#there was that really good thread on here about rise leo and his relationship with death and i think it heightens my point

[tothefiniteyou]

Something that's been in my head a while concerning the brothers and their "roles", so to speak. This is meant to be about the original Mirage comics, but applies to 2003 and IDW as well. Potentially 2012, maybe more. I don't remember the exact issues, but this WILL contain spoilers for IDW and the original comics.

Raph is the one that takes on the responsibilities no one else does/wants to. He very often has to play the part of the bad guy because his convictions are more rebellious in comparison to what Splinter teaches them, core beliefs and rules that Leo in particular takes to heart. Raph keeps his family in line through his anger, for better and worse, being the one of tough love. In volume 1 of Mirage when they retreated from New York after Leo was almost killed, he calls his brother a coward for not "finishing the job" and goes off to face the Shredder alone. He almost got killed because of his impulsiveness, yes, but Leo's always been about saving his family. So really, he had the courage to face Shredder again because it was for someone else's sake. Their whole fight was kind of gruesome and full of harsh words, but at the end of it all, Leo thanks Raph for it. It's very interesting to me. It shows that Leo, even if he was originally mad, understands that his brother was only doing it because he was scared of his family being hurt again. He sees that it was for his own good, so he expresses gratitude.

Alongside that, I've said before that it's not that Raph wants to be the leader because of the title itself, but rather that he wants freedom, and for others to listen to him. He resents Leo for holding him back, not fully understanding his brother's reasoning. He focuses more on action and less on the consequences of said actions and choices.

In essence, Raph is often the one that has to do the dirty work. His parentification in Rise is even similar to this, having to parent his brothers and be the one to tell them "no", even when it isn't his responsibility. But if no one else is going to do it, then he has to be the bad guy, even if his brothers resent him for it. At his core, he always has his family in mind, even if the execution is flawed.

Raph being thought of as the shield has always felt right to me, as shields can still be used to hurt.

On to Leo - Leo is a very existential person, and that also makes him the most spiritual. Kind of a yin and yang ordeal, with him seeing how there's a balance to things. (I would also say that he needs to assign a purpose to everything, if only to rationalize bad things. It's sort of why he has a bit of a crisis in several iterations when Splinter isn't there to guide him). He's the most "warrior-like" because of the way he values life and honors things like bushido. He'll kill to protect, but that doesn't make him callous, just "strong" (putting this in quotes for multiple reasons). I think IDW tackled this quite lovely, especially when he goes on to have a greenhouse just full of life.

However, I can't say all of this without mentioning the fact that Splinter's teachings are often flawed. I've said before that a lot of Leo's major "arcs" and "growing up" is about becoming his own person and leader, and that's still very much true. Blind Sight is my favorite story to have come from the original comics, and I think it really puts into perspective how Leo struggles to see himself as anything but a weapon. It's that bad habit of his where he must assign purpose to everything, struggling when proven wrong or having to recontextualize things. There's so much more I want to say about him and his role, but a lot of it would be reiterating my points from this post. I struggle to call Leo the sword of the team considering his words to Mikey about how, if he were to throw his katana off the roof, would that be the same as throwing himself. But in Blind Sight, he does learn that he's more than just some sword for his father to wield, and that a sword not only hurts, but protects.

People infantilize Mikey wayyyy too much in this fandom for just being the youngest, which makes me have to pick and choose my words very carefully for fear of the wrong impression. He's definitely the goofball that tends to not take things as seriously, but I think something that The Last Ronin meant to emphasize is that his "raw talent" is from a place of love. It's not that he's not the best of them all just because he lacks focus, it's that he's never seen a reason for him to have to be a warrior like that. Surrounded by his brothers, he doesn't have to try so hard. He'll watch their backs and they'll watch his. He's got the same warrior's spirit as the others, it's just that he rejects some of those teachings in his own way? Raph is often seen as the contrast to Leo, and that's typically true, but I think Mikey can be as well... In a way, Mikey has the most ties to humanity, and that's why I think he's similar to Leo in some ways. Not to say the brothers don't have humanity, but... It's so hard to word what I mean, bear with me.

Being a better warrior kind of means losing his fun-loving and go with the flow nature. He would be less like Mikey. Not to say that being good at fighting exactly equates to being deadly, but that's always a possibility, you know? IDW Mikey is such a good balance and blend of his little shit characterization and his more empathetic side. When he's the first to leave and reject Splinter's ways in IDW, this shows what I mean with him being more strong than Leo's way of being considered strong. He might not be "the best", and he might not tap into his raw talent that several characters mention, but I don't think that's what he necessarily wants. Splinter's idea of strong isn't necessarily the best.... Hopefully this section makes sense and my point gets across that Mikey is both the heart and armor of the team.

And as for Donnie... Oh boy! He has to use a gun in the original comics and actually be the one to kill (since only Raph and Leo really did that from what I can remember), and it shakes him up SO BADLY... And volume 1 just ends with him not choosing to go back to the sewers with his brothers, but to stay on the farm with Splinter for a bit. This is quite a finishing scene after ending a whole war within the city...

Donnie doesn't love his brothers any less, it just goes to show that he's never wanted to be the one to have to kill, and maybe wasn't prepared for it. While Mikey is definitely a pacifist, you can argue that Donnie is more of one. Him wielding the bo even supports this idea, as it can still be deadly, but not as lethal as his brothers' weapons. He's a very soft-hearted person that prefers to invent and give life to machines.

I hate when people think he's any less skilled in fighting than his brothers, because that's wrong! He just doesn't like violence and, dare I say it, I don't think he ever wanted to be a warrior in the same way. His intellect is a mightier and more useful weapon to him, because he can use it to keep others safe and make machines that can do all sorts of things. He'll fight to protect, same as the others, but disarming is more of his goal in the end. This makes Donnie, at least to me, both the brains and armor for the group. He's more than that, but... something something, things falling apart when Donnie is missing in SAINW.

At the end of it all, something you have to remember about all of them is that, even when they grow older, they started out as nothing more than child soldiers cultivated for the sake of revenge. Killing was always in the books, but they all have a different role on the team, and killing wasn't meant to be Donnie's. He helps with plan-making and would probably rather be support than a tank, if that makes sense.

They're heroes but but but. They're just kids, too...........Gripping my head

[chemicalpink]

JK's Birth time analysis

First and foremost, I’m just doing this to occupy my mind in something else while I go through some stuff, I will continue to use the general consensus of the community for my astrology readings, I’m just doing this for fun, remember that we as fans are in no way entitled to know JK’s exact birth time, these are just fun educated guesses on some alternative that has arisen.

Now, I must say, when I first started the astro part of my bts blog I immediately thought 1 pm for JK’s birth time, I don’t have any factual backup on this one, I’ve talked about it before, I am kind of a human tarot deck lmao things sometimes just come to me. So I started roaming around and I found that JK’s libra rising made sense to me, and it was a general consensus for his readings so I said sure let's go. You know that I endorse and adore having conversations with you guys, my craft isn’t perfect and no one else's is so it is great to hear every opinion to forge our own judgement. I do only present to you information that I can back up, which is why as much as I’d love to I won’t be taking into consideration my own personal hunch on the info I’m about to present you, although you can read it as subtext when it is in italics like this hello this is an inner thought of marinette’s.

SO the big deal: Is JK a libra rising or is JK a sagittarius rising? General consensus says 8:04 am as speculated time of birth, some others say 1-2 pm.

Either way, JK’s sect remains nocturnal so there’s not much to go from there.

When it comes to appearances, I’ll update what I said before.

Libra rising appearance:

Very youthful look that it seems like you don’t even age

Gentle smile

Charming demeanour that makes people obsessed with you

Very symmetrical features

Fit body

Contagious smile

Put together look/ clean look

Dimples

Dark hair and dark eyes

Tall

Oval/Round face

Think Harry Styles, Beyoncé, Niall, Britney Spears

Sagittarius rising appearance:

Bulky thighs

Horse like face

Big forehead

Incredibly tall or more than average tall

Gain weight easily

Not really athletic

Pretty full lips

Think Kim Kardashian, Elvis, Jennifer Lawrence, Paris Hilton

Evidently, other aspects in astrology and genetics can alter these, but it is mostly true.

Now, I am not that well versed in vedic astrology since I stopped studying it due to lack of time BUT the infamous thread that looks into the possibility of JK being a sag rising is pretty elaborate, although it does run more on intuitive processes and symbolism, which are of course, valid, and it really is up to both the analyst and the ones reading the analysis to determine the weight of it. My craft is more oriented towards intersectionality so I don’t like to go by what we are able to see about him as an axis, more like confirmation about it. Idk if it makes sense. I just don't trust seemingly scripted content that much to run my analysis based on it. Everything mentioned about JK Jyestha makes sense when looking at the content presented, and it will make even more sense once we take a look at some other non western astrology systems. Again, I am not well versed in vedic astrology so right off the bat I would fight the conversion system rather than the information presented.

Regarding that thread, some of the keywords used to conclude JK’s Jyestha are as follows:

King, Winning, Ambitious, Passionate, Skillful, Eldest, 1st, Seniority, Expertise, Sensory indulgence, Celebration, Bravery, Heroic, Dragon Slayer, Warrior, Rain, Thunder, Umbrella, Protector, Provider, Scandalous, Impulsive, Bunny, Deer, Earring, Eye.

In western astrology, a general comparison on placements would look something like this.

Sun in 8° 33' Virgo

Moon in 27° 20' Leo

Mercury in 7° 49' Virgo (r)

Venus in 16° 58' Libra

Mars in 11° 7' Scorpio

Jupiter in 14° 15' Aquarius (r)

Saturn in 19° 35' Aries (r)

Uranus in 5° 28' Aquarius (r)

Neptune in 27° 33' Capricorn (r)

Pluto in 2° 55' Sagittarius

North Node in 20° 11' Virgo (r)

Chiron in 29° 45' Libra

Ascendant in 4° 20' Libra

MC in 4° 46' Cancer

1st House starts at 4° Libra

2nd House starts at 1° Scorpio

3rd House starts at 2° Sagittarius

4th House starts at 4° Capricorn

5th House starts at 7° Aquarius

6th House starts at 7° Pisces

7th House starts at 4° Aries

8th House starts at 1° Taurus

9th House starts at 2° Gemini

10th House starts at 4° Cancer

11th House starts at 7° Leo

12th House starts at 7° Virgo

In here, the main aspect I can relate JK to is Cancer MC, MC represents your public self, as well as the success level you might experience. Cancer MC is all about taking care of others, yet it can also point towards a career in arts, especifically singing and writing, it also indicates a strong possibility of psychic abilities which have been widely discussed in JK with his readings and such all while having the main troubles of being an impatient person and sometimes getting self conscious which we have heard him say before when he refers to himself knowing how to do stuff yet he doesn’t think he’s good at any of them, or his letters to himself about having to love himself more.

Another pretty JK thing I’ve noticed is his Virgo Stellium in the 12th House, which shows struggles with identity JK has, once again, being vocal about him growing up within BTS and how that has shaped him and how he has constantly been looking for himself. They often absorb the struggles of people around them. Does anyone else remember him saying he’s okay as long as his hyungs are okay? Also, singing and dancing are very powerful manifestation tools for these people huh maybe that’s why he writes and sings love songs. This aspect also indicates him having the potential to amass a large amount of wealth, some astrologers think about this stellium as an extremely karmic one, which can be translated into the whole JK’s soulmate narrative.

When it comes to his 5th house, it indicates him being a hell of a creative person, especially in a somewhat rebellious sense which I interpret as him getting a sleeve tattoo It also talks about not being traditional in relationships which I believe has come out a few times in his tarot readings.

With Sag rising, his chart would look something like this:

Sun in 8° 45' Virgo

Moon in 29° 46' Leo

Mercury in 7° 37' Virgo (r)

Venus in 17° 12' Libra

Mars in 11° 15' Scorpio

Jupiter in 14° 13' Aquarius (r)

Saturn in 19° 35' Aries (r)

Uranus in 5° 27' Aquarius (r)

Neptune in 27° 33' Capricorn (r)

Pluto in 2° 55' Sagittarius

North Node in 20° 10' Virgo (r)

Chiron in 29° 46' Libra

Ascendant in 5° 28' Sagittarius

MC in 18° 28' Virgo

1st House starts at 5° Sagittarius

2nd House starts at 7° Capricorn

3rd House starts at 12° Aquarius

4th House starts at 18° Pisces

5th House starts at 19° Aries

6th House starts at 14° Taurus

7th House starts at 5° Gemini

8th House starts at 7° Cancer

9th House starts at 12° Leo

10th House starts at 18° Virgo

11th House starts at 19° Libra

12th House starts at 14° Scorpio

In this case, his MC is in Virgo, it mainly indicates a tactful and slow success in someone’s career, these MC Virgo people are often regarded as overly responsible and as people that like to get recognised as people to whom nothing is hard enough for them to call it quits. While they openly seek perfection which ofc JK has always talked about improving himself they often love to do the stuff that others despise to do like countinc, calculating and organising.

Evidently there's no 12th House stellium, he would have a 9th House Leo stellium, which is most of the times noticeable at first glance, the moment these people open their mouths, everything is just extraordinaire, there’s a longing to be loved and to be admired in this aspect. They’re inspirational people to be around which JK is, if I remember the members saying that they get inspired when watching him make efforts. They’re also overly curious about stuff around them big doe eyes anyone?

In this case he would have a 5th House aries, meaning that there’s a need to be physically active and being creative on top of that which I mean does check out. They do tend to be openly superficial people and big-headed when they are in a successful position tho.

So okay, let’s talk native astrology, JK’s Tzolkin is Tz’i-Oc, noted by their need of freedom and less traditional relationships, they work tirelessly and have an innate ability to be successful and accumulate a lot of wealth once again, JK’s position in BTS shows up HE’s in a basic need of having a strong foundation, which he will not like to lead but more take the role of a caregiver that can easily turn into the one receiving care. Here’s the thing, there are a lot of Libra themes in his Day Sign and his Trecana Sign, both of them talking about justice, fairness, helpfulness, as well as him being a nomad which I interpret as having a libra/virgo mix that is really hard to miss Now, this is where it gets funny, His galactic tone is 4, which while it talks about balance and calmness and tranquility libra like it also is represented by a warrior, which is part of the twitter thread as one of the symbolisms to think about sag rising

Last but not least, JK’s bazi, since his contextual situation is leaning more towards it. I did a comparion and it caught my eye the next part:

One of the widely talked about symbols in the sag rising thread is the element of water being consistent with JK, and in his bazi, ¾ Na Yin, the element of water came out, however, they came out when his birth time is 08:04 am.

In his 08:04 bazi, some keywords are:

virtue

star

travel

In his 13:00 bazi, some keywords are:

monetary loss

star of arts

heavenly doctor

So really it all boils down to: we do readings for fun, craft is personal and completely valid in any form as long as we aren’t hurting anyone. We do not know his actual birth time and we actually might never know it, each astrologer is free to work with the birth time they consider the best fitting unless a specific time is given. I myself, see a libra rising fitting, perhaps if we were to trial and error it, some other might come out but honestly, these readings are a hobby and while I dedicate myself to my craft, I certainly don’t have the time that it would require to analyze each placement so I can see for myself which I find the best fitting out of 12 signs. But hey, this was a fun educational opportunity to dive into other practices.

[redsdesktop]

Deviant Dynamics: Revolution.

Chapter 5

Masterlist

Warnings: None. Except for some surprises.

Connor looked up at the house before him as the rain poured down, soaking his previously dry and cleaned clothes. He wore a Detroit Lions hat so the brim kept the rain out of his face, allowing him to seem without water blurring his vision. In reality, Connor had never seen this house before, but in his simulation he knew it down to the smallest detail. It was a strange sort of feeling, making him wonder how his system had known about this house to begin with when he'd never seen it in person. So, Connor stood there trying to puzzle out how he knew about this house, how he knew exactly how many steps it took to bring him to the front door. His hand lifted, finger hovering over the doorbell, he already knew the pleasant chiming sound of a few notes from Clair de Lune would play inside the building.

Regardless, he pushed the doorbell and as predicted the first few chimes played, it was an eerie sensation that was making him more and more aware that his simulation had be much more than a simple dream perhaps. Before he could chase down the rabbit hole of conspiracies, the door opened to reveal a human, he could tell right away from the five o'clock shadow the man was sporting. His dark brown hair slightly mussed in contrast to the elegance of the home. Connor had never seen this human before but he already knew who it was without running a scan. He'd seen pictures, paintings, the assortment of documents while he'd visited this home in his simulation.

Leo Manfred.

It was some surprise he was here, with the known record of Carl Manfred's son being not the most idealistic child, Connor would have thought the man would've sold the place once Carl had passed away.Though Carl had passed away in his simulation, not in reality, but he'd been in poor health during the revolution so he wouldn't be too surprised if the man passed. Especially after hearing about Markus.

"Who are you and what do you want." Leo interrupted Connor's train of though, he sounded like he didn't want visitors, making Connor tilt his head to study Leo closer. His stress levels were high, meaning he was up to something and given Leo's records, Connor could only assume what. However, he didn't put them out in the open yet, wanting to investigate further as to why Kamski thought to send Connor here of all places. He wasn't certain what he should tell Leo, with deviancy being a crime punishable by deactivation, it would be a risk to tell Leo that he'd been part of the revolution with Markus. However, Kamski wouldn't have sent him here just for Connor to get caught, so he had to put faith in whatever Kamski was scheming and just come out with it.

"My name is Connor, I was friends with Markus during the android uprising. I was told to come here from a reliable source, though I do not know why he would send me here." Connor frowned, hoping that would be a good enough response for Leo. The name Kamski likely wouldn't help his case, so Connor conveniently left that out. To the common person, Kamski was connected to Cyberlife, as the recluse didn't make his actions publicly known, allowing him to continue his work away from the public eye. Leo stared at Connor for a long moment, looking like he was half tempted to slam the door in Connor's face. However, something held him back, desperation? What for though was the greater question.

"I remember seeing you on TV, but they shot you and Markus." Leo straightened a little, examining Connor a bit closely now, especially Connor's forehead where he'd been shot. "I guess a bullet through the head doesn't count for much these days. Fine, come in." Leo opened the door to allow Connor access to a house he'd never been in and yet looked far too familiar. It was a disorienting experience, trying to make out what was reality and what was memories of his simulation. Connor stepped into the house, not wanting to be out in the open for very long, though he wasn't sure if entering this home was any less dangerous. Leo had granted him access a little too easily, making Connor remain on alert regardless of being in the safety of indoors.

Once the door was shut Leo rubbed his palms nervously on the tops of his thighs, making Connor's LED swirl yellow as he felt his own stress levels rise. He could handle one human, but he would prefer not to if he had the choice. "Can you explain to me why I was sent here, Leo?" Connor pressed, turning to face the man who looked out of place in such a refined building. His clothes weren't tattered but they were casual and he didn't show any signs of drug use, despite his previous knowledge of Leo. Then again, if Leo was still dealing in drugs, he likely would've sold off everything in the house along with the house itself. Something had kept this man from going down the wrong path, or so Connor assumed.

"Its... Its better if I just show you." Leo turned abruptly and jogged up the stairs, Connor followed at a more sedate pace, not wanting to run head long into a trap. He didn't like how vague Leo was being, he was practically a stranger, the only connection was that Markus and him had had a falling out and that had been the spark of Markus' revolt. From what he heard, Leo was jealous of Markus' relationship with Carl. None of these stories had been good. As he followed after Leo up the stairs and down a hall, Leo stopped to open the door and enter first, leaving Connor to enter as he wished.

Connor turned to the door but remained outside so he could examine the room within. It was a bedroom, but that wasn't as important as what else he saw. Laying on the bed was an android, it was difficult to tell who it was at first sight but Connor would never forget the warm mocha toned synthetic skin. Without thinking he rushed over to the bed, eyes wide as he took in the sight of Markus, or what was left of him. He was in just as bad shape as Connor had been before RK900 had repaired him. "Markus?!" Connor called out, placing a hand on the other android's shoulder in attempts to wake him from his sleep.

"He can't answer you." Came another voice, a new one that wasn't Leo but was all too familiar. Connor jerked his head around to see another android who was slouched on a small couch that faced the bed. He looked almost just as badly damaged but still able to move and talk,

"Simon?" Connor asked cautiously, half afraid to hope. Even outside of Connor simulation, Simon had been the only other one who had easily accepted him at Jericho. The blond android was still neutral to Connor, but he had trusted Markus' judgement without question, knowing Markus only had the future of Jericho and androids safety in mind. Simon slowly pushed himself up into a sit, struggling to do so as his torso looked like it had taken severe damage.

"It looks like the dead just won't stay dead." Simon stated as if staying alive was exhausting and a chore, Connor could understand that much. After such a crushing defeat, being on the brink of death, sometimes just giving up felt like a huge relief instead of carrying around the burden of living. They'd been so close to achieving their goal and it was snuffed out so easily, it was difficult to bounce back from that when one couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Connor had, he'd tasted what could be and now more than ever was determined to hold onto that thread of hope.

"What happened? Last thing I remember was seeing Markus get shot." Connor asked as he looked back at Markus, it appeared that he had been worked on a bit, hooked up to a remote power source to keep him on life support basically. However, that was the extent of it, making it difficult to look at Markus like this. The once confident and calm alpha who appeared like nothing could bring him down laying helpless and near lifeless on a bed.

"After You and Markus were shot, the humans swarmed us out of no where. I carried Markus out of there, but not without sustaining heavy damage myself. Josh and North..." Simon turned his head away quickly, his jaw clenching and his fingers curling. It was the first time Connor had seen Simon express any sort of emotion that wasn't calm acceptance. Connor decided it was best not to pry, even if North and Josh had been opposed to Connor being with them, they had supported Markus and that was all that really mattered.

"I didn't know where else to go, so I took Markus back home thinking... Well, I thought he'd want his final resting place to be in a place he loved." Simon's voice wavered a bit before steadying as if nothing happened. "I didn't expect to find Leo here, but Carl had called him over to settle the will." Simon looked down at his lap, his LED was a solid red, the android was stressed beyond measure. Connor turned his gaze to Leo, wanting to hear more of the story but not wanting to press Simon any further. Leo took his cue and stepped closer, moving a bit awkwardly as if he was uncomfortable with the situation. He didn't know how to deal with emotions of kindness and love. Connor could see it, he'd been there once himself.

"Well, truth it, I came hoping Carl would sign everything over to me, I had every intention on selling everything for money." Leo admitted with a bit of guilt in his voice but he dragged a hand over his cheek to steady himself. "But... Carl, no, my dad. He told me that he wished that Markus and I could've met on better terms, he wanted us to be like brothers." Leo's frown deepened, causing wrinkles on his face that should still have some youth left in it. Too much had happened, too much of the man's inner turmoil soured his appearance and the drugs certainly hadn't helped. "He new he wasn't going to last much longer, he didn't want me to face the world alone any longer. So he wanted Markus to be what he failed to be."

Leo dropped down in a chair that was set beside the bed, raking his fingers through his dark brown hair. "I hated the old man, he never gave two shits about me while I was growing up. And seeing him care for Markus, who wouldn't be jealous? But, if it wasn't for Markus, Carl wouldn't have even given me a second thought." Leo put his elbows on his knees and cupped his hands over his mouth as he was trying to keep himself together as he stared at the motionless remains of Markus laying on the bed. "So when Simon came to the door asking for me to hide them, I did. I don't know why really, part of me still wants to throw them out. But, I can't, Markus is the only family I have left." Connor tilted his head a little, studying Leo as the human had admitted to considering Markus as family, which was an encouraging sign.

"The problem is, I can't send him or Simon in to get repairs, I can't call someone over either and I have no clue on how to work on androids. Simon did his best but there's only so much he knows." Leo looked up at Connor as if the android was their saving grace. "Since you're here, it'll be some help in getting all the parts and fixing him right? You're a RK unit like Markus, highly specialized?"

"While I am a later generation model of Markus, I'm not certain if I have the complete knowledge on how to fix him." Connor paused as he stared down at Markus with dark brown eyes, he would return Markus to his former glory. "However, I do know someone who is highly skilled in bringing androids back from the brink of death."

[willandlyra]

when i rise i see you falling

a couple of anons have requested something with will being the insecure one, or a bit of a mess, in the relationship. so: 

in which will is sad, and neither of them really know what to do but they’ll try.

::

Will’s main problem is – well, actually, that’s a part of it. Will doesn’t know what his problem is.

He knows Nico likes him. He knows it because he knows how Nico is when he doesn’t like someone. And this isn’t that. He knows Nico likes him because he doesn’t shadow travel midway through a conversation just to piss Will off, because he knows that the whole ‘fading out of existence thing’ still gives him the shakes.

He knows that Nico likes him because they sit together at the campfire and Will teases Nico, and his face glows hot and pale scarlet underneath the light of the burning. He knows it because their fingers brush together and Nico’s eyes widen like little moons, and he knows it because Nico fakes inexplicable, uncontrollable zombie epidemics so as to sit with the Apollo table at meal times.

And, you know, there was the whole thing where Will asked Nico out in the most awkward way possible, and the two of them tend to hole up in Nico’s cabin or behind a tree or lie down in the tall grass (Will’s pick, not Nico’s. Nico claims to have had enough experience with Demeter’s overgrowth, whatever that means) and make out until their lips are sore and their eyes are bright.

Yeah, that too.

But there’s this other thing.

There’s this horrible thing inside of him that crawls out at inconvenient moments. When he can’t sleep or when Nico’s stuck in the underworld with his father, and he hasn’t had a chance to talk for a while. When Percy Jackson makes a joke and Nico laughs and like, not a big deal, but also.

Percy Jackson saved the world a couple of times and jumped into Tartarus after his girlfriend, and how do you compete with that?

So it sneaks up in the night, this little black feeling, like bed bugs or stupid monsters. Not big enough to do anything huge, like cut open the skin and scar, but enough to leave a sore spot.

::

Starts sort of like this:

So Nico and Jason will spend hours duelling, just for the fun of it, with swords and their weird ass powers, and campers will literally fill out to watch, placing bets on which Son of the Big Three is gonna win this one.

Piper joins in, putting her bets on Jason – sometimes, like a supportive girlfriend – or Nico if she’s feeling like that’s her lucky call. Hey, she goes where the money is, much to Jason’s indignation.

But then Piper also had a part in the whole saving the world thing. Piper hasn’t sat on the side lines helplessly, unable to save a single soul when your friends are saving everything around you.

These thoughts aren’t fun, and they make Will feel a little queasy, guilty for even letting himself think of them. He shuts his eyes tight for a moment and when he opens them he catches Nico looking at him from where he’s in the midst of dodging Jason’s attacks.

Will plasters on a big smile, cheers him on. Places a bet.

After the duel, Nico ignores everything else and makes headway straight for Will, who may or may not be hastily trying to make an exit. Because he’s got that feeling again.

Nico is sweaty and his hair is tangled, and he’s breathing a little more heavily than usual, shoulders shuddering with the weight of extra breath.

“Grace, you lost me the last of my drachmas!” Leo screams from afar. “How could you do this to me!”

Nico raises an eyebrow and smiles a little.

“Giving into the temptation of gambling, and at such a young age too,” he says. “So sad.”

It’s a Will-type comment, one meant to make him laugh, and it makes him realise that Nico doesn’t really know what to say because he knows something’s up.

A few years ago people were weary of the death kid who glowered from the other end of the room, and now he’s reading feelings from across ocean spaces.

“Yeah,” Will attempts. “I’m getting a little worried – I’m pretty sure Drew Tanaka is going to end up with his cabin at some point, with the way this is getting. Time to tell Chiron?”

“Oh, Mr D already knows,” Nico says. “Totally approves, of course. Says it reminds him of his ventures to Vegas. I don’t even wanna know.”

“Not sure I do either.”

Nico laughs, and then pauses, and then reaches out and grasps Will’s hands squeezing his fingers lightly now that all but the last few dregs of campers are left in the area.

“Is everything okay?” he asks.

Will smiles and says, “you worry too much.”

::

Nico isn’t perfect, and Will knows this better than anyone.

With glory comes a whole bunch of other things. Dark matter and memories that don’t belong in any living person’s skull. Dreams of dying and thinning away on only pomegranate seeds, feeling yourself slide away into shadows.

There’s a haunted look in Nico’s eyes, sometimes, and the same ghost mask is thinly veiled over the faces of the Seven, and Will wouldn’t trade that for anything.

But people died trying to do the things they did, to save the world and fight off the monsters, to stop the bed bugs biting, gnawing at the ankles of the youngest campers there. So when Will bandages up the broken wrist of an Ares camper, or dries the hot wet tears of a little girl in his own cabin, when they thank him in small, tinny voices, Will can’t help but shudder.

Because they shouldn’t be thanking him.

They aren’t thanking the right person.

::

It comes out of nowhere sometimes, a little like things that go bump in the night.

Each and every demigod at this camp has some sort of scars attached to their skin. And some of these are more obvious than others. Will spends so much time patching people up in the infirmary, not only physically, after duelling incidents or general illnesses that come and go, but soothing his patients when they wake with night terrors.

Like clinging to tidbits of light to stop someone from fading out of existence.

Will’s the head medic. The rest of his cabin look up to him like some kind of icon, in awe of his healing powers, his focus on a patient and the way he keeps it together. But that’s a whole other problem. They don’t realise that just like the rest of them, he’s damaged goods.

Nico looks at him the same way.

Says in awe, reaches up with soft bony fingers to drag a light touch across Will’s cheeks. He breathes things like, ‘you’re amazing’ when he’s healed someone, and the colour has gone from his skin. In awe, like he doesn’t understand how Will has these fingers that are perfect for fixing things up.

If Nico called himself damaged goods, then Will would hit the roof and he’d come down with a smart ass answer and a scowl, listing reasons why that’s not true, why Nico kicks ass, why that’s the dumbest thing he could ever ever say. Wait til his eyes are closed in thought, because Nico can’t always pull all the self hatred out of him, no matter what Will says.

Gently kisses the thin skin of his lids.

Says, “you’re fine, Death Boy.”

And yet – when it’s his own face he’s looking at and his own heart he’s stabbing at with rusted arrow ends, none of that comes to mind.

And there’s just this Nothing in front of him – this big white blank space. And so in spite of all the love he feels off the backs of his family and his friends, and the boy that kisses him before he goes to bed, it reads with just a few little words that hurt like bee stings: you’re not worth it.

Not worth it, not worth them, not worth him.

::

It’s not always this bad.

It comes and goes like coughs and headaches. Sometimes he falls asleep and it’s gone by morning. But sometimes it sticks in the back of his brain, thick and black and ugly. Sometimes he can’t stop thinking about it and he can’t sleep at night and he thinks dark thoughts like:

Not worth it. Not worth him.

After all, he lives in a camp full of heroes and if he isn’t one of them, what does that make him?

Nico picks up on his silence, a few days after a particularly bad spell has been leaving him in all these different kinds of blue. They’re at the campfire, and people are singing some dumb songs, taking the piss out of quests and destiny and the joke life of each and every demigod. About dead beat parents.

Merriment and red cheeks, but there’s something really heavy holding down Will’s heart.

“Are you okay?” he whispers. His hand reaches out and takes Will’s, threading their fingers together. Nico’s hands are always cold but it feels kind of good against the heat of the flames.

“Yeah,” Will tells him.

Flashes a bright light smile, but of course, Nico doesn’t buy it.

“I’ve been worried about you. These past few days, something has been off. I can tell.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nico sighs.

“Whatever, Will. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. But you don’t always need to be the Camp Medic, you know? Or the big brother, or the head of the Apollo cabin. It’s okay if you’re not sometimes. That’s – it’s fine.”

Nico’s cheeks are a little aglow, and Will is touched. He knows that Nico doesn’t find these kind of things easy. That words plucked from the bottom of the heart are as easily accessible as flowers blooming in Tartarus.

But he’s trying and Will’s tired because he’s just not really sure if he’s worth those words, or that smile, or the hands soft and warm and holding his own.

::

His little siblings love him because he can patch up wounds in a flash and he’ll make them laugh, poke their noses and muss up their hair. His older siblings laugh with him, and he teases them about other campers who their cheeks go red around, and makes sure they get enough sleep.

But they’d love Michael more, if he was here. If they could hear the jokes that Lee used to make.

And this is a primary difference between the heroes of Camp Half-Blood and Will: they don’t always save the people that they love. In fact, very often, they lose them. But they at least get a chance.

Will’s brothers died and he never even knew they needed him.

::

Will has had bad days before.

When he’s not wanted to get out of bed but he does anyway because he has to. And he snaps and snipes until Kayla demands he take a break from working the infirmary.

He’s curled up with Nico and fallen asleep on thick duvet covers. Especially warm because Nico is almost perpetually cold except to Will, who often thinks he feels like he’s the warmest person in the world.

But he doesn’t often have bad days like this. And it’s obvious, because neither of them know how to deal. Nico wants to help, yet doesn’t know how – doesn’t know whether to reach out and touch or keep his distance, and Will can’t tell him either way because his head is swimming and he doesn’t know what he wants.

He just wants this sadness to stop – the third bad day this week. Or, bad night, because it’s in the midst of the night when his voice cracks and the words spill out, the things inside of his head trailing like weird slime and leaving stains. And Will hates this, the kind of vulnerability that shows.

He's usually so okay – made of stone and built not to break. Each and every demigod has this sometimes, when something inside snaps and subsequently, everything crumbles. Will is particularly good at ignoring these waves. At least, usually, not now.

Mouth down-turned into a small frown, and Nico scratches at his head.

“But I don’t understand,” he’s saying. “You shouldn’t – you shouldn’t feel that way. You’re not – you’re worth more than that, Will.”

Will makes a small sound.

“You’re worth everything, and you don’t need to go on – on stupid, dangerous quests to do that. Not going on a quest doesn’t mean you’re not a hero.”

“Pretty sure it does, di Angelo,” Will says, with a little bit of humour in his voice, but it sounds kind of empty. Like fish in the underworld.

Nico shakes his head. “Look, no, listen to me. It sounds – gods, it sounds so lame – but like. If anyone is gonna be a hero here, it’s you. You patch up the Stolls like, every day. And put up with the Hermes cabin and work overtime after Capture the Flag. I don’t even want to know how many times you’ve healed Leo and Jason and Percy after duelling. Especially Leo – him and his stupid fire tricks – but like. See what I mean. Or where I’m going, at least?”

“Yeah,” Will does. He gives Nico a slight smile. “It’s sweet.”

“No, it’s not. It’s true.”

“I don’t know…”

“Well I do,” Nico huffs a little impatiently this time. “You don’t know your own worth. Well, I do, and so does Kayla, and so does Austin. And it’s a lot, so this sadness you’re subjecting yourself to – it’s bullshit. I get it. Really, I do, but…”

“Nico,” Will says gently. “I appreciate what you’re saying. But I don’t think you can make this go away.”

Nico looks at him.

Nods, slowly.

“Okay,” he says. “I guess I can’t. But I can stick out with you, right?”

“What do you mean?” Will asks, and despite himself he’s got a little smile forming on his lips at the determined look in Nico’s eyes. Light, fiery – like very much living things.

“I’m just gonna stay here – as long as you’re cool with that – until this shit gets out of your head. And if you want me to say stuff and like, tell you over and over that you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met, I will. So… yeah.”

“We’re in your cabin,” Will reminds him.

Nico blushes. “And you’re lucky I like you. No one else is allowed to spend so much time in here.”

Will lets out a little laugh, a bit wet, like there are tears caught in the back of his throat.

“I’m lucky you like me,” Will says. “I’m lucky I have you.”

He lets himself fall against Nico, lets his head fall against his lap as Nico’s hands reach out, his fingers running through the crown of blonde curls. And it feels good, nice, soft. Safe. Nico bends down a little, presses a cautious kiss on his temple.

This is unfamiliar territory. But they’re learning.

And the black stuff around Will’s heart is starting to thin out like ice on a warm morning, on a sunny day, though it might take a while longer to thaw entirely.

They fall asleep near like that, half snoozing and falling onto each other, wrapped up in one another and exchanging sleepy kisses, and Nico whispers, when he’s not so sure Will is still listening, is still even awake, “you’re really, really, really worth it.”

::

In the morning they wake before the sun has fully risen, dregs of pale light streaming into the cabin.

Nico’s already holding Will’s hand.

“You were as cheesy as me last night,” Will tells Nico, and there’s a little smile on his face when his cheeks pinken.

“Yeah, well,” Nico mutters. “You bring out the worst in me.”

“I kinda like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And Nico?”

Nico looks at him, raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Mm?”

“Thank you.”

::

Will still doesn’t know what his problem is, or why he gets so sad sometimes, or why the shadows seem to whisper around him that he’s not good enough, and he’ll never be a hero, and he’s not worth it.

But the good thing about having a boyfriend with weird, cool, underworldy powers?

He’s very good at chasing those shadows away.

//

note: lame and random, but i’m really unsure about this one, just bc i wrote it whilst a bit of a Mess and the structure is a little weird. im not sure whether i like it enough to put it into my canonverse series on ao3 so please let me know if you think i should or shouldnt do that.

[jasonfry]

Author’s Notes: The Secret Academy, Pt. 2

WARNING: These notes will completely spoil Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy. Haven’t read it? Stop and go here.

(Go here for notes for Edge of the Galaxy, here for Rebel in the Ranks and here for Imperial Justice. And here’s Pt. 1 of The Secret Academy. )

All right! It’s our last go-round for Servants of the Empire author’s notes. Thanks to everybody who’s followed along this far – I’ve had a blast writing these notes and hope they’ve been useful, whether you’re a budding author or an interested reader.

Part 2: Merei

At the end of Imperial Justice, Merei Spanjaf escaped her service to the crime boss Yahenna Laxo and her mother Jessa’s investigation of her intrusion into the Imperial data network. Yet Merei then immediately used her forged credentials to resume her snooping, discovering that Zare Leonis was sent to Arkanis at the Inquisitor’s orders.

I did that in Imperial Justice so the reader would go into The Secret Academy worrying about Zare and suspecting that Merei wouldn’t be able to leave well enough alone – in Godfather-style, she thinks she’s out but they pull her back in.

What pulls her back in is her determination to save Holshef, an elderly poet endangered by Laxo’s demise. She’s worried about Holshef himself, but also frustrated by her inability to help Zare and guilt-ridden about Laxo’s death. Holshef becomes her way of turning that frustration and guilt into something positive.

Originally Holshef’s rescue had more moving parts: Merei enlisted his daughter to help and played a game of cat and mouse with the bounty hunter trying to apprehend him. But I realized I didn’t have room to weave another strand into the plot. In fact, I was worried I didn’t have enough room to do everything necessary to wrap up book and series properly. So Holshef’s daughter got pared down to a quick reference and the bounty hunter was reduced to a briefly glimpsed antagonist. 

I had to economize elsewhere too, sometimes to a fault – I agree with reviewers who found the last two sections of The Secret Academy a little rushed. This book taught me that while wrapping up a series is easier than constructing a middle chapter, the little grace notes needed for a satisfying ending require more words than you think. Live and learn. 

One dynamic I liked in Merei’s story was how Jessa turns cool and resourceful once Merei reveals the truth about the Empire. Rather than waste time mourning misplaced loyalties, Jessa swings into action and becomes an effective partner for her daughter. Which makes sense -- apple and tree and all that. But I wish I’d seen the dramatic possibilities earlier and played up the conflict between Jessa and Merei in Rebel in the Ranks and Imperial Justice. That would have made the payoff from Jessa’s turn more satisfying. 

An unexpected complication was how to get Holshef, the Spanjafs and the Leonises from Lothal to Garel. My original idea was that Merei would call in a favor from the Spectres via Old Jho, with Ezra insisting that his compatriots pay their debt to Zare by joining the raid on Arkanis. But at that point in the Rebels timeline the Spectres were laying low and avoiding Lothal. I could use them for the raid, but not the rescue.

Plan B was using Lando Calrissian, but I hated the idea – Lando had played no role in the series and I felt a cameo would distract readers and slam the story to a halt. At that point I needed readers to be biting their nails, not going, “Hey neat it’s Lando!”

Plan C was using Old Jho himself, and I disliked that idea too. But I warmed to it out of necessity since there was no Plan D. At least I liked the character – his trolling the Imperials in “Idiot’s Array” was pretty funny – and I’d already decided to pair him with Holshef as another elegiac voice for Lothal. Expanding Jho’s role from go-between to rescuer wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t the end of the world, either. So I added some light comedy about whether or not his ship would fly, dropped a few The Force Awakens Easter eggs and moved on. 

Some notes on Part 2:

“Wox ho uffdon comda,” mutters a speeder truck after Merei cuts it off in traffic. That’s Bocce, derived from the Galactic Phrase Book and Travel Guide. An approximate translation would be “You go shut down now.”

Merei and Holshef talk about jogan blossoms, with the old poet musing that scent can unlock memory. This is, of course, exactly how Zare will cut through Beck’s brainwashing around 60 pages later. I’d woven the theme of scent and memory through all four books, but needed to double down on it now that I was so close to the story’s climax.

The events of Chapter 14 tie in with the Rebels episode “Call to Action.” I liked that Tarkin’s toppling the tower creates problems for the Empire that insurgents can exploit – I thought that was a realistic consequence, and one it would be natural for Jessa and Gandr to comment on.

Operation Guiding Light, the directive that Holshef ran afoul of, is another fascist strategy designed to mesh with Imperial Justice. Its directive that nostalgia should be suppressed as “a product of dissatisfaction and anger” is an homage to a line I love in Don DeLillo’s White Noise.

On a less highbrow note, Old Jho’s sorrowful note that the forests of his youth have been “turned into mines and machines” is right out of Lord of the Rings. Which makes sense, as Ithorians are basically the Legends version of Ents.

Merei’s long speech to her parents recounting everything she’s done behind their backs was meant as a bit of domestic comedy, with Jessa and Gandr staring at their daughter in disbelief as this treasonous chronicle rolls on and on. There’s a similar scene with Tycho and his family in Jupiter Pirates: The Rise of Earth, which was written at much the same time. In both books, a few readers missed the joke and complained about getting a big chunk of exposition about things they already knew. Oh well.

Something went awry with the bit about the locator in Chapter 17, or else I’ve forgotten what I was trying to do. Jessa tells Merei to leave it with Gandr, but then tells Gandr she’ll send him their location. Huh?

Some readers have asked what happened to Jix. Beats me – I assume he went to prison. An experiment I tried in Servants of the Empire was letting things be a bit messy. Merei forgets to tell Zare about Project Unity, we don’t find out what happened to Oleg or Jix, and Chiron makes a promise to Penn that he winds up unable to keep. I think a certain amount of messiness is realistic – certainly more so than having every single plot thread tied off neatly by the end of a series.

Merei stunning Leo – and Tepha’s reaction to it -- was a scene I had in mind from the very beginning of the series. It’s Merei’s Indy in the Casbah moment. Auntie Nags was supposed to then lecture Merei that it’s bad manners for guests to shoot people, but I unthinkingly used that joke in The Weapon of a Jedi and so had to drop it here. I wish I’d done the reverse – C-3PO has plenty of good lines already. 

Part 3: The Tower

This section brings everything together and so moves quickly, reuniting Zare and Merei and then Zare and Dhara, sacrificing Beck, then getting everybody off Arkanis for a pair of emotional reunions.

I worked hard on Zare’s speech, reading it out loud to myself until I thought it was right. I like it both as an emotional recitation of the journey he’s been on and a call to arms -- an indictment of the Empire that could only be made by someone who’d once believed in it.

Three books’ worth of work on scent and memory pays off with Beck’s turn, but I also brought grav-ball back as a reference point. I overdid the grav-ball references -- Zare and Beck talking about a center-striker sneak would have been enough -- but think it works. That last image of Beck’s hand with the jogan blossom clutched in it is a little cheesy, but I figured I’d earned it.

Another scene I polished obsessively was Zare’s long-awaited reunion with Dhara. I mulled including brief interludes in the series from Dhara’s point of view, but decided it was more dramatic to reveal nothing about her fate until we see her here. As for why Dhara was kidnapped, there are clues in what she tells Zare in her cell and aboard the Ghost. That’s all I’ll say for now.

Chiron’s death was another part of the endgame that I had in mind from the very beginning, complete with Dhara’s burning eyes and Zare swearing Merei to secrecy about her Force tantrum. I liked that there’s no real villain in Chiron’s demise – he follows his misguided sense of duty to the very end, Dhara acts out of self-preservation, and you can’t really blame either of them. A nice bit of tragedy, if I do say so myself. The logistics were a pain, though – I had to isolate Zare, Merei and Dhara, figure out how the auxiliary elevator came into play and then get everybody to the roof.

The scenes aboard the Ghost were reworked at the very end of the process. My editor Jen Heddle asked for a quiet scene between Zare and Dhara, which was a great call, giving them a moment that Zare had worked so hard for. As for Zare and Merei’s vow to make use of the data she’d stolen and keep fighting, it was another late addition. Once again, that’s all I’ll say for now.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s begged, cajoled or campaigned for further adventures of Zare and Merei. There are no plans that I know of, but I’d love to bring them back for another story. I want to know what became of their campaign against the Empire, where their relationship went, and if Dhara recovered from her ordeal at the Inquisitor’s hands. (And yes, I have ideas about all of those things.) But if that never happens, it’s fun to think of Zare and Merei continuing to fight the good fight, as they learned to do so capably over four books. 

Quick notes on Part 3:

The other cadets stripping Zare’s uniform and breaking his saber was borrowed from descriptions of Han Solo’s expulsion from the Imperial Academy in Han Solo at Stars’ End and the Dark Empire Sourcebook. To keep the reader from being distracted by a new uniform, I made sure the cadets wore their dress blacks in an earlier scene.

Beck mentioning that he stopped taking his medication was a quick add to reinforce the idea of the jogan perfume cutting through his brainwashing. I think little buttressing details like that are effective provided they neither stop the narrative nor give the game away.

I liked that Zare doesn’t really have a plan once he and Beck break out. Zare’s a smart kid who’s cool under fire, but he’s in a facility he knows nothing about so he’s just improvising wildly. Hey, when you’ve got a date with a firing squad any plan is better than nothing.

Where’s the rest of the Ghost crew? I left Kanan out because he would have sensed Dhara’s dark-side tantrum and started asking questions. Story Group’s Pablo Hidalgo also taught me a good trick from TV: leave out a member of an ensemble cast in case you need to explain what happened in some later project. That way you can handle the needed exposition through conversation. 

I enjoyed writing Dhara’s reunion with Tepha and Leo – after so much tension and anxiety, it was satisfying to craft a scene that was just pure love and joy. But if Servants of the Empire is ever collected into a single volume, I’m campaigning to edit out that last line. After everything the Leonises had been through, Dhara telling the rest of her family not to let go said it all.

If you enjoyed these notes and are going to Orlando for Star Wars Celebration 2017, I’m leading a Star Wars University session about writing and storytelling on Friday April 14 at 6:30 pm. Come on out! 

Thanks for coming along on the journey with me, and here’s to new adventures ahead.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Required Reading

MASS MoCA will unveil what it’s claiming is the “world’s largest watercolor painting,” a 120-square-foot (8′ x 15′), site-specific commission by Barbara Prey. That’s quite a claim, though I do wish the painting was a little more exciting. (via MASS MoCA)

This article about a family “slave” in the US has been much discussed this week. Alex Tizon, who died at the age of 57 this year, writes about when he realized who the woman who lived with his family was. The whole story is chilling:

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

RELATED: Some interesting responses:

"My Family's Slave" is now trending in the Philippines, where it's lunch time. I'm going to share a few interesting threads from Filipinos:

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) May 17, 2017

Honestly I'm convinced 3/4 of you who are opining about the Tizon piece didn't finish reading it

— Sarah Jeong (@sarahjeong) May 17, 2017

Eudocia Polida was an enslaved person whose hopes and dreams we know filtered only through the service of others by system not choice

— Sydette (@Blackamazon) May 17, 2017

Read "My Family's Slave" &I just literally wanted to reach into the story and punch every fucker in the Tizon family, including the author.

— ✡️Josh Shahryar ☪ (@JShahryar) May 16, 2017

I hate Interview, which is a celebrity-obsessed rag full of starfuckers, but I do always love Antwaun Sargent’s perspective, so I really enjoyed his interview with painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye:

SARGENT: One signature aspect of your painting is that the figure almost blends into its surroundings, because the earth tones of your backdrops are reflective of the character’s dark brown skin tones. There are a lot of things that are being signified but particularly there’s a critique of the hypervisibility, which Ralph Ellison talked about, that renders blackness completely seen and unseen. Is that part of the negotiation between the figure and its surroundings in your work?

YIADOM-BOAKYE: Maybe I think more about black thought than black bodies. When people ask about the aspect of race in the work, they are looking for very simple or easy answers. Part of it is when you think other people are so different than yourself, you imagine that their thoughts aren’t the same. When I think about thought, I think about how much there is that is common.

Robert Rauschenberg’s “Bed” (1955) piece includes a “stolen” bedcover from another artist:

But for the artist Dorothea Rockburne, the painting carries a more personal charge. She first met Rauschenberg during their student days at Black Mountain College, the fabled school near Asheville, N.C., that was briefly the epicenter of the American avant-garde. One day, Ms. Rockburne was in the college laundry room unloading her wash from the dryer when she realized that her patchwork quilt was missing. “The next time I saw it was at the Leo Castelli Gallery,” she recently recalled in a tone of disbelief, referring to the public debut of “Bed.” “My first thought was: Son of a bitch! We were close friends.”

Masha Gessen writes about the language of autocrats:

A Russian poet named Sergei Gandlevsky once said that in the late Soviet period he became obsessed with hardware-store nomenclature. He loved the word secateurs, for example. Garden shears, that is. Secateurs is a great word. It has a shape. It has weight. It has a function. It is not ambiguous. It is also not a hammer, a rake, or a plow. It is not even scissors. In a world where words were constantly used to mean their opposite, being able to call secateurs “secateurs”—and nothing else—was freedom.

“Freedom,” on the other hand, was, as you know, slavery. That’s Orwell’s 1984. And it is also the USSR, a country that had “laws,” a “constitution,” and even “elections,” also known as the “free expression of citizen will.” The elections, which were mandatory, involved showing up at the so-called polling place, receiving a pre-filled ballot—each office had one name matched to it—and depositing it in the ballot box, out in the open. Again, this was called the “free expression of citizen will.” There was nothing free about it, it did not constitute expression, it had no relationship to citizenship or will because it granted the subject no agency. Calling this ritual either an “election” or the “free expression of citizen will” had a dual effect: it eviscerated the words “election,” “free,” “expression,” “citizen,” and “will,” and it also left the thing itself undescribed. When something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share that experience, because they had no language for doing so. At the same time, an experience that could be accurately described as, say, an “election,” or “free,” had been preemptively discredited because those words had been used to denote something entirely different.

Siobhan Burke is speaking out against imagery in dance that exploits women (including images of sexual violence):

By “images of violence against women,” I mean not just depictions of violent acts but also the kind of forceful partnering that’s become so ubiquitous, so gratuitous, so banal in ballet — the yanking, dragging, prying open of women’s bodies by men — both with and without a narrative pretext. Calling it out, as I did after seeing Angelin Preljocaj’s “La Stravaganza” (1997) for City Ballet in 2014, or Mauro Bigonzetti’s “Cantata” (2000), performed by Gauthier Dance in 2016 — feels as tiresome as watching it, and unpacking its history would take more space than I have here.

… My disappointment with “Odessa” led me to post a photo on Instagram — my favorite place to air an impulsive thought — with the caption “no more gang rape scenes in ballets, please.” (The photo was of my face, looking directly at the camera, wearing what I consider an “over it” kind of expression.) This prompted an expansive thread of comments, including by my colleague Alastair Macaulay, who had reviewed “Odessa” for The New York Times. He asked whether my call for “no more” was a call for censorship: “Must works of art only depict people behaving correctly?”

The answer, of course, is no. If artists want to deal with rape, gang or otherwise, as subject matter, they should, as they should grapple with any difficult issue. But they must really deal with it: Say something. Don’t just toss it in as one more incidental plot twist, one more exquisite thing to behold. Acknowledge its urgency, its complexity and the fact that to many in the audience, it may not be so abstract.

Documenta or Crapumenta?

Graffiti castigating the spectacle as “Crapumenta 14” soon appeared. “I refuse to exoticize myself to increase your cultural capital. Signed: The People,” has been a particular favourite. While Giorgos Kaminis, the city’s mayor, maintained Documenta was fantastic for tourism (as Aegean Airlines’ new and fully booked Kassel to Athens route has proved), critics complained that it amounted to the worst kind of crisis tourism.

“There’s anger because they haven’t taken circumstance into account,” says Nadja Argyropoulou, a curator in Athens. “Their theory is beautiful, radical and timely, but they didn’t mingle or take the leap into the everyday or address the reality here. Circumstance is what humbles theory and makes art as important as real life.”

For detractors, Szymczyk had become the embodiment of the corporate, neo-liberal order he professes to abhor, a purveyor of the worst kind of soft German power. Not only was the exhibition abstruse, it had committed the cardinal sin of omitting Greek artists and curators. “There are so many names,” Argyropoulou says. “People who should have been in it but were never approached. But please also write that we want them to succeed. If they fail, it is us who will be left with their ruins of contemporary art – and in a country that is continually looking to its past, with unresolved questions of identity, that would be disastrous.”

An obsessive fan found the source for the cover image of Radiohead’s OK Computer album (it’s a highway in Hartford):

    After looking at 2,000 scripts, 25,000 actors, 4 million lines, and analyzing them by gender, this is what Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels (writing for the Pudding) found:

A tour of the new Foster Partners–designed Apple HQ, where the tech company even designed a special pizza box for employees:

For workers who want to take the café’s pizza back to their pods, Apple created (and patented) a container that lets air and moisture escape so the crust won’t get soggy. (via Wired)

Jack O’Donnell worked for Trump in the 1980s, and he reminds us that everything he’s doing is NOT a surprise:

After I resigned in April 1990, I wrote a book about my time with him, Trumped: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump, His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, in 1991. In the book, I told stories about Trump’s leadership style that would come to echo his presidency years later.

I witnessed him make public phone calls that he insisted were private and use those conversations to humiliate and corner the person on the other end. I witnessed him demand loyalty from those who worked for him. I witnessed him make impulsive decisions as a result of his short attention span.

RELATED: Did you know Nixon wrote to Donald Trump in 1987? Presidential historian Michael Beschloss posted this:

Nixon writes to Trump, 30 years ago this year: http://pic.twitter.com/rKxHBXNuXO

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) May 17, 2017

ALSO RELATED: A new poll suggests a majority of Americans believe Trump is a liar and wish Obama was still president. More data from Public Policy Polling:

Only 40% of voters approve of the job Trump is doing to 54% who disapprove. For the first time we find more voters (48%) in support of impeaching Trump than there are (41%) opposed to the idea. Only 43% of voters think Trump is actually going to end up serving his full term as President, while 45% think he won’t, and 12% aren’t sure one way or the other.

… By an 8 point margin, 49/41, they say they wish Hillary Clinton was President instead of Trump. And by a 16 point margin, 55/39, they say they wish Barack Obama was still in office instead of Trump.

And Time Magazine‘s new cover became a topic of discussion on social media. This is probably the funniest take on it:

@TIME Fixed this for you. *Turn on audio* http://pic.twitter.com/7soqnUZI7r

— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) May 18, 2017

Or did Time rip off Mad Magazine?

Once More, With Stealing Dept. TIME MAGAZINE RIPS OFF MAD MAGAZINE?https://t.co/dWYykrr4tJ http://pic.twitter.com/bfYrj2DpUb

— MAD Magazine (@MADmagazine) May 18, 2017

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

The post Required Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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