#using different words in place of what would normally be there to evoke a particular image and FEELING is a very big aspect of my writing

[definitelynotshouting]

heyo! i learned a new word today and thought i'd share cause it sounds like a word you'd like

the word is apricity and its an old English word meaning "the warmth of the sun in winter" :]

-🍁

leaf anon ur spot on the money i have instantly fallen in love with this word right now immediately. If anyone sees this show up in one of the next hunger au chapters you know EXACTLY who to blame /DEEPLY SILLY

[acourtofthought]

One of the funny things about this whole poll thing is that I personally didn’t vote—not for any particular reason, I just don’t follow BB on IG, which makes it difficult to predict when the polls are gonna be—but, honestly, I would have voted for Elain in this round.

And like, E\riels are always there moaning about Eluciens not voting for Elain and not being her “real” fans, but that’s not even true? I think that a lot of us voted for her, and even when you think about those that didn’t… it’s really not as deep as they’re making it out to be.

For one, not all fans are as invested as to vote in the polls, and there are also those (like me) that maybe don’t use IG that much\don’t care about following the books’ publishing house. These are factors.

Other factors?

1. A lot of Eluciens are also Gwynriels (and some mainly Gwynriels in the first place), which means that they are also invested in the Valkyries and their journeys. Also, Nesta and her couple have been front and centre for a long time, and BB put Elain’s scene up against a pivotal Nessian one.

2. You can have a character as your favorite (or one of your favorites), and still not vote for them. Mind-blowing, I know. But, honestly, loving one character doesn’t mean that each and every one of their scenes has to be your favorite. You can make another choice while still loving that character to bits.

3. And yeah, relating to that, you can love a scene even if you don’t love the characters in it, even just because of how it’s written or the feelings that it evokes in you due to specific factors. It’s really not that deep, but I’m not surprised anymore by the superficiality of most E\riels’ thoughts.

Honestly, I just need BB to announce anything at this point, because I can’t stand this childish behavior anymore. Even if we end up with E\riel (which I don’t think, but I’m considering all possibilities here), at least we’ll know and deal with it, yk?

I voted for Elain in this round too but not because she's my favorite. If her killing Hybern had been up against a scene like Feyre and the Wyrm I would have chosen Feyre even with Feyre not being up there on my preferred FMC list. I voted for Elain in this round because to me, the surprise of her being the one to stab the king was so shocking it was delightful. Yes, Nessian shared a beautiful moment but I also (personally) didn't connect with it emotionally because a confession of love on what would be someone's deathbed feels too much like "well thanks for telling me now." 😂 And Nesta was very antagonistic towards Cassian for much of the series so it was difficult to connect with her showing her feelings for him only when she thought she would die (then she turned back around and started ignoring him again once they lived). But, I didn't vote against Nessian because I "hate" Nessian (I don't though I don't feel strongly for them either way). I also didn't vote for Elain just because I normally prefer Elain. It's like you said, favorite moments don't need to have anything to do with our favorite characters so much as a scene that really stood out to us and made us feel a certain way. Referencing my first paragraph, I think the way Sarah wrote Feyre performing in her first trial was pretty epic and I love that she was surrounded by people rooting for her to fail yet she bested them all. If that moment were up against Elain I would have chosen Feyre but not because I hate Elain or think Feyre is normally better.

There is this idea that loyalty has to be blind, that unless you're 100% all in on a character at all times you somehow like them less? That there is never a moment where you're ever allowed to enjoy another character equally for different reasons. That's just childish to borrow your word. I think Elain has had many moments where she shines so far but was it the authors intent to have Elain stealing the show in the original trilogy? No. No matter what Elain contributed, I can still acknowledge that Feyre was written to be the "heroine" and that her sacrifices and triumphs were meant to lead the story. Someone ignoring that to try to elevate Elain to being the best and most important character of all time in this bracket (since my guess is they'd still choose Elain if she went up against a Feyre scene) doesn't prove they like Elain better, all it proves is that they'll ignore the actual text and intent of the author to remain on their high horse. And when it comes to the match up between Nessian / Elain, it really comes down to personal preference. Some might have voted against Elain just to ensure "e/riels" lost (despite many Eluciens actually liking Elain) and sure, maybe those people are guilty of not liking Elain but some might actually find a romantic scene more compelling, which is what Nessian's was. Even if an Elucien voted for the Nessian scene, maybe it's because they connect more to emotional confessions over action scenes. It's just not fair for anyone in this fandom to lump everyone into the same category, "if you don't XYZ, it means you hate this character!" It is those who lack emotional maturity that can't understand that blind loyalty is not evidence of anything. If anything, all blind loyalty does is show you're not interested in having original thought.

[another-lost-mc]

Any thoughts on the excerpt from Michael’s diary on Nightbringer’s Chapter A gacha page?

Okay. 😂 Normally I would've saved this for tomorrow, but I was working on a Michael smut fic in another tab and since I have no self control, here I am.

Anyway, I don't think I've talked about this before. I was so fixated on that little snippet when NB first came out, and I’m still trying to decide what interpretation of it I like most.

Please note that I write Michael a particular way and have a lot of personal headcanons that shape the Michael/Celestial Realm lore we don't have knowledge of, so that is going to skew my interpretation a bit. (If you're asking me about Michael, I'm guessing you're already fine with that.)

I'm being half-serious here, but without any sort of tone indicator, the way this is worded seems rather...ominous? It doesn't sound positive, not if we look at the language and the imagery it evokes.

You may have changed

This sounds like something you'd say to someone who's trying to argue, "You don't know me!" and you're like, "Um, yes I do." It almost sounds accusatory, or doubtful.

a great river still flows and swells within you

Part of my personal headcanons for angels is that they have a natural affinity for elements that make up the Celestial Realm and human world. This lets them connect to those worlds on a physical and spiritual level. For me personally, I always associated Michael with water - the way his behaviour and personality seems to shift the way tides rise and crash along the shore, the way sunlight glistens on the surface but fails to touch the darkest depths that hide whatever secrets he keeps buried there. It's interesting that he would sense that type of primal elemental chaos within someone else, the same moral tug-of-war that wages inside himself.

biding its time to swallow us both

There's nothing friendly or inviting about the language used here. "Biding its time?" Okay, so basically Michael and whoever he's referring to are fucked whenever the perfect storm of circumstances lines up and shit hits the fan. "Swallow us both" is an awfully graphic way of saying, "We're in this together." Is something eating away at you, Michael, and do you think that feeling dwells inside whoever it is you're writing about? This doesn't sound hopeful to me. This sound like reluctant acceptance that they're both doomed to succeed - or fail - together, whether they like it or not.

With that out of the way, I have a few different ideas - each worse and more non-sensical than the last - of who I think Michael was thinking of when he wrote this.

Lucifer

He's probably the most obvious candidate out of all the ones I've considered. It seems on brand (to me, anyway) that Michael would be waxing poetic in his journal like an emo edgelord after he and Lucifer broke up and parted ways at the end of the war. Michael's just waiting for his chance to see Lucifer again and be like, "HA! See, we're not so different, you and I!" and cue the dramatic reunion montage.

MC

Nightbringer's whole premise - as nonsensical as it is - is that some mysterious person or entity has sent MC to the past because reasons. There's a lot of suspicion around Michael knowing Nightbringer, or possibly being Nightbringer himself. Even though he and MC never formally met in OG prior to Nightbringer - aside from some weird dream-like conversations - you could argue that Michael knows a lot about MC from what he's deduced from their own brief interactions as well as the thing he's seen/heard from the other angels who've met them in his place.

I have this vague memory of reading something about Michael having the ability to travel through timelines like some of the other powerful characters do. We also know that Michael and MC both love Lucifer and his brothers and would do anything to be with them. If Michael knew what Nightbringer was up to and why MC was sent back at all, then perhaps there's other things he knows that have yet to happen that will continue to challenge MC's resolve. If Michael is not a villain in this case but a spectator to the whims of another force using MC for their own gain, then perhaps Michael worries about what the future holds for them both.

Himself

This interpretation is basically Michael talking to his post-war broken self, where he's struggling with the reality of what's happened, the bitterness of what he's lost, and the bleak future he has now that his home has lost some of its brightest angels. He might've been the one who cast them out, in a moment of anger or desperation it's hard to say, but something strange happened at the end of the war that saw Lucifer and his siblings spared and their sister condemned to die. (Some of this is pulled from @/luckykittysshowerthoughts essay about the fall, it's much better written than anything I could say on the subject.) So maybe Michael feels that the war has changed him, or losing Lucifer has changed him, or defying Father has changed him - and he's waiting for the consequence of his actions to reveal itself.

Father

I'm about to turn into a pumpkin (aka it's almost midnight) and I'm not sure I can articulate my interpretation of the very strange relationship and power structure of the Celestial Realm, or how the angels abide by Father's teachings and carry out his will despite him being some omnipresent entity. I like the idea of the Seraphim slowly growing more defiant of Father's wishes and commands over time when they realize how unforgiving and unkind he is, especially when angels (to me) are flawed as much as any human and demon. Unfortunately, Father expects them not to be. The war could've been a turning point in Father's relationship with the Seraphim, or with Michael specifically, and perhaps Michael suspects there will be even more of an upheaval - or a reckoning - in store for both of them (or the Celestial Realm as a whole) for the things they've done.

[soulmate-game]

part 2 (of that new bio!dad fic)

Dick whipped his head over to Bruce, who could feel the heavy gazes of all his children as if they were physical. If they had had heat vision like Clark, he would have already been reduced to a puddle of mush. Bruce shifted, the only sign of his discomfort, but he recognized that the middle of a gala was no place for this discussion. There were too many busybodies trying to listen in for the latest gossip. So he plastered on a smile that he couldn’t quite feel, and held a hand out to Marinette. He was careful to keep a good distance though, and left the choice for contant purely up to her.

The young woman looked down at his hand, then back to his face. Damian had been shocked silent by what she had to say, and perhaps even more by the all too telling way that Bruce hadn’t so much as implied that she was lying, and the look he was giving her was making her a little uncomfortable. Yes, she hadn’t planned on interacting with her father more than just the years-overdue confrontation she had just done, at least not while at the gala… but her plans always left room for improvisation. She could make this work.

With a soft sigh, Marinette extended her own hand— half the size of Bruce’s, he noted almost immediately with a rush of illogical fondness— and grasped his lightly. She couldn’t help but notice the way his impossibly blue eyes brightened, no different than her own when she was particularly happy, or the way his mouth twitched with a barely suppressed beam. Instead, he controlled himself enough so that the only smile he gave would look professional and entirely in character to the nosy socialites still spying on them, and led them out onto the dance floor.

What everyone else saw was the unfairly charming Bruce Wayne giving his young guest of honor a simple dance. Just a basic swirl around the floor that every other social elite had learned when they were five. Clearly he was taking it easy on the self-made girl, who probably didn’t have experience with such dances. Humoring the accomplished young woman with his approval for a moment before he would slink back to his family or patrol the crowds and make the necessary greetings and meaningless chatter.

What his family saw was Bruce taking time to slow his steps, not for Marinette to keep up but rather to prolong the event. What they saw was the grace in Marinette’s steps as she never once faltered, and that Bruce was careful to take his cues from her instead of the other way around. He only led the dance in technicality, Marinette had all the real control.

What they saw was a father’s first dance with his daughter.

“Eighteen,” Dick whispered, eyebrows drawn low. “She said she’s almost eighteen.”

“Well, that lines up doesn’t it?” Jason asked gruffly, his own gaze never leaving the dancing duo. “We were planning on doubling up your big thirtieth birthday party as your eighteenth adoption anniversary,” he reminded his brother, who just made a slightly distressed noise in the back of his throat. Whether it was at the reinforcement of his adoption coming only months after Marinette being put up for adoption, or the fact that he was turning thirty, nobody could really tell.

“Hurt,” Cassandra spoke up from behind them, looking incredibly concerned as she watched the dance. “Uncertain.”

Stephany rolled her eyes, fidgeting from her quickly building energy. Anger was making her restless. “Of course she’s hurt. Bruce replaced her, with a boy he knew virtually nothing about, not even that long after she was born. How do you think that made her feel, when she found out?” Stephany let out a little growl, grabbing a flute of champagne from a passing server and downing it in one gulp. She ignored Dick protesting that she wasn’t of age yet, which made her wrinkle her nose. “Only one more year, Dickhead. Get over it, I need the buzz.”

“Well,” Barbara sighed and maneuvered her wheelchair around the group so that everyone could see her. “Nothing we can do right now but be supportive and watch Bruce like a hawk so he doesn’t make this worse,” she stated easily, not looking even the least bit ruffled by the news despite the disturbed glitter in her eyes.

“... Guys,” Tim spoke up, not looking at any of them. “Who wants to volunteer for Damian duty?” At first glance, it might seem like Tim was thinking about his own first disastrous meeting with the younger boy. Once everyone paid attention though, they could see that the truth was that Damian had snuck away and Tim was pointedly looking at a slightly hidden-away staircase to the second floor.

“Shit,” Dick muttered, but before he could say another word Jason shoved him back and started towards the stairs.

“No, not this time Dicky. I’ll talk to the brat.”

Back on the dancefloor, Bruce and Marinette broke away without any fanfare at the end of the song. If Bruce tried to hold her eyes for a moment too long, nobody noticed besides his observant children, and two of Marinette’s protective friends.

Then, just to make sure that nobody caught on with the help of hindsight, Bruce said something vaguely polite and praising, which Marinette accepted with flawless, distant poise. And they went back to their own groups, Bruce quickly noting that two of his sons were missing. He raised an eyebrow, about to ask why when a presence behind him caught his attention. Unlike Marinette and Chloe, this newcomer was not at all trying to hide their approach or be sneaky about it, even though Bruce couldn’t hear any footsteps that were close enough to belong to the mysterious entity. Closing his mouth, Bruce turned around only to be greeted by yet another vaguely familiar face. Bright green eyes bore into his, unreadable.

“Mister Wayne,” the newcomer greeted, voice warm but stiff. If the Waynes hadn’t all had years of recognizing when a person was only pretending to be cordial, they never would have suspected that the boy was anything but pure-heartedly happy to be there. But they did have that experience, and thus they instantly honed in on the very well-hidden fact that he had a bone to pick with them. Or, more probably, with Bruce.

He cut an impressive figure, for all that he was lithe muscle instead of bulk. Hair that was lighter than Chloe’s, less like cloth-of-gold and more like sunlight glinting off of wheatfields. It somehow hung in gravity-defying tufts, yet perfectly arranged to evoke a calming aesthetic. Like the fluff of a long-haired cat, almost, and it looked just as fluffy and hypnotizing. It contrasted with his emerald eyes, impossibly vibrant in their gleam. And the suit he wore was decidedly top-notch, much like the other two they had met from his class. He was daring, in a dark silver suit that slightly shifted in the light, green accents that matched his eyes standing out strikingly against the collars and trim, and coiling in tantalizing swirls at the cuffs. The lining of the suit jacket was done in a dark green that could almost pass for black in the right lighting, adding a layer of both drama and mystery as it peeked out at the back of his collar, the insides of his sleeves if he moved just the right way, at the bottom hem of the jacket when he turned or bent just so. And with his notoriety in the modeling world? He always knew exactly how to move or place himself to get the reactions he wanted. And he was clearly showing off the craftsmanship of his suit just then as he faked adjusting his cufflinks and lifted his head just the right amount to both look challenging and let the dark green on the back of his collar flash in the light in such a way that Bruce and those nearest him wouldn’t be able to miss the brief reveal of color.

“Adrien Agreste,” Bruce greeted back, eyebrows pulling down in slight confusion. Normally the topic of clothing was far from his genuine interest, but in this particular case it was an intriguing, and possibly even concerning, observation. So he said next; “That suit is not of your father’s usual style of design.”

Adrien scoffed, straightening out his suit’s jacket and making the obsidian buttons glint. “Of course not. I’ve started my rebellious phase— or, well, I finally started being blatant enough about it that my father noticed anyway,” the way his lips curled was decidedly not very attractive, but painted a vivid picture of a son who despised the way he was treated. Adrien quickly wiped the distasteful expression away and replaced it with a camera-ready smile. “I’m wearing one of Marinette’s designs, much to his chagrin. She insisted on making this for me as soon as she heard that my father was planning on sending me in a white suit.”

Bruce quickly caught on, and sighed. How long would the gala go on for, again? He didn’t remember what time it was anymore. “Your friend Chloe already got a pretty clear warning in. I suppose you know as well?”

Adrien’s grin darkened with mischief, and he nodded all too happily. “Of course! Marinette told me almost as soon as she found out, a few years ago. You see, we had to put down a very solid rule about secrets between the two of us. She has a bad habit of trying to shoulder the entire world’s problems and not tell anyone about it, if you don’t pay close enough attention,” his voice was deceptively light but his eyes were hard, warning. “And let’s just say, I have a lot of experience with bad father figures. I can recognize them a mile away by now. The signs of neglect, of apathy,” his eyes suddenly lightened when he saw how Bruce’s throat visibly caught, how the man didn’t seem to realize he had stopped breathing. Maybe he was being a little to mean, Adrien thought. So he let the dark slip out of his eyes, and his smile turned more genuine. “You don’t have those signs. You looked at Marinette like you were both the happiest and most miserable man in the world at the same time. But you can’t change what you did to her, Mister Wayne. If you want some advice from Marinette’s oldest friend?” Adrien held out a closed fist.

Bruce took a second to realize what was happening, too busy trying to recover from his situational whiplash and wave of relief. Once he caught back up to the present, however, he held out his open palm and let Adrien drop something into his hand.

To his shock, it was a pen, engraved with the name he recognized as Marinette’s biological mother. He also recognized it as a popular model of pen-knife. He raised his eyes to Adrien, who winked.

“Marinette doesn’t know I had this made. And she has a lot of tricks that might surprise you, but what she wants more than anything is stability. If you try to give her that, show that you care and you want her safe— and then prove that you’re gonna stay— then maybe you can repair the damage you’ve done. It won’t be easy though, Mari is the single most stubborn person I’ve ever met. And I grew up with Chloe.”

Bruce closed his hand around the pen, swallowing a lump in his throat. He couldn’t quite figure out why, but Adrien’s faith in him and his help… somehow felt significant. He nodded to the young model.

“Not to worry, I have experience with stubborn,” he glanced back at his other kids with a small smirk. None of them were the least bit repentant. “And I do want to stay. Thank you for the advice.”

Adrien shrugged. “Don’t thank me. If you hurt her again, you’ll never see my revenge coming. It can be rather… catastrophic,” with that ominous threat, Adrien bowed dramatically and turned to leave and do some rounds charming the elites. Bruce tucked the pen in one of his hidden pockets, but stayed silent after that. He had a lot to mull over.

—*—*—*—*—*

Damian leaned on the railing of the balcony, looking out over the gardens behind the gala’s venue. He was glaring at nothing, and his hands trembled from where they gripped the rail. It was five minutes, a little longer than he had expected but not that odd considering everyone’s distraction over Marinette, before he heard the glass doors behind him creak open.

“Yo,” Jason greeted, knowing it was better not to catch the boy off guard. None of them were good with surprises anymore, for good reason. It was always best to announce their presence before they made someone react violently on accident. Damian’s shoulders relaxed a little— not a lot, but enough for Jason to notice. The older man sighed, walking up and leaning on the rail next to his little brother. “What’s on your mind, kid?”

“That could have been me,” he almost instantly blurted. It was still hard talking about his feelings, but certain things were easier with Todd. This was, apparently, one of them. “If Mother hadn’t kept me a secret.”

“I don’t think so,” Jason disagreed, shrugging. “There are several big differences here. For one, Marinette was born three years before you were. By the time you were born, he already had Dick and he would have only been a year, max, away from taking me in. Which means he already had built up his problem with taking in kids, and nothing would have gotten him to give up a chance at raising you. With or without Batman getting in the way.”

“But then why—” Damian growled. “Why did he give her up?”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Jason remarked bluntly. “You know how he is. He didn’t have a kid at the time. Hell, Bruce would have only been twenty-two back then. He only adopted Dick on impulse because Dick reminded him of himself, but before all of that shit? He probably made a million excuses about not being able to raise a baby and be Batman at the same time. About his life being too dangerous for a kid. Which, yes it is, but that clearly didn’t stop him later.”

“She’s older,” Damian muttered, this time softer.

“Yup.”

“Her mother wasn’t an assassin, probably. She designs. I hate to admit it, and you are never to repeat it to anybody, but her work that we’ve seen so far is impressive. She can clearly charm even the most stuck-up of gotham’s upper crust.”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed neutrally, his eyes never leaving Damian.

“Father won’t need me. He already doesn’t have much patience—” Damian was cut off by a flick to the nose. “Hey!”

“Not my fault you’re being stupid,” Jason defended himself. “Look, B’s actually been real patient with you these past few years. I mean, when was the last time he yelled at you? Or told you that stupid ‘justice not vengeance’ line?”

Damian opened his mouth, then closed it. After another moment, he replied; “Almost two years.”

Jason nodded. “It might take him way too long, but he can still learn new tricks. Especially after that mess with Heretic, he’s been trying really hard to be better to you. He still screws up, because I think we all know by now that he’s a bigger mess than any of the rest of us and that’s an accomplishment, but he’s trying. He doesn’t keep you around because he needs you. He’s got plenty of us around if all he wanted was soldiers— though none of us would stick around if we thought that’s all he wanted.”

Damian flexed his jaw. He was still the most violent of the kids, besides Jason. He saw Bruce rubbing his forehead or pinching his nose far too often at some of his decisions or comments. He was stubborn, impatient, reckless.

But hadn’t Bruce himself told him on several occasions that he wasn’t trying to make him a perfect soldier? Hadn’t Bruce himself said that he just wanted Damian to grow into himself?

It was just really hard to swat away those stupid voices in Damian’s head. Voices of the past, mostly, old dialogue he had never actually forgotten. That he merely pretended had never affected him. The “you’re too violent”s, the “that’s not how we behave, Damian”s. All the old lectures, the old fights. They echoed like stupid little gremlins of doubt.

“...Marinette has his eyes.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over something like that,” Jason’s voice was soft, but gruff at the same time as he cuffed Damian over the head. “You didn’t choose to be born, idiot. And despite being a little demon, none of us would reverse it, You’ve saved all our skins at least once. And besides,” he nudged Damian a little with a grin. “You’re not half bad, nowadays.”

Damian chuckled. “That makes one of us.”

“Hey!”

@peterxwade24 @mizzy-pop @maskedpainter @ladybug-182 @khneltea @itsmeevie01 @fusser90 @woe-is-me0 @lolieg @moonlightstar64 @jayjayspixiepop

[blackboxoffice]

‘The Underground Railroad’ attempts to upend viewers’ notions of what it meant to be enslaved

by William Nash, Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures, Middlebury

Above: Making the series changed Barry Jenkins’ views on how his ancestors should be described and depicted. Atsushi Nishijima/Amazon Studios

Speaking on NPR’s Fresh Air, Barry Jenkins, the director of “The Underground Railroad,” noted that “before making this show … I would have said I’m the descendant of enslaved Africans.”

“I think now that answer has evolved,” he continued. “I am the descendant of blacksmiths and midwives and herbalists and spiritualists.”

As a scholar interested in how modern representations of enslavement shape our understanding of the past, I am struck by the ways Jenkins seeks to change the way viewers think about – and talk about – Black American history.

In doing so, he takes the baton from scholars, activists and artists who have, for decades, attempted to shake up Americans’ understanding of slavery. Much of this work has centered on reimagining slaves not as objects who were acted upon, but as individuals who maintained identities and agency – however limited – despite their status as property.

Pushing the boundaries of language

In the past three decades there has been a movement among academics to find suitable terms to replace “slave” and “slavery.”

In the 1990s, a group of scholars asserted that “slave” was too limited a term – to label someone a “slave,” the argument went, emphasized the “thinghood” of all those held in slavery, rendering personal attributes apart from being owned invisible.

Attempting to emphasize that humanity, other scholars substituted “enslavement” for “slavery,” “enslaver” for “slave owner,” and “enslaved person” for “slave.” Following the principles of “people-first language”– such as using “incarcerated people” as opposed to “inmates” – the terminology asserts that the person in question is more than just the state of oppression imposed onto him or her.

Not everyone embraced this suggestion. In 2015, renowned slavery and Reconstruction historian Eric Foner wrote, “Slave is a familiar word and if it was good enough for Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists it is good enough for me.”

Despite such resistance, more and more academics recognized the limitations of the older, impersonal terminology and started to embrace “enslaved” and its variants.

The new language reached another pinnacle with the publication of The New York Times’ 1619 Project. In the opening essay, project editor Nikole Hannah-Jones eschews “slave” and “slavery,” using variants of “enslavement” throughout. However controversial the series may be, it is setting the terms of current discussions about enslavement.

“Enslaved person” – at least among people open to the idea that a fresh look at American chattel slavery necessitated new language – became the new normal.

What, then, to make of Barry Jenkins’ saying he wants to push past this terminology?

In that same NPR interview, Jenkins notes that “right now [Americans] are referring to [Black slaves] as enslaved, which I think is very honorable and worthy, but it takes the onus off of who they were and places it on what was done to them. And I want to get to what they did.”

I think that Jenkins is onto something important here. Whichever side you take in the ongoing terminology debate, both “slave” and “enslaved person” erase both personality and agency from the individuals being described. And this is the conundrum: The state of enslavement was, by definition, dehumanizing.

Above: Caesar, played by Aaron Pierre, and Cora, played by Thuso Mbedu, escape from the plantation where they were held as slaves in ‘The Underground Railroad.’ Kyle Kaplan/Amazon Studios

For artists, writers and thinkers it’s difficult to reflect on the dehumanization of masses of people without diminishing some of the characteristics that make them unique. And once you step onto that path, it’s a short journey to reducing the identity of the collective group – including their ancestors – to one that’s defined by their worst experiences.

Seeing slaves on screen

In some ways, because of the nature of their medium, filmmakers have fared better than their fellow artists at balancing the challenges of portraying the horrific experiences of enslaved people as a whole and elevating the particular experiences of enslaved individuals.

So where does Jenkins fit in the lineage of cinematic depictions of enslavement?

From the start, comparisons to “Roots” – the first miniseries about American chattel slavery – abound.

“Roots,” which appeared in 1977, was the first miniseries on American television to explore the experiences of slavery on multiple generations of one Black family. It also created powerful opportunities for interracial empathy. As critic Matt Zoller Seitz notes, for “many white viewers, the miniseries amounted to the first prolonged instance of not merely being asked to identify with cultural experiences that were alien to them, but to actually feel them.”

Some Americans might remember those eight consecutive nights in January 1977 when “Roots” first aired. It was a collective experience that started and shaped national conversations about slavery and American history.

By contrast, “The Underground Railroad” appears in an age replete with representations of enslavement. WGN’s underappreciated series “Underground,” the 2016 remake of “Roots,” 2020’s “The Good Lord Bird,” “Django Unchained,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Harriet” are just a handful of recent innovative portrayals of slavery.

The best of these series push viewers toward new ways of seeing enslavement and those who resisted it. “The Good Lord Bird,” for example, used humor to dismantle ossified perceptions of John Brown, the militant 19th-century abolitionist, and opened up new conversations about when using violence to resist oppression is justifiable.

A delicate dance between beauty and suffering

Looking at “The Underground Railroad,” I can see how and why Jenkins’ vision is so important in this moment.

In Jenkins’ films “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” the director made a name for himself as an artist who can push past narrow, constraining visions of Black identity as one marked solely by suffering. His films are not free from pain, of course. But pain is not their dominant note. His Black worlds are places where beauty abounds, where the characters in the stories he tells experience vibrancy as well as desolation.

Jenkins brings that sensibility to “The Underground Railroad” as well.

Critics have commented on how Jenkins uses the landscape to achieve this beauty. I was struck by how the sun-soaked fields of an Indiana farm create a perfectly fitting backdrop for the rejuvenating love Cora finds there with Royal.

In “The Underground Railroad,” slavery – for all its horrors – exists in an environment nonetheless imbued with beauty. The curtain of Cora’s vacant cabin flapping in the breeze and framed by the rough timbers of the slave quarters evokes the paintings of Jacob Lawrence.

Above: Barry Jenkins’ Black worlds are places where beauty abounds. Atsushi Nishijima/Amazon Studios

In other scenes, Jenkins juxtaposes radically different landscapes and actions to emphasize the complexity of these characters’ experiences. For example, Cora works as an actor at a museum, where she plays an “African savage” for visitors; in one scene, she changes out of the costume and into an elegant yellow dress. Walking the clean, orderly streets of Griffin, South Carolina, she transforms into a picture of middle-class propriety.

Scenes portraying the manners and reading lessons offered by the faculty of the Tuskegee-style institute where Cora and other fugitives find shelter demonstrate the allure of these middle-class values. On first glance, it all appears promising. Only later, when Cora’s pushed by her mentor to undergo forced sterilization, does it become apparent that she’s landed in a horror show.

These vignettes are but a few examples of the thoroughgoing power of Jenkins’ aesthetic. Every episode yields moments of beauty. And yet at the flip of a switch, serenity can devolve into savagery.

Living with the recognition that calm can instantly and unexpectedly become carnage is part of the human condition. Jenkins reminds viewers that for Black Americans – both then and now – this prospective peril can be particularly pronounced.

[petri808]

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Inukag AU

As Inuyasha and Kagome cut through a park on their way back to the Higurashi home, they chatted casually, just winding down after a hearty lunch at a nearby cafe. The couple stayed to the pathways traversing the manicured park. It would be shorter to cut through the grass, but why the rush? It was a beautiful location, with a several different kinds of trees dotting the landscape to provide shade and lots of open space for all kinds of activities. Some picnicked, flew kites or played frisbee, they’d even passed a group doing Tai Chi. There were young families to older citizens enjoying the scenery. The couples conjoined hands and twined fingers swayed lazily back and forth between them. Despite the summer heat starting to rise in Tokyo, with blue skies and a gentle breeze brought in from the Pacific Ocean, it was a perfect day for a stroll.

While this journey towards normalcy hasn’t always been an easy one, the past couple of months have been the happiest so far. Ever since leaving the hospital Kagome’s felt better and better. There were even moments she’d made peace with the idea she may not regain her memories. Was it saddening yes, because she wouldn’t remember her job, friends, and other precious moments. But at the same time, she could always make new ones. Sango’s twins were still young. She could relearn her job, and best of all she had Inuyasha who’d she’d become attached to. Their steadily growing relationship was a budding romance regardless of their past history. Think about? Kagome had a chance to re-experience everything in a new way, through a new lens. Well… that’s what she told herself to justify the idea, and so far, it was working.

But there were strange moments starting to occur. Sometimes they were dreams of scenes Kagome didn’t recognize. That in of itself weren’t unusual because how often do dreams ever make complete sense? No, it was in the emotions that came with them. On several occasions Kagome would wake up with the distinct feeling these were not merely dreams but memories trying to break through. At other times, she couldn’t remember the dream, only the emotions she’d felt during them. Sometimes they were so intense, she’d wake up in tears or completely happy for no other reason. According to her neurologist, this was normal during the healing process, but unfortunately there was no true way to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

“Did I tell you I reached out to Ms. Tanaka the other day?” Kagome asked Inuyasha.

“Mmm, I don’t think so.”

“I called the office and spoke to her briefly about maybe getting lunch one day so she could tell me how things have been there. I may not know exactly what she’s talking about, but maybe it’ll jog my memories.”

Inuyasha lifted their conjoined hands and kissed the back of hers. “I think that’s a really good idea. You guys will have fun talking.”

“I think so too, she seemed very nic—…” Kagome’s voice trailed away as stopped dead in her tracks and her eyes shifted towards one of the parks trees. “Um, c-could we check out that tree?”

“Sure, whatever you want.” Inuyasha smiled knowingly.

It was like her feet gained a mind of their own as they carried her towards a large Sakura tree in the middle of a field. Just from looking at, there wasn’t anything special about the tree. Spring had long since passed and the blooms were no more. But Kagome felt a pull towards this one in particular as if she remembered something about it. What that was she had no idea. She let go of Inuyasha’s hand and reached out, touching the bark of the tree, and staring up at its massive girth. It looked old. Maybe there long before the park existed… maybe older than even the Edo period, who knew? It was just another green leafed tree, yet why was it stirring up a rush of emotions? Happy ones with butterflies dancing in her soul.

Slowly, she moved around the base of the tree like a surveyor mapping it out or searching for secrets only it could provide. And that’s when she saw it. Kagome’s breathing hitched as her eyes fell upon a carving in the wood, approximately five feet above the ground. There, a bit worn nonetheless was a heart encircling two names. “Kagome…” She read aloud, “& Inuyasha—

Oh, my Kami!” She gasped, both hands flying up to cover her mouth in shock. “H-How? When?”

At that moment, Inuyasha walked over, gazing at the words and running his hand over the carving while he spoke. “We carved this about two years ago.” He smiled, eyes crinkling, and growing moist as if reminiscing. “It was a late Saturday afternoon and after eating an early dinner at Genki Sukiyaki, we cut through this park to get to your house. But it started to rain, not very heavy, so we took shelter under this tree.” Inuyasha chuckled lightly. “I remember you being upset about your hair getting wet.” He finally looked to Kagome, placing a hand on her cheek. “You looked so beautiful and even though the weather was miserable, there was just something magical about it all. That’s when you asked me to carve this into the tree.”

“But how did I know to look for it?” Kagome was so confused. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“I have no idea how. But part of you must. Maybe, it’s a sign your memories are fighting to come through.”

The tears gathering in Kagome’s eyes, trickle down her cheeks as a blend of happiness and sadness. She wanted to be happy for such a beautiful memory but devastated that she couldn’t remember it. She wanted to be excited that maybe, just maybe it could be true that her memories were returning, yet she didn’t want to take the chance of a let-down. Inuyasha pulled her into a tight hug as she let go of the angsty emotions. “It’s not fair that I can’t remember! I want to remember!”

“Shhh,” Inuyasha who’s own tears begun to spill, did his best to soothe her with softened tones. “I want that too. It’s gonna get better baby. I think this really is your memories returning, we just have to believe.”

“It’s hard to do that sometimes…”

Inuyasha lifted her chin and swept his thumbs over her cheeks to dry them. “And if you don’t, we’re creating a whole new memory of this tree right now, an even more special one.”

Kagome sniffled. “You think so?”

He nodded his head and placed a gentle kiss on her whetted lips. “What do you think?” Inuyasha questioned with a soft smile. “How can we add to this memory?”

Kagome paused for a moment in thought. “We could add something beneath our names… like… mmm, forever in time?”

“Is that what you want?” She nodded yes. “Okay,” Inuyasha obliged.

He kissed her again then used his claw to slowly, meticulously carve the new words into the bark. It took a few minutes because he wanted to make sure it was easy to read and would last a long time. “I think this is definitely will better than the original memory.”

“Mmhmm, it’s a good one,” Kagome agreed. She felt a lot better now. “Thank you, Inuyasha for being so patient with me. It must be so frustrating.”

Inuyasha shook his head. “Not anymore. I’m not glad about the accident, but I’m cherishing all this time I’m spending with you. Kagome, I truly mean it when I say, this moment right here,” he took her hand. “It’s now one of the happiest moments you’ve ever given me. No matter what,” he smiled, “I’ll always love you, forever in time.”

She giggled. “Forever… I like the sound of that…”

After the incident at the park, Kagome brought it up with the neuropsychologist assigned to her case. The woman patiently sat in her chair as Kagome told her every little detail. What she felt, the emotions, her thoughts, and reactions. She also brought up the dreams she’d been having as well as small incidents that caused her to feel like it might be memories trying to come through.

“Like, just the other day,” Kagome explained. “Sango accompanied me to the hospital for my last physical check-up, but as we passed by the nursery, we decided to stop to look at the cute babies. Then out of nowhere I started to feel emotional, nothing bad, just happy as she talked about the birth of her twins. I mean, yeah it makes sense to feel happy at the time because we were having a good time, but it just felt different. I almost felt like crying. Why is that??”

The woman finished jotting down her notes before speaking. “It’s been about 5 months, correct, since you lost your memories?” Kagome nodded yes. “And according to your latest evaluations, your brain has healed quite nicely. It’s not uncommon at this point for triggers to manifest themselves.”

“I don’t understand…”

“The way long term memory retention works, our brains must process information and create new neurocircuitry, storage if you will once the information has been deemed necessary to keep in the long term. If not, our short term memories are discarded quickly. Of course, this is just a basic explanation and there’s more to it, but what studies have found is memories attached to an emotional event have a higher likelihood of being retained and will evoke a stronger response from us. Think of it like, these emotional memories are much more deeply attached to our psyches.”

“Oh— I think I understand.”

“Mmm,” the doctor hummed. “The park incident was attached to a very emotional moment in your life. So even though you couldn’t remember the event itself, the part of you that remembered the emotions surrounding it did and pushed you towards the tree. Also, the hospital, you mentioned being with your friend Sango and looking at babies. This is just a guess, but perhaps you were feeling the emotions you felt from the time she gave birth.”

As the doctors words were processed, moisture began to pool in Kagome’s eyes. Could it really be true?! Should she really allow herself to hope?! When Kagome finally responded, her voice cracked as it held back the tears. “D-Does this mean… I’m starting to get my memories back?”

“I would say, yes. Again, I cannot say one hundred percent certain, but what you are experiencing is a common one. Those that suffered from acute memory loss, don’t just wake up one day and suddenly they’ve all returned. It’s a gradual process, but once it begins it typically continues at a steady pace.”

“I-I don’t know what to say!” A few happy tears joined the smile on Kagome’s face.

“I suggest that you start writing down the times you feel something or think you’re remembering something and check them with your family and friends. If they confirm it, talk about it. That could help as well to bring more information and memories to the forefront— give your brain a little help to jog itself.”

“Thank you so much, doctor! I’ll definitely do that!”

The woman smiled, reaching over to pat Kagome’s hand before giving it a small squeeze. “You’re very welcome. I wish you all the luck in the world!”

[zoffra]

Why Hisoka decided to kill the troupe ?

Analysis in two parts:

1- Hisoka's pre-fight personality

2- Hisoka's post fight psychological change

Part 1 -

Let us make a point on Hisoka's character.

Hisoka's a character who takes pleasure in fighting strong opponents, it's his reason for living, it's like a drug in the proper sense of the term. If he doesn't fight for a long time, or if he's about to fight and - for whatever reason - the fight doesn't start, he'll kill anyone to satisfy his need and calm his excitement. This happens, for example, during hunter exam after meeting Kurapika and Leorio (= satisfying his need), or after Illumi's meeting with Killua and Alluka (= calming his excitement).

Other than that, he carefully chooses his opponents and will even refuse fights if he judges that the person isn't worth it.

Hisoka's incredibly patient. In order to fight Chrollo, he'll put in a lot of effort. He joins the spiders - which already isn't an easy task - and waits for three years that an opportunity presents itself, so that he finds himself alone with the leader and can fight him. The other members don't interest him - except maybe Machi to a much lesser extent.

After Chrollo lost his Nen, Hisoka assists the troupe in search for the exorcist. Shizuku assumes that Chrollo promised him a fight in exchange for his help. It's not known how long Chrollo's deprived of his Nen, whats certain is that several months go by.

Abengan's Nen works like this: he invokes a Nen beast whose shape and size varies according to the curse's power posed by his user. The stronger the curse, the longer that will takes time- and you can be sure that Kurapika's chain was far more powerful than Genthru's bomb.

Later, we learn from Gitarakuru that after recovering his Nen, Chrollo fled. During this time, he returned to Meteor city to prepare his fight and steal various capacities - in particular that of the dean, Shalnark and Kortopi. Finally, after all these waiting years, Hisoka's finally rewarded and they'll fight in a place - that Chrollo himself chooses, as floor master : Celestial tower.

I'll not describe the fight, I can only advise those who haven't read the manga to go and find out for themselves. If I could sum it up in one word, it would be 'disappointing'. But not for us, readers, for Hisoka.

Chrollo used sneaky methods, avoiding to maximum close contacts with Hisoka, while sending his puppets to fight for him, waiting for opportunities to hit him critically. Warning! This isn't a criticism, I'm not saying it's something bad, these are just the facts.

We know that Chrollo's calculating and that beyond his extraordinary physical abilities, he distinguishes himself from others by his intelligence. For me, this fight is the very reflection of his personality, calculated like music paper and orchestrated by Chrollo as master of ceremonies.

It's also a nose thumb at the relationship they've always had. Hisoka spent more time killing puppets with no interest to reach Chrollo, rather than fighting him. He finds himself in the situation where he has always been.

At the time of his 'death', Hisoka made a pact with the Nen to bring him back to life. By using condition and oath - his death being the condition to be fulfilled - he wish that his heart's functions and his lungs will be restored. And from there, the troupe will have big problems.

Part 2 -

Spiders made several mistakes. When they inspected Hisoka's body, they were negligent. When Shalnark testified to Hisoka's death by asphyxiation, no one found his hands position strange. By that I mean they're seasoned Nen users, cold-blooded killers, they know that Nen gets stronger after death.

An important detail is that you can revive a suffocation victim - it shouldn't last too long of course, but it's not as if his head was cut off. And that's exactly what Hisoka will do.

He probably used Ken to absorb the explosion, surrounded his heart and his lungs with his Gum, then practiced a cardiac massage to resuscitate himself, - I pass about after-effects that his brain would normally have undergone, which is an ease logical scenario.

Machi said one interesting thing: '[Hisoka] still paid me in advance.' This means that she was in contact with him before, and Hisoka asked her to stitch up his wounds after the fight. Machi probably understood it as 'if I win the fight, can you heal me', but for Hisoka there was probably a double meaning: healing his wounds if they were too serious so that he do himself, or if he hadn't been in fit state to do it.

Biggest mistake spiders have made has been to underestimate Hisoka.

Towards fight's end (chap 355) when a puppets horde rush towards him, Hisoka has an angry expression. Hisoka's neutral facial expression is a mischievous pout, or in fights where he has to fight seriously, he has a concentrated expression.

It's extremely rare to see him angry, and I think his change of mind manifests himself at that time. Hisoka's face takes half a page's place and is a terrifying blackness, it's an important moment. All accumulated frustration since years literally explodes during this bitter taster fight.

When he wakes up, we don't immediately notice his change of mind, but when he speaks it's clearer.

'Reality knows how to wake you up.' Hisoka realizes - if not already done - that he'll not be able to defeat Chrollo with his usual methods.

A little higher, I said the trio had underestimated Hisoka but I also think of Chrollo. During the fight he was arrogant, explaining his abilities, inviting him to flee and then, telling him that isn't to taunt him - you can't make me believe thats true.

'If you've learned your lessons from this, then next time make sure to choose your opponent and the location you fight.' Machi's words complete Hisoka's decision, it was clearly not the thing to say to him at this precise moment.

This how Hisoka's change of mind worked for me. Hisoka's an irrational person but he killed with a certain consistent logic - strong ones who deserve his attention. His death - more precisely, circumstances of the fight leding to his death - played a major role in his transformation. He's no longer undefeated and has been ridiculed, Chrollo practically whistling when he sent his puppets against him.

'No matter where they go and who they are with, I won't stop until I kill them all' It's revenge.

His actions are no longer directed by the will to fight strong adversaries, they're guided by the outright brigade eradication.

Strangely, he leaves Machi alive. Don't tell me thats because he just wants she getting her message across to the other members, there were a thousand ways to warn Chrollo and the others without leaving her alive - and considering the awkward position she was in, he could have kill her without slightest concern. - In an interview, Togashi says that he didn't want to kill her at that time because he has other plans for her.

Kortopi was visibly relieving himself when he was killed. He was a pointless opponent for Hisoka, especially considering the situation in which he found himself. This proves once again his change of mind, it's a method of murderer.

Same method when he sends Kortopi's head to Shalnark. At that moment, Shalnark grabs his friend's head - which is edifying of stupidity - to verify that it's him, and Hisoka punches him.

On several occasions, I've read some people would have liked to see a real Shalnark vs Hisoka fight. But we had it, and difference in strength is too great. At that moment, it's true that Shalnark couldn't use his Hatsu, nevertheless he could still use his Nen but he didn't even had time to defend himself with his Ten.

We don't know if Hisoka kills Shalnark in one blow, it's possible that he survived for a moment. However, this isn't what the staging seems to evoke. The fight literally takes a half page, speed with which Hisoka starts the fight and shock's power when he hits Shalnark leaves no doubt as to the fight speed end. In addition, even though Hisoka's Nen strengthened, he was seriously injured - he was able to repair his limbs in appearance, but he has no healing ability like Machi or quick regeneration like an enhancer.

The last chapter page sounds like a real turning point. We knew Hisoka was sadistic, he likes to torture his opponents psychologically (cf: Kastro fight, Goto), but we had never seen him at work physically. After his fight, he took the trouble to stage the Shalnark's and Kortopi corpses, tying Shalnark to the swing like a puppet, refering to his ability and his fight against Chrollo.

Chapter ends abruptly with a sentence / thought from Hisoka: 'There are 10 left.'

Number 10 is interesting. At that moment, members still alive are the following: Phinks, Feitan, Machi, Kalluto, Nobunaga, Shizuku, Franklin, Bonorenov and Chrollo.

That makes 9. I consider that - even if he didn't see her die - Hisoka is aware of the Pakunoda's death. He spent a lot of time with members at Greed Island and Chrollo, it's impossible that he didn't learn it.

The 10th member is therefore Illumi - reader learns of his membership in the troupe only 20 chapters later -, he was therefore recruited before Hisoka announced his vendetta against spiders.

Last point I wanted to emphasize: when Hisoka says 'there is 10 left', he includes Chrollo. This shows that he no longer puts him on a pedestal, seeing him as the head or someone important. It's simply a leg to be eliminated.

Hisoka's personality has radically changed, he has finished playing.

[setaripendragon]

Ursakoda Soulmates - Part 3

More of this nonsense! This time with actual kisses! =D

Hakoda is good with people. It’s one of the things that makes him such a well-respected chief. Everyone’s different, of course, but there are some types of body-language that are pretty similar all around, and Ursa’s reaction to his question about the father of her children put a whole new spin on the bumps and bruises he’d felt from her over the years. That reaction hadn’t said ‘fighter’, it had said ‘hunted’.

And it’s filling in more than a few bits of the story for him. Not the details, and he’d still like to hear those, at some point, if Ursa’d be willing to tell him, but… the broad strokes. And it’s making him more and more convinced that she’s here because she’s running, not because she’s spying. It’s a relief, even if the knowledge that there’s something she’s that scared of makes his heart hurt for her.

“Tell me your story?” Ursa asks, shattering Hakoda’s thoughts. He turns his head towards her, and finds her looking back with a curiosity that’s only a little bit guarded. “You already know so much about me, it’s only fair.” She adds, on the edge of teasing, but… not quite.

And that’s fair, Hakoda decides ruefully. “Okay.” He agrees, and then considers how to begin. At the beginning, he supposes. “I was born at the South Pole, in the Whale-shark Tribe, one of the Southern Water Tribes. My father was the Chief before me, and my mother was originally from the Northern Water Tribe.” He paused, and then laughed. “I have no idea how to describe my childhood. It seemed normal enough to me, but I’ve learned that our normal really isn’t all that normal for the rest of the world.”

“Tell me what you think is important.” Ursa instructs gently.

“That works.” Hakoda agrees. “My best friend growing up was Bato. We were the resident trouble-makers. Gave my mother no end of grey hairs chasing after us. We learned to hunt with our fathers, learned the ways of the sea and the turn of the stars. Learned to fight.” He sobers a little, and reaches out catch hold of Ursa’s hand, because what he wants to say next is going to be hard. “The raids had been going on since before I was born, so to me, they were… just a fact of life. Polar leopards will eat you if you’re not careful on the ice, sometimes blizzards snow us in for so long someone starves, and the Fire Nation comes and takes water-benders every now and then.”

Ursa squeezes his hand, but doesn’t say anything, and Hakoda is grateful. It makes it easier to get through the next bit. “When I was twenty-three, there was… what we thought was the last raid. My mother’s best friend was the only known water-bender left, and she was taken, and my father was killed trying to stop them. Mum was… Well, someone had to step up, so I did. Won my place as Chief, and kept the Tribe going. Married Kya.”

Beside him, Ursa stiffens slightly, before relaxing again. “Kya?” She asks quietly.

Hakoda stalls for a moment. Because Ursa is his soulmate, and so she deserves the truth, but she’s also Fire Nation, which brings the lie to his lips automatically. In the end, he settles on telling a half-truth that will, at least, answer the question Ursa is really asking. “She was killed in the actual last raid.” He says, aware that his tone has gone hard and angry, but unable to stop it. “For being the last water-bender in the South Pole.”

Ursa sucks in a sharp breath. There is a very, very long silence in answer to that, and Hakoda lets it sit, because, really, there’s not much to be said to something like that. “I understand you may not appreciate hearing it from me, but I’m sorry for your loss.” She says, finally, tone subdued.

Hakoda sighs, and lets the anger and grief flow away for the time being. “Thank you. On a more cheerful note, I also have two children.” He goes on, finishing up the very loose tale of his life. “Sokka is about a year younger than your eldest, and Katara’s half a year older than your youngest.” He grimaces a little. “They’re still in the South Pole. I haven’t seen them in… just about two years now.”

“I know how that must feel.” Ursa tells him, and Hakoda looks over at her, caught by the fragile note in her voice. Her eyes look hollow, haunted, and Hakoda doesn’t need to work hard to put the pieces together.

“They’re still with their father?” He asks carefully.

Not carefully enough. Ursa flinches, and her expression goes tight with pain. She keeps her composure, but she can’t keep a slight tremor from starting up in her shoulders. A line of sharp pain scores its way across Hakoda’s palm when she fists her hand and her nails dig in, and another across the inside of his lip as she bites at hers. “Ursa?” Hakoda prompts in concern, voice little more than a whisper, reaching over to catch her hand and gently uncurl her fingers. Then he lifts his hand, slowly, giving her time to move away if the touch would be unwelcome, to her cheek.

She stops gnawing on her lip when his thumb brushes the corner of her mouth, and she draws in a sharp, shaky little breath. “I left them.” She confesses in a rushed whisper, closing her eyes against the truth of it. “Agni forgive me, I left them with him.”

Hakoda remembers how she’d reacted to his sideways inquiry about her husband, and tries to imagine how he would feel if he knew that Sokka and Katara, instead of being as safe as they can be with the rest of the Tribe, had been left in the care of someone that could evoke that sort of reaction in him, that sort of cold, defensive rejection… The mingled fear and fury turns his stomach, and his heart goes out to Ursa. Following the impulse, he wraps his arm around her shoulders and tucks her in against his side, tipping his head to rest his cheek against her hair.

Ursa turns her face into his shoulder, and just breathes for a moment, soaking up what little comfort he can offer. Then she sits up, still looking a little ragged, but with resolve glittering hard and bright in her eyes. “I’m getting a little tired.” She announces mildly. “Walk me home?”

Amused, Hakoda stands and offers her a hand to help her up. “That will earn us a lot of speculation.” He warns her, because he can already feel the curious and incredulous stares of his men. He ignores them easily enough, because the Tribe are always up in each other’s business, it’s difficult not to be with the way they live, but he doesn’t want Ursa subjected to that without prior warning.

But she just looks resigned as she takes his hand and lets him pull her up. “Oh, I know.” She assures him, keeping hold of his hand as she leads the way out of the village square and into unlit streets. She doesn’t say anything else until the sounds of the revelry have faded, at which point she sighs. “I assume you have questions?”

Hakoda does, but he’s not sure he knows where to begin. He could ask about her husband, but as much as he’d love to know which Fire Nation bastard to take particular pleasure in cutting down, it’s not a subject he feels he has a right to. It’s Ursa’s pain, and she’ll share it if and when she wants to. The same is true of her children. He’d like to ask about them, to see if it might not be possible to arrange some sort of reunion, but surely Ursa has already thought of things like that, and he doesn’t want to dredge up any more of her pain.

There’s one question, though, that crystallises out of the mass of curiosity in him, and it feels more important than anything else he can come up with. “How come you’re here?” He asks.

Ursa’s steps stutter and slow, as though she hadn’t been expecting that question, but then her lips quirk into a side-ways little smirk that makes Hakoda’s heart trip in his chest, it looks so good on her. Part amused and part smug and part mischievous. “I was banished.” She says lightly, but Hakoda knows full well not to trust that tone, given that smile. “For murdering Fire Lord Azulon.”

Hakoda trips over his own feet, and he gives up on trying to walk and stare at Ursa in flabbergasted shock at the same time. Ursa comes to a stop as well and turns to face him, clearly enjoying his reaction. “What?” Hakoda asks, not because he didn’t hear her, but… what?

Ursa folds her hands together primly, and repeats herself. “I was banished for murdering Fire Lord Azulon.”

It’s almost unbelievable, but Hakoda can’t help but believe her. Wishful thinking, some might call it, but Hakoda would prefer to think of it as gut instinct. Ursa’s not lying. She really did kill a Fire Lord. She killed the Fire Lord that was, ultimately, responsible for all of the worst things in Hakoda’s life. He laughs, incredulous and delighted, and Ursa grins in answer. “You’re amazing.” Hakoda tells her, entirely sincere.

Ursa’s grin gentles, and then slips sideways into something rather rueful. “I wish I could say I did it because it was the right thing for the world, but… it was a lot more selfish than that.” She tells him.

Hakoda shakes his head, not to deny the truth of her words – he doesn’t know why she did it, but right now, he doesn’t care – but because he’s not going to stand there and let her deny that she did something incredible. His heart swells with a feeling that’s rather a lot like awe, and he decides he has a better way of conveying it to her than words. He steps forwards, catches her face in his hands, and leans in to kiss her.

Ursa’s eyes go wide when she registers his intent, but she doesn’t pull away or bring a hand up to push him back. Instead, she leans up into him, eyes fluttering shut as their mouths meet. Her lips are warm and soft, but the grip of her hands on his waist is firm and sure. “You’re amazing.” Hakoda repeats against her lips, and Ursa kisses him again to shut him up.

[script-a-world]

What are your five rules to new authors about world building? I struggle with this, as a minimalist author. And I would love suggestions on how to build a world in as few words as possible, while the description is still efficient and powerful.

Constablewrites:

Teach us about the world through the characters interacting with it. If your characters never interact with it, is it really relevant to your story?

Culture and society all ultimately derives from people--what they know about the world around them, how they survive in their particular environment, how they ensure the survival of future generations, and so on.

Conflict and tension come from limitations. Infinite and/or ill-defined power kills a reader’s emotional investment.

Don’t answer a question we haven’t asked. Context first, then explanation only if necessary.

Your reader will comprehend your world based on what they know of ours.

Personally, I think minimalism can be a good thing! New authors tend to err on the side of waaaaaay too much world building and explanation thereof. The best way to figure out the balance is to read closely. If you’re reading something that makes you feel really present in the scene, pay close attention to how they do that: the details the author chooses, the things they merely suggest or infer, the senses being evoked, and so on. And remember that contemporary literature has to world build just as much as genre stuff does; I’ve spent just as much time on a ranch as I have on Mars, so while I might be bringing more knowledge/assumptions to the table I’m still relying on the writer to make the world come alive.

Brainstormed:

Do you enjoy what you’re making? If not, let the idea lie fallow to be recycled, and ask yourself what would make you enjoy the worldbuilding again. Even if what you’re doing will never show up in your story, it’s still worldbuilding and therefore great. Just prioritize plot-relevant details, and make sure to have fun.

How different would the plot and/or characters be if this detail was changed? This question allows you to figure out the really vital parts of your world and its natural consequences in your story. The details that don’t affect much of your plot/characters are still good, as they add depth, but okay to parse down for a more minimalist perspective.

How far am I willing to ask my readers to suspend their disbelief? Can be asked of specific parts of your world, like magic systems or physics or geographical oddities, or of your setting in general.

Is this self evident? That is, does this part of your worldbuilding become foundational to the plot and/or setting in such a way that the reader understands and extrapolates without ever requiring the dreaded infodump? Not every detail has to be self evident, and in fact I don’t think every detail should be. There’s plenty of things about the real world that I would love to absorb infodumps about, but the way the sun in the sky affects my day to day life requires no context.

Breadth vs. depth, which is more a function of your plot and cast than setting. If your plot follows your characters wandering through a great deal of varying places/cultures/times/etc or a very diverse cast of different races/beliefs/jobs/etc, you’ll need a lot of distinct and interconnected settings with just enough detail to function and stick out as unique in the reader’s mind. Buckling down on a single world/culture/nation/etc to flesh out its complexities and variants will get far deeper into the why’s and how’s of your plot and/or characters, just be careful not to turn it into an encyclopedia instead of a story. (of course, you could do like me and create a lot of breadth and then murder yourself by trying to achieve depth with all of it)

Saphira:

Worldbuilding itself, and setting up the world, comes before the writing in my book. I find that chronic descriptors fall into two categories:

Those who know their world so well that they want to tell EVERYTHING. These I affectionately call the Gushers.

Those who are discovering their world as they write. The world is a mystery to them until the written word tells the writer where they are. These I affectionately call the Explorers.

I suspect you are concerned about being the former. In my gut, however, I suspect you may be the latter. Now there are different rules for each method.

FOR GUSHERS: Use Constablewrite's rules. Those rules underline what's important.

Worried you're still overboard? Count your paragraphs. How many has it been since something happened?

FOR EXPLORERS: Write as normal. Then go over it and look for the things Brainstorm mentions! Highlight them, or copy the stuff on another document.

When you get to rewriting your work, look at your notes and see what you feel is important! You've already explored, so now you can filter.

Worldbuilding in the scale that we know it is relatively new to novel-writing. (Thanks to Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors in the 1950's? Ish? Research it. Cool stuff.) That being said we're already getting really good at it. We've seen the wild phenomenon of cultural diving that Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Harry Potter have had, and we want to give our readers the same experience!

Though I will note, what draws a reader into the world is the intrigue of the questions they can ask! If we can give our readers just enough information about the world to ask the coolest, deepest questions? We have succeeded.

Tex: I'm not a big fan of generalized advice, especially in regards to "new"... anything. I'm not aware of either your flaws or your strengths, though your use of "minimalist author" intrigues me - what do you consider minimalism? Is it descriptions, is it settings, is it dialogue? Is it something else?

I don't know whether this minimalism is the result of developing your writing voice or the result of underdevelopment in various writing skills, so I hesitate to give any concrete answers. In that respect, I would like to recommend @scriptstructure for the finer points of writing descriptions.

The others look to have covered about everything on this topic, but I would like to reiterate the idea that worldbuilding for the purpose of exposition is heavily dependent upon the plot. Whatever the focus of the plot is, and to some degree that of the characters, is the focus of your worldbuilding.

What's important to your story? Can you remove an element and still make sense? Those are consistently my two biggest guides when worldbuilding because everything outside the immediate needs of the plot are usually extraneous.

Feral: I don’t have rules so much as questions to provide some guidance for new writers getting into worldbuilding.

What quirk of character or plot stands out as being from a society different from my own, and what society would produce this? For a sense of verisimilitude in fantasy and sci-fi, it’s important that the characters not be reproductions of who you would expect to meet in the author’s own society especially when that society does not reflect the author’s own. Dragons, a post-singularity Earth, and a hundred other things that cast the story in a specific genre would create very distinct pressures that would lend themselves to different worldviews, economies, traditions, etc.

Would a particular feature of the world make my character or the plot more interesting? Would it create more problems than it would solve? I always advise against creating a feature of the world that solves your characters’ problems. Features of the world should either a) provide a lovely flavor or b) create obstacles for your characters to overcome or c) both. New writers, particularly those who don’t want too much superfluous flavor might look at Premise Brainstorming, or “In a World Where…” brainstorming to create world ideas that tie directly to the character and/or plot.

Am I avoiding describing something because it is not in my style or doesn’t fit the narrator’s voice? Or am I avoiding describing something because I can’t picture it in my mind or lack the confidence to execute it? This is me all the time. 2 decades of writing, and my first couple drafts are always a little lean on world details because I’m still wrapping my mind around what things really look like and how to take the image in my brain and translate it to the page. It’s ok to take your time getting the world rendered out; that’s what multiple drafts are for.

How have writers I admire and whose writing style matches what I want for myself handled the question of worldbuilding? If you’re not familiar with The City and the City by China Mieville, I strongly recommend checking it out. When I think of so-called minimalist world building, that is what I think of.

Do I know enough about my world to know what is important and what is not important to include? I recommend the Iceberg Principle for newer writers/builders: 90% of the world isn’t gonna make it into the story. So, that 10% better be enough and relevant.

[anistarrose]

Dog is an Elf’s Best Friend (TAZ Graduation)

Summary: The summer before our series is set, two brothers search for the cure to a curse and are led to the Unknown Forest.

Word Count: 4100

Warnings: very brief eye horror

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/21436063

I can’t be completely sure because I can’t read Travis’s mind and I don’t know what canon is going to do, but this is probably an AU. Some parts are based of a theory I think is pretty plausible, but other parts are bigger stretches.

***

Each year, when the hottest months arrive and the students leave their Wiggenstaff dorms to visit family or pursue summer employment, there are exactly four faculty members who remain on campus. One is Hernández, who stays to take care of the resident animals, and the second is of course Groundsy, whose true motivations remain an enigma to all but is ostensibly present to repair the tower and maintain the grounds as needed.

The third is Higglemas Wiggenstaff. They say you have a better chance of catching him outside of his office in the summer than you do during the school year, but it’s still a rare occurrence. Most rooms in Wiggenstaff’s, and in the Annex in particular, get so hot in the summer that they’re practically suffocating — but rumor has it that Higglemas can and will open a portal to the Plane of Air itself, if that’s what it takes to ventilate his office and keep it at a liveable temperature.

(Most students — especially the magic users themselves, who know just how much skill it requires to open such a portal — take this rumor with a grain of salt. Higglemas has been locking himself away like this for years, but has yet to emerge from his office with any grand innovation or discovery to show for it — how competent of a wizard can he really be?)

Unbeknownst to all but Higglemas himself, the fourth faculty member is Higglemas’s dog.

At first impression, and even second and third impression, nothing seems unusual about the collie that wanders the halls of the Annex — at least, nothing more unusual than what would be expected from a pet of Higglemas’s. He’s a well-trained dog, usually aloof but occasionally willing to accept bribes in the form of food, and he seems intelligent, but not uncannily so.

But this impression of mundanity, while incorrect, is a testament to the dog’s ability to keep a secret. And as luck would have it, this ability just so happens to run in the family.

***

Today, there are two deliveries for Higglemas waiting at the wrought-iron gate to the Annex. When the dog fetches them from the courier and brings them to his office, Higg immediately tears off the brown paper covering the larger of the two packages and begins leafing through the book in search of its section on polymorph spells. He hunches over the his desk, ignoring the second package, and presses his thumb to his middle finger to stem the flow of blood from a papercut he’s given himself in his haste.

“Hrm. Smoke from mahogany wood, that might be worth investigating…” he mutters, sloppily underlining a passage in the ancient tome with a ragged-looking quill pen. Then he cross-references his notes, and scowls. “No, what am I thinking? We’ve tried mahogany wood twice now!”

He slams the book closed. “We’ve tried every type of wood by now! We’ve tried every damn combination of components in all of Nua — and none of them have done a single thing!”

The dog whimpers, nudging the second package closer to Higg. It’s a small burlap sack, containing several loaves of bread and sugary pastries ordered from the bakery in Last Hope.

The dog cannot speak, but his message is clear: You’ll never find the right components if you forget to eat and collapse from starvation.

Higg reluctantly breaks off a tiny piece of crust from one of the loaves, popping it into his mouth as he pulls out another book. Unsatisfied, the dog leaps up onto the desk, trampling all over Higg’s notes and setting the bag of food down directly on top of the book, where Higg can’t possibly ignore it.

“Oh, fuck off, Hiero!” Higg snaps. “Do you want to be stuck like this forever?”

Hiero huffs and jumps down off the desk, storming off to disappear behind one of the office’s many bookshelves.

Higg sighs. “Okay, fine! I’ll eat — look!” He magically slices two pieces of bread off of the loaf and puts a piece of cheese between them, then takes a bite and makes exaggerated chewing motions. “See, there it goes! Down the pipe! You don’t need to get all sulky on me!”

Hiero doesn’t emerge from behind the bookshelf.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you like that, okay? I’m sorry.” Higg puts his head in his hands. “It’s just — it’s been five fucking years, and I haven’t come up with anything, Hiero. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Someone’s bound to figure us out sooner or later…”

He swivels around in his chair, pulling open the curtains covering the office’s sole window and gazing outside towards the Unknown Forest with unfocused eyes.

“Everyone knows you would’ve saved me a long time ago, if I’d gotten cursed,” he whispers. “But I’ve tried every idea I can think of, every single spell component I know, and you’re still a dog…”

Hiero pokes his head out from his hiding place just in time to see his brother abruptly lean closer to the window, a smile suddenly spreading across his face.

“So that means the missing piece of the puzzle must be unknown to us, so to speak…” Higgs muses out loud.

Hiero barks so loud that it startles a bird flying by outside. You’d better not be planning what I think you’re planning! You’re just going to get yourself killed!

But Higg is already on his way to the door, throwing on a cloak and dusting off a longsword that hasn’t seen use in decades.

“Quit being such a worrywart, Hiero. I’m going to the Unknown Forest, I’m gonna burn some of the shit I find there, and then I’m going to get you back to normal.”

***

The smoke is the most vital component of a potent True Polymorph spell, on that much all sources agree. A cloud of smoke can change shape unlike any other substance, responding instantaneously to even the gentle guidance of a faint breeze. It represents impermanence and entropy, and the delicate act of channeling something fluid into a different, yet recognizable form.

But Higg has found all sorts of differing accounts on what type of smoke works best. Not all of them are contradictory — some recommend burnt driftwood specifically for a transformation into a sea creature, and others endorse candle smoke with a dash of copper sprinkled in for bats and other nocturnal creatures. Others still swear by a piece of parchment with writing on it, ideally a few words that evoke the creature one is trying to transform into.

But there is no recorded precedent, much less a scientific consensus, on how to reverse a curse and turn one’s brother from a dog back into an elf, so Higg has resorted to simply trying every possible combination of components he can think of. He still consults old texts from time to time, but neither research nor trial and error have resulted in even the faintest hint of a lead.

Hence his current plan: walking straight into the deadliest forest on Nua. Somewhere in between storming out of his office, and finding himself in the northeast corner of the campus green, he’s come to accept that it’s one of his worst plans ever — but it’s also the only plan he has left, and there’s no plan that’s worse than not trying anything.

He notices that Hiero is trotting after him, lagging behind by a few dozen feet. As much as Higg hates the idea of Hiero following him into the forest, his presence is oddly reassuring, because it tells Higg that even despite their earlier spat, his brother does still worry about him charging off to his death.

We really have flipped our old hero-sidekick dynamic on its head these past few years, haven’t we…

“You’re not heading to the Unknown Forest, are ya, Wiggs?”

Groundsy’s voice makes Higg jump — the groundskeeper, despite his impressive height and lumbering gait, always seems to appear out of nowhere even when Higg is completely expecting to run into him.

“I am heading in, but not so far that I lose sight of daylight. I’ll hurry back out at the first sign of trouble, I assure you.” Higg’s impression of Hiero’s voice is flawless, as is his disguise spell. (It has to be, in order for him to run the school in his brother’s place while he puzzles out the polymorph curse.)

“Well, what in the world for? You’re about to take quite a risk here, Wiggs — what reward are ya hoping to reap from this little expedition?”

Higg summons every ounce of elfin disdain he can muster as he replies: “Need I remind you, Groundsy, that you are in my employ — and so accordingly, I don’t have to justify myself to you? With my unmatched wisdom, I selected this particular site for my school out of nearly a hundred alternatives, and I have lived in the tower above this forest for over two centuries! If anyone knows what is or isn’t worth venturing into the Unknown Forest for, it would be me — the astute and frankly legendary Hieronymous Wiggenstaff! So put a bit more faith into your headmaster and let me go about my business uninterrupted, would you?”

Hiero’s ears twitch with a fair amount of elfin disdain of his own as he listens. This is no longer an “impression” of me. This is flat-out caricature.

Groundsy doesn’t seem too bothered by so-called-Hieronymous’s scathing rebuke. “Well, if ya find yourself in trouble, ya can always call for help!” he reminds Higg. “I won’t come in to rescue ya, but it’ll make the story more interesting when I tell everyone how the legendary Hieronymous Wiggenstaff met his match!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Higg replies dryly. He puts his hand on the hilt of his sword, about to march into the forest, but Groundsy speaks up again:

“Oh, that’s a new sword, isn’t it?”

“My usual blade is out being resharpened by an expert smith,” Higg fibs. “I’m borrowing this one from Higglemas — since we have about the same build, and he certainly never uses it.”

“Borrowing his dog too, I see! Will you be using him to lead you through the forest by scent?”

“The dog goes where he pleases. I don’t have any say over it.” Higg turns around to give Hiero a glare. “Though I hope he has enough common sense not to follow me into the woods. He has no magic, no sword — he wouldn’t last a minute in there.”

“Oh, I’ll keep an eye on him for ya! Groundsy’s great with animals!” Groundsy kneels down to pet Hiero, who backs away and growls.

“Try and get along for just a few minutes, you two,” Higg tells them. “This shouldn’t take me very long.”

And if it does take longer than a minute or two, you’ll have more pressing concerns than each other’s company.

He casts Light on his sword as he steps closer to the woods, holding it out at arm’s length to illuminate the uneven terrain beneath his feet. He passes several jagged, half-buried boulders and treads across dead and gnarled old roots left behind by a long-gone tree, then warily comes to a halt a few feet away from the forest’s edge. Behind him, the sun is just as bright as one would expect from a cloudless summer day, but in front of him, it’s dark like midnight on the night of a new moon.

He hears Hiero whimper from a safe distance away, but he doesn’t turn back. There is a sapling at the edge of the tree line, bearing only a dozen or so leaves on each of its wiry branches, and he confidently strides towards it, gripping the thinnest-looking branch in a gloved hand and preparing to snap it off —

It doesn’t break. The branch is as rigid as steel, and feels deathly cold even through the insulation of his glove.

“Damn it, why didn’t I just bring a fucking axe?” Higg shivers, reluctantly raising his sword. He’d hate to damage it trying to chop down an unnaturally hardy tree, but collecting branches by hand wasn’t working, and he won’t let this perilous trip turn out to be for nothing.

Hiero barks as Higg swings his sword down, and Higg jumps, missing the sapling entirely.

“What the hell was that about? Don’t do that when I’m holding a bladed weapon —”

Hiero barks again, more urgently this time, and a realization dawns on Higg a second too late.

The tree roots he’d mistaken for dead have come very much alive — now they’re coiling around his feet, snaking up his boots, constricting his legs. As Hiero let’s out another frantic howl, they jerk violently, yanking Higgs off balance and dragging him backwards into the Unknown Forest.

“Fuck!” Higg swings his sword wildly, desperately trying to cut his feet loose, but it bounces straight off the bark of the roots. Its light dims as he’s carried further into the woods, and every other second he either gets a faceful of prickling branches or feels his head slam into the trunk of a tree, leaving his face bloodied and ears ringing.

Who’s going to save Hiero if I die in here? No one else even knows the truth —

He plunges his sword into the ground, miraculously finding a narrow chink between two immobile, iron-hard roots and piercing deep into the cold earth beneath them. The force at his feet keeps pulling, but his grip on the hilt of his weapon stays firm, and he doesn’t budge.

“Take that, you abducting arboreal bastards!” he spits, pulling his wand from his pocket and blindly aiming a freezing blast of wind towards his feet.

The roots immediately convulse, jerking upwards and hoisting Higg and his sword vertically out of the ground — only to stop moving a second later, leaving him suspended in the air. They glimmer in the light of his now-freed blade, and he realizes with a smile that he’s frozen every damn inch of them solid.

“Good riddance,” he growls, and strikes them once more with his sword — and this time, they shatter into thousands of icy crystals.

He feels less triumphant after tumbling to the ground and landing a bit less gracefully than he’d like — and what’s more, he realizes he’s somehow lost his grip on his wand.

“Shit, shit, shit…” He swings his sword in wide arcs, trying to illuminate as much of the surrounding forest as he can. None of the trees here seem to be as mobile as the roots that captured him, but he still flinches every time he feels something brush against his ankle. Once he finds his wand, though, he’ll be able to just levitate above the treetops and fly back to safety…

He glimpses a familiar polished marble rod atop a pile of ebony-dark leaves, but before he can pick it up, a chattering squirrel darts past and snatches it up beneath its teeth. Luckily, the creature doesn’t run far, instead opting to scamper up a tree and perch atop a low-hanging branch. It still holds the wand beneath its teeth as it stares at Higg with accusing eyes.

“I know I’m intruding on your territory, but I promise you, it wasn’t intentional,” Higg says softly, slowly stepping towards the squirrel and holding out an outstretched hand. “Now, I’d really appreciate it if you could just drop that wand you’re carrying…”

The squirrel’s tail erupts into purple flames and it snaps the solid stone wand between its teeth, chattering with delight as it stuffs the two halves into its mouth and gulps them down.

Higg hastily steps back, tightening his grip on his sword, but the squirrel darts away without another glance at him, and the forest falls eerily silent.

“Hiero?!” he shouts. “Groundsy? Can you hear me?!”

There’s no reply. And even worse, it dawns on him that he has no idea which way he came from — if he’d broken any branches or left any sort of trail while being dragged in, the plants have already regrown to cover it.

If he dies here and leaves Hiero stuck as a dog forever, all because he didn’t recognize Hiero’s own warnings in time, then… well, that sure would be an appropriate way to cap off his miserable, failure-wracked life, wouldn’t it? Really, he should’ve seen this result coming from the first moment the idea of entering the Unknown Forest popped into his head —

Think, Higglemas. Don’t give up, think. What would Hieronymous do to get his bearings?

He gazes up towards the blanket of pitch black leaves overhead, through which only a few tiny pinpricks of starlight reach through…

The stars, that’s it! Higg is no scholar of astronomy, but he does know the major constellations, as well as the approximate geographic layout of the Unknown Forest as a whole — with the stars in view, he can surely deduce the fastest route back to safety. Rather than sheathing his sword and blocking his only source of light, he ties it to his belt, and he selects a climbable looking tree — offering a sturdy trunk, ample branches for handholds and footholds, and most importantly, roots that don’t come alive even after giving them an experimental poke.

But almost as soon as he begins to scale the tree, things go wrong. The bark is unnaturally slick, and initially stable footholds melt away beneath his boots, sending him sliding back down the trunk to land on his rear in a pool of foul-smelling oil.

“Damn it!” Higg takes a running start at a different tree, leaping for the lowest-hanging branch, but it liquifies in his hand, and once again he tumbles to the ground.

So much for the stars saving me…

A bush a few feet away from him rustles, and Higg freezes.

But the forest goes quiet.

Concluding that his imagination had worked against him, Higg lets out a sigh of relief — then the bush rustles again.

(Is it the same bush? Or was the sound closer this time?)

He draws his ever-dimming sword, and from the bush there comes an eerie creak, like a footstep on a floorboard. But at least it isn’t advancing towards him anymore — he can work with this.

He’s about to take the first of what would hopefully be many slow steps backwards, away from the rustling creature, when he hears it. Somewhere behind the bush, a dog is barking, and though it’s distant and muffled, Higg recognizes it instantly.

“Hiero! I’m coming!!” he shouts, and charges towards the bushes.

Between the cover of the plants and the cover of darkness, the being that lurches forward to meet him is difficult to perceive, but Higg glimpses it in brief flashes as he swings his blade —

At least four spindly arms, probably more. Fingers whittled into points.

Ash-grey bark peeling away to reveal eyes, so many eyes. Pulsating black pupils, surrounded by spiderwebs of crimson veins.

A cavity between two forking branches, in which rows of fangs drip sickly-sweet sap.

Higg lets out a guttural roar and skewers the beast through its torso, casting its hollow body aside and sprinting onwards to the source of Hiero’s barks. But a stray vine trips him, and his heart skips a beat in his chest as he feels it ensnare his ankle in a familiar death grip —

Hiero springs out of the shadows, a terrifying bundle of momentum and determination in canine form, and barrels into the vine with so much force that even Higg gets jerked a few feet. The vine doesn’t release him, but it goes just limp enough for Higg to slip out of his trapped boot, and Hiero darts to his side as the two of them break into a run again without a single word exchanged.

If Higg didn’t know better, he would’ve sworn his brother had done this before. Hiero keeps his tail close to Higg’s legs and his nose close to the ground, barking and swinging his tail every few dozen feet to signal for Higg to turn. When they finally breach the tree line, they skid to a halt and whirl around to face the forest — Higg with his sword drawn, Hiero with haunches raised and teeth bared — and wait several terrifying seconds before finally collapsing to the ground, confident that no creatures will follow them out of the woods.

“Well, I’ll be a unicorn on the barn roof!” Groundsy begins to applaud, rushing to Higg’s side with a huge smile on his face. “Ya made it out in once piece, both you and your dog!”

“He’s my brother’s dog, not mine —” Higg begins, before looking down at his hands and clothes and realizing that his Disguise Self spell is, of course, long gone.

“Oh, don’t ya give me that schtick! Your secret is safe with me, Higgsy!” Groundsy tells him with a wink.

Higg breathes a temporary sigh of relief, mentally debating the ethics of looking into a memory-erasing spell later. Unless huts are involved, Groundsy’s secret-keeping abilities usually leave much to be desired.

“From the looks of things, ya almost did kick the bucket in there,” Groundsy goes on. “I hope ya at least got ahold of whatever it was ya went in for?”

Higg plucks a few pointed twigs from his cloak and pants, holding them gingerly and cupping his free hand beneath them to catch the oil that they drip.

“Well, not quite in the way I wanted to. But I’m thinking this’ll suit my purposes just fine.”

***

Hiero sits impatiently at the center of a room that has seen many explosive fires and failed rituals, waiting for Higg to finish his preparations. There are circles of chalk that must be drawn, dust from previous failures that must be swept up, and most importantly, oil from the Unknown Forest that must be burned.

Higg watches the flames turn an unnatural purple color, pointing a freshly obtained wand at the bowl of oil and concentrating on channeling the smoke. As he directs wisps of it past his face and towards Hiero, he’s somewhat put off by how normal it smells — it has a slightly more earthen scent than the usual flammable components he uses, but there’s nothing particularly otherworldly about it. Nothing to indicate that this might be the breakthrough he’s awaited for years.

“Ready?” he asks Hiero, pushing his doubts to the back of his mind, and Hiero nods, sitting up on his hind legs. They’ve always speculated that a bipedal posture might help reversing the polymorph — though of course, it’s not like they’ve had any success to show for it.

Hiero holds his breath as Higg surrounds him with a plume of smoke and begins to chant, carefully enunciating words in a long-dead language that even most elves don’t remember. The room quickly darkens in a way that it never has before, as the smoke absorbs the ambient light and begins to glow in an inconsistent shimmering pattern that evokes stars scattered across a deep indigo sky.

Higg, too, holds his breath as thin wisps of that smoke coil around Hiero one at a time, slowly blending together and changing in shape. The obscured silhouette of a collie transforms, snout shortening and legs elongating — and then it all disperses with a sudden clap of wind, leaving behind an elfin man who instantly collapses to the floor.

“Higglemas?” Hiero croaks, staring down at his trembling hands. “Did we —”

He coughs up a cloud of acrid red smog, convulsing and arching his back.

“NO! WAIT! Do something, Higg! I can’t —”

Higg dives after his brother, eyes stinging from the fumes as Hiero’s voice breaks and distorts back into a howl. Higg wraps his arms around a thrashing collie, and Hiero goes limp, red-tinged foam still dripping from his mouth as his younger brother whispers:

“We’re getting so close, Hiero. Don’t give up on me now, not when we’re so damn close.”

Hiero whimpers weakly, hanging his head.

“We have a lead now,” Higg continues, summoning all the optimism he can muster into his voice no matter how sick he felt watching Hiero revert. “And in just a few weeks, we’ll have a new class of students, too — odds are one of them will know their way around animals and shapeshifting.”

He gently pats Hiero on the back, running his hand over fur until he can feel that Hiero has stopped trembling. “We’ve got more to go on than ever before. We’re going to figure this out one way or another, I promise.”

Hiero’s eyes close as he rests his head on Higg’s knee. I hope so.

***

(End notes:

Thanks for reading, comments are always welcomed!

While I genuinely believe the Hiero Dog Theory as a whole has a lot of weight to it, certain parts of this are certainly going to get proven wrong sooner or later, but it was still extremely fun to write! I am historically a huge sucker for grumpy old men with hidden depths, so I got invested in Higglemas right away.)

[mysticsparklewings]

Something of a Story String

romping through rose rows the rouge holds roamers ransom re-writing their wrongs out yonder, they yawn yearning for youth yanked from them you yearn for them, too grave group, so it goes much greatness gone to the grass, a goodbye garden but the "byes" come back they blow in on brisk breezes blooming in balance ____ What's this? It's not Inktober yet, what are the mini-magnets doing out and about?   Over on deviantArt, I was encouraged by AlinaLeeArts to enter the String Me a Haiku Contest! hosted by HaikuWriMo, and while I have only basic knowledge and understanding of Haikus, I've been really wanting to play with the mini-magnets lately after reorganizing them into some new tins, and it sounded like fun. (And like a good way to fill out my upload schedule since the bigger projects I'm working on still aren't quite finished yet. ) So I decided I'd take a stab at, or at least see if I could come up with a concept I was happy with and take it from there. The contest rules state that an entry has to be made up of a string of at least four haikus, a Haiku for the uninformed being, according to Google, "a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world." And that the haikus should use heavy alliteration, which also for the uninformed is, "the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words." This would pose a unique challenge for me because, as I said, I'm not very familiar with writing Haikus. I've read plenty of them, sure, and I think I had to write one at least once or twice back in K-12 school for English class or something, but other than that, if I've ever constructed one, it's been completely by accident. That said, I used two different syllable counters to check each of these before I ever arranged the magnets, so hopefully, they do indeed follow the 5-7-5 pattern properly, if nothing else! Alliteration is also not something I intentionally use super often, and that combined with the limited syllables and structure I think makes for a unique challenge even for someone more familiar with the haiku form. Something I learned very quickly while trying to do this: Every syllable counts, you don't want to waste a single one! Before I could get to actually writing the haikus, though, me being me, I needed a concept/theme to work off of. How would I pick letters to alliterate? What would the haikus be about? Since I want to use the mini-magnets (as is more or less my standard for short-form poetry) what should the background(s) look like? Will all four tell a continuous story or four short stories that go together? I have to have at least four haikus, but am I just going to do four, or will I maybe do a few more than that? I decided the easy way to break it down would be to have each haiku dedicated to a specific letter for alliteration, then make a poem based off of whatever I could come up with within that letter alliteration, as I worked I could go back and forth between the separate haikus to develop more of a story, and then once they were done or mostly done, I could decide on what I would do for the background(s) based on the poems themselves. This process did change a little bit, as I started off using a haiku generator to help me get more in a haiku-writing mindset. I did through that pick up one line, "seeing a balance," that obviously got translated a bit differently into the final version ("blooming in balance"), but other than that I really was still largely on my own. I'd toyed with a few other concepts, but none of them felt right or were really sticking with me. Then I got the idea to pick each letter for the haikus based on an acronym; a well-known combination of letters. That would also potentially give me a theme to work off of.   Initially, I thought of ROYGBIV, the acronym for the basic seven colors of the rainbow. And I actually started working on trying to make my haikus based on that, but the letter "O" stopped me pretty short because once I had the letters, my idea was to do word-association like I normally do for the Inktober prompts; I'd list out some potential words to use that I felt somehow connected with the color and started with the same letter as the color. Frankly, there just aren't a lot of letter-O words that I could also connect back to the color, and the few I did come up with just didn't seem like they had a super compelling story hidden within them. But I did really like the idea of the colors because that gave me a good launching point for the backgrounds; I could just use the same color the haiku was based on within the background for it. It sounded like fun, even. So I didn't want to just totally ditch it. After giving it some thought, I figured the best thing to do would be to try using the four main colors everybody knows: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. If I still couldn't come up with my haikus based on those four letters, then it was time to pick a new acronym. Fortunately, even though I had my concerns about the Y in particular, I had a much easier time after that. (I mean, I already had most of the one for "Red," from the ROYGBIV stage, but still.) It's funny though, I thought "Blue" was going to be the easiest, based on my knowledge of "B" words, but that one was actually the one I ended up tweaking and re-writing the most. Probably because it was also the last one I did, and I had started to develop a vague story about yearning for life and visiting a grave in a cemetery, so I had to work within that theme. Though, that said, I think "Green" is actually the weakest of the four, as far as impact goes, despite it being the one that kinda hammers home the life/death theme the most. It was the most difficult one to balance my syllables appropriately because of the words I really wanted to use.   Obviously, this "story" developed as I worked, so it's a bit more on the abstract side, but this is how I see what these four haikus say together; They're talking about someone, probably a young someone (I picked a girl for the background, but the poems could go either way), walking through a field of flowers and stumbling upon a nursing home, maybe with a couple of residents on the porch, and a cemetery nearby. Maybe connected to the home, maybe not. And the young someone stops and reflects on life, and how even once someone passes away, oftentimes we can be reminded of them, or almost feel as if they're still here, in the small things and little fleeting moments here there, like the petals of a flower or the whispers of a seasonal breeze in the air. They come back in those small ways, completing the circle of life, that essential balance of the universe. Of course, that's just one way to interpret it, and even then there are still small details that could be changed while still keeping the sentiment the same. Personally, that's one of the things I enjoy the most about poetry and the mini magnets--you don't always know what you're going to end up saying until someone else reads it and tells you what it says to them. As for those backgrounds, they're all fairly simple watercolor paintings. Once I had the poems and this vague idea of a story, it was fairly easy to come up with a background concept for each one to make them a little more interesting. Normally, I'd use sponged-ink backgrounds during Inktober, but I've been toying with the watercolor idea in the back of mind and this seemed like a good time to experiment since I was already pushing the envelope in various other ways. You can see pretty much exactly what I had in mind for each one, though I will clarify the green one is supposed to be a tombstone in the grass since it's the only one that I think might not be super clear right away. It could just as easily be a rock.   For each of them, my process was very simple; I just picked 1-3 shades to make a gradient from the appropriate color, alternating each one slightly depending on what I wanted for the sky, and then I added the grass and silhouettes on top using a combination of watercolor and black pen. And then the very last one, "blue," got the added moon, stars, and some fireflies using gel pens (and a little bit of pastel for glow). It was the most complex, but "yellow," was actually the trickiest because I have not yet mastered the ability to free-hand a human silhouette. I had to sketch it out separately and then use my lightbox to transfer the outline and fill it in. And, funnily enough, the backgrounds you see here were actually meant to be smaller test-runs before making bigger ones and actually physically setting the mini-magnets on them to photograph. But I was so happy with how these small test ones turned out, I honestly didn't feel like I needed to make the bigger ones. So I pivoted a bit; I formed each mini-magnet poem on a plain blue piece of paper (a "blue screen" if you will to make it easier to separate the words) and photographed them, then used Photoshop to get each haiku onto its respective background. This ended up working to my advantage, as I could just focus on arranging the words to make the words properly and not working around the paintings underneath, and then once I had everything in photoshop I could move things around as necessary much more easily. I'm not super sure about the haiku part, but I'm really pleased with how the overall result looks, and especially happy with 3 out of the four backgrounds.  So much so, I will be posted a wordless version of just the backgrounds to go along with this one for your viewing pleasure! fav.me/ddrqj28 I don't think I'll be placing in the contest (I could be wrong, but I'm aware I'm a little out-of-my-element here ), but I enjoyed the process and the end result, so it was still worth it in my eyes. It was really nice to have the mini-magnets out and put them to use again, especially since I've been having a craving to do so lately. And having them all freshly re-organized made using them all the more enjoyable. Though I'm still not quite sure in what form it'll be, I am very much thinking of doing more non-Inktober stuff like this with the mini-magnets going forward. I have so many of them and I enjoy using them, even when it's a daily challenge and running me a bit ragged.  You might say I'm a bit of an addict. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[charmedhypno]

Reminder: Charmed Pre-Conference Registration Is Open!

Just a reminder, the Charmed School pre-conference is already open for registration! Here's the link:

https://charmedhypno.org/pre-conference/

This year there are FOUR amazing tracks, with presenters all the way from New Zealand and options for beginners and seasoned hypnokinksters alike! Here's a rundown of what's available:

Track 1: Hypnosis 101, A Practical Approach

Presented by The Secret Subject and Alicin

So, you like hypnosis but you aren’t sure of your skills just yet? Great! Come along and spend the evening learning, sharing and playing games with The Secret Subject and Alicin. This practical crash course of hypnosis will give you all the skills you need to go out and hypnotise people all weekend long, as well as lend you some confidence in what you already know. But, it’s not just for those who identify as dominant, this is for anyone who wants to hone their craft and try something new in a safe and constructive environment.

This class is all about the basics of hypnosis that you can use as a recreational hypnotist. We will be covering:

Pretalk, negotiation and safety concerns (tackling common community misconceptions.)

Aftercare, what is it, and when do we need it

A brief on abreactions and what to do if/when one occurs

What is hypnosis

Wording suggestions and modalities (learning the difference between direct and indirect suggestion)

Inductions and practice time (this will be a large portion of the evening, please keep in mind you will have the opportunity to hypnotise someone and be hypnotised, consider this when signing up for the class.)

So, they are under, what now? (bringing them back up, post hypnotic suggestions versus hypnotic suggestions, what to do if you panic.)

Confidence and imposter syndrome, performance issues (**wink**)

Q&A/knowledge share

Class feedback

Where to from here?

This is an empowering take on hypnosis for beginners and you will be able to leave the class feeling great about your abilities, whether you knew a lot or a little before this class, you can be sure there will be something in here for everyone to take away.

 Track 2:  Music, Story, and Emotion – How to Craft a Musical Hypnotic Journey

Presented by Enscenic

How to create a music-driven group trance experience designed to evoke and manipulate specific emotions using a storytelling model. The track will include classes on storytelling, music theory, and musical induction demos; as well as a musical group trance experience.

In Part 1, you will study story structure as a way of creating group experiences.  There will be discussion of myth, music, and fairy tales and their traditional roles in passing on history, culture, and social mores.

In Part 2, you will focus on music as a modality.  Some music theory will then give way to demos in which music is used as an induction, as deepeners and awakeners, and you will play with musical games and triggers.

In Part 3 you will build on the skills already learned to engage modalities other the the strictly auditory, and build a world using music and language. Part 4 will focus on how different musical styles can evoke particular emotions, and Part 5 is a discussion on abreactions as a normal human response and how to work with them.

Then, Part 6 is a complete musical journey which will illustrate the techniques taught in the class.  Participants will experience joy, curiosity, fear, sorrow, resolve, anger, and hope.  There will be lots of aftercare and discussion.

WARNING:  This track involves emotional edge play, and may not be for everybody.  Use your best judgement.

 Track 3:  Nonverbal Methods – Hypnosis Through Intent

Presented by Chewtoy

Along with the things that we consciously say and do, we are all unconsciously communicating all the time in a variety of ways. Tone of voice, posture, facial expressions, and so on. You’re probably already familiar with the idea of paying attention to these signals from your partner to aid rapport, but with practice we can do much, much more than that.

This class is a grab-bag of nonverbal communication exercises from a variety of sources, which both hypnotists and subjects will find helpful. I’ve taught shorter versions of this class at several hypno cons now and it has always been well-received; this is an opportunity to dive a bit deeper.

Participants will be encouraged to switch roles frequently, and to switch partners as well. Some of the exercises will involve one or both partners going into trance, but we will not delve into suggestions beyond that and this is not a place to get your D/s itch scratched; think of it as more like a ballroom dance class where you’re switching partners frequently to learn the steps better.

 Track 4:  New Presenter’s Workshop

Presented by Wiseguy

Do you have an idea for a class, but don’t know how to get started? Would you like some personalized coaching and tips for making your presentation easy for an audience to understand and follow? Each person who signs up for this workshop will leave with the beginnings of a class, just needing to be fleshed out and submitted, and with personal coaching on how to give the presentation with oomf!

Bring an idea you want to work on, because without that the day will be academic instead of practical. You don’t need anything more than that idea; we’ll flesh it out in the workshop. We’ll come up with a (working) title and then cover the basics of structure, to give you a framework on which to hang the pieces of your class. We’ll discuss when and how to lecture, demo, and do hands-on and the strengths and risks of each form. Each attendee will build a rough outline of their class in the session.

Next, we will learn the art of presenting itself. We’ll discuss starting strong, finishing strong, and lots of tips and tricks from handling difficult audience members to keeping yourself in control. You will practice and receive feedback from the group. Come prepared to work! Attendance will be capped at 12 in order to make sure everyone has a good experience.

The pre-conference is a nine-hour, single day course (with breaks) on Thursday, January 16th, the day before the con. It is a separate event and has its own fees and registration, and class sizes are limited. So don't delay, register today!

[prashantrana85]

Visual Style: Expression, Aesthetics and, narration in photography

From the beginning, our eyes encounter photons either directly or indirectly. So to speak, under normal conditions, our interaction with the outer world begins with visual contact. Of course, all other senses play their role in this interaction. But, seeing and hearing stimulates the mind at first, because these can work through distances, whereas, other three require physical contact with stimuli.

So, what happens when seeing and hearing stimulates the intellect and emotions? In that instant, seeing and hearing turns into vision, and the act of listening. And, from that moment onward, these senses analyze the world. This analysis usually leads to acceptation, rejection or intrigue.

It is clearly comprehensible that within the frames of regular conditions, we begin with visual diagnosis, even before listening. As John Berger said “It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it,” within this establishment, we appreciate, admire or detest, and in certain instances we are simply curious or astonished. And, in the soil of this establishment, emerges the sapling of visual style with its fruits as expression and aesthetics.

What is visual style? As John Berger said “Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen,” this realization influences a person to try and appear as visually appreciable, or at-least acceptable. This effort to be visually appreciable and, acceptable is visual style at the grass-root level. Is this phenomenon of visual style only limited to people? Of courses not; it is applicable to every visible entity.

As spectator, one applies this understanding of visual style on people, places and things one sees and, classifies them as pleasing, disgusting or intriguing. As the spectated, we use this understanding of visual style to decorate ourselves, our places and things that we create. For example, person X going to a party would try to put on their best clothes and, to carry their best appearance. Here, they apply the criteria of visual style on themselves, but once they reach the party, it is probable that person Y catches their gaze, because he or she is dressed (in accordance to understanding of visual style of person X) in visually pleasing manner, which can also be referred as beauty.

When David Hume writes “The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same,” he highlights the subjective nature of visual style. This branch of subjectivity bears its first fruit, which is expression. Let’s go back to the example of person X. They applied this subjectivity on themselves and, person Y to justify what is visually pleasing to them. But, when person X would’ve to create something, for example a photograph, they’d apply their subjective expression in that act as well. Even if the task is assigned by someone else, it will contain traces of person X’s individual expressions. This subjectivity is what distinguishes Richard Avedon from Robert Capa. Although, their medium of expression was same, their potential stimuli, and expressions were different.

This subjectivity becomes evident in mediums of visual art and, media and communication such as photography, music, textual expression and design. In this moment second fruit called aesthetics, comes to existence. All mediums of expression such as poetry, theater, music etc. are as inseparable from aesthetics as image making. But, since we are discussing visual style, we will discuss visual art and photography.

Expression is an act and, aesthetic is how one decides to perform that act. To explain this lets take the example of person X again. When they dressed up good for the party, it was an expression. But they decided to wear a particular colored dress, with a specific fragrance and pair of shoes, appropriate for that particular kind of occasion, it turns into aesthetic.

Often, aesthetics is defined as a set of principles concerned with beauty or its appreciation. Is it really that simple? Victor Burgin says “What we see … is not a pure and simple coding of light patterns that are focused on retina. Somewhere between the retina and the visual cortex, the in flowing signals are modified to provide information that is already linked to a learned response. … evidently what reaches the visual cortex is evoked by the external world, but is hardly a direct or simple replica of it,” Roland Barthes put this as “I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe and I think,” and John Berger expresses that “Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Genius, Civilization, Form, Status, Taste, etc.” all three of them talks about similar or same concept, but yet in different ways. And, this selection of different ways represents their personal aesthetic expression.

I use expression and aesthetics together, because both are weaved together as the fabric of visual style. But, with these statements one can surely derive a conclusion that expression and aesthetic are not independent of society and psychology. When it comes to modes of visual communication such as photography, this influence of society and psychology is very important to understand, because photography bears responsibility towards both; the viewer as well as the creator.

Talking about social influence on aesthetics, I prefer to call it as Macro Aesthetic; which is derived from society, culture, and politics etc. This determines the issue, event or sentiment which a photographer decides to portray, and the general ways of viewer’s perception. Photos from modernist and post-modernist era, or works of photojournalists influenced by a certain political movement, are an apt example of this. Roland Barthes talks about this influence as a spectator when he coins the term Studium saying, “It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in stadium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions,” and Martha Rosler talk about this influence over photographer pointing out “The Bowery, in New York, is an archetypal skid row. It has been much photographed, in works veering between outraged moral sensitivity and sheer slumming spectacle,” in her essay.

On the other hand, I believe there is also Micro Aesthetics, which emerges from within the photographer, and is influenced by psychology. It influences the selection of subject and not only its way of portrayal. It is determined by personal experiences, hopes or ambitions of the creator as well as the viewer of the image. As a viewer, Roland Barthes calls it Punctum when he says, “It is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.”

To simplify, I’d say; Macro aesthetics is where either photographer or spectator or both are playing the photograph as a musical instrument. They’ve control over the selection of theme, shapes, colors, issues and cultural knowledge or curiosity to enhance that knowledge, by studying the subjects portrayed. They’re involved but not participating in the image.

But, Micro aesthetics creates circumstances where either photographer, or spectator, or both are being played like a musical instrument by the photograph itself. Here, they participate in image making i.e. the photographer and spectator, share a part of inner self with the photograph. But, it is next to impossible to set permanent principles around it, because what might socially affect one could psychologically influence the other, and vice versa.

An example to this can be the recent trend in photojournalism, where photos of war and refugees, flood the media. These images might contain Barthes’s Studium for people from safe countries but, they’d have Punctum for persons that encountered war. Similarly the photographs might be results of Macro aesthetics of a photojournalist who hail from a safe country, but for a photographer who faced or is facing loss due to war, those photos might be an outcome of Micro Aesthetic expression.

These expressions can be static, dynamic, geometric or sculptural etc. depending upon the personal psyche of creator. And, can be sympathetic, empathetic, objective or symbolic for creator as well as spectator, depending upon their reference point within the image.

At macro level, aesthetic expressions are connected to society and culture in terms of trends of how one expresses oneself. But, this connection is not strong enough to behold subjectivity. At micro level, subjectivity works to expand the horizon of visual style. One can say that we are going through this phase of expansion of horizon in photography. From the descriptive documentary style to interpretive communicative, and in some cases even symbolically expressive.

The direction of this expansion is still blurred. But I presume that text, sounds, and films are gaining importance as aesthetic additions, or tools in visual style of photographic presentations. Reason behind this anticipation, is the lesser amount of time that spectators invest in image viewing, due to fast paced lives. Flood of images in online and offline visual media. Also, text, sounds and moving images, prevents misunderstandings in global society, by clarifying the meanings of symbols and intentions of the photographer. It appears that inclusion of other senses, than just sight is the next step. We’ll see.

By – Prashant Rana

Every Sunday we discuss live though Instagram @prashantrana_official (Link - https://www.instagram.com/prashantrana_official/ ), at 16:30 (04:30PM) Indian Standard Time (12:00 Central European standard time). The discussion is based on diary entry of Fridays. We pick one topic of photography to write about, and post it here on the website. And, on Sunday at the given time, we talk about that live on Instagram. (Next session on 15th March 2020.

The session is later posted on Youtube - Zikr: Conversations in Photography (Link - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy129cJLS3_vQN8wUFls_Mg?view_as=subscriber )

So do subscribe and follow. Looking forward to our conversations.

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) A Brief Analysis of Rhubarb by Scott Morrison

> On YouTube, there is a fan-made video for Aphex Twin’s Rhubarb with over eight million views.

> Accessed through the familiar white, pristine and frictionless interface of the site, this particular video immediately stands out to me as a lacuna.

> Uploaded eight years ago – a relative artefact in the endless present of the digital age - the video consists of low-resolution passages that alternate between ambient landscapes of clouds, open fields and bare forests.

> The timelapses of clouds in their quiet, candyflosslike unspooling seems instantly to be the perfect companion to the quietly unfolding music. But the video always fills me with questions: who took the time to make and upload it, eight years ago or more, and why does their emotional response correlate so exactly with my own? Why do the blurry outlines of their nostalgia tesselate so precisely with mine? And why do the images so intimately fit the music itself?

> I would like to suggest that it’s because the footage, the music, and our emotions while we listen share a similar essence, a common resonance: the fundamental tension between stasis and movement.

> Setting up this relationship is one way that music can touch the eternal, the timeless. But, as is fitting, we will return to this by moving on. The way up and the way down are one and the same.

> So why does Rhubarb feel endless? Why does it feel like floating?

·      

Open up this MIDI visualisation of Rhubarb.

> MIDI visualisations are like starcharts to me. Often, more than any other type of analysis, they can make clear the different voices, structures and ideas at work in a piece of music.

> They can reveal the curves and clefts of sonic constellations; the outlines of bodies and faces in the clouds.

·      

Harmony

> With Rhubarb, the harmony is always the first thing that hits me.

> For the duration of its 7 minutes and 44 seconds, Rhubarb is a single chord sequence that repeats without cessation or secession, recurring over and over and over again.

> This, at the simplest level, is the clearest manifestation of the tension between movement and stasis in the music. This is why it feels endless. The great law of the universe is entropy: everything will change and decay and pass. But not this piece of music – especially when we can just press play again when it finishes.

> The music may not have substantially moved by the time we get to the end of its 7 minutes and 44 seconds - but have we?

·      

> To be a little more granular (grains: the gauzy, hazy textures of clouds on film frictionlessly becoming pixels online), in music theory, we could express the journey Rhubarb’s harmony does or does not take like this:

II: D(i) | F#m | A | E | D :II

II: IV | VI | I | V | IV :II

Western harmony revolves around the building and release of harmonic tension. Here, however, this process is subverted - the tension is never fully built or fully released: the sequence never resolves.

> In fact, the imperfect cadence at the end of the sequence (V > IV) leads back around to another chord IV at the beginning, smudging the boundary between the end and the beginning, the omega and the alpha.

> Notably, this first chord, inverted, loses even the pull of its own root note; and the lowest pitch (an A) in the bass voice (the blue line in the video) often makes the final D a second inversion. The lowest note in the piece - which normally acts as a ground in the music’s home key - is indeed the root of the tonic, but this only appears during the dominant chord, its diametric opposite.

> In other words: the usual harmonic weights that act as the law of gravity in the blue globe of a piece of music have lost their pull. Really, this is the fundamental reason the music feels like floating – we are not in a terrestrial world of causation and consequence, of falling and entropy and decay, but in another weightless world, revolving. Floating. Endlessly. Like clouds on a screen.

·      

> From here in the Cloud(s), what other features can I discern in the harmony below?

> The movement of the chord voicings (i.e. how the notes of one chord shift to form the next chord) is one of perpetual descent.

> In music, descent is a downward movement of high to low most often associated with music of lamentation, loss and grief. Here, however, due, to the unchanging repetition throughout the piece, this descent spirals not downwards into the depths, but - to me at least - pushes inwards, gently eroding, nudging, nestling, searching, enveloping, suffusing.

> The overall atmosphere of the piece is one not of deep grief or loss. But there is definitely a wistful sadness and longing (the bare branches in the video, the low winter sun). These are moments of melancholy and nostalgia. But why?

> Well, what is the essence of each of these states? I would suggest that both are defined by a tension between stasis and movement: the tug of the past on the present.

> I would like to suggest that this, by modelling this dialectic tension between stasis and movement in the fundamental construction of the music, is how Richard D James can make a piece that so powerfully evokes these feelings.

> There is one last thing I would like to add, softly, before we touch the ground again.

> The harmonic language here is entirely diatonic, and, for the most part, triadic. In other words, it is a simple soundworld – an echo of the language of lullabies.

·      

Timbre

> The timbre (the colour or sound quality) of the instruments used only heightens the precious, fragile, lullaby-like lilt of the harmony.

> The softness of the synths is sleepy and soothing. They behave like organs; celestial simulacra; hushed, safe, endless.

·      

Tessitura

> Clouds, of course, live in the sky.

> They move over vast distances, surrounded by space, and air. From aeroplanes and mountaintops, I have seen the vastness of their shadows migrate effortlessly over distant hills and plains below.

> Rhubarb shares this feeling of vast, endless, weightless distance. This is partly created by the recurring harmonic structure, outlined above, which seems to be without bounds.

> The feeling of space in the track is also created, however, by the sense of space between the different voices, and the wide range between the highest and lowest pitches. To me this creates a feeling of a ground far below and a sky far above.

> In terms of production and mixing, the panning and reverb add to this - more intimations of spiritual spaces: sounding spinning about above our heads, echoing in whispers, as in caves, or cathedrals.

·      

Rhythm

> Clouds never move quickly. Even if they pass over us with greater speed on certain days than others, for me there is something about their scope and scale that always makes their movement a graceful procession. There is no hurry or agitation. It is an enviable, inevitable process - long lines of flawless code running endlessly.

> Clouds (those in the sky, at least), move steadily. They do not glitch or leap. And so here the rhythms are regular. They do not alter. This creates a certain feeling of stability and certainty, of predictability, of trust. Of comfort and soothing.

> At one point, a voice enters playing on an offbeat (the yellow voice at 2:17 in the MIDI visualisation). This little change is vast in the context. It opens up another part of the landscape entirely: it contributes to the impression that there are several independent cycles occurring simultaneously, which helps the piece to feel organic, flowing - trees in a forest moving differently in the same wind. Clouds of different shapes and textures hanging in the same sky.

·      

Melody

> Then there is that beguiling shiver of a melody.

> It appears in the highest voice (the red line that enters at 0:44) and floats and glides small distances at a time, again, with no glitches or sudden leaps.

> It reminds me of the purity of plainchant, or Renaissance masses – a single, pure human voice vibrating in a cathedral. It reminds me of Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli: a slow, predominantly stepwise melody unfolding on top of a largely fixed, triadic harmonic part.

> Again: stasis and tension; linearity and repetition.

> The feeling of walking in place on an endlessly revolving spiral staircase.

·      

Voicing

> I identify a total of five separate voices, each of which occupy a certain register, and which have a unique character. These rarely play all at once.

> It is these different combinations of the voices, alongside the harmonic rhythm previously discussed, that creates the structure of the piece. This is one not of progress or expansion, but of exiting and returning.

> Disappearance and reappearance without change feels eternal, inevitable; as if the different voices have been continuing unaltered somewhere else (beneath the mixer, above the clouds) momentarily inaudible to us, before appearing in our reality again.

> Notably, the piece ends how it begins (a way a lone a last a loved a lone), continuing as movement and stasis: unchanging materials combined and recombined in ever evolving coagulations.

> It fades out. In other words, the recording ends, but the music doesn’t.

> Buffering on servers, endlessly playing on The Cloud, or buffering again in my memory it feels - endless, like floating.

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Text and Images: Scott Morrison

Published: 29/12/19

[xambedox]

the boy with the bread; a drabble

     it was a dreary day, the kind where the cold chilled you to your bones, the kind where even the steady hot & golden glow of the ovens couldn’t keep the chill out, not truly. peeta’s warmed by the fiery oven but just to look out & past the window, he’s left with a melancholy unbefitting of a child. the rain itself looked steady, like it was ice cold & unforgiving to those caught in it.

     but peeta did his best not to dwell on it, instead focusing his attention on the tasks at hand & on the surprisingly good mood of his family as they all worked around him. even his mother, who was more often that not, just as cold as the rainstorm outside. she liked to see people miserable, struggling. he often wonders how she can be so cruel, especially to the family she raised & whom she claims to love.

     then there’s the far off clatter & rustle as he hears the garbage can at the curb & it seems he wasn’t the only one. the look in his mother’s eye changes, & he worries. already his mind is going through all the things he must remember not to do for fear of evoking her wrath & turning it towards him. but peeta’s curious, & though timid, he follows his mother out, thinking how large of a contrast between the pleasant tone of the bell at their door & the loud, ugly words he soon hears leave his mother’s lips. he can’t see her face the way he cowers behind her, but there’s no struggle for him to picture the expression he’s seen time & time again.

     so he stares out past his mother’s skirt, eyes finding the face of a girl he’d known well enough. katniss everdeen  —  the girl with a voice as soothing & lovely as he looked in that red dress from his memories. but the girl he sees now seems a shell of the girl he knew. they were in the same year at school & saw her only in passing, but now he’s able to see her clearly & the sight pains him. it looked like katniss had been starving for days. deep set dark circles, hollowed cheeks & tired eyes, glazed over with a somber acceptance of the insults being spit in her direction. she was soaked as could be, her shins & boots muddied from her uncareful steps & peeta was at a loss. she looked as though she was on deaths door & had no rebuttal for his mother’s more than displeased words. he wanted to help, to do something. but he’s still only a child — a child with no say & a deeply ingrained fear of his mother’s hand.

     katniss replaced the lid where it belonged, backing away. while still unhappy & her mood ruined, peeta’s mother turns on her heel, moving swiftly back into the bakery, grumbling about how awful it was to have hideous beggars coming to them for scraps, & how unpleasant the goosebumps now raised on her arms were from the chill, so uncaring of the girl who felt it tenfold over. with his mother back inside & the bell chime fading, he watches katniss moved onward & around the side of the bakery, though not far. she found herself leaning against the old apple tree & peeta knew there was no mistaking the bitter look of defeat in her face. he felt selfish for it, but he turned away from her, guilt squeezing his heart uncomfortably tight. he’s left wondering how he could help her, if he could help her.

    starvation was no stranger to district 12. though the seam was far worse than the merchant area, there were still those of the town kids that had to take out tesserae. peeta’s family included. their bakery was popular, full of good hearty food that was always in demand, but they went through food supplies dangerously fast, taking out tesserae made their lives that much easier. still, they struggled at times, a fact well hidden among merchants for fear it might affect their business. the culmination of which being that he’d seen first hand the effect starvation had on the people of the district, there was no avoiding it even within the safeties of the merchant section.

     now back in the bakery, the room feels warm, too warm. & he wants to focus on the tasks he’d been given but he couldn’t stop thinking about the girl outside, a girl he’d loved from afar for so long & yet he’s unable to help her when she needs it most. his mother snaps at him, spitting cruel words to him now that her anger had been redirected & he nods, his shoulders hunched as he cowers next to the oven, worried about the risk of her ire escalating further, but as he reaches to pull the bread from the oven, an idea strikes him, & he forces himself to comply before he has the chance to change his mind. he’s caught, being yanked away from the oven by the back of his shirt as his older brother pulls the burning bread from where it fell in the fire. now retrieved, the charred bread sits on the counter top in front of his mother & the entire bakery is quiet as they wait on his mothers response. she takes a few moments for her to collect herself, taking that pent up after from a few minutes ago & molding it together with the scolding peeta knew was coming. but he stood his ground, silently awaiting his punishment & fighting the tears in his eyes. he was stronger than this, only the weak cried, & he couldn’t be weak, not in front of his mother.

     then the punishment came & for a split second he saw white. she’d swung the rolling pin at him, a weapon she was well practiced with, but this particular blow was harder than most. as much as he wanted to stand strong & take it like a man, he was still just an 11 year old boy. so he lets out a small cry, equal parts pain & surprise as he finds himself falling to the ground. his father rushes forward to his mother, trying to calm her down while peeta’s eldest brother helps him up, trying to assess the damage but already peeta’s wincing at the touch.

     he’s sure it will bruise, & he hears his brother mutter quietly under his breath.  ❝ what’s wrong with you? you’ve just made it harder on the rest of us. ❞ the words harsh as were most in their family, but there was still some concern in his tone.  ❝ you’re normally better than this. ❞ peeta swallows the tears threatening to spill over, insisting to himself over & over again that this was nothing, he’d received far worse.

     but his mother’s screaming continues & peeta’s shoved towards the side door, bread still almost painfully hot in his hands.  ❝ feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! ❞ his mother roars, chasing him out the door.  ❝ why not? no one decent will buy burned bread! ❞ peeta finds it hard still to hold back the tears. so he sniffles, feet half dragging through the mud on his way to the pig pen. he can see katniss out the corner of his eye, but he’s still afraid, terribly so, & feels her eyes trained on him as he halfheartedly tears bits off the bread. he can see bits of raisins & nuts poking through the more he tears. then he hears their front door bell chime once more, & his mother rushes back inside to meet the customer, & he can picture all too well the change in her voice to a cheery tone as if nothing had gone wrong at all.

     his cheek stung & ached & he’s sure the heat of the oven will only hurt it more, but he had to deal with the pain without complaint, god knows what more would happen if he were to whine even in the slightest. but soon peeta finds himself glancing back over his shoulder at the bakery, hoping desperately no one would appear to make sure he finished the job. & it seemed clear, so peeta wastes no time tossing the partially torn loaf of bread to katniss’ feet, followed by the second almost immediately & he made his way back inside as quickly as he could, careful to close the door tightly behind him.

     he was right. the heat of the room only strengthened the ache of his cheek & eye & he hopes he made the right decision. he hopes she takes the bread, & he feels guilty he felt like he had to toss it at her, condescendingly, instead of walking over to her & handing it over directly. but already he was scared, so scared he’d burned the bread, & further scared still his motives would be found out.

     later that night, he’d been forced to sit at the dinner table, his plate empty while those of his family members were full. ❝ you shouldn’t have burned the bread, peeta. ❞ his mother’s tone was sickeningly sweet, smug tone as if she couldn’t be more proud of her punishments for the day.  ❝ if you’re going to ruin perfectly good food then i see no reason why you should be allowed to eat some. ❞ peeta’s only response is to nod silently in his seat, staring down at his empty plate. but somewhere in the back of his mind, he tells himself he learned a lesson. giving something up so someone else can have it ( no matter the pain of the scolding he might receive ) was worth it. he went to bed, stomach painfully empty, but his heart full knowing he might have made a world of difference to a girl he cared about.

     when peeta awoke the next morning, it was to the face of his younger brother leaning over him, a grimace contorting the other boy’s face. ❝ you’ve got a black eye, ❞ he states plainly as if peeta couldn’t feel the familiar pain of it. ❝ she wanted to let you go to school without breakfast again today, ❞ he adds. ❝ dad convinced her otherwise but you’ve gotta be careful the next few days. ❞ peeta sighs. oh how he tires of this life of carefully treading around his family, the constant fear he won’t measure up to his brothers, or that he was always just one small thing away from another blow & his eye stings further at the mere thought.

     the next time he sees katniss, it’s at the end of the school day. her face is still tired, on the verge of looking malnourished but she at least seems refreshed, her expression happier than before. then peeta catches her eyes, only for a moment before he finds himself too embarrassed to look any longer. if only he could have gone to her, placed the bread in her hand & treated her like a human being rather than a dog begging for scraps.

     & it’s like that that peeta falls back into his habit of finding himself staring after her during school, but now she catches his eye before he has the chance to flit away & go unnoticed. he hopes she’s doing well, better than before. & he resolves himself, making a promise to his ears alone that if she’s ever wanting for food again, as desperate as she was that day while searching through garbage for scarps, he tells himself he’ll give her bread again & he’ll look her in the eye when he does it.

[ruminativerabbi]

Eurovision 2019

To say that the annual Eurovision Song Contest has not been a big part of my life is really almost to say nothing at all. Obviously I had heard of it before last year when Netta Barzilai won the contest for Israel with her slightly bizarre but extremely catchy hit song, “Toy”? (The bizarre part has to do with her mimicking a chicken in the course of the number. But she was a very engaging chicken and the voters loved it, and I did too! To take it all in, click here.) For one thing, I was still at JTS the year that Israel won for the first time with Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta’s performance of Nurit Hirsch and Ehud Manor’s song “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” (click here) and remember loving the song and feeling very proud of Israel for winning. And I was only one year older when Israel then pulled off the remarkable feat of winning for a second consecutive year in 1979 with Kobi Oshrat and Shimrit Orr’s song, “Hallelujah,” performed by Gali Atari and the musical group Milk and Honey (click here). It then took almost twenty years for Israel to win again, taking the prize in 1998 with Dana International’s truly remarkable rendition of Tzvika Pick and Yoav Ginai’s song, “Diva.” (Click here and you’ll see what I mean.) And then, twenty years later still, Netta took the prize again last year.

The general principle is that the contest is held in the country of the previous year’s winner and there have only been a handful of exceptions, mostly connected with the winner’s country not wanting to shoulder the expenses involved in hosting the contest. (In 1980, when the contest should have been in Israel for the second year in a row, Israel declined to host the contest because its date fell on Yom Hazikaron and it seemed impossible to contemplate to hold a contest like Eurovision on a day of national mourning for the fallen servicemen and women of the IDF.) But that was then, and Netta’s win last year meant that this year’s contest would be held in Israel, which is exactly what has been going on this last week.

It’s been a wild time with missiles from Gaza aimed at civilian targets clearly meant to discourage people from coming to Israel to attend or participate in the contest. There have been endless efforts by anti-Israel groups of all sorts to condemn the participants for coming to Israel and adding their name to a contest that will surely bring Israel international prestige. And yet there are forty-one countries participating in Tel Aviv. The semi-finals were on Tuesday and Thursday; the finals featuring singers from Greece, Belarus, Serbia, Cyprus, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Australia, Iceland, San Marino, and Slovenia are this Saturday night. Will Israel’s Kobi Marimi manage to win the prize for Israel for a second consecutive year with his English-language song, “Home”? I suppose we’ll all find out soon enough, although he’s not favored to win or even to come close to winning. But who knows? The world is full of surprises! (You can decide for yourself what you think. Click here to hear Kobi Marimi sing “Home.”)

More impressive even than Netta’s chicken dance from last year is the fact that no contestants at all pulled out of the contest this year—and that despite the intense pressure that was exerted on some of them not to perform in Israel. The rockets—hundreds of them, some landing less than twenty miles from Tel Aviv—also failed to affect the party. Yes, it’s true that fewer tourists came to attend the contest than Israel had expected. But the bottom line has to be that the contest came to Israel, that it unfolded precisely according to plan, that no one was successfully bullied into backing out, and that Israel felt—for the course of almost a full week—like a regular country among the nations of the world, one that takes its place naturally among the nations who participate in international song competitions like Eurovision, like a contestant state among contestant states…and not as the recipient of such endless hostility from the very nations that should be Israel’s most staunch supporters and allies that we—we who keep track of these things and who truly care about Israel’s future—we barely even notice insults and aggressive statements of the kind that would ignite international storms of outrage if they were directed against any other country at all.

But even though no one withdrew, there was still the lingering irritation regarding the decision specifically not to have Eurovision in Jerusalem despite the fact that the regular practice is always to hold the contest in the capital city of the previous year’s winner’s country. In the past, this hasn’t been an issue: the contest was held in Jerusalem both in 1979 and in 1999. You could say that nothing much has changed since 1999 with respect to Jerusalem: it was the capital of Israel then and it is the capital of Israel now. But that wouldn’t be taking into account the world-wide efforts of the BDS movement and its Israel-hating leadership to delegitimize Israel’s existence and, with particular venom, its natural right to establish its capital wherever it wishes, a right naturally and uncontroversially accorded every other country on earth. It is true that many Eurovision contests have not been held in capital cities—when Germany hosted the contest in 2011 contest, for example, it was held in Düsseldorf rather than Berlin—but these were not political decisions, just ones related to how much money the host city was willing to spend and other venue-related considerations. Only here does it feel certain that political considerations outweighed all others. Yes, it’s true that the European Broadcasting Union, which is the parent company that organizes the Eurovision contest, said publicly that their decision to hold the contest in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem was simply a function of Tel Aviv’s “creative and compelling bid.” But, at least as far as I can see, that has convinced basically no one at all. Nor is it at all clear that our own nation’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was unrelated to the EBU’s decision and their eagerness not to be seen to be supportive of that move. So there’s that issue too in the mix of emotions I bring to Eurovision this year!

For me personally, the whole scene— this is the rabbi in me talking, not the music fan—the whole scene evokes a set of feelings unrelated to the world of pop music and unrelated, even, to Netta Barzilai. That longing to be one of the nations, after all, is as old as the Jewish people…as is the tension between that longing for normalcy and the sense that Israel—both it is sociological guise as the people Israel and its political one as the State of Israel—has a role to play in the history of the world that is uniquely its own, a role for which it was chosen from among the nations of the world to play in the pageant of human history that is different from the parallel roles assigned other nations and peoples.

Scripture uses the phrase am s’gulah mi-kol ha-amim (“the treasured nation from among all the nations”) three different times to reference the Israelite nation. How that somehow morphed into the much-maligned epithet, the “chosen people,” I’m not entirely sure…but it clearly happened a long time ago: the benedictory formula recited when someone is called to the Torah includes the Hebrew version of that expression and requires that the person coming forward acknowledge God as the one who “chose us from among the nations to grant us the revelation of the Torah.” There was a time when those words were considered entirely normal and not at all chauvinistic or arrogant. But even to me they feel just a bit iffy these days…and I am someone with the greatest respect for the liturgical heritage of the Jewish people.

I suppose I too long for normalcy. I want to see Israel treated like the other nations of the world. I want Israeli athletes to compete freely in whatever tournaments they qualify for, not only those that take place in countries that will grant them visas. I want Israeli professors to be welcome guests in the universities of the world, not to have to negotiate minefields of unwarranted hostility from their own colleagues in academe. I find it beyond problematic that Israel is forced by the United Nations to be part of the Western European Group (delicately renamed in their honor as the Western European and Others Group) rather than welcome to join the Asia Group, membership in which you would think would be naturally awarded to a country that is, after all, in Asia. I hate that Israel is singled out again and again by self-appointed critics who find it offensive for Israel to self-define as a Jewish state but who seem not to care at all about Iran or Pakistan self-defining as Islamic ones.

And so I find myself in a familiar bind, wanting specialness and normalcy, uniqueness and averageness. I want Israel to be seen as a regular nation, as a normal one, as just another member of the family of nations. But I also want to embrace the concept of Jewish destiny, a concept inextricably tied in my mind to the unique role in history that is Israel’s. I suppose we all feel that about ourselves at least to some extent, that we want to be thought of as unique, as special…but somehow also not to stand out unduly or to be perceived as other than regular people living regular lives. I’ve learned over the years how to live with a bit of ambiguity, how to accept that the tension that inheres in every set of incongruent desires does not need to be resolved, how to want two incongruous things and not feel obliged to abandon either merely because it feels impossible to have both. Sometimes—and I say this both on the macrolevel of national identity and on the microlevel of personal individuality—sometimes you just have to choose not to make a choice.