo? At furst hand it seems like a very romantic/amazing thing to do with your partner right?

Lastly- Do you ever itch to make a second part to this? And in the most acceptable case that you dont, I always wondered what you had in mind for them in the future- because of the soul bonding thing, you mentioned that the generational curses will be erased, which means I guess that the Malfoys can have more than one child now, and girls as well. (I cannot believe im asking for this as I am the one to avoid any pregnancy fanfics but) do you imagine them with children and if yes, how many? How do they integrate muggle devices(I know youd agree wit me that Hermione would definitively bring some muggle stuff over!) and which devices would Draco really secretly like?

Pleasewriteasecondpartwhereyouelaborateyourthoughtsonthisthankyou.

Ok rant done. :D

List anon! You’re back with another amazing ask. I’ll do my best!

1.) I like to think Ron matured a lot post-war (not enough to stop making terrible jokes, though.)

2.) Regarding your beautiful analysis of my specific dragon breed for Draco’s patronus: How many points would you like for your Hogwarts house of choice? I will add that according to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Ironbelly’s scales are normally a metallic grey. I will also add that I subscribe more to book canon than movie canon. In the book version of events of the Gringotts escape, Harry breaks the chains and Hermione (with eventual help once the boys catch on) destroys the ceiling so it can have a way out. The partially blind dragon does the rest of the work on its own.

3.) Thank you, that’s very flattering.

4.) Does your friend also get you into fancy restaurants and can they make salted caramel bread pudding???

5.) Thank you, it was one of my favorite aspects of writing this story.

6.) Thank you, she’s so fun to write and flesh out from her book portrayal.

7.) Haha, I felt so validated by that line of dialogue in Cursed Child when Draco tells Harry he wanted to play quidditch professionally, but wasn’t good enough.

Now to some answers:

A.) It’s definitely a recurring joke. It’s up to the reader to interpret Draco’s actions here: is he doing it to be a massive troll? Or is he genuinely not retaining the information of her married name because he considers this fact so unimportant that he does not bother to keep it in his brain? Troll, snob, or both, you can decide!

B.) I’ll address the second part of this first, because it was not intended as a loophole. I 1000% do not understand the “death eaters can’t have patronuses” thing. It makes absolutely no sense. Snape has a Patronus. But beyond that… Umbridge has a Patronus (a cat). If we’re letting that woman have a Patronus, then yeah, I think Draco can cast one. As for the vision that Draco used to conjure it… up to you whether that’s a fantasy or a glimpse of a certain ritual actually working. Draco’s thoughts on the matter: “An image of such striking tangibility that he might have already lived it, or perhaps experienced time in such a way that he lived it now.”

C.) I wanted Draco to have a choice, obviously a recurring theme for him in RN. For my characterization of him, that symbol on his arm causes him nothing but shame and self-loathing (see the end of chapter 36 during his heart-to-heart with Hermione). He’d already exercised almost every known avenue to rid himself of it before Hermione entered his life (he lists these in chapter 44). Hermione already loved him (and has told him so) by the time she’s figured out how to remove it: “I love the man you are today and I will love that man tomorrow, bare forearm or not. I simply wanted you, for once, to have the choice. It’s your body.”

D.) Ooh anon, you are tempting me here. I really hate to be coy, but you might see some future writing on this very topic.

I can at least answer the taboo part: I think soul magic in general (horcruxes, the use of unicorn blood) is quite taboo in the HP universe. As no one knows what happens after death (not even ghosts, Nearly Headless Nick says as much when Harry asks him point-blank in OoTP) I think most magical folk would think the intense ritual (blending magical cores) an unnecessary thing anyway. As Draco explains in chapter 48, since no one actually knows the effects or if it works, it’s considered a bit over-the-top since it’s probably futile anyway. It is also not a Vow with a death component; Narcissa is obviously alive in this story even though Lucius is already dead. I wrote the generational curse protection theory in as a dig at Cursed Child for the way they handled Astoria’s character.

The idea of it I think is romantic, but I will stress it is very dependent upon the intent of the two participants. To quote Draco in chapter 48 again: “To twine one’s soul to another showed a willingness to not only physically tether one’s self during your time here on earth, but to commit to a blending of your magical cores, putting faith in your magic to recognize its bonded counterpart in another life. Should other lives even exist.”

If you re-read Draco’s experience during the bonding ceremony in chapter 51 (starting from this bit: “The cognizance of his own powers never felt sharper, more familiar, but suddenly another power pulsed within to join with his.”) you might find it bears a resemblance to the trajectory of their relationship.

Lastly- I’ve left Draco and Hermione to their wedded bliss. I’ve got nothing planned for them beyond where they are in the final lines of chapter 51. I don’t have that itch to write more into their future because it would feel forced. Draco laid out his two envisioned futures with Hermione in chapter 48 when they discuss having or not having children. They are happy and content in the life they chose together. That’s all I ever wanted for them.

You will see more from this story though. I have an entire series of one-shots and outtakes from the published Remain Nameless timeline that I’ll start posting soon.

Thank you so much list anon! These were fun to answer!

[fipindustries]

Mouth Dreams analysis

MOUTH DREAMS

I dont even need to introduce to you the marvelous mash up works of neil cicierega’s mouth trilogy (now quadrilogy i guess). We all know them, we all love them and we all have our own interpretations of what they mean. For some merely musical shitposting, for others clever experimentation laden with phrases, leivmotifs and themes repeating here and there, and for many a deep and rich bounty of lore, hidden messages, subtextual stories and underlying narratives implied across multiple variations of all star, hidden in the meta data and uncovered only after doing spectrographic analysis on the soundwaves of the songs after being played at x0.000003 times the speed. It is usually understood that all the albums together form a unique and rich tapestry, a coherent whole that can be understood in its totality. Im not here to do that.

I came up with my own interpretation of what Mouth Dreams can be read as, independent from the other albums. Think of it as me presenting this entry as the soundtrack of a musical with its own self contained story. It is the interpretation that i chose to go by and i hope its understood the brilliance of these albums lies on how weird and vague and open ended they are such that any number of different readings can be extracted from them. So lets see the one i extracted, without further ado, lets begin.

Yahoo

It is an out of context, in media res, start for the whole story. We hear a voice, echoing in the void, yelling at the top of its lungs, reaching desperately for human conection. One form of looking at this song is that the voice only receives an empty response from its own echoes, but i dont take it like that. The song is too sublime and too beautiful for these, the notes soaring too high, the desperate plead is being answered. Someone is listening to the plead and answering right back, harmonizing.

This whole album is in a way that howl, reaching to others, and we the audience are answering back, listening. But also on another level, this whole album is the protagonist telling the tragic story of his own life to some sympathetic figure who wants to help, perhaps a therapist, perhaps a friend, perhaps a partner, we’ll see. And as the yelling subsides the story starts proper.

Mouth dreams (intro)

We are being slowly taken into the story, entering the psyche of the main character, entering their subconscious, their dreams, their memories and therefore, their past. We’ll see what life they led and how they ended up where they are now and we start right at his infancy with….

Spongerock

Spongebob is a great indicator that we are seeing this person’s early childhood. They seem to be a rambunctious and energetic child. Cheerful and enthusiastic, yet there seems to be some underlying aggression there. The music is a bit to strong, and in comes freddy mercury berating the poor kid “you’ve got mud on your face, you big disgrace”. Who is this entity being so hostile to a poor kid? What lies beneath that image of a happy kid? We are about to see on the next song.

Just a baby

This is where trouble starts. We are treated to a dramatic song about a poor young baby who seems to be having a pretty sad life. Justin bieber, former teen idol, keeps lamenting about the poor baby being stuck in baby jail. This song is very much about loss of innocence. A shadowy figure of the mother is introduced who tells the protagonist to be a good boy. And almost at the end of the song we get a suggestion of what’s so wrong on this poor kid’s life. His mother apparently “shot a man in reno”. We dont know if this is a literal thing the mother did or if this is a metaphor for the mother doing something horrible, commiting some crime, harming someone in some way. While its not clarified we see strong hints of what the mother could have done in the next song

Superkiller

As we worry what may be so wrong with this kid’s mother we come across the title for this song, ominous. Now in the original Psycho killer the killer was clearly the singer, but in here the song is twisted and turned a bit, recontextualized by the beats of “cant touch this”. It seems like this time is the singer the one who doesnt want to be touched by some nefarious figure (the mother? Is the mother a psycho killer?) maybe the kid saw the mother killing people “i dont like people when they’re on fire”. whatever the case might be the kid is clearly strung up and under a lot of stress and we are introduced to the first hint of the insomnia that will plague this persons life who cant sleep because “my bed’s on fire”. The horrible situation in which this kid is living is taking a severe toll on their mental health. How is he going to cope with this?

Get happy

I think everyone can agree that “come on get happy” is incredibly unnerving when mindlessly repeated over and over. A first read might suggest the kid is forced to put on a happy face, to pretend that there is nothing wrong going on with their life. But as the song progresses it could also be interpreted as the kid being tempted to find refuge from the horror by unsavory methods “get happy” as in acquire happiness of a forced and artificial kind, perhaps drugs. But also “we’ll make you happy”. The kid is not running into a rabbit hole on their own, they are being invited. Its possible that the kid is being seduced by a bad crowd to move into seedy circles as an escape from their life.

Ribs

In here we see the kid, probably a young teenager by this point as suggested by the use of marylin manson in this song, falling deep into debauchery. The specific kind is not needed to know, it could be drugs, it could be sexual experimentation, it could be criminality. Point is this is unhealthy and dangerous and depraved, emphasized by the title of the song “ribs” as a reference to the rumor that marilyn manson removed two of his ribs in order to perform autofellatio. Whatever the case it clearly works, the song is actually a great bop, energetic and upbeat, the kid is content with the situation, at least for a while…

My mouth

This song is the coming down from the high. In here we see at full blast how the life of depravity on the one side and their situation at home on the other have turned the character into a hardcore insomniac, their health is severy compromised “My eyes feel like they're gonna bleed

Dried up and bulging out my skull”. Another way to read this song is as we momentarily cutting back to the present. After all, what we have been seeing until now has been dreams/memories and this is a short look at the wreck that the person is as a grown up, stirring awake from their memories and trying desperately to forget or to go back to sleep where they can have a reprieve. As evidenced by the next song

Aerolong

I dont wanna miss a thing is completely turned on its head. As the lyrics clearly demonstrate is the protagonist who cant go to sleep being chased by their memories, specifically the memories of their mother “I don't miss you, babe, and I do want to miss a thing”. As the person is tossing and turning on their bed, unable to sleep they talk about how they dont miss their mother at all and they want to “miss” her as in they want to forget her.

Sleepin’

The character is constantly speaking about how they are “sleeping with their clothes on” this is due to them falling asleep during their everyday life because of their lack of sleep every night, this person is barely functional, their sleep schedule is broken. Also since this song is about the character actually sleeping it also works as a bridge back into their dreams and so into their past.

Aammoorree

Is another vignette about the character sinking into disreputable states in order to escape their shitty situation as a teenager, this time very specifically about being completely drunk and perhaps experiencing romance for the first time. The character is probably at a club or a party, drunkenly hitting on someone, though chances are without much success as the song becomes increasingly more incoherent and we go into a full black out. This gets bad enough that the person finally has to take a look and….

Where is my mom

….stop. It is highly suggestive that in the album the “stop” is part of this song rather than the last one. The person is not only stopping their current alcoholic binge. They are stopping the entire situation and taking a good look at their life, finally confronting face to face what is happening and why it is so wrong. Now “stacy’s mom” was always kind of an inappropriate song due to it being about a child having a crush on their friend’s mom, as sung by an adult. But as it is recontextualized by the instruments of “where is my mind” it takes on a much darker tone. The romantic words are still there but now with a sinister bent. This time the main character asks their friend if they can go and take refuge at their house and when they ask if the mom is going to be there they sound more scared than eager, specially suggested by the way he seems to be stammering the word “pool”, they are nervous and terrified. They also talk about stacy’s mom as “all they want and been waiting for so long”, probably because all they want is a normal, loving mother. Presumably this song is about the main character finally talking about what is going on at his house with a friend, confessing and that confession gives way to realization

Fredhammer

Then realization gives way to anger. During this whole song we see the teenage character finally grasping how fucked up the whole situation is and he gets progressively more worked up with each successive aggravation “Why did it take so long? Why (hoo!), did I wait so long, huh?

Why??? To figure it out, but I did it (huh?)”. From this we transition to the kid actually confronting their mom face to face. The line “So you can take that cookie And stick it up your (yeah!)” can be read as the mother trying to pretend there is nothing wrong or pacifying the kid with empty gestures of motherhood, by making cookies and the kid spitting that back into their face. The kid gets more and more worked up through the song as we seamlessly transition to the next one.

Limp Wicket

This song is pure incoherent chaos but something very important can be rescued out of the chaos. This song uses the lyrics from the “ewok celebration” which is presumably the song the ewoks sing in return of the jedi after the empire was defeated. So in a way is the kid celebrating that he finally confronted their mother and presumably defeated her. This is emphazised by the recurrence of the lyrics ““So you can take that cookie”. Is not specified how the mother is defeated, maybe social services or the police get involved, maybe the kid runs away, either way this song is triumphant. The evil entity that stole his childhood and innocence has been defeated.

Cannibals

This song is slightly different from the rest. It works as a form of victory lap after the defeat of the mother figure, but also as an intermission since it lies smack dab in the middle of the album, and finally as a transitionary song from childhood to adulthood. Is a time skip, we get to see the person grow up in fast forward as the THX song hits its crescendo. This song also makes it perfectly clear that, even though she was left behind, the mental scars that the mother left are still there and still fresh and still very much stopping them from sleeping “She drives me crazy

And I can't help myself”. 

The outsiders

This works as a way to recontextualize us in the life of the character as an adult. Our so called “feature presentation”. It is not altogether clear who these people being introduced are. They could be the people who came to mean something in this persons life as they grew up after trauma, probably multiple foster homes, social workers, friends, bosses, co workers, etc. the fact that they are being enumerated dissapasionatly could indicate how most of his social relationships were basically a meaningless blur for him who grew up socially distant due to trauma. It could also represent the multiple roles that our character was forced to take as they grew up and the multiple things that went through his mind or meant something. There is clearly some desperate attempts to recapture their lost childhood as figures such as “inspector gadget” or “the ninja turtles part three” are named. The song is a fast montage of views and places. That prepares us for the next song.

Johnny

We finally zoom in and take a good look at our main character as an adult. A sad, pathetic figure, hurt and lonely, possibly not very well liked and certainly not respected as we hear boos all around. Despite all this the character is clearly committing themselves to be a good person, to not hurt others like he was hurt and specifically to not commit the same crimes that their mother commited.

Closerflies & Nightmovin

These two songs might as well work as a single piece since they are both more or less about the same thing. We reiterate how this person has been turned into an insomniac due to the trauma that they experienced as a child “When I'm far too tired to fall asleep”. They are delirious and barely coherent, possibly hallucinating as they think about their life in bed. This is clearly hell on earth and it seems like its just never going to stop “Can't wake up in a sweat

'Cause it ain't over yet” but, with neil’s classic sense of humor, the song immediately ends.

Now that could just be for the sake of irony but there is also another level in which it could be read. This suffering stops because something suddenly changes in this person’s life. What could that be?

Whitehouse

“I fell in love with a girl”

As the lyrics say, the main character met someone special and they are deeply in love. But also, because of the past that weighs heavily on him, he is very trepidatious about wether to go on with the relationship or not. He knows he is damaged goods and he doesnt want to drag her down as well, these fears make it so he never fully opens up to her about his issues “She turns and says, "Are you alright?" I said, "I must be fine because my heart's still beating." 

Wah

The use of “war” by edwin starr is a clever reference about how everything is fair in love and war. Now this song is an important departure since it is sung from the point of view of the girl our main character fell in love with. She is a feisty woman who is very clearly trying to establish the terms of the relationship and demanding her partner to open up which the main character, due to his insecurities, takes as a declaration of war and which he deflects by playing dumb, hence the repeated use of the silly “WAH” by wario. 

Pee Wee Inc

The emotional distance from the man is putting a strain in the relationship, so what once was supposed to “feel good” is now this melancholic and unbearable situation. Is no mistake that the song sampled here is “the breakfast machine” from pee wee’s big adventure. After all  a neglected partner can feel like a breakfast machine, an object that is there just to make your breakfast. On top of this you can see that the insomnia hasnt gone away “My dreams, they got a kissing 'cause I don't get to sleep, no”. In a lot of ways the girlfriend is feeling used as just a relief from the man’s suffering but not as someone who is being truly loved.

1000 spoons

We go back to the woman’s perspective. At first it just seems like a simple melancholic situation where she is sad the relationship is not working, but then we see the woman have a full mental breakdown as the song changes and becomes much more deranged and we get to see what is really happening. The man ran away on their wedding day. This is represented by the lyrics “is like rain on your wedding day” because it means the wedding has been ruined. She is heartbroken by this.

Mouth dreams (extro)

Appropriately as the previous song talked about a wedding being ruined by “rain” this song begins with the sound of rain. This is the big emotional climax of the story, the music at its most dramatic. Now i will admit, even for me this is a stretch, im willing to concede most of what i am about to say is essentially built out of whole cloth and me wanting to fit a neat full narrative into this album where there is none, but hey, what is art for?

Essentially the man is about to commit suicide, possibly by jumping off a bridge in the rain as suggested by the song being sampled “drowning”. The fact that this song is named after the album is a way to signify how everything that we have just seen weighs heavily on the man’s heart, his whole life, his memories, his trauma, and he is finally ready to end it all. He jumps.

But at the last second his wife jumps after him and drags him to the shore, the last we see is her trying to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation, as indicated by the song,”love me mouth to mouth now…” he is unconscious and presumably finally sleeping peacefully (maybe dead?) “...cover me with dreams, yeah”.

It might look like he will not survive, as implied by the sinister version of all star encroaching over the song. But as it looks like all hope is lost he finally WAKES UP.

In a way this song is also when we finally catch up with the start of the album where we saw the man desperately hollering for human contact and merely echos responding, except now someone finally answered, and he is finally ready to open up and share his story.

Brithoven

Even though this song is sung by a single person i choose to take it as a dialog between the couple, both of them sharing their regrets about their relationship with each other, her recriminating the fact that she couldnt have known what he was going through “oh baby bay, how was i supposed to know, that something wasnt right here” and him finally admitting that he needs help “My loneliness is killing me”.

Finally they both agree to try it again and give their relationship a second chance “hit me baby one more time”

Ain’t

Part of me is conflicted about this song, i kind of want to disregard it, mainly because i think its kind of a weird way to end an album and also because i just dont feel is a very good mashup really. The lyrics dont mix that well with the song, they are paced in an inconsistent way and overall feel like they never truly click. On top of that it just doesnt fit at all with the narrative that i have been building during this analysis.

There is talk about alcoholism and parent abandoment, this time by the father, a figure that was never mentioned during the album. The last line says “say it aint so” which doesnt particularly seem to reflect on any of the themes i’ve been building upon. Ultimately i think i will just leave it besides and be content that i managed to fit almost all of the album into one story, this process was never meant to be a perfect dissection of the carefully planned story that neil deliberately crafted but rather me having fun seeing pictures in a rorshach test.

So anyway that was Mouth dreams, let me know what you thought.

[argentconflagration]

Aziraphale and (Sexual) Innocence

(Thanks to @ineffable-endearments for some key insights and a lot of encouragement!)

[Read on AO3]

As we all know, one of the biggest things that changed from the book to the show is that in the show, the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley is written as a love story. Now, of course, that doesn't necessarily imply anything sexual (and I think there's a lot of interesting things to be written about a reading of their relationship as specifically a nonsexual love story!). 

On the other hand, the interpretation of them as having either literally or metaphorically a sexual relationship is (I would say intentionally) presented to the viewer as a potential lens for viewing the story. In your average romance arc, the characters are understood to be sexually attracted to each other, and if it's at all targeted toward adults, the viewer is generally intended to assume that the characters sleep with each other at the end of the story (whether it's shown onscreen or not). In Good Omens, there are a few obviously sexually-charged elements during the course of the love story (the statue in Crowley's flat, Crowley slamming Aziraphale against a wall, etc.). At the end, Aziraphale goes back to Crowley's flat, and by morning they've entered each other's bodies. Literally sexual? Not necessarily. Metaphorically sexual? Yeah kinda. 

So let's talk about knowing, in the Biblical sense and otherwise. 

(Just as a quick note: this analysis is show-based— assume I'm referring to the show except where I specifically mention the book.)

Crowley is the serpent of Eden, who tempts others to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and thereby introduces sin into the world. I'm hardly the first one to point out that Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship involves Crowley persistently (but not insistently!) tempting Aziraphale into the knowledge of good and evil. He fell for asking questions, continues to question the Almighty's decisions throughout the show, and in general represents a force of knowledge and free will, for humanity, for himself, and for Aziraphale. 

To quote the linked post:

"Why was the apple forbidden food? It gave the knowledge of good and evil. It enabled them to choose for themselves instead of blindly obeying orders. Why is Crowley forbidden company? He does the same."

Crowley is the serpent, the tempter, but he is also the apple, the forbidden fruit of which Aziraphale is not allowed to partake. He offers free will to Aziraphale, starting from the very beginning when he (unintentionally) reassures Aziraphale that he can't do the wrong thing, up until the very end when Aziraphale tells him that he has accomplished his temptation.

By the way, why is the apple an apple, anyway? Many people know, and I’m sure Pratchett and Gaiman knew, that Genesis doesn’t specify a kind of fruit. Rather, the image of a shiny red apple is a product of millennia of religious interpretation. It largely comes to us through Paradise Lost, and has now long since been cemented in pop culture. Using the apple as a recurring motif in Good Omens tells us that we’re not meant to understand this as a commentary on the most literal translation of the Bible, but on Christian culture as a whole, including the parts that wildly diverge from the source text. 

And you can't talk about cultural Christianity for long without talking about purity culture. There's a lot that can be written about purity culture, but I'm going to focus on the idea that the opposite of sinful knowledge and agency is ignorant innocence and inaction. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, says purity culture. It's okay if other people suffer, so long as your own hands are clean, says purity culture. 

Perhaps the most obvious instance of Crowley trying to shake Aziraphale out of this mentality is all the way back in 3004 BC, at the Flood. Crowley tries to make Aziraphale aware of good and evil— God is going to kill the kids, and that's wrong (and right and wrong can be known outside of simply adhering unquestioningly to what God says). Aziraphale defends his innocence by appealing to ignorance: the Almighty's plans are ineffable, so Aziraphale can't question them, and he's not going to do anything about it. He's trying to stay in the pre-Fall state, without knowledge, free will, or sin.

Over and over, Aziraphale can be seen engaging in basically useless, performative behavior for the sake of not being directly implicated in evil deeds. When he resists the Arrangement, it's not because it will have any meaningful impact on the world for good or evil. But it causes Aziraphale to be directly involved in evil, and it's against the rules. Similarly, he tries to persuade Crowley (and later Shadwell) to kill the Antichrist, and Crowley to vanish the airbase guard, rather than doing it himself— not because the outcome will be different, but because he wants to preserve his image of himself as pure and holy. (Worth mentioning is that this characterization is way more pronounced in the show than in the book— in the book he gives only half a line of lukewarm resistance to the idea of vanishing the soldier himself before he does it.)

But back to sex, like I promised. 

There's no two ways about it— Christian purity culture is largely about sex.  So we might expect Good Omens to make some sort of commentary on the most pronounced aspect of Christian purity culture— the measuring of people's goodness based on their lack of experience (i.e. knowledge) of sexual things specifically. And what we see is that here, too, Aziraphale tries to preserve an image of himself as pure, while Crowley tries to shake him out of that mindset. 

In presenting himself as human, Aziraphale presents himself as a gay man. In general, stereotypes of gay men are hypersexualized, but the specific tropes that Aziraphale draws upon are sexless, neutered, and nonthreatening. This is epitomized by Anathema's narration (in the book) as she parts ways with Aziraphale and Crowley after the bike crash. She's very wary of getting in a car with two strange men at night, and treats the two with suspicion and hostility throughout the encounter, but concludes that "She had been perfectly safe after all" when she reads them as a gay couple. 

(It's not only because of Heaven's expectations that Aziraphale presents himself this way, of course (perhaps not even mostly). He doesn't want to hurt people. He'd rather avoid a war than win it, give away his sword than use it to drive away humans, go to lunch with the Adversary than thwart him— he is, in a word, soft. And after all, on a textual level, a sexual relationship with Crowley wouldn't be forbidden because it's sex, but because it's Crowley— it's specifically his choice of lover that Heaven would have an issue with, presenting an obvious analogy to gay identity that Aziraphale could hardly avoid picking up on. Like most aspects of Aziraphale's self-presentation, his presentation as a gay man reflects both his idea of what a Good Angel should be and who he really is.)

But in addition to presenting himself to humans in a desexualized way, Aziraphale also sets himself up as the sexual gatekeeper in his and Crowley's relationship (assuming a sexual reading of the relationship arc, that is). Christian purity culture expects women to be gatekeepers against men's sexuality, protecting both men and women from the sinfulness that is sexuality (outside of very narrow parameters). While gender is more fluid than that in Good Omens, the angel/demon binary is strong, and Aziraphale and Crowley constantly wrestle with it. Aziraphale takes it upon himself – as an angel – to protect the both of them against Crowley’s interest in furthering the relationship. 

I should mention here that Heaven's initial purpose in placing Aziraphale on earth was literally to guard a gate, and that Aziraphale immediately wanted nothing to do with that role.

And, just as he does in other matters, Crowley offers Aziraphale a way out. He doesn't pressure or force Aziraphale— he wants him to make his own decisions. Aziraphale says, "You go too fast for me." Aziraphale says, "Don't go unscrewing the cap"— i.e. "I'm ready for this, but I'm not ready for everything." 

When, finally, Aziraphale and Crowley spend the night together, when they inhabit each other's bodies, when they defy Heaven and Hell together, it's the culmination of a lot of things. For Aziraphale, it's the acceptance of the knowledge that Crowley has been trying to impart to him the whole time. Know me, Crowley says. And know yourself. The fear of falling (from Heaven, from Eden, in love) has been overcome— there never was an apple that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.  

In conclusion, Crowley said fuck the expectations of purity culture, sexual and otherwise. Now, go forth and write thematically resonant smut. It's what Michael Sheen would want. 

[thinkingaboutsanfrancisco]

Well shit...I’m glad to know we’re on the same page.

Truly. If I weren’t restrained by this seatbelt I’d honor him with my standing ovation, but since I am I settle for a continuous ardent nod. I’m not surprised that he agrees with me, but fuck does it feel nice to hear a conviction I’ve held for a long time verbally justified by someone outside of the gates of my own tumultuous conscious without their own regret dampening it. All of the details I always ruminate over, S delves into and elaborates on them with such precision, casting upon them the rare tone of honesty and understanding we both know a majority of society continuously refuses to afford us degenerates since, like he said, they’re far too caught up in their broken ideals to dare spare us the empathy despite that, despite our different methods, we all aspire to the same fucking dream. I don’t even know why they deem it necessary to enter the conversation if they’re only going to pollute it with righteous ignorance, but if I entertain the analysis further, it’ll piss me off and...I’d rather not knock the smile off my face. 

It’s great to be heard.

It’s so relieving that this Parliament drag is celebratory...until he changes the fucking subject. 

“Wait, yo, you use Reddit?! Gimme your username. I’m gonna add you.”

What? No you aren’t---who said I even have one?!

I mean---I do and I have since July of 2012, but that doesn’t garner it up for grabs. His brazenness of the unspoken etiquette is second to the fact that stalking the site doesn’t necessitate an account. That’s one of the beauties of it, honestly, to search and find a thread that answers a very specific and niche question and enjoy the luxury of reading all of the other perspectives and experiences. Sometimes I want to remember that question but sometimes it’s so stupid and minor that the answer’s enough to satisfy me, so I don’t bother logging in or using my regular browser to remember it when I’m searching for something else.  Who is he to say that stalking is not all I do? 

 “I…don’t have an account. I just observe the site, y’know.”

And I hoped that would be enough for him to take the hint and not press on it, but he doesn’t. Instead, he rhetorically asks why I don’t have one before practically demanding that I make one right fucking now and, for so many reasons, fuck no. The real life anonymity of it is what drew me to it in the first place. I love being able to talk without worrying about dragging the weight of my real name or image or anything else around like you have to do on every other flashy social media site nowadays. For once, I’m not Jason Dale Kelley: Lance and Deirdre’s exhausted, depressed, rotting social pariah of a son who you should avoid with a ten foot pole. No, I’m just a couple of letters and numbers and, if you get onto my profile, I’m just another guy named Jason somewhere in the world with stories, opinions, and thoughts...history that I don’t want to give up as J. Not like there’s anything too incriminatory, but who the hell knows what he could conjure about me from the scattered fragments I’ve dropped about my personal life. He presents it so innocently too: so we can trade conspiracy theories...as if I’ve ever had one to trade to begin with. Clearly, I’ve gotten used to them in the middle of a deal, but I’d rather not worry about logging in and finding him linking me to a theory to debate when I’m trying to forget about my existential dread and worrying if that’ll set him off. He doesn’t even know my real first name and now he wants access to almost three fucking years of my life? I've broken my boundaries enough already as it is, but this is where I’m drawing the line.  

“Tempting, but…I think I’ll have to pass since…I don’t know how. Not exactly on there too often, so uh…I believe it’d be a waste to make one.”

Not my best lie, but I’m not exactly sure how else I can tell him I don’t want to without risking offending him too much. Skirting around it in itself is already bad enough because, with the way he laughs and shakes his head, he damn well knows that I can make an account in my fucking sleep, but at least he takes the hint and throws his handle out there for whenever I decide to crack the unfathomable mystery. 

Conspiracyking with a k, for alliteration purposes. 

I wish I could pull out my phone and look it up to find out if it’s a legitimate account or if I narrowly avoided giving myself up for nothing, but...the car’s jerked quicker than how he jerked the most insightful conversation I’ve ever had with him and made it about fucking Reddit; a careless dive right into one of the most crowded parking lots I’ve ever seen. Eventually, he finds a spot, the locks pop, I stuff an eight ball in my jean pocket and we’re about get out...when it suddenly dawns on him that I might have a fucking issue getting in. 

Should’ve thought about that before you brought me here. 

“Don’t worry, I got it covered.” 

Luckily for him, I ‘renewed’ my fake near the end of last year because I got tired of staring into my hollow, broken, fifteen year old sneer and worrying if it’d pass. While I never got caught, I used to get a lot of scrutinizing stares and snarky uncertain comments that instill the fear in me that I didn’t look eighteen, much less nineteen like I’d initially made myself. My dark circles and puffy eye bags were probably the only thing that got me by until I hit a growth spurt last summer that made me look less gawky and frail overall, so I used some of the cash I’d saved up to capitalize and it paid off. I’m rarely double checked for cigarettes now, so I pass for eighteen, but I’ve never tried 21...

S cackles, asking me how much fakes go for nowadays instead of taking the hint again, and...fuck it. This shit’s going both ways now. 

“You’d have to tell me that ancient figure for me to give you a proper comparison,” I retort as we shut the doors and start our walk towards the building, when I realize that I’m going to have to drop the sarcasm because he does need to know that there is the annoying possibility that I might not get let in, “But probably. Got it done online and paid around 300 bucks for it. My nicotine habit wouldn’t let me get away with anything less, but it was well worth it since it’s got all of the proper holograms and scans. It hasn’t given me any problems before so I honestly forget about it, but you might wanna chill out with the J name ‘til I get in. Don’t think that letter appears anywhere on it.”

[howtolistentomusic]

There's a half hour left in the shift. Roll-off has been shut down. Maurice and I are sweeping the section of the warehouse where we store furniture donations. Or pretending to, at least. David, Carlos and Ruben are conversing nearby.

Productivity in the warehouse always slows after last break but it usually takes longer than this for the atmosphere to become so jovial.  Anna, who typically rules the room with an iron fist, is over on line one. She's conversing with Lupe and Monica. None of them are making any pretense of working, which gives everyone else tacit permission to relax.

"Work from Home" by Fifth Harmony is playing over the radio. I sing along with Ty Dolla $ign.

"Putting overtime on your body!"

"You actually like this song?" Maurice asks.

Oh, Maurice. Not you, too.

"It's catchy," I say.

I leave it at that. I don't tell him that "Write On Me" is among my phone's most played songs so far this year. I don't tell him that I prefer the group's cover of "Let it Be" to the Beatles original. And I don't tell him that I saw Fifth Harmony in 2014 when the group came to the Ventura Theater. It was a fantastic experience, save for a couple of asshole venue staffers.

After the show, in the hopes of catching one last glimpse of the group before they departed town, a substantial amount of attendees gathered on the stretch of sidewalk outside the theater where the tour bus was parked. Apparently not accustomed to dealing with genuine stans, the staffers were frustrated with this development. i get that. Overtime indeed sucks. But these guys were not shy about expressing their rockism and it was infuriating.

"I'm tired of babysitting," one of them said to the other at one point. "I just want to go home."

"Me too," the other said. "Fucking girls."

Fucking girls, they mused as they were being openly condescending to a large group of them on the basis of a shared musical preference. Ugh, the audacity. Those guys can go to hell.

***

"You don't gotta go to work but you gotta put in work," Maurice recites.

"I told you it was catchy," I say.

"You don't gotta go to work but you gotta put in work," Maurice repeats.

Yeah, dude. I hear the song loud and clear. What's your point?

"Not a fan of Fifth Harmony?" I ask.

"The song doesn't make any sense!" he says.

"Why not?" I ask.

"You don't gotta go to work, but you gotta put in work?"

"Oh shit!" Carlos says. "Anthony's getting mad!"

"I'm not mad," I say.

"He’s mad!” David says to Carlos.

Fine. I'm a little mad. But it isn't because I consider Fifth Harmony some sacred cow that Maurice is professing inadequate fealty towards. I just think his specific complaint is bullshit.

"When people viscerally dislike you, the first thing they deny you in an exchange of ideas is figurative language."

Tressie McMillan Cottom tweeted this yeas ago and it's a sentiment that has stuck with me. The argumentative tactic she's alluding to is also often utilized to quickly dismiss a work of art or a piece of entertainment. Let's call it literal policing. It’s really great for uncritical types that are looking to feel superior anyways. Art being, you know, art and all, literal policing offers one an endless well of complaints to draw from without having to do anything.

Literal Policing is a branch of Hyper-Nitpicking, which is a type of analysis that has unfortunately become prevalent as the internet’s cult of the amateur continues to supersede traditional criticism. In YouTube personality and probable How to Listen to Music plagiarizer Adam Buckley's review of this very Fifth Harmony song, he takes the lyric "gonna get you fired" and interprets it at extreme face value as a basis for his flimsy pan.

I suspect it's a good thing that every woman doesn't have the mindset of Fifth Harmony and isn't telling guys to give up their jobs to just stay home and bang. Otherwise, I have a feeling that the entire economy would pretty well fucking collapse.

- from  Musical Autopsy: Fifth Harmony ft Ty Dolla $ign - Work From Home

This is disingenuous as hell. The line "'I'mma get you fired" is obviously meant to tease. Nobody in Fifth Harmony genuinely wants to get their partner fired.

Ugh, Adam Buckley is the fucking worst. 

***

"Look, you don't have to like the song," I say to Maurice. "But you have to do better than to take the artistry out of art."

"Huh?" Maurice says.

"Well your complaint basically boils down to the fact that the group is utilizing the word 'work' in two different ways. Is that not allowed?"

Maurice is trying to force 'work' into having One True Meaning so he can dismiss a song he doesn’t like with as little effort as possible. He's literal policing. Of course, he doesn't seem to have the same issue with Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison", a staple of Anna's favorite radio station that never fails to get Maurice's head bobbing. That girl is poison? Really? Is she cyanide? A pesticide? What???

"I get what you're saying," Ruben tells me.

"Cool. You can pull tomorrow."

Lately I've been trying to usurp Ruben in his position as roll-off's designated puller. Transporting full gaylords from the dock into the warehouse is a desirable task because donations can be anything and are often difficult to deal with, and pulling minimizes the time spent handling them directly.

"I don't need your permission to pull!" Ruben says.

Better start handcuffing that pallet jack to your wrist, then. I’m coming for you, motherfucker.

"Screw both of you," Maurice says.

"Don't tempt Anthony!" Carlos says. "He'll do it!"

"Get a room, you two!" David says.

“How’s your sister?” I ask Carlos.

He glares at me.

Ariana, Carlos’ elder sibling, used to work with us at the warehouse. She’s really attractive, and Donald once told me that he overheard her telling Carlos that I’m “really cute for a white boy.” [Editor’s Note: I’m Hispanic.] Of course, Carlos kept this to his damn self. I didn’t find out until well after Ariana got laid off.  

"My cousin listens to this shit," David says. "She likes the Mexican one."

"Camila or Ally Brooke?" I instinctively blurt out.

The guys burst into hysterics at my expense. I'm taken aback and utterly confused for a moment before it clicks: I committed the cardinal sin of knowing the members of a female pop group by name.

[coldtomyflash]

Have you ever done an analysis on how Barry feels about Snart, and the evolution of that from s1 to the s3 finale? Please ignore me if you have lol

Anon. Anon. Anon.

How have I never written an analysis on how Barry feels about Len? How did that get overlooked? *screams into the void* *puts down wine glass* *begins to think*

Okay I’m going to try to take my shipper goggles off for a hot sec and come to some reasoned understanding for how Barry’s feelings about Len are demonstrated and how they’ve evolved. Because honestly, even leaving those goggles off, the way Barry responds to Snart in canon is… unique, of all of his villains.

Let’s start with 1x04, Going Rogue.

There’s nothing special about their first meeting, at the armoured car, or their second, at the theatre, except that someone dies and Barry is pretty choked up about that, and also hurt by the cold gun. But so far that’s normal hero/villain interactions, insofar as things go.

Things change on the train. First off, this is Barry’s first time turning off the comms and going things solo (bad call, Barry). Second, we get this banter:

And Barry’s smirk in response? Just, he’s having fun. 

So at this point, the dynamic shifts a bit. So far Barry’s fought Clyde Mardon, Multiplex, and Nimbus, but this is the first time he’s faced off against someone where Barry feels like he’s ready to laugh and looks tempted to banter with them. Not to mention him making the joke about how they both have long/terrible names and learning other things about Len’s past that might give him a sense of mutual understanding. 

But of course, Len derails the train and Barry’s not laughing anymore. Especially when Len ices him and he almost dies. The fact that he doesn’t die, that Len doesn’t call Cisco’s bluff, might’ve helped Barry sleep at night. If, y’know, Len and Mick hadn’t turned around and kidnapped Caitlin shortly after.

Barry’s tempted that whole episode (1x10) to go after Len. He knows intrinsically that Snart is trying to draw him out. In that episode, Wellsobard tries to keep Barry focused on getting faster but Barry recognizes that Snart is trying to challenge him specifically and he can’t stand it, and eventually of course gives in to the challenge once Caitlin gets kidnapped.

So we see there that although Barry probably hates Snart, he also seems to understand him pretty easily. Knows what Snart is up to and wants from him, and doesn’t seem surprised that Len continues to escalate it until Barry rises to the occasion.

Of course at this point, there’s no love lost.

Dude is… hurting.

But. The whole precinct is abuzz with how the Flash is a hero and despite the hell that Barry went through to take Captain Cold and Heatwave down, he’s getting some of the recognition that we know (from his own lines in canon) that he’s been craving. So that’s nice. Inadvertently, Len gave Barry something he’s been craving. Barry’s going to have a positive emotional association with the outcome of this fight, probably. With beating them, with Eddie being there to help, with all the praise the Flash gets for it. 

So that’s churning away in his unconscious. Still, things don’t actually change on Barry’s side until 1x16. Not in any major way. Up until then, Len is a villain that Barry seems to have a pretty natural understanding of, but not someone he ‘cares’ about or would ever trust. 

So he readily heads to the casino to stop Cold and grabs Lisa without a second thought, pointing her own gun to her head (and why not grab Len? could it be to extend their game of cat and mouse? or is he more intimidated by Len?). But it’s when Barry learns her name and sees her face that things start to click: that she’s the woman he met with Cisco the prior evening.

(You can see the moment of realization on his face! #acting)

Anyway that conversation shifts things. Cisco’s life is in Snart’s hands and Barry happily encouraged Cisco to go with Lisa and he’s still reeling from the fact that he time travelled the night before and Iris has just rejected him so he’s just… all sorts of vulnerable right here. 

And what’s he got except hope that Snart won’t hurt or kill Cisco? He’s got… nothing. Except some manner of detente, maybe, because he knows that Snart must know that if Cisco dies, the Flash won’t stop until Snart’s behind bars. (So he’s relying on the fact that Snart will understand him as well as he understands Snart?)

But honestly, after the bomb incident with Caitlin, Barry is taking a bit of a leap of faith with Snart, here. I’m sure he’s terrified for Cisco, and feeling powerless. But then Cisco comes back safe (yay!) if somewhat traumatized and with his brother in need of serious medical care. 

And on some deep and instinctual level, there’s the instinct toward reciprocity that I think kicks in. I know it’s fucked up in this case, but it’s one of humankind’s more ingrained instincts. Len returned Cisco alive. He held up his end of that casino-conversation, so to speak. In doing so, he built some manner of trust between them, though I’m 100% sure Len wouldn’t have been aiming at building it. 

But now he knows Barry’s name. #yikes. So Barry chases him down. Again.

(I love Len what an asshole).

And then we have an impasse. And the nebulous things that have been building between them start to come to a head. Because Barry’s desire to banter with Len on the train got him burned because he took his time, and Barry’s attempt to ignore Len’s grabs for his attention got him burned again with Caitlin getting kidnapped. There’s no winning no matter what he does, but still, Barry came out intact from both of those situations, and so did everyone he cares about. Same deal with Snart having Cisco.

And that means that they’ve been matched fairly evenly. Len won one, Barry won one, they both made mistakes. Len developed a bit of an obsession with Barry that he can’t have missed, and Barry has an understanding of what makes Len tick and knowledge of that understanding isn’t lost on himself (it can’t be - he understood Len by 1x10 and it’s what allowed him, however fearfully, to place some trust for Cisco’s life in Len). 

So now, finally (already), here they are: an impasse. 

And the crazy thing is? They agree on terms. Just like that. Little to no debate. “Leave town” “no” “then stop stealing” “double no” “then stop killing (because it’s the only part of this i really care about and i’ll even appeal to your vanity because i understand you and how to butter you up)” “…okay sure fine whatever i’ll do it”.

And Barry doesn’t “Trust” Len yet. Don’t let me oversell that. 

He threatens him directly. But Len is smirking and saying like,

And Barry obviously doesn’t give him a ride but he is a little amused. He’s got Snart’s number, so to speak. The man is an asshole. A devious bastard. But not outright evil. Willing to wheel and deal and make some rules that mean he won’t hurt the people Barry cares about.

So despite not “Trusting” Len, whether he wants it or not, Barry does trust him with this. To keep his identity secret. To not kill people. He believes Len’ll do it. He has to, to make that deal. And every day that Barry’s identity isn’t threatened and people aren’t being killed by Captain Cold is another day that cements that trust.

Which leads him to this moment.

(excuse the crappy timing, it’s an old gif).

Barry gets this idea, in this conversation, to get Snart’s help with transporting the metas. And what’s fascinating about that is that Barry gets the idea right after saying that it’s okay to break the rules to help others. Why that makes him think of Snart is honestly a bit of a mystery but it’s important because of that. Somewhere in Barry’s mind is this idea that he’s different from the “Bad” guys, and what makes him different is his motives, and thinking of being “Not Bad” and having better motives makes him think of… Snart?

Honestly, Barr, honey, no. But at the same time, yes? 

And maybe it’s because of having to trust Snart with his identity in the way he has, or maybe it’s whatever he saw exchanging banter on the train, or the fact that Caitlin and Cisco both made it out (relatively) unscathed, or that Len readily agreed to stop killing – or maybe it’s even because Barry gets Len on some implicit level he hasn’t fully examined but empathizes with, even now – but whatever it is, it leads him to actually understand Len on a level deeper than most people who’ve ever encountered him. To understand this about Len, about his core self.

Because he trusted Len to help him when he asked, to set a fair price that Barry could pay, to keep him and his friends safe. And Len actually did all of that. Yes, Barry got a rude fucking awakening from Len’s betrayal. Like ouch. But Len saved Barry’s life, literally killed a man to do it, and sent the other metas on their way so they couldn’t cost the lives of any of Barry’s friends and family. 

Barry wasn’t right to trust Len with everything, but he wasn’t wrong in that Len would protect him and hold up that end of the deal. And he wasn’t wrong in knowing Len would agree when he appealed to his love of the city and the people there, either.

(mutual understanding intensifies)

And I mean, I have to point it out: I know it was down for visual effect but it was clearly a conscious decision to have Barry standing on the Rogues’ side in this scene:

Barry literally chooses to ally himself with Leonard Snart. That denotes trust and understanding and I think, honestly, somewhere under the “he’s such an asshole”, some level of mutual liking. He chose to go to Len, chose to try this out, agreed without blinking to destroy his records, fought Joe for Snart’s inclusion on the mission, and doesn’t even bother to suppress his amusement when Len’s all “after you” and he runs out of the lab? Despite himself, he’s got a soft spot for the guy, like I’m pretty sure.

But okay.

After all that. What’ve we got? 

A betrayed Barry Allen who tells Joe that he thought he could ‘use’ Len but he was wrong. A Barry who, despite being betrayed, still seems to agree that he owes Len his life? Like he acknowledges that Snart actually had his and the team’s backs when shit hit the fan, regardless of whose fault it was. A Barry who probably now believes he can’t trust his own feelings and sentiments about Snart because look where his sense of trust got him.

Basically, he’s a conflicted mess.

Flash forward a bit through his post-singularity survivor’s guilt and avoidance tactics to 2x03, Family of Rogues.

Lisa comes to the team and they hardly believe it. Barry’s like “yeah sure whatever” and agrees to check in on Len because Lisa brings up the life debt. And then we get this exchange.

Back to banter. Back to an impasse. “You don’t mess with me and I don’t mess with you”. Back to their Not-Trust pseudo status-quo.

Barry pushes a bit and Len keeps assuring him that he’s fine, then Lewis shows and and Len ices Barry and it’s like, Betrayal 2.0 written on Barry’s face.

(that’s gotta smart)

Anyway so Barry trusted Len again, sort of, or at least was Mildly Concerned about his wellbeing, and got iced for his trouble. And he’s kinda pissed and really about to tell Lisa where to shove it, but then she shows them her scar and tells them about her father and everything tilts on its axis. 

And Joe told Barry that Lewis would take out his anger on his kids. Barry knows that Len and Lisa didn’t have the best life. But either he forgot or didn’t realize how truly terrible their childhood was.

Because after that, he has zero complaints about helping. And he shows his understanding of Len’s psyche again when they find the headless Rutenberg. Barry knows that Len would rather dig out a bomb in his own neck than comply with Lewis’s demands, and is the one to figure out the bomb is in Lisa. Just like that. Because despite the betrayals and the (not entirely) misplaced trust, Barry still gets Snart, gets how he ticks.

So he pushes. And pushes. Because he understands now that Snart’s in trouble and that Barry has the means to help him and dammit, he’s going to help him. And I literally cannot help but believe that Barry wouldn’t push so hard except that he cares. He cares what happens here. He cares if Snart’s dad hurts him. He knows they’re going to save Lisa, that Cisco is working on it, so it’s not her he’s worried about. It’s Len. 

Well, Len and the innocent people Lewis is going to potentially kill. But Barry could stop Lewis as the Flash. Would it piss Lewis off? Abso-fucking-lutely. But would he kill Lisa over it? Not likely. 

No, Barry gets dressed up as Sam and pretends to be a criminal to keep an eye on things and literally the only way that makes sense is if he does it for Len. To keep him safe. To keep this whole thing smooth. To insert himself right into the middle of the mess so that he can be the one to ‘save’ Len, basically.

And just look at how he takes a step back when he sees Lewis. He’s heard what Lisa has to say about the man and he gets it now - this is who Leonard Snart fears. That’s just so not lost on Barry. He’s intimidated by Lewis and the violence he knows the man possesses. He’s literally never taken a step back like that from Len or many of his other villains. Lewis is special in Barry’s instinctual desire to get the hell away from him.

But okay. Barry gets “shot” and Len whispers that he’s sorry and Barry’s dressed as the Flash like 2.0 seconds later and up in that hall and he – he trusts Len so much by this point. It’s undeniable. He trusts Len not to shoot. He tells Len that Lisa is safe as soon as she is and stands there facing down the barrel of the cold gun until that moment, knowing that Len will (has to) pick Lisa over him, but still believing that Len will hold out as long as he’s able and won’t shoot him.

Look how far they’ve come. And Barry asks him why he killed Lewis but he’s the one there to witness Len’s vulnerable moment, and Len is just honest with him about why, and there’s just gotta be some measure of Care on Barry’s end, some intense pull at his heartstrings at witnessing all that and being involved in it and in taking the cold gun and seeing his ‘enemy’ (ally) so defenseless?

But... he puts Len in prison anyway. Or, I personally suspect, the cops arrived and Barry scampered and the cops hauled Len off to prison. But Barry visits him. Visits him expressly to say:

Like, Barry is just cutting open Len’s heart and looking into the deepest parts of him and putting Len on the defensive because he’s so not ready for that conversation and Barry’s saying it with complete conviction?

We’ve moved past trust and surface or even deep understanding. Barry is invested. This episode he came to see behind the veil Len holds around him and he cares about what happens to Len (and Lisa, to a lesser extent) now. He’s saved Len. Gone out of his way to do it. And come to understand his deeper motives and parts of himself that he hides away from the world???

And it’s in part because of the parallels that Barry explicitly draws between himself and Len by this point. Like that’s where some of this is coming from. In 2x03, Barry tells Joe that if it weren’t for him (Joe), he might’ve ended up not unlike Len. He doesn’t just understand Len, he empathizes. With his anger, his violence, his need to protect his sister (the one person he loves) at the expense of all else. How he did what he could with the situation he had and then just… never looked back.

(Because Barry’s just like that, okay. Exactly like that).

So I’d say at this point we have Barry genuinely caring about Len as a person, about who he is, what’s happening to him. If Len came to Barry for help with something, anything, at this point I think Barry would say “what do you need?”. And he’s ready for Len to betray him or pull some bullshit because he’s learned, and he knows that Leonard Snart is a very dangerous man. 

But he’s also eager to work with him again, the next time he gets a hint of a chance.

He wants to give Len opportunities to do good. Calls him out on being a lousy villain. Lets Len strike up a conversation with Iris after the initial shock wears off and he verifies Len’s not there to hurt them.

(Trust, but verify, amirite?)

Anyway, that’s… the last time Barry sees Len. Ouch. But it really cements some things. Like that Barry wants to work with Len, that he sees the hero Len could be if he lets himself. 

And as for how he feels about Len? I take it to mean that by this point, he’s gone from apathy to amusement to hate and ire to frustration and (mis)trust to mutual understanding to hurt and betrayal to deeper understanding and care to genuine… hope, inspiration, liking. Camaraderie might be too strong of a word, but I think he wants it. He wants more from and with Len than he has. He wants to develop their friendship. 

And I think he really is starting to think of it as a rather strange friendship (he does call Len an “old friend” in 3x04…). I mean, friendship is a weird thing for Barry anyway - he’s said he didn’t really have friends (aside from Iris) before he became The Flash. His view of it might be skewed a little. A mutual trust and understanding and liking with Snart? Might be close to qualifying…

And he asks after Len when he notices he’s not with the Legends and he cares about the answer.

He’s hurt that Len died. And there’s no time to get into it when there’s a literal alien invasion, but the Speed Force doesn’t let him forget it.

Of all the people he could’ve seen in the Speedforce, he sees the ones whose deaths he blames himself for most, and Len is on that list. Ronnie and Eddie were friends, and this tells us that Len was too. That Barry cared about him and cares about his death and blames himself, on some level, for it. (Thanks Speedforce for rubbing salt in that wound).

And when he needs a thief? Doesn’t even hesitate to fuck up the timeline a bit to grab Len from the past for some help. And that could have had disastrous consequences to the timeline if Len found out about his imminent death. Consequences Barry waved off easily. Why?

Well, Iris was in danger. That’s the biggest one, for sure. But Barry’s not willing to run back in time to change things to save her, we know he’s not (because it’s not a plan b that they discuss and his future self from 2024 hasn’t done it) but he is willing to grab Len from the past and risk a timeline change anyway. It’s for Iris, but I think, personally, that part of Barry misses Len, and wants to see him again before his death. Especially when he’s on the verge of losing a person he loves, seeing another person he cares about who already died might be… comforting? Affirming? Like… he can visit the dead, in a way?

But yeah he just hops through time to pick up Len and asks him for help and puts it all the table, is just casually honest with him about his reasons and motives and just trusts that Len will help. And that trust isn’t in vain. They’re so far past the give and take. They just… trust, and care. They really are friends.

(And lmao, Barry made sure no one could try to talk him out of it…)

So Len helps. And gets trapped with King Shark. And Barry can’t leave him behind. And Lyla hits the nail on the freaking head when she points that out, basically pointing out that Len is important to Barry, that Barry won’t sacrifice him even for the woman he loves.

They actually end up working really well together, too? And Len proves he gets Barry as deep as Barry gets him. Hands over the freaking cold gun (we have never seen him do that wtf) and then lectures Barry on his willingness to kill. He hammers that lesson home when Barry drops him back off, too, and they have a heart to heart.

Ultimately, they acknowledge that they get along. That’s mutual. Acknowledge what they see in each other, what they understand about themselves and each other, and implicitly, the ways that they inspire and help each other.

So, literally 3 hours later, my conclusions are:

Barry cares about Len. Truly, genuinely. As a person, as a friend. As someone he understands and wanted better for. He’s gone from genuine enmity to genuine friendship, I think. In their own, rather weird, sort of way.

[amorremanet]

top 5 movies? and why? no no TOP FIVE BOOKS

oh gosh, both of these are hard and my answers for them are probably so boring (they also come with the, “this is just how I feel right now because ugh, I am the worst at picking any all-time faves for broad categories”) — but!!

top “five” movies:

The Prince of Egypt — has some of the most beautiful art that I’ve ever seen, anywhere, and music that sticks with you, and it really shows the human drama and human stakes of such a classic story in ways that a lot of adaptations of Biblical mythology are afraid to do

Deadpool — because I’m garbage, the characters are great, the script is pretty good, and the movie makes me laugh. It’s not really a deconstruction (in the way that some people make it out to be, by way of justifying why they like it), and it’s not super-intellectual, and in a lot of ways, it’s like a giant #SorryNotSorry that makes fun of superhero movie tropes while continuing to use them (and there are some subtle ways it plays with some of said tropes and twists them around, but it largely doesn’t) — but it’s fun

But I’m A Cheerleader — is far from perfect, and I maintain that it’s actually much more depressing than the ending leads us to believe (I mean, Meghan/Graham and Dolph/Clayton get together and escape from True Directions and homophobic parents, and Meghan’s Mom and Dad at least try to do better by their daughter, but things don’t work out that well for anybody else), but it’ll always have a special place in my heart because it was one of the only lesbian movies that I had access to as a little gay baby

Female Trouble — I wouldn’t say that it’s the best thing that John Waters has ever done, just the one that I personally like the best, and I’ll admit that it’s probably an acquired taste…… but I love how it takes on celebrity culture in the story Dawn Davenport, and it gave us great lines like, “The world of heterosexual is a sick and boring life” and, “I wouldn��t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls!” It also has a special place in my heart as one of my favorite, “gay AND weird” movies

—which probably makes sense, given that it was written and directed by the trash king of being gay and weird

……like, seriously. My (best friend who I call my) brother once asked me, “So is John Waters gay or is he just really weird?” and the only thing I could think of to say to that was, “Yes, both.”

the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy — which is totally cheating, to put three in here, but I couldn’t pick between them. I do think that Hot Fuzz and The World’s End are more fully actualized than Shaun of the Dead, but I love all of them, and the reason is pretty much just, “Because they’re good mixes of being hilarious and making me FEEL things” (……less so in The World’s End, for several reasons; it’s a lot heavier on the feels, to the point that you sometimes feel bad for laughing at the jokes, but still)

and books:

Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman) — This book was my introduction to both PTerry and GNeil, after I found a cheap copy in an airport bookstore when I was about twelve and immediately fell in love. It’s funny, the characters are vibrant and engaging, and it played right into my love of screwing around with Biblical mythology.

I’m periodically tempted to list different books for both of those men (with PTerry’s probably being one of the Granny Weatherwax books, or Faust Eric, and GNeil’s being either American Gods or one of his Sandman books — because yeah, he’s done other good stuff, but I’m more sentimentally attached to AG and Sandman. Also, Preludes and Nocturnes has some of the only non-movie or TV horror that has genuinely terrified me, so)

—buuuut then I never do, because Good Omens was my first book from either of them, and remains my sentimental fave, even though I admit that they’ve both written other books that are, “better” or, “stronger,” or whatever

Dry (Augusten Burroughs) — There’s a lot of fair criticism to be made of Augusten Burroughs, and he’s been one of the writers at the center of the debates about truthfulness or lack thereof in popular memoirs (like, how much an author is allowed to condense things before it stops counting as a, “real story,” and how an author remembers things happening vs. how other people remember them), but Dry nevertheless means a lot to me.

Like, I enjoyed Running with Scissors and his novel, Sellevision (which were the other Big Deals in his collected works, at the time I originally read Dry), but Dry fucked me up a LOT when I first read it. It has continued to fuck me up ever since.

There are passages in this book that I can’t even be jealous of, as another writer, because they’re so good that they skip right the fuck past, “I’m angry and jealous that I didn’t write this myself” and into, “Holy shit, THIS is why I write, the ability to do THIS KIND OF THING EXACTLY with words, I need to go write something right now”

Also, it means a lot to me for sentimental, “I read this book for the first time when I was in high school, and it made me feel less lonely and sad and scared” reasons

Dynamic Characters (Nancy Kress) — This is by no means the be-all and end-all of, “how to writer better” books, but it’s a personal favorite of mine, for two reasons: 1. there are some things that Kress doesn’t cover about creating characters and doing better by them in your writing, but she’s still pretty comprehensive and offers some solid illustrative examples, multiple perspectives on this part of writing (not as many as she could, but to be fair, she only has so many pages to work with), and a good mix of “tough love” advice and gentler, more reassuring advice;

and 2. …it was the first, “how to writer better” book that I ever got my hands on. I picked it out specifically because I’d posted a completely ridiculous crack fic that was a crossover between Harry Potter and Sailor Moon, with a first-person protagonist narrator who was a hot nonsense self-insert power fantasy Mary Sue with no flaws and no nuance because, hey, I was 11.

And someone actually commented to go, “Hey, look, you have talent, but you could do better and one place to start is maybe with learning to build better realized characters” — so I picked out the Nancy Kress book and it seems like a really silly thing to call a turning point? But it was big a turning point for me

Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (José Alaniz) — okay, time for me to be a loser and cite an academic book. I’m also probably a cheating loser, since I just read this book for the first time recently…… but with that said? I’ve read a LOT of critical treatments of the superhero genre, some pretty good, others pretty bad (for example, I remain Perpetually Tired of Slavoj Žižek’s heavy metal Communist, Bane in Leather Pants bullshit reading of The Dark Knight Returns), and most of it somewhere in the middle

—but there’s this trend among people who write critically about superhero junk, whether they’re academics of not, wherein we act like we have to act like superhero comics are The Most Progressive Ever and oversell their sociopolitical impact in order to make them look like ~*True Art*~ That Must Be Taken Seriously (—and like, I’m not saying that they have NO impact on people at all, because that’s objectively false. But you also can’t try to claim that Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America comics are why the Allies won World War II)

(this is a pointless aside to note that I deliberately left the Goddamn Batman off that list, because while Supes, Diana, and Steve were all off punching Nazis, Golden Age Bruce and white boy!Dick were running around on the home-front, rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps. So… y’know. There’s that.)

……or we have to take legitimate criticisms of problems in the superhero genre, both historical and current, and use them to go, “Therefore, the entire genre is pointless garbage that has no redeeming qualities at all and could never ever EVER be used to tell any stories that are worth telling, and frankly, you are all terrible, horrible people for enjoying it, how very dare you enjoy that X-Men movie or that Red Hood And The Outlaws comic, you’re basically a fascist now”

—which is hilarious, to me, because the people who write that sort of criticism almost always cite Fredric Wertham’s book, The Seduction of the Innocent (aka: the book that led to so much moral outrage over the allegedly very gay and fascistic, child-corrupting content of comicbooks that the Comics Code Authority was created), and they always go, “Well, obviously Wertham was OTT and totally full of shit, buuuut…… *argument that would not have been out of place in his book*”

So, one of the big reasons I loved Professor Alaniz’s book is that is does neither of these things. It offers some incisive, and occasionally kinda damning, critique of the superhero genre and its handling of disability and mortality, but he does so from a place of love and enjoyment, and never pretends to hate the genre, nor argues for throwing the whole thing out because it has problems.

Like, his underlying mindset is very much, “Yes, the superhero genre has a LOT of problems, but people could, in theory, fix them and try to get closer to realizing the full potential of what these characters and stories can do” — while never skimping on a detailed analysis of the trends and case studies that he presents.

Sometimes, I think he’s kinda reaching (and I, personally, never want to hear anything about Doctor Doom’s Oedipus complex ever again so long as I live, though it was validating to hear that my theatre kids AU version of him — who is a ridiculous mess, obsessed with taking selfies, and perpetually acting like he totally gets everything while missing some crucial detail, which is how he ends up thinking that Loki is dating Tony Stank [a suggestion that makes both of them want to puke] — is actually a valid interpretation of his character, based on some parts of canon)

Overall, though, my biggest problem with Professor Alaniz’s book is that he can be kind of a hipster and it can get a little bit annoying. Not enough to ruin the whole book, but enough that it does stand out.

Like, his chapter on Daredevil specifically analyzes an infamous Silver Age story that basically everyone hated — the one where Matt Murdock tells Karen and Foggy that he isn’t the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but he has some heretofore unknown identical twin brother named Mike, who is not blind but *IS* actually that aforementioned costumed hero, and carries on a charade of pretending to be his nonexistent twin brother — and okay, we get some pretty neat discussion of how passing can work or might not with disabled people

…but you can still walk away feeling like his biggest reason for analyzing that story arc was less about its value to any part of his discussion, and more about going, “Other Daredevil stories are too mainstream, I care most about this one that was so infamously ridiculous that people have said even soap operas wouldn’t have done this plot”

Likewise, I’m not saying that there aren’t very fair criticisms to be made of the X-Men and how their stories handle disability in particular… but at some points in his chapter on the Silver Age Doom Patrol comics, Professor Alaniz seems to be less, “using the pre-Claremont Silver Age X-Men stories as an illustrative foil to the Doom Patrol, especially with regard to how Charles’s paraplegia is treated vs. how The Chief’s paraplegia is treated” and more, “using this discussion as a free excuse to bash on the X-Men for being popular”

To his credit, Professor Alaniz does kinda discuss some of the ways that the X-Men’s popularity might have been affected by the fact that things like their ableist handling of Charles make them feel, “safer” and, “less sociopolitically threatening” than he makes the Doom Patrol out to be (with a pretty convincing argument, actually)

He just doesn’t do it enough for me to feel like his “criticism” of the X-Men isn’t at least partially grounded in going, “Well, it’s popular, therefore it sucks” (—as opposed to my approach to them, which is, “It’s popular, and has a mixed bag of things that it does well vs. things it does that suck, but it does not suck BECAUSE it is popular”)

Anyway, good book, and it’s written in a refreshingly accessible way (it’s still an academic book and harder to get into than, say, Good Omens, but Professor Alaniz doesn’t make a lot of the more common mistakes that leave a lot of academic writing effectively incomprehensible)

and last but not least…… Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (we all know who wrote this, okay, come on) — because I’d be lying if I didn’t include at least one HP book on this list, considering how important those books and that fandom have been to the course of my life and to my development as a writer, and it was either gonna be this one or POA, but this one won over the other because I’m garbage

[matildainmotion]

The Superheroes who might save us: A Call to the Mothers of Parliament.

When I go shopping in the Co-op near our house, when I have reeled the children in from running up and down the aisles and made it to the check-out, I stand, holding their hands and waiting, and then, and only then, I allow myself to glance over at the newspaper rack. I read the headlines. I read them fast, as if I am doing something forbidden – having a smoke, a coke, a coffee. As if I am getting a sugar or caffeine hit. The fact is I am getting a ‘headline hit.’ Then we are at the front of the queue and it is time to buy our groceries and go home, where I do not read the papers, listen to the radio or watch the news. I have learnt that when I engage with the news fully, as many do, I do not know how to carry on with the next simple task in front of me – getting dressed, brushing teeth - and now that I am a mother this is not a good idea. It has never felt like an ideal solution – just to avoid the lot – but it is the best coping strategy I have found.

But every now and then, when I am standing in the Co-op queue, there is a headline that hits me so hard I have to engage. Something like, “Johnson to Ask Queen to Prorogue Parliament,” for example.

I had another blog lined up for September. It was about diversity. It will have to wait. On the whole, in leading Mothers Who Make (MWM), I don’t write about politics in order to honour diversity. MWM is for all mothers regardless of age, race, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, gender identity, religion or political persuasion. However, the truth is, MWM is deeply political, just like mothering. It is not ‘regardless of…’ but rather ‘regard-full’ of it all. It is the very stuff of our exchanges with our children, from the word go, from the first howl and how we respond to it.

It was one of the things that struck me most forcibly after my son was born, how political my new job was. The recommended literature fussed about nappies and naps, purees and poos – things that I heard other mothers both obsess over and scorn as unworthy of true intellectual engagement, but under it all rumbled the profound responsibility with which I had been entrusted and to which no one seemed to be admitting. “What does ‘MP’ stand for?” my son, now 7, asked not long ago. I was tempted to answer, “Mother of Person” for the personal, and specifically the maternal, is political. Here is the Wikipedia definition of ‘politics’:

Politics…involves making decisions that apply to members of a group. It refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance—organized control over a human community.

There I was, 7 years ago, a new mother, thrust into a sudden position of governance, organising control over a brand new human community, otherwise known as a family. Every choice I made – including the ones about nappies and naps – had, it seemed to me, political ramifications. I had to decide how to shape the world, how to interpret it for this new citizen under my governance, what laws to lay down, how best to spend our resources, and of course all this had to take place within the wider context of the country and its government– and how these two governments, at home and at large, aligned or did not, had to be continually negotiated. No wonder I was tired.

Given this, I have for a long time now, felt startlingly radical. Mothers Who Make, early on, gained the strapline of being ‘a quiet revolution.’ One of my favourite comments from an MWM participant (now North London’s MWM facilitator), Zoe Gardner, is about how astonishing she found it that “something as vanilla as breeding” could make her feel so marginal and alternative. Every day can feel like a kind of march, a protest. Out the door we go again, to meet the world, to bump up against its values, often, in my case as a breast-feeder, with a bare boob to boot. And those values frequently feel Victorian: I, and the small, contentious country under my governance, brush up against the attitude that children should be seen and not heard, and ideally not seen either, or only in certain designated child-friendly zones.

So, whilst I don’t engage with the world’s views and news, I also do - I engage with it all the time and therefore when I read a headline like “Johnson to Ask Queen to Prorogue Parliament” it is easy to join in the live news stream – I’m already knee deep in it. Being a mum, bringing up the next generation, involves wading in.

My second child was born in June, 2016. The fatal, famous referendum took place when she was barely two weeks old. The Brexit story has formed the background to her entire life. I’m a Remainer – my father was a refugee from Nazi Germany and I feel more European than British. However, I am not interested in or qualified to add to the vast volume of Brexit-analysis articles. I recognise the truly horrific thing about the last three years is not in fact the leaving of the EU but the level of division and polarisation it has caused. But to shut down debate, to close parliament now….. It is too close to the mechanisms at work in a totalitarian state, reminds me too much of the sly sliding of the story in George Orwell’s Stalinist fable Animal Farm, for me to be able to bag up the groceries and turn away from the papers and their headlines, as I usually manage to do.

We came home from the shops on Wednesday evening and my children had been promised a treat: watching The Incredibles, the movie about a family of superheroes who have to hide their heroic powers because the frightened government has outlawed them. The film’s baddie is a man called ‘Syndrome’ who doesn’t have any super powers but develops a whole load of gadgets that makes it seem like he has. He looks, as it happens, rather like Boris Johnson – his hair is a bit more orange, but otherwise it is a good fit. While the children were watching the movie with their Dad, I went online and signed every petition I could find.

Then it was bedtime. The children, eventually, went to sleep. I did not.

I wondered if I could sneak out the house and make it to the protests in Parliament Square and back before they woke up. But I didn’t. I sat in the bedroom and I went online again. I signed some more petitions. I made my contribution to Gina Miller’s legal fees. I read about the suggestion, from Lloyd Russell-Moyle, that the only way we can stop the suspension of parliament is through a general strike. I went on Facebook. An old friend, Anna Dale, – someone I met through the early days of MWM – had written this above one of the petitions:

“This is a start. What else? Mother's strike, anyone?”

I wrote back:

“I’m in. I have no idea what a mother’s strike would look like but I think it is time we invented it – tonight.”

I spent the rest of that night, and most of the last 3 days and nights wondering what a mother’s strike might look like. I remembered the ancient Greek play, Lysistrata,in which the women, fed up with the never-ending war in which the men are engaged, go on a sex strike – no sex till you sort it out. It worked. I have been craving something this outrageous. I thought of the way in which, growing up near a river, I was afraid of the swans after their signets had hatched – the ferocity of the mother when the safety of her young is at stake.  

Back on Facebook, Anna shared with me her ideas for a mother’s strike and I added my own:

-The mothers of the land leave their children to their menfolk and get themselves to Parliament Square to protest, so causing a knock-on effect of chaos as the public work gets disrupted due to newly shouldered childcaring responsibilities.

-We use social media to drown Johnson in the minutiae of our days – we tweet the moment by moment work we do of caring for our children, as he is busy moment by moment fucking up their futures.

-We stage protests in our homes. We make small podiums in our living rooms and then film ourselves and our children making speeches of protest. We get out the paints and we make banners. We put them up in our windows and we put them up online.

Feel free to run with any of these. Any of them could be potent and brilliant. For me, however, none of them quite feel achievable. Despite my passion and fury, despite my sense of the critical importance of this moment, I do not feel able to action these or mobilise the numbers needed in time, or even if I did, I am not sure that it would have enough impact. Why?

I think it is because, as a mother, it is more or less impossible to go on strike. We cannot stop our work. We cannot fold our arms and refuse the naps and the nappies. It is hard to find the time even to write this blog, let alone organise a major national action. The children are here – their needs are loud and immediate. I cannot stop looking after them. We cannot stop caring. It is why what we do, as mothers, is invisible and marginalised because it is fundamental and its impact is incalculable – beyond metrics. Something as vanilla as breeding, as basic as breathing, as radical as loving.

Mothers are both the least and the most powerful people in the land. In this paradox lies the key, I think, in my quest for what a mother’s strike might look like. We have a fantastically ambivalent status. I think of the phrase: ‘Women and children first.’The weakest members of society are put first, in an emergency, in a chivalric act by the strongest and most powerful. But there is another way to frame this. For a time my son was obsessed by the sinking of The Titanic and, in reading the story of that night, I found that the news headlines from over a hundred years ago were ones from which I also could not turn away. Most of the men drowned, whilst most of the women and children got into those precious few lifeboats not because they were weak, but because the future belonged to them - it belonged, at least, to the children, and the women were vital in ensuring they inherited it. (Yes, men can do this too, but allow me to give the women their moment of honour).

We are powerful because the future is in our hands. It is in our arms. We rock it to bed at night. We sing to it. We dress it in the morning. We give it the present, as a present. “Here,” we say. “This is ours now. One day it will be only yours.” We teach and we guide it as best we can. We tell the future when we think it is misbehaving because we desperately, deeply, want the future to be good, for all the love and the care to travel beyond us –life boats sailing out into the years ahead. And so I wonder whether the key to ‘a mother’s strike’ might lie not in disrupting what we do, not in doing it less, or even in doing it loudly, but in quietly doing it more.

One of the articles I have read since Wednesday night was a commentary in The Guardian, entitled, ‘Johnson wants us to feel outrage. Let’s take back control – starting with ourselves.’ I think this is right. Part of my resistance to the news in general is that the papers and media want to get a rise out of me. It makes me think of being a mum to a stroppy, outrageously-behaving child – an almost daily experience of mine.

On my best days (and these, I have to admit, are few) I do not react to the outrageous behaviour of my children with further outrage. I have responded in this way enough times to know it does not go well for anyone. On my best days I hold my ground but I do not dig in my heels. Nor do I march anywhere. I do not protest. I stay calm whilst they do the protesting, the kicking, the screaming, the spitting, the stamping off. I do not give in, but nor do I fight back. I do not threaten. I do not punish them. I do not strike them and I do not go on strike. In fact I do the opposite. I stay right there, more ‘on’ than ever.

As a ‘mother of parliament’ I think this is what I should do, and invite others to do, in response to the pseudo-superhero that is Boris Johnson – a man with lots of showy gadgets, but no real power. I should be how I am on my best days as a mother. I should stand in the centre of my invisible but very real power as a caretaker of the future. Hold my ground, like a swan in front of her signets – not yet attacking, but showing up with full, fierce presence.

I think mothers are like The Incredibles. They have incredible power, but they have to lead ordinary lives. They have to hide the fact that they are super heroes. But they are.

Imagine them all - the incredible mothers of the land, holding the children, and quietly surrounding Westminster.

We cannot necessarily drop our lives, stop our care, make it to Parliament Square but we can still hold this ground. This is the latest image I have, and I am inviting you to help me build it - a mother’s strike which requires only that you strike a match.

Go, light a candle for your children, do it casually or reverentially. It need not be holy. Or only in the way that our thousand prosaic, daily acts of care are holy. It is just a candle. I like candles. My children love them- blowing them out, relighting them, picking the cooled wax off the kitchen table. Light a candle for each child, for the care of them and their future. A night light, a broken birthday candle from the bottom of the drawer, or a pristine dinner candle – any candle will do. Take a photo of it, of the candles, of the future you are holding. And put this online. Use this hashtag: #motherstrike. Be quietly, fiercely present to the outrageous behaviour of the government.

Maybe we can surround Westminster with our candles. And it doesn’t matter how many or how few of us do this because this is not about metrics (though, hey, it would be cool if it spread far and wide). For regular striking to have an impact it depends on enough people doing it. But instead of striking we will be staying. We will be being more present, quietly more ‘on’, than ever, letting our invisible, incredible power be known, those of us who hold the future in our arms.

Before I go and light my candles, here is one other thing you can do –

Next Friday, Improbable, the theatre company with whom I work, will be Opening Space. Children will be welcome. This event, will also, in its own way, be candlelit, in the sense that it is an invitation to turn up and turn on your presence, rather than deny it, to work beyond your outrage and find a creative response. It’s free. Go here to book your place: https://www.devotedanddisgruntled.com

And, if you are part of the MWM network and want a question for the month, here it is:

How, as a mother and a maker, do you wish to engage with the wider world? What do you do? What do you notdo? What do you want the future to look like and how can you help make it so?

Now, go find the matches, and the night lights– strike your match and share it, let it be known that you are here: #motherstrike

.

[nicoladoeschina]

The Seedy Underbelly

In truth, I am really having a hard time with this new job.

So.... Why?

Why am I doing this now?

I think the answer is simple: so that I’m not tempted to try it again later.

This is a retrospective analysis.

From the outset my thinking was more upward looking.

I was curious. I still am curious. I wanted to know how Chinese companies operate.

My reasoning is that many foreign companies are doing business in China.

I thought it’d be a good angle to get to know them from the inside, so as to better deal with them on the outside.

But even before I formally took this job, I already knew how this one operated.

Horribly.

Already in May, the hiring process was chaotic.

The day after the fancy interview at headquarters, I was verbally told I’d been selected.

Nothing in writing.

I didn’t get more than a casual: you’ve passed, and your stated salary requirements will be met.

The HR employees then commissioned me to obtain many many documents so they could prepare a working visa, that would lead to huge spends of time and money on my part.

I didn’t even have an offer in hand! But if I failed to present the documents, then I Definitely wasn’t getting an offer. It was a Catch-22.

The month of running around Beijing admist garish uncertainty of employment was absolutely wrenching – for me, and for all my close friends/family that had to listen to me bitch for hours in frustration.

I had travel plans to execute on. I had, and still do have, a life to lead. How could they leave me in this limbo? Professionalism? Efficiency? Both null.

After much aggravation, I let them know that I was leaving the country on June 30. It was non-negotiable.

Over the course of the next 6 weeks, I continuall and more firmly, asked for my offer letter. Yet, I was continually met by garbage delays.

Truly, no good reasons were provided for such gross incompetency.

The night before my graduation, I raised hell. The morning of the ceremony, I got my offer. Then I promptly submitted all the pre-visa documents they requested of me. Phew.

Come mid-July two weeks later, I was contacted with my contract.

I was told that even though the stated working location was Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, that this was for government relations/taxation purposes.

As for signing the thing, I was already traveling, so I managed to print it, sign it, then had to scan it to my mom and trouble her to mail the parcel overseas.

Another big hassle.

At this point, I began to wonder about what a professional life in Beijing would look like. So it dawned on me to ask if they would provide assistance for finding housing in Beijing.

And what do you think I learned then?

Oh, by the way, don’t worry about housing in Beijing yet...because you’ll be training in Hohhot for three months at the beginning!!!

What?

You’re only telling me that... now? What if I didn't ask? ...

Knowing what I know now from other recent hires, they wouldn’t have told me. Period.

The Indo girl wasn’t informed of the three month Hohhot stint until after she bought her plane ticket to Beijing. And then she only had a week to prepare.

She’s still paying rent on her Beijing apartment now...

The others, they probably had even less notice.

Lucky me, I put the feelers out about housing in mid-July...

What the actual fuck?

How can any respecting corporation pull at stunt like that on their new hires?

What is the point? It’s not like the HR people don’t know the drill. All new management hires must complete the same process.

Did anyone care to tell us at the interview? No.

Did anyone care to tell us upon the offer? No.

Did anyone care to tell us on signing the contract? No.

Did anyone care at all to tell us one once of information about any fucking thing?

WHAT THE FUCK.

Back to the summer.

The third week of July, I received notice that my non-criminal record check was not sufficient.

Let’s see... that’s Three Weeks after I submitted my information.

As I was traveling, I told HR they must wait.

When I arrived home in mid-August. I went through hoops for the next two months collecting all the necessary documents to approve a new non-criminal record check.

Why did this take two months? Oh yeah, because no one had any clue how to help me and i was having trouble helping myself.

There’s little information online about it.

OHHHHH and best, the Chinese embassy official site hasn’t been updated since 2015.

I should have been smarter and contacted a visa agent from the beginning. But since the NYC consulate is fairly close, I thought I could manage on my own.

I was wrong. I needed the help and eventually wound up paying a service.

(At least I bought myself two amazing amazing months at home. Big upside)

Why was it that the HR for this huge company had no idea how to advise me?

I’m the first (of two) foreigners that they’ve ever hired at the entry level.

The company employs several foreign experts, but of course they are managed much differently...

Once I arrived in Hohhot, it became overwhelmingly apparent that none of the beyond the HR staff and foreigner stuff, no one in management has any knowledge of anything even so slightly removed from their narrow purview. 

Great.

No one knows a fucking thing about anything.

But they’re all generally really nice though...

Let me describe how Chinese companies really work, from the inside.

One umbrella, Three buzz words:

Inefficiency via Over-employment, Under-training and Lots-of-Ass-Kissing

Now, you might ask, how do they function at all?

The answer is very Very VERY slowly.

There are SO MANY people. And so LITTLE skills among them.

Imagine trying to make an assembly line out of a non-linear process. That’s Chinese corporations’ approach to management.

The Chinese government views employment like the Western governments view human rights: necessary for stability.

If Chinese organizations only staffed the number of people needed for the work, there’d be massive havoc in the streets.

There are 1.4 billion people in China. Every year, there are 10 million new college graduates.

Excess labor may be good for keeping blue collar wages low to boost competitiveness, but in white collar work, the mandated hiring of excess labor has led to rife inefficiency.

Now, you may be thinking, hasn’t the government been trying to tackle this problem by trimming massive State Owned Enterprises since the ‘80s?

They’ve definitely made strides in transforming SOEs from hugely unprofitable corporations with cradle-to-grave care for millions of employees and families, to profit-making firms that hold up reasonably well some to competition, right?

That’s right. But they’re still ungodly bloated with workers.

The private sector may have developed in the era of opening and reform, but many Many MANY Chinese companies still actively practice over-employment.

They play a numbers game. 

White collar labor is still fairly cheap. The employees are all responsible for little, but there lots and Lots and LOTS of them.

You can see how this quickly leads to bureaucracy – to keep everyone feeling important.

I can give countless examples from my own experience this month, describing in detail, just how many people become involved in even the simplest tasks.

The assembly line isn’t linear, remember?

In fact, it’s a good mix between horizontal, diagonal, and vertical. It’s 3-D, really.

I honestly don’t want to go into the examples because they make me too infuriated. But know that the problem is not only acute, but prolific.

It is overwhelmingly compounded by buzz word No.2: under-training.

So you have this huge bureaucratic fucked assembly line mess, and now imagine no one knows what they’re doing...

Why?

I can speak about Yili, though in regards to other Chinese firms, I can’t tell you anything concrete.

At Yili, all new management hires must complete three months of training in Hohhot. This includes: One month of courses about company culture, business practices, and rough overviews of Yili’s departments, and Two whole months of “interning” at Yili’s factories around the city.

In theory, this could provide a fantastic foundation of base knowledge for all incoming management employees.

But there is, of course, a big catch. Two actually.

One, is that the factory “internship” is a wash. After brief introductions to processes, we are made to sit or stand, observing automated processes for 8-to-13 hour shifts at a clip. Observing only. We don’t have any real knowledge about production, we’re in marketing or sales. If the training was actually training, than this could be a bit long, but a great experience. Instead we’re left milling around doing absolutely nothing for months.

Two, is that over the course of these three months training, we have absolutely ZERO job-specific training.

That’s right. Zero.

But once our training period ends, we’re thrust right into our roles in business development, or media coordination, or etcetera.

Our bosses are supposed to function as mentors. Though, from what I’ve learned about mentors or “internships” here in China, is that they’re shit.

So basically, we’ll finish the training and be handed a list of tasks as if we know how to complete them.

Where does that leave us? OH YEAH, asking colleagues for help.

But what happens when, in an over-staffed company, every colleague is asking everyone else for assistance on this, that or the other thing?

That, my friends, is inefficiency on a huge scale.

Buzz word number three is the last piece of the puzzle. Ass kissing. Lots of it.

Many people are familiar with Chinese culture’s deference and respect to status.

There are positives and negatives to this. Definitely many positives in an authoritarian system... cough*

But in a corporate setting, deference leads to dishonesty.

And worse yet, indifference to the circle of inefficiency it’s creating.

No one wants to make anyone look bad.

But, oh wait, THEY LOOK BAD. Almost everyone, LOOKS BAD, all the time because they don’t know their left from their right, nor their own shit from the chocolate-covered soybeans in Yili’s yogurt products.

No one will say that the factory internship is garbage, because then the internship supervisors will lose face and get in trouble. No one will say that they’ve received inefficient training for their required job, because the training school supervisors will meet similar consequences. But then the poorly-trained trainees, struggle greatly with their new tasks and must call for help constantly, miring everyone in the web.

The problem compounds and compound, both across departments and across rank.

The Chinese cultural element that breeds filial piety at home, also breeds horrible inefficiency in the workplace.

Rife inefficiency has still managed to render many Chinese firms successful at home in their government protected, sheltered economy. If they all operate similarly, then of course there can still be big winners.

Though, should these firms encounter international competition – where the leanest and meanest reign supreme - they’re in for very hard reckonings.

The large, very successful companies competition internationally such as Alibaba, I can’t speak for.

But i do believe i write with honesty that the three buzz words, one umbrella analysis of Chinese corporate culture is both spot on and scary, for me personally. I signed up for this, knowing i’d have a really hard time. But i committed. 

I still dearly hope that this is a positive building block that will help me moving forward. 

It is my goal to avoid complete disenchantment that will chase me away from China completely. There’s only so long as I can being the only competent one in the room. 

But I hope these fears are shattered soon by some fantastic coworkers at the Beijing branch. My fingers are crossed! February I’m looking at you! Come sooner!

In the meantime, I’m pursing things that interest me such as travel writing, and learning new things.

I’ve updated the inspirational quote on my desktop to:  What you’re doing is worth it.

It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the weeds of daily nonsense here, so i need to remind myself that the long game will bare fruit.

Peace.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: ‘I have tried trade, but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.’1 Noam Chomsky once emailed us: Am really impressed with what you are doing, though it’s like trying to move a ten-ton truck with a toothpick. They’re not going to allow themselves to be exposed.2 These were kind words from Chomsky. But, in fact, ‘they’ – corporate journalists – often do an excellent job of exposing themselves. Consider that, last week, one of us happened to notice this on Twitter: Under 27? Want to spend a year writing about politics for The Observer, @NewStatesman and @thetimes? Anthony Howard Award 2018 is now open: http://anthonyhowardaward.org.uk . It gave @LOS_Fisher @ashcowburn @patrickkmaguire @Dulcie_Lee and me our starts in Westminster. Apply! We responded: Forget it. Don’t write for the “mainstream”. Don’t write for money. Don’t write for prestige. Just “follow your bliss” by writing what you absolutely love to write to inspire and enlighten other people. Write what seems interesting, important and true, and give it away for free. The tweet quickly picked up 15 retweets and 40 likes. At first, nobody expressed strong feelings about it. But then, a clutch of corporate journalists and writers decided to scandalise what we had sent, generating a kind of ‘mainstream’ feeding frenzy. Emma Kennedy, actress, author of ten books, tweeted graciously: This is total bollocks. If you want to be a writer know this: you have a value and you ALWAYS deserve to be paid. Go fuck yourself Media Lens. Stephen Buranyi, who writes longreads for the Guardian, mimed: **does the jackoff motion so hard I glide across the floor like an unbalanced washing machine** Patrick Sawer, senior reporter at The Telegraph: Tell that to anyone trying to stage a play, paint a canvas, put together a film, get a book published. What arrant nonsense to pretend, for the sake of “purity” that the market economy doesn’t exist. Kate Hind, Mail on Sunday Showbiz Editor, chipped in: I think this lot are in on the wind up Pressgirl wrote: I’ve worked as a journo for more than 30 years and only those with wealthy partners can afford to potter about doing what they fancy. Most have to do the grunt work of covering courts, sports, disasters and getting their hands dirty. Everyone seemed to find their own meaning, and outrage, in the tweet. Editor Wendy Rosenfield: This is literally the worst advice for writers. Write for yourself, on your own blog, or to promote your own work for free. Charge everyone else. It’s work. It has value and deserves compensation. Ian Craig, a politics reporter: Abhorrent. I hope you apologise for this. Helen Black, a novelist, foresaw dark consequences: Have you got any idea how unattainable a career in the media/arts feels to millions of working class people? A tweet like this only serves to feed class division. Before long, the outrage went global. From New York: This is awful advice. Truly, truly awful. From Spain: Snobismo moralista de pacotilla… We got the gist from the first two words. Even Owen Jones of the Guardian, normally a stickler for ignoring us, replied: The corporate media needs to be relentlessly critiqued. And that includes its dependence on unpaid/underpaid labour which is a) exploitative and b) turns journalism into a closed shop for the privileged. Which you helped justify. He added: And yes, sure, there’ll be those using your stupid statement opportunistically because you more generally critique corporate media practices. That doesn’t mean you’re vindicated in giving pseudo radical cover to unpaid media labour. We replied: It’s not possible for us to have “helped justify” corporate media exploitation and privilege when the first line of our tweet read: “Forget it. Don’t write for the “mainstream”. Jones has previously revealed that he is ‘barred‘ from criticising his colleagues. With this in mind, we added: There’s also a problem with corporate media requiring that young journalists refrain from criticising their colleagues, their company, their advertisers, their owners, “the industry”. But that’s not something you’re willing or able to talk about, is it? Jones resumed his policy of ignoring us. The New Statesman published an entire article on our tweet, titled: Telling journalists to “follow your bliss” by writing for free is as anti-socialist as you can get Abuse poured in liberally: You sound like a privileged twat here. Just saying. Fucking new age wanky twaddle. Fuck off’ Go stuff your bliss up your arse Fuck you. Pay people. You sound retarded. And so on, with the above representing only a small sample… ‘The Call to Adventure’ By any standards, this was a fascinating response to a single tweet of just 279 characters. In his excellent response to the furore, former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook wrote that ‘the outpouring of indignation from these journalists at a little bit of advice from Media Lens must be unprecedented’. So what did Joseph Campbell, a comparative mythologist, actually mean when he talked of ‘following your bliss’? In a series of discussions on The Power of Myth with journalist Bill Moyers, Campbell explained: The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy – not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call “following your bliss”.3 Having found out what really inspires us, the key is to not be distracted or tempted by lesser motivations – ‘lesser’, not because they are ‘bad’ or ‘evil’, but because they are not, in fact, despite what many people think, sources of real satisfaction: You may have a success in life, but then just think of it – what kind of life was it? What good was it – you’ve never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off. (p.118) Campbell was not dispensing self-help twaddle here. His comments were rooted in more than half a century spent studying myths, legends and folk tales from every corner of the globe. He was particularly interested in a remarkable, recurring ‘monomyth’ featuring a ‘hero’ – not a tedious, Marvel-style superhero, but simply someone sensitive to his or her extreme frustration with egotistical pursuits based around money, respect and fame. This stubborn, otherwise very ordinary, soul responds to a ‘call to adventure’, stepping beyond the boundaries of everyday life to search for some deeper, more satisfying answer to life. In doing so, the hero inevitably takes a challenging journey away from the familiar and secure along a ‘road of trials’, which eventually delivers him or her to a ‘wasteland’. This is an abysmal moment of crisis that, if faced and endured, results in a tremendous ‘boon’; an experience that leaves the hero utterly transformed. Campbell’s specific advice to writers answering this ‘call to adventure’ was to read everything by the authors they love. And to then read everything loved by this first set of authors, and so on. He suggested we keep journeying, investigating ever more deeply into whatever it is we find most enthralling and enlivening. Simultaneously, we should write whatever it is we find most interesting – just write and write, practice, experiment and enjoy. In this way, he claimed, we can develop a depth of enthusiasm, knowledge and skill that may very well result in our work being noticed, appreciated and supported. But this positive reception should not be the motivation, not even a concern. Does it need saying that the hero of the ‘monomyth’ – Christ, Buddha, Bodhidharma, Saraha, Kabir, Lao-Tse – is not seeking fame and financial gain? Campbell warned that a writer might need to follow this path for ten years before receiving any acknowledgement at all, much less payment. But this was not a problem because the delight of the adventure more than compensates for any financial loss. Campbell’s key point: And if you stay in the centre and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss. But, of course, questions remain; urgent issues that explain the bile expressed at our tweet: 1: How on earth are we to live? Guardian columnist Dawn Foster garnered 524 ‘likes’ on Twitter with this comment: Emailing my landlord, bank, and utilities company to explain I’m “following my bliss”. Someone else wrote: How the fuck are we going to afford rent and bills and food by writing for bliss. 2: Why on earth would a young writer give his or her work away for free? Why would payment not be an aspiration? Writer Emma Kennedy again: It is utterly disgusting that you are advocating for writers not to be paid. Go tell that to a plumber. You’re a disgrace. A freelance photographer agreed: Dear “Work For Free” cheerleader: Just Fuck Off, there’s a poppet. To reiterate, Campbell argued that a creative writer must first build a foundation of enthusiasm, knowledge and skill. This can take years, and means following our interest wherever it leads. What matters in these early years is that we love what we’re doing and keep doing it. What does not matter is whether we are achieving some external reward: getting attention, getting paid. These are completely secondary. In fact, they are not even secondary; they are a trap. Schopenhauer wrote: Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain.4 The 11th century Buddhist master, Ksemendra, made a similar point: The thoughts of wealth and glory that arise first are like poison ivy: they harm merely by a touch, enchanting and paralysing the mind.5 But how can a concern for payment be actually poisonous? As young writers very consciously following our bliss in the 1990s, we also felt the temptation to stop reading and writing the material we found most interesting; to start thinking ‘maturely’ and ‘responsibly’ about ‘market demands’. As knowledge and ability increase with practice, the possibility and temptation arise to turn to issues, perhaps related, that pay. Taking this turn, we can quickly come to feel exactly as we do when stuck in standard corporate office work – we are now writing from the head rather than the heart, which is clearly felt as a dull, joyless, mechanical task. But what is really alarming about straying from the ‘call to adventure’ in this way, is that we can end up spending a huge amount of time and energy on this paid work. Writing consumes a lot of mental energy – anyone who writes for three or four hours a day will not have much energy left for real writing. It is far better for young writers to avoid paid writing of this kind and support themselves through paid, non-writing work – part-time teaching, for example. Rather than worrying about toxic money issues, young writers can write what they believe in and send it, completely free, completely uncompromised, to people they admire, friends, small magazines, and so on. In our case, we sent our work to people like Harold Pinter, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Howard Zinn and Edward Goldsmith; to magazines like Resurgence, The Ecologist, New Internationalist, Red Pepper and Z Magazine. Because they valued our work, they began helping us – in Pilger’s case, to a degree that was beyond anything we could have imagined and that continues to this day. This is why our tweet suggested young writers should write and ‘give it away for free’. Doing so allows them to stay true to what they believe, and may well result in support that, crucially, is not conditional on corporate conformity and compromise. Incidentally, Campbell followed his own path by disappearing into the hills to read for ten years at the height of the Great Depression. As he said: I came back from Europe as a student in 1929, just three weeks before the Wall Street crash, so I didn’t have a job for five years. There just wasn’t a job. That was a great time for me. I didn’t feel poor, I just felt that I didn’t have any money. Bridges Burning Brightly – Media Lens Consider the creation of Media Lens in July 2001. We both loathed trying to jump through tiny corporate media hoops to publish small articles and book reviews, and never considered charging for our media alerts and cogitations. The goal was to enjoy ourselves, writing whatever we felt was important, interesting and true about corporate media without giving a hoot about upsetting newspaper editors, commissioning editors and the like – the people young writers are normally terrified of alienating. We felt it was vital to not give a hoot. It never occurred to us that we might be able to make any money out of what we were doing. After all, which of the many corporations, great and small, that dominate the mass media would dream of publishing material undermining their credibility? We also didn’t imagine that readers would send donations to a tiny website run by two virtually unknown writers. Nevertheless, we set about burning our few, rickety media bridges. Just eighteen months later, with donations flowing, Edwards was able to abandon his ten-year, Tefl teaching career to work full-time on Media Lens. Cromwell, who has a family and who was then working as a scientist, was eventually able to resign and work full-time from 2010. The public response has always been astonishing. Last year, in lieu of the usual coffee-makers and cutlery, a couple wrote to their entire list of wedding guests asking them to send donations to Media Lens. As a birthday present for her husband, the wife of an avid reader in Switzerland sent us €1,000, asking only that we send him an email on the day. Ignoring our protests, another reader set up a standing order donating £2 a month, despite sometimes not having enough money to put food on the table. Another supporter paid for 100 copies of our book Newspeak to be sent to senior journalists, editors and managers at the BBC (we only ever received two replies). We have many humbling stories of this kind that we can hardly believe ourselves. The public has immense power to support honest writing, which is why we have imagined a collective of principled writers and journalists detaching themselves completely from corporate media, and placing themselves entirely at the mercy of the public. Of course, we have also made a small amount of money from our two Pluto Press books; from a tiny, short-lived monthly ‘box’ column in the New Statesman (2003-2005), and from a bi-monthly column in Gulf Today recycling media alerts (2004-2009). We are not at all against being paid; the point is that it has never been our motivation and does not determine what we write. And yes, we accept that this is not in any way a secure career path. In fact, donations have been falling for a while and we may have to return to part-time work in the next couple of years. We are keenly aware that the reflexive response from our many critics, wobbling like washing machines across the floor, will be: Well, you say you follow your bliss, but your writing is tedious, turgid, ineffectual crap. So why don’t you…? Which is why we responded to many tweeters with a comment that appeared on the front of our second Media Lens book, Newspeak (Pluto Press, 2009), taken from the foreword by John Pilger: Not since Orwell and Chomsky has perceived reality been so skillfully revealed in the cause of truth. The quality and impact of any writing is always a matter of personal opinion, of course. But we think responses of this kind from the people we respect most indicate that Media Lens has been a tremendous success, considering that we really are just two writers who really have given our media alerts and cogitations away for free, exactly as proposed in our tweet. The Bigger Reality But there is another crucial issue mentioned in the tweet, ‘Don’t write for the corporate media’, that was completely unaddressed by our Twitter critics. This concerns the utterly disastrous impact of young writers meekly conforming to the demands of the corporate system. For these media truly are an integral part of a ‘mainstream’ monster that is devastating the planet. As Jonathan Cook wrote: It’s almost as if these critics are desperately trying to deflect their thoughts from the consequences of this bigger reality. Media Lens and I have committed a crime of honesty: about what kind of world we not only need to live in but must live in right now if we and our children are to survive impending climate breakdown and economic collapse. The “realists”, it seems, would prefer that Media Lens and I tell young journalists that they should forget all that, keep their heads down and carry on like their predecessors in the media, who smoothed the path to the environmental and economic crises we now face. It is impossible to write in a genuinely unconstrained way about the crucial issues of our time from within corporate media. This becomes immediately clear when we glance at just a few of the major topics that ‘mainstream’ writers cannot discuss: They cannot criticise their newspapers, magazines or other media companies: their media owners, parent companies, editors, colleagues, products and advertisers. They cannot discuss the toxic nature of the corporate media system as a whole. For example, they cannot point even to the absurdity of profit-seeking, billionaire-owned, advert-dependent, corporate journalism reporting ‘impartially’ on a world dominated by profit-seeking mega-corporations. They cannot discuss the very reasonable claim advanced by the Canadian lawyer, Joel Bakan, that the corporate system – the most powerful economic and political force on the planet – is, in essence, a giant psychopath subordinating human and animal life to short-term profit. This cannot be debated even in the context of irrefutable evidence that vast corporate interests are, still now, fighting tooth and nail to obstruct action on climate change that is threatening global catastrophe. Because the government is a major supplier of high-level sources and other subsidised news (from central government and various departments, like defence), writers cannot discuss the fact that party politics is essentially owned by corporate power. They cannot expose the role of the US as a de facto global Godfather deploying high-tech violence and terror to ensure Third World countries serve US corporate interests, with obstructive independent nationalists attacked and overthrown in the name of ‘human rights’ and ‘self-defence’. Because the corporate press is about selling products and services to billions of consumers, it is loath to discuss the claim that an authentic, incomparable bliss is located within the human heart, and can be experienced by directing some attention away from external sources of ‘happiness’ to internal feelings in meditation. And yet this has been the assertion of every great spiritual master for thousands of years. Kabir, for example, said: Don’t go outside your house to see flowers, my friend, don’t bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. These ‘flowers’ are waiting for us when we follow our bliss. The flower with ‘a thousand petals’ found by ‘the hero with a thousand faces’ is Enlightenment, deemed a quaint, poetic notion by head-trapped journalism. It is a truth so completely at odds with the whole purpose of corporate power that, beyond a trivial, lifestyle concern with de-stressing ‘mindfulness’, it cannot be considered. A spider’s web of ‘red lines’ awaits anyone who tries to write openly and honestly inside this system. Finally, why did so many corporate journalists feel so compelled to vent their spleen at this one tiny tweet among thousands? A tweet from a website that has no conceivable ability to influence or harm their financial prospects in any way. Why did they bother? The answer can only be that corporate journalists felt drawn to Campbell’s advice. He wrote of such people: Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture”, the subject loses the power of affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless – even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.6 What journalist stuck in the confines of profit-maximisation and ‘market demands’ could fail to feel the attraction of ‘writing what you absolutely love to write to inspire and enlighten other people. Write what seems interesting, important and true’? But what journalist lumbered with a mortgage, prestige, kids’ university debts – after decades spent clambering up a career ladder – can dare to think in terms of following their bliss? The idea seems hateful because it triggers a conflict that is immediate and obvious, and full of pain. How, then, to safely dismiss the whole issue? By raging at the final advice: ‘give it away for free’. Impossible! Absurd! It sows class division! Thus can they reject all such ‘nonsense’ and trudge back to conformity. The tell, the clue, lies in the very passion of the rejection – in the hundreds of angry tweets. After all, mere nonsense is ignored, or coolly dismissed. But when something stirs an inner conflict, the energy must out: ‘The lady doth protest too much.’ The gentleman, also. To all our corporate critics languishing in the fetid bowels of the corporate media Moloch, we say: Don’t go to your corporate offices to see flowers, my friend, don’t bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. * Thoreau, Walden * Chomsky, email to Media Lens, September 14, 2005. * Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, 1988, p.155. * Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, Penguin Books, 1981, p.199. * Ksemendra, Leaves of the Heaven Tree, Dharma Publishing, 1997, p.421. * Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Fontana Press, 1949, p.59. http://clubof.info/