#to my new followers me writing whole essays is nothing out of the ordinary i used to do it all the time

[willowpenguinwritting]

Day 1--Heartbeat-- Alec/Ellie

Mentions of sex

It was an ordinary day in the Broadchurch police station. Alec and Ellie had worked hard and did their jobs as usual. It was when they arrived home that things became a bit less ordinary. As usual on their way from the station together they collected Fred from school and were told about Fred's day by his teacher, both of them were supposed to be told but most of the time Fred would leap into Alec and cling in a hug like manner onto Alec's legs and then beg him to go and play for a bit. Ellie had to admit she still wasn't used to watching the man she once knew to be nothing but grumpy to be playing so happily with her son. Well, technically their son now.

After a bit more talking Ellie would go through her routine of searching the school's playground for Fred and Alec. More or less of the time Fred and Alec were hiding behind a tree to scare her. Usually the same tree at that but Ellie kept her act of having no idea where they were going to please her joyful son. Once Alec and Fred had been found the trio began to walk home, Fred enjoyed walking with the three of them spread out across the whole footpath and holding hands with both his mum and Alec. Often however Fred would let go of their hands and run ahead and Alec and Ellie would subconsciously walk closer to one another before they would take hold of each other's hands. By the time they had caught up to Fred and entered the house, they would start work on making dinner.

After a while of making dinner of spaghetti,, Tom would usually return from school and then they would eat dinner. Throughout dinner, they would discuss their days.

"In Biology we were learning about the heart and average heartbeats and it was interesting to see the difference between a resting heart rate and a through-exercise heart rate," Tom told them all.

Alec nodded before asking, "Did you learn anything about pacemaker heartbeats?" he always wanted to keep conversations with Tom going especially as Alec wasn't his first dad.

"No, we didn't, we got homework in English which is an essay to explain what love is," Tom said looking half agitated.

Ellie smiled, "Well we can help you with that if you like."

"Mum, I can't just write the words my mum and dad on the piece of paper I have to write at least two pages," Tom complained slightly not realising he hadn't called Alec as Alec but Dad.

His mum's face changed to an unreadable expression, "When you say mum and dad who do you mean?"

"My mum and my dad, shitface and his whisperer." Tom declared shrugging it off like it was not a big deal.

Alec laughed with joy of what Tom said but tried not to let it show to much, "We really shouldn't have told you about that."

Fred let out a giggle which in its contagious nature caused the dinner table to burst into hysterics, Ellie had to stand up and leave the room so she could stop choking on her pasta. This was how their family was the only person missing was Daisy who was going to be coming for the weekend. After the laughter died down Ellie decided it was time for pudding which was just simply some fruit but they still all ate it happily. Alec didn't have any way of knowing but his eating made Ellie oh so very happy.

After the pudding was finished Fred was sent upstairs to get ready for bed whilst Tom was to tidy away the dishes. Alec followed Fred upstairs to ensure he was actually getting ready for bed and Ellie used this as a chance to talk to Tom.

"I'll wash you dry?" Tom suggested handing his mum a teatowel Ellie nodded she could tell that Tom knew she wanted to talk.

After a while of washing and drying Ellie started the conversation "You called Alec, Dad?"

"Well he loves you and us and if he isn't, my dad then who is, who else comes to all my football games to cheer me on and still buys me ice cream when we lose, who else tries to help me learn new skateboard tricks despite not knowing a thing about them, who else loves my mum so much?"Tom asked as if he had his answer scripted in front of him. "The amount of people who have called him my dad just makes me realise that he is my dad."

Ellie smiled, "I'm glad you are happy with him as your father figure."

"Well if I wasn't something would have to be very wrong with me, I'm glad you too found each other even if it was in the worst way possible he makes you happy and you make him happy, and as you have said before him happy was hard to believe until you started being officially together," Tom said as he began plotting asking his mum something.

Ellie laughed slightly at his face, "What is that face about?"

"I have a question.... when did you first have sex?" Tom said.

His mum flushed pink "Well I think we were both in desperate need of sex but then a few things clicked in my head, like how I had dreams about him and then he surprised me by just randomly kissing me one day and then we discussed things like how we were in love with each other and then we had sex that very night."

"Wow, properly romantic. Did you never notice Dad often went on walks? after you had spent a long time together to according to him clear his head?" Tom asked about to be revealing something Alec had said to him before his mum was dating him.

Ellie looked confused, "Ummm no?"

"Well you requested he give me some manly education before you were together, and the topic of erections came up and he was trying to convince me they sometimes just happened and other times they can occur around people you are sexually attracted to, then he proceeded to tell me that there are ways to get rid of them especially when they just happen. Dad then proceeded to tell me how he sometimes had some very awkward ones after spending long days with you." Tom explained finding it slightly amusing.

Ellie's eyes widened "You are surprisingly mature for your age about all of this but I didn't know about any of this I am so pestering him about this later."

"If you want to become a detective you need to be mature about things." Tom answered before disapearing upstairs before his mum could add anything else.

Once Alec returend back downstairs the first thing he saw was Ellie's smug face "Oh I know that face what have you learnt now."

"Apparently someone has been telling one of my sons about erections," Ellie revealed.

Alec mentally face palmed, "Oh, god I thought I should educate him before one happened and he didn't know what to do."

"Well, apparently Hardy was very hard at times around me for no reason at all." Ellie giggled

Alec sighed "I now know the reason, Oh El it's too early to go to bed and do anything Tom is still awake."

"We can go to bed early and just relax for a bit and then once we are sure he is asleep we can do as we wish as long as we do it quietly," Ellie suggested raising her eyebrows in a perhaps supposed to be seductive manner.

The pair headed upstairs and got ready for bed and then put on a crime show for them to discuss in a whisper until they saw Tom's light go out. Once Tom's light was out it began. It was like any other time. They stopped as they began to tire and remember they had to actually go to work tomorrow. Ellie found herself lying naked on top of Alec, Ellie had her ear pressed to his chest and smiled "I can feel your heartbeat, it's good to know I make your heart race."

"Do you want me to turn the light out?" Alec asked.

Ellie smiled "Yes, please. Can I stay lying here?"

"Of course you can my queen." Alec smiled back.

Ellie sighed "You said you would stop comparing me to Elizabeth the Second in The Crown."

"I didn't even realise I was," Alec told her.

Ellie giggled "Goodnight my king."

"Goodnight my queen," Alec answered placing a kiss on Ellie's forehead whilst doing so.

The pair awoke the next morning in the same position to Ellie's alarm of the Looney Tunes theme tune.

[parismystere]

Please tag your salt

sweet anon, you didn't tell me exactly what posts to tag for you, so i am going to take this opportunity to talk about something that has been bothering me for some time, probably since i found out what the salt tags are: but what is salt? on salt and its dimensions: a thesis by parismystere tumblr dot com. let's get philosophical, ladybloggers.

i cannot recall what was my first introduction to salt, how i found the tags or which salt blogs i visited first, but i think it might have been posts that criticized the show in, what seemed to me, fairly objective and civil ways - maybe somebody was discussing that the concept of love rivals is pointless and boring when you have something unique as the love square where the point is that the main two characters are each other's rivals, maybe someone was mad that lila appears once in a blue moon - who knows? all of these things i found very valid and worth of discussion, able to be debated with arguments from people on both sides, hardly negative or mean-spirited, so why were they labelled as salt? i was beginning to catch on that salt equals ml negativity, but i also wondered why the hell was the need for less-than-gushing opinions to be filtered out like that. if i am in a fandom, i am probably interested in what people have to say, right? (and i usually am: probably the only people i wouldn't be willing to engage at all is a specific very obsessive, vengeful and hostile type. i am capable of agreeing with salters on certain stuff if i think they are correct; for the most part, i feel no need to start dog-whistles that someone is Bad; it's just one sector that drives me bonkers to the point of me being unreasonably angry. but i am working on it.)

somewhere along that time i was a budding adrien stan and as such i had to face the Public Opinion on My Boy. that's when i discovered character bashing that was inane to me - that adrien was a sexual abuser when that was quite obviously not the intention of the show, that alya was a bad friend, that tom and sabine (yes) were bad parents, and so on; and i was like, aha, salt is when you exaggerate the truth to a degree that seems insane to anyone living in the real world. please try explaining to people in your life how a french boy kissing a girl's cheek is sexual harassment. you get weird looks. but also, the thing is that the people who write those things genuinely believe them; salt isn't some fun role-play where they pick a character to lash out at. if that's their truth, then it makes sense that it isn't salt from their perspective, no?

[nota bene: at some point it became clear to me that these people were nearly always maribug/lukanette stans. a l w a y s. there is a level of unhingeness in maintaining a blog in which you meticulously track down instances of your fave being wronged for years. there is something deplorable about people encouraging other people to waste their time on such endeavors. i mean - it's cultism. i hate cults. have you ever had one of those people under your posts? it's the same keywords, same sentences, same arguments, multiplied over many blogs. it's an entire community dedicated to hating a character or a show, because they project on marinette to a borderline unhealthy degree, or because they were here for s1 and then they ended up disliking the show, or because they hate everything about ml and cannot look away. fair enough, it is addictive, but if you are THAT disappointed, you walk away, you don't act like a messiah saving people. you say your piece once, you don't make a fucking cult. anyway.]

but, i also want to talk about a fandom-defining event: chameleon.

can you imagine being me, watching chameleon, not thinking anything of it and coming on here and finding out it ruined a fandom for years ahead? i'm still so incredibly baffled that real-life humans felt so slighted that they ended up writing thousands of revenge fantasies, downvoting the episode on ratings websites, began claiming that the showrunners hate marinette (she has two pairs of pajamas. shut up.), saying that everyone was dumbed down for the episode (the only dumbed down part for me was that ladybug kept trying to take objects from chameleon and deakumatize them. like, girl, the entire akuma shapeshifts. who wrote this #character assassination), made the ladyblogs and so on. and for what? because of how much they project on marinette, because they fail to see the show from the perspectives of other characters (adrien was right, actually), because they overblew this completely trivial plot out of proportion. it's kind of like the 'why does marinette always mistakes' argument - because this show doesn't allow anyone else to take the spotlight for long enough to make the mistakes. this is the life of the kid show protagonist. and that includes stuff like the lila/chameleon plot.

but here is the most important takeaway from this essay: because of the mass hysteria over chameleon, any logical and legitimate grievences with the show, any thoughtful but not glowing opinions, any things that should be rightly questioned, anyone coming from a good place and trying to have intelligent discussions about their freaking french cartoon gets shut down. we are at this point when even something as tame as asking 'what purpose does luka serve' has to be tagged as #ml salt. fam. this is not okay. hell, the show got in hot fire for using a flag offensive to south koreans, and even though it was a legitimate issue and a mistake on the creative team's part (that didn't get fixed :) even though they said they will fix it :)), posts about it were also tagged with #ml salt. this is insane, right? you're also seeing it?

the fandom response towards the kuro neko trailer for me, personally, was hard to swallow; i won't go into details of the stuff i saw, of how the narrative got constantly rewritten, of how anyone who was legitimately upset with how the episode was going down, how the ladynoir dynamic was handled, got shut down. correction: one side repeatedly got shut down, but also thankfully, those people aren't the type of people to make salt blogs or to harass people [i know that many were biting their tongue ever since marinette's plan in ephemeral because they fear chameleon 2.0, why is your opinion of adrien stans so low when that's the most mature section of the fandom smh </3].

but to me, i guess, what is even more unhealthy is to think that someone bashing your favorite thing reflects on that favorite thing, your personhood, your life and so on. it comes from a place of insecurity or weak sense of self maybe, i don't know. you can love something and have nuanced opinions about it. probably my natural arrogance, my uberconfidence in my opinions (my fatal flaw!), but - if i really understand something well, if i know that i am right, if i am secure in who i am and what i believe, then, unless i am in a shitty mood, it's hard to get to me. i used to get very upset about adrien salt - and when i understood that thing as far as i could, unless something has been upsetting me, i can just scroll past and not think of it much. i mean, if someone salts on him for hugging his blood relative without consent, you just have to laugh.

there is the 'counter salt with sugar' thing - i've said before why i don't think it doesn't work - and something that i described once as fandom defensiveness. i am as guilty as everyone for posting fandom salt, especially when it's over old wounds, because, honestly, does it matter? has anyone ever changed somebody else's mind over the internet? it's especially funny when people say that they haven't been seeing salt on their dash and only counterarguments -because the ops have probably also blocked the tags and the salt people, so they're fighting chimeras. or when people write fandom salt on tumblr about what's going on in... instagram or youtube. i don't know; it's good to let off steam, especially if there is a new episode or a trailer and we're all being anything but very normal about it; but i remember that i literally saw people blocking and unfollowing each other over dub preferences??? is this the fandom salt we should spend our energy on??? anyway.

in conclusion: there is no definition of salt, really. it can go from slightly negative things to outright hatred, from very sincere disappointment written in good faith to statements that sound closer to trolling. it's the wild west. salt is whatever you want it to be. but worst of all, the toxic idea is that anything other than blind worship is salt. because then i can't have my fun conversations in public and invite more people with interesting perspective, i have to do clandestine meetings in private messages. i mean, it is sexy, but at some point you want the company to go public.

anon, sorry if i came off as being a bitch. i am also sorry if you had to read all this lol. but hey, i know that there are people who hate-read my blog and i will probably wake up to this post being quoted and discussed without context, like always, so can you blame a girl for being defensive and not as sweet as pie anymore? [also, i am being facetious in many parts of this post. nota bene for the out-of-context crew.]

anyway, i am pretty sure that this ask is bc i narrated the plot of ml in the main part of my post but said in the tags that i dislike what's going on in a joking manner and without elaborating further. see? i had no idea it would bother people.

[seijorhi]

hello, i love your writing and was hoping if u could write a yandere kuroo x reader where he corners her in a corner and kenma is there and is getting off from it 😳 thank u !

Asdfghjkl this was supposed to be posted on Sunday I’m sorry, bby!! I hope it’s worth the wait! 💕 also, loved this request so thanks for sending it in 😊

Kuroo Tetsuro x Female Reader, Kenma Kozume x Female Reader

TW dub con, coercion (kinda?), stalking, humiliation

Helping Hand

There’s a certain peace you find in the looming stacks of the library after the sun sets. It’s quieter then, less people milling about. You don’t have to fight for space or books, and considering you have midterms soon and essays coming out of your ears, that makes it the perfect study environment.

It’s only a little after eight, the library’s still open for another two and a half hours, but on the fourth floor it’s almost a ghost town - just how you like it. There’s a professor tucked away in the back corner, piles of books built up around him, an older librarian with her trolley, slowly re-shelving books, and two other guys around your age sitting huddled at a table a few down from yours - the textbooks and highlights spread across their desk having been long since abandoned in favour of literally anything else.

Honestly, you’d wonder why they’d bother coming to the library at all if it wasn’t an almost daily occurrence. Most days you were there, so were they - usually together, although it wasn’t uncommon to see just one of them camped out between the stacks as you made your way to your desk. The duo, one tall and lean with a shock of messy dark hair that always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and the other smaller, more reserved, with bleached hair and dark roots in serious need of a touch up, seemed to prefer this time to study too - not that they ever seemed to actually do all that much studying.

Usually the blonde ends up absorbed in his switch while the other casually thumbs through whichever book is closest.

So long as they were quiet and didn’t disturb you, who were you to judge?

You don’t really remember when they’d started to appear, only that they’d quickly become a fixture in your refuge - distantly familiar presences like strangers travelling on the same bus to work each day. They smile (well, the dark haired one does) and nod whenever you happen to look up from your notes and catch their eye, and while you’ve only spoken a handful of words to the both of them, they always seemed nice. 

Nicer than the clearly overworked professor muttering away in the corner at any rate, which makes them the logical choice to approach when you find your bladder uncomfortably full halfway through your self imposed study session. Realistically, you know at this time of the night nobody else is likely to make their way up to the fourth floor, much less have any interest in your shitty, old laptop or the five whole dollars in your wallet - yet you find you making your way over to the twosome’s table anyway, a faint blush dusting across your cheeks.

“… don’t want to,” you overhear the blonde mutter, his attention wholly focused upon the game in his hands. “Things are fine, why change that?”

His friend sighs, “Because you can deny it all you want, but I know you better than that. I know I’m not the only one who wants more. You can’t just sit back and…” he trails off suddenly, hazel eyes flickering over to you in surprise. 

Confused by his friend’s sudden silence, the blonde lowers his game and glances up - only to still at the sight of you.

You swallow down your nerves, plastering what you hope is a friendly enough smile across your face, “Hi, uh… sorry to interrupt you guys, but would you mind watching my stuff for a few minutes while I go to the bathroom? I won’t be long or anything, I just don’t like leaving my stuff out in the open,” you say with a sheepish laugh, well aware that you’re rambling like an idiot. 

It’s the dark haired one who answers, a wide grin breaking across his face as he nods, “Yeah, no worries. We’d be glad to.”

You smile back, ignoring the faint fluttering in your stomach (he does look kind of cute grinning like that), thanking him again before rushing away in the direction of the bathroom.

It doesn’t take long for your thoughts to drift away from the duo back to the essay you’re mid-way through drafting. You have a sinking feeling that the argument you’re trying to use in the fourth paragraph is essentially a just rehash of the point you made in the first. By the time you unlock the stall door and make your way over to the sink to wash your hands, you’re starting to debate the merits of scrapping the whole thing and starting fresh with new ideas.

You still technically have time, it’s not due until the end of the month, but you just kind of want it done so you don’t have to think about it anymore. Then again, that’s kind of your feelings towards the semester as a whole. 

Who are you kidding? University’s kicking your ass this year.

The ancient hand dryer’s almost deafening as it clicks on - it masks the sound door swinging open and the footsteps that echo out from the tile floors.

It’s only when your eyes flicker up to mirror that you see that you’re no longer alone-

Standing right behind you is the guy from before; the tall, dark haired one. 

- and jerk in surprise, stumbling backwards with a choked yelp.

It doesn’t hit you right away - no, that’s relief that has you drawing a hand over your chest and letting out a shaking laugh. “You scared the hell out of me!” you say, bracing yourself over the sink to try and calm your breathing.

No, it doesn’t hit you quickly. Realisation is slow - creeping through your veins like ice as your eyes flicker back up the mirror. 

He hasn’t moved. 

He’s smiling, grinning really, but there’s something… something off about it. It doesn’t quite meet his eyes… Why isn’t he saying anything?

W-why isn’t he moving away?

Your heart, still hammering from his shock of his sudden appearance, squeezes uncomfortably and your eyes slowly widen.

“Wh-”

A rough, calloused palm slaps across your mouth, smothering whatever words you’d been about to speak. “Ah, ah. Gotta keep it down, sweetheart.”

He winks at you in the mirror, taking a tiny step towards you and you squeak, breathing in sharp, shallow pants through your nose as a warm, muscled chest presses against your back. “You’re a nervous little thing, aren’tcha?” he chuckles. “Relax a little - promise I don’t bite.”

With one hand wrapped around your lips the other creeping across your waist, his words don’t exactly bring you a lot of comfort. 

It makes no difference either way - you’re paralysed, shaking and trembling, but utterly unable to move as he noses at the column of your throat, his warm breath tickling your skin.

You could scream, but there’s no guarantee anybody would hear you. You could try and fight him off, but he’s taller than you, and you’re willing to bet stronger as well.

Will he hurt you if you try and resist?

Is he gonna hurt you anyway?

You’ve heard the stories before about men who follow women into empty bathrooms and the awful things they do, but you never...

Those things don’t happen in places like this. The library is supposed to be safe, he- he’s been-

Your stomach drops.

Weeks. 

He’s been visiting the library with his friend, sitting across from you for weeks.

His eyes bore into your reflection in the mirror like he can hear every terrified thought that passes through your head, and with excruciating slowness you’re forced to watch as his lips brush a kiss against your cheek, lingering and sweet - a mockery of tenderness. 

A scared little whimper is all you can manage, and even that is swallowed up by the sound of the bathroom door squeaking open once more. 

Your heart skips a beat, eyes widening.

A faint burst of hope flickers to life.

You might not be a fighter, but this might be the only chance you have. You shriek again, the sound woefully muffled, and writhe against your captor’s tightening grip as slow footsteps round the corner.

Please, you think as tears stream silently down your face. Please help me.

What little hope you have is quickly - brutally - extinguished as your would be saviour steps into view.

Your legs shake and you’re almost positive that if it wasn’t for the strong arms wrapped around you, you would have crumpled to the floor.

It’s his friend, the blonde, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, watching the scene before him - you struggling against an iron grip, gagged and terrified - like it’s nothing out of the ordinary. 

Your captor chuckles, relaxing his grip as his hand drifts upwards to palm at your breast and you want to die. “Glad you finally decided to grace us with your presence.”

“Shut up, Kuroo,” the blonde groans as he makes his way over, but he barely glances at his friend before his catlike eyes come to rest on you.

Your cheeks are burning, a potent mix of shame, nausea and dread churning in your stomach as you’re crudely felt up, but under the blonde’s attention you freeze.

While his face is a blank mask of apathetic disinterest, those golden irises are piercing in their intensity as they study you.

The glint in his eyes is as unmistakable as it is stark; anticipation - like a house cat watching a golden canary flit restlessly in its cage.

The hiccuping sob comes unbidden, choking at your throat as you wail against the palm at your lips. You’ve never wanted to disappear so badly in your entire life, to slap yourself awake and realise that it’s nothing but a stress induced nightmare because this can’t be happening.

Why you?

What could you possibly have done to deserve this?

“Relax,” Kuroo repeats, leaning down over you again, “we’re not gonna hurt you. Just wanna have some fun, that’s all.” You think he’s going to try and kiss you again, but instead his tongue darts out and he licks at the silvery tear tracks, groaning softly.

You shoot the quiet blonde a desperate, pleading look. He hasn’t lifted a finger to stop what’s happening, hasn’t done anything other than stare at you, but even as his lips twitch into the faintest hint of a smile you hold out on the shadow of a prayer that maybe, just maybe-

Kuroo follows your wide, panicked gaze and almost snorts. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there, baby. Kenma’s not gonna help you. He wants this just as badly as I do.” His thumb slides across your cheek, brushing away more tears, “C’mon, on your knees.”

He doesn’t give you a choice - the hand on your shoulder forces your shaking knees to buckle and you fall down to the bathroom floor.

The tiles are cold against your bare legs, but the shivers that wrack through you have little to do with the temperature. It’s far too late to regret the short skirt you’d thrown on that morning.

Kuroo hums appreciatively, lifting his palm to tap it a few times against your cheek like you’re an adorable little puppy who’s just learned its first trick, “It’s a good look for you, baby, but I think it’d be even better without this-” his fingers tug at the collar of your top and his grin widens, “- in the way.” 

Yet he makes no move to take it off for you. One look into his eyes, the glittering amusement darkened with lewd desire and you know that he won’t.

He wants you to do it, to play along in their fun - to be an active participant in your own humiliation.

And really, what other choice do you have?

It’s impossible to ignore the bulge straining against his jeans as your trembling fingers grip the hem of your top and reluctantly yank it upwards. There’s a sharp inhale - Kuroo you think - and a whistle as it comes off, baring your lacy bra and the soft skin underneath to their hungry gazes. 

Only for a moment. 

Staring resolutely at the floor you’re quick to try and cover what little modesty you have left, bringing your arms up to wrap around your chest-

Except a hand catches at your wrist and tugs it back, and when you glance up you find it’s Kenma’s. 

“… Don’t,” he murmurs. “I want to see you.”

You let your arms drop, hands clenching into shaking fists in your lap, fingernails biting into your palm.

The sound of a zipper being pulled undone is almost deafening in the quiet bathroom. Fresh tears sting at your eyes, but you can’t bear to look at either of them as Kuroo reaches inside his pants and frees his cock.

The hand that cups your cheek is surprisingly gentle as he coaxes your face back towards him and the achingly hard member in his grip. “See Kenma, I told you - change ain’t always a bad thing.”

His dark eyes flicker back to you and he grins, “Open up, sweetheart.”

[potteresque-ire]

Hi! I have been reading your posts and responses to anonymous and I am inclined to comment on your broadly realistic views and detailed analystic answers and let us not forget your ability to be warm in putting forward your opinions. I am truly a huge fan. Thank you for being a station for various answer seekers.

If you have time and patience, please elaborate on the situation GG is still facing post 227. Recently I read various comments insinuating GG copied DD for Douyin night which is absurd but the implication that only one party is still being targeted unnecessarily raise hackles of a lot of solo fans. And I, under any circumstances, DO NOT believe the involvement of the other party. Firm believer of BJYXSZD.

My point is what is being done to stop these antis from targeting GG. Since one of the motive to target GG is to severe the relationship of GG and DD, IMO at least. Does constant attack (external stimulus) on GG (belittling him by comparing him to DD) may have the possibility to effect their relationship (internal reaction)? Objectively yes, but given your perception of their relationship, what is your opinion in this matter, however subjective it may be?

Moreover, how much extreme and sometimes irrational analysis done by bjyx community can lead to harm to both of them especially GG?

Also, I have seen DD being the captain of BJYX in various circumstances but also throwing off people from their old predicted/maintened theories especially in case of Kadians. I am not sure how much to trust these 'candies' since he has a reputation of not giving a f*** of others opinion. So why would he post GG related or non-related content with same kadians. I mean if he posts private content with GG related kadian then why post promotional content with GG related kadian. Does it imply that kadians are related to GG or not or he doesn't care and we are thinking too much. I am not sure what I am writing now, maybe multitude of thoughts poring out here. I am extremely sorry for that.

I do not know whether people believe or not but 1st post by GG yesterday had initials YB in the circle. Not at all explicit, and depends on believers but I felt like he was just trolling BJYX, it may be good naturedly but after his promotional brand picture of shrimp in bunny's hand. I do not know I just felt, dissappointed/bitter/unsure about all of this. I think it is normal to feel this way from time to time even for SZD because along with emotional investment we have rational perspective which is necessary to scrutinize evidence(maybe) from time to time.

I whole heartedly apologize for writing an essay length ask, this is the reason I wanted your patience 😅.

If any other blogger wants to add or comment on this please feel free to do so. Your suggestions are highly welcomed. 🙏

Hello Anon!

I take it that your questions about safety are concerned about the behaviour of c-solos and c-turtles? International fans aren’t likely to put Gg and Dd at any risk. That said, however, frequent fighting among i-fans would likely drain Gg and Dd’s international fanbase, as many fans do not enjoy being a combative atmosphere (I, for one, will run away as quickly as a turtle can run!). Lost i-fans can’t be easily replenished, whether they’re turtles or solos ~ The Untamed, as a foreign language show so beloved that fans are willing to scale tall language and cultural barriers to understand it, isn’t something that comes around often. (stanning Gg and/or Dd does take a lot of work!)

About the arguments. I probably only know about a fraction of them since I do not interact directly with fans outside Tumblr . As far as I can tell, however, recent arguments among c-solos and c-turtles have been ordinary fights, and also, fairly “bi-directional” between the solos (ie. I don’t think Gg or Dd has been relatively exempt from attacks compared to each other). 

These arguments can be heated and some of the attacks may sound vicious, but there’s nothing much to worry about from a safety angle, as they haven’t caught the attention of those outside the fan circles.

The theorising by turtles are also not inherently dangerous. c-turtles have mostly been careful about keeping their discussions among themselves. The only risk it may lead to in the future, that I can think of right now, is the associated YiZhan content on China-based websites (ex. Bilibili, Douyin), which has become fairly plentiful. YiZhan candies used to be relatively obscure given the guidelines of CP fans to keep them among themselves (they call this practice 圈地自萌, literally, drawing a circle on the ground and have fun in it by oneself). These days, however, anyone who’s curious can get a good sense of YiZhan’s story by browsing Bilibili. 

This probably contributes to the continued growth of the turtle population; however, some of this content is created by non-turtles who seek viewership and have little concern over Gg and Dd’s safety. They are the ones who re-upload the BTS, for example, despite the repeated pleas and warnings by the “站姐”s—the superfans who take/purchase these videos—as well as the turtles to not do that. If these content creators go overboard, there’s a possibility that YiZhan content may get caught in the government’s “Eradicating Pornography and Illegal Publications”（掃黃打非) movement. The movement originated in the mid 2000s, and its recent waves have been used as pretext to remove LGBT+ and BL content on line (I will eventually set up a post re: those events). Just last month (2020 Dec), Bilibili has been explicitly named by the government for hosting questionable materials, which means it’s already under scrutiny. Sweeps performed on an entire website are usually broad-based enough that no specific individuals are targeted; however, the government also encourages, with financial incentives, the reporting of specific content and has set up a dedicated website for doing so. While all YiZhan content has no direct relation to Gg and Dd, removal of such content may cause an over-reaction from fans, which can, in turn, lead to accusations of poor fan management by Gg and Dd. Most people will also assume the YiZhan content to be created by turtles.

(Another example of how an alleged turtle mis-step can get the YiZhan fandoms and Gg and Dd tied to the 掃黃打非 movement: a few days ago, a Weibo post showed a photo of a hardcover version of an explicit BJYX fanfic, reportedly sold for profit, and GG haters were calling for an arrest for “illegal publication.” So far, there’s minimal noise on the issue, so it isn’t something to worry about. It can also be fake news, which is so bountiful on the platform and on every aspect of daily life that most die a very peaceful, very well-deserved death.).

Whether fan arguments / theories may affect Gg and Dd’s relationship (assuming they’re in a relationship) … my guess is, not much. Gg and Dd are busy people, unlikely to closely follow their fans’ discussions. Again, I expect effects to be felt only if the arguments get out of hand ~ as in, if they begin to involve the public and/or the government.

As for the question about what is being done to stop Gg being targeted: fan wars are incredibly common in China (as in everywhere else), and Gg and Dd’s aren’t special in that sense ~ it’s just that as turtles, we know about those surrounding Gg and Dd and they feel significant to us. No individuals can stop a fan war ~ all we can do is to not join these wars ourselves.

Personally, I think the international fan base of Gg and Dd, as solos and cpfs, have more chance to achieve peace than its Chinese counterparts — if they choose to want that. Popularity in China is not only quantified (which is likely true everywhere, by marketing departments), but very visibly so. Sales numbers, votes, traffic attributed to each idol are frequently released to the public, possibly to foster competition among fans and drive these numbers further upward. c-turtles’ demonstrated strong performance in pushing these metrics has made them a target to those who wish to have usurp their consumer power. They, therefore, have good reasons to be wary of anyone who try to sway them from their “turtle-ship”, whether to turn them into solos or to lure them into an entirely different fandom. The swaying messages are also not always obvious, not always a direct “your cp suck”.  They can be subtle, many even come from netizens who appear to be fellow turtles, who may say “oh, maybe we (turtles) are wrong” or “we have to be realistic; Gg and Dd will never look at each other publicly again”—messages that cast doubt and sink morale in a fandom that’s already running an uphill battle. Remember: traditionally, CP fandoms are not expected or welcomed to last, and solos have been happy to (correctly) point out that the BTS, the origin of the most solid “evidences” of BJYXSZD, are getting older by the day. c-turtles can’t expect anyone else to help defend their ship if something happens, given CP fandoms’ lack of respectability, given YiZhan being a real person M/M pairing that is often frowned upon. So it’s understandable, to me at least, why c-turtles are on guard, and occasionally, clash with those who they feel may be trying to take away what they love.

i-turtles, I feel, don’t have that many reasons to fight. We don’t really have other fandoms (for example, the up and coming danmeis—the adapted BL dramas) vying for our attention (and wallets). No one can put an expiration date on the YiZhan communities except ourselves.

Another way to see this is: we—as in, the combined Gg + Dd international fanbase, the solos + CPFs—are lucky in a way the fans in Gg and Dd’s home country are not. Collectively, we’re much further removed from the pressure to perform as fans, which is immense in China with their fan circle culture and fan economy. i-shrimps and i-motorcycles ~ some of you are reading this, I think? (hello!) ~ here are my humble thoughts: the solo/turtle ratio of Gg and Dd’s international fans doesn’t make much of an impact on Gg and Dd’s star status, on the popularity metrics that matter. Our spending power is limited outside China’s borders, and while Gg and Dd likely love us equally as fans, our adoration for them doesn’t really matter much, if at all, to the production/media/commercial companies that control the trajectories of their careers. 

Along this line, the turtles’ “double loyalty” doesn’t have much of an ill effect, because there are few popularity contests here that mean much; few times (if any) when the turtles must face the dilemma of whether to vote for Gg or Dd because only a single vote is allowed; few situations where they have only x amount of dollars and must split it equally between Gg or Dd’s endorsements. There’s also much less cause to worry that i-turtles may draw the attention, or ire of the Chinese government ~ the whole international fanbase is too far away, too spread out to destabilise the regime in any way.

What the turtles do have in common with you, the solos, is their knowledge, their love for Gg/Dd. Knowledge, in particular. The people who know about Gg/Dd are still far and in between—at where I am, at least, and my guess is, it’s likely true for many of you too. Think of the turtles as people who you can talk to about your favourite star in places where few people know about him, can help promote The Untamed  far and wide—many people still haven’t heard of the show, and they deserve to.

For the turtles ~ no one can take away our turtle-ship identity, as long as we don’t give it away. No one can report on the our communities to the government and get them dissolved. Our votes, our spending habits are no one else’s business but ours here.

So, Anon, here’s what I think, and these are all very personal opinions, very personal decisions on how to navigate fandom …

I truly hope that we, as the international fanbase, can try to use this luck that we have. Make our communities not mere copies of their (combative) Chinese counterparts but something different, something with our own flavour, something with more peace and less fighting.

Specifically, I see little cause to try to persuade/dissuade anyone to be a solo/turtle. I find them… not the best use of time. Why? Because frankly, neither solos nor turtles have a better grasp of who Gg and Dd are. Neither solos nor turtles have a truly good grasp of who Gg and Dd are. These discussions are therefore bound to end up with more ill will than conclusions, since both sides are short of facts.

We’re all short of facts as audiences, who’ve all only seen a tiny sliver of who Gg and Dd are as human beings.

I don’t mean Gg and Dd’s star image is fake ~ it’s just that, their star image is their “work face”, and even I, a lowly turtle, must act somewhat differently in my own office. It’s part of being professional.

Gg and Dd’s star image are their professional face, and no professionals worth a salt truly ignore other’s opinions, especially when the profession is being an entertainer whose job is to face and hold the attention of the public. 

This is true for Gg; this is true for Dd.

Social media accounts are also part of Gg and Dd’s professional face ~ whatever is posted on there will be scrutinised by millions of fans, and they know that. The posts do provide some insights about Gg an Dd’s personalities, but they can’t be expected to show a complete picture. No parts of these posts, therefore, whether it’s the content or the kadians, are sufficient evidences for / against any aspect of their personal lives (especially as private an aspect as their romantic lives). Anon, you mentioned promotional marketing materials, and here’s my understanding of them ~ ambassadors such as Gg and Dd have minimal control over their design. The shrimp-holding bunny you’re referring to, for example, is very likely provided by the company.

However, may I also add this? Please try to not think of the shrimps / motorcycles as enemies of the turtles. Millions of people are behind each of these labels, and true for any group of this size, a fraction of its members are bound to be annoying. A small fraction may be awful, even. But they don’t represent the entire group. The shrimps are not only Gg’s fans, many of them have supported him longer than any turtle (since turtle-ship can’t be older than 2018); they’re also the reasons why Gg is in the industry ~ they voted for him in X-Fire. Likewise, a subset of motorcycles have been with Dd since UNIQ; they were there when the Korean ban effectively dissolved his group; they stuck with him when he was attacked for taking on the role of LWJ.

We’re all Gg and Dd’s fans, if you ask people outside the fandom. Remember: few outside China understand why heated arguments can occur between a bunch of shrimps, turtles and motorbikes. (It sounds a bit kafkaesque, just typing it out.)

It’s important not to lose sight too, that Gg and Dd’s social media accounts, where many new candies are found, primarily function as bridges of communication between them and their fans. These accounts do have different degrees of “professionalism” ~ Weibo and the official accounts being more formal, and Oasis, Douyin being more laid back and intimate; still, they all serve similar purposes. They’re not candy generators, or a script Gg and Dd have an obligation to follow to confirm / refute BJYXSZD.

Also: these accounts are accessible and watched by the public, not all of whom are friendly to Gg and Dd.

Re: Gg’s drawing on Oasis. He used the account as it’s intended for—to interact with his fans (the caption of the first draft was an unspoken invitation to shower him with ideas) and maybe, to show off a little (it was a very nice piece of artwork ~ a comment that I, sadly, haven’t seen much of). I doubt he posted his drawing because he wanted fans to carpet-search for traces of Dd in it (even though he probably expected that would happen); I very much doubt he posted his drawing because he wanted his fans to fight over scratch marks or black dots.  

If these fights keep happening, I can imagine a possible outcome. He’ll stop showing us his drawings. His social media accounts will become less and less personal, as they already have.

I’ll share with you my thoughts about candies too, while I’m at it. These are probably not-so-popular opinions, so please take them all with a grain of salt.(Salted caramels? 😊 )

I haven’t looked at why candies are called candies, but I find the name appropriate for how I think of them ~ candies are 1) neither evidences or truth, 2) sweet, 3) treats (non-essential, not like the main course).

The first point is, perhaps, the one I try the hardest to keep in mind. There are posts out there claiming the candies as made-beliefs—generated from edited pictures or videos, exaggerated translations, and their interpretations forced by “guidances” in the annotations/narration. There are also posts claiming that turtles are deceivers, or have been deceived by brainwashers who maliciously created these make-beliefs. A turtle may assume these posts are all lies, all made by antis. 

But, speaking turtle-to-turtle, I’d venture to say this … there’s some truth in the *first* statement. Many candies do, indeed, taste different if their taster returns to the original source—not necessarily unsweet, but less sweet. Candies, remember, are generated by fans like you and I. Same for c-candies ~ they aren’t endorsed by Gg and Dd, aren’t necessarily closer to the truth just because of the relative proximity of their birthplaces to their leads. 

Candy generation is The Tradition of CP fandoms. It’s a celebrated skill, and who doesn’t want to generate a candy that will be talked about, that will be part of the BJYX canon, for as long as the fandom lasts? Some fans are, therefore, also more … efficient in the “marketing” of the candies they generated — in persuading others that their candies are evidences, the truth. “Guidance” photos and videos (which pinpoint the place to watch, sometimes with appropriate sound effects for emphasis) have come about that way, and because they’re easy to digest—especially where language barriers exist—they end up spreading to i-fandoms.

These photos and videos may look more professional / trustworthy, but they often have an additional layer of subjectivity ~ on top of the already subjective opinion of what makes a candy. Translations (of BTS, fake rumours house content etc) also introduce a subjective element. Word choices can significant modify the tone of a conversation; speakers of different Chinese dialects may also have different interpretations of the same phrases. Example: I, as a non Chongqing/Sichuanese speaker, can guess the literal meaning of the “puppy” term Gg used for Dd — 狗崽崽 (gou zai zai) — but I also had to rely on others to tell me how endearing the term is; me being a Chinese speaker actually doesn’t make my interpretation any more valid, or authoritative, in this scenario, because my dialect doesn’t use this term at all. 

It doesn’t mean the people who’ve put in the work have any less-than-good intent; the vast majority of them come from a place of deep love. It’s just that we all carry our own perspectives, and as fans, our strong emotions in our fanworks.

This is why candies are often insufficient as good “points” for arguments, why they fail to convince non-believers, sometimes to the disappointment of some turtles. As evidences, they aren’t objective enough; they’re also often touch upon the assumption that’s mark the fundamental difference between solo and cp fans — the assumption that Gg and Dd are (not) together. Take, for example, this segment from a (polite) ask I got from an anon solo:

All the matching clothes, jewelry, shoes etc. Stopped being valid candy when I realized that the brands have popular stars "endorse" their products. The lightning pendant? Other actors have also worn it. Does that mean they are in a 3-way with (Gg) and (Dd)? Probs not.

Solo anon was correct! Brands have star endorsers, and other entertainers have, indeed, worn the same lightning pendant. The implied argument is also valid: people who don’t care about, don’t even know about each other can wear the same things. Most of us do that on a daily basis with our mass-produced garments.

However, a counterargument can also be made to the statement above, and easily: even the most precious, most beautiful wedding rings (say, from Tiffany!) are not exclusive to the first RL couple who bought them. It doesn’t mean the first RL couple is sleeping with all the couples who bought the same rings afterwards, doesn’t mean those rings aren’t significant to every one of these couples as romantic mementos. More often than not, couples wear matching things not because these things are exclusive to them—because how often can one find things that only exist as a single pair in this world? They wear matching things because they want to see something on themselves that remind them of their significant other and so, as long as the things aren’t so prevalent that everyone is wearing them, they can already serve their purpose.

But you see, Anon, that arguing over this would’ve been a waste of time? Because the solo came in with the assumption that Gg and Dd were not a couple, and the counterargument was made with the assumption that they were. The pendants alone are insufficient to prove either side correct or wrong. No one knows why those pendants ended up on Gg and Dd’s necks, except Gg and Dd and their teams. If I were to argue with anon solo, we can go on and on and on until we’re both left with bitter tastes in our mouths and WWX-red in our eyes, and forget the one thing that really matters: we’re both Gg’s fans.

(We could’ve spent the time talking about how that scene in The Wolf with Ji Chong throwing Zai Xing in the water is ❤️.) (I can’t believe the script waited 30+ episodes to do it. 😂)

This leads to my second point, Anon. Candies are meant to be sweet, and they’re meant to be sweet for you. In Chinese, a term for an expert candy person is a 嗑學家 (the candy-eating in CP fandoms is called 嗑糖 (ketang) ～ with 嗑 ke denoting a specific form of eating that requires breaking something open first with teeth—such as watermelon seeds; a 嗑學家 is a 嗑 (ke)-ologist). A 嗑學家 isn’t someone who can recall the longest list of candies, or spread the most candies around, or convince the most people that the CP behind the candies is real; they are those who can find their own candies in a source material, and be overjoyed by the sweetness of their discoveries without outside help. To me, at least, this term encapsulates the subjective nature of candies ~ what’s right for you may not be right for me and vice versa, and that’s perfectly all right. In other words, there are many candies out there but you’re not required to believe in all of them; instead, you’re free to choose candies to your own liking, compose your own version of the BJYX canon that you love, that you find sweet.

Wait, but you may say. Doesn’t that make my canon fantasy? Yes and no, because candies are based on real events. They’re interpretations, which sit somewhere between reality and fantasy. They’re like … opinion shows on news channels.

But what if I need to convince people of my canon —

Your “opposition”’s canon is as fantastical, and as real as yours — maybe it isn’t, but neither of you have a way to prove it one way or another.

Wouldn’t solos call me delulu, or clowns?

Maybe. But one step outside the fandom, and all of us fans—solo and cpfs—are delulu, clowns.

(That’s why while I’ve used the cpn label, I haven’t called myself delulu, or a clown. Anyone who thinks I have the truth about the love story about a pair of idol I haven’t met from thousands of miles away … the joke’s probably on them, don’t you think?)

Of course and again, Anon, this is only my take! I like candies precisely because I like to watch the real-time generation of candies, which ones different people claim as their own, which candies fall away and which stick around in the fandom over time. As a fic writer, this ship has gifted me with a treasure trove of information ~ what do people think of as romantic gestures, as give-away signs of love? The fun/amazing part of BJYX is that candies are available for so many different answers to these questions. Some people think of longing gazes and sweet smiles; some think of touches that can’t be helped (the many, many, many “fights”); some think of service (buying foods, designing clothes); some think of caring about the other’s well-being (throat candies and dumplings + noodles + crackers); some think of being The Other’s One and Only Exception (Dd being so talkative around Gg, Gg being so … fussy around Dd); some think of expressions through the arts (songs, drawings, dances); some think of grand gestures (the wave heart in the ocean); some think of matching clothes and symbolic accessories (rings); some think of birthdays and anniversaries (314, 622, the first snow); some think of sharing life’s hassles and small tidbits (fake rumour house); some think of … just looking VERY good together. Etc etc.

Some think of a subset of these, some think of all of these…

(Personally, I’m a very picky candy eater. I know about many of them, but only a small fraction impresses on me.)

(Still, I love watching candies. I love watching the joy of people sweetened by them ~ or, when c-turtles exclaim kswl! — the short form of ke si wo le! 嗑死我了! I “ke”ed so much I’m dying!)

This gets to 3), Anon, and I apologise to you too, for answering your not-essay-at-all with an essay! Candies are, to me, treats, and I don’t expect them to come at any frequencies higher than treats do. The reason isn’t because I don’t like candies ~ I enjoy watching them, as I said, even if I don’t eat many of them; the reason is because I don’t expect anyone’s romantic love to leave a trace in everything they do. For example, if I truly find myself in a SZD/SJD discussion re: Gg’s drawing, I’d say the lack of Dd in Gg’s self-portrait doesn’t really mean much. Even if Gg and Dd were head-over-heels in love with one another, Gg doesn’t have to put Dd in everything he touches. Likewise, Dd doesn’t have to present a consistent, or decipherable story with his kadians. This is true for the real-life couples around us too, isn’t it? They don’t perform every single act in life leaving a noticeable trace of their significant other. And the misunderstanding that couples do that — that their romantic lives take over who they are as individuals — IMO, partially explains why people who choose to not to date or marry, people who’re aro-aces, often have a difficult time convincing others that they’re complete humans. Romantic love is, of course, very, very important and can be life altering, but it also isn’t everything about a person ~ especially not if a person who has a career as exciting as Gg’s and Dd’s. Gg and Dd who also have friends, family, (many) talents and interests …

(And lots of ugly icons on their cell phones. Yes, I’m talking about you, Gg. That long-armed Pepe from your 2018 snowless Beijing post will give me nightmares…)

[fbfh]

“forever” paxton hall-yoshida x reader

genre: fluffy romance + mutual pining (not too slowburn tho lol)

word count: 3.4k

au: none?? jock x theatre nerd ig

pairing: Paxton x broadway baby!reader 

requested: yes !! i hope u like it uwu

warnings: one hell one motherfucking and i think that’s it for swearing?? um brief self deprecating/talking bad abt urself from paxton (bby boy needs a self love boost), reader and paxton are home alone together for a little while but nothing bad happens, uh,,, i think that’s it

summary: when Eleanor can’t run lines with you, she sends over a very attractive, mutually pining substitute.

reccomended songs: “Seventeen” - Tuck everlasting OBC, “The Kiss” -The Princess Diaries score

a/n: i’m p sure i kept the reader p gender neutral but there’s implied slightly long hair, and you play the lead (a girl named winnie) in ur schools production of tuck everlasting but like it’s theatre so anyone can play anyone lol,, this took so got dam long bc i’m fucking s o f t for jock x artist and it just sorta happened lol aLsO,, not super thoroughly edited so there might be a typo or two?? im tired lol

requests r open <3

You had only ever seen two athletes present during rehearsals. Once when Madeline (who at the time was playing Penny in your production of Hairspray) was dating a guy from the soccer team. The other was when the star of the basketball team had come in to give your choreographer pointers for the basketball scenes during High School Musical. 

Until now.

You had run onstage part of the way through “Live Like This”, which wasn’t out of the ordinary since so much progress had been made on the costumes. You were still tying the ribbon on your pinafore as you jumped into the song, but when your eyes met a face in the usually empty auditorium, you faltered. You almost sang the wrong verse, but recovered quickly, continuing with the blocking. What felt like a moment later, the number was almost done and you were nearing the end of your counterpoint with Mae Tuck - played by Eleanor, of course. Who could be better for the part? You held out the last note, trying to stay in character despite all the distractions in the back of your mind. You had to talk to Eleanor when the director called for 10; she’d started telling you how Devi was being weird recently. Also, what the Hadestown was Paxton Hall-Yoshida doing chilling in the auditorium? You shoved all that away, focusing on staying in character until the director called for a break. 

‘I want to go to the fair. I want to go so badly! I just need a change, need to get out of this house for a little while. I never do anything, so this can’t be asking for too much, right?’ 

You projected all that into your everything - face, voice, mannerisms, energy.

“Hold!” 

Everyone froze.

The director wrote a few things on his paper, sighed, and underlined something several times. 

“Okay, good job! I need to revise some of the blocking, then we’ll do notes, so take ten.” Your sudden nerves had definitely made you pitchy, you knew that would be one of your notes for sure. 

A chorus of “Thank you ten”s erupted, and you immediately ran to Eleanor, telling the others good job as you passed. 

You leaned in and started speaking to her, quietly.

“Okay you need to finish telling me about Devi, and that other news you’re being so cryptic about! Also, what’s up with Fierro over there?” you nodded towards Paxton hoping he wouldn’t see, and you noticed Fab is sitting near him. You realized they’re probably waiting for Eleanor and/or Devi. That must be it, he’s been hanging out with them lately, right? Eleanor gasped.

“You’re right! Paxton is such a Fierro!”

You cringed inwardly a little bit as her voice carried through the auditorium, mixing with the others. Your eyes darted over to him for a fraction of a second. Oh god. He was looking at you. Or in your general direction at least. Lena, the costumer, walked around the set gingerly, following you around and getting you out of your dress incredibly carefully as you and Eleanor walked off stage. 

“No! Well, yes- but no. What’s he doing here? Jocks never come here during rehearsals. I saw Fab too, are you guys and Devi getting dinner or something?” You said, entering the auditorium, and stepping out of the dress. You grabbed sweatpants and a silky, floral kimono jacket from your bag to throw over your leotard and tights. She waved back at Fab before sitting down in the front. You both grabbed your fans and dramatically flicked them open in sync. Your wrists fluttered, cooling both of you off.  A knowing, and slightly mischievous, look came on her face. 

“Devi and Fab and I are. Paxton must be here for something… else.” she shrugged, nodding towards Paxton. You looked over again. He was staring at you. You did a double take and tried to hold back your smile. 

“Wh- I do not know to what you are referring.” 

“To what I am referring is the blush on his cheeks.”

You barely held back a nervous, bubbling laugh.

“He is not blushing! Why would he be blushing!”

“I don’t know,” She shrugged, “Just like how I don’t know that he’s been loitering in the halls outside the music room during your last three solo music rehearsals.”

You struggled for an answer. Before you could form one, you were interrupted.

“Okay, okay what is the best Lin Manuel Miranda musical? Because Kathryn thinks it’s Hamilton-” 

“Duh!”

“-But I think it’s In the Heights! It’s an underrated jewel!” Jonah interjected, still wearing his Jesse Tuck hat. 

You considered for a moment.

“I mean, they’re too different to compare. In the Heights has the same energy as Rent - showcasing what goes on in ordinary people’s lives, and how love ties us all together,” he nodded in agreement, “But Hamilton is on a way larger scale, almost Les Mis meets Fun Home vibes. But in terms of personal preference…” Eleanor scoffed at your answer, and Jonah went back to debate further with Kathryn.

“Anyway,” you turned back to Eleanor to ask her what the hell she meant by Paxton Hall-Yoshida was blushing. But before you could-

“Eleanor, we need you to try on your blue dress again,” Lena was already pulling her away, “I had the empire waist in the right place but half the pins fell out, and it’s just...” And she was whisked away before you could finish the thought. You just had time to help Holly get out her wig pins and drink some lemon water before notes. Eleanor still wasn’t back, so you made sure to write down hers for her. It was pretty standard; be quiet backstage, go over your lines, don’t touch props that aren’t yours, don’t eat in costume, and a couple blocking changes you made note of. After your end of rehearsal warm downs and huddle, everyone left relatively quickly. You ducked into the bathroom to freshen up a little. Sometimes it was hard coming down from such intense energy after rehearsal. You mentally ran through your to do list. You needed to get some more tea, write that essay when you got home, go over your notes- You gasped, cutting off your own train of thought. You ran out of the bathroom to look for Eleanor, still clutching her notes in hand. 

~

Your voice still echoed in Paxton’s ears. He wished he had a whole album of you singing. Your voice made him want to ruin his spotify algorithm by listening to nothing else. You had looked at him a couple times, and his heart had almost stopped. He didn’t know eye contact could be so intense. It’s probably just cause you’re like, the only person in the audience. Where else is she supposed to look? He deflated a little. He heard his name and looked over to you and Eleanor talking together. Hopefully it was about him. Hopefully it was good. He checked his phone, trying to look busy. When he glanced up to see if you were looking, you were gone. He started to look around for you when he saw Eleanor waving at Fab, and sure enough, you were next to her. What he didn’t expect was you dropping your dress to the ground. Time slowed down (and his heart sped up) as you stretched a little, and pulled out sweatpants from your bag.

Wow.

 You had on what looked like a bathing suit on underneath, and a few other people had done the same, but he knew that image would be in his memory, probably forever. His heart was beating in his ears and he knew he must be blushing.

“You okay, Paxton?” Fab asked, a seat or two away. Oh god, he didn’t want people asking why he blushed every time he looked at you! He muttered something about needing to make a call and headed for the doors. Don’t look back at her, don’t look back at her… His eyes involuntarily darted in your direction right before he left. You had on a flowy translucent jacket, your hair thrown back supermodel style as you fanned yourself to cool down. He needed to cool down too. Maybe a cold shower, a really cold shower.

~

You managed to find Eleanor just before she left. Two girls were with her, you had seen Fab once, and you’d heard a lot about Devi, but had never been introduced. 

You gave Eleanor her notes, and she hugged you.

“You’re a lifesaver!” 

“Of course, I-”

“Uh, who’s this?” you looked over, and the shorter girl - Devi, based on what you’d heard about her -  was giving you a weird look. You introduced yourself. 

“Nice to meet you. How do you know Eleanor?” said the taller girl - definitely Fab.

“Oh,” you smiled, “she’s my almost mother in law. And my arch rival,” you counted on your fingers, “my sister, my niece, my lover, my husband, and…” you trailed off, trying to think of the other dynamics your characters had had in past shows.

“Your co-conspirator.” 

“Right,” you laughed. Devi and Fab looked at you two.

“We’re in the musical together.” you clarified. You were about to part ways when you called to Eleanor, “Hey, we’re still on for running lines tomorrow night?” 

“Uh… Sounds good!” she walked away quickly, speaking to Devi and Fab in hushed tones. Something was definitely up. That was typical Eleanor Scheming behavior. 

~

That night, you almost couldn’t sleep. This wasn’t the normal post rehearsal can’t sleep. In fact, Tuck Everlasting was the last thing on your mind as you readjusted your pillows and snuggled into your duvet. You stared at the neon blue stars projected and swirling on your ceiling. You sighed. Again. Your brain was a 24/7 livestream of Paxton Hall-Yoshida to relax/study to. You saw him again, his face in the dimly lit auditorium, Adonis in a sea of faded seats. If you hadn’t been sure before, you knew now that red was definitely his color. You rolled onto your side. Your heart picked up speed as a thought crossed your mind. You could almost see Paxton now, kneeling next to you, his fingertips brushing your cheek. The piano underscore to “Seventeen” ran through your mind. You could imagine him saying “Wait with me, we could share the world…” so vividly it almost hurt. He leaned in, and… 

You let out a loud sigh and rolled over again. Your heart was fully saturated. That’s more than enough pining for tonight. 

~

“Paxton!” 

He was a little surprised when Eleanor just walked up to him at lunch the next day. Most people were too intimidated to approach him out of the blue. 

“I have a plan.”

“Uh, I don’t know what you-”

“Cut the crap, I know you like her.” 

His face blanched. Well, yeah of course he did. Who wouldn’t? He was going to ask Eleanor if there was something he could do to win you over, just not here, not now. Not where everyone could watch and jeer and rib him for it. Just like they were doing now. 

“Woah, dude, who is it?” Trent asked. He fumbled for words. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He hadn’t kept his crush a secret because he was embarrased of you, he’d kept it a secret because his dumbass friends wouldn’t get you. Hell, he barely got you. You were so deep, and emotive, and artistic... 

“Bro, if you like her as much as it seems like you do,” Trent continued, “you gotta win her over.” He was a little shocked at the agreement murmuring through his group of friends. He didn’t know how to respond. Trent turned to Eleanor.

“What’s the plan, drama mama?”

“First of all,” she said, an almost humorously dangerous look on her face, “never call me that again. Second,” she shoved some papers into Paxton’s hands, “meet me in the music room immediately after school.” She started back for her table. Trent looked back over to Paxton. 

“You gotta do it, dude. We’ll cover for you at swim.” 

The rest of his friends agreed. He was pleasantly surprised at how supportive they were being. 

“Yeah, I guess... we’ve got a plan.”

~

The next day went by pretty smoothly. No rehearsal was scheduled since they were finishing construction for some of the sets, but everyone was instructed to do a couple read throughs of the script, focusing on scenes they’re still forgetting, to make sure everyone’s off book. You stopped by 7 Eleven to get a blue slurpee (for homework) and a couple coconut waters (for run throughs). You texted Eleanor on your way to the slurpee machine. 

okay so do you like the mango coconut water or the pineapple one?? It’s the mango one right?? i always forget lmao

sent at 4:16 pm

btw I don’t have that much homework so you can probs come by around 5:30 if you’re ready by then

sent at 4:16 pm

Bae Tuck

OMFG!! I totally forgot about running lines tonight, I can’t make it! :( but I’ll send someone over to help you out. :)

sent at 4:17 pm

You squinted at your screen. That was weird. Eleanor never used colon parentheses smilies. Like, ever. She always used emojis, and usually way more than two per text. 

yeah np, are u good? ♡

sent at 4:17 pm

Bae Tuck

Yes :)

sent at 4:18 pm

Bae Tuck

Also get the passionfruit one 🥥🍠 👀

sent at 4:18

that’s,,, el that’s a sweet potato,,

sent at 4:19 pm

Bae Tuck

Close enough 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

sent at 4:19pm

...Okay? That was definitely weird. You shook it off and headed for the counter to pay. You stopped half way there, and turned back to swap the mango for passionfruit. 

Not long after you had finished your homework and tidied up your room a little, the doorbell rang. You exited the kitchen, drinks in hand, and opened the door. Your heart caught in your throat. Paxton Hall-Yoshida was standing outside. And you were pretty sure he looked nervous. You both just stood there for a second. No one breathed, no one spoke. 

“Uh, hi, do you want to…” you backed up, motioning for him to come inside. 

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, entering the doorway. Paxton motherfucking Hall-Yoshida was in your living room. You held out a hand to him.

“Coconut water?” he took the box, looked at the label, and smiled. 

“Yeah, thanks,” he said again, this time a faint, yet unmistakable note of joy in his voice. He took a sip. He smiled.

“Passionfruit’s my favorite.” You silently thanked Eleanor, who you knew must have planned all this. Most of the evening was a blur, and you thanked god your family wasn’t home right now. You went upstairs, texted Eleanor asking what the actual fuck, made some surprisingly comfortable small talk, then filled him in on how to run lines. 

“Do you think playing the soundtrack would help you… get into character?” he asked. 

“I would probably just end up singing the whole thing,” You laughed and tried to ignore the butterflies in your chest. The main scene you struggled with was before “Seventeen”. It was harder to get into Winnie’s head because you had no romantic feelings for Jonah, and you always just made each other laugh. You had started with a few easier scenes of Winnie and Jesse, like the fair, and the dialogue before “Top of the World”. 

“That was really good,” he said, and you felt the sincerity of his words. 

“Thanks…” you smiled and took a sip of coconut water, hoping you weren’t blushing too hard. 

“So what next?” he asked. 

“Probably the scene before ‘Seventeen’,” you said, giving him the page and scene number, “it’s one of the hardest ones for me. I guess I just can’t connect to Jonah the way Winnie does.” 

“Huh,” he said, skimming the page. When you looked up at him, he had something between a smile and a smirk playing at his lips. You made yourself look away before you got too distracted. You refused to think about the fact that you were sitting across from Paxton Hall-Yoshida on your bed, in your room, like you were… close with each other. His eyes skimmed the script, finding the dialogue. He glanced up at you and nodded, indicating he found his place. You began.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t get away,” you said, jumping into character.

“I may be 102, but I can still outrun anyone,” a smile played at his lips. You smiled, then let your face fall.

“I’m so sorry, I-I tried to warn you-”

“No, no,” he interjected almost seamlessly, “It’s okay, it’s… refreshing having someone look after me who isn’t my mom.” His eyes flickered between your face and the page. You smiled with him for a second, then let distress cloud your face.

“Jesse… that man came by my house today. He heard the music box, he knows about you-”

“I know he knows…” 

You continued on with the scene and he trailed off when he came to the sheet music for the song Seventeen. You took in a breath to start the dialogue in the middle of the song, but before you could…

“Six years from now you will turn seventeen,

Turn seventeen,

The same age as me,

Six years from now,

Go to the spring,

Go to the spring and drink…”

He was singing to you. He was looking at you and singing to you. His eyes only flickered down to the page to confirm the lyrics. He was nervous, you could tell. But through his hesitance, the emotion in his voice was sincere. Your heart was beating faster. You didn’t even notice your pulse was ringing in your ears, you were too focused on Paxton. 

“I'll wait for you till you turn seventeen,

Turn seventeen,

The same age as me,

Six years from now,

Go to the spring,

Go to the spring and drink…” Your hand rose to cover your mouth. He hesitated, and you remembered your dialogue.

“Uh, wh-what if I… forget where the spring is?” He reached out and took your free hand in his. Your pulse was off the charts. “I’ll go get you some water. Just… remember to keep it somewhere safe. Somewhere no one will find it.” You got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about the water. You knew he had never really been in a serious relationship before, and it clicked suddenly - if he learned an entire song to duet with you, just how much he must like you. You exhaled a breathy laugh, unsure how to process the sudden euphoria you felt. 

“You make the world sound so… exciting. I just want to drink the water right now!”

“Uh, no. You have to wait.” you both smiled, anticipating the upcoming joke.

“Why?” you ask, “What’s the difference?” You held your breath as he tried not to laugh through the delivery of the punchline. 

“Believe me,” he rubbed his thumb over your hand, “there’s a difference.” You both chuckled, and he continued singing. You were so focused on him, so… touched that he would do all this for you. 

“Winnie, wait with me,

And we could be married,

Winnie, wait with me,

And we'll share the world,

Winnie, you can stop time,

And live like this,

Forever…”

“I could live like this forever,” you echoed.

“Live like this...” you sang in tandem.

“What do you say, Winnie? Do you want to…” he broke character suddenly, and asked, his eyes boring into yours, “Do you want to go out some time?” 

He could see the adorable smile blooming on your face, even from behind your hand. You nodded.

“Yes, I-I would love that,” and you began to sing the last line in the song, “Forever-” 

But before you finished holding out the note, his lips were on yours. His mouth moved slowly, intentionally, against yours. You followed his lead, flustered. He leaned further forward, his palm caressing your cheek. It was everything you imagined it would be, and you had quite the imagination. Your head was angled up and your hands rested themselves on his back, one tracing little shapes. Your shoulders were pressed against each other and neither of you could think. He was so warm. He tasted like coconut and passion fruit, and a distant part of your mind silently thanked Eleanor again. 

You really could live like this forever.

[seenashwrite]

The Fall ‘18/Winter ‘19 Edition of…

It’s a better-late-than-never situation, but it’s finally here!

*~* New to The Nail? *~*

The Nail isn’t about perfection. It isn’t about award-level contenders. It isn’t for highlighting certain genres of fics or specific ships. It’s about seeing real effort and hard work radiate off of the screen - the sole focus is quality. Character dimension. Writing with clever readers in mind. Well-built worlds. Killer starts and clutch endings. Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. More shows, less tells. Big emotion.

Find past editions HERE. Find what factors are considered when constructing this rec list, and learn how to get your recommendations to me HERE. Find info on the structure of these rec posts HERE, with answers to FAQs such as “Why did someone make up a title for my piece?”, and more.

>> The Basics On What’s Below <<

- All from the world of SPN (unless otherwise noted, i.e. cross-overs), across all genres; these are organized by length for the most part, so you’ll need to click thru to see if it is a theme of your preference; I aim to not have too much that’s of the same genre/length in a given edition, and limit the times a writer can appear on a given list (if they had more that fit the bill, I’ll chuck ‘em to next edition’s list); when applicable, unique projects, original stories, and any anecdotes/personal essays/family stories/etc. are near the end.

- You’ll see icons throughout…

If it has NSFW elements / walks an NSFW line - ⚠️

If it features / blatantly alludes to a specific ship - 🚢

If it has less than 100 notes (at time of this post) - 📌

And that last item is very important.

- A main priority of The Nail is to have at least 50% of these one-and-done SPN stories (so, drabbles and one-shots) be those which have less than 100 notes (give or take a few self-reblogs by the writer, and not counting mine) in each posting, and for this edition, out of 36, these comprise 26 so the goal was met!

Highly encourage you to at minimum hit the heart, ideally reblogging along with a note of feedback if you enjoyed. To do my part, I’ll be queuing these low-note fics one per day after this edition is published.

- Reblog of this rec list by “big blogs” (let’s say 1K followers and up) is especially appreciated, and not for my sake; it’s to get these wonderful writers with low note fics as much exposure as possible.

- Writers, make sure you scroll - you may be on here more than once!

- “Notes from Nash" at the very bottom of the post.

- For your mobile convenience, here’s The Nail Master Post of Editions

- And finally, shameless plugs....

 See Nash Write: Master List

You Totally Made That Up podcast - @youtotallymadethatup

Note: Just a line or two excerpt to paint a little picture - no specific feedback on these drabbles because each writer nailed it in the entirety - all are poignant, well-structured, thoughtful, and they did it all in a limited amount of words. Well done, all of you. 

181 words

The Wishes 📌  -  @sixtysevenandwhiskey 

It’s a lot of nothing, until nothing is all there is.

.

182 words

Stars 📌  -  @covered-byroses

She loved looking at the stars.

.

223 words

Storytelling 📌  -  @always-keep-writing

He shouldn’t be surprised that it ends up being a story.

.

230 words

A Long Forty Years  -  @babybluecas

Sometimes, he’d wish he was so much older.

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352 words

Control 📌 -  @idreamofhazel

If only Dean knew the other, more biting things he holds under his tongue.

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370 words

His Hair 📌 🚢  -  @gabrielfallstonight  

He often wondered if, by spending as much time on Earth as he did, he was growing almost human.

.

427 words

Topper  -  @alleiradayne  

Coffee. He just needed a cup. Or four. Okay, maybe the whole pot.

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483 words

Tedium 📌  -  @smi727  

This situation was something Michael simply could not abide.

555 words

Kids These Days 📌  -  @revwinchester  

A little behind-the-scenes interlude wherein Dean has an interaction with some kids in town. In medias res, OCs developed in a short amount of space, thoughtful/nice message without being preachy.

.

560 words

Four Months Expired (But Still Good) 📌 🚢  -  @bendingsignpost

A delightful scene based on a premise that could've gone saccharine but stays the just right amount of sweet and humorous.

(I cannot tag this lovely, if someone would be so kind as to try to do so in the comments, it would be appreciated!)

.

570 words

Black 📌 - @sculptorofbeginningslibrary  

An introspective look at Dean in the time between waking up with his demonized soul and when he left the bunker; doesn't merely recap what we know; nice take on the physical changes; excellent characterization.

.

633 words

Smoked  -  @ameliacareful

A snicker-worthy tale of what should be an ordinary shopping trip, but as we know nothing can ever be simple for the brothers; well-structured, solid characterization, concise  descriptions that put you right there with them.

(I cannot tag this lovely, if someone would be so kind as to try to do so in the comments, it would be appreciated!)

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664 words

Last Night  -  @atwistoffate

A brief interaction between you and Dean that is a perfect balance of snarky and cute, and (thank Chuck) Dean is portrayed realistically, and I personally salute the writer for not uttering a single Y/N or sweetheart (it can be done, folks). I'd also be remiss not to highlight this beauty: “You know what? I don’t even care,” Dean says, caring deeply.

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714 words

Stay  -  @there-must-be-a-lock

Absolutely beautiful moment between you and Sam that doesn't get weighed down by over-dramatic pining, in part thanks to a sandwich. In medias res; descriptions that paint the picture without diving too deep; lovely from beginning to end.  

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812 words

Carolina 📌  -  @atc74

A first-person, introspective tale of an interaction Dean has with a stranger. In medias res; sets the stage from the opening paragraph, putting you right into Dean's shoes; well-developed OC in short amount of time; great closing lines.

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841 words

Strange Gifts 📌 -  @lastactiontricia  

Michael gives you the "gift" of knowing your potential fates. In medias res; great structure/descriptions that convey the mood without being belabored; clutch open-ended ending.  

1.1K words

Syruped and Feathered 📌 -  @mrswhozeewhatsis

A snicker-worthy on-the-hunt tale where you and the Winchesters get in a... well... a sticky situation. Ahem. Sorry, couldn't resist. Oh, and there's a surprise guest star that'll make you grin. In medias res, nice flow, creative use of prompts.

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1.2K words

Don't Panic 📌  -  @koedeza

Beautifully written, somber tale about what eventually happens in the lives of hunters. In medias res, excellent structure/flow, fantastic characterization, clutch ending. Keep an eye out for this writer - they are consistently solid and do not disappoint.

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1.3K words

'Til It All Falls Apart 📌  -  @lipstickandwhiskey

Angst done right in this story about what Dean might've gone through after Michael was cast out. Good flow, no laborious explanations of what we already know, reasonable actions/reactions from all.

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1.4K words

Bite Me, BitFit 📌  -  @shy-violet-soul

Exactly what you think from the title - a funny story about Dean's battle with healthy living. In medias res, nice structure, great characterization, several killer lines.

.

1.4K words

Eggshells 📌  -  @hunenka

A coda to Nightmare Logic, this tackles Dean's internal processing of life as he now knows it, Sam in charge and what feels like a million people in his home. Beautifully written, Dean is as accurate as it gets, excellent flow, plausible scenario.

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1.7K words

Told You So   -  @there-must-be-a-lock

How to do hot and sultry without smut - read and learn. This is a story about what should have been just an ordinary post-hunt night back at the bunker, when it turned to something more. Great opening paragraph, easy flow, trifecta of snarky-sweet-sexy.

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1.8K words

Brother 📌  -  @sixtysevenandwhiskey

An exquisite look - to use the writer's words - at Dean over the years, through Sam's eyes. Excellent structure/verbiage, no unneeded repetition of things we already know, good use of song inspo, plausible within canon, feels genuine throughout.

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1.8K words

The Lie 📌 -  @sophisticated-angel

Stunning tale (and add this to the pile of "Why the hell doesn't this have more notes?!" stories) about what happens to those who are left behind after a loved one dies - but as always in the Winchester world, nothing can ever be routine. In medias res, creative plotline, moving and heart-grabbing that leaves you with both a sense of rightness and a sense of unease.

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2.9K words

The Unexpected Guest  -  @crispychrissy 

Per the writer's summary - "A day of researching takes a turn when you see something from your past that leads to some interesting discoveries." But, wait - this is so much more. Pay attention as you read, because the writer has left you clues along the way (starting with the title), and it's done quite deftly. In addition - nice blending of humor and drama, time taken to research the creature featured clearly evident, clutch ending.

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3K words

Easier To Be Me 📌 -  @alleiradayne

A Sam + Reader story labelled "floof" by the writer, but it's sweet without bending saccharine; in medias res; great opening/closing lines.

[Nominated by @atc74 who said - “So I have read a couple things of hers, this I read a while ago, but it deserves some love, because it is just that good. Hope you like it This was so wonderful. Well written and beautiful."]

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3.1K words

Teeth 📌   -  @lastactiontricia

Do you want to read something spooky that’s based on a true story, with a fantastic plot that has roots in a true story, which features well-developed characterization/accuracy in characterization, and is - in case I didn’t mention it - based on a true story?!

Read this. Find you a cozy corner, grab the drink of your choice whether it’s bourbon or hot chocolate, wrap up in a blanket, and Read. The. Story. It is unique, it is well-written, quality top to bottom, and it’ll give you the feels, tips to toes. Stop wasting your time on the same ol’, same ol’.

READ THE STORY

(Part of a collection, all are fantastic, so see also: Halloween Horror SPN One Shots Masterlist)

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3.3K words

Lay Me Down 📌  -  @stusbunker

A solid case fic here that balances itself with some cheekiness thrown in amongst the drama (and a bonus for me, not a "Y/N" in sight - it can be done, folks). In medias res, moves at a quick clip, great line here: "The spell spread quickly, like spilled water on a tabletop..."

.

4.9K words

Shadow's Edge 📌  -  @saenalife 

A story of what happened one night when a routine retrieval of an item goes sideways. In medias res, excellent opening line/paragraph that perfectly sets the scene/mood (I mean - "Dark seems like too shallow a word for this. It goes beyond the absence of light - more like the light has never existed here at all..." - hello), creative plot, great structure (specifically: flashback/forward done right), and bonus kudos for switching things up with a feature not seen with regularity, that of a gender neutral lead.

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5.6K words

The Wonders of Modern Technology ⚠️ -  @littlegreenplasticsoldier

If you aren’t familiar with Greenie, she’s another one of those rare writers ‘round these parts who gives us consistently solid stories with a unique style that’s all her own, and this one is no exception, a humorous tale of a piece of equipment that doesn’t exactly malfunction, but we’ll just say there’s, ah, user error [wink]. 

.

5.7K words

Like Ocean in the Desert 📌⚠️  -  @saenalife

Borrowing the writer's summary - "Baby needs some work before Dean can get back on the road. He went to the salvage yard for parts, but what he found was a human connection." In medias res, well-developed OC, nice premise, great structure/flow.

[Nominated by @littlegreenplasticsoldier who said - "Here’s a prime example of notes misaligning with quality. Pfft. Criminal. This is the third time I’ve read this."]

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6.4K words

The First Bite 📌  -  @shy-violet-soul

A story from the way-back-when, and as for feedback, I’ll let the curator take it away....

[Nom'd by @mrswhozeewhatsis who said - "Confession: I love Weechesters. So, this fic was already up my alley from word one. Add in pie mentioned just in the author’s note, and I was already a happy camper! Imagine my surprise when I was sniffling halfway through because wee!Dean was just killing me! The OCs are very well fleshed out, without being distracting, and the whole story was just so well-written I finished it just wanting to hug everyone. The grammar and other technical stuff was at least flawless enough that I didn’t notice it, and the whole story just unfolded in front of me like a cootie-catcher. I think I’m in love, and I might go read it again, even though I should be writing. *swoon*"]

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6.8K words

Gutted  -  @idreamofhazel

A case fic with some Dean + Reader sweet-n'-sultry on top. Nice opening paragraph that sets the tone, solid characterization, very creative plot/creature featured, excellent structure.

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6.9K words

About Dean's Dreams   ⚠️ -  @fanforfanatic  

This writer has yet to disappoint - and this story is damn near pristine from start to finish. It’s an actual, on god, Dean-in-character dive into the woman of his dreams. Sound fluffy or angsty? Nope. You’re wrong. It isn’t either. What it is, is just right. I’m not telling you any more - when you next have time to sit and read and really absorb an introspective Dean piece, make this your first choice.

Say hello to a new (-ish!) writer, @salt-n-burn-em-all !

Doors 📌

You will not believe this is just her 2nd SPN fanfic - captivating and moving, and even if you're swiping a tear away, I think you'll find yourself with a smile at the last three words.

East of Nowhere ⚠️  -  @thecleverdame 

You and Sam are strangers trapped in a desolate mountain town where you live alone, isolated from the outside world, for five years.

Very creative scenario that takes you on an intimate journey and - most importantly - has quite the satisfying reveal.

.

How You and I Will Be  -  @katehuntington  

When a hellhound case in the mountains goes sideways, Dean and you find yourselves trapped in a small cabin, miles from civilization. Rescue is on its way, but will it be in time?

Opening paragraph sets the scene perfectly, you'll find yourself there immediately, and it's a plausible scenario of a hunt gone wrong. (We do love our case fics here at The Nail!)

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If This Is A Dream  🚢 -  @wendibird 

Sam receives a tip about a restless spirit haunting a particular patch of woods in South Carolina - one who has asked for him by name. He must now deal with the thought of putting to rest someone he once cared for, but will things go that simply?

Phenomenal opening line/paragraph that puts you in Sam's headspace from the jump, and boy howdy can we all empathize with him, and it's a plausible scenario, one I personally haven't seen tackled til this.

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Men of Cold Cases  -  @smi727

Sam had uncovered hundreds upon hundreds of cases the Men of Letters had never closed, [and the] idea was to investigate what those stodgy old nerds never got around to. Given the cases were at least 60 years old, the chances that any were still active were slim to none. They should all be milk runs…

Fantastic concept, completely original, and well-written to boot. Bonus? The writer has based the plots on actual cold cases and mysteries, and provides you links to the stories behind the story so you can learn more.

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The Ellison Lane Legacy  -  @sixtysevenandwhiskey 

Sam finds a case. You’re reminded of a past you want to forget.

Cheers for a well-rounded original female character who is tough and vulnerable all at once. Interesting and creative story that's heavy, yes, but thanks to skilled writing the flow keeps it moving vs. getting mired down.

Wrath 📌  -  @waywardjoy

Shakespeare gets a run for his money here with a small fic inspired by some of his words. Beautifully composed, from the title to the usage of the lines, flows like a dream, evokes big emotion, and puts you right there in the action, breathtaking from start to finish.

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The Runaway Vessel 📌  -  @butiaintgonnaloveem 

A creepy re-working of a popular children's story that will stay with you after you read it. Killer first line, clutch ending, and a detailed, stunning piece of artwork to boot from @lostmymuseagain, what a match made in heaven. This one dug deep, and definitely read like a cautionary fairytale about fate and choices that grandparents would tell/read to the children on a dark night around the fire, give ‘em a bit of a chill in spite of it. 

Ring-A-Ling  -  @winchester-writes & @littlegreenplasticsoldier & @mrswhozeewhatsis

To think, it all started with an innocent post about a tiny bell - get ready to laugh.

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Ten Years Gone  -  @cinnamonanddean  

This is a short-and-sweet, most worthy exception to a The Nail rule that no RPF will be on the list, wherein Jensen reflects upon his time on the show.

Carriers  -  @violetwolfraven 

Daddy Loves To Be Murdered   -  @gabesnonnie 

Slay Ride  -  @bendingsignpost 

The Awakening  -  @rmeisel 

The Chosen One  -  @copperbadge 

The Night  -  @later0varies

Bedtime Stories & How Chad Got His Name  -  @lostmymuseagain (also see the artwork related to the Chad story here)

The Author  -  @thebibliosphere

Notes from Nash

The document with my little summaries and personalized feedback for each of these got eaten - basically, I had to re-do the list and time’s been scarce, so forgive me for the lateness.

Also, there was a good handful of stories that disappeared due to what I presume was the purge/people deleting or losing their blogs. I did make effort to check AO3 but I’m afraid some stellar work has been lost for good.

There were a lot of repeat writers and folks I’m friendly with in this edition, more than I typically feature - I strive to highlight mostly lesser known writers and, as noted, mostly fics with <100 notes - but they earned it (and I even chucked a few more from some of these peeps into the folder for the next edition, that’s how hard they’re rockin’ it). That’s why it’s so important y’all let me know about the unsung writers and their undiscovered jewels - submit the story links and your reviews to me (links to your reblogs with your comments is perfectly fine) any ol’ time. 

That’s it! What’re you waiting for??? Get to reading!

[hatari-translations]

Griðastaður - 2017 draft version

So, before there was award-winning play Griðastaður starring Jörundur Ragnarsson, there was an early draft read by Hákon Jóhannesson, better known as Hákon from Iceland Music News (presumably, he was studying acting at the Academy of the Arts at the same time as Matthías was studying playwriting). Because it’s fun, I’m going to compare this early version to the final product! It’s the same core idea and significant chunks are very similar, but there were also a lot of interesting changes made between this 2017 draft and the final version, overwhelmingly for the better in my opinion.

(Scroll down to the “Thoughts” section below the cut if you just want to hear the overall summary, as opposed to me very lengthily laying out all the noteworthy changes because wow there were more changes than I realized.)

What Changed

The first thing to note is that the early version starts with Lárus’s phone conversation with his mother. The entire opening, with Lárus preparing for a meeting, explaining his relationship with IKEA and how he came to IKEA this one particular morning when he woke up with a guilty conscience, just isn’t there, though a small part of it is implemented after the phone call. I expect in part it was expanded to make for a more substantial play, but the opening of the final version also contains some fun/interesting bits of setup or foreshadowing for later: Lárus ends up backtracking on telling the meeting attendees to turn off their mobile phones, saying they can keep them on if they’ve got kids or moms (turns out it’s because he missed the notifications when his mom was dying), he mentions the Securitas guy isn’t going to have a problem with them staying late, and the weird little tangent about the IKEA flags serves to set up the flag-bearer who rescues him at the end.

This also means that in the early draft, him having to tell his mom that he’s just in IKEA because it’s his sanctuary and he's not there to buy anything is how the audience actually learns he’s in IKEA.

After the phone call, he says “I often have nightmares. (That was my mom.)” He explains that there’s a void inside of him, which he tries to fill with chocolate or Netflix subscriptions, but that gives him this guilty conscience, which then calls for more chocolate or thoughtful status updates or “neat patterned socks” - or, as he’s been doing increasingly recently, carefully evaluating the selection available at Swedish megastore IKEA. He wakes up with a guilty conscience, and makes coffee according to the guilt that he’s feeling. Then he explains about heading to Garðabær, the eco-labeled house, and going to IKEA and spending whole days there, and then we go on to, more or less, the section that follows the phone conversation in the final version.

When recounting the things he’s going to leave behind, he mentions a facial soap that he bought and used and now misses, which I thought was kind of a fun little detail.

The deodorant story is rearranged a little in the final version; in the draft version he talks about how he doesn’t know Chinese and would never be able to say any of this to the Chinese guy before he actually imagines the man’s response. He says he can’t even tell his brother what he thinks of him, or talk to his mom; the brother’s gone in the final version (makes sense, since the brother is never mentioned again and has nothing to do with anything). When pleading with the Chinese man, he suggests the chemicals are produced in really toxic conditions like maybe where he works, not where his sister did.

At the end of the deodorant story, as he asks the Chinese man to help him understand, he moves straight from there to shouting about spiders, as if he’s imagining the spiders attacking while he’s trying to talk to the Chinese guy! I kind of like that, compared to the final version where these bits are separated and don’t feel connected, and Hákon doesn’t play it in this very deliberately fake voice, instead just coming off more like he got carried away with this imaginary scenario. The thing he sprays on the spiders is the Nike Xtreme Men Edition deodorant that the Chinese guy was using. Afterwards, he says this story, which he dreamt once, is only one of his many go-to stories.

The bit on B-products isn’t there, nor is the fake PowerPoint, but he still talks about discounts, quality of life, etc. When talking about how stuff pollutes, he includes property rights, “which aren’t going anywhere”.

In the draft version, the IKEA employee really does compliment Lárus on his contemplation on environmentalism, where in the final version Lárus merely imagines the employee tells him that. Lárus thanks the employee, says IKEA is his sanctuary and if there is any place where he can cry it’s in IKEA, and then the employee goes “You’ve been in the bathroom department since we opened.” In the final version Lárus sounds defensive and awkward about this, but here he just sounds like nothing is more natural. When the employee asks if Lárus is looking for anything, he says “Well, aren’t we all looking for something? Haven’t we all been in the bathroom department since it opened, ever since we were born?!” The employee goes “Yeah, sure, but are you looking for anything special?”, which prompts Lárus to realize he’s going to try to sell him something, at which point Lárus goes off on another rant about how they’re here in the Mecca of disposable crap and he’d be even worse than the Chinese guy from the story if he bought stuff - upon which the employee asks what all the disinfectant he’s bought was for (showing that yeah, he literally launched into that whole rant within earshot of the employee), and from there persuades him that if he could buy 34 bottles of disinfectant he might as well buy this Silverån mirror cabinet without significantly depleting the Earth’s resources, and it’s really convenient and easy to clean, and then Lárus asks if he can put his toothbrush in it, etc. I’ll just translate how that whole conversation plays out, because it’s got a pretty different feel to it:

“So could I store my toothbrush in it, for example?”

“Sure.”

“How many?”

“As many as you like.”

“And toothpaste? How many tubes of toothpaste?”

“As many as you like.”

“200 tubes of toothpaste?”

“Yeah, if you like.”

“How about deodorant, eco-labeled?”

“Eco-labeled? Sure.”

“What about chocolate and popcorn and olive oil?”

“Yup, whatever you like.”

“Essays and books? Das Kapital, for example?”

“I-I’ve actually got better cabinets for that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, you can put anything in that one.”

“Medicine?”

“Yes, absolutely!”

“Mom?”

“...N-no?”

“My mom is chronically ill in the hospital.”

[The employee makes a tiny awkward grunt]

“Dental floss?”

“Sure, sure.”

“Mouthwash?”

“Yeah, yeah, uh, sorry about your mom.”

“Self-respect?”

“Huh?”

“Can this cabinet assure me that I’ll see her again?”

“Who? It’s just a cabinet!”

“Uh-huh. Disinfectant and band-aids? The contradiction inherent in my lifestyle and my fundamental beliefs?”

“Yeah, yeah, disinfectant, whatever, maybe not 34 bottles, that’s an excessive amount of disinfectant, and sorry about your mom.”

And then the employee says actually he needs to help other customers and he’ll write it down. All in all, this whole encounter is a lot more parodesque and weird, the employee is a more absurd, comical character, and Lárus is more condescending and actively hostile, where in the final version the employee feels very much like a real, ordinary person, and Lárus makes it a bit awkward by bringing up his mom but is a lot more sympathetic and keeps his annoyance at the employee to himself. I think this is a really solid change; the draft version is amusing but Lárus just comes off as kind of an annoying dick in it and it’s hard to come away from this actually caring about his relationship with his mother.

The following sequence, where he goes down to get the cabinet and finds they’re all gone and then his phone chimes with the text about his mom being dead, is very similar, although it’s been fleshed out a bit with some details in the final version.

When he’s been hiding in the warehouse for those six hours, he “feels something break - and it’s not the Billy shelves”. Definitely a good call losing that joke; in the final thing he totally pulls off this sequence as a serious moment where you actually feel sorry for him, but in the draft this keeps it fairly ridiculous.

The security guard scene is very similar, but in the middle of it he throws in a “This is all imaginary, come on.” Good call losing that too! This little emotional breakdown into twisted violent power fantasy is my favorite part of the play, and he ought to be far too worked up here to have the self-awareness to remind the audience this isn’t really happening. Hákon punches the script as he beats the guard half to death, though, which is amusing.

When he goes back to the cafeteria and there’s no hot food, he specifically states that he imagines they’ve thrown it all away, rather than sounding like he genuinely assumes this is the case. Again, I think the final version works better; he’s still in this supremely agitated emotional state, and it’s far better conveyed if he sounds like he really believes what he’s saying, even if he is telling this story at a later point. He also doesn’t take the bathroom break where he starts to calm down and catch his breath; he just immediately notices the salads and heads on up to his favorite staged bathroom. When he says “I’ve always dreamed about doing this”, he adds, “staying the whole night at IKEA.”

In the draft version, the rant to his mom about how everyone dies keeps noting, both at the start and throughout the first half of it, that he didn’t actually literally say this to her. I think the final version, where he says that whole rant and only then admits he didn’t actually say it, works better, especially since it’s set up by the previous encounter with the employee where he does the same thing. He also doesn’t say “I love you” at the end, which in the final version really lends that extra punch to it when he follows it with “...No, I didn’t say that to her.”

The whole bit with him imagining another meeting with the Chinese guy, his sister the marine biologist and the turtle and them coming to a mutual understanding, isn’t there in the draft; the Chinese guy doesn’t come back at all, much less parallel Lárus’s sense of loss the way he does in the final version. We just pretty much go straight from the everyone dies rant to Guðrún arriving, and she’s just a random employee rather than the person who raises the flags (I don’t think the flag introduction in the final version is entirely elegant, but the presence of that setup is nice narratively).

The part with them visiting his mother’s grave and the exchange ending with “Mortality is a staged bathroom” is more or less the same, but again, we don’t get the “No, she didn’t actually say that”, or the entire following paragraph talking about all the kinds of people at IKEA who are going to die.

Then the final bit about how Guðrún led him down the escalator is there but a bit shorter, and then Lárus proudly presents the first eco-labeled cabinet at IKEA. We don’t get the bit about how none of this makes sense because there aren’t two escalators facing each other at the IKEA in Garðabær. I am convinced this is because somebody who frequents IKEA watched the workshop performance, came to Matthías and pointed out that it didn’t make sense, and he just brazenly decided to have Lárus address the complaint in the play instead of ditching the escalator scene. Amazing.

Thoughts

Overall, the tone of the play and the character of Lárus comes across differently in the draft version. It’s more of a straight dark comedy, and accordingly, Lárus is basically an unsympathetic comedy protagonist archetype. Hákon really plays him that way, too, primarily angry and indignant and pretentious.

In between the two versions, Matthías (or one of his instructors, or someone else who commented) realized that Lárus could actually work as a sympathetic character: he’s pretty eccentric and obsessed with IKEA, sure, but he’s also just lonely and repressed and goofily imaginative and overwhelmed by everything and worried about his sick mom, and by fleshing things out and editing various details and just playing him differently, we could genuinely feel for him when he learns his mom is dead and breaks down and crawls into the shelves at IKEA - which makes for a way better play than if we just can’t stand him. Jörundur plays him as awkward, nervous, constantly second-guessing himself, bad at expressing any of the things he’s thinking, and for all his eccentricities you just care about him and can follow his emotional journey, or at least the most important section of it.

The final version also just ties various things together better, bringing things from earlier back later and so on. I don’t think it’s 100% successful at being a satisfying narrative, but it’s a lot more so than the draft version, which is largely just an amusing ramble describing events that don’t seem to be in much of any coherent relationship with one another.

All in all, it really shows that Matthías spent a lot of time and care improving the play since the draft, which I, possibly the biggest nerd about revisions and adaptations that I know, think is pretty cool.

[yespoetry]

Control the Echoes

By Jonathan Russell Clark

Her spoken sentences tended to omit proper nouns, leaving only discursive, aimless run-ons that veered off one point, switched to another, swooped again, got murky, and finally landed not really anywhere specific but simply where a period arbitrarily stopped them.

“You were here when they told me,” she’d say, “and so you know that I’m not trying to do anything like they said I did, but they keep coming at me, and I don’t know who or what or where anymore, because there isn’t anything like that that I want, and I said that I was fine yesterday because I saw her over there, you know the young one, the one with the, oh what’s her hair like, and she wasn’t asking because like I said I wasn’t saying anything if I didn’t want to.”

The hospice info pamphlets said to go along with whatever she said, but how do go along with that? It didn’t take long, though, for me to figure out the purpose of going along with the things she said. If you don’t, you have to ask for clarification, or you have to contradict them, or you have to interrupt an already tenuous thread—and none of it with any results. It’s the flow that’s important, not the content. If I’d stopped my grandmother and said, for example, “Who are they?” she’d look at me as if I’d just asked her the most nonsensical thing, since of course she didn’t know who they were, because who they were didn’t matter. What mattered for her was some deep need to express, to communicate something, even if that something didn’t come out explicable. It was the act of talking that compelled her, and any obstruction jammed the rhythm and frustrated her. And since no actual clarification or sense came from any question we asked her, it was obviously better to let the linguistic current expel forth unimpeded.

Among her verbal hemorrhaging were numerous references to her long life: sometimes she’d wonder why her parents hadn’t been around to see her; sometimes she asked if I knew her brother, and where was he; and other times it seemed the words were some uncontrollable reverberation of various points in her nine decades.

An echo of herself.

*

In Aleksander Hemon’s novel The Lazarus Project, there is the following line: “Nobody can control resemblances, any more than you can control echoes.”

If there is a sound and a reverberating obstacle, there is an echo. There is no judgment in the existence of that echo, no choice, no accusation of agency, no life in it. Nobody accuses an echo of hyperbole, of lying, of falsifying the expanse of its resound. It is simply there because it is there.

*

 Three years. Three years. Three years. Three years.

I’ve never reached a fourth anniversary with a partner. All four of my major relationships ended at three, never developing the ability to speak in complex sentences, never learned to count past ten or understand the concept of time or tell a story about what happened to them.

My relationships died before they began to truly become independent. The failure of my love—its inability to keep something alive—repeats in my mind and through me when I meet someone who moves me. The joyous noise of new love echoes off the obstacle of my past failures, and I can no more control it than I can family resemblances.

*

My mother looks like my grandmother, and my sister looks like my mother, but my sister really looks like my grandmother. I see each of them in each other, in little softly articulated ways, as subtle as color schemes in well-decorated interiors, minute spots of this shade, that one, which unite a space of otherwise unconnected things.

*

Echoes are beyond our control—unless we alter the geography of where the sound is made.

*

Echo is a nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who is condemned to repeat the last few words of whatever Narcissus says. So when he asks, “Is anyone there?” she responds, “One there?”

I am standing in a cavern at Old Man’s Cave in Ohio, where I’m from. I yell out, “HELLO!” and hear loud and clear my voice coming back to me: ELLO Ello ello lo lo o.

Echoes do not return our words; rather, they transform them.

*

From Lacy M. Johnson’s essay “The Reckonings,” in which she grapples with notions of justice and retribution for the man who kidnapped, raped, and tried to kill her:

I carry these stories with me because I don’t know what else to do with them. The details may differ. If it is not the story of an abusive lover, perhaps it is a mother, or a father, or an uncle; or it is the story of a friend who has been killed by a stranger while trying to do the right thing, or a woman who is shot in the back of the head while asking for help; it might be a story about the abuse of power, or authority, of the slow violence of bureaucracy, of the way some people are born immune to punishment and others spend whole lifetimes being punished in ways they did nothing to deserve.

These horrific and common stories demand a corresponding action—some form of symmetrical absolution, as in movies where the villain is righteously killed by the victimized hero. “Then, as now,” Johnson writes, “we want to transform our suffering: to take a pain we experience and change it into the satisfaction of causing pain for someone else.”

Later, on becoming a writer: “I’ve called myself a writer now for more than half of my life, and during all this time, I have learned that sometimes the hardest and more important work I’ve done has meant turning a story I couldn’t tell into one that I can—and that this practice on its own is one not only of discovery but of healing.”

*

The American Psychiatric Association has this to say on PTSD:

People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.

*

Echo tries to touch Narcissus, but he repels and rebukes her, saying, “Hands off! May I die before you enjoy my body.” To which Echo replies: “…enjoy my body.”

*

Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves features a chapter dedicated to echoes. This chapter has caused much consternation in readers: if you Google “house of leaves echoes” you’ll find numerous threads asking why this section is included in the book at all.

From that chapter:

Nevertheless, above and beyond the details of frequency shifts and volume fluctuations—the physics of ‘otherness’—what matters most is a sound’s delay.

Point of fact, the human ear cannot distinguish one sound wave from the same sound wave if it returns in less than 50 milliseconds. Therefore for anyone to hear a reverberation requires a certain amount of space.

*

My grandmother, out of necessity, does the same things everyday: she gets out of bed, takes medications, eats some fruit or toast, sits in her chair and watches TV. And she talks. In circles, full of non sequitors, wholly incomprehensible. Though there is sometimes a hint of frustration or helplessness in her words, she does not seem unhappy.

And yet she is losing herself. Has already lost most of herself. This self now—the one that still lives, functions, talks—isn’t her. So she isn’t happy; she is gone.

It is this echo that seems happy.

*

From Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence:

The painting is an allegory of the evils of power, how they pass down the chain from the greater to the lesser. Human beings were clutched at, and clutched at others in their turn. If power was a cry, then human lives were lived in the echo of the cries of others. The echo of the mighty deafened the ears of the helpless.

I repeat: echoes do not repeat; they transform. It may be slight, it may seem miniscule, but it is not the same as the original vibration; it is like a recollection of it, a memory.

Memories fuzz the details. They make them murky. They soften the edges of some parts, intensify the sharpness of others. But we do not mistake memories for current realities, no more than we believe that a son and a father are the same person, merely because they share traits, look alike, echo each other.

*

Imagine the inside of yourself. Not the physical inside but the abstract inner space—the spirit or the soul or the heart or the essence—whatever you want to call it or believe it to be.

Imagine it as an open expanse of sky, or an endless field of grass, or a wide ocean. Imagine these impossible geographies filled with items: the house you grew up in; your first pair of glasses; your crush on your neighbor; the backpack you lost on the subway; the books you read and remember; the words that hurt you, that healed you, that gave definition to something that before was inarticulate; the shape of your calf; a painting by a friend; the hope you carry that persists in the face of repeated failures. It is you who connect this space of otherwise unconnected things.

Now imagine moving through these expanses—flying, walking, swimming—brushing up against the items, through them, past them, around them; touching them, holding them, feeling them. Imagine the culmination of these touches, these brushes, how they add up in your fingertips, give you a sense of surfaces, a variety of weight.

Imagine a sudden interruption in these spaces—a wall bounding upwards forever, a cliff with no foot routes, a curved shaped you can’t get above or below or around or inside. Imagine trying to continue moving through the space, but not matter what you do, you can’t get above or below or around or inside this interruption. In vain, you attack it with your fists, which only serves to confound your sense of touch, which before had been the entire point of moving. You have no options. Like some Biblical figure, like some mythological cypher, you yell at the interruption, condemning, berating, pleading, accusing, decrying…

But your words do nothing to it; they only echo back, mocking your futility.

*

When Narcissus first hears Echo in the woods, before he rebukes her, he calls out to her, “This way! We must come together.” Echo replies: “We must come together.”

*

We do not know what to do about my grandmother. She is not she and yet she is.

I do not know what to do with my new love, how I can deflect the echoes of my three-year pattern. Every love is different and yet shades of similarity persist.

We do not know how to get over trauma—not fully, not completely. Those echoes will always be there; we can no more control them than we can control the cause of that trauma.

We do not control the echoes of us; we can only control our own volume, the spaces we create sound in, our voices. We cannot control the sounds of others—“the physics of ‘otherness’”—but we can to the best of our ability change our distance, our space in relation to the echoes, to maybe get close enough to the source, that we can hear it no longer. We must turn the stories we can’t tell into ones that we can. We must reverse the echoes of power.

We must come together.

Jonathan Russell Clark is a literary critic. He is the author of An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom (Fiction Advocate), on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. A former contributing editor at Literary Hub, his work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, Tin House, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the Columbus Dispatch, The Georgia Review, The Millions, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, Chautauqua, PANK, and numerous others.

[slothgiirl]

forever isn’t for everyone (is forever for you?) part 5

London is gray and dull after Australia and the festivals we'd been at. And like it's welcoming us all back, it's raining. 

Foggy, a complete 180. It doesn't help that it's night, and I haven't seen day since two days ago, having spent another day traveling. Cramped up in my seat, squished between other passengers. 

This time I had slept fine on board, exhausted from touring. We're all dead on our feet and unlike the last few days, we don't puke into a cab, we just sort of wave and leave and it's sad. I think after all we've done, all the time spent together, we leave like it's nothing. I know even I need some alone time. 

But it's still sad to me. 

The second leg of the tour isn't for months and I have a week off before having to go into work. A week I spend sleeping and doing laundry and becoming a couch potato. 

Another week of catching up with friends and getting lunch before I have to go back to work. It's the day before I go back to work that Alex texts me, my heart lurching, an unconscious desire that had sunk into my mind. 

In Australia, it had seemed easy to believe that a man like Alex might like an ordinary girl like me. Perhaps I was selling myself short, but my confidence was a fickle thing that still needed propping up after my acne ridden teenage years. 

More eloquent than in person, his preference for written word is obvious.

I was hoping we might have a listen to the record I told you about. A drink or two, a small offering in comparison to the pleasure of your company once more, in the city we both inhabit, where everything will seem solid and less ephemeral than abroad. -Alexander

It was long and flowery for a text and made me dizzy with anticipation, I threw out everything I'd been told to do when a boy texts you and replied instantly, walking home from tescos trying to make food instead of getting takeout for a change, eagerly asking for a time and address. 

It was nice to be able to come home and do nothing. A privilege I couldn't imagine coming back from while my roommates came home from their jobs dead on their feet. 

Grueling weeks on the road seemed a small price to pay.

I take the tube over to his, a beautiful georgian house among many in Chelsea, save for some dying plants outside, a clear victim of his recent travels, thick dark curtains obscuring all the windows.The street is littered with nice cars, millionaires the only people who can afford the nice neighborhood. London's market on the uptick. 

At least I feel at ease in the dying light, the sun spilling in the sky like egg yolk as it sets, turning the clouds blood red, casting long dark shadows. I guess Alex is not a struggling musician, or maybe he's just from a well off family. 

It's then I know that I start to feel anxious, no longer buoyed by our shared work, just me and him and would that be enough? It was stupid when I already knew how easy it was to be with him. 

But this felt more concrete then wondering around a foreign city had. The thought of kissing him no longer a far off wish but a possibility so close it had my fingertips tingling. 

Alex opens the door with a boyish smile on his lips, clad in loose blue jeans, frayed at the hem, and a grey t shirt emblazoned with give a damn, hair hopelessly disheveled as if he'd just woken up. "El, love" he says fondly, after a second, "I'm delighted you're here." 

Waving me inside. I'm expecting the inside to look like a Tatler photo shoot, more burberry than marks and spenser sales rack, with the uninviting feeling carefully decorated homes had. 

Instead, the rugs are rich, intricate designs, the edges frayed with time and use. There's a thin layer of dust in the paintings hanging on the wall, one signed manet, another of a slender woman with doe like eyes and hair the colour of milk tea, in vivid realism, only the clothes betraying the age, paint cracked with time by the frame.  

Following along, I spy the stacks of books piled high on every table, some new others yellowed with age. 

There's a silver tray on the coffee table littered with pens and paper and a beautiful piano in the room he leads me too, room lit by stained glass lamps in the shape of flowers, the shades tightly drawn with a beautiful japanese inspired screen for good measure. 

A guitar rests in one settee. It's closer to an antique shop than any catalogue. "Please," Alex says, "sit, make yourself comfortable," as he goes to place the needle on a record, a small library of records covering a bookshelf nearby. 

As an after though he adds, "don't mind the mess."

"It's fine," I smile, watching him, at ease in his home, wanting to run my fingers through his hair and find out if his hair was as soft as it looked, "it's kind of the vintage shop of my dreams. I don't know where to look because everything is catching my eye." 

As I'd hoped, he laughs. "That's certainly a way of looking at it innit?"

The first notes of the record filling the room. Alex takes a seat next to me on the plush sofa. I kick off my shoes, surprised at how quickly I take a liking to the jazz music, curling up on the couch, dim lighting adding to the cozy atmosphere, before I catch him looking at me with the same fondness from earlier. With an easy smile on his lips.

For a moment, we just gaze at each other with a certain schoolyard shyness that settles when neither of us looks away. 

His expressive eyes on mine. 

A gaze so intense I can't hold it for long before I have too look away. "It's funny," I note, "the music has me picturing the concert clearly. Like I'd been there. Fuck that must have been a night."

"It was." Alex nods, his gaze still heavy on me. "They all lived for their music, bodies a vessel for playing the notes swirling around their souls."It was a beautiful thought, and I wasn't sure how to reply to the sheer earnestness. 

"You said there was wine," I ask all faux innocence, wanting something to take the edge off. 

Hyper aware of every movement I make. I want to sink back into the ease we'd had in Auckland and not this. The thought of him wanting me as much as I wanted him was driving me crazy. 

"Oh so that's why you came," he grins so alight with amusement, eyes twinkling. 

"The musics good too." 

"And the company?"I shrug, teasing, "I've had worse."

"Oi!"

I snort.

He doesn't move to go for wine. "I'm starting to feel superfluous El," Alex say in his thick yorkshire accent, a drawl to his words, each one carefully considered as he takes his time to form a reply, uncaring about the time he takes. "It's not a very nice feeling."

I roll my eyes. "Don't tell me you need as much ego stroking as Miles?"

"Miles does all the ego stroking for himself."

"That doesn't surprise me," I laugh, "I think you need a lot of ego to get up on stage every night. I don't have stage fright but it's all very weird to have that many people looking up at you."

He nods in agreement, "it's a good thing that's not part of my job. All I wanted to do was 'ave people listen to my little songs."

"Well I'd say job well done." 

The album had debuted top of the UK charts. And he'd written the lions share with Miles. Alex ducks his head, red rising to his cheekbones, a stark contrast against his pale skin. 

Even a few weeks down under had done nothing to rid him of the lack of colour that came with living in such a gloomy city. 

"You've got the whole country singing along."

"Well. . .Miles and the boys do. I just helped Miles a little or well we just jammed together. Can't help myself around that man. . .rarely has anyone understood me so well."

"Have you always written songs?" None of my childhood hobbies had stayed with me, consumed with studying. 

"Can't help myself," he admits. "A tune or some words. . .coming to me mind. There till I write them down."

"That's loads more creative than me. I always think it would be fun to draw but I'm imagining some renaissance masterpiece and it always comes out a derpy stick figure or worse. So I just give up and read or go for a walk." Even in the winter, Greenwich park was beautiful, and bundled up it was bareable. 

"What do you like to read," Alex asks, tilting his head towards me, curiousity brimming in his soft eyes. The space between us closing in as we lean towards each other, disarmed by our conversation.  

His hand resting on his knee, pulled out on the sofa, making me feel shameless about having my legs pulled up as well. 

"Articles. Very depressing boring world news. Free essays on the paris review. It's a shame prints dead or else I'd try to justify buying copies. But I think I'd rather have a cuppa tea. With those fruit bits or boba."

"Is print dead?" 

Alex says it with a layer of incredulity, baffled. 

"Yeah. This thing called the internet came along."

"Bloody hell," he jokes, "I'm still waiting for the windows explorer to. . .do it's thing."

"You mean load? Not surprised. The selfies you tried to take in Sydney were awful. Thankfully those people were there to take our picture."

"Be easy with me El," Alex laughs, shaking his head at me, eyes crinkling in amusement. 

"I'll have to think about it," I tease, leaning against the softness of the sofa, resting my head as I take the sight of him in, warmth spreading in my chest, thrilled to know that I can make him laugh, that he'd meant it when he said he wanted me over. 

It's a funny little skip of my heart as hope takes root, the idea that he might like me as much as I like him, making me smile, happy for the first time since I got back. Really happy, not just content to be home, to lazy around and get time to myself.  

He pours us both a cuppa wine in ceramic cups, "no wine snobs here," he grins and the music plays and his knee taps to the beat against my leg. 

Every touch too much and yet not enough, desire welling up in the pit of my stomach. It's easy to drink, pour another glass out."

I don't think anyone has the time or concentration to listen to a fourty minute song anymore," I note, sipping lazyily at the wine, my palette too unrefined to know if it's cheap or expensive. 

"It's a jam session!"

I drink, trying to hide my smile at his expression, affronted on behalf of music everywhere, the seriousness to his mouth, frowning, a directness to his gaze. 

Failing, I giggle, slumping against the sofa, looking up at Alex through my lashes. "I thought it was just a very long song."

"El." His voice, that thick accent, his unique drawl, my face burning, as he leans over, empty bottle of wine forgotten on the coffee table. His hand cups my cheek, the tips of his fingers calloused in a delightful way, toes curling on the sofa cushion, thumb running over my bottom lip. 

Heart beat lodged in my throat, I can't speak, the desire bubbling over, wanting to spill over and kiss him already. Alex pressing lightly over my body, trapping me against the sofa. 

I swallow thickly, my fingers going to neck, threading my hands through his caramel hair, soft and silken, and pull him down to kiss me hard. 

I can feel his satisfied smile against my skin as he kisses me back passionately, without any hesitation, all of his fumbling for words gone. All confidence and want. 

Alex's other hand going down to my hip, rubbing cicrcles over my cotton shirt. My head spins with want and desire and Alex all tangled together, finally, kissing him eagerly as he shifts, shoving a cushion thoughtlessly off the sofa. I lay down, skin burning hot. Too many layers between us. 

His lips against mine. Tasting of wine and bitter chocolate, a tanginess I can't get enough of. 

My mouth opening up to his, tongue exploring my mouth, my hands running through his hair. Alex pressed against me as I lay with my back on the couch, solid and too many layers between us. 

He pulls back, pulling up at the hem of my shirt with a naughty schoolboy grin, endearing all the same. 

"I hate winter," I whisper against his cool skin, colder than the room, barely emanating any heat at all in the frigid english winter, "it makes getting undressed such a pain." 

Alex laughs, pulling his own shirt over his head. "I'll be sure to make it worth your time."

"Cocky bastard," I utter as he hooks his fingers through the loops of my jeans, pulling me closer to him, the feeling of his own cock, already half hard, sends me reeling. 

In leiu of a response, Alex trails kisses down my neck, sucking at the skin, sure to leave marks tomorrow. 

My fingers dig into his hair, breathily moaning his name. Shamelessly, he undoes the button on my jeans. 

It's never sexy to take off jeans, kicking them off rapidly, as I reach for him, kissing him again fiercely. The feel of his cool skin sending sending shivers down my spine. Lithe but toned. 

Alex cups one of my breasts, nipple hardening through the delicate lace. "Fuck El," he groans, hips grinding down against mine.I want him. I want him so much, feeling feverish with desire.  

All my thoughts of him. 

Of Alex. 

He slides his jeans off easily enough, cock hard through the fabric of his boxers. I look up at him, as I unclip my bralete, adding it to the pile of things on the coffee table. 

There's always an initial nervousness, when sleeping with someone new. And yet, I know Alex wouldn't hurt me. I trust him. 

"El-,"

"Come here," I reach for him, a whine to my voice, "come here and fuck me Alex."

He does. 

[saints-row-2]

the following is a creative writing ‘essay’ i wrote as part of a class on psychogeography, about Stilwater. i think i linked to this briefly before but i got asked to post it so im posting it now. 

But this Vision Remains Fragmentary

I came to Stilwater five years ago, mostly because I had nothing better to do and nowhere better to be. There were other options; San Andreas, or New Austin, or Los Santos, but I chose to come to Stilwater. On the edge of a lake, in the middle of Michigan, Stilwater is a tiny city that might have been nice forty, fifty years ago. The city has a huge factory district, so I guess it made its money off producing something at some point, but now they’re all closed. It’s a mystery how Stilwater makes any money at all. Most of the city just doesn’t.

Stilwater has always been rife with crime, had a crime family decades old stuck in a war with their younger rivals, tearing the city apart for only yet another gang to slip in through the cracks and monopolise the bits of the city not yet claimed. The three gangs divided Stilwater up into factions and fought hellishly on the boundary lines. Anyone could get caught in the crossfire, and anyone did – the number one cause of death in Stilwater was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It didn’t really matter where you were; the projects in Sunnyvale Gardens amongst the run-down apartment blocks, or the wealthy suburban houses in Tidal Spring, it was all open for invasion.

I came to Stilwater, but most importantly, I came to Saint’s Row. Saint’s Row is a small neighbourhood on the corner of Stilwater, surrounded on two sides by open water. Historically, it has been one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city, wedged between the Red Light district and the factories and truck yards in Charles Town and Pilsen. It is the wrong place. Long past its prime, half full of empty buildings and half full of homes rotting with people still inside them, Saint’s Row was a desolate place to live. By far the most violent neighbourhood in Stilwater, abandoned to be a failure inside a city that was already suffering. Somehow Saint’s Row never fell under the banner of one gang or another; people fought there, but no one ever claimed it for themselves, the title of ownership rolling around between factions until someone finally decided they’d had enough. It was a shithole, but as my friend Johnny said, it was a shithole with potential.

We were not the only ones who saw the potential inside Saint’s Row. Over five years they rebuilt the neighbourhood from the ground up, stripping out the decaying housing projects, remaking the landscape to form something useful to the people funding the rebuilding, something that the whole city could be proud of. Now it is a thriving centre of business and commerce, every skyscraper a shining beacon of success. The people who used to live in Saint’s Row are gone now, driven out by rising costs and the swift demolition of their homes. But that’s a small price to pay to have a place to put Stilwater’s brand new digital convention centre.

I never saw the rebuilding of Saint’s Row. I spent the transition confined to a hospital bed; left my home the way I had known it and returned to find the place wiped clean, as though the riverbanks had burst and drowned the old neighbourhood. Long ago, when an earthquake struck the Red Light district and caved in a part of the city, they built over it, the old buildings entombed deep below the ground like ancestors’ graves. But the old Saint’s Row is not buried, it is gone, scoured from the face of the Earth.

It wasn’t a safe place to live, a friendly place. I’ve said that well enough; it was dangerous, and it was decaying. Now it’s purified, scrubbed clean and perfect, a glass-coated vision of luxury without a soul and with no homes. I don’t know if having nowhere to live is an improvement over having somewhere unsafe to live. The apartment buildings here are a little out of the price range of the usual tenant of the old Saint’s Row.

I can barely find the street my building used to sit on, let alone revisit my old home. The block where my apartment sat was demolished, and they built a skyscraper on it. It’s a definitely a change from the squat three-floor building I used to rent a ground-floor apartment in.

It was a single room; bedroom, kitchen and living room in one. Hot and cold running gunfire at all hours of the day. It wasn’t anyone’s dream home, especially mine. It was a filthy mess in a block full of graffiti-coated shacks, and was barely able to keep warm in winter and keep out the sound of the street. It did have a garage though, which was a distinct advantage in a city where parking a car on the street is essentially asking for it to get stolen. And it had a beach view, if you stood on the roof, although the last thing you’d really want to do with Saint’s Row’s own Mission Beach was look at it.

The skyscraper that stands there now is like every other new skyscraper in Saint’s Row, a fifty-story art-deco rectangle cluster, with a thousand shining blue windows that are excellent for catching the sun and shining it in your eyes. No matter where you try to hide in Saint’s Row, if the sun is out, there is going to be a skyscraper shining the light right back in your eyes, like a spotlight that detects poor people. There is a huge divide between the old and the new in Stilwater; places like Downtown are an inharmonious mixture of old traditional and the new flash, which is why they have tried to eradicate everything in Saint’s Row that risks breaking outside of their strict template.

The only thing that remains from the old Saint’s Row is the church, and that’s still the greatest loss of them all. The church at the heart of Saint’s Row is white, like bleached bones picked clean by scavengers. The inside is gilded with gold and lined with oak floors, but it looks and feels like a rich man’s tomb. You can spend a million dollars to make a grave beautiful, but it still holds nothing but the dead. They call it the Saint’s Row Memorial Church now – it was just the Church before, it didn’t need a name to hold reverence – and claim it is a testament to the city’s tumultuous past.

When it was the place me and my friends haunted like violent ghosts, it was collapsing in on itself. The grey stone that the church was built out of was plastered in so many layers of graffiti that though it could have been white underneath, but you would never be able to tell. The pillars inside that held the second story were crumbling, the stairs to the upper floor torn out a long time ago. Most of the pews were gone too, only a few left, the wood black with rot. The graffiti that coated the walls was like a mural to the history of the neighbourhood, every gang and gangster that rolled through in the last forty years had made their mark on it. It was alive, with the people inside and with our love for the place. People died to protect that church. I fought tooth and nail to keep it ours. It was a crumbling ruin, but we were proud of it.

The memorialisation feels like mockery. What are they trying to memorialise? What has been lost is not theirs to mourn. The church was ours and they took it from us, and they have the gall to say that they lost something in the years that we were the ones occupying it. It was our right! To take what we had and defend our neighbourhood, that was our right. No one else was trying to look after the place, the police and the city officials had long since given up on the Row.

The Church sits now in the shadow of the Phillips Building, a goliath of a black and orange skyscraper that dominates the Stilwater skyline. The Phillips Building is the Ultor headquarters, and they want to make sure you can always see them. They funded the rebuilding of the Row, and they want to make everyone know it. The road leading up to the Church is four lanes wide and lined on either side with flags showing off the Stilwater city crest alongside the Ultor company logo, as if the two are halves of the same coin. Ultor billboards are all over the neighbourhood, branding their mark into every inch of the place so you can never dare to forget it. A BRIGHTER FUTURE AND A BETTER LIFE, their slogan claims. The future they’ve built is definitely brighter – it’s so dazzlingly bright that I’m blinded. Or maybe that’s just from the rage.

The Church was sacrosanct not because it was holy; it was an ordinary building, we the children played in it, we can hardly claim the refurbishment was an act of iconoclasm. It was precious because of what it meant to us. I wonder sometimes what happened to the bodies in the graveyard. Were they moved, to the bigger graveyard in the north of the city, next to the rich people’s suburban mansions? Or were they just paved over, buried under layers of concrete and tarmac, like the underground buildings in the Red Light district? It feels more egregious than the other crimes, even if we had little respect for the graveyard ourselves. People used to have fights out there, in ritualistic bonding activities, and half the gravestones were broken from our own bullets.

I say ‘people’ like I wasn’t one of them, and Johnny didn’t once nearly kick my teeth in out there amongst the tombstones. That kind of thing just felt natural in Saint’s Row. It probably doesn’t make sense to outsiders. It doesn’t make sense now they overthrew the neighbourhood and made it into something hollow, and empty. I couldn’t imagine behaving that way in the courtyard of the Memorial Church, our behaviour turned into something unwanted and vile, a blight on their glass paradise.

The change in Stilwater was less natural progression and more a like a sudden neon-clad viral infestation, eating through the bones of the city and making it flourish into hideous impractical new growths. You can stand on the river opposite Saint’s Row, on the pier in Downtown, and it very nearly looks pretty at night. When it’s too dark to make out the buildings themselves, all you can see is the sweeping orange spotlights around the leviathan Phillips Building, the way the millions of glass windows reflect in the river, and it looks nice. Certainly, better than it’s ever looked in the past. In the light of day, the old city looks grimy and unpleasant, the ugly practicality of the old architecture awful in contrast to Ultor’s garish new renovations. I’d say you can understand why someone would want to remodel the rest of Stilwater, but I’d be caught dead before I was seen sympathising with Ultor.

Saint’s Row is pretty from the outside, from the faraway side of the river, but it’s worthless within. There’s nothing worth reclaiming, and even if we called it ours, it never would be again. Beauty, when it does not hold the promise of happiness, has no right to exist, but we can’t tear down the billboards, the skyscrapers, the Phillips Building and find what we used to own beneath the shell. The Saint’s Row we called home is gone. Five years ago, we started in the Row and grew outwards. It was a struggle, but it was a war we were willing to wage. Now we are forever outside Saint’s Row looking in. It is a white void of land that is untouched and untouchable by the likes of us.

[a-bittersweet-life]

Creative Inspiration: Sculpting Time, Essays on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

Sculpting Time, “a major retrospective of all seven films by the true master of cinema,” presents a collection of essays that examine the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and offer captivating and refreshing insights into the impact and significance of Tarkovsky’s filmmaking career: One of world’s most visionary, celebrated and influential filmmakers, Andrei Tarkovsky made just seven features before his tragically early death at the age of 54. Characterized by metaphysical and spiritual explorations of the human condition, each film is an artistic masterpiece of extraordinary visual beauty and stand as enduring classics of world cinema.

Ivan’s Childhood

by Lanre Bakare, Deputy Arts Editor of Guardian US

Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature Ivan's Childhood (aka My Name Is Ivan) was described by the Guardian’s Philip French as “one of the great movies about the horrors of the second world war.” Based on a short story by Vladimir Bogomolov and shot in the damp bleakness of Belarus' Pripet Marshes, it's an account of the travails of the titular 12-year-old boy, who is used as a scout by the Soviets after his parents are killed by the Nazis.

Tarkovsky described Ivan--played by the unnervingly accomplished Kolya Burlaiev--as “a character created and absorbed by war,” someone whose life was in constant conflict. And it is. Apart from the strangely arresting opening scenes of him playing on a beach, Ivan and the older officers caring for him--Captain Kholin, Lieutenant Galtsev, and Corporal Katasonych--his war is presented as a never ending cycle of daily nightmares and nightly terrors where he's haunted by what has befallen him. When he plays, it's to act out the fantasy of avenging his parents, while his school yard is the war soaked marsh that surrounds the action.

The soldiers aren't fit to be parents either (there's a vague idea he might live with Katasonych after the war), and continue to use him as a scout even after his predecessors young bodies are hung from trees by the Germans. Tarkovsky said he “wanted to see the grave changes which war makes in the life of a man, in this case a very young one.”

The film introduced Tarkovsky as a director who took imagery and cinematic vividness, which was called “utterly personal and surprisingly spiritual, even transcendent” by the New Yorker, to new levels. Flashbacks to Ivan's Childhood aren't simply a way to fill in the blanks and to explain his actions, they're opportunities to put the camera where it usually doesn't venture and create moments that weren't just calling cards but a blueprint for one of cinema's most iconoclastic careers.

The horrifying well scene, when Ivan falls into the watering hole, is cinema as fever dream, while Kholin kissing the army nurse Masha as he holds her over a trench in a forest of birch trees is as beautiful as the aforementioned well scene is harrowing. As a Soviet film, Ivan's Childhood took a divergent course by placing the individual front and center. The war, although always lurking in the background, is the setting for a young boy's tragedy, one which drags the soldiers in too and forces them to contemplate their decision to keep a young child near conflict.

While other Soviet second world war films, such as The Ballad of a Soldier, captured the world that revolves around conflict--romantic or otherwise--Ivan’s Childhood forces viewers to confront the horror without flinching and in a manner never before seen.

Andrei Rublev

by Sophie Monks Kaufman, Contributing Editor at Little White Lies

Religion is no longer the heart of social life, but in 1966 Andrei Tarkovsky used the semi-biographical, medieval setting of Russian icon-painter Andrei Rublev to express a worldly Christianity that encompasses everyone, even non-believers.

Rublev (played by the craggily handsome Anatoly Solonitsyn) is an artist, a monk and a wanderer. The film is a chronicle of what he sees over a period of 24 years marshalled into eight parts. There are long sequences in which a first-time viewer may struggle to understand a scene’s significance to the overall story. This doesn’t matter. The atmosphere transmits more than any sub-plot, character or exchange. What seems like a challenging runtime contains nothing extraneous, but this is only clear in retrospect, when you cast your eye back over the meticulously crafted landscape. All that happens in the film contributes to the spirit of the artist. All that he has witnessed and endured years to him, hours to the viewer, give rise to a payoff that is as pure an illustration of redemption as anything I have ever seen. But what exactly came before? What do you watch when you watch the film?

It’s hard to write calmly or clearly about a work of filmic art which has a perspective that binds the tiny and the tremendous in endless symbiosis. Tarkovsky depicts the difficult labor that serious industry requires (the last hour shows the building of a large bronze bell), but the whole is concerned with the shape of life--showing in long gracefully shot sequences, Andrei’s encounters with naked pagans, violent royals, dogs, horses, men, women, and children.

The most infamous fact about Andrei Rublev is that you see a horse (which Tarkovsky bought from an abattoir) killed on screen. During battle, the noble beast collapses down a flight of wooden stairs, then lands on a spear--its fall caused by a bullet fired out of sight. The scene lasts less than ten seconds. The sacrifice was for a flicker of celluloid. This anecdote is indicative of the whole, grave procession, which took six years to realize. Everything is rooted in preparation that spans way beyond the film world. Everything is in black and white until it meaningfully attains color. The breadth and depth of natural vistas are so spectacular that it’s sometimes hard to concentrate on foreground conversations, although each wagging tongue is an extension of each character’s soul.

Andrei Rublev’s main stress is over his own moral value and the fate of the Russian people. There are countless faces in this film, all lingered over lovingly, whether on screen for seconds or hours. Andrei Rublev (the film and the man within the film) is about love. Not earthly love, and certainly not sexual love, but a type of fraternal kinship that finds release from personal burdens by sinking into the mud to comfort another. Andrei Rublev (the film and the man within the film) is also about the point at which, after years of bearing witness in a state of speechless despair, hope, wisdom, and talent alchemize to create an enduring work of art.

Solaris

by Jemma Desai, Founder of I Am Dora, Film Program Manager at British Council and BFI London Film Festival Programmer

Andrei Tarkovsky famously described his filmmaking as “sculpting in time.” As cinephile video essayist Kogonada reminds us in the excellent Auteur in Space, in Solaris this sculpture leads us wondering where his meaning might lie: “He [Tarkovsky] will spend five minutes following a man in a ordinary car traveling along the highway and less than two minutes showing his main character traveling through space.”

So how do we understand the meaning of Tarkovsky’s Solaris after it has been sculpted through the perspective of another passage of time: all the way to 2016? Is it the ultimate science-fiction film, an inner space epic of magnificent proportions, or an anachronism that has become pastiche of cinematic futures?Is it not about the future, or space at all and rather, about universality, the past, and memory? Is it, as writer Philip Lopate has beautifully described, about “falling in love with ghosts...the inability of the male to protect the female, the multiple disguises or ‘resurrections’ of the loved one, the inevitability of repeating past mistakes.”

A series of macho face-offs mark its journey to audiences now. Tarkovsky’s film is based on polish author Stanisław Lem’s novel of the same name. Lem famously had had little love for Tarkovsky’s elliptical version of his novel, resenting his infidelity to the source material (a complaint he later repeated on release of Steven Soderbergh’s remake in 2002). Tarkovsky later regretted any fidelity to Lem at all saying: “The rockets and space stations--required by Lem’s novel--were interesting to construct; but it seems to me now that the idea of the film would have stood out more vividly and boldly had we managed to dispense with these things altogether.”

Deeply embedded in any contemporary cineaste’s reception of Tarkovsky’s inner space epic is another takedown by Tarkovsky. Namely his criticism of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) “for being too enamored by the spectacle of the genre, for being too exotic, too immaculate” and his explicit disdain for the concept of genre in general and the West’s take on science-fiction in particular.

Some decades later, in 2009 when director Lars von Trier made what film publication Variety called his “big fat art-film fart,” Antichrist, the review from its premiere press screening in Cannes reported catcalls and boos which were particularly loud when the credits revealed a dedication to Tarkovsky.

Reading back in time had the audience of international film critics equated a reverence to Tarkovsky as a sign of the ultimate pretension? Or had Von Trier committed the ultimate sacrilege to a great Soviet martyr who had famously struggled to make the “anti-spectacle,” the “anti-2001,” the “anti-Antichrist?”

With all this macho jeering, it might be easy to think there is nothing in Solaris, or indeed in Tarkovsky, for the female spectators. At a screening of Solaris I once attended, a discussion took place afterwards on the influence of Tarkovsky and him as a “filmmaker’s filmmaker.” A question from the audience asked the panel’s thoughts on why Tarkovsky’s was so often cited by male directors as an influence. From Von Trier to Carlos Reygadas, Terrence Malick to Alexander Sokurov. Was there something that made the films resonate more meaningfully with men rather than women? It seems fascinating to think about this question now and see if the rise of feminist film theory in the years since the film was produced might have added another dimension to the meanings the film might have today.

In addition to contextualizing assumptions and myths around Tarkovsky’s isolation and difficulties with Soviet authorities, Philip Lopate also unpicks our go-to cinematic references when we watch Solaris today. Lopate cites Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1956) as a better comparative text than Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. For him, the powerful driver in the film is protagonist Kris’ guilt and grief at his wife Hari’s past suicide. On Solaris, these emotions conjure up another Hari, an apparition, seen only through the gaze of Kris’ desperation “to do anything to hold onto [an image of] her, even knowing she isn’t real.”

Lopate’s comparison to Vertigo gains special relevance when we realize that the same year Solaris was produced (1972), feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey began work on her seminal text Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (later published in 1975), where she explored the idea of the male gaze in cinema, famously unpicking this gaze through her reading of Vertigo.

The ideas in Mulvey’s text--now over 40 years old, and expanded on by many wonderful scholars of both sexes over the years--are my guide map when making my way to Solaris today. This map shows the landmarks of patriarchal critical acclaim as well trod pathways, and invites me on a less travelled path. The monument to meaning at the end of this pathway in here is Natasha Bondarchuk’s extraordinary performance as Hari: one that has gained some extraordinary resonance when in 2010 Bondarchuk revealed she had an affair with director Tarkovsky during the shoot, and attempted suicide when they split in 1972.

So when you go on the journey to Solaris, take this map with you. Make like Tarkovsky and sculpt in time to mold your perspective. Make your way through the multiple gazes on Hari, and Bondarchuck, to see them both for yourself.

Mirror

by Michael Pattison, Critic

In Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky’s legacy for unforgettable imagery finds its purest form. This intensely autobiographical work, which channels the filmmaker’s childhood memories as well as his father’s own memoirs, is structured as a dreamlike mood poem, progressing by means of associative leaps rather than a strict cause and effect logic. It helps to unshackle the images, affording them a freedom to work as standalone compositions.

For Tarkovsky, these images held deeply personal meanings, rooted to his family history as well as culturally specific notions of Russian identity. But in their startling simplicity, such images have repeatedly proven to be profoundly relatable and endlessly moving for a broad range of filmmakers and cinephiles. In Sight & Sound’s most recent “best ever films” poll, Mirror was voted 19th by critics and ninth by other directors.

The painterly compositions presented in Tarkovsky’s most challenging and rewarding film may defy explanation in narrative terms: a burning barn watched on from a family home, a woman levitating from her bed as she sleeps, a fingerprint shrinking from a tabletop. Though powerful and absorbing in themselves, such moments are only enriched by their juxtaposition. Tarkovsky weaves through this fabric in such a way that opposites don’t so much collide as merge: peacetime and war, the domestic and the social, the past and the far past.

Otherwise ordinary scenes, such as a wind gliding through trees, become strangely haunting, as if the elements are being controlled. Tarkovsky knew that the magic of memories was that they’re always half-fabricated, distorted, allowed to blur into one another like a thick soup. We are guided through this by a masterfully imaginative, rhythmically precise soundscape, in which voiceover utterances of “Papa” and “Mama” act like punctuation marks that glue the emotional meaning of the work together. Likewise, we must adjust to the inexplicable switches between sepia and color--as if this too is part of the magic.

Tarkovsky’s longstanding reputation for slow, single-take sequences is both deserved and reductive. While it’s certainly true that the Russian director has inspired whole waves of filmmakers with scenes of notable duration, he also understood as well as anyone how to mix things up. Mirror, which came at the midpoint of his career, might be approached today as the summation of two conflicting styles that run through the master’s work: complex, drawn-out long takes on the one hand, and exhilarating montage on the other.

Indeed, some of the images in Mirror are all the more beautiful for being so fleeting. And while many of them unfold in slow motion, the film itself never feels slow. Though he helped legitimize a form of filmmaking that was free from the pressure to constantly advance story, Tarkovsky grasped that brevity was the true soul of poetry. Maximizing their visceral impact, he cuts his slow-motion scenes short at the very moment they jerk to dramatic life. As when a bird crashes through a window, for instance, or when another takes flight from the hand of a dying man.

Stalker

by Chal Ravens, Writer for Fact Magazine and The Wire

Stalker contains just under 17 minutes of music--a tiny fraction of the film’s 160-minute runtime--yet its otherworldly atmosphere and subtle science-fiction twist rest on Andrei Tarkovsky and composer Eduard Artemyev’s extraordinary handling of sound. Long, disorienting sections of near-silence, echoes of classical music in the clatter of passing trains, a locomotive rhythm dissolving into eerie electronic drones--nothing is quite what it seems when you enter the Zone.

Even at the end of his career, Tarkovsky had conflicting ideas about the purpose of music in cinema. In his book Sculpting in Time, published just before his death in 1986, he emphasized how “important and precious” music had been to his films, but admitted: “In my heart of hearts I don’t believe films need music at all.” In Stalker, he attempted to resolve this contradiction, showing how the barest use of sound could be even more expressive than an emotive musical score. He directed Artemyev not to write music but to use sound to create “states and conditions” establishing the Zone’s atmosphere of unreality. Watching the film, our suspicions are raised through subtle changes--a distant river suddenly becomes audible, beckoning our three travelers, or we hear a breeze but notice the grass isn’t swaying. The laws of physics do not seem to apply in this strange territory.

Artemyev, one of Russia’s pioneers of electronic music, used the British-made Synthi 100 synthesizer to build on this alien mood. Stalker’s short musical score, first heard in the opening titles, places the long, airy drones of the Synthi 100 under a flute and an Iranian stringed instrument called a tar. This suggestion of Eastern music (particularly Indian classical music, where a tanpura provides a continuous harmonic drone underneath a sitar’s melody) adds to the sense of dislocation--we’re a long way from the sepia-toned Russian town where we first encounter the Stalker.

Artemyev’s electronic scores (including those for Solaris and Mirror) added to a wave of synthesizer-based soundtracks in the 1970s, particularly in sci-fi and horror, where their unfamiliar tones helped establish worlds where normal rules do not apply, as in A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Suspiria and the sound design of Alien, released the same year as Stalker. Tarkovsky believed electronic music had huge potential for cinema, as it could remain indistinct and indefinable, working subtly at the edge of our awareness: “The moment we hear what it is, and realize that it’s being constructed, electronic music dies.”

In Stalker he further loosens our grasp on reality by hiding fragments of famous classical pieces (”La Marseillaise,” Bach’s “Tannhäuser Overture,” Ravel’s “Bolero” and Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”) in the din of passing trains, like the everyday illusion of hearing a familiar song under the noise of a locomotive. Just as the experience of mishearing a melody shows that what we perceive as reality is always colored by our perception, so we might suspect that, in their quest for the Room, the Stalker, Writer, and Professor are really searching for themselves. On their long journey into the Zone, the rhythmic clanking of the motorized trolley dissolves into synthesized drones and metallic echoes. The camera ignores the moving wheels and much of the passing scenery, instead panning between the travelers’ faces; we seem to enter their very thoughts as they cross into the unknown. Their journey is not merely a physical effort, but a mental transformation. Tarkovsky and Artemyev’s achievement is to erase the distinction between the physical world and our inner lives.

Nostalgia

by Carmen Gray, Film Critic/Journalist

Andrei Tarkovsky made Nostalgia in Italy toward the end of a career cut short by his death from cancer. It was the first feature he made abroad, and its culturally alienated protagonist can be seen as a mirror of his own deep homesickness and longing for Russia. Tarkovsky had forged his career under the Soviet regime, but had bitterly struggled to avoid having his work suppressed by a bureaucratic studio system tasked with realizing the state’s view of cinema as a propaganda tool to indoctrinate the masses with heroic communist ideals. He alarmed the authorities with his highly intuitive, personal, and poetic approach to directing. His films, which all deal with spiritual crisis, tend towards a dream logic, incorporating visually stunning imagery with fragments of memory in a manner that defies simple, set interpretation. He did not overtly identify as a political dissident, but he found the pressure exerted by the state on his ability to create with unhampered authenticity so taxing that after going to Italy in 1982 to shoot his sixth feature, he announced he wouldn’t return. The Soviet authorities actively prevented Nostalgia from winning the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes. This obstruction only strengthened Tarkovsky’s resolve not to go back to his beloved homeland, even though his young son was there and not permitted to leave.

Tarkovsky had made autobiographical work before, his 1975 masterpiece Mirror being essentially a weave of childhood recollections set into the wider context of Russia’s tumultuous history. The fictional story of Nostalgia, which he dedicated to his mother, holds clear parallels to his own predicament of self-imposed exile. A Russian writer, also named Andrei and played by Oleg Yankovsky, has travelled to Italy to research compatriot 18th-century serf composer Pavel Sosnovsky. Andrei is suffering in the throes of a profound sense of displacement. The companionship and declared affection of his beautiful interpreter Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano) only serves as an additional strain. The tension between creative freedom and ancestral belonging troubles his thoughts and is an irreconcilable problem echoed in the fate of Sosnovsky, who had felt compelled to return to Russia despite knowing he would be enslaved again. There, he had turned to drink before committing suicide.

Tarkovsky often used rain and crackling fire in his work to create oneiric, mystically charged worlds teeming with the elemental grandeur of nature. Nostalgia plays out in ruins flooded with water with dripping walls in which indoors and outside merge; in the eerie haze of a steaming Tuscan spa; in a pool in which Andrei attempts to walk from one end to the other without letting a candle extinguish. This last act is called for by local Domenico (Erland Josephson), who may be martyr or madman and who makes an extreme stand against the catastrophic state of the modern world. A final iconic image shows Andrei lying with his dog in front of a Russian dacha, nestled inside an Italian cathedral. Tarkovsky once claimed, after all, that Russians are fatally attached to their roots.

The Sacrifice

by Tom Seymour, Editor of British Journal of Photography and Journalist

In May 1986, a month after the Chernobyl disaster, The Sacrifice won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Andrei Tarkovsky, at the age of 54, could not accept the award. He was in Paris, battling lung cancer.

The prize was collected by his son, Andrei Jr. The Soviets had waited until the recalcitrant genius was beyond cure before granting his children permission to stray beyond the Iron Curtain. Back in Russia, the award went unreported by the state media.

Tarkovsky died, in exile, later that year. And so The Sacrifice, this Dostoyevskian epic of apocalyptic grandeur, can be seen as his final farewell.

Ingmar Bergman once said: “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest director, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”

The Sacrifice seems to be the Andrei's way of returning Bergman's compliment. It was shot in the summer of 1985, on the Swedish island of Gotland (the Swedish military denied Tarkovsky access to Bergman's island of Fårö). Employing, to large effect, the Swedish language, Tarkovsky also used two of Bergman's veterans--the cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and the actor Erland Josephson. In the vein of Bergman, the film asks questions of Biblical proportions to frame a midlife crises. The Vatican includes The Sacrifice as one of 45 “great religious films,” yet it is essentially a story about a rather dysfunctional birthday party.

Josephson plays Alexander, a writer and academic of unflinching sincerity whom tells us, in an opening monologue, of humanity’s great moral failings in the authoritarian age of nuclear arms. “Humanity is on a dangerous road,” he says. “We are living like savages.”

Quite a way to kick off one’s birthday. We meet him in his remote, spartan home on the banks of the sea, joined by his wife Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), her teenage daughter Martha (Filippa Franzén), and their young son (Tommy Kjellqvist), referred to only as Little Man, and whom cannot speak. Two housemaids hover in the background, and he is visited by two friends whose provenance remains uncertain.

The roll of thunder is heard in the skies overhead, and then the thunderous shudder of military aircraft passing by. We hear mysterious cries, faraway in the night. Then a voice on the radio intones with words that shake the party; a nuclear holocaust is imminent, the world is about to end. Only a deal with God, an anti-Faustian-pact, holds the chance of salvation.

In One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, a documentary about Tarkovsky from another cult cineaste, the late French director Chris Marker, we are given access to quiet, revertant footage of the great man brought low with sickness, greeting his family after years apart. Marker's film contextualizes this with, seven months hence, backstage filming of The Sacrifice. Such sunlit, shimmery footage of Tarkovsky--already ill, exactingly and, in his own way, joyously planning the film's climatic end--is a lovely foil to this weighty, portentous film.

For it is possible to read The Sacrifice as a metaphor for Tarkovsky’s own state of being. Six years earlier, he seemed to foretell the Chernobyl disaster with Stalker, which takes place in an abandoned, desolate expanse called The Zone. Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa Tarkovskaya and Anatoli Solonitsyn, the lead actor in Stalker, all died from a comparable type of lung cancer (Vladimir Sharun, the film’s sound designer, claimed the director and cast were exposed to lethal carcinogens by the production’s proximity to a chemical plant). When he shot The Sacrifice, he must have known the end was in sight.

In the opening act of The Sacrifice, Alexander helps his son plant a tree by the sea. Without speaking, the small boy listens to his father’s instructions--if the tree is watered, every day, it will become something larger than ourselves. It will outlast us, and in that act, a small part of the world will change.

And so, in the final moments of The Sacrifice, we see Little Man, now a bit bigger, carefully watering the sapling, still fragile but steadily growing, winding its roots into the earth.

What a way to sign off. That maybe, in the act of dedicating oneself to small tasks, in the embrace of sacrifice, we might find our chance to build a legacy.

[dustedmagazine]

2016/2020: Patrick Masterson

If what you came to read was my 2020 wrapped, here: Yves Tumor’s Heaven to a Tortured Mind was my favorite album. HAAi’s Put Your Head Above the Parakeets was my favorite EP. Oleksandr Yurchenko and Svitlana Nianio’s Lichy Do Sta Symphony No. 1 was my favorite reissue. Overmono’s take on Rosalía’s “A Palé” was my favorite remix. Protomartyr’s “Processed by the Boys” was my favorite video. Equiknoxx’s Vinyl Factory set was my favorite mix. Lil Baby’s “The Bigger Picture” was song of the summer. The best show I saw was SuperKnova at Chicago’s Sleeping Village in February. My Spotify account doesn’t reflect any of this.

What follows is an unused essay for The Believer’s Distancing series that Dusted alumnus Daniel Levin-Becker ran for most of 2020. The idea behind the column was to write something personal about an album that took you to a space away from quarantine’s confines. I’d intended it as a kind of spiritual companion or prequel to the essay of mine that ran in May, but I think it functions as an endnote for this year just as much as it would’ve for 2016, when I sat out Dusted’s year-end features. Call it making up for lost time.

As I get older, I’m often reminded that music doesn’t save and it doesn’t really heal the way I once thought it could — but it does let you feel, which is to say it lets you know you’re alive. In a year where government ineptitude and personal irresponsibility actively worked against that, music took on added importance for its normality. Artists kept releasing. I kept listening. The ritual remained. I don’t know what 2021 brings the same way I didn’t know what 2017 had in store, but I do know what I’ll be doing until my ears finally fail me. Over my dead body is right. Thanks for reading.

- - -

Distancing #XX: Rojus (Designed to Dance)

Hitler, man. Fucking unbelievable.

I laugh at the thought, leaned back and following the shadow of an umbrella to shield my sunburned skin from further exposure on the main floor of Larcomar, an open-air mall carved into Lima’s Pacific cliffside, watching paragliders take off at regular intervals and nursing a bottle of Cusqueña in the final idle hours of my trip down here. My youngest brother is across the table, sunglasses on, shaking his head, then nodding like the Alonzo Mourning gif as he nurses his own: Yeah, we did do this, didn’t we. We met Hitler in Peru.

Well, sort of. That’s how I’m going to lead off the story of what I did for Christmas 2016, anyway. The truth is less sordid, no zombies: We’d been walking aimlessly the evening before around Miraflores, a neighborhood that never seemed to end and stopped at the sandwich shop La Lucha. I ordered a jamon y queso (relearning Spanish on the fly, needless to say, has its limits) and was rung up by Wilson, a very ordinary name, and served up by Jitler, which… I don’t know, maybe I’m the only person in line who gave it a second thought, but say that with a Spanish accent and it sure seems like something you, as a parent with even a vague awareness of the last 100 years on earth, wouldn’t risk naming your kid unless you were looking to prompt a lot of questions already answered by your kid’s name. Right? No fucking way? Unbelievable.

I tip the bottle back and think over how that hasn’t even been the best part of this trip. The best part, truly, is the bread. If I asked my friends to name three things they know about Peru, they’d say Machu Picchu or the Incas, probably ceviche, maybe coffee or pisco sours. They aren’t wrong, but there’s a more right answer: I haven’t had bad bread the entire time I’ve been in this country. From paninis to pizzas to hot dog rolls (what can I say, I panicked staring down a sizable menu and a dog just sounded right in the moment), every loaf or slice or roll has smelled tremendous and tasted better. I’m sure of it now: There really is something to breadmaking by the sea, as any defender of a New York bagel will tell you.

Is Peru the only country I’ve never eaten bad bread in? I take another sip, can’t remember.

On the other hand, why is every napkin here half-sized and single ply? It feels like you have to fight for each perforation of napkin no matter the buttery goodness of your bread. Maybe paper is just valued differently or people are neater here, but I’m sure of this, too: There has to be a reason the same way there’s a reason the bread is good and the straws are so big and the restaurant and bar hours are strange and only one guy does all the Liga 1 commentary and you can’t check into a flight until three hours before, but security for it closes two hours before and the gate is 15 minutes before. I have a lot more than Conversation in the Cathedral to read when I get back, I think. There’s a lot to be explained.

For example, what I’m even doing in Peru for Christmas to begin with. It started as a joke, I’ll tell people: I got hired in May for a job after being unemployed for seven of the previous 13 months. It took nine years, but this was finally the position I’d wanted since I graduated, the role I felt I was put on this planet to fulfill, and in this aspect of my life at least, I was relieved. My friend had planned a New Year’s Eve wedding and the logistics of bumming around friends’ couches or staying at my parents’ house for more than a week didn’t quite add up, so I told my brother, wouldn’t it be funny to go somewhere weird for Christmas instead? I’ve never been to Calgary or Albuquerque or Little Rock. Then it was Cuba, then Argentina, then Peru — hey, my brother says, I’ve got a friend who knows the country and is all about us going down there.

We check the flights. It’s laughably affordable for us both.

Like a lot of my trips in recent years, then, the logistics escalate quickly from theoretical to real: I play around with dates, times, connecting flights and strange airports in an effort to game the system and get a little bit extra trimmed off the cost. We commit to plane tickets, a hotel, itineraries. He gets phone numbers of people his friend knows down there. Where in Newark do you want to meet up before the flight? How far can we go once we’ve arrived? Is there anything we collectively need to see? Isn’t this dumb and delightful? And that’s it, crucial questions answered, pieces in place: I’m visiting Lima.

Everyone should travel like that, I think, watching another paraglider set off. In one way, I’m thinking about all the ridiculous pieces it took to put me here. In another, though, my mind is as far away as we are from Chicago. I’m stalling, trying not to think about what’s happened back home. Two weeks before, I was in Charlotte enduring grade school friends’ condolences like it was a funeral instead of the wedding it actually was. “I heard about what happened.” “I’m really sorry to hear about you and.” “I was looking forward to finally.” And so on. For someone who usually has so much to gab about, I still haven’t worked out how to say what I’m really feeling. It’s crushing and confusing when you think you’ve found the most powerful relationship in your life and effortlessly reached a kind of platonic ideal, the kind of intimacy most people go their whole lives not knowing — and then, slowly, you find it’s less true than you imagined, find something more powerful. Nothing can prepare you for what you can’t ignore. I have no idea what institutional oppression is like and I’ve done nothing but benefit from a system designed to serve me, so I feel too guilty to admit to anyone I’m an emotional wreck when their grandparents are dying and their worlds are changing and we’ve just elected a self-important cartoon for president, but there is always a “but” with stuff like this. I remember the bar in the hours before I left for Newark where I was tired and thirsty and tired of being thirsty, the train ride to O’Hare, pausing to look back before I passed on through security. There is always a reason.

All of that was the old world, I think to myself. This, though? This right here? This is the new. I think back to the intramural soccer matches we watched after downing the sandwiches and moving on; for all we know, we might’ve been watching a fourth division game out there. Beautiful palm trees, incredible summer weather, pull-ups on the beach, pisco sours with the hotel staff as a transgender game show host soundtracked our Christmas countdown, Brenda and Renzo and Callao and Christmas day turkey with a family I didn’t know and bubblegum soda and Barranco beer and Cerro San Cristobal and cherimoya slushies. Typhoon evacuation signs. The modern art museum. Lanes and turn signals as suggestions. Far away clears my head.

I know what I’m doing even when I don’t always know I know what I’m doing and God has that gotten me in some trouble, but I know what I’m weak for and I know what my strengths are and I think I know how to play it better yet. This is where I start to get myself correct, stop being my own worst enemy. I have a plan. I’m going to straighten things out and get my mind and life in order and all this pent up fear, this sadness and disappointment and self-defeating anxiety, is going to show itself out. I exhale in relief at the anticipation of it: Yes, 2016 was a bad year, maybe my worst, a year I never want to go through again — but 2017? No, I can feel it as “Blush” rolls around in my head and I watch another paraglider set off from the cliff and out toward the sun, the sea: 2017’s going to be a good year. A really good year.

Hitler. Fucking unbelievable. I take another sip and laugh again. What do you think, I say, one more and then we go? Rory nods. One more.

Rojus (Designed To Dance) by LEON VYNEHALL

[slut-for-fandoms]

Love can be a miracle, darling

Pairings: Harry x reader in the beginning, Draco x reader in the end

Word count: 2281

Requested:  Hey, can you write a Harry Potter x Reader where they have been dating for a while but the reader caught Harry cheating on her with Cho and they have a huge fight. After that, she keeps crying and Draco tries to cheer her up and they kiss. Pleaseeeee <3 by @partyiinthedungeons

A/N: I hope you like it and sorry for posting it so late. I did my best to finish it today because of my full schedule. Sorry for the mistakes because i am sure there are and let me now what you think ♥ 

Being Harry Potter’s girlfriend had it advantages and disadvantages. The good part was the loyal friends you got by your side and the bad…well the bad are the slytherins always trying to offend you somehow. Well, they were mostly hostage toward Harry not me but the fact I was ready to kill everybody who had said something bad about him was enough for a way the others to mockery him.

But besides the bad attitude we got in fifth year, I was more than happy to be with him. Half of the school thought he was a liar, a boy wanting an attention and I were just a chick using him to become famous and so on. However, Harry never paid so much attention to those words but I did. I tried not to but it was hurting to hear such lies. Harry was so nice to stay hours after curfew to calm me down, to say he loved me and that’s all that mattered. He even said that if I wanted we would break up so he could see my smile again. I, of course, punched him slightly always exclaiming that he was much more important than some stupid students.  

We were going to Hogsmeade on dates, drinking butterbeers, shopping at Zonko’s, we basically tried everything there for such a short period. I did my best to stay focused when helping him with his homework but usually ended making out on the sofa in the common room. That led to an angry Hermione who didn’t skip an opportunity to remind us we were falling behind with it. But let’s come to the present where the interesting part is.

Today was just an ordinary Saturday. We had finally finished another rough week. Early in the morning I woke up and after dressing up, I headed towards the library. There was an hour till breakfast so I decided to spend it while searching information for Snape’s essay.

“Hey (Y/N)! Why are you awake so early?”, Hermione’s voice ranged through the empty library.

“I just want to get something done. I don’t want to fall and spending time with Harry isn’t helping me.”, smiling I sat down next to her.

“You managed to find the truth! Only for that I will lend you my notes, but don’t tell the boys.”, we both laughed and after promising I would not each one of us continued her work.

“If we don’t hurry we will miss the breakfast. Come on.”, I packed my things and with my friend we exited the room going straight to the Great Hall.

There weren’t a lot of people but our boys were already on the Gryffindor table. Harry was reading something while Ron was eating…a lot, as usual. A smirked appeared on my face as I went to my boyfriend as quiet as I could. He was facing me with his back so I used this opportunity to cover his eyes, well specifically his glasses. The boy jumped due to being surprised. His hands left the newspaper and touched mine trying to identify the person messing with him.

“(Y/n)!”, my boyfriend exclaimed seconds later and turned around to face me. There was a smile on his face which caused me to smile, too. I sat down next to him placing a kiss on his cheek.

“Don’t tell me you are still reading those lies.”, I took the newspaper from his hands but Hermione did the same to me, making the research instead of us.

“Well, you were late, so we had to take it.”

“You two are disgusting.”, Ron noted as he continued to eat.

“You will be too when you find a girl, oh my pardon, if you find a girl.”, Hermione retorted as she closed the paper and put it in her back.

We all laughed while Ron gave Granger a dead look.

“What are we doing tonight?”, although it seemed as an ordinary question, it wasn’t. Since some weeks, we were training spells in out secret group, or so called D.A.

“We have a studying session at 8 pm. as always (Y/n), how can you forget about it?”

“Oh, sorry Harry but when I see you I forget everything.”, we usually played this game of being so in love only to make no suspicions but we did enjoyed it, it always amused us.

After we finished our lunch we went to the lake. The weather was fantastic and neither one of us wanted to spend the whole day locked in the castle. We sat down next to a tree trying to stay in its shadow and began doing our homework. I can’t say we desired to do it but there was a trip to Hogsmeade tomorrow and I didn’t want to miss it because of stupid two meters long essays. Harry and Ron were complaining instead of working, Hermione used her energy to quarrel with Ron while I and Harry laughed at their ‘family problems’. The time was passing by and soon dinner came. After we were done, we agreed to go to the Required room separated so Umbridge won’t be able to catch us.

“What are you going to teach me today, Mr. Potter?”, I teased my boyfriend as we were heading towards our wanted direction.

“Someone is eager for knowledge? You should spend less time with Hermione.”

“Oh, shut up!”, I punched him slightly and laughed, “You are just jealous that I’m coping with school, while you might be failing.”

“That huts. That’s it! You made me cry, what kind of a girlfriend are you?”

“Come here and let me kiss you, you’ll feel better.”, leaning closer we shared a kiss that would had definitely turned out in a heated one if it wasn’t somebody’s cough to make us separate.

“Hey there lovebirds! You can continue that later, we have a work now.”, Fred Weasley smirked and entered the Required room. We followed his actions.

This time Harry showed us some others spells. I was with Neville who surprisingly was doing much better than me. I was doing well to be honest, practicing with Ginny, Ron, Harry, but maybe like 30 minutes later I didn’t fail to notice something. Cho Chang, a ravenclaw girl Harry used to like in his fourth year, was now watching my boyfriend carefully, trying to get his attention. That made me mad and that’s why I got hit my Neville’s spell that paralyzed me for a moment.

“I hit her, I did it!”, Neville screamed at top of his lungs happily, “Sorry (Y/n).” He then came closer and helped me stand.

“No problems. I am happy you did it, Neville.”, he was so happy that I couldn’t tell him I wasn’t paying enough attention to block the spell.

No matter what I did afterwards was, to put it mildly, horrible. I tried to practice but my eyes were glancing and Cho and Harry. I knew he was helping her but I didn’t like she was doing poor just for his attention. Harry was observing everybody and when he saw my actions he came closer and gave Neville time for a rest.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?”, I could read the care in his eyes and it made me feel a little better. Besides everything Harry was with me, not with her.

“I’m fine now.”

“If you wanted to train with me you could have just asked.”

Till the end of the lesson I was actually getting more and more capable of using the new spells. Deep inside me I felt pleasure to show Cho I was better that her. When the ‘class’ was over we were heading out by three. I wanted to stay and help Harry to clean but he refused, telling I’d better go and rest. I listened to him and left the room with Hermione and a tall Hufflepuff boy. We were already on the stairs when I realized I had forgotten my barrette.

“Wait for me, I’ll be back in a minute.”, after notifying Hermione I ran upstairs.

The door was slightly open. Cursing the stupid people who left it that way I entered the room but stopped where I was. My eyes widen when I saw Harry and Cho kissing in front of me. She had put one of her hands on his face, while Harry had placed his hands on her both sides. My eyes were filled with tears by now.

“How could you?”, was the only thing my mouth let out. I felt a strange feeling in my throat, not letting me to breathe or talk anymore. Harry and Cho jumped away from each other, both looking at me as a deer looking at the headlights coming towards her.

“(Y/n), I-”

“Don’t!”

I exited the room and ran in some direction not caring where I was going. Suddenly I felt somebody grabbing my hand and spinning me around. It was Harry with his messy hair and sad face.

“Stop.”, he said softly.

“Let me go, please. Let me go!”, I managed to find my voice again and screamed at him.

“It’s not what it seems.”

“Oh, really? Because it seems you still love Cho and was messing with me the whole time!”, he didn’t know what to say, he did try but nothing came out, “Have you ever loved me, Harry? Have you?”

“Of course I have, I still do.”

“Do not lie to me! Do not!”, licking his lips, the boy was about to talk but I interrupted him, “I cannot believe you used me like this.”

“I-I didn’t, I-”

“Are you sure because stuttering like this now shows me I am right.”, I bit my lips trying to prevent the others tears to roll down my face, “Look at me, look at my eyes and say you did not use me to forget Cho or to fucking make her jealous! Look at me for god’s sake and say it!”

But the boy was still looking at his feet ashamed.

“I loved you, Harry. Everything I have ever said was true. I showed you my feelings, I gave you my heart…and for what? To be your little toy!? To be the girl you would go to if Cho didn’t like you back?! To be the second option?! Fuck you Harry!”, I screamed at his face, spun around on my heels and attempted to get away from him.

“No, (Y/n), wait!”

“Don’t you dare touch me again or call me, Potter. Don’t you dare!”, this time my voice was low, almost calmly but I felt how he trembled from it. I didn’t mean to threaten him but his presence was no longer wanted around me.  

After minutes of walking I ended in the Astronomy tower. I sat down and let myself cry out all the pain inside me. How could he do this to me? I believed him when everybody thought he was a liar, I was beside him every time he was bullied…and what did I get? A knife in the back! As I was sobbing a voice spoke beside me.

“I see there are troubles in heaven, huh?”

“What do you want Draco? I am not in the mood for your stupid jokes”, but as soon as I turned to face him, his expression changed. With some steps he came next to me and kneeled down.

“Hey, hey. I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was that serious.”, he spoke with a soft and caring voice, something I’d never thought I would hear from him.

“Don’t act as you care.”

“I do care if you haven’t noticed, darling.”

Looking at him, especially at his eyes, some moments ran through my mind. He had always been good to me, never saying bad about me, helping me in Potions, not gloating when I fail… For the first time I felt I could tell him what happened, what I was feeling and he would care about it. All those small details were showing something deeper and complicated to be explained.

“I-Ha-Harry cheated on m-me.”, saying those words out made me sob again. Draco wrapped his hand around me, getting me closer for a hug.

“Hey, look at me.”, with his forefinger he lifted my chin up so now I was facing him, “He doesn’t deserve your tears.” He remover some of them, “He doesn’t deserve your love. You have to stand up, smile and show him what he has missed. Show him you are happier without him. You are the one who deserves better – somebody who would do anything for you, and by anything I really mean anything. You are so kind, funny, just amazing. I cannot explain it but each time I see you, my mood changes. I become more gleeful just because of hearing your voice, laugh or seeing the spark of joy in your eyes. You deserve somebody that can make you feel the same way you make me feel… ”

Without thinking I leaned closer and connected our lips. The kiss was salty due to my tears but was enough to make me feel butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t feel it only with my body; I felt it with my soul. It warmed me up, made me feel loved. That kiss wasn’t like the kisses I’d shared with Harry. It was kind of passionate but showing things that could hardly be explained even from the hand of a skillful poet. It was something not to read about but to feel it.

“I’ve never thought you could be showing such emotions.”

“Love makes miracles with everybody, darling.”, he smiled and leaned for another kiss.  

[clausvonbohlen]

Where I am; a manifesto, memoir, and auto-analysis.

I haven’t posted on here for a long time. This was intended to be a brief update, but has turned into something much longer, a sort of summary of the last 10 years. Perhaps that’s fitting, given that I turned 40 a few months ago. It will, however, require more commitment from you, my cherished reader.

 But first, a disclaimer of sorts. This is about the ups, but also – and perhaps primarily – about the downs. And yet I know I am lucky. Indeed, I won a sort of birth lottery: I am white, male, educated, and have never suffered from lack of anything. If you don’t think that I should have downs, or if you think that if I have them I should not write about them, then you should stop reading here. This has been my experience, I promise to relate it to you with as much honesty as I am capable of. If that is not enough for you, then we cannot be friends.

 This is also, in a sense, the story of my continuing search for happiness. When I say ‘happiness’, I mean it in the deepest sense – a life that is fulfilling, and meaningful, and conducive to continued growth and flourishing. There is nothing unique about that; it’s a journey we are all on, in one way or another. And I also feel a certain duty; if I, with all my advantages, can’t be happy in that deep sense, then what hope is there for those less fortunate? And if no one can be happy, then what, really, is the point of human existence on earth? Is that too grandiose an extrapolation? I don’t think so.

  In fact, I do now feel that I am on the right path, but I lost it for a while, and I could lose it again. That’s what I now intend to write about.

  I am not the first to have been at a loss, and particularly not at this stage. Seven centuries ago, Dante Alighieri wrote:

‘Nell’ mezzo del camin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.’

  When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.

  In my case, I began to find the path harder to follow about ten years ago. At that time I was living in London, writing, going out, occasionally hooking up with girls, going to rugby training during the week and playing matches on weekends. For years, rugby had been a big part of my life. I was only ever competent, but since my work life was solitary, I loved the team side of it, and the physicality too. But then, to my surprise, I found myself enjoying it less and less. The training was predictable, the games often disappointing; only the friendships kept me going.

 My life in London also felt predictable and uninspiring. I had finished one novel and had not yet started on a second. I was serving part time as a Special Constable – a volunteer Police Officer- in the borough of Wandsworth. It was generally dull work, though I had signed up for it in the hope of excitement, and to get me out of my apartment, which was also my place of work. Then the opportunity arose for me to change tack and work for a German film director in Los Angeles, as his assistant. I took it. From one week to the next, I handed in my police badge, hung up my rugby boots, and moved to America.

  I have recently been listening to some podcasts by the psychologist Richard Alpert, later known as Ram Dass. My experience of ceasing to enjoy playing rugby – a very small thing, in itself – gave me my first inkling of the much deeper changes that he describes more dramatically as ‘the dark night of the soul’. This is  from a talk he gave:

‘And you will go through a period, some of you have already done it, where you are horrified by your dying, the dying of rushes you were previously getting from life, that you tried to hold on to something that was giving you a rush before, because you couldn’t ever conceive that it wouldn’t always give you a rush, but it doesn’t, and the lag between when you stopped having the rush and when you are willing to cop to it, see, that’s how bad you want to get done. A lot of us are clinging to rushes we are already done having, partly because we don’t know what to do next, or partly because we are afraid of what happens next, because “lest ye die ye cannot be born again”… and that is the “dark night of the soul” in St. John of the Cross, where you have lost the fun of the world and you haven’t fully tasted the divinity.’

  There is a lot more in that talk, much of it still mysterious to me. But I would have to say, other ‘rushes’ then started to fall away too. Drinking. The Cresta Run. One night stands. Not to say that they couldn’t be enjoyable on occasion, but there was certainly no reliability in it. Not as there once had been, and not as other people seemed to experience.

  Recently I had a very clear perception of the diminishing returns from ‘rushes’. I was walking home here in Athens, having smoked a joint. The whole way, I was focussed on the next sensory pleasure that I could give myself. I got home and drank a glass of wine. Then I ate some chocolate. Then I surfed the web. The dissatisfactory quality of each gratification was almost immediately evident; the pleasure lasted just moments, and as soon as it was over, I was casting around for the next one. The balance between enjoyment and dissatisfaction has shifted over the years, or maybe I now see it with greater clarity. In any case, I couldn’t help wondering, how long will I continue with this pattern? How long until the dissatisfaction outweighs the enjoyment? And what then?

  A Western psychologist reading this might think, aha, sounds like you were/ are depressed. But I don’t think Richard Alpert would have said that. Or, if he had, he would have attributed very little significance to the term. It might be an accurate description – in terms of box-checking - of a certain pattern of feeling and behaving, but it says very little about the meaning and deeper purpose of that pattern. And I am sure that there is both meaning and purpose.

  But to resume the narrative – the narrative of my life! – I moved to Los Angeles and very quickly realised that I was completely disenchanted with both the industry I was working in, and the city I had moved to. I met many talented, attractive, successful people, but they all seemed so unhappy, so anxious, so neurotic. In fact, the film industry and the city – hard for me to differentiate the two – seemed to suffer from a collective neurosis. I wanted to understand it.

  At the same time, I had started to realise that the traditional goals were not going to provide me with the ‘rushes’ I had lost. I came across a quote by Helen Keller that resonated with me:

  ‘True happiness is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.’

And with that in mind, I decided to become a psychotherapist. I applied to graduate school in San Francisco, quit my job in Los Angeles, and embarked on a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology six months later.

  At first, it was exciting to embark upon a new field of study, in a new city, with a sense of purpose. However, little by little, the disenchantment set in. Not so much with the absence of rushes, but rather with a sense that the material I was being taught, and the perspective I was being taught it from, were misguided. The information was accurate as far as it went, but it was based on a contracted view of what human life could be. I have written about this disenchantment in other places  (e.g. my blog at that time, www.icanseealcatraz.blogspot.com). Eventually I found a happier home at Saybrook University, formerly the Humanistic Psychology Institute of California State University. Here I was able to take courses in the Psychology of Shamanism, Eastern Psychology and Existential Psychology, amongst others. I was encouraged to look at human life from a broader perspective.

  I graduated with an MA in Existential, Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, then I went to work for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, a Palestinian NGO in the Gaza Strip. But with only rudimentary Arabic, I soon reached the limit of my usefulness. Following the kidnapping and murder of one of the very few other non-UN foreigners there, I moved to Beirut, to study Arabic.

  My short time in Gaza made a big impression on me. Despite the poverty, the nightly sound of drones overhead, the sonic booms of Israeli fighter jets on daytime fly-bys, and the fact that ordinary Gazans cannot leave their tiny strip of land (no airport or port, closed borders), the people struck me as happier, on the whole, than the average American (yes, yes) in San Francisco. That impression deserves an essay in itself, and it is something I rarely talk about, since it is easily misinterpreted. It also has to do with the bonding effect of shared suffering and a common enemy (similar to the Blitz in that respect), as well as more tightly knit families, and minimal materialism. But in short, and as idealistic as this may sound, it made me realise that human relationships make people happier than constant material consumption ever can.

  When I first arrived in Beirut, I taught English to Palestinian students from camps in Lebanon, through an NGO called Unite Lebanon Youth Project (ULYP). Then I heard about a vacancy for a full time teacher of English Literature, and also Philosophy, at Brummana High School, in the mountains above Beirut. I applied, went for an interview, and was offered the job.

  I worked at Brummana for two years. Some of those experiences are detailed elsewhere in this blog. But in short, I was teaching subjects that I found interesting, to students that I liked. I had a lot of freedom and was even allowed to design and teach a Creative Writing elective that turned out to be more like group therapy, with some poems and short stories on the side. I was living in a beautiful place, with sweeping views over Beirut and the Mediterranean. I was doing the kind of work that is generally thought to be worthwhile, to accord with Keller’s ‘worthy purpose’, and to be fulfilling. And yet, having settled into the daily and weekly routine, it was not long before I once again started to feel restless.

  I left Brummana, and Lebanon at the same time. I was not sure what I wanted to do next, but I thought that a cure for my perpetual restlessness might be a long walk, so I walked with Finny – my Lebanese foundling dog – from Salzburg to Santiago de Compostela, along the old medieval pilgrims’ route. The walk took us six months, and I wrote about it here – www.onehundredwordsaweek.blogspot.com

  The walk gave me plenty of time to think. I limited my access to email and internet to once a week. One email I received along the way was from an old school friend, organizing a dinner for a group of us who had left school exactly twenty years before. It made me think back to that period of my life, and these lines from the Frank O’Hara’s poem ‘Animals’ came to mind:

  Have you forgotten what we were like then

when we were still first rate,

and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth?

 I was reminded of certain mornings as a teenager, perhaps during the summer holidays, when my body hummed with energy, and when the future filled me with a sense of tremendous excitement.

  And I thought of Housman’s lines from section XV of ‘A Shropshire Lad’, lines that more accurately reflected my own experience of recent years:

  Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows;

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

  That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went,

And cannot come again.

  I had hoped that the pilgrimage would allow me to work out what I wanted to do with my life. It didn’t. Or at least, not in any long-term way. However, it did make me think that after almost a decade away from the UK, I should return there to spend some time with my parents, and also to put some energy into maintaining and renovating parts of our family home in Sussex. It is an old house with a lovely garden and I have memories of a very happy childhood there. But it had started to look a little neglected, perhaps more obvious to me since I would just see it once or twice a year. The place has given me a lot, and I felt a responsibility to it.

  So I found myself back in a place that I loved, channeling my energy into a project that felt worthwhile, and spending some time with parents who will not be around for ever. Ideas of nostalgia were still in my head, but not in the way they had been during the walk. Now I became aware of the second meaning of the term – not homesickness so much as a more literal ‘nostos’ and ‘algos’, the pain of returning home (an insight that I owe to Rory Dunlop and his very enjoyable novel ‘What We Didn’t Say’). Because I did now feel pain; home was not the same, my parents were not the same, and nor was I.

  At first I minimized all this. People close to me endorsed my renovation project, and my decision to spend time with my parents. I knew I was lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful place. But the problem was that I was struggling to see the beauty, or feel the luck. Wherever I looked I just saw problems, endless menial maintenance tasks with no end in sight, like one of those bridges – The Golden Gate, the Severn - where as soon as the painters finish painting one end they need to start at the beginning again.

  What’s more, I was drinking a couple of cocktails every evening, then passing out as soon as I lay down. But I would wake up feeling exhausted and achy, and my tiredness would only increase throughout the day. I also felt a tightness in my throat, and a general lack of enthusiasm. I thought I might have contracted a virus, so I went to see my GP. He did some blood tests but couldn’t find anything wrong.

  Throughout my life, books and literature have always provided a refuge. But no longer: I was struggling to concentrate, and I wasn’t enjoying any of the books that I picked up, despite the fact that they often came highly recommended.

  In a last ditch attempt to lift myself out of this slough of literary despond, I made a larger order of carefully chosen titles, from Amazon. The first book to arrive, clearly addressed to me, was ‘What Matters Most’, by Dr. James Hollis. Bizarrely, I had never heard of it. There was no receipt, and when I viewed my account online, I found no record of having ordered it.

  That night, most unusually, I woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I picked up the book and started reading. I read for 3 hours straight; it felt as if the book had been written specifically for me. Dr. Hollis’ thesis, based on his Jungian training, is that there is something beyond the Freudian id-ego-superego structure, and that is the soul. The soul needs to grow, needs to feel that it is expanding and developing, and if that does not happen, then sooner or later we will experience symptoms – lack of energy, frustration, anxiety, indecision, and physical ailments too.

  Despite the somewhat pop-y title, Hollis is a serious Jungian analyst. From his perspective, the book’s mysterious arrival would not be an accident, but an instance of synchronicity. The following morning, when I woke, I saw a whatsapp message on my phone from an old friend with whom I communicate about once a month. He told me he had just woken from a dream in which I had recommended a book to him. I told him of my experience of the night, and recommended Hollis’ book to him.

  ‘What Matters Most’ made me realise that my malaise had a meaning, that my body was the means through which the soul and the unconscious were trying to communicate with me, and that those deepest parts of me were frustrated because they did not feel they were growing. Most people my age are married and have families; many have their own businesses. These are all creative acts. I, on the other hand, was trying to patch up my childhood, to preserve my parents’ vision, and – essentially - to hold onto the past. The book also drew my attention to the way that it can often be fear – fear of change, fear of failure, fear of what other people will think – that holds us back from being all that we can be.

  In the summer, I attended an Ayahuasca retreat in Scotland, something I was quite apprehensive about, since I have long questioned the value of de-contextualised shamanism. But the retreat was guided by an inspiring individual who was himself deeply rooted in a specific tradition, and it rekindled my own interest in plant medicine and Amazonian shamanism. I felt that the time had come to delve deeper into that world, so I interviewed the shaman about where it might still be possible to find uncontaminated shamanic practices in the Amazon (without risking one’s life), and based on his information, I planned a trip for the end of the year.

  I went to Peru with my mind open; I wanted to see whether it would be possible for me to communicate with the plants in the way that curanderos and vegetalistas describe. I took Ayahuasca twice a week over a period of two months, as described in previous posts on this blog, but the plants did not communicate with me. Or, at least, that is what I thought at the time. They certainly did not teach me their healing and medicinal purposes, nor the songs through which this information is said to be relayed. But, in restrospect, I think they may have had a message for me, namely that it was not the right time for me to explore that world. I needed to ground myself in this world more firmly first, to feel that I had a home of my own, an Archimedean point.

  My Ayahuasca trips are rarely very visual, but one mental image that kept coming back to me was of an empty white room, with a view of the blue sky and the blue sea. At the time, I thought this was probably a reaction to my life in Sussex where, in addition to feeling lethargic and unwell, I had felt oppressed by ‘stuff’ – the accumulated clutter of my lifetime, and my parents’ lifetime, and the clutter of previous generations. So many things, and they weighed on me, as a sense of family history also weighed on me. The empty white room was the opposite of that: a space in which to let go, to de-clutter, and to create.

  I was able to experience a pared down, de-cluttered life in a Zen monastery in Japan some months later, and I found it very rewarding. But it was brutal too – the monastery was freezing, I was not allowed to wear socks or a hat, and the obligatory 4.30am morning meditation was followed by hours of floor cleaning, with a cold wet rag. But I soon felt calmer than I had done for years, though I also realised that I was not ready to make a longterm commitment to that kind of a life, though at some future point, who knows.

  Back in Europe some months later, I joined a few friends on a short hiking holiday in Crete, inspired by the Patrick Leigh-Fermor and Stanley Moss’ kidnapping of the German General Kreipe in 1942, and their subsequent march across the mountainous centre of the island. General Kreipe had been dragging his feet,  expecting to be rescued at any moment. On the first morning of his abduction he observed the sunrise on Mt. Ida and quoted the first verse of Horace’s ‘Ode to Thaliarcus’, describing a similar sunrise on Mt. Soractus in the Apennines. When he had finished, Patrick Leigh-Fermor – a classicist blessed with an excellent memory - quoted the remaining verses. The General was impressed and stopped dragging his feet from that point on. In his memoir, Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote, “…for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before.”

  I was blown away by the area of Crete that we were hiking through. The walk across Europe had re-sensitized me to the beauty of landscape, but these Cretan mountains were, I felt, the landscapes that I wished to get to know deeply, and one day to paint.

  I won’t pretend that I found the actual empty white room of my Ayahuasca visions, but this place definitely had the right feel. It was here that I could imagine building that white room for myself, with its view of the sea and the sky.

  I returned to the UK with a sense of excitement about the future that I had not felt for some time. I was finally finding some direction, even a sense of purpose.

  Some readers may be thinking, fine, but what about teaching? What about psychotherapy? What about helping people? Maybe you should be less selfish, maybe if you had committed to those things, you would have found that sense of purpose?

  I hear you, friend reader! But I felt I did commit, to the extent that I was capable at those times, and yet I was restless. Not despairing, but not exactly happy either. Does that matter? Should it not be enough just to feel that you are doing something worthwhile? I think it does matter. Happiness creates ripples, and if you are happy in yourself, then that will have a positive effect on all the interactions you have, and on all the people you meet. The uplifting interaction with a stranger in a supermarket may have more impact than the worthiest acts that are performed by someone who is profoundly miserable. We are not the originators of love or positivity; rather, we are conduits for those qualities, and we channel them most effectively when we are happy in ourselves.

  Happiness, in this deep sense, is not a purely selfish thing. It benefits others too, and in some mysterious way it may even shape the world we live in. So do what makes you happy, but make sure you understand the distinction between sensory gratification and real happiness.

  But isn’t the pursuit of happiness always self-defeating? We are happy until we ask ourselves whether we are happy, and then we realise we could be happier, and that makes us unhappy… Happiness is, in the words of Oliver Burkeman, a ‘delicate two-step’: aim at it too directly, and you will lose it.

  There is truth in that. But at the same time, I think that there are certain constituents of happiness that will never let us down. Two of the most important, as Freud stated, are work and love. Work, at its best, should provide a sense of purpose, and also allow us to experience a state of flow, that sense of being fully absorbed in a task. Seen in this light, work can be very similar to concentration meditation; it allows the restless mind to settle.

  To be in that state of flow and get paid for it is perhaps the holy grail. But even if we don’t get paid for it, we still need it. We might then describe it as a ‘hobby’, or perhaps it is simply unpaid work (like my mother ‘working’ in the garden), but the important thing is that we are having that experience.

  We also need to feel love, or else we become brittle and emotionally atrophied. But that need not necessarily be romantic love. We can love our friends, or music, or a pet, or nature, or God; the important thing is to remove the blockages from that channel.

  To return to my own story, I have known for some time that I need to rediscover the state of flow. My walk across Europe had reminded me of the power of landscape to move me. Crete’s rugged beauty impressed me deeply. When I was younger, I used to paint a lot. But in my 20s and early 30s, I did not find it dynamic enough. Now I think differently; the calming, meditative quality holds an appeal for me that I was not conscious of before. I made up my mind to return to Crete and devote myself to painting landscapes. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed the right thing to do.

  I remembered a piece of advice from a letter that Hunter S. Thompson wrote to  his friend Hume Logan. Logan requests career advice, to which Thompson replies: ‘…beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.’

                  When I imagine my future, I do not aspire to being surrounded by flapping assistants, chauffeured from meeting to meeting, plied with rich food and drink, signing cheques for the maintenance of houses and expensive toys. And estranged wives. No, I would much rather spend time in the landscapes that I love, building a relationship with them through meticulous observation, and recording that relationship through the act of painting. A direct relationship, not mediated through a digital screen, and – crucially – free from distractions. Hemingway said: ‘The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.’ I want to live seriously within.

  I have also been inspired by the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about an elderly Japanese sushi chef called Jiro. In my own life, I have not observed many people ageing well, by which I mean being happy and at peace with themselves and the world as they grow old. Jiro, though rather a tyrant in his restaurant, seems to me to be that rare bird: a happy old man. He still works every day, as he has done since his earliest youth, and he is driven by the same goal: to make the perfect mouthful of sushi, just a tiny fraction of a degree more delicious than anything he has ever made before. He has no interest in retirement, or even in holidays; what can they offer a man with so clear a sense of purpose?

  Jiro is an artist. Perhaps he is lucky to have been born with a fine palate, and with so clear a sense of purpose. But perhaps we can decide on our purpose, and thereby make our own luck.

  *

  In the Amazon, the plants had not spoken to me, at least not through the medium of song. And yet, more and more, I feel that they are alive, and maybe that they do have spirits. Indeed, that all of nature is animate in that way. Painting is a way to concentrate on the natural world, and to explore these intuitions more deeply.

  I know that landscape painting is not really part of the dialogue of contemporary art, but that doesn’t bother me. In fact, I think I prefer it that way. If you have got this far, you will have realised that I prefer the monologue anyway. In addition, landscape painting could have a moral dimension, since the more we  appreciate the beauty and harmony of nature, the less likely we are to destroy it. Painting has the capacity not only to open the eyes of the artist, but of the viewer too. That is a worthy goal; to communicate something of the vision and the sensitivity.

  Finally, perhaps I am starting to see painting as a secular form of worship; through it, I can express my gratitude for creation, and for the fact that I am here to appreciate it. And maybe that is our collective human purpose: we are nature becoming conscious of itself.

  *

  Back in London, I started taking Greek lessons at the Hellenic Centre. Then I bought a second-hand motorbike, tidied my affairs, and set off by motorbike for Crete. I took the ferry to Santander, arriving by night in the middle of a rainstorm, then crossed the north of Spain to Barcelona. I stayed with my old friend F, whom I had got to  know 20 years before, when we both played for a rugby team in Barcelona. On the last night of my visit, his wife gave birth, two weeks early. He just managed to get her to the hospital in time, and I said goodbye to him and his wife, and their newborn baby, in the maternity ward the following morning.

  I spent a week with other friends in France, then continued into Italy in the crucible of a heat-wave. Biking long distances is tiring at the best of times, but exhausting in 42 degrees, when the heat radiates off the motorway and you are clad in black leather. I had planned to bike through the Balkans, but there were wildfires in Albania, and I was finding it increasingly tough going. I crossed the north of Italy and then decided to take the ferry from Ancona to Greece. While biking the final leg from Patras to Athens, I felt euphoric; I had a strange sense of having finally come home. I thought of Cavafy’s poem ‘Ithaka’:

  Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

  Greece is not my native soil, but I am beginning to feel that my journey has been a long one. Perhaps that is enough; anywhere can be home if we choose to make it so.

  *

  Except for the touristy areas, Athens in August is something of a ghost town. I only stayed a couple of days before continuing to Crete. I was afraid that it would not live up to my idealised recollections, but I need not have worried. I returned to the area I had visited in the spring, and it was as wild and beautiful as I remembered. I hiked, swam in the sea, painted watercolours, and observed the old men in the taverna at night. But despite the inspiring landscape, I soon realised that, at this point in my life, I would find life in this remote area of Crete too lonely. In addition, I am still a very long way from possessing the technical skill to paint the kind of pictures that I have in my head.

  In September I returned to Athens. I started a course of intensive Greek lessons, and I spent my days crisscrossing the city on foot, getting to know different areas and looking for an apartment to rent, as well as a space to use as a painting studio. It was still very hot, and at times the language barrier could make life difficult. But things seemed to fall into place: I met good people and found spaces that far exceeded my hopes, both in terms of charm and affordability. I felt that I was experiencing first-hand my theory about positive energy: when you are happy and open to the universe and to others, then good things often fall into your lap. It seems more than just coincidence.

  There are many things I love about Athens. Above all, I feel that people are less neurotic than in any other place I have ever lived. There is not the same restless quality. At times this can be challenging too; it often makes me realise how impatient I am, but that is a valuable lesson. At least once a day I have to say to myself, ‘You can’t hurry the Greeks.’

  I love the absence of billboards and advertising in the city generally, and particularly on the underground. My mental space is more protected here, my consciousness not constantly invaded by disingenuous images telling me what products I need to buy in order to be happy, or what I should look like, or the kind of life that I should aspire towards. It’s very pleasant, but most Greeks are unaware of their good fortune in this respect, because it is all they know. I am tempted to draw a parallel with colour perception in the ancient world. There is no word for blue in ancient Greek, perhaps because, with all that immensity of sea and sky, the colour was so ubiquitous that the ancient eye was not trained to pick it out.

  I love the fact that the bars and cafés are crowded with cheerful, attractive Athenians who will sip from one or two glasses of iced espresso all night. Their pleasure comes from conversation, from each other, and not from getting wasted.

  I love the fact that this is not a nanny state. Occasionally you will see someone riding a motorbike, no helmet, cigarette between his lips, holding a phone to his ear, and with a dog perched on the fuel tank. Dangerous, yes, but free too.

  There are many beautiful Greek girls. In some ways they are similar to Lebanese girls, but they are more natural looking. I love the sound of the language as they speak it. It has a delicate, tinkling quality, like a clear mountain stream.

  I love the exaggerated respect that you are shown when you have to enter a PIN number anywhere. As soon as a shopkeeper or waiter has given you the portable terminal, he will retreat into a corner, closing his eyes and turning his back, as if you were handling a vial of anthrax rather than a credit card.

  I love the fact that in a spinning class I went to, the strapping instructor came round before and after  the class offering everyone chocolate truffles; during the class, he projected a sequence of Victoria’s Secret videos, which was an excellent distraction for me, and which the rest of the class – all girls - appeared to not to mind.

  As a single person, I love the fact that in Greek the same word (‘ελευθερος’) means both ‘single’ and ‘free’.

  I love the fact that internet dating has not caught on in Athens. Greeks prefer to speak to each other in person, and will still start conversations with strangers in a queue, rather than focus all their attention on their telephones. They think that there is something a little bit sad about conducting the affairs of the heart through an app, even when real world interactions mean running the risk of rejection. And, because they are less neurotic, the belief that the perfect partner is just one more swipe away has less traction.

  *

  Of course there have been challenging days too, particularly while I was struggling to find a place to live, owing to the boom in Airbnbs, and consequent dearth of furnished apartments on the domestic market. But often things felt not quite real. On one occasion, when I was frustrated after yet another rejection from a prospective landlord, I looked up to see a clown on an oversize unicycle cycling down hectic Piraeus street; as if the universe were telling me to take a deep breath and lighten up.

  That is a just a very small moment, but it does tap into a much bigger question about the reality of the external world. For some time now I have wondered about the extent to which we are involved in the co-creation of what we perceive to be reality.  I don’t think it is possible to take psychedelics and shamanic entheogens without at some point asking oneself these questions.

  There is a famous thought experiment in philosophy: can we ever know that our experience is what we believe it to be, or could we just be disembodied brains in vats having our neuronal circuitry manipulated by mad scientists? In light of last year’s American election, when a clown in a toupée was elected President of the United States, the brain-in-a-vat theory suddenly seems quite plausible.

  I am neither a solipsist nor an idealist in the Berkeleyan sense: I do believe that other people exist in meaningful ways, and not just because I have an idea of them. However, what interests me is the extent to which my ideas shape the experiences I have, and how they contribute to creating my ‘reality’. This is a big, and possibly unanswerable, question for metaphysics, but its implications are perhaps most evident in the field of psychology, where it has arisen in an pointed way for me in the context of making choices.

  Choice is a sword with two very sharp edges. One the one hand, choice is a luxury and a privilege; the richer, more talented, more successful a person is, the more choice they often have. But on the other hand, it seems to me that nothing is quite as likely to cause neurosis, dissatisfaction, and avoidable suffering. To give a very simple example, I can find myself paralyzed before a supermarket shelf of different washing-up liquids: which is the best? Which is the cheapest? Which smell do I like best? Which colour do I prefer? What can this one do that the others can’t? On a bad day, the decision-making process is painful, probably because this one choice carries with it a little bit of all the other unmade choices in my life. However, if I go into the local corner store which stocks just one size and type of washing up liquid, I will buy it and be perfectly happy.

  In small ways, I can find myself undone by choice. I am now consciously attempting to prevent those small ways from becoming bigger ways. For instance, I attend Tai Chi classes here in Athens. There are mornings when I don’t feel like going; I’m tired, or it’s raining, or I just don’t feel like it. I am currently experimenting with pretending that I don’t have a choice. I don’t allow myself to go down the decision-making path. Just do it. And I have to say that so far I feel much better for it.

Washing-up liquid and a Tai Chi class are of course very small things, but it is good to practise with the small things. The bigger things are, perhaps, choosing to move to Greece. I have moved to different countries and different cities in the past, but always in a provisional, transient way. I feel differently about this move, and that is having a beneficial effect on my own habitual inner restlessness. It is also, I think, the right kind of preparation for committing to this new career, and possibly even to a person.

  Maybe I have just been rather slow to adopt this strategy. Years ago, I joined a Canadian-American friend in a cross-country skiing marathon from Norway to Sweden. My friend is affectionately known as Captain America, owing to his chiseled chin and robust all-round competence. I had flu on the day of the marathon and was running a temperature, not at all pleasant in -20 degrees. My progress was very slow, also because the phlegm in my lungs kept making me retch. My friend stuck loyally by my side for the first 30 kilometers or so, then – in a moment reminsicent of a Vietnam movie – I persuaded him to  push ahead at his own speed. Captain America’s parting words to me were, ‘Remember: failure is not an option.’ I am not sure whether I found it all that motivating at the time, but now I recognise the effectiveness of that attitude.

  But for me there is one problem with this approach, and it is a problem of intellectual consistency. Unfortunately, the pretence that I don’t have a choice does not sit well with my commitment to the existential perspective, as formulated philosophically by Sartre and psychotherapeutically by Irvin Yalom. Central to the existential perspective is the recognition that we have total choice, and total responsibility for our lives. There is no human ‘essence’; it is up to us to make of ourselves what we will. We are ‘condemned’ to be free, and any attempt to shirk that freedom is intellectually dishonest, personally inauthentic, and breaks faith with life (Sartre terms it ‘mauvaise foi’, bad faith).

  Is my pretence that I don’t have a choice an example of bad faith? I’m not sure. It is a strategy that enables me to circumvent my own neurotic tendencies, a strategy that would have prevented Buridan’s ass from starving. Indeed, Buridan’s ass may have had a very happy life had he adopted it. And in my own case, it has not made me shrink from life. Quite the opposite: I have committed to Greece, to landscape painting, to learning Greek, and to practicing Tai Chi… all of these are slow processes, and this strategy helps me get over the little ups and downs. But I would not have been able to make these changes and commit to these things if I had not recognized my essential freedom in the first place.

  This conflict is just a shadow of the more serious one that arises from my growing conviction that there are karmic principles at work in our lives. I am increasingly persuaded by the sages, mystics and monks who believe in reincarnation and who say that the point of our many lives is to lead us, finally, to liberation. There are many things I don’t understand: what aspect of ‘us’ gets reincarnated? How is it all organised? How can there be more people alive today than ever before? But what I like about reincarnation, and what seems intuitively correct, is that there is a point to our lives. Every new incarnation gives us the opportunity to burn through the accumulated negativity of past incarnations. Nothing happens by chance. The relationships that we have in this life are reconfigurations of similar constellations from the past; they repeat themselves until they have been fully resolved. When ‘bad’ things happen to us, they present us with the opportunity to resolve the blockages that are holding us back, and to grow in precisely the ways that we need. This is the amor fati of the Ancients; but is it true? Or is it just wishful thinking, the Panglossian optimism that Voltaire ridicules in ‘Candide’?

  A part of me wants to follow Pascal and his wager: we can never know for sure, so why not believe what is most beneficial? There is no doubt that I am happier believing that there is a point to my life, that it is one of many lives, and that suffering has a reason and a purpose. Of course, one cannot choose to believe just anything. But I don’t have to try to force myself to believe this; it is in line with my intuitions.

  As I have already indicated, I am increasingly persuaded by the idea that we are involved in creating the reality that we experience. Convince yourself that failure is not an option, and you are more likely to succeed. But does the same hold in the field of metaphysics? Do our thoughts, either individually or collectively, create the ‘reality’ we experience? I think that probably is the case: in significant ways, we think the world into being. The objective and subjective worlds are not completely distinct; if they are separated at all, it is only by a porous membrane. If you believe in reincarnation, then the belief alone may be enough to make it true. This is the perspective of many peoples and cultures down the ages: thought is primary and thinking (or dreaming, ‘dream-time’) creates the reality we experience.

  Interestingly, there is no way to disprove this theory. If Western science looks at indigenous beliefs and shows them to be false – i.e. a mistaken representation of the way things really are – this is in fact exactly what the indigenous perspective would expect, since Western science is also just another reality that has been thought into being.  There is no ‘way that things really are’; there are just different ways of thinking, and these create different realities.

  Belief in reincarnation and the doctrine of karma also seems to presuppose a deterministic world. I once consulted a Vedic astrologer in South India; his reading of my natal chart was astonishingly accurate, and specific. I questioned him about the assumptions underlying the reading. He confirmed that, from the Vedic perspective, the world is fully determined. The outcome of this life, and of all future lives, is already known. We will never change the course of our lives – even the changes that we think we make have already been determined – but we can watch our lives unfold with curiosity.

  Does this make life pointless and boring? Not at all. The Vedic astrologer drew the following parallel: Harry Potter’s life has been fully determined by the author, nevertheless, Harry himself does not know the outcome, and his life in each book is still vitally interesting to him - he believes that he is meaningfully shaping his future, although the author has already decided it.

  What to make of this parallel with a fictional character? If thought creates reality, then in a sense we are fictional characters, either created by ourselves, or by some much greater ‘author’. Can this parallel shed light on the question of how to resolve the conflict between the radical freedom of existentialism, and the determined universe of reincarnation and Vedic thought? I don’t know, but I feel that resolving this conflict – at least to my personal satisfaction - may be the major intellectual task of the rest of my life.

  In fact, it is a task that I have already embarked upon. Part of the reason why I am attracted to Zen Buddhism is because it appears to take one beyond rationality, to a world of pure awareness, a world that is not subject to the rules of thought, and that transcends conflicts of logic. The point of the Zen koan, as I understand it, is to shake us out of our ordinary way of thinking, and to give us an intimation that the world in its suchness is not as we assume it to be. These ideas are hard to frame in language, because language is itself a function of the rules that govern thought (non-contradiction, identity and so on); what Zen attempts to convey is a different perspective, beyond reason and hence also beyond ordinary language.

  In the end – at the end of life, at the end of thought – perhaps the best model is provided by the ancient lama in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’. At the end of his pilgrimage, he returns to the mountains and says: ‘These are indeed my hills. Thus should a man abide, perched above the world, separated from delights, considering vast matters.’

  *

  I am finally content where I am, and not ready to perch above the world, separated from delights. But nor am I free from all anxiety. I do, for instance, wonder whether I will ever be able to paint landscapes that will match the images in my head. But here again Jiro Dreams of Sushi has provided me with inspiration. From that film, I learnt that a sushi chef in Japan spends the first two years of his career just learning how to make rice. One cannot rush things. Start small, and stay the course. In my own case, I will start with still lives, and little by little, improve my technique (should you wish, you can follow my progress via instagram: konrad_ratibor_bohemian). If I find flow, and practise diligently, then I am hopeful that one day I will create work that I am happy with. But perhaps, in order to retain the sense of purpose, one must always keep aiming a little bit higher, as Jiro does.

  The life of an artist may seem very self-involved to you. It often does to me. But then I think that perhaps the greatest contribution that anyone can make is to find a way of life that makes them happy, and to share the path that got them there. Maybe in the end it can be the artist’s life that inspires others to follow their own passion, whatever it is, and realise happiness for themselves. I will conclude with Dr. Hollis’ formulation of the same sentiment in ‘What Matters Most’:

  ‘Maybe all of us will learn to grapple with the paradox that living our lives more fully is not narcissism, but service to the world when we bring a more fully achieved gift to the collective. We do not serve our children, our friends and partners, our society by living partial lives, and being secretly depressed and resentful. We serve the world by finding what feeds us, and, having been fed, then share our gift with others.’

[un-residencies]

Aristide Antonas with Data Rhei Interview

[ENG]

Data Rhei : You created the project House for Doing Nothing, which is an answer to an assertion from Slavoj Žižek’s book Violence. You say you often work with writing poems or short stories created with and about the law, did you proceed this way for this project? Could you briefly describe it and relate it to your global approach?


Aristide Antonas : No, I did not start with the law in this case. The House for Doing Nothing began as a critique of a concrete written statement, a critique that is normally operated with an essay would now be done with architecture; this is what I decided when I read this text.     Slavoj Žižek in this particular fragment was claiming that we should better step back and refuse engagement in order to think from a distance, somehow more productively and undisturbed because of this distance of withdrawal. I thought I could just design the space that Žižek would need for his withdrawal; I would then prove two things at once. The first would be that his so-called withdrawal is a normal or banal condition for every one of us; there is nothing heroic in this condition, we have already withdrawn without being conscious about it, the web is the name of this withdrawal; our distance from reality does not make us more vigilant. It is the opposite: reality is constituted by this distance. The second thing I wanted to show with this architecture was that only through this very withdrawal, that we have already done unconsciously, the contemporary “community of humans” is formed. Giorgio Agamben calls this “community”, if it is still one, “a-demic” i.e. deprived of the communal characteristics of demos. The nowadays human community is formed by this contradiction, by the very impossibility or by the unimportance of “really getting together”. So, I thought that The House for Doing Nothing could showcase fake heroism at the first level with this withdrawal. Secondly, it would show that the idea of withdrawal creates the banality of this society; it deals with a certain category of exoticism that is linked to the idealization of “elsewhere”; it transforms the tension between here and elsewhere to a dead zone. A dead category of the new urban experience is already offered to us; this house depicts the ordinary in its fake exoticism. This house then is not anything new. It shows the banality we live into in a fancy way. With this house, I only wanted to claim that withdrawal is not an exception but the rule; it is the condition of the everyday; an analog to the interface format. An interface is not a representation of something. It is an abstract empty world which carries a content very strange to it. Through the category of the interface, the intellectual distance to reality defines a different wasteland; it is a new type of scenography. We do not deal anymore with the space of a heroic self-exile; I could only write Žižek that the bed where he works is the answer to his idea. His bed was contradicting him: The House of Doing Nothing is only the “happy” extension of it; self-exile is not heroic but already designed for us, it forms today a stronger concept that we could call infrastructural desert. There is a heavy materiality within this infrastructure; withdrawal is the presupposition of this so-called community. Under this light, Žižek’s argument is not proposing any kind of derangement for status quo; a community organized by withdrawal does not seem to need further withdrawal as its political strategy.It would not need any kind of easy engagement against it; it may need the reinvention of being physically together in a different post-web social sphere; the civic conditions of our cities are transposed on a large scale towards the new statement form of life proposed by the internet. This is why I found something wrong with this Žižek's statement. Withdrawal is at the same time obligatory and definitive for what we call the social sphere today. It did not make sense to add any struggle to it since it is banal. The House for Doing Nothing is only a critique of this statement and not a solution; it is a question and not an answer concerning this paradoxical “society of withdrawal”.

DR : This work gave us the impression that you think architecture must act as a kind of political interface between the self and the society. Do you think the self is something we should empower because, as it would be intrinsically unpolitic, it should be the first resistance tool?

AA : There is an obvious critique concerning a certain civilization of the self in this project. And there is no light for any possible community yet. In my works on protocols and in my literature of law I posed the problem that you mention more explicitly. The position of the self in the frame of the community is maybe the main argument of Rousseau’s The Social Contract. We need to re-think the relation of the individual to the community; we are not able anymore to conceive what you call “self” and “society” in the same way as Rousseau did. The identity of what we meant as “individual” in the past is not functioning anymore. In the post-network conditions, we need to redefine the “self” as a population of ready-made borrowed identities or as an ensemble of user attributes. And the community is also very different than in Rousseau's time. The society also needs a redefinition. Society is an archipelago of protocols. It could be a market for protocols or a structure of protocols if the web keeps its power into the social sphere. So, even if we claim that the self is a resistance tool, we need to work more in order to structure a different self in a different community; the old self and his or her signature for ideas are not important anymore. The structural difference between the new self and the new social is weakened; the self and the social are structured through the same archipelago of ready-made platforms; this weakening makes responsibility impossible. We are not able to be responsible in this condition.

DR : Aiming at this empowerment of the self, you start by criticizing Hannes Meyer’s Co-op Zimmer (a transportable room with a bed, two folding chairs and a big gramophone on a table) as a turning point to Aureli’s “Passing Dweller” and the nomadic individual, to head yourself towards The House for Doing Nothing. I think there is something totally different between both: while the Co-op Zimmer is a proposition for an affordable, lightweight and minimalistic living, The House for Doing Nothing looks more like a standardized and low-cost holiday house. Even if the latter gives access to asceticism to a much wider population than usual, it seems always quite difficult to generalize it to the whole population. Then, how could we imagine democratize asceticism to the working class?

AA : On this issue, you have to read more. For instance, in the booklet we wrote together with Pier Vittorio and Raquel Franklin on the Co-op Interieur, I try to make a genealogy of the “bed” and the “table” in a typical domestic economy. There is a war between these two furniture pieces that I observe. The Hannes Meyer work is a very important still from this history. I told you that The House of Doing Nothing is a material exaggeration of the bed. We are all in the position of Žižek, doing the same, using our beds as cockpits. Beds fulfill our imagination of the holiday house without moving elsewhere. Or the bed is the banality of the holiday house when it invaded the city. I am trying to show the core of the everyday in the interface of the exotic. The House for Doing Nothing is our idealized bed or our idealized urban sleep. Our beds breathe with this fake idealization. And the city of today is made out of these beds. You say that this is a generalization from a part of the population to the whole of it; you need to do this to capture interesting concepts. Negri writes that Karl Marx was doing the same when speculating about the transformative power of the working class of the industry with his texts; the phenomenon was not yet formed. He was only speaking for a part of the social sphere. But this part was the most important for the evolution of things. Today, these observations are the most significant from my point of view.

DR : Oslo Architecture Triennale, by labeling our time as the “After Belonging”, seems to share your concerns about the possible loss of the self with the new culture of individual mobility and the “Passing Dweller’s” lifestyle. As it seems related to the idea of being a self with the feeling of belonging to a place, we probably need to worry that an increase of mental health inequality could follow the increasing of precariousness and the rental system growth. Then, do you think that architecture (and your projects) could address the ways we stay in transit and how can we still belong to places or communities?

AA : Well, “being a self with the feeling of belonging to a place” is something very old to me; not because of belonging to a place, but because of the very notion of the self. We cannot simply say that today's self is heterochthonous. There is no today's self in the way we knew it in the past. Of course, heterochthony is a good concept that I propose as the opposite to autochthony. It describes the fact we often not relate strongly to a place of origin anymore. This is an old discourse. Oswald Spengler writes already about a similar character of deracination in his Decline of the West. But heterochthony is a positive concept. It relates to a constructive understanding of Unheimlichkeit, i.e. the most radical unhomely core of the western civilization. The west is demonized in its later phase, but there is no other human period with such a treatment of the unhomely. I miss already this elaboration of the view of the abyss in the post-western world. So heterochthony for me is a promise for a different consciousness on the self, it is already a political task. This is really a wishful thinking or my hope for the future. A consciousness of radical heterochthony would be a promise for a political future. But by lamenting the terrible side of the west as we are used to, with such a strong voice, we risk losing the positive construction of the unhomely character. This is a western construction. Investigating more about the limits of placeless communities while the humanity deals with radical heterochthony could be an open promise for the future; it would merge with a different web. I am sometimes accused for a nostalgia of the bygone west. Revisiting the past is for me an important part of any architecture; it is like in philosophy: we start thinking and designing being each time already in the middle of the way. There is an existing story we feel the responsibility to respond to. You ask about architecture in transit, it has its own history, Hannes Meyer’s Co-op Interieur is again a piece to reflect about this story. My Transformable Vertical Village was translating this potential mobility to a stable structure of an awaiting infrastructure where mobile units could plug in.

DR : Identity construction within the nomadic, and often diasporic lifestyle, often goes by going back and forth between interior and exterior, Home and house, real and virtual, and even human and machine. As these oppositions are very recurrent in the architectural language, do you think architecture, as a mean to build society, could be seen above all as a way to construct ourselves?

AA : This will be a very heroic architecture. But would this be a revisit of the same lost self of the past? The architecture of the self offers a nostalgia for optimists. I am not against nostalgia and its future. I am not against nostalgia, but we have to think more about it. Svetlana Boym gives a good description of nostalgia. And it would be great if we could name “architecture” the works on lost responsibility. It could renew the political in the terms we knew it in the past.

DR : We think that a problem with “neo-nomadism” is that it adds some identity insecurity to the isolation of 20th-century capitalist individual housing, making people even less able to struggle. Whether in your very interesting Transformable Vertical Village (which is a structure made of “elementary homes, hosted in ship containers through an interior solution that allows the units to plug in the village’s infrastructure”) or in The House for Doing Nothing, you use to work on living solutions based on individual housing. Do you think that individual withdrawal is more efficient than collective struggle to fight inequalities?

AA : For me, individual withdrawal gives space for an invisible governance – this governance is operated through the infrastructure. It is a challenge to describe this technical evolution with these terms. But there is no difference or tension between individual withdrawal or collective struggle. They are both parts of the image of a world which is vanishing. In the new world, withdrawal will seem as paradise and the struggle as always already ineffective.

DR : As curators interested in the domestic aspects of life, we are bound to think about the nakedness of the “one-room manifesto”. If, as Lissitzky said, Co-op Interieur was a “still-life of a room, for viewing through the keyhole, rather than a room”, studios in university residencies, for example, are very close from it. Only remain white walls to customize to make it personal. How do you think we could improve small housing, to help subjectivation and reflexion?

AA : This is a question for an architect, but also a question for everybody. Making home is similar to making oneself. It may need again a balance between stability and fluidity. This management may be the architecture of the political. We cannot help reflexion with space, but space is always concretized thought, and we can design fluid arguments.

—

Interview realised between April and May 2017.

Aristide Antonas’ work spans philosophy, art, literature and architecture. As a writer and playwright, he published novels, short stories, theater scripts and essays. His art and architecture work has been featured among other places in Istanbul Design Biennial, Venice Biennale, Sao Paulo Biennale, Display Prague, the New Museum and had solo institutional presentations in Basel’s Swiss Architecture Museum and in Austria’s Vorarlberger Architektur Institut. He won the Arch Marathon 2015 Prize for his Open Air Office, was nominated for a Iakov Chernikov 2011 Prize and for a Mies Van der Rohe 2009 Award for his Amphitheater House. He works as a professor of architectural design and theory, and directs the master’s program on architectural design at the University of Thessaly, GR. Aristide Antonas has been a visiting professor in the Bartlett UCL and at the Frei Universität in Berlin.

[ba1bresearchblognarrativeessay]

Day 11 - 12th of February 2020 - Are we Following the right Path/Story?

From yesterday’s research and the points that I plan to reflect on for the essay, I thought today I might do a tiny bit more of research for the essay so that I have a better understanding of the question in general. That’s not too say I haven’t got enough information for the essay for referencing as I have a general idea to how I might plan and structure the essay as well as the points I plan to talk about. 

My overall plan to keep on the right path of the question is talking about how the 12 stages both work and don’t work in the film and making points for and against it’s a template in reference to the film ‘Kung Fu Panda’. This would take about most of the essay as I could involve things like the archetype theory and how it is used to help and enhance the 12 stage Hero’s Journey template as well as talking about the unconventional structure of the film despite being very misleading at first. From there I can also talk about how the Hero’s Journey doesn't just focus on Po’s character as Shifu is presented as the main character just like Po almost to the point where it’s his own story. From openly discussing how I plan to write the essay, I definitely feel a lot more confident in regarding the question.

For the last bits of research that I plan to look at, I thought it might be useful to look into the Hero’s Journey a little bit more and how it’s broken down between the 12 stages to further help with my understanding for the question and how I will write it. One source I found was where the Hero’s journey template is actually split into three sections of the 12 stages where you have: the departure act, the initiation act as well as the returning act.

The Departure Act -  the Hero leaves the Ordinary World

The Initiation Act -  the Hero ventures into unknown territory (the " Special World ") and is birthed into a true champion through various trials and challenges

The Return Act -  the Hero returns in triumph

If I was to look at the film this simplified way, it would definitely be easier to say that Kung Fu Panda definitely follows the Hero’s Journey structure as for both perspectives of Po and Shifu, it lines up nicely over the events that occur in the film.

Po’s Perspective:

The Departure Act -  Po leaves his small village (the Ordinary World) in becoming the Dragon Warrior through the tournament that he was accidentally chosen to be

The Initiation Act -  Po begins to train but finds that Shifu’s harsh methods don’t work out for him leading to Po to become more resilient and optimistic about the whole approach. Eventually, Po starts training with Shifu more to his style which makes Po confident in his skills of becoming one with Kung Fu

The Return Act -  Even though Po has become good enough in Shifu’s eyes for the Dragon Scroll, the blankness demoralises Po thinking there was supposed to be this great power behind it leaving Po demoralised. However, it’s Po’s dad that helps him get back on his feet and inadvertently tells Po the secret to the Scroll which gives Po the confidence to defeat Tai Lung and save the day.

Shifu’s Perspective:

The Departure Act -  Shifu has to leave his version of the Ordinary World and comfort zone through not only having to teach Po Kung Fu for the first time but also with the vision that his son will wreak havoc over China

The Initiation Act -  Shifu really despises Po for not only his physical appearance but also his respect and knowledge for the art of Kung Fu as it’s super minuscule and rather than help Po help out with the basics and gradually train him, he has the grudge to kick him out of the jade Palace for good. Despite this, Shifu at the same time doesn't know what to do with himself as he feels he doesn't know his true purpose is which is due to the dragon warrior being Po as well as news of Tai Lung escaping prison. Eventually, the discovery of Po’s hidden talents sparks hope and motivation in him and sets off with Po to train him Kung Fu which speaks wonders for Po’s learning.  

The Return Act -  Shifu feels satisfied that Po deserves the Dragon Scroll after all they’ve been through in the film but is also just as demoralised as Po when there’s nothing written or any power from the scroll. This brings Shifu to his lowest point as he thought Po was his destiny as the ultimate student and feels he has to prove his worth by fighting Tai Lung himself. When it comes to the fight, Shifu is outmatched and almost killed until Po steps into the picture and saves China. Whilst he doesn't defeat the villain, Shifu is a hero having trained Po to become the epic warrior he is as well as being at peace at last as Tai Lung had been eating his emotions away.

If I were to look at the shorter side of the Hero’s Journey that I discovered today, it would definitely be more in line with the template than the 12 stages that I’ve analysed twice as it’s a lot broader to think about and a lot more flexible to which parts of the film can be placed to each stage. Whilst this makes it conventional in the grand scheme of things, I still think the film follows an unconventional structure fi you were toe really break the film down and try and fit it in the 12 stages of the Hero’s Journey as well as thinking about the additional elements to the template like the archetypes. 

However, overall, it’s definitely got me thinking to how my points should be conveyed in the essay as well as how I should mention how the Hero’s Journey is taken into consideration for the film but not all the way as there are areas that show the template working and some that there isn’t.