#this is what my bio is referencing for anyone curious

[glavilio]

george herriman

[pigeonflavouredcake]

Here's my unwanted opinion on some witchcraft books

This is a list of opinions I have on some popular witchcraft, occult and practitioner related books. I don't talk about anything I haven't read myself.

This is in no way stopping you from reading them yourself, it's just what I think of them as an experienced practitioner and pagan.

I now have a Goodreads account you can look at if you're curious what else I've read but it's a mess and I've just added my bookshelf on in bulk.

Lisa Lister - Witch

To get this out of the way. It's bio essentialist crap and we all know this by know but it bears repeating. This is an example I've used in my grimoire of how transphobia seeps into spiritual spaces and goes unchecked under the guise of feminism and women empowerment. Arguing that a witch's power comes from her womb as a bowl of nature and creative magic. If that's what you like to draw from then all power to you, I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is that Lister directly infers that the title of 'witch' is exclusive to this specific demographic of women.

I find her statements gross and dehumanising to women and her argument falls apart completely when you remember that not every woman has a womb, big duh moment I know. It correlates with TERF ideology that certain women are inherently more powerful because of a female reproductive system as opposed to women as a whole being powerful because of their autonomy as human beings. "But if that's true then what's stopping cis men, trans and nonbinary people from being practitioners?" LITERALLY NOTHING!

Sky Alexander - The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book and The Modern Witchcraft Grimoire

Very simple. Pretty cover. Overall they make for ok resources for beginners but once you're out of the beginner phase they really fall flat. Alexander doesn't provide much context when referencing certain tools and practices and tends to confuse witchcraft with wicca.

The Farrars - A Witches' Bible

Dated. Uses the G slur. Their books are all mislabelled wicca which makes sense because these books have been around since the 90's when there wasn't much of a difference and you can tell. They do not hold up to today's standards. They are a good example of how practices have historically been conflated in pop culture.

Does discuss ritual nUdity (they call it skyclad) and includes pictures. I wanted to mention it here to not surprise anyone in case any of you aren't comfortable with it.

Rachel Patterson - Grimoire of a Kitchen Witch

A book about kitchen witchcraft that doesn't include any kitchen witchcraft. It's more like a basic beginners grimoire. Very repetitive.

Features a chapter on hoodoo which I'm unsure about. I don't know anything about hoodoo or rootwork but I'm assuming it's a practice exclusive to the black community in America due to it developing during the period of enslavement in the US. I'm also assuming that Patterson isn't a part of this community due to being white and British. If I'm wrong and Patterson is genuinely part of the practice and can honestly speak on the topic please correct me.

Scott Cunningham - Encyclopaedia of Magical Herbs

A good resource for correspondences, easy to digest but Cunningham focuses on wicca (again) using wiccan practices like complementarianism and gendering nature which to me makes no sense (I know about the law of polarity but I do not agree with it). The pictures of plants are nice but the folklore provided for them is pretty minimal. You can find all the same info for free online.

Judika Illes - Encyclopaedia of Spirits

Honestly not that bad. There's a lot of information and it's pretty consistent throughout. It's a huge book though, it can be kind of overwhelming but they take from multiple sources when discussing the mythos of deities which is a plus. The pages are very thin and delicate which can make it hard to read the text.

Joey Hulin - Your Spiritual Almanac

it's eh in the broadest sense. I liked the folklore and the eco action sections but I didn't really absorb any of it. a lot of the corresponce lists was information I already knew about. It felt very repetitive. Would have loved to have seen more detailed information about the changes happening in nature each month.

Rachel Pollack - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom

Pollack is very informative, and honestly a great resource for tarot work, she knows her shit and isn't afraid to info dump. The only thing I didn't really like is all the mentions of dualism like of mother v father, male v female but that's entirely my issue and it's the nature of tarot to be dualistic, It just isn't a necessity to me and my practice. Still a great book.

Aleister Crowley - Magick

A great example of what not to do. Appropriates dharmic practices and Jewish mysticism. When he wasn't stealing from other cultures or being a massive contrarian Crowley was writing about sex magic and it's discussed here in uncomfortable detail.

[kira-ani-mcgrath]

I've little interest in Frozen stuff but I've seen bits and pieces of this Hans stuff you've mentioned on and off and I'm curious about something. When you say someone is acting un-Christlike by saying a character is irredeemable, what is it you exactly mean? Because sometimes yea, it can be narratively unsatisfying to randomly redeem a character in a story. Example: People debating if it would be narratively satisfying if Azula got redeemed. It's got nothing to do with worldview imo.

For context, this ask comes in the wake of this post.

I’m posting this reply publicly so I can refer back to it if needed in the future. I received a similar ask [hopefully that link works] on the heels of this post, which I answered privately without saving a copy of my response, and it would have been useful if I’d saved and/or posted it. Thus, here we are.

I want to make something 100% unquestionably clear to anyone who follows me or reads my posts: whenever I criticize someone labeling Hans “unredeemable”/“irredeemable” it is ALWAYS in the context of someone declaring him un/irredeemable because of what he has done.

It is NEVER people saying they don’t think Disney should redeem him because they’re worried WDAS will do a terrible job of it. It is NEVER people saying they don’t want him redeemed in an unsatisfying manner (i.e.: “BTW he’s good now, he changed off-screen and now he’s back like nothing bad happened.”). It is NEVER people saying that his redemption may not fit well into a particular scenario. It confuses me that people are interpreting my words this way, because if I were to express concern about the way a character’s actual or potential redemption were handled, I would never do it by labeling the character irredeemable or saying the character shouldn’t be redeemed at all, full stop. I would include the nuances I am referring to, such as “The character shouldn’t be redeemed off-screen,” or “The character shouldn’t be redeemed in this movie.” Therefore, if I am saying people shouldn’t call a character irredeemable, I’m not referring to specific cases such as “The character shouldn’t be redeemed by this creative team,” or, “The character shouldn’t be redeemed in this manner.” I am referring to a much larger picture.

I am criticizing people who say Hans is evil, malicious, unfeeling, manipulative, abusive, a villain, a sociopath, and/or a murder, and therefore he can never and should never be redeemed. I am criticizing people who don’t want Hans redeemed because they have a personal grudge against the character. I am criticizing people who think that once a character crosses a particular line (and apparently this line is unique for Hans, based on what he actually did compared to every other “bad guy” in fictional history), the character is now 100% bad and can never be good in any way ever again.

A Christian should never think this way. There is no unforgivable sin (besides attributing works of the Holy Spirit to Satan, as some of the Pharisees did). We are to love our enemies and desire what is best for them - to be saved, redeemed - and yet I see people with the word “Christian” in their bio bragging about how much they hate Hans because he was so terrible to Anna and Elsa, rejoicing that Hans remains unredeemed in canon, cheering when Anna punches Hans in Frozen, laughing when the Frozen Fever snowball crashes into him, agreeing with Elsa calling him an “unredeemable monster” and approving of her destroying his snow-figure in Frozen II. I see those who say they belong to Christ - the Savior who took on every sin imaginable - saying that Hans is simply too mean, too horrible, too evil to be redeemed. I hope this is obvious, but there should be no such thing as “too [x] for redemption” to the Christian. There is never anyone, real or fictional, beyond salvation and redemption. [The only exception I could think of would be a fictional world where the rules are the antithesis to Christianity - then you could say a character is irredeemable because the very nature of that universe doesn’t allow for the character’s redemption. But that certainly doesn’t apply to Frozen.]

Now to address the Azula example brought up at the end. I’m not an A:TLA fan, but I did watch the entire show and I see the occasional meta cross my dash now and then. I’m not familiar with any debates as you have referenced, so I’m just going to give my own examples to hopefully add some extra clarity to my position.

First, I fail to see how a well-done redemption arc could ever be “narratively unsatisfying,” particularly for the Christian. If it’s well-written and you see the steps the character takes, their failings and their successes, I would think that'd be quite a satisfying story. So what is the actual issue when debating characters’ redemptions? I believe it’s concerns of quality, characterization, and actions.

Given where we see Azula at the end of her fight with Zuko in the finale, it would certainly be unsatisfying if she was chilling in Iroh’s tea shop with everyone in the final moments of the series. Likewise, I would not want to see a Hans redemption where we are re-introduced to Hans and he’s completely apologetic and ready to right any wrongs. In fact, I am put-off by fanfics that start with Hans having already repented, changed, etc., from his canon actions and self. I want to see the process of change, so that it is satisfying when he finally makes the right decision.

Given the existing three seasons of A:TLA, people are free to debate on whether or not room could have been made for an Azula redemption arc. Given the current Frozen material, people are free to debate on whether or not room could have been made for a Hans redemption arc.

Had there been further canon A:TLA material, and there was an Azula redemption arc done as well as Zuko’s (such as described in this Twitter thread), I would have found that very narratively satisfying. Now, others may not like how that theoretical redemption was handled, plotted, etc. That’s perfectly fine. Likewise, people may have certain ways they don’t want a theoretical Hans redemption handled, plotted, etc. Again, perfectly fine. One can disagree on the way a redemption arc was/might be handled without dismissing the redemption altogether.

People may want Azula to remain unredeemed because they believe she would choose to be so. That’s fine (though others are allowed to disagree). For example, if she were to maintain that she did nothing wrong and reject any help Zuko and Iroh offered, then she would remain unredeemed. Alternatively, she could realize that what she did was wrong, but then go the opposite direction and believe she doesn’t deserve anything good, so she would reject love and help at every turn for the rest of her life, and thus remain unredeemed. However, I have never seen anyone call a character “irredeemable” and mean that they believe the character would actively choose to reject offers of redemption.

People may say Azula or Hans shouldn’t be redeemed because it would be out-of-character. From an unbeliever’s perspective, that may be correct, as they think certain traits as immutable. However, that’s wrong from a Christian perspective, as anyone can change if enabled by the grace of God. In fictional worlds that don’t have any Christianity, you simply use an imperfect archetype to play a pivotal role in the character’s transformation (i.e., Uncle Iroh to Zuko).

People may not be against an Azula or Hans redemption in and of itself, but think it makes the most narrative sense to leave the characters unredeemed - whether it be because there wasn’t enough time in canon, or there’s other characters to focus on, or some other behind-the-fourth-wall reason. That doesn’t make the characters irredeemable, it just means that’s the way the story currently stands. There’s no reason that story can’t change in the future.

However, if people are saying Azula shouldn’t be redeemed at all because what she did was too wrong, then that is un-Christ-like. Likewise, saying Hans is irredeemable because what he did was too wrong is indisputably un-Christ-like. Now, of course, I can’t expect unbelievers to act Christ-like, so it doesn’t surprise me when I see them express such sentiments. However, when a Christian argues against redemption on these grounds, I absolutely question why. You claim to stand on the Word of God, but declare there are actions too heinous to be forgiven and characters that don’t deserve redemption? God rebuked a man for his desire to see people punished instead of forgiven [Jonah], forgave adultery and murder [David], and transformed a man from persecuting to teaching the Church [Saul/Paul]. Yet you put your stamp of approval on a lack of redemption for a character because of the actions of that character? Further sanctification is needed, whether in love for the lost or in fully surrendering all to Christ. A lack of redemption should only serve as a warning of what happens to those who reject truth, love, and forgiveness - because, as we know, not everyone will be saved. A Christian should never be against redemption because they personally hate the character, or think the character is unforgivable, or believe the character doesn’t “deserve” it, or any other reason antithetical to who Christ is and what He has done.

[gutosimmer]

not to be a bother, but when checking who i can teleport from the loner house in your early strangetown hood (the one with genetically correct sims,) there appear to be 2 clones of ajay, one named AJ instead of ajay. AJ has the face of the maxis ajay but the normal ajay has the genetically correct one. AJ doesn't appear in the house when i play, and he doesn't age with the story progression mod, so i had to move him in the muenda house to see what he looks like. this isn't really a problem for me, though, it actually may add some spice to the plot. i made it so that in the story for this neighborhood, ajay has a secret twin that his father strangely has never heard about. i let ichabod specter adopt AJ. i am so sorry if i don't realise this is intended or not

Hi anon! Don't worry, you don't need to apologize! I'm glad someone found poor AJ! He was kinda of a mistake, but i worked him into the story! And i love this story with Ichabod adopting him!

Idk if anyone cares about how AJ and Ajay came to be, but here i go

Since i wanted Ajay to be a baby in Early Strangetown, i couldn't make him in CAS, so i made Madhuri have a baby before i killed her off- she was abducted.

But in every pregnancy i made her have, she always had twins! At that time, i didn't use something like the Sim Manipulator, for her to have a single child, so i didn't know what to do. But i guess the thing i did was incorporate the forgotten twin into the story.

Madhuri knew that she couldn't raise two kids at once, so unfortunately she put AJ for adoption, but she didn't had the courage to talk about that with Vidkram, so it was her little secret, that she never told because she was abducted and never returned!

It sucks that the children in the adoption bin don't grow up, my intent was that AJ could be adopted right at the start of the game, so the ages could sync with Ajay. In my playthrough (that in fact, i never posted because the screenshots were messed up :C) I made Glabe Curious and Daisy Loste get married and they adopted lil AJ, and that became the Singles household, Glabe Singles, Daisy Singles and AJ Singles.

And one last thing, i don't know if anyone knew about Ajay's bio, it (kinda) referenced the exist of his twin, it goes like this:

''Ajay always dreams of mirrors, I think the idea of ​​a clone kind of haunts him.''

I hope someone found this interesting, i personally love seeing how other people create their projects, i find it very interesting! Thank you for listening to my TedTalk.

[vaguely-concerned]

Some T.F./Graves thoughts from their bios

I realize what a dumb move it is to base uuuuh basically anything on lol bios, since riot apparently change those like other people do underwear, but if I’m not here to build my castles on sand what am I here for honestly  

- I LOVE the description of their first meeting, it’s such a meet cute lol... these two assholes really did just take one look at each other and mutually went ‘so is anyone gonna enter into a life-defining homoerotic partnership with this lying cheating bastard??’ and then neither of them waited for an answer 

- Though at times Twisted Fate would blow all their shares and leave them with nothing to show for it, Graves knew that the thrill of some new escapade was always just around the corner…

I am genuinely a little emotional about how obvious it is that at the end of the day the money really is secondary to him - what really drives him is how much FUN they have together. (he seems in general quite driven by that sense of Adventure; if it were just about the cash he had steady work in bilgewater before he took the trip over to the mainland as a kid) it’s like the part of ‘the road to el dorado’ in the boat except more sincere... ‘you made my life an adventure bro’ :’) 

(also very funny that graves’ bio is where you learn that t.f. doesn’t always win or get away with his shit hahaha, in his own bio it’s played like ‘oh gotta let people win once in a while to throw off suspicion’ flasdhfjsad. it’s mentioned he gets caught a lot more without graves watching his back too, which also gets me in my feelings a bit) 

- one thing I find interesting is that t.f.’s parents aren’t referenced directly at any point (the only family members mentioned specifically are his aunt and grandfather, I’m pretty sure). I’m wondering if they were already out of the picture somehow and that’s part of the reason no one spoke up for him? I mean it’s fucked up either way, I don’t know what’s worse; that his people found it so easy to exile him because he didn’t have anyone to protect him, or that his parents were alive and JUST LEFT HIM THERE. like what the fuck. from how it’s written it’s pretty clear he was still considered a child at the time too, so, y’know. (Graves is described as ‘little more than a youth’ when he headed for the mainland while T.F. seems to have been a kid when he started being on his own, so I’ve headcanoned something like 16-17 and 13-14 for their respective ages of leaving home, with both of them around 19 when they met) I’m quite curious about what kind of internal family politics were at work for them to apparently all agree -- or perhaps be too intimidated to disagree -- to exile a child for life with no recourse and no resources. like yeah okay he messed up but that’s some next level assholery to pull on a kid honestly, no wonder he grows up to have a bunch of abandonment and emotional intimacy issues (and presumably some prime survivor’s guilt as well. oh buddy) 

- eternally entertained by how much meeting t.f. is worded like the ‘how they met their spouse’ section of a wikipedia article in graves’ bio

Across one table, he met a deplorable fellow named Malcolm Graves is also *mwha* so good 

- for fic purposes I would just like to give a moment of thanks for the paragraph in graves’ bio that mentions a bunch of shenanigans they got up to back in the day, very useful thank you

- from what I understand t.f.’s exile-causing transgression has been changed quite recently from fighting back to running away, which I am so happy about because it makes a lot more psychological sense to me and makes graves’ words in ‘burning tides’ hit so much better.  

- I like that their individual descriptions of graves being captured are so indicative of how they each think about it -- namely t.f. doesn’t want to think about it (repress! repress! repress! very relatable) but probably has the more accurate view of it: The exact details of that night remain shrouded in mystery, for neither of them likes to speak of it—but Graves was taken alive, while Tobias and their other accomplices ran free, while graves does think about it but sort of still has his trauma goggles on for it: During a heist that rapidly turned from complex to completely botched, Graves was taken by the local enforcers, while Twisted Fate merely turned tail and abandoned him. t.f.’s is obfuscating and refusing to engage in the emotional aspect of it, graves’ is much more emotive in the language used, like ‘abandoned’. the lol bios often teeter awkwardly between straight biographies and wanting to dip into prose/flavour text, I must say I usually find them very clunky and unsatisfying, but this juxtaposition works for me.

sort of weird the details that don’t make it in, though -- like the fact that they’re both aware that miss fortune was the one who screwed them over in the whole gangplank Situation? (I love that part in ‘destiny and fate’ where graves is gamely like ‘yeah of course I’ve got a grudge against her but that was pretty metal too so y’know *shrug*’ haha)   

- it’s interesting how much t.f.’s uh connection I guess to the cards is almost described as some kind of... compulsion/unstoppable drive in the middle of his bio and then fades into the background towards the end (because his priorities have changed to repairing his marriage now that it’s an option and by god I support him in that). I really do wonder how his card magic actually works -- it’s a cool mix of extremely unsubtle and undeniable sorcery (straight up throwing fireballs around) and subtle (’hunches’, being ‘guided’, just knowing things he sort of shouldn’t), which seems to be where it started

also it seems like he can do it with just about any playing card he comes across? would be sort of weird if it’s the cards that are special, considering he keeps throwing them away and also I don’t know a lot about gambling but I distinctly imagine that casinos don’t let you use your own decks haha. and t.f. seemingly can’t do magic just on his own, without them. so it’s a thing that happens very specifically in relationship, when all the elements come together, symbiotically sort of thing? could he do magic without the cards but it’s how he’s trained himself to think of it so he doesn’t realize it (well I honestly doubt that but just for the thought experiment)? is there some sort of spirit behind those cards looking out for him? is it lady luck keeping an eye out for her favorite boy lol? we know this stuff can physically change the cards like when they showed the crown in ‘destiny and fate’, and he seems able to ‘prime’ a card with magic beforehand if ‘double-double cross’ is anything to go by, but even then mf can’t actually use or release it. hmmmmm many questions  

- the more of my long fic I write the more I am questioning what the fuck these two DO with all the money they steal -- like they’ve clearly pulled off some HUGE heists, surely it can’t all go into like drinks and cigars and fancy waistcoats and tf’s seemingly unending supply of playing cards

do they have like. a bunch of small caches of gold hidden away all across two continents in case of emergency? are their buried treasures the stuff of runeterran urban legend and people go out hunting for them? Have they invested this stuff in actual banks? (actually no I refuse to accept that as a possibility lol if nothing else this would make it hard to figure out if they were robbing THEMSELVES sometimes, sounds like a lot of hassle)

- His people had always waved away concerns over primitive magic and “cartomancy”, but now Tobias began to seek out ever more dangerous means to bend the cards to his will. 

I’m having a little bit of a hard time parsing this -- does this mean his people didn’t believe the cards were magic at all and he’s the only person he knows who can do it, or do they know but just don’t think can be dangerous??? I chose one particular interpretation for my fic, but I honestly can’t figure out what it’s actually meant to mean haha

- T.F. getting a special satisfaction from robbing people who are Assholes is a good character detail (his colour story really goes out of its way to show that the merchant he’s playing against is a real shitbag, for example); there is some lopsided form of righteousness/sense of justice there, I think. and it also ties in with why I like that his exile was because he ran away rather than because he resorted to violence -- there’s this underlying sense that he particularly enjoys outsmarting people who’re dickish to outsiders in precarious situations (like his people) so thoroughly that they don’t even realize it before he’s long gone, without ever having to even lay a finger on them, because that’s a way to fight back while staying out of reach when you come from relative powerlessness. There’s a... lack of malice, I guess, to both of them that I find quite endearing, you can see in Burning Tides that even at his most mindlessly vengeful Graves doesn’t actually enjoy being actively cruel. ‘mutual sense of roguish honor’ is RIGHT they’re bad men but not Bad men you get me  

- All in all, Twisted Fate is glad to have his old friend back, even if it might take another job or two—or ten—to restore their once easy partnership.

This probably means nothing because as I said the lol bios seem an endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of canon, but I think it’s so sweet that both of their last sentences/’where are they now’ statements are about them wanting to repair their partnership (and do some Cool Big Stuff together in graves’ case, I do wonder if that’s foreshadowing for the ruined king game or what)

[randaccidents]

Aggressive Friendship

I live! Again! Its the start of the holidays, and while I might have an exam literally the second holidays end I can write! Cause vibesss

Aight so fic! I decided we needed shadow animals and I went off.

Key note: said shadow animal is a boss shadow and can basically share its emotions with others, so watch its influence cause shenanigans! (thanks to @bellysurfer for helping me iron out the idea!)

... I explained that bad haha but whatever the animal feels other shadows around them have a similar emotion!

Shadow People AU by @mine-sara-sp

NO TW ONLY CUTE

------------

Stretching his arms above his head, Solo sighed. The last few weeks had been a little rough, especially after he had shut down the shadow meetups. Talking to Ren had helped some, but he still felt that he could have done a little more for some shadows. Glancing towards the distant hill that Coda had disappeared over, the feeling doubled.

He shook his head doggedly. No, no more blaming himself for other people’s actions, Ren had made it clear that that was bad. His eyes lingered on the horizon as he walked away from the flower field.

He could still feel bad about the isolation of some shadows, however.

Twirling on his heel, he moved towards Biedronka’s farmstead. Bio had told him about the wild wolves that had moved in nearby recently, and right now that sounded like just what he needed. Some nice quiet time with some wolves. Yeah, that sounded great.

“Aggro! Bad! Down boy, stop that! What did I say about fighting?”

Never mind. Solo could hear someone shouting from where he stood. It sounded like they were having trouble. He picked up his pace, skidding around the corner to see what the problem was.

To his surprise, he saw two wolves snapping their jaws at each other, clearly unhappy, yet with heads held in deference to the shadow standing before them. No, the shadow who was clearly in charge of the pack was not what surprised him. After the vexdows and Biedronka and Bio and the Naptime Squad, nothing like that could shock him anymore. What did surprise him was that one of the wolves was grey, little yellow triangles floating about it.

One of the wolves was a shadow. He didn’t even know that was possible. Although, considering everything that had happened to them, he supposed this wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen. He brought his fingers to his lips, letting out a piercing whistle. All three mobs snapped their heads up to face him, the wolves growling at his presence. The shadow, meanwhile, began waving his arms above his head, grinning widely.

“Solo! Hello!” Cavalier called out to him, a wide grin on his face. Solo raised a hand in return, jogging up to stop beside him. He opened his mouth to speak when the loud growls of the wolves below began again. Looking down, he found the two circling each other, teeth bared. His fingers itched, wanting to reach for the guitar on his back, but he stamped it down. No need to get so antsy over wolves. Suddenly, they pounced in sync, mouths open, too fast for Solo to react to.

Teeth snapped shut on empty air, the wolf mob turning about in confusion of where its enemy had gone. Cavalier reached down to slap its head lightly, other arm holding the shadow wolf snug against his side. "What. Did. I. Say." He scolded, the wolf wilting under his gaze.

The wolf whined, burying its face in the red cloth around its neck. Idly, Solo realised that the shadow wolf had a similar looking bandana around its neck, coloured bright yellow. This must be the shadow of the same wolf being scolded.

Cavalier straightened, the wolf twined around his legs whining pitifully at him. He hefted the shadow wolf up, poking its nose. "And you! Don't think you're exempt!" The wolf similarly wilted, looking to the side in guilt. Solo found himself feeling sorry for the wolf, as guilty as it looked and felt.

He marvelled at how the knight had those wolves trained. He was certain that Cavalier still didn't have a power, so to command this much obedience? He must have spent a long time with them.

Solo put an arm on his hip, watching the once-shy knight scold the two wolves, smiling to himself. Those wolves really were a blessing. After that first meeting, he never thought he would see the day that soft-spoken Cavalier would assert his dominance over anyone, even if they were only wolves.

At length, Cavalier tucked the other shadow back under his arm, turning back to Solo. "Sorry about that, these two can't get along if I'm not looking." he muttered, free arm scratching the back of his helmet shyly. Solo gave him a gentle smile, waving a hand in the air. "It's no problem. Watching you being more confident in yourself is a treat."

Cavalier grinned bashfully, seeming to enjoy the praise. “Thanks, I’ve been working on asserting myself. Be my own person, you know? Having to look after these idiots helps. How about you? What are you doing here Solo?”

“I heard about the wild wolf pack that moved in near Bied’s and wanted to hang out with them. Didn’t know they were yours though.”

Cavalier’s grin turned sheepish. “I didn’t expect them to be here either. Did you know that there’s a shadow temple near here?”

That was new information. Solo shook his head. “How did you learn about this Cav?”

Without missing a beat, Cavalier poked a finger at the shadow wolf he was holding with one arm. “You see this wolf? Aggro went sniffing near the temple. Turns out mobs can summon shadows too, and the both of them have been at each other’s throats the whole time!”

The two wolves whined at Cavalier, seemingly apologetic. Solo raised a hand to rub the back of his head. “Geez man, I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help. Have you tried leaving one of them with Bied?”

Cavalier only raised an eyebrow at him, gesturing to the area around them. Solo flushed in embarrassment at the reminder of how bad his observation skills were. He opened his mouth to speak, but the pack leader was quick to cut him off.

"No, it's alright, I forget not everyone observes and remembers every tiny detail around them." He smiled sheepishly up at Solo. "It's my training."

Mentally skipping over the implications of the 'training' that Cavalier referenced, Solo brought the subject back to more slobbery matters. "So what are you going to do with them?" He kneeled down to look into the curious eyes of the shadow wolf, directing Cavalier's attention back to the literal problem on hand. "You can't keep an eye on them forever."

The shadow wolf (he should ask if it has a name, he can't call it 'shadow wolf' forever) tilted its head, releasing a curious "Boof!" at him. He barely held back the sudden urge to reach out and pet the shadow wolf, aware of Cavalier's mild touch aversion. The wolf lolled its tongue out at him, and the urge to touch only grew stronger at the cute sight.

"Hey! Solo! You still here?" Finger snapping brought his attention back up to Cavalier, flushing in embarrassment for the second time that day. The pack leader smiled down at him, no judgement in his gaze. Something suddenly lit up behind his eyes. “I just had the best idea.” He whispered to himself. Solo stood up in confusion, unsure of where the new conversation was going. “Cav? What idea are you thinking of?” Solo asked cautiously.

Cavalier bounced on the balls of his feet, his eyes practically sparkling in excitement over his idea. “What if you looked after him? You seem to like him, and he definitely seems to like you back! What do you say? Will you do it?”

Looking into the sparkling eyes of the two shadows before him, Solo couldn’t find it in his heart to say no. With a sigh, he fixed a small smile on his face. “Sure thing! It can’t be too hard right?”

Cavalier giggled, gently dropping the shadow wolf onto the ground. It immediately moved to sniff at Solo’s trousers, seeming to recognise that it was to follow him around. “Oh, you have no clue.”

Ignoring the ominous meaning behind the words (really, he’s starting to sound like Keloid and Avarice and Paladin, innocent but ominous), Solo knelt down and finally gave into his urge to pet the shadow wolf. The fur felt coarse but soft, and thick enough that his hand sunk in slightly. The shadow wolf wiggled happily, raising its chin in invitation. The little triangles surrounding it formed a small crown as Solo obliged the wolf’s request, scratching it beneath the chin. “What’s his name?” Solo asked, other hand rubbing the wolf on the back.

Cavalier’s mischievous smile went unnoticed by Solo. “I named him Mutton, because he likes eating Mutton.”

Solo smiled down at the dog. “Mutton,” he repeated, committing the name to memory. “I’m going to look after him so well, you wouldn’t even hear of any trouble from me!”

------------------------------------

He is so stupid.

He is a stupid idiot derp of a shadow and he really should have remembered. He rushed through the trees, mentally bashing himself for his stupidity.

It hadn't been anything too special, he'd wanted to go meet up with his band, so he'd left Mutton in a small fenced off area next to one of his hovels. It was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to still be there when he came back. He knew how mobs worked.

Well, clearly he had forgotten how shadow mobs worked, because Mutton had clearly slipped out two-dimensional between the fence poles and run off after something.

Solo didn't know if he should scold the wolf or kiss it once he found it. At least Mutton had the decency to leave a clear path that he could follow, even if it was only because it had destroyed every bush in its path. He really hoped that Mutton hadn't gone into a river or, Abyss forbid, the ocean.

Shaking his head clear of such scary thoughts, Solo ran on between the trees. He could see the tree line thinning up ahead, a clear patch in the forest. He didn't stop to think about what that meant in a forest this dense.

Clearing the trees, he took only a few steps into the clearing before he had to stop in surprise, curiosity colouring the confusion in his gut.

There was a small hut in the clearing, sitting amidst a small smattering of flowers. In front of the house was Coda, crouched facing slightly away from him, scythe leaned against the doorframe. That in itself was weird enough, Coda never let his guard down to put down his weapon. But the shadow was staring deep into the eyes of Mutton, who was staring back, tail wagging. The particles around them swirled lazily, giving off no indication of caution or aggressiveness, interacting and mixing and separating. A few triangle bits floated lazily above their heads, forming the shape of crowns and dog ears.

Cautiously, Solo walked up behind Coda. His confusion and concern and curiosity only grew when Coda didn't register his approach, continuing to stare intently into Mutton's eyes.

Mutton's eyes flicked over to look at him, and it gave a loud "Boof!" of excitement. Coda turned his head slightly, jolting when he noticed Solo standing right behind him. His hand flashed out to grab ahold of his scythe, his posture visibly relaxing into a familiar annoyed posture. "What are you doing here dog?"

Solo rolled his eyes, secretly glad that Coda hadn't suddenly changed. "Again, can't call me dog when you're one too. What are you doing?" He asked inquisitively, genuinely curious as to what Coda was doing.

"Nothing that matters to you." Came the way too quick reply, Coda attempting to look casual and unbothered. "Just another animal come to mess with my territory, like you."

Mutton snuffled loudly, almost in response. The two shadows ignored it. “Having a staring competition with a wolf is not just ‘nothing’ you know,” Solo stated, raising an eyebrow at Coda. He didn't know what gave him so much confidence and sass in that moment, but he wasn't complaining. Coda pushed himself to his feet, turning to properly face Solo, free hand on his hip. “I was not having a staring competition with a mutt.”

“Then what were you doing.”

“Establishing dominance.”

The answer was so unexpected, said so seriously, that Solo couldn’t stop the howls of laughter that escaped him. Mutton bounded around their legs, tail wagging in excitement and amusement that mirrored Solo’s. Coda simply raised an eyebrow, unamused. "Are you quite done with this frivolous act?"

This set off another set of giggles. If only Coda knew that his whole ‘I have no emotions’ gig fell apart under the tiniest of conversations with him. At least he wasn't lying too much about the emotions thing, muted as his reactions tended to be. Catching Coda's vaguely annoyed look, he quickly smothered his laughter. Coda sighed, leaning back on the handle of his scythe. "I will repeat myself; what are you doing here."

Solo pointed to the shadow wolf currently attempting to climb Coda's scythe, which was set firmly into the ground. "Mutton ran away, and I chased him here."

Coda’s eyebrows flew up. “Mutton. You named a wolf after a food.”

“I didn’t name it!” Solo protested, backing up slightly. “Cavalier did!”

“The Scout? Interesting.” Coda looked down at Mutton, who had gotten bored and distracted by a nearby flower. “Didn’t think he had it in him to lead wild beasts.”

Solo sighed. Now he was feeling bored and distracted. He kneeled down to face Mutton, the wolf tilting its head curiously at his actions. "Well I need to get him back to the pen. Come here boy!"

The shadow wolf didn't budge, sitting its tiny butt down on the grass and panting lightly at him (panting? none of them had figured out breathing until at least a month after sentience!). Frowning slightly, he clicked his tongue. All Mutton did was to loll its tongue out of its mouth, happy to simply sit still. Behind him, Coda scoffed.  "Just pick up the dumb mutt, it can't be that hard."

Solo shivered, remembering what had happened earlier when he tried to pick up Mutton without its permission. "Uh, yeah, no? Mutton will bite, and with it being a shadow? Ouch. I didn't know wolf bites hurt so much!"

He could practically hear the eyeroll that Coda gave him, before his brother Coda was smoothly stepping past him, arms reaching down to pick up Mutton. "Wait, don't!"

Coda turned back to him, an eyebrow raised, Mutton happily lounging in his arms. "And what, exactly, is the matter?"

Solo let out a sigh he didn't know he was holding. "Oh thank goodness. Can I have Mutton now?"

"No."

"What?!?" Solo screeched. Coda gave him a blank look, but his eyes held a small sparkle of mischief that he could not hide. "I said no. You lost it, I found it, so it's mine now."

Solo felt his jaw drop at the statement. "I- But you don’t even- And- It's Cav's!"

"And he can come get it himself after you've reported your failure to him. Now leave."

Mutton boofed, adding insult to injury, especially when it stuck its tongue out at him. Light mischievousness that he didn't know what to do with rolled in his gut. "Fine! I'll go, but I'll be back."

Coda didn't make any sound as Solo turned and stomped back into the treeline. But once he was safely hidden by the trees (which meant at least 10 trees) he turned around, slipping into the shadow of the nearest tree. No way he was going to leave poor Mutton with Coda. Besides, he promised Cav!

Pulling his head out of shadow at the edge of the clearing, Solo peaked around the leaves of the tree to yet another strange sight. Coda was talking to Mutton, who appeared to be listening intently, its sharp barks punctuating the air. Coda raised a hand up to hover dangerously before Mutton’s nose. Solo held his breath.

As expected, Mutton sniffed his hand, snarled, and bit down on Coda’s fingers, shaking its head slightly. To Solo’s surprise and delight, Coda laughed. Really, genuinely, laughed.

Coda was quick to slap a hand over his mouth, jerking out of Mutton's grip and silencing himself. Mutton whined up at him, snuffling under his jaw. Solo watched Coda shakily place a hand atop Mutton’s head, whispering something to the shadow wolf. A happy bark, a small smile from Coda, and then he turned and entered his small shack.

Sliding down to reform sitting against the tree, Solo parsed through what he had learned. Had Coda… shown emotion? For a second there, it looked like he was scared of that realisation. But then Mutton… and Coda had brought it into his shack. The shack that no one was allowed into. That shack. And he seemed to really like Mutton.

A wide grin grew on his face. Oh, Cav had to know about this.

… and Chamo.

… and Distress.

Wow, that’s a lot of people he had to tell.

[illusion-of-sea-axes]

Hargrove: “We Are Still At War”

A little ramble-analysis on Charon’s business practices, Hargrove’s political stances, and Halo lore. 

(Warning, contains some spoilers for some of Halo, specifically the novel Envoy)

My brain is snagged on the ‘We Are Still at War” bit from Hargrove, in Prologue.

 I’m very curious as to what he means, it is actively fucking with my focus, so I’ve decided to scribble about it and work it out.

This is gonna verge a little into speculation on RvB canon and Hargrove’s business practices, I’m just really curious on what it could mean and I’ve been binge-reading all the Halo lore I can get my hands on.  

In Prologue, Hargrove is shown during a news broadcast, saying this;

(It’s hard for me to interpret what Hargrove says over the other conversation going on in the scene, if anyone else gets it please let me know)

“We are still very much at war, and we should all prepare ourselves for whatever may come next.”

(I’m gonna make a quick note that Hargrove’s been around since before the war, which lasted nearly thirty years, based on how old he looks) 

Based on news scrolls from this scene and a scene from Along Came a Spider, which I tried to transcribe here, RvB is following the Halo series’ idea for the post-Covenant space. 

(Said news scrolls mention a bomb being found outside the UNSC HQ, the Sangheili Embassy being attacked by human extremists, and tensions rising between alien and human colonists) 

Hargrove says “Still at war,” which could refer to many things. I’m gonna think of the threats dealt with in recent years, which would be the Covenant and the Insurrection, based on the ‘still’ part. Either would be plausible, as the Insurrection never really stopped, just went to the back burner during the Covenant War, and the Chorus Trilogy is set in the years after the War’s end when the Insurrection is making a comeback. 

Post the Covenant War, there are still aliens trying to live up to the Covenant or fill its place (Jul ‘Mdama comes to mind) as well as the New Colonial Alliance making a return. There was a Sangheili Zealot terrorist in 2556 who set off a bio weapon that caused major deaths in Sedra (referenced by Kip Silas in Smoke and Shadow) and there was also an incident of one colony (Cleyell) being glassed by a remnant of said Covenant. 

I’m inclined to believe Hargrove is referring to the Covenant, hell, he might be referring to all of the Sangheili as well. It wouldn’t be an uncommon stance for him to believe humans should not ally with the Sangheili, there is an entire group in Halo lore (Sapien Sunrise) that strongly believes that to the point of extremist attacks. There are repeated mentions or even entire pages of focus on how weird the human-Sangheili alliance feels to a lot of people in the novels (Kilo-Five trilogy, Hunters in the Dark, Envoy)

But Hargrove, obviously, is financially benefited by this stance no matter if he himself holds it, because Charon is benefited by war, and not just Chorus’.  

Charon Industries seems mainly funded by war sales, especially with their focus on alien weaponry in the Chorus trilogy. Hargrove mentions, in Along Came a Spider, that he was meeting a client about their new suppressor submachine gun. He, however, doesn’t say the UNSC, UEG, or even military. He says ‘client’ and remains nonspecific. Maybe that’s just business.

He could be selling to the NCA or pirates or whatever the fuck, we don’t know. 

 Their stock doubled, likely because people are expecting another war, and that could either be against the Sangheili, remnants of the Covenant, or the Insurrectionists.

(Perhaps this will all be a bit more explored in RvB18)

[cantusecho]

(Episode 4 thingssssss

Truthfully, this episode was pretty chill, meaning it feels like things don’t start to pick up until the middle portion (Maria’s song) and the end (Hanasaku Yuki).

But! There is one thing that got me curious.

I’ve been grateful for the cameo’s of Miku in each episode. I’m still ridiculously excited what they may have planned for her in the season. However, even if they’re small appearances, I feel like they’re important, as in it’s building up to something later.

With AXZ and XV being made together, I still have confidence that this season will be paced well enough. What they’re doing seems to be changing everything up compared to previous seasons, which is why I think people are a little iffy on how things go or are going so far. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway! This short scene with Hibiki and Miku left me feeling a certain way;

Hibiki cuts her off before Miku can finish her sentence. Now, without thinking, this can be seen as amusing but my first thought was worry. We all know about the hints towards Miku this season, or ever since the end of AXZ, but these small scenes between Hibiki and Miku so far in this season makes it feel like there’s some...strange distance between them or as a friend put it, they’re “out of sync” with each other.

Hibiki has gotten to the point as a character where she doesn’t hide many of her problems anymore and relies on Miku more than before for that sense of normalcy. Miku, perhaps used to the sense of normalcy clashing with Hibiki’s hectic battle life, is content on being that support for her.  However--- Ever since episode 1 of XV, heck technically since S1, Miku has had issues expressing her deeper feelings. She’s always been frustrated with her not being able to communicate in general, or express herself like others (as she explains in AXZ, as well as her XV bio).

In Hibiki’s second song this season, “Kimi Dake Ni”, she admits to not noticing Miku’s tears unless she was literally in trouble. That means, even when Miku may seem fine on the outside when they’re talking normally and at school, Hibiki didn’t notice that Miku was actually having her own struggles, which is sad haha.

Not sure what it will take for her to realize it in the show, but clearly she does at some point since “Kimi Dake Ni” is her literally pouring her heart out to Miku, which is seriously a first in my opinion haha. So I feel like little things like this will be adding up for later.

I’d talk about this dang scene all day so let me move on.

Shout out to the same scene though for referencing the one time Miku and Hibiki invited Tsubasa to go out for karaoke in S1 because they wanted to try and cheer her up. It was sweet.

But clearly Tsubasa still isn’t fine.

Clearly Fudou is still getting under her skin.

And speaking of him---

He’s over 100 years old yet is strong? The heck is up with this dude?

Okay, jokes aside, Fudou is clearly the bad-guy of this season, as I assumed ever since AXZ ended. He orders Millaarc to kill, which I’m wondering why they’re listening to him. Maybe because he’s so powerful, he gives them protection (technically) from being found out, as well as getting the blood they need to survive? And in return, they help him obtain the divine power?

That’s what I assume, anyway. And he already speaks about making his next move because it’s clear, after one of the people who put on the bracelet tried using it and basically exploded, it can’t be handled by just about anyone. And we know that the only two people that can handle the Divine Power is Miku and Hibiki.

Miku I assume is still under the radar, which leaves Hibiki being the obvious one since it took her over last season. However, we don’t know if Fudou knows about Miku or not. With his power, and possible connections, he could very well know but again, no telling.

Maria’s transformation is awesome. Her song is awesome. Hibiki is a mess.  That’s all. Lmao.

After that fight, they have everyone back on the bridge to listen to the strange music they picked up, which was briefly when Shem-Ha was activated. They picked up the Aufwachen waveform, which honestly reminded me of how Airgetlam’s waveform looked like.

(Shem-Ha)

(Airgetlam)

And it’s interesting that Maria seems confused by slightly recognizing the distorted music that was picked up from Shem-Ha as well.

With all the hints towards Maria’s background this season (her line in episode 2 and the OP), this surely will play into that as well. Wondering how though of course.

Now, the craziest thing that happened was the whole Hanasaku Yuki and duet with Saint-Germain. Just in case for those that don’t know, Aoi (Hibiki’s VA) suggested her and Minako (Saint-Germain’s VA) actually sing the song together at the 2018 LIVE, which they proceeded to do. It was nice, because it actually felt like the song was something between the two of wanting to come to an understanding and connect, but they were both fighting strongly for what they believed in and so were at odds. The song strangely fits very well as a duet and I didn’t realize this until seeing the LIVE.

And so, having it actually show in the anime, where they are literally fighting together and singing the song, it made me get a little emotional.

Hibiki has grown a lot over the series; in the beginning, all she’s wanted to do was make friends with everyone and that sometimes made her a little bit pushy. That’s technically how she managed to make friends with Chris, Tsubasa, Maria and the others.

The next person I think she tried hard with was Carol. She was determined to try and befriend her, to save her so to speak, but it didn’t work out. It’s a personal headcanon of mine that Hibiki thinks about Carol often and how they failed in saving her. So she tried a different approach with Saint-Germain in attempting to try and understand her way of thinking instead of pushing her own beliefs on a person, as well as realizing that people are fighting hard for their beliefs just as hard as she is.

Like she says in Hanasaku Yuki, there’s no “good or evil when it comes to landing a single blow”.

It’s already been officially confirmed, even before this episode due to the keywords, that the Gears were practically part Faust Robe due to the Lapis Philosophorum (Philosopher’s Stone) merging with them at the end of AXZ (when they used it instead of achieving X-Drive, since they had no means of accumulating that much Phonic Gain to achieve it anyway) so that’s where these new forms come from, known as Amalgam.

Amalgam means “a mixture or blend” so it makes sense.

But what makes me emotional about this is because Hibiki technically has her dream come true at this point. She’s fighting alongside Saint-Germain. They did at the end of AXZ, but it clearly feels like they’ve managed to come to a more mutual understanding thanks to all of it.

It makes me wonder if they’ll actually release an official duet version of this song between the two. I would love it, honestly.

But after all that, Hibiki tries offering her friendship to Vanessa, since she says she wants to get her body back and make friends. But before she could respond, the Gear users are ordered to step down from official government orders.

But the thing about this is that they’re holding everyone on the bridge at gunpoint.

I assume this is due to Fudou and his so called “next move” that he’s already made. 

Again, things are heading off pretty fast this season. There’s 9 episodes left and that form they achieved is something I thought they wouldn’t get until maybe around episode 10 or later? Since that’s how it normally goes. But if Fudou is going to be the main baddy, what about Noble Red (Vanessa, Elsa and Millaarc)? How will they continue to fit into this? It may seem fast, but I think they still have things planned to stretch out upon these next 9 episodes.

This all depends on how they execute it but I’m not trying to jump the gun when we still have plenty of story left to tell. I feel like I can’t judge pacing until the season is over. Maybe that’s too late for me to form an opinion, but I find it easier to look back instead of assuming as we go along. 

So I won’t say it was “rushed” or anything like that until we get further in. Then I’ll think about possible pacing issues.

Hm, that’s all I got I guess! Lol.)

[dontcallmecarrie]

More stress in my life = more crack for you all. 

I haven’t even reached Tony’s part of the timeline in LTTR/OTNC, or even touched the Civil War arc of TWiFFON yet here you go, mini-crossover snippets of my two biggest AUs thus far that I’m now considering expanding later. 

Warnings: everything Welcome to Night Vale-related, because LTTR/OtNC!Tony’s got it in his blood. Only referenced, though, nothing graphic. 

This is in the grey area between ‘just messing around’ and ‘can be considered canon’ because this is set at the ending of TWiFFON, and as of right now OTNC is nothing more than a fic idea that I’ve only started to expand a little, set in the same universe as Live Through The Rain, wherein Maria Stark née Carbonell was born and raised in Night Vale.

Just random scenes in my head that I couldn’t get rid of, here.

Under the cut, because RIP mobile users otherwise.

Tony straightened up, and dusted himself off. He...probably shouldn't have been messing with dark matter like that when Clint was around, in retrospect, oops—wait.

No, wait.

The universe wasn’t—oh shit. 

The universe didn’t— it wasn’t singing to him like usual, it was in a minor key instead of a major, uh-oh JARVIS would rip a hole in whatever reality to drag him back and Pepper was going to kill him.

Umm. 

Umm. Okay. Where was he, exactly? He needed to get home, where the hell was he and how’d he even gotten wherever he was in the first pla—ah. 

Cue robots, of course. Okay, Tony could work with that. They felt almost familiar, but far emptier than what he was used to, but he could work with it. If they were friendly, great. If not, he had his bloodstones and gear on him, and knew enough combat invocations to at least make a dent. 

“I take it you’re the welcoming committee here?” He asked dryly to one, and started walking before they said a word.

“Greetings. I take it you are aware of your displacement? Come with us, please, we can help get you back.”

Ah, they were friendly and polite. Great, his laser knife-fighting skills were rusty anyway.

“This is Tuesday to you guys, isn't it? Random strangers accidentally falling through the fabric of reality?”

Great! Hopefully nobody’d be looking at him weird here, if this kind of thing was normal. It’d be a nice change of pace, for once.

...he took that back, this place was just as weak as his own dimension. Dammit.

“So, you’re saying you’re used to evil clones and that’s why you jumped out the window of a several-hundred-foot building.” His double said, a hand on his watch and an incredulous look on his face. Besides him, a young man in a red-and-blue suit stood, mask in hand and watching the two of them like a tennis match, and some dude with a cape was in the corner and managing to both keep a wary eye on things but also very clearly trying not to smile and failing badly.

“Yeah, I mean, I took Bio 351 in college. Got excellent marks on the final. Besides, it’s not like you have room to talk, Mr. I Took Over The Planet.”

“You...okay. What exactly do you need, to get back home? Because this is weird even by my new standards and I hadn’t thought it was possible, and stop laughing and help me out here, Strange, dammit.”

“Oh, shouldn't be too hard, my main worry is JARVIS tearing apart reality looking for me. Always annoying, that.”

“And for the record, I didn’t mean to take over, it sort of...just happened. Wait, what do you mean JARVIS can warp reality? He’s an AI, isn’t he?”

“Well, duh. But computer science is an arcane field. Coding’s right up there with dark magic.”

His alternate looked like he’d been smacked by a fish, and leaned back. “Science? Arcane? You— okay, no, I don’t even, Strange get over here I think this is more your field than mine.”

and, later on, 

[with some potential spoilers for what’s going to happen in OTNC when things get a bit more serious]:

“So, why the robot army. I mean, no complaints here, but personally I’d been looking more into other fields.” Tony started. Because sure, the Iron Legion looked pretty shiny, but it was also pretty hard to follow, especially given the looks this universe’s Avengers gave his double the moment he brought up said robot army.

“Did you guys not get invaded? The name Thanos ring any bells?” Hope—as she’d introduced herself as— asked carefully, trying to feign being casual but Tony didn’t miss the way the others had stilled...great. 

It’d better just be a dimensional thing and not a Night Vale thing because that’d be just the goddamn cherry on top, seriously.

“I mean, we had New York just a few months ago, but that was more annoying than—” He cut off when the room all but exploded, and maybe he was using his power for evil but Tony couldn’t help but keep an extra sharp ear out for anything he could use amidst the muttering.

“We should tell him—”

“No, but his dimension’s—”

“Should you—”

“I mean—”

Tony tried to get their attention, but it’s not until he brought out the big guns and said something in Triple Spanish that the room remembered he was part of the conversation too.

Of course, he also got weird looks, because he still weirded anyone who wasn’t Happy or Pepper or Rhodey out, whenever he messed with intonations.

“What the hell was that?” Hope demanded, a hand sitting on her...was that a taser?

“Triple Spanish. For when I need to get the room’s attention. Tell me what, by the way?”

...apparently the room agreed on letting him know what his dimension might be in for. Good.

“Just curious—didn’t you go through a portal, during New York? Because that was...a pretty big moment, for me.”

“Well, yeah, but it wasn’t like I saw the Void or anything. The warhead made a very nice boom, but overall it was just deep space, nothing special.”

“Nothing specia—” his alternate managed to choke out, all-but-glaring at him. Rhodey’s less-chill clone was about as stunned, too.

“I mean, I’d been warned all my life about looking into the Void, how it can drive some into madness and everything, think I caught a glimpse of it during the one astronomy class I snuck into, way back when. But what I saw wasn’t it.”

His double just stared.

and even more ridiculousness, because why not. Taking quite a few liberties with stuff from WtNV, here:

“So, New York differences notwithstanding, that probably means you’re probably going to need to deal with Thanos. Big, purple megalomaniac, wants to kill everything he encounters.”

That got Tony’s attention.

He straightened up, and noticed the glances that were being thrown his way.

“He’s a tyrannical despot? Wants to bathe in the blood of his enemies or whatever? Has a huge never-ending army?” He asked, not even bothering to hide the edge in his voice now. Oh crap oh crap oh crap—

“Yes,” Rhodey’s alternate said. 

Well, fuck. Tony leaned back, and hoped nobody noticed the tremor in his hands, or the way the shadows by the table were suddenly a lot more jittery than they had any right to be.

“So you’re saying I’ve going to need to gear up for the Blood-Space War. Damn.”

Okay, he could do this. Tony took a deep breath, let it out, and ran a hand through his hair. Just keep everything under control, this was fine—

“What do you mean ‘blood-space war?’” A very pale version of himself asked, echoed by the entire room in varying tones. 

Oops. 

“In my dimension, mom’s from Night Vale. I take it she’s not, here?” Tony looked at his hopefully-not-evil clone for confirmation. When he shook his head, it wasn’t a surprise. [Well, that explained some things.]

“I’m Night Vale, too. It’s a long story, but the short version is it’s a small town with some apparently unusual quirks. Me, I don’t see what the big deal is about time travel requiring a license, but whatever. The Blood-Space War will happen at an unspecified point in time, when reality and unreality are at a nexus, neverwhere and yet eternal.”

Tony paused to take a drink, noticed everyone’s looks, and continued.

“Some of Night Vale’s people’ve enlisted. They get sent out, across time and space. Plus there’s the Society for A Blood-Space War, who sends time-traveling assassins to prevent despots from ever starting their reigns of terror.”

“You what now?”

“Ġ̫͙͋͑͗r͔̣̩̞͉̪̖ͬ̈́̋̆̎̓̐̀͑a̝̗͉͕͈ͯͨ̎ͧ͛ͭͨn̜̼͙̣̈́̓̋ͭ͗̃d͚̰̤̀p̮̮̖̝̖͍ͦ̎a̳̯̲͍͈͊̂ͥͥͦ̂͗ sent letters home like clockwork.”

Tony had not meant to make them flinch like that. Right, English only when it came to outsiders, oops. [But talking about his grandfather just felt weird without the proper intonation!]

“Grandpa enlisted when mom was...seven, I think. He sends letters like clockwork, last I heard he was slated to command a battalion... But yeah. Blood-Space War. I’ve been trying to lay the groundwork to protect our guys for a while now, guess I’ll need to step up my game. Thanks for the heads up, though.”

These people’s expressions were about on par with his own team’s, when they first found out about Night Vale. [People never change, do they?] 

Finally, this Strange guy broke the silence. “Let’s...focus on getting you home, shall we? And hopefully the rest of us’ll be able to wrap our heads around...this.”

If Tony wasn’t so resigned to it, he’d pity them. As it was, this was old hat and the sooner he got home, the better. At least there everyone he cared about was more or less used to his quirks, even if Steve still sometimes made a face whenever he drank his smoothies. Odds were JARVIS was busy on his own end, anyway, and Tony needed to start planning for this latest development too.

Clearly, he’d need to find Night Vale sooner rather than later...hmm.

There’s more to it that that, of course, but these snippets were the ones that really wanted out.

Because, just imagine it: OTNC!Tony, aka NightVale!Tony, just crash-landing TWiFFON and breaking everyone’s brains. 

[definitearticle]

How Not To Do an Erotic Hypnosis Workshop

Crossposted from FetLife.

Tonight, I attended TNG Portland's Erotic Hypnosis Workshop (presenter's name intentionally omitted. It's available elsewhere on the [FetLife] site, and if anyone is curious, I can provide it PM).

Okay. So.

First off, I want to make sure that it's clear that the event organizers, TNG Portland, did a fantastic job of planning the event. The topic (erotic hypnosis) is dear to my heart, the venue (Q Center) is amazing, and the advertising was solid. And it showed; 30 people turned out for a presentation that charged $15 per person and $25 per couple. That kind of turnout for a niche topic like hypnosis is outstanding.

Also, I want to state categorically that the opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone; that they are opinions based solely on my own experiences; and that they do not necessarily represent the opinions or feelings of anyone, living or dead, real or imaginary, other than myself. They are also my recollection of the events that transpired, not an objective third-person omniscient narrative. Terms and conditions apply, see store for details.

He'd better get to the point soon.

The event was scheduled for 2 hours, and that limit was solid. Given that hypnosis is pretty complex, and this was billed as a workshop, I wasn't sure what to expect. The presenter (let's call her N) passed out a good 6 or 7 handouts, only one of which appeared to pertain to hypnosis, and none of which were ever referenced in the presentation. I still haven't looked at them.

The first 35 minutes were N introducing herself, telling stories of her discovering hypnosis in the early '60s, her drug use and study of transcendental meditation in the late '60s, her exploration of S&M in the 70s (including details about an accommodating husband, an incestuous fling with a cousin, and personal ads in the town newspaper advertising first for a Dom and then for a sub), and her bona fides as a BDSM leader, having founded a kink support group in 1986 and spread it nationwide.

The next 20 minutes were spent with each attendee introducing themselves and sharing what they wanted with the group, especially about their experience with, or interest in, hypnosis. The group was a pretty even mix, with some experienced practitioners, some newcomers, some skeptics, and a good handful of people too shy to share anything.

N then announced that she would need two volunteers, which she would find during a 10-minute bio break. "They don't need to be subs, though that would be useful," N said.

During the break, N tapped her volunteers. The first volunteer, whom we'll call A, spent most of his time during the introductions explaining that he was a skeptic. The second volunteer, whom we'll call B, was incredibly shy and didn't speak much, if at all, during the intros. N asked both A and B if there was anyone in the group that they were attracted to. At least one of them, and perhaps both, mentioned my friend, whom we'll call C. I recently introduced C to hypnosis, and she's really enthusiastic. She's also on the TNG Board.

After the break, N led the workshop in a 35-40 minute long group trance, using a standard induction (stare at a point on the ceiling, take slow, deep breaths, relax, and eventually close your eyes) and tactile deepener (she went around to each participant, lifted their right hand by the thumb, and dropped it back into their lap, telling them that it would drop them deeper into trance). N then had us envision various incarnations of love, such as the face of a child, the touch and voice of a loved one, making love as a young person, etc. She then brought us each up, leaving A and B entranced.

Except...it didn't appear that A was entranced.

Quick point: N's choice of a skeptic and a shy person is a pretty standard one. Being able to drop a skeptic and cause a shy person to behave as an extrovert are standard methods of proving bona fides as a hypnotist. However, they've got to actually drop and become responsive for this to work.

N encouraged A to stand up, dance, and show his ass. A stood and said he didn't want to dance, but he would be happy to moon us, which he did. When he refused to do more (I believe that N was trying to get him to do a striptease, but she wasn't expressing it very well), the event organizer spoke up and said that it was clear he didn't want to do it.

So N asked C to come up so that A could dance sexily for her. C appeared to be very uncomfortable with the idea of being used as a prop to circumvent an expressed lack of consent for the activity, but stood and said that she'd be there for him for moral support. C stood next to a visibly awkward A, and when it was clear to N that nothing had changed, she had him sit down and turned to B.

Except...yeah, you see where this is going. If she was entranced at all, B appeared to have come out of trance by this point.

N tried to get B to dance. She did a shy and awkward dance that looked sort of like the mashed potato, but likewise declined to do more and quickly sat back down.

Faced with two wide awake and reluctant subjects, N decided that the best course of action would be to wrap up the session. She did this by rubbing A and B's back while reciting a poem that she had written, an incredibly long set of rhymed couplets told from the perspective of a man who loves to masturbate, who has a fantasy about sleeping with his therapist who urinates in his mouth while a butch lesbian rubs a used tampon all over his face. I watched, dumbfounded, as B squirmed in obvious discomfort while N recited this poem, at times sounding like a mother telling a bedtime story to her child.

When the poem was complete, N asked if anyone had questions. One audience member asked "So what exactly just happened?" N's response was "I'm not sure I can answer that question. How do you feel?" "Like I fell asleep" came the reply. I don't recall a follow-up explanation. N encouraged us to buy her book, then asked whether we were all going out to dinner afterwards. And that was the workshop.

So: What went wrong?

Let's start with the basics. At no time do I recall the following questions being addressed by N at all: What is hypnosis? What is erotic hypnosis? How can erotic hypnosis improve my kink experience?

Second, without those questions having been answered, informed consent could not be given for a fun, sexy trance session.

Third, A and B do not appear to have been placed under hypnosis, or if they did, they came out of it quickly. This is likely due to a lack of trust in N, or in a discomfort with the situation which was not clearly explained to them.

Fourth, when it became clear that the subjects weren't entranced, N resorted to peer pressure and coercion to get A and B to perform, which the audience (made up primarily of Millennials) were not okay with. This is where I recall most of the audience becoming uncomfortable with the situation.

How do you solve this?

By starting the discussion not with personal anecdotes and bona fides, but with information about hypnosis. What is it? How does it work? What are its possibilities, and what are its limitations? What techniques are used? What safety precautions need to be taken both by subjects and by hypnotists?

By the presenter providing their own demo sub, someone who understands how hypnosis works and has at least some experience being in trance.

By recognizing when a subject isn't comfortable with the situation, validating that discomfort, and redirecting to an activity they might find more desirable.

By removing unnecessary information from the presentation, including the lengthy bio, the disquieting poem, and other distractions. When limited time is a factor, a focused presentation is vital.

I hope this narrative proves useful as a learning tool. I think it's important at this point to reiterate my support of TNG Portland, and my belief that they're blameless for circumstances surrounding this presentation. Indeed, they reacted very well to it, with two leaders speaking up when they felt consent was being violated, and several leaders checking in with both A and B. I look forward to the next event. I'm certain that their next presentation will be far more entertaining, educational, and consensual.

[bigskydreaming]

i've been following you for a really long while now and i'm curious, have you ever posted or considered posting a selfie picture? and every time you post, i have a mental image that you would look similar to scott mccall/tyler posey style-wise

Yeah I definitely look nothing like Posey, and now that TW is over and a Scott or Posey icon no longer is as relevant I probably should change that so its not misleading. (Definitely white as my bio says on my main tumblr page). Honestly I have no idea what to change it to, any suggestions? I’m the literal worst at things like URLs, themes and icons and suck at picking them and so once I do I practically never ever ever change them…pretty sure this is the only theme and icon I’ve ever had on here? LOL.

But no, I’ve never posted a selfie and am unlikely to because I do occasionally work on shows or movies that I rant about on here. I’m not like, super worried about anonymity because I’m not anyone famous and even if someone DID somehow find reason to link my real name back to a show I’ve worked on and is ticked about how I talk about them online, I mean…it wouldn’t be the end of the world. So a fair number of my mutuals do know my details and where to find me on twitter and stuff and so occasionally we’re probably a little obnoxious about referencing stuff I’ve been in, whoops lol. But I mean, while I’m not super stressed over staying anonymous, I do like feeling like I have a place I can rant about the stuff that pisses me off in entertainment without having to wonder oh shit, is this gonna get me in trouble, so I’m not likely to go posting selfies anytime soon.

I promise if I do ever end up famous or some shit I’ll find a way to let you guys know, lol, cuz I mean….I’m really not good at subtle or secrets. I didn’t even tell half the mutuals who do know where to find me in stuff how to do that, they just figured it out from my big mouth lmfao.

[dotshiiki]

The Evolution of Hydras

Ahh so this is gonna be kind of weird because Rhodes airport doesn’t have wifi and my data plan doesn’t charge me extra for my phone use but it won’t let me hotspot overseas so I’m gonna try actually posting fic on tumblr mobile. Well, I have 90 minutes to wait til boarding anyway.

So this is for the final day of @percyjacksonweek2k17 -- free day! And I’m continuing from yesterday’s fic. I’m actually curious to know if Paul’s ‘method’ (okay, really mine) works, or if I’m just barking up the wrong tree with it. So, uh, let me know? :D

Summary. Paul devises a novel way to help Percy with school stuff. | Paul, Percy genfic | 1170 words

The problem with science textbooks, Paul thought, was that they insisted on presenting information in the driest way possible. Would it really kill the authors to inject at least some semblance of a narrative into the bare facts they attempted to shove down your throat?

Charles Tetley had been confused when Paul had asked to borrow a copy of the biology text he assigned his twelfth-graders, but he’d handed it over readily enough. Paul reread the notes he’d made on the chapter, double-checking them against the relevant paragraphs. Given the problems Percy was already having with the subject, it probably wouldn’t make things too much worse if Paul messed up a few points, but it’d be much better if his analogies were accurate.

The fire drill during second period had been quite the godsend. Not for Paul–he didn’t exactly appreciate the disruption to his class–but Percy had Biology second period. Which meant his test now had to be postponed to the following week.

It gave Paul a chance to see his idea could help.

He spent his free periods and lunch break sketching. It had been years since he’d put together a comic (it was a hobby he hadn’t indulged in since college) and it was quickly and clumsily drawn, but he thought it got the point across well enough.

Paul only hoped Percy would think so, too.

He caught up with his stepson that afternoon right after the last bell went. Percy was among the throng of seniors on their way out of the building when Paul tapped his shoulder.

‘Oh hey, P–er, Mr Blofis.’

‘Mind if I have a quick work?’

‘Er, yeah, sure.’

'So, the fire drill today–’

Percy held up his hands immediately. 'I swear, that wasn’t me.’

'No, no, that wasn’t what I–’ Paul sighed. The poor kid–he really was accustomed to getting blamed for anything out of the ordinary. 'I just meant to say, I guess your Bio test didn��t happen?’

Percy ran a hand through his hair. 'Yeah, it’s next week now. Got a stay of execution.’ His mouth twisted wryly. 'Too bad Annabeth went to Frisco this week. I could’ve used her help figuring out that evolution shit.’

'About that …’ Paul held out his amateur comic.

'What’s this?’ Percy scanned the sketches first with bewilderment and then a glimmer of understanding. 'Hydra evolution?’

'Let me know if it helps.’ Paul patted Percy’s shoulder again and headed back to his office. He smiled when he turned back at the end of the corridor and saw Percy studying the comic as he left the school.

OoOoO

Everyone knows hydras have multiple heads. But they didn’t always look that way.

When Poseidon made the first hydra from a magic green gem, it was a pretty normal dragon. Okay, yeah, normal’s relative. But you know–breathes fire, spits poison … hey, it’s a dragon, what do you expect? But one body, one head. Cut if off and it’s dead, game over.

But what fun is that, right?

Athena decided to 'improve’ the design a little. She used her magic grey gems and came up with multi-headed hydras. Maybe she watched too much baseball, because she went with the three-strike policy: strike one, there’s still a second head. Strike two, there’s still the third. Strike three, sorry hydra, you’re out.

So Poseidon had his green, single-headed hydras and Athena had her grey, three-headed ones, and they didn’t really mix until one day, a Poseidon hydra and an Athena hydra had a big adventure involving a daring escape from a demigod hero, a lot of flames, saving each other from certain death, and–okay, the details aren’t important. The point is, they fell in love.

And had lots of little hydra babies … who all had only one head apiece.

Poseidon was pretty insufferable about that, since he was sure it must mean his hydras were better than hers. But he stopped boasting pretty quick when the grandkids came along and out of nowhere, a pair of single-headed green hydras popped out a grey, three-headed baby.

See, the thing is, hydras mix their gems when they mate. And when you mix green and grey, all you really see is green. But it doesn’t mean the grey isn’t there. It’s still hiding under the surface, passed along down generations until one baby gets two grey gems. Without the green to overshadow it, the greys work their magic, and poof: three heads.

So the hydra population grew along merrily, eating heroes whenever they came along. For years, their numbers didn’t change much–Poseidon’s hydras seemed to be more numerous, since the mixed-gem kids always came out green and one-headed. But Athena kept saying, wait and see.

Then the heroes got bigger and badder and started carrying sharp bronze weapons. They got better at killing hydras.’

And Poseidon’s hydras got hit the worst. I mean, one good slice was all you really needed to take them out.

Athena’s hydras made it lots further, with their multiple heads. If they lost one, the others could still attack the hero. Their chances of survival were loads better.

So as time went on, the heroes killed more one-headed hydras than they did three-headed ones. After a while, the green gems that gave the hydras their single heads began to disappear.

Finally, only Athena’s grey gems were left–which now kept producing three-headed hydras, unshadowed by the green gems that kept the multiple heads from developing. And today, demigod heroes must contend with all hydras having too many heads to fight.

OoOoO

Percy was sitting at the kitchen table when Paul got home that evening. He had the hydra comic in front of him, as well as his biology textbook.

'I don’t know what my dad and Annabeth’s mom would think of the story,’ he said, 'but this finally makes sense.’ He jabbed a finger at the biology text.

Paul hoped he hadn’t inadvertently incurred the wrath of two Greek gods. He hadn’t really thought about that when he was sketching his Darwinian analogy. Maybe they’d forgive him; he was only trying to help their kids out, after all.

Percy pointed to a few highlighted passages in his textbook, cross-referenced against Paul’s comic panels. 'The gems are genes. And the heroes are selection pressures, right?’

Paul beamed. 'Right.’

'This is brilliant!’ Percy said. 'Do you think you could do this for, like, history and chem and–’

'Whoa.’ Paul held up his hands. 'I’m not that great an artist.’ Not to mention he’d have his work cut out for him trying to figure out all those subjects. But then, this was what it meant to be a teacher, wasn’t it?

No, scratch that. This was what it meant to be a dad.

'We can talk about it,’ he said.

A wide grin spread across Percy’s face. 'There’s one thing you should know though.’

'What’s that?’

'You do know hydras regenerate heads, right?’ Paul laughed. 'Well, maybe you can give me a crash course on monster physiology in return.

A/N: If I had any drawing skill at all I would totally do that comic. As it is, even my stick figures are pathetic, so a written version is all you’ll get.

Disclaimer–I know nothing about the US school system save what I’ve seen in popular media. My sincere apologies for an inaccuracies and I am open to any corrections anyone would suggest I make!

[how2to18]

I liked the idea of a story in episodes that would go on for a long time.

— David Lynch (1997)

¤

DAVID LYNCH AGES GRACEFULLY. Proof is in footage from the making of Eraserhead, confirming that Lynch was not born with his silver, pomaded hairstyle, and that the lines of maturity make him look less goofy than he did in his post-college years. Almost unfaltering critical success and international fame have made the concept of Lynch plausible: his once curious, shambolic persona has been a brand since the 1990s. In “Part 14” of the much-awaited — and one-year overdue — return of Twin Peaks, FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole (David Lynch) retells a fresh “Monica Bellucci dream,” in which Cole and Bellucci (as herself) have a terrace coffee in a Paris street. Asking who is “the dreamer [who dreams and then lives inside the dream],” Bellucci makes a sign for Cole to look over his shoulder. The dream cuts to a shot from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), showing Cole at his FBI headquarters desk, 25-odd years previous, brown-haired, full-cheeked, with an air of concern on his face. Present-day Cole recounts: “I saw myself. I saw myself from … long ago. In the old Philadelphia offices.” Philadelphia holds significance in Lynch’s personal mythology. It is the city where Lynch, as an art student, first started experimenting with animation and, soon after, film. The dreamer who Bellucci referenced a moment before, he who lives within his own dream, might very well be David Lynch looking back on himself as a cultural subject — one for whom thinking creatively accounts for such a great part in biography and idiosyncrasy.

From the moment he was given a platform to talk about his journey into cinema and television, Lynch has talked about life in Philadelphia — where he attended art school, got married, became a father — as a source of dread and inspiration in and of itself. The influence of his college education on his artistic development seems to pale in comparison to that of the city itself, and it has been suggested, whether in good faith or not, that Lynch’s primary sources are rooted in his perception of the physical and social environment rather than in aesthetic and theoretical teachings he received. Candidly, in a BBC documentary on the history of the Surrealists in film that he was asked to host in 1987, Lynch talked about Philadelphia as “one of the sickest, most corrupt, decadent, fear-ridden cities that exists.” The dramatic quote has followed him everywhere, but he has not, to my knowledge, nuanced it since. The memories from Philadelphia are so strong partly because they are always interpreted in contrast with an earlier, idyllic past in Lynch’s Midwestern childhood. Against this comparatively happy, easy, wholesome time and place, urban societies have always seemed — if only at first sight — toxic. (This is with the exception perhaps of Los Angeles, a city where the sun shines and where, Lynch claims, there is “something in the air.”) However, as his manifest attachment to past selves and identities suggests (see the persistence of his birthplace, Missoula, Montana, and of his Eagle Scout ranking on his Twitter bio), a preserved naïveté is an integral part of his mature artistic persona.

In the opening sequence of last year’s documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, a montage of Super 8 family film footage gives a glimpse of this “simple” and elated postwar American childhood. The film director’s voice retells fragments from a happy early life among a loving mother, father, brother, and sister, and each memory sounds sensorily close and relevant. On a hot summer day in Idaho, Lynch remembers having been placed in a man-made pool of muddied water in the garden of his parents’ house in the company of Dickie Smith, another toddler from the neighborhood who was his friend. The two boys had been sent there together for protection against the scorching heat, and Lynch remembers how this simple arrangement enabled him to enjoy the garden, the pleasantness of the mud forming under his fingers, and the proximity of a friend who was sharing in his excitement. The memory of this scene, today, is so palpable that it becomes a bit overwhelming: “Forget it,” Lynch concludes with a smile.

Much of Lynch’s artistic coming of age, as he retells it in the documentary, involves the thematic elements of this happy anecdote: the immediate excitement of creative experimentation and the joy of sharing this work, this lifestyle — the “art life.” Through the rest of the film, the director is pictured handling rust-colored paint, which he smears onto the flat surface of a canvas in his current Los Angeles studio. Though his hands are clad in surgical gloves, the idea of the mud of the opening memory is not distant. Viewers may feel far removed from the clean and remote technicality of film, the medium with which Lynch’s work is predominantly associated. Yet the documentary closely examines this other, enduring side of Lynch’s artistic process, one that relies on primary, unmediated experimentation with matter and texture. Lula, Lynch’s two-year-old daughter, is walking around the studio, grasping the look and feel of various objects from her own perspective. There is a shot of a furry gray moth fluttering against a window pane. Later, Lynch comments on the amazing textures hidden within the body of the smallest organic creatures: insects, fish, small animals.

The life and death of organic matter can be as curious and spectacular in Lynch’s aesthetic as the workings of technology. Such curiosity brings his work to tread a fine line between the sheer beauty of changing organic forms and the abject horror that bodies conventionally represent when they are subject to death and decay. Lynch recounts that as an art student in Philadelphia he kept a special room in his building’s basement for artistic “experimentations,” which consisted in gathering organic matter, animal or vegetal, and leaving it to rot while recording all the successive physical changes of these transformations. This experimental preoccupation anticipates the dead cat in Eraserhead, the ear in Blue Velvet, or even the fantastic “Children’s Fish Kit” Lynch assembled in a 1979 photo-based art piece, giving instructions to assemble a (dead) mackerel he had chopped up into three pieces, like the parts of a mechanic toy. The bloody mess around the pieces of this gory puzzle testified to either the idiocy or malevolence of the maker of the “kit.” As Lynch remembered it, his father’s reaction when he showed him the experimental basement room was, unsurprisingly perhaps, one of palpable sadness and concern. This impression was confirmed to him when his father advised him a moment later, à propos de rien, never to have any children.

There is, and always has been, a sustained critical interest in discovering, as David Foster Wallace once put it, “what David Lynch is really like.” A question that arises, for example, is whether the concept of Lynch as a sui generis figure in cinema is fair, or even plausible. Film critic Peter Bradshaw, in his review of The Art Life, notes that the documentary gives little to no indication that Lynch is aware of an experimental film tradition happening before him, and concomitantly with him, as he describes the way he came to the realization that there could be such a thing as a “moving painting.” This realization, which led him to apply for and obtain a grant from the American Film Institute, is presented by Lynch, like many of his artistic decisions, as a purely intuitive move. “What is so extraordinary about this film,” Bradshaw writes, “is that it doesn’t show Lynch as the cinephile or the movie brat or even someone with any great interest in art history […] It is as if Lynch was in a state of innocent primitivism, without ever knowing about anyone else doing the same thing.” In Chris Rodley’s book of interviews, Lynch on Lynch, the names of Fellini, Kubrick, or Wilder occasionally come up, but the comments that they inspire are always succinct and superficial. “Sunset Boulevard is in my top five movies for sure,” says Lynch, before claiming he is not sure it has anything to do with Eraserhead beyond perhaps the “experience of a certain mood.” Watching or reading any interview with Lynch since the release of Eraserhead leaves open the question of whether the director performs his innocent remoteness to such a film tradition, or whether this lack of awareness, which amounts to a form of phenomenal self-involvement, is genuine.

Wallace, among others, believes it is. The concept of a “primitive” or “infantile” approach to filmmaking has marked much of Lynch Studies since its ignition in the 1990s. Both Surrealism and the Freudian Uncanny, important intertexts for Lynch’s interpreters, identify regression into infantile or primitive states as a condition of their existence. The primitive self, or the child-like self, is the only aspect of human life that André Breton sees as artistically promising and liberating, and his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto promoted Surrealism as no less than a “second chance” to experience the freedom of childhood — free from the constraints of rational language and self-presentation. Though he readily admitted the limitations of his own tentative, preliminary theories on the subject, Freud, meanwhile, insisted on this notion of infantile primitivism as the return of animistic beliefs that should have been bypassed in psycho-sexual development, but which nonetheless return to create the specific experience of the uncanny. My favorite moment in the Art Life involves Lynch’s retelling of a hazy, ominous memory, of saying goodbye to a male neighbor named Mr. Smith (Dickie’s father?) before his family set off to leave Boise, Idaho. It is unclear whether the man, almost a stranger to the young boy, represents the loss of a happy past or, on the contrary, some kind of threat. Lynch pauses; his voice wavers; and the story is never completed. Trying to define that special brand of creepiness that would come to define the term “Lynchian,” Wallace suggested that Lynch seemed to be “one of these people with unusual access to their own unconscious,” suggesting that if these unconscious fixations are often too much for words, Lynch’s lack of emotional distance from them allows for their comparatively unfiltered expressions in his visual art and film.

Despite his unrelenting aesthetic interest in making the unconscious visible, Lynch claims to be ignorant of psychoanalytic theory, and Peter Bradshaw is not the first critic to have drawn a parallel between his quasi-contempt for theoretical knowledge and his seemingly innocent, unadulterated creative persona. His own contributions to interpretations of his work rarely take us further than autobiographical sources. For example, while hosting the history of Surrealism in film, he only admitted to feeling an affinity with “people who are interested in cinema as a means of experimentation,” whomever these people might be after the Surrealists. Jeff Johnson even identifies “an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism” in Lynch’s films, evident from the early shorts The Alphabet (1968) and The Grandmother (1970), where the movement from the intuitive to the symbolic, from pre-verbal freedom to the constraints of language, is represented as a trauma. Johnson thus interprets the streak of happy naïveté in Lynch’s work as the expression of intrinsically American values, pointing that the rationalist approach always fails in Twin Peaks, and that Voltaire, in Lynch’s work generally speaking, “always loses to Rousseau.” Agent Cooper, the iconic hero of the TV series, is one of the clearest and most sophisticated expressions of Lynch’s postlapsarian American ideal. Wholesome, empathetic, spontaneous, trusting in his own intuitions and honest appetites, nevertheless hard-working and ever-respectful of social hierarchy, Cooper is the alter ego of the “naïve genius” Pauline Kael saw in Lynch upon the release of Blue Velvet: a childish, solipsistic, albeit clairvoyant, man.

¤

The return of Twin Peaks has given new life to Lynch’s “naïve genius” persona, which has lived through a number of variations in Lynch’s work, from awkward Henry in Eraserhead to Mulholland Drive’s ingénue heroine, Betty. In Season Three of Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper, already known as a naïve prodigy, is subjected to an interminably stretched-out “return” via catatonic Dougie Jones, a somewhat radical new incarnation in this genealogy of naïveté. Fifteen episodes into the much awaited Return of the 1990s cult TV show, Cooper, the hermeneutic force and spirit of Twin Peaks, had yet to recover the capacity to form sentences, or make willing decisions, a state that had led TV reviewers worldwide to compare the new Coop, or “Dougie,” with a robot, a simulacrum of himself, or even the eponymous Sims of the once-widely popular life-simulation video game (see, for example, Dougie’s helpless reaction when he needs to go to the toilet in “Part 5,” clasping his crotch with both hands, unable to relieve himself unless told to do so). Cooper’s 25-year sojourn in the remote time of the Black Lodge — a place where language is spoken backward but where even deceased people, like Laura Palmer, go on living and aging — comes to an end no sooner than three episodes into the new series. Even after this phenomenally delayed return, the transmission fails to restore Cooper to his terrestrial self. Perhaps as a result of his extended absence in between worlds, or as a consequence of the trauma for changing from one substance to another in his passage back from nowhere to Earth, Agent Cooper has then to go through a long and directionless process of restoration to the character he once was. I call it a process, but it is one that shows hardly encouraging, almost imperceptible, progress — an impossibly elongated delivery that will have resigned many viewers to accepting that perhaps this catatonic state was what the character Cooper was supposed to be for the whole series, that there would be no further “return” than this innocent, familiar body in a suit.

In line with Coop in the original series, the Cooper who has infiltrated the life of Dougie Jones in The Return is responsive to the simple, almost invariably sweet, food that his wife, Janey-E (Naomi Watts), feeds him as she would a child. The new, temporary Coop doesn’t dream, but he is guided by a good intuition (a.k.a. the Black Lodge) that helps him dodge the traps that his now almost nonexistent rational logic would fail to discern. Finally, Coop is still pure at heart to the point of taking an embarrassingly innocent approach to heterosexual relationships, which leads him to engage in a disturbing sex scene with Janey-E without previously having shown signs of consent. This is, up to this point, the only sex scene the show will put Cooper through, as if the character had to be stripped of agency to support — and perhaps accidentally enjoy — this less-than-pure experience of adult physicality. Coop, however, renews along with his old sensory memories. Through the comical, aphasic demands for coffee of Coop-as-Dougie-Jones, the longtime viewer can satisfy their knowledge that, doppelgängers and mind-bending dimension-crossing aside, this is the “real” Coop, in essence. In fact, Cooper’s initial rediscovery of coffee in “Part 4,” and of cherry pie in “Part 11,” tease the audience’s longing to see Cooper restored to his true self while failing to produce a suitable “trigger” for his return. So Coop, for the most part of The Return is reduced to a sort of Faulknerian man-child, but with added magic: he may be slowed down, incapacitated, limited to the feel of simple emotions and easily satiated hungers, but he is never angered by this condition, or shown to have become selfish in this disposition. He is fully dependent on the care of others but also flourishes under this care, seemingly blind to danger but actually blessed by protective intuition, good reflexes (as when attacked by Ike the Spike, the hitman sent to kill him), and the unfaltering guidance of mysterious protective forces.

And yet in the episode aired a week before the two-part finale, the show got Cooper back. Indulging in this subversive timeline, Lynch forces his audience to experience the world of Twin Peaks — which now comprises many more locations than the town of Twin Peaks itself and many new characters that draw, more or less closely, on the original series — beyond or before its movement toward narrative resolution. The “spirit” of this irresponsible timeline occasionally crystalizes through the wide, innocent, experimental eyes of Cooper-as-Dougie-Jones.

Twin Peaks has always affected a great innocence over the way it managed time and the release of information, a process that always privileged environmental components such as food, nature, technology, weather, and time. As Michel Chion noted in the mid-1990s, Twin Peaks was the first television series where the characters were seen interrupting the action altogether to enjoy simple physical gratifications such as fresh air, the taste of a good cup of coffee with a slice of pie, a “notion of ease” that was so completely new to the time-tight world of television series. Lynch was famously forced by ABC to reveal the identity of Laura Palmer’s killer early on in Season Two out of concern for the general longing for narrative resolution, a move that went against Lynch and Mark Frost’s initial plan to let the murder plot recede to the background, while savoring all the minor sub-narratives of the various characters and the atmosphere, in a word, of the show. This decision, he realized immediately, would “kill” the show, and it did, at least for a time.

The decision to make Fire Walk With Me in 1992 was, for Lynch, an opportunity to reexperience the world of the show, a universe that he had become obsessed with. Yet one of the reasons why the film was initially so badly received was that, due to new time constraints, the more light-hearted tone of the TV series had to be stripped away from the prequel narrative, leaving us with only the bleakest elements of the plot. It seems clear now that the show has taken complete liberty over the deliverance — and delivery — of Cooper, and therefore of time. It made the return of the hero not the beginning but almost the end of the Return’s plot and through this device, restored the show’s initial pace of suspended action, fruitful confusion, and slow, all-too-frequently pausing, dialogue. A bit like Gordon Cole’s deafness or Andy and Lucy’s heightened emotional sincerity, this is also a device to submit character interactions to a certain kind of experimental pace.

The extreme delay in restoring Cooper has enabled some of the greatest comedy the show has delivered yet, such as the gloriously incongruous casino scenes, the insurance company scenes in which Dougie behaves in a less-than-office-appropriate manner and gets away with it, and the desert rendezvous scene in which Dougie evades the Mitchum brothers’ plan to kill him by delivering them a $30 million check from his boss with a complementary cherry pie in a cardboard box. All of these scenes offer comically providential outcomes to seemingly desperate situations, deploying money and professional resources with a simplicity that only a child at play could come up with. Paradoxically then, the delayed recovery of Coop has enabled the return of the Twin Peaks spirit: a goofiness restored, rebooted. In Rodley’s book of interviews, to this day the most substantial collection of published words from the filmmaker, Lynch points out that he generally looks back to an era when filmmaking could take its time.

Things go so fast when you’re making a movie now that you’re not able to give the world enough — what it deserves. It wants to be lived in a little bit, it’s got so much to offer, and you’re going just a little too fast. It’s just sad.

In pure Lynch fashion, this statement fails to say whether it is referring to an actual era in film history or to Lynch’s own early experience of feature-filmmaking, a period when, for lack of funds, he stretched the making of Eraserhead over more than five years, a time that allowed him to create a vision and feel time within it — to explore it and believe in its reality. “Everything should be looked at,” is Lynch’s overall message. “There could be clues in it.” This is what the format of the television series certainly allowed him to do, which he found attractive from the beginning, in spite of the initial losses that TV would imply in terms of sound and image quality back in the 1990s.

A paradox remains in this scenario. For all its impossible delay, The Return is incredibly contemporary in its handling of media and sensitive to their evolution in time — from the ubiquitous radio in the enigmatic 1940s flashbacks of “Part 8,” to the new present day’s use of Skype, video blogging channels, smart phones, and geolocation. Many of these illustrations of hyper-connectivity are topped with representations of metaphorical and actual screens, at times futuristic or retro or both, as in the case of the mysterious glass box seen in “Part 1.” Only Sarah Palmer’s viewing of nature television programs and a boxing match seem resolutely from another time, the latter actually stuck in a terrifying time loop: a nod to the death of television as we once knew it. This, and a Roadhouse music listing that feels up-to-date, save for a few fan-serving callbacks (James Hurley, Audrey Horne’s ever-haunting dead-to-the-world dance, and to an extent, Rebekah Del Rio’s timely return), makes you think David Lynch is very much in tune with a contemporary cultural moment, which he consciously haunts. Meanwhile, the rarely interrupted continuum of an authorial vision is a place of indiscriminate duration, an elongated present moment prone to uncanny returns: mud, heat, hit songs, nuclear explosions, places where personal recollections eventually form the substance of the collective past.

¤

Elsa Court’s monograph Émigré Representations of the American Roadside 1955-85: Explorations in Literature, Film, and Photography is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan. Court researches expat cultures for the Financial Times and reads fiction for Granta magazine.

The post Return of the Naïve Genius: “David Lynch: The Art Life” and “Twin Peaks: The Return” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[coffeemeetsbaegoals-blog]

1st Bagel: S

On my first day of using CMB I was curious about what potential matches I would be presented with and anxious about whether or not anyone would like me back.  My first bagel, S, was totally my type.  

Average height, lanky, dark-haired, and self-depreciating sense of humor.  In his bio he apologized for not being Ben Affleck and stated that although he wasn’t a good cook he knew all the good restaurants in Boston, and ended with his height in heels (6′5″) and his credit score.  I didn’t think it was possible, but I was smitten with a profile and immediately pressed “connect”. 

To my surprise, we matched and for the next hour I was giggly like an idiot, butterflies were in my stomach and I was completely over the moon.  Too shy and nervous, I refrained from messaging first but was delighted when after my evening SoulCycle class, I received a notification of a CMB message.  

“Does this mean I get to take you out to dinner?” I squealed and embarrassingly jumped up and down on the sidewalk.  My smile widened and I panicked, asking my friends what I should say.  I definitely wanted to meet up but wasn’t sure if I was ready for a full on dinner so after consulting my friends E and J I decided to write, “You’re going to have to impress me with your wit and charm first” which was a perfectly flirty response and a perfect start to a conversation until against my better judgement I decided to ignore his next message.

I still can’t explain why I did it, but I ignored his message that night until the next afternoon.  It read, “What?  My profile wasn’t captivating enough for you.” Not at all skilled in text flirting I consulted E and J again and wrote as a response, “Still not sure I can justify going out to dinner with someone who’s a bigger Justin Timberlake fan than I am” (referencing a blurb in his bio about listening to the Sexy Back song for all four years of high school).

This was quite possibly the worst thing I could have said and the worst course of action that I could have taken.  I was expecting a response later that day but got nothing and then another day had passed and nothing.  He had ghosted me.

I dissected our very brief conversation and realized that:

1. My delayed responses probably came off as me being uninterested in him.

2. What I said, and my lack of emojis or lols in my comment to him about the JT thing made me come off as a bitch strong.  

How could I not see it?!  It looked like I was making fun of him instead of being flirty.  I was so embarrassed that a deleted our conversation from the chat room and ignored CMB.  I vowed not to go on CMB which was one of the more “serious” dating apps and told myself that I needed to practice text flirting before going back on CMB.

My next, potentially poor decision?

To create a Tinder that night.

[katielang-basicsculpt-blog]

Introductory Questions

My name is Katie Lang; I am a sophomore sculpture major, former photo major, and I’m from Leesburg, VA, which is about two hours north of Richmond. I’m excited about sculpture for the freedom of expression that I can enjoy in this department. I’m also looking forward to making art that doesn't involve sitting in front of a computer for long hours while I edit photographs and export massive files for printing those photographs.  I didn’t realize I would miss getting my hands dirty quite this much. 

What is something in your life that you want to empower and why? - I suppose my drive to continue creating, because sometimes I question if my art is worth anyone’s time other than my own. But for myself I don’t know how I would exist without it. 

What is something in the world that you want to further empower and why? - My answer to the last question could probably be applied here as well. 

In what aspects of your work so far do you feel strongest? - I feel that the concepts and ideas behind my work are pretty strong. Also my drive to pursue ambitious projects. 

In what aspects of your work do you feel the weakest? - Communicating those concepts and ideas to an audience/viewer. The ideas behind my work are typically pretty complex, and sometimes during crit the class doesn’t quite catch all of it. At the same time, I like the idea of obscuring things from the viewer and communicating with what I don’t show them; I want them to do some work to get meaning out of the piece. I also like the idea of the meaning being different for every viewer; partially because it makes it more interesting and partially because it’s impossible for it not to mean something different to everyone. However, I have been criticized for not taking a rigid enough position on the meaning of my work. 

Who would you list as the five artists who interest you? - Joseph Beuys; I watched an interview of him being grilled by a panel of intellectuals who wanted him to explain to them the meaning behind his performance piece “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” with plain words. He told them in multiple different ways that if it could be explained with words then he would have just written about it instead. He went on to tell them that art is meant to be understood with our “sensory organs”, and not in the same way that we understand the meaning in words. I found this to be incredibly inspirational. Teiji Furuhashi; I recently saw one of his installation pieces at the MoMA and found it enchanting. I want to look for more of his work. Rene Magritte; His paintings make so much sense and don’t make any sense at the same time. Out of all surrealists I think he captures a dream the best. A couple of them I actually have trouble describing with words. Yayoi Kusama; I like the simplicity and chaos in her use of repetition. Somehow her work manages to be meditative while also being humorous. Shana Lutker; In her expansive sculpture installations, each part of them is its own piece with its own meaning, but put together they tell a story. I feel as though I need to quickly mention Agnes Martin and Brittany Nelson. 

Name two of the favorite artworks you have ever seen - “God” by Ragnar Kjartansson, and “The Seducer” by Rene Magritte

Are you indoorsy or outdoorsy? - Both without a doubt. Indoors wise, I take the composition of my space very seriously. Every object in my room and where it is in my room is considered with extreme care. Feng Shui is very important to me and I can’t stand when my room doesn’t feel right. Because of that my room is always neat. There are many ways in which I lean toward connecting my indoor space to outside. To me, windows are the most important feature of an indoor space. I have a lot of plants that I’m proud of and very attached to. I’m not sure how to explain how I’ve thrived outdoors, but I enjoy them. 

What subjects in the world outside of art most interest you? - Definitely sciences. I geek out about science. I’ve always loved biology; even though most of what I learned in AP Bio isn’t particularly useful in my life, I greatly value understanding how life works and knowing about the other living things on this planet. I’m also very into history in a similar way. My knowledge of world history isn’t used in my everyday life but I enjoy knowing about things I’ll never see or experience just because I can. 

Name three people that are no longer living and are not artists that interest you and why? - Rosalind Franklin, because she was one of those women who were successful before women were supposed to succeed. 

How is your work political? - I really can’t think of any way that my work is political. 

How do you use social media in your life? Do you want more or less? - I almost exclusively use instagram. I like the simplicity (although it becomes more complex with every update) and having something to do with all the pictures I take with my phone thats quick, easy, and free. My instagram page is a visual representation of myself that changes as I do without me having to put much of a conscious effort into it. It could be a way of getting myself out there but I dont think I take it seriously enough for that. It’s also a way to find new art and artists. I wouldn’t say I want more or less of it. Maybe less at times when I feel that it’s distracting. 

If everything goes the way you wish it would at this moment, what will you be doing two years after you graduate? - Living in New York, working with other artists in some way, showing at a gallery, and making something important. 

Does gender play a conscious role in your work? - Not often. I tend to stay away from making work about myself, and gender would be a difficult topic to make work about unless it’s about oneself.

How does your race and issues surrounding race influence your work? - The biggest effect being white has on my work is that I don’t make work about racial issues. I don’t see it as my work to make. 

What is a physical material that you have worked with that feels more powerful than your body? - Light

What is a social material that you have worked with that feels more powerful than your autobiographical experience? - I rarely work with my autobiographical experience but I don’t think I use very powerful social materials because I don’t feel that my work is particularly powerful yet. 

Is your sexual orientation something that figures into your work? - Almost not at all. I wouldn’t even bother labeling my sexual orientation, and I’ve never had a conflict with it or felt the need to show people work about it. 

How do current events affect the way you make art? - Conventional current events don’t factor into my work very much.  It’s funny that I avoid making work directly about myself, but my own current events have been inspiration for a project. My final for digital imaging last semester was a series of outdoor still lifes that I left out for days in an attempt to attract a possum that I had once accidentally attracted to our deck. 

Do you use art history as an ingredient in your work? - Yes, particularly in the still lifes I was making last semester. I often referenced the themes of classical painting still lifes. 

Does your lack of sleep make you feel stronger or weaker? - that mostly depends on what I’m doing and it goes through a bell curve. If I’m taking notes in a lecture class or doing something sedentary - weaker. While if I’m generating ideas or actively making a piece, I’ll start out feeling weaker but after a point feel great and then gradually decline into total exhaustion. 

What is your fantasy studio? - Big windows, high ceilings, spacious, and lots of plants. It would either have to be in a large city on a floor high enough to muffle some noise, or out in the mountains but not too far from a city. 

Do you want to make a lot of money in your life? - If I’m being honest, yes. Enough to travel, have nice things that aren’t essential, and not worry constantly. 

How do you think about your diet? - My diet is the way it is for convenience, effectiveness, and cost efficiency.  I have almost no time to cook and not enough money to get food that does much other than make me full. I’d consider these personal choices. That being said, it really isn't too bad. It’s also extremely irregular. I always eat breakfast and it’s the only part of my diet that isn’t unpredictable; it usually consists of some variation on a couple eggs and some toast. The rest of the day is comprised of things that keep for a long time and are fast. I don’t drink much other than water, coffee, tea, and an occasional red bull. I’m also a vegetarian, which is both a personal and social choice. 

Three specific experiences in your life that you would be curious to feed into an artwork? - Some recent experiences could be inspiration, like the one I mentioned with the possum. However I can’t name specific ones right now. 

Identify aspects of your past work that people have challenged that you want to confront this semester - I want to better communicate my concepts to the viewer while also balancing my interest in strategically hiding things from them. Another balance I want to strike is between allowing the viewer to make their own meaning out of the piece and holding true to what I intended it to mean. 

What general conversations about peers work have you felt lacking and want to pursue? - I am definitely interested in the conversation of materials and the process by which the work was made. 

Do future technological developments excite or scare you? Or both? How? - Both, I think countless and unimaginable good and bad can come technological developments. 

Name several artists that you have come across in the past year that you want to learn more about? - Teiji Furuhashi, Yayoi Kusama, Steve Reinke, Shana Lutker

What kinds of learning environments are/have been most exciting for you? - Lots of freedom but with an idea to push off from with project assignments. Honest feedback. Emphasis on concept development but learning new technical skills too. 

List five questions that you want to fuel your work? - I have a hard time answering this because I’m not sure of what kind of work I want to make. I’m stumped here. (to be answered at a later date)

If you were to conceive of one art assignment/prompt for yourself what would that be? - A full room installation that communicates through what the audience can’t see.