#vulnerability begets vulnerability it seems

[citymiddled]

elluin finally had her one (1) allotted breakdown where she cut all her hair off and astarion immediately confessed his feelings to her

[sylwanin-was-right]

I feel the film redirecting Neytiri’s anger toward Spider instead of Jake made her seem less justified since he’s a kid and def played into a lot of stereotypes (plus her relationship with Ronal adding up to her being one of the “simple angry natives” She deserves to angry due to her tramma but the way it was displayed was disappointing

I can see where youre coming from, but I funamentally dont agree:

he’s a kid

Neytiri targeted Spider strategically to intimidate Quaritch into freeing Kiri. Not only that, Neytiri knew (somehow) that the two Miles were related as father and son, so Spider being sacrificed as a "son for a son" was the trade of magnitude that Quaritch needed to realize the consequences of bluffing (disowning and discarding Spider as a human casualty that happened to be his child).

Although I doubt Quartich knew how Neteyam died in all that chaos, he probably understood the magnitude of her "son for a son" comment by inferring she'd lost her son and would risk a heavfty bloodpayment to avenge him and save the rest of her children (of whom she didnt seem to consider Spider one of) and also put him in a vulnerable position by freeing him up.

Spider is a kid yes but so was Kiri, Tuk'tirey, and Neteyam, all of whom were targeted as prisoners of war, and the last of whom died as a casualty of war. War causes excessive suffering, trauma, and death, but fire begets fire and sometimes sacrifices have to be made. To Neytiri, sacrificing Spider was something she was willing to pay for the price of not losing Kiri or anyone else and having Jake in better position to capture him so she could escape with the kids. She knew how much it would take for Quaritch to let Kiri go, so she got equal with the stakes of the tradeoff.

Also, Neytiri is a warrior who is probably trained and used to the cruelties of war at this point, but shes still a person, so shes complex. We saw how happy she was until the humans returned, we saw how much grief and agony she was put through, and we saw her grapple with the war refugee status she and her family were in, again. She had to be convinced by Jake to leave Neteyam's body to finish the RDA off because she is a loving person and mother as much as she is a ruthless and dedicated warrior and she had to internally struggle with those parts of herself. But I feel that Neytiri was constantly dragged along by events that led to enormous personal losses, so we saw her take her own course of action when the buildup of her trauma required her to make a morally grey descision. We got to see Neytiri be complex in a way thats morally grey.

She did not target Spider because he was a vulnerable child anymore than her enemy did to intimidate a surrender. But I personally believe her "son for a son" comment made the ultimatum she directed very personal as she felt need to not only save her living children but avenge her dead child in the form of sacrifice. Neytiri made a descision that made her complex and just made sense for what shes been through and what she stands for.

[...] and def played into a lot of stereotypes (plus her relationship with Ronal adding up to her being one of the “simple angry natives” She deserves to angry due to her tramma but the way it was displayed was disappointing

I agree that the immediate feud between her and Ronal was a very poor writing choice by white people (mostly white men) who seem to think portraying two Indigenous-coded women literally catfighting upon meeting had zero implications about Indigenous people and women in general lol. But I disagree (as a Black person, tho not Indigenous, so keep that in mind) that Neytiri's character arc exhibited stereotypes of a "simple angry native" because the rage that led her to sacrifice Spider was not just simple anger at all and actually very complex decision making from complex motivations.

We saw Neytiri endure major, consequtive traumas throughout A1 and A2. She watched it all happen before her eyes and she had little to no onscreen time to process any of it. It seemed she was dragged along by the plot and passive to the decisions it required from her. We finally got to see her fury and rage unleashed in a slaughtering at the sinking ship battle, and while she had blood on her mind in vengence, it was not senseless and random; she was doing what any warrior, mother, and would-be Tsahìk would to "protect the people", this time NOT from anyones swaying or orders, or by the demands of plot progression.

I think the worst anti-indigenous stereotype of the movie, had Neytiri not been shown to sacrifice Spider, would be that Indigenous ppl are never justified in their expressions of trauma against their oppressors. We saw no full blooded Na'vi character make descisions of their own voalition in expression against RDA plundering because Jake was always there to be the more "level headed" mediator and reorient their "reactions". It was frustrating to see the known white savior character seem to have just as much unearned authority as before even if it was in a mediating position. So when Neytiri made a strategic descision to use Spider as bait against Quaritch to free his hold on Kiri—something Jake would have likely never done nor fully accepted—we saw a Na'vi woman use her own voalition to express her rage against her oppressors and those in debt to her people in a strategic way that furthered their self defense as a people, which beings me to my next point:

I'd argue that Neytiri's descision to use Spider as bait and sacrifice wasnt just about her own vengence. The magnitude of her losses and who she is as an Omatikaya warrior woman meant Soider's sacrifice would be a collective a loss against the RDA since Neteyam's death was a collective loss against her family, the Omatikaya, and even Eywa (after the Collective losses of A1 and the events prior, like Sylwanin's murder).

Its as likely as not that Neytiri knew Quaritich killed Neteyam. She decided that, regardless, he has to pay as the leader of the RDA force that was directly responsible for the war and assassin fleets brought to all her families multiple times. The fact that a sprayed RDA bullet killed Neteyam and not directly Quaritch meant that there was a collective blame to be placed on the entire RDA for his death and the continued assault and massacres of Na'vi peoples and Eywa. Spider's sacrifice would have reverberated across the RDA as a collective attack since he served as both a valuable resource and a legal liability to the RDA (think of negative PR they would have if news got back to Earth that a human childs death occured on a Colonal's watch), as well as a personal attack on Quaritch whom likely would have made his son's loss personal to the RDA, too (whether in allegience to them or not. We'll see!).

Ofc it would look bad to the humans for a Na'vi to kill their kin, and could easily be spun against them since its not wrong to put ur species first, nor wrong to find child death irredeemable. But the stereotype of the "simple angry native" comes from their propaganda and privileges since they benefit from Na'vi oppression, not from the actions of the Na'vi in response to their oppression in the context of it. One human child sacrificed in a hostage standoff in lieu of a genocide of thousands of Na'vi children, their families (familial flora and fauna too), and their sacred sites is not comparable to a corperation's military forces using genocide and war to protect plundered assets for money and market domination because the collective messages against the people affected by the losses are completely different. Neytiri's sacrifice of Spider is a message of collective and spiritual venegence and self defense, and the RDA and RECOM fleet's massacring and plundering are messages of of violent supremacy and greed. Total opposites between the oppressor and the oppressed.

TLDR: Neytiri is a complex character saturated with trauma and, at her breaking point, was fueled by vengence into morally grey territory. Her on-screen slaughtering of RDA forces was an extention of the rage and vengence she felt when she used Spider as bait and sacrifice. She was only morally "questionable" to the extent of what sacrifices could be "allowed" in war/defense, and IMO, it made sense for her to use Spider in the heat of the moment as bait to call Quaritch on his bluff to release Kiri and get better position to defeat him and get the kids to safety.

It was important to see an Indigenous-coded character use her own voalition against the white savior's sway to express anger at oppessors and add layers to her character. In avenging the death of her firstborn and the protection of her family, her people, her home, and Eywa against settler colonial genocide, morally depraved, capitalist destruction, and assault on the spiritual harmony and autonomy of Na'vi nations, Neytiri targeted the human boy she felt little kin with in a strategic way. Quartich's son proved to be a liability anyway and Neytiri knew she could exploit that liability through his sacrifice, which proved to expose the vulnerabilities of the oppressor enough to free her family and ring a message to the RDA that the losses she endured were personal and collectively felt.

I feel that Neytiri as a warrior, a mother, and an indigenous woman (in her own universe at least) was justified in her actions toward Spider, and her abscence from the film in dialouge and emotional expression (other than crying and screaming in agony from direct assaults) are what contribute to anti-indigenous sterotypes about Native Women's lack of complexity and Indigenous ppl's automous decisions against their oppressors, NOT her descision to act on her trauma.

[aro-barrel]

as someone who has struggled to see myself as queer when i was younger, it frustrates me to see the de-legitimizing of aspec people as queer. it's worth discussing because biases and exclusionist tendencies don't come from nowhere and we have to remain critical of those tendencies in ourselves and others.

one of the reasons certain identities are raised as "legitimate" in the first place has a lot to do with visibility. framing LGBTQ+ rights as the "right to love whoever you want" or the right to "be who you are" has done a number on how we view queerness within the community. we aren't immune to mainstream portrayals of us. a lot of aspec people have to grapple with legitimacy because we are poorly represented. the depth of our experiences are unknown, our issues underdiscussed.

to highlight my previous point: we know that a major political "gay issue" is the right to same-sex marriage. but people seem to put an emphasis on "right to love" and not the actual legal benefits of marriage (i.e., transferring assets, hospital visits, making decisions in case of death, etc). aspec people don't get those things unless they get married. i don't think many younger aspec people know that being aspec isn't just about our "lack of attraction." we are systemically deprived of the rights granted only to married couples. (that's the basis for poly and aro solidarity.) there's a reason our identities feel prominent, why they matter at all—it's because society isn't favorable towards us.

another reason we are seen as "less legitimate" is perceived oppression. this one is stated outright by unabashed exclusionists, but the sentiment is not exclusive to them.

people (even well-meaning people) seem to think there are levels of oppression and that oppressions stack to determine how unprivileged you are. which, uh, no. it's not a video game. the way we discuss privilege in general is really fucked up. truth is, we have to live with the fact that it's not a perfectly quantifiable thing (and shouldn't be). privilege exists in dimensions beyond identity labels. to quantify it and make it the basis for inclusion/exclusion is a mistake that leads to tokenization and opens a path for wider society to de-legitimize other queer identities (this is what i mean when i say exclusionists throw others under the bus—bus-throwing begets more bus-throwing).

it only makes instinctive, reactionary sense to claim a sub-identity is less "real," especially as a community concerned with our marginalized status. but it's all the more necessary to root out these tendencies in ourselves and ask why there's any need to exclude, or assume other experiences are lesser. is there really anything to gain from claiming that bi people, ace people, or straight trans people are less legit or not "queer enough," as if it's quantifiable? (trick question: you will gain nothing but meaningless label purity and mark fellow queer people as vulnerable targets for derision.)

[franklespine]

Season 9 so far is so funny for all its lying and manipulating shenanigans. Its Metatron using Gadreel's desperation for redemption to manipulate him, to Gadreel lying to and using Sam essentially as ransom to Dean to keep his identity a secret, to Dean gaslighting and lying to Sam to keep him in the dark about Gadreel possessing him - like there's so many layers to this. And the funniest part is that with everyone it starts off as one lie or act and then one lie begets another and all of a sudden the gaslighting and lying is just getting redonkulously out of control and no one even likes what they're doing anymore. It's most evident in Dean where he was like yeah one little violation of my little brother's autonomy not so bad and then all of a sudden Gadreel keeps taking control at random times and tells Dean he'll basically let Sam's organs shut down if he lets Castiel stay in the bunker, and Dean is having to be like umm yes Sam when you got knocked unconscious I came in and killed 3 demons by myself John Wick style crazy right, no soz Cas ik you have literally never been in a more vulnerable position but yeah you gotta leave - he really got a little crazy there. In fact, the only person in this whole mess who seems completely ignorant to everything is Sam, which is rather sad, this poor guy always gets the short end of the stick. 10/10 Viewing experience - what can I say, I live for the juicy ticking time bomb lies.

[s0apysm1les]

Omg I love your yan geralt x rock troll darling; if it still ok with you maybe some hcs on geralt finding out darling's/reader's persuit was only intended to be a friendship and friendly company while she's separated from her mate and until she can unite with him again but she still wants to be friends with him? I don't think yan!geralt would take that info very well 👀

The ultimate - surely accidental - betrayal and one that you will come to regret. He not only did not kill *you* out of his random benevolence but he even left your comrade alone as well... until he saw the two of you hold hands and seem to lean on each other in a passionate way.

The rage he felt when he heard the clacking of stones that led to him turning and seeing the sight had never left him since then. Even as you treat him the same was you did previously.

The exited nature of matching a rock to his cold exterior and gleefully bringing it to him. Was it just you treating him as a lesser in your own sickeningly cruel way? You treat him like this. You open him up to you and make him connect you to him, make him have a vulnerability. You-you break him. And you can act like nothing happens? No. That's not how this works.

You CHOSE him. You already picked your mate when you sought Geralt out each of those times. The days where you somehow made him cater to your unspoken requests, the moments where he unpromptedly defended you, fed you and saved your life on multiple occasions was you. choosing. HIM.

It didn't matter that you had bonded with this other troll creature before you had met Geralt. It didn't matter because you had made Geralt chose you and with every one of your actions you had yelled to the stars above that you had chosen Geralt too. Don't you attempt to deny it now when everyone who you two had passed had seen everything and would agree with his thinking

If they knew what was good for them.

Your false... "mate" will die. He will ensure that you know this. He will ensure that *it* too knows this. Making a demented sort of show as he flourishes in watching the false mateship end in a gory tumble.

You will learn soon enough that this was only a farce that that other rock troll surely tricked you into.

You are just too oblivious and stupidly kind of a creature to notice that the other rock troll was lying and deceiving you the entire time into a relationship that is meant for Geralt to partake in with you.

But ignorance does not beget innocence you... darling, daft creature. And Geralt will teach you just who you belong to. No matter how much you cry and mourn for that fraudulent thing you called a mate.

Part One

[robininthelabyrinth]

Tricks of the Trade - ao3 - chapter 8

- Extra 2 -

In which Jin Guangyao was not as subtle as he thought

(Lan Qiren POV, inspired by Dracula Daily)

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

Excerpts from Lan Qiren’s personal journal:

…cannot express how overjoyed I am to see Xichen back with us, unharmed in body and resolute in spirit. I initially feared asking too many questions about what happened to him after he fled the Cloud Recesses, in truth as much for the prospect of drawing his ire (for he was most reluctant to leave in the first instance, and did so only on my express orders) as for fear of prodding at some vulnerable point, but in fact he has been quite open about his experiences. In particular, he mentions one name repeatedly, a certain Meng Yao, originally of Yunping, as someone who provided him with a lifeline in his darkest moment. The name seems somewhat familiar to me, likely through my political correspondence, but I have lost all my notes to the flames…

-

…Xichen mentioned Meng Yao to me again today, as the latter, upon Xichen’s recommendation, has apparently found employment in the Nie sect. This is eminently reasonable, given the Nie sect’s well-deserved reputation for accepting and promoting disciples purely upon merit, but caused me some strange confusion that lasted until I finally remembered where I heard the name before. I have reflected in the past upon the short-sightedness of Jin Guangshan’s deplorable behavior in regards to those children he begets and then abandons, but to cast someone of his own blood out of Jinlin Tower in such a shameful and public way, ruining their reputation in the future, is even more shameful…

-

…Meng Yao visited the Cloud Recesses upon business for the Nie sect. As expected, he is a charming young man, polite, graceful even in the face of adversity and remarkably intelligent; he is exceedingly pleasant company. I have done what I can to make him feel welcome, knowing as I do how cruel others in the cultivation world can be – there is nothing like being a teacher for seeing the small indignities that people will heap upon each other over miniscule differences, much less a matter that is commonly considered disgraceful – but I do not know if it will be sufficient; the sect’s rules against gossip are among those most easily broken. I have decided to forestall this by spending further time with him myself…

-

…another visit from Meng Yao. After concluding business, he accompanied me for the entire afternoon, during which we spoke for over a shichen on the subject of regional music variations. I have not had such an enjoyable time since before the war began…

-

…letter from Meng Yao arrived. I do not recall precisely when we picked up a correspondence, but seeing a message from him is always a highlight – his writing is clear and concise in regards to the duties to which we are both entrusted, lengthy and effusive in regards to other interests we share in common. I will add in a visit to our library (or what remains of it) to my schedule for the evening in order to consult some texts for the purpose of composing my reply…

-

…Meng Yao in a mood today. It comes upon him at times – all the bitter gall he has been swallowing for so many years rising up to the surface, no doubt. I am honored that he feels comfortable enough with me to display it openly, rather than hiding behind a mask of politeness as he does with others. He has gone out to fulfill certain errands, but when he returns I will propose spending some time refining some of the musical techniques he has picked up on the battlefield, which I hope will please him and ease his temper. His cultivation skills are exceedingly admirable, though of necessity limited by his lack of foundation, a fact which I know he sorely regrets; despite that, he is an apt pupil in the ideal mold, as enthusiastic to learn as I am to teach. I do not know whether he knows how much of a gift it is to me to have the opportunity to act as teacher once more, rather than as a general – I will need to find a way to express my gratitude…

-

It is not gratitude, and I am a fool. No more today.

-

…have spent a great deal of time as of late in meditation. Xichen has told me that he approves, as the rest (insofar as it is rest, given how much of my time is still devoted to matters of war) has been beneficial to my health, which has deteriorated once more, now featuring recurrent intermittent colds and fevers – I wonder if he would still approve if I told him that the primary subject of my thoughts has been neither music nor the sect rules, but rather his friend Meng Yao.

It is a matter of great consternation to me that I have found myself seemingly making the same mistakes of my family’s past, which I had thought, incorrectly it seems, I had avoided. Our family has forever been drawn to inappropriate matches of the heart, and it seems I am no exception. I have taken to questioning myself, wondering if I am merely conflating innocent affection with something more as a result of the tense times in which we live, but the answers I find within my heart appear in earnest…

-

…somewhat relieved to hear that Meng Yao’s visits have ceased because he is on some other mission, according to Xichen, rather than as a result of our interactions, though of course I now worry for his health and safety, as the casualty count of this dreadful war grows ever higher. Despite my concerns, what I (selfishly) fear most is that I have somehow behaved inappropriately and provided Meng Yao with the further burden of unwanted attentions to carry. He is the same age or even younger than some of my students, younger than my nephew, rendering my interest wholly improper; the thought that he might requite my affections is naturally absurd, and yet I find myself examining our previous interactions, my fevered mind obsessing over some phrase or another that seems to suggest otherwise.

For instance, I had on some early occasion mentioned to him my disinterest in carnal matters – I thought it wholly innocent at the time, a mere gesture seeking to reaffirm that he was safe with me, given the storms he has undoubtedly had to suffer in the past past, though perhaps in retrospect it was in fact a sign of my impending doom – and he responded far more positively than I would have expected, saying that it seemed to him far better to separate matters of sex from romance, that the disinterest in the former should not forestall progress in the latter. I assume I am once again deceiving myself, but it is a pleasure, albeit a guilty one, to imagine a future in which his words were meant specifically for me.

Still, as I have said, this behavior is inappropriate. I will assign myself further punishment…

-

…Xichen unburdened himself to me today. Meng Yao doing something far more dangerous than I had previously imagined. I keep him in my thoughts…

-

…now properly referred to as Jin Guangyao. The name itself is an insult – the current generation name is Zi – and I am disgusted in Jin Guangshan for his pettiness and malice, as I have often been before. Still, I hope that Jin Guangyao finds some satisfaction in knowing that he has achieved the impossible, as the Jiang like to put it, in forcing that odious man to give him any recognition at all…

-

…Xichen tells me Jin Guangyao will be coming to visit soon, relevancy primarily to the subject of rebuilding. Despite this, I find my foolish heart leaping for joy at the prospect of seeing him once more. Will need to remind myself not to go overboard. The rules say Maintain your own discipline…

-

No entry today. Much has happened, but my hands are shaking too much to note them down.

-

…excitement and fear warring within me. Excitement, that I am not alone in this; fear, that I unknowingly overstepped my bounds and manipulated Jin Guangyao’s emotions in my favor. And yet I cannot help thinking that he had other options, other alternatives – he even had Xichen, if all he wanted was family – and yet he chose me, and granted me such intimacy as I could not have expected. I have issued many punishments over time, yet I feel certain that this was not merely discipline or the need for absolution, but more. The expression on his face, of unleavened trust and what I might dare call ecstatic bliss, as we went through it together (he insisted on privacy) will be a cherished memory forever more.

Yet despite my enthusiasm, I remain afraid, and remind myself that I must be cautious to avoid seeing what I wish to see rather than what is truly there. It is essential that I control myself, conduct myself properly, and make sure to verify with Jin Guangyao before proceeding further…

-

…conduct leaves no room for doubt. Ah, Qiren, Qiren, how did you end up like this? Did you not long ago give up on love, that pestilent family curse? How do you now find yourself in such a ridiculous state? This sort of secret affair, where neither party can say what they mean because of the burdens of duty and politics and yet both are well aware of each other’s intent, is not meant for the likes of you: have you not always been clumsy with understanding people, more naturally inclined to speak your mind than to be subtle, one whose peers teased for being too old even as a young man..? And yet here I find myself despite it all. Is this what they speak of when they say that love is like spring, turning even old men young once more? I must avoid letting others see too much, or else everyone will know of my foolishness – and yet, at the same time, I wish for nothing else but the world to see and know, a sadly impossible state –

Maintain your own discipline. My words and thoughts have been scattered and disorderly: I return to the beginning, and start again.

I would like to think I had no further intentions in arranging for some privacy on today’s night-hunt than to try to find some time for us to confirm what had come up between us. I have hinted to Xichen before that I have grown very fond of Guangyao, but I think he has not understood, and I did not wish to clarify further before confirming with Guangyao what his views on the matter were. As it is, it seems apparent to me that he does not wish for our entanglement to become more known – we discussed politics at some length during the night-hunt, and he insisted firmly on taking the practical view, speaking meaningfully of the primacy of instilling in soldiers a fierce loyalty in their own sects, ranking such loyalty above even efficient martial skills. In combination with his comments about some troubles he has had in Lanling City, it seems clear to me that he feels that we cannot make explicit what is currently implicit, lest his duty to his father require him to report on the subject once it is made apparent. I appreciate his concern for me (for Jin Guangshan would immediately try to use it against both me and my sect), and understand the dangers of his own precarious situation back home. Although I would dearly like to make our relationship known to the world, for such public recognition is no less than he deserves, I am not as impulsive or headstrong as I was as a young man – we will wait, for now, and look to the future for an opportune moment.

For a moment I briefly thought that he might even want to recant the whole thing entirely, returning to the purely platonic relationship of colleagues alone, but then, with a mischievous look, he rather deliberately cast himself down in such a way that required me to take him into my arms, with a convenient nearby location for us to sit side-by-side on a bed already located in advance. His schemes are so delightfully charming..! I would rather he not have injured himself, if I had a say in it, but it did give me an excuse to put my hands on him for quite some time, to his very evident enjoyment and mine. He even went out of his way to reassure me that he did not find the age gap between us an impediment – really, to call me ‘gege’ in a flirtatious tone like that is to show how paper-thin our excuses have already become…! He backed away from it moments later, of course, at least verbally (it is as if he were afraid of being overheard, though I suppose that is not unwise a habit to develop in Lanling), but he gazed straight at me when he suggested that he could rely upon a sworn brother, and his meaning was very clearly not signifying brotherly intentions in the slightest.

I still feel the fool, falling for such a young man, but if I must be foolish, then better I be one whose affections are returned…

-

…is not that I do not wish to scold Wangji, at least a little – at least over his apparently unceasing passion for Wei Wuxian, who in his unorthodoxy and demonic cultivation has the potential to be quite dangerous, though I admit that introducing Nie Mingjue into the mix has to a certain degree calmed my fears. Nie Mingjue is far from level-headed himself, but he is a good judge of character, though I am still somewhat concerned…still, thinking ruefully of my own circumstances, I have decided to refrain from passing any judgment for the moment. I am not sure yet that Wangji is aware that I know – Nie Mingjue told me himself in order to ask for my blessing, that blessedly straightforward boy, but I think he may have forgotten to tell Wangji that he has done so – and it does give me some little amusement to think about his reaction when I do finally inform him. It is a pity that the matter was conveyed to me in confidence, or else I would mention it to Guangyao, who I think would find it equally amusing…

-

…embarrassed to be so ill. I was worried about what Guangyao might think – he has his pick of the world, full of cultivators far better and more able-bodied than I, not to mention younger – but of course he took it well in stride; he even used it as an opportunity to find an excuse for us to spend hours cloistered together. Delighted to find Guangyao becoming increasingly more daring in stealing chances to take me into his arms, and to let me do the same with him…

-

…Guangyao has somehow put together a plan for me to meet with Su Minshan that accords with all our requirements – privacy, lack of commitment, etc. What a wonder he is! I continue to feel exceptionally lucky, and also as if the rest of the world is blind for having overlooked such a treasure. This whole business of being in love is not as dire as I had feared it to be; I remain myself, capable of self-control, and it has not taken the soul of me. Perhaps our Lan hearts ought to be viewed more in the same light as our inability to drink: a familial trait, a burdensome one, but one that depends on the individual and the circumstances to make it turn good or bad…

-

Proposed to Guangyao today and was accepted. Jin Guangshan is a foul creature, unworthy of having sired such fine sons; he sought to use Guangyao as a scapegoat for his own sins. First for what happened at Qiongqi Path, and then to imply that Guangyao would have tried to murder his own kin – I could scarcely speak out of indignation! It makes one think once again about the rumors that were present when Jin Guangshan himself ascended to his present position…enough, let me think of him no longer. Let me instead fill my mind with thoughts of Guangyao, who is as happy as I have ever seen him.

Once we had a moment to speak, I assured him that I did not intend to propose marriage in such a roughshod manner – I had assumed that building up the necessary political momentum to force a positive answer, or at least to make Jin Guangshan believe there were enough benefits in it for him to agree, would take a great deal more time, and I suspect Jin Guangyao thought the same, given his surprise; it was only that in the moment it seemed to me to be the obvious solution. And it did resolve the problem…

Xichen took it as well as could be hoped. He is even now rushing around trying to set up a preposterously oversized wedding – I think I will have no choice but to comply with his wishes, given that I am stealing away his dear friend to claim for my own. Guangyao has confided in me that he finds Xichen a little too easy to manipulate at times (I agree), but that he has some ideas on how to help him improve. Have already started thinking with great anticipation of having Guangyao to assist and advise me on my classes in the future – a little ridiculous, I know, to think of teaching at a time like this, but I cannot help it.

Overall, very happy. Believe this to be the first of many such entries going forward.

[egipci]

thoughts on michael possessing the bodies of both father and son

Thoughts on Michael possessing the bodies of both father and son: Great, wonderful, amazing, etc. etc. I have a lot of affection for Matt Cohen!John (and indeed for the prequel guy--- I'm very vulnerable to young John, for some reason), both times we (and Dean) see him he's dead or almost dead, and I think so much about how Dean knows him and doesn't know him and loves him and feels conflicted about him because he's not actually his dad, he's just a very vulnerable kid, and Dean is so vulnerable to him--- there should be a million time travel fics about them, but I'm afraid it's a niche market with one (1) customer, so.

Anyway, John as angel vessel is one of the things I wish had gotten more airtime, though I don't know how they could have done that without getting too (or more) hammy.* People have talked before about how revealing it is that Michael appears to Dean as John and Lucifer to Sam as Jessica (keeping in mind one is an actual possession vs an illusion). There is the first love angle, for the gross shippers (among whom I am chief) but also there's the sort of desire they each represent: Jess qua Lucifer represents rebellion, superficially, but also a home Sam makes for himself, a home that he chooses, unlike the home he had with Dad and Dean (insofar that he thinks he didn't actually want/choose them).

Michael!John is more interesting because up until 5x13, John explicitly occupies the role of "God" in the narrative, Dean makes that comparison himself-- he's the agent pitting Dean and Sam against each other, Dean has to kill Sam for his affection and approval, out of duty (and doesn't, once), Sam is rebelling against his father whom he loves because he doesn't get enough affection either, etc. etc. and all that maps out pretty neatly, if even a little simplistically. But then we meet John again in s5 and he's not just God, he's also Michael (despite not having a brother!). It's yet another John-Dean "thing" that Sam doesn't have access to -- Dean has direct access to becoming his father that Sam does not. But that John is not only the unknowable absent father but also the faithful right hand-man is also interesting in what it says about God and Michael, and the possibilities for John and Dean. John connects them in an interesting way — to appropriate Trinitarian language: Michael and God seem homoousios, maybe -- not identical, but of one essence. And that's basically Dean's reward, for the small price of fratricide (and potential genocide and mass extinction) --- a sense of unity with his father, a sameness -- which, outside of any specific love/desire Dean holds for his father, ties into the position the father/god occupies as maker/font of being/one who begets, etc. (to use Trinitarian language again)--- see also how the show consistently uses "hole" language to describe Dean's "emptiness"/longing for death/non-existence and also his longing for his father. This is not to say that his longing for John = desire to die, or that one necessarily causes the other --- but there is something interesting there about how the text positions them as the same sort of wound-- survivable but also irreparable and immanent (but-for divine intervention, perhaps).

The other thing is it's Azazel!John redux: the creepy frightening force you're running away from/trying to defeat is literally your dad, but also he's violating your dad in a pretty significant way. But more minutely on a beat-by-beat level: Mary is about to die, John makes a deal, but then instead of Mary getting possessed it's John (again), and he's less explicitly sexually menacing with Dean, except he's very politely asking him to get inside his body-- so, you know. In fact Michael!John brings up Azazel outright: Azazel is part of the plan, that he would possess John and kill Mary and go after Sam and spit in Dean's mouth whatever the hell he has going on with Dean. And there's the angel ornament at the end of the episode watching over baby Dean, which invokes the motif of John over the crib, etc. etc.

TLDR: it's good stuff!

*I've been known to rant and rave about how John as vessel should have come into play in Lebanon--- Dean wishes for Michael out, and John the second best ever vessel comes in, and he offers himself up for Dean and through some weird magic they put Michael into his head and *he* goes into the malak box and into the deep or whatever. not necessarily super compelling, but like, it's better than a glorified bloodless jdm cameo, methinks.

[van1lla-v1lla1n]

writing pattern game

Rules: Share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able and see if there are any patterns! (from most recent to least recent, starting from the top)

tagged by @jaynovz :) (this was a fun exercise, thank you Jay!)

1. so violence begets violence (black sails silverflint)

“Attend to me in my cabin,” Flint said to Silver, presumptuous as ever, though his haughtiness had taken on this haunted glint.

2. upon my mother's breast (hotd rhaenicent)

“You know there’s another passageway, like the one from your chambers, that leads to the queen’s,” Daemon said.

3. the secret he carries between humiliations (sas rogue heroes mayne/jordan)

“Jordan,” Paddy said, feigning French. “Come.”

4. parity (black sails silverflint)

As if by some act of God they had escaped the doldrums.

5. the green fields we might visit (the terror irving/tozer femslash)

“It seems the prodigal Tozer girl is back again,” Georgie Kingston whispered into her ear.

6. a dusk holiday (sas rogue heroes mayne/sadler)

“Ever fuck a mate, Paddy Mayne?”

7. the violence of vulnerability (reylo??)

After he destroyed the holding cell that had been meant for the scavenger, Kylo managed to wrest back some semblance of control.

8. MTN DEW BAJA BLAST FREEZE-ARITA (the terror taco bell au asl;fh)

“You’re a glorified bean rehydrator, Cornelius."

9. the wilderness that waits (the terror armitozer)

Too many days out with hunting parties and Tozer, blind from all the white, had to submit to being led back to the ships. 

10. selfish (the boys maeve/butcher)

It was their shared hate that had made Maeve lean in the first time, the cruel curl of Butcher’s mouth when he thought of killing Homelander.

------

(technically i skipped my most recent fic, which is anne/max, bc the first line is an outright mention of sexual assault which i can't tag for very well here)

more of these kick off with dialogue than i'd've expected! looking back further i feel like it's a recent shift, but then almost all of these are shortish one-shots, and starting with dialogue feels like a quick way to get things moving, both narratively and for me in the actual act of writing them?

consider this a free-for-all tag if you'd like to partake in this game! (& feel free to tag me if you do so i can see yours <3)

[grlbts]

The Tyranny of Convenience

by Tim Wu

Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of the economist’s incentives. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the same thing as trivial.

In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience — that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks — has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies. This is particularly true in America, where, despite all the paeans to freedom and individuality, one sometimes wonders whether convenience is in fact the supreme value.

As Evan Williams, a co-founder of Twitter, recently put it, “Convenience decides everything.” Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. (I prefer to brew my coffee, but Starbucks instant is so convenient I hardly ever do what I “prefer.”) Easy is better, easiest is best.

Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable. Once you have used a washing machine, laundering clothes by hand seems irrational, even if it might be cheaper. After you have experienced streaming television, waiting to see a show at a prescribed hour seems silly, even a little undignified. To resist convenience — not to own a cellphone, not to use Google — has come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism.

For all its influence as a shaper of individual decisions, the greater power of convenience may arise from decisions made in aggregate, where it is doing so much to structure the modern economy. Particularly in tech-related industries, the battle for convenience is the battle for industry dominance.

Americans say they prize competition, a proliferation of choices, the little guy. Yet our taste for convenience begets more convenience, through a combination of the economics of scale and the power of habit. The easier it is to use Amazon, the more powerful Amazon becomes — and thus the easier it becomes to use Amazon. Convenience and monopoly seem to be natural bedfellows.

Given the growth of convenience — as an ideal, as a value, as a way of life — it is worth asking what our fixation with it is doing to us and to our country. I don’t want to suggest that convenience is a force for evil. Making things easier isn’t wicked. On the contrary, it often opens up possibilities that once seemed too onerous to contemplate, and it typically makes life less arduous, especially for those most vulnerable to life’s drudgeries.

But we err in presuming convenience is always good, for it has a complex relationship with other ideals that we hold dear. Though understood and promoted as an instrument of liberation, convenience has a dark side. With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life. Created to free us, it can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us.

It would be perverse to embrace inconvenience as a general rule. But when we let convenience decide everything, we surrender too much.

Convenience as we now know it is a product of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when labor-saving devices for the home were invented and marketed. Milestones include the invention of the first “convenience foods,” such as canned pork and beans and Quaker Quick Oats; the first electric clothes-washing machines; cleaning products like Old Dutch scouring powder; and other marvels including the electric vacuum cleaner, instant cake mix and the microwave oven.

Convenience was the household version of another late-19th-century idea, industrial efficiency, and its accompanying “scientific management.” It represented the adaptation of the ethos of the factory to domestic life.

However mundane it seems now, convenience, the great liberator of humankind from labor, was a utopian ideal. By saving time and eliminating drudgery, it would create the possibility of leisure. And with leisure would come the possibility of devoting time to learning, hobbies or whatever else might really matter to us. Convenience would make available to the general population the kind of freedom for self-cultivation once available only to the aristocracy. In this way convenience would also be the great leveler.

This idea — convenience as liberation — could be intoxicating. Its headiest depictions are in the science fiction and futurist imaginings of the mid-20th century. From serious magazines like Popular Mechanics and from goofy entertainments like “The Jetsons” we learned that life in the future would be perfectly convenient. Food would be prepared with the push of a button. Moving sidewalks would do away with the annoyance of walking. Clothes would clean themselves or perhaps self-destruct after a day’s wearing. The end of the struggle for existence could at last be contemplated.

The dream of convenience is premised on the nightmare of physical work. But is physical work always a nightmare? Do we really want to be emancipated from all of it? Perhaps our humanity is sometimes expressed in inconvenient actions and time-consuming pursuits. Perhaps this is why, with every advance of convenience, there have always been those who resist it. They resist out of stubbornness, yes (and because they have the luxury to do so), but also because they see a threat to their sense of who they are, to their feeling of control over things that matter to them.

By the late 1960s, the first convenience revolution had begun to sputter. The prospect of total convenience no longer seemed like society’s greatest aspiration. Convenience meant conformity. The counterculture was about people’s need to express themselves, to fulfill their individual potential, to live in harmony with nature rather than constantly seeking to overcome its nuisances. Playing the guitar was not convenient. Neither was growing one’s own vegetables or fixing one’s own motorcycle. But such things were seen to have value nevertheless — or rather, as a result. People were looking for individuality again.

Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that the second wave of convenience technologies — the period we are living in — would co-opt this ideal. It would conveniencize individuality.

You might date the beginning of this period to the advent of the Sony Walkman in 1979. With the Walkman we can see a subtle but fundamental shift in the ideology of convenience. If the first convenience revolution promised to make life and work easier for you, the second promised to make it easier to be you. The new technologies were catalysts of selfhood. They conferred efficiency on self-expression.

Consider the man of the early 1980s, strolling down the street with his Walkman and earphones. He is enclosed in an acoustic environment of his choosing. He is enjoying, out in public, the kind of self-expression he once could experience only in his private den. A new technology is making it easier for him to show who he is, if only to himself. He struts around the world, the star of his own movie.

So alluring is this vision that it has come to dominate our existence. Most of the powerful and important technologies created over the past few decades deliver convenience in the service of personalization and individuality. Think of the VCR, the playlist, the Facebook page, the Instagram account. This kind of convenience is no longer about saving physical labor — many of us don’t do much of that anyway. It is about minimizing the mental resources, the mental exertion, required to choose among the options that express ourselves. Convenience is one-click, one-stop shopping, the seamless experience of “plug and play.” The ideal is personal preference with no effort.

We are willing to pay a premium for convenience, of course — more than we often realize we are willing to pay. During the late 1990s, for example, technologies of music distribution like Napster made it possible to get music online at no cost, and lots of people availed themselves of the option. But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it anymore. Why? Because the introduction of the iTunes store in 2003 made buying music even more convenient than illegally downloading it. Convenient beat out free.

As task after task becomes easier, the growing expectation of convenience exerts a pressure on everything else to be easy or get left behind. We are spoiled by immediacy and become annoyed by tasks that remain at the old level of effort and time. When you can skip the line and buy concert tickets on your phone, waiting in line to vote in an election is irritating. This is especially true for those who have never had to wait in lines (which may help explain the low rate at which young people vote).

The paradoxical truth I’m driving at is that today’s technologies of individualization are technologies of mass individualization. Customization can be surprisingly homogenizing. Everyone, or nearly everyone, is on Facebook: It is the most convenient way to keep track of your friends and family, who in theory should represent what is unique about you and your life. Yet Facebook seems to make us all the same. Its format and conventions strip us of all but the most superficial expressions of individuality, such as which particular photo of a beach or mountain range we select as our background image.

I do not want to deny that making things easier can serve us in important ways, giving us many choices (of restaurants, taxi services, open-source encyclopedias) where we used to have only a few or none. But being a person is only partly about having and exercising choices. It is also about how we face up to situations that are thrust upon us, about overcoming worthy challenges and finishing difficult tasks — the struggles that help make us who we are. What happens to human experience when so many obstacles and impediments and requirements and preparations have been removed?

Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place. We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes. We are at risk of making most of our life experiences a series of trolley rides.

Convenience has to serve something greater than itself, lest it lead only to more convenience. In her 1963 classic, “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan looked at what household technologies had done for women and concluded that they had just created more demands. “Even with all the new labor-saving appliances,” she wrote, “the modern American housewife probably spends more time on housework than her grandmother.” When things become easier, we can seek to fill our time with more “easy” tasks. At some point, life’s defining struggle becomes the tyranny of tiny chores and petty decisions.

An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we don’t actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life.

We need to consciously embrace the inconvenient — not always, but more of the time. Nowadays individuality has come to reside in making at least some inconvenient choices. You need not churn your own butter or hunt your own meat, but if you want to be someone, you cannot allow convenience to be the value that transcends all others. Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are.

Embracing inconvenience may sound odd, but we already do it without thinking of it as such. As if to mask the issue, we give other names to our inconvenient choices: We call them hobbies, avocations, callings, passions. These are the noninstrumental activities that help to define us. They reward us with character because they involve an encounter with meaningful resistance — with nature’s laws, with the limits of our own bodies — as in carving wood, melding raw ingredients, fixing a broken appliance, writing code, timing waves or facing the point when the runner’s legs and lungs begin to rebel against him.

Such activities take time, but they also give us time back. They expose us to the risk of frustration and failure, but they also can teach us something about the world and our place in it.

So let’s reflect on the tyranny of convenience, try more often to resist its stupefying power, and see what happens. We must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest. The constellation of inconvenient choices may be all that stands between us and a life of total, efficient conformity.

[nazorneku]

NERO ( @chthonicsurge ) INQUIRED OF VINCENT: vincent is being watched. this is nothing new. nero has taken to watching the older man from the shadows, studying him. ostensibly this is because he wishes to learn his weaknesses so, should they come to blows again, he will not fall. in reality, the sable simply wishes to understand. the weight of his sins is not something nero is unaware of. how could he be, with every damned soul howling within the depths of his little black soul? but they do not weigh him down. vincent's do - and despite his attempts at isolating himself, connection seems to find him. it's... enviable. enviable in a way nero refuses to acknowledge, as that is the part of himself that acknowledges that one cannot hang their entire (immortal) existence on the shoulders of one tired (mortal) brother. so he watches vincent. and when he feels the need, though he is fully aware the other is the only one who knows when he comes and goes, he makes himself known like a cat seeking attention. like now. absently knocking a cup from the table as he perches on it, expression bored but interest all too clear in those vivid red eyes.

Chest heaved under a measured breathing, as the gunman opted to abandon the waking world for but the briefest of instants, leaning onto the smooth and cold surface of the stone wall. Habitually was devoid of dreams his rest, nonetheless filled with incessantly shifting the images of the past, that even now retained an unrelenting grasp upon the man. The grief possessed a scant concern towards how long ago the incident occurred, its sting was everlasting. And during such moments, engrossed in reminiscence of bygone days, Vincent appeared the most vulnerable, susceptible to influence if one knew where to apply those. Nevertheless, his guard would remain impenetrable, as in was engraved within the Turks to sleep with one eye opened, and thus the presence of another would eventually be detected. Shadows could scarcely conceal the other from the vivid crimson gaze, and he would proceed to pay no heed to Nero despite ceaseless observations and rather bizarre antics. Yet when the whist observation prolonged and the Sable displayed no signs of retreating, the hoarse tone uttered. "I can still sense you." And as if to respond, to verify his presence, the other knocked the empty cup off a table, manifesting in front of Vincent and begetting a discontented expression to spread across the commonly aloof facade.

Incomprehensible was such conduct, recurring demands for attention, akin to a mouse wiggling its tail in front of a cat, akin to a child awaiting for a parent's recognition. Vincent could not deduce what exactly governed that man's mind, though he could not deny the intrigue, hence he would not dismiss Nero's arrival outrightly. "If you have something to say - say it, if not - go away. Leave me to my rest." Albeit the own voice did not obtain a more amicable tone, he was willing to consider the other's company for a valid reason.

[void-talking-to-the-void]

Jambalaya

A point of extreme frustration: I've been a teacher for more than ten years now and I have always said that we aren't really necessary. We're the conscience, someone to feel obligated to, someone who's there to provide the motivation to the student or, in other words, kick and jab them into studying. There aren't really good and bad teachers - though, of course, there're awful - it isn't rocket science.

Not sure I can hold this view any longer, because right now, in my search of teachers, I fucking wish for a time travelling machine to exist, you see, I need it, I'll visit that distant future where I have already conquered the language and pay myself from the future to teach myself from the present, it fucking seems there isn't anybody else to do it the way that actually works for me. Or anybody, really, anybody.

I wonder, really wonder, how fucking hard is it to speak at the lesson? It's exceptionally easy to offer speaking as advantage you have as a teacher, it's easy to promise the poor student they will speak, both at the lessons and in real life, but then the lesson comes, one hour passes - and I've barely said a word.

I WANNA SEE IF YOU CAN READ AND WRITE.

OH, YOU CAN READ AND WRITE SO WELL, UHHH... LET'S READ AND WRITE SOME MORE!

Jesus Christ.

Also, the book. It too provides some frustration.

This I have also proposed many, many times: quit writing about rape in passing, without deep concern, to drive the plot or to establish character, just fucking quit. Please, write about rape only when rape is the main topic, when you, the author, want to invite us, the readers, to contemplate the complexity of this subject, to feel and think and condemn all those endless types of pain.

Not that anybody's ever listened, yeah.

So I'd be reading a novel about an anarchistic physicist and there'd be a scene, which, in the beginning, promised me so much. He hasn't consumed alcohol before, people on his planet don't. But he consumes it now, and he doesn't know he's drunk, so the alcohol, the people who're used to it around him, his own mind, all of these things take a forceful hold on him, while cheering, laughing, seeing nothing wrong, and I am all in. I want this conversation about rape coming in so, so many different forms. About the attitudes that almost always coincide with it, this weird kind of happy flippancy, about the vulnerability of the person who is raped and the prevalence of rape just about everywhere, I want this shit.

But do I get it?

Nah. No way.

There is this dark bit - maybe, only in my mind - and then the woman, who has brought him into her own room, without explaining anything about being drunk, but with her own agenda, then it is her who's raped - for no fucking reason whatsoever. The anarchistic physicist, on whose planet, I was told, rape is soooo uncommon because there is sexual freedom - as if it's abstinence that begets rape - this physicist attempts to assault the woman, because he_thought_she_wanted_to (because he wanted to) and hey, by the way, her saying no, fighing against it, excites him even more!

Hurray.

As for the sexual freedom, I don't quite get how in a sexually free society these two passages could occupy adjacent pages:

"Hell," he said aloud. Pravic was not a good swearing language. It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blasphemy does not exist.

Meanwhile the double room was pretty well justified by the succession of men that passed through Bunub's door, a different man every night, as if Bunub were a roaring girl of seventeen.

Hard, is it? See how easy it was for you.

Good literature, good use of sarcasm, but shitty, fucking shitty morals.

[propheticsnail]

I used to be a FOS major until I saw the ways forensics as a science is designed to criminalize more people, not reduce harm. Nothing I think has made me more skeptical of at least the current partial automation in societal process (which are often flawed or genuinely inaccurate) than seeing it's effects in the medical field. I have had to wait years to get diagnosed with a condition that is poorly understood and often now misunderstood by medical professionals, only to have to switch doctors and have the new one ignore my symptoms and run a test impromptu while I was medicated for said condition and try to undiagnose me. The ability of medical professionals to decide firstly that the words of the patient and their doctors are unimportant and secondly they are unequivovally right because the computer just said you and your doctors were wrong reminds me of the ways forensics techniques (I've heard the most cases of falsification in forensic chemistry and because of the esteem held by that position I judge it to be more of a modern risk, if less insidious than say, a polygraph) have been utilized with solely the intention of incarcerating people as opposed to reducing the harm in a community. I think in the same way many medical tests are done with the intention of generating capital and at best they diagnose and beget treatment for a patient and as many medical professionals seek to forcibly hospitalize people (another means of generating constant capital) it seems obvious to me that these systems are equally unsustainable and removing the ability to generate capital in these fields is imperative to stopping the invention of more tools of oppression (or tools with the capacity of misuse toward the end of oppression) and therefore to liberate and care for our society's most vulnerable.

[positiveswimfuture]

it makes complete sense why choral music is performed in churches. It is kind of magic. Fasces! Community makes strength and beauty. Excessive individuality begets sickness and weakness.

anyone else seeing the parallels between the seeming holiness, collective strength of a traditional choir, the sickly, exploited, vulnerable and manufactured individual modern pop star and the development of humanity itself from pre-industrial collective society toward the divided, alienated and exploited by invasive demands of labour and consumption, post industrial society?

the development of music as a symbolic representation for the development of society itself. Though I spose this could be said of anything really…

[mariacallous]

Another United Nations climate conference (COP) has come and gone, leaving the world to scratch its head over what was accomplished. The annual conference has ballooned over the years into a massive climate festival: nearly 50,000 people — an all-time record — taking part in the rituals of formal diplomacy and, in parallel, a flashy climate change expo. So what came of it?

If you ask people who paid attention only to the formal negotiations, the answer is not much. Meetings were frustrating and adversarial, focused on broken promises and eking out small, hard-fought victories. When they finally ended — two days after the formal deadline had expired — there was a sense of relief that consensus had been reached, but bewilderment about its content. Most visibly, parties agreed to set up a new funding mechanism to compensate developing countries for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change. But the fund was empty of money. What the celebrated agreement really does is lay out a process for future negotiations on a slew of issues where governments don’t much agree — including who will pay into the fund and how the money, if it ever appears, will get spent.

Those who focused more on the other things happening around COP27 have a different and more encouraging story to tell. That story is full of examples of implementation — small groups of governments and firms working together to transform key industrial sectors. Too often, these examples of productive cooperation and practical action get overlooked because they happen largely outside the negotiating room.

As the climate effort shifts from forging consensus around the need to do something, to actually doing things, implementation is what really matters. The character of the COP event is evolving accordingly — every year, firms, governments, researchers, and civil society show up in greater numbers to showcase and build on their activities in what is now a full-blown climate expo. But even as focus on the ground shifts away from formal diplomacy and toward action, media coverage keeps the spotlight on the formal process.

The message coming out of COP matters. The Paris Agreement was built on the logic that action by some will beget more action by others — building trust and collaboration, ratcheting ambition and generating momentum. The COP is the most important climate conference in the world. Many look to it to gauge the temperature of progress on global climate action. For the event to continue inspiring collective action, the world needs a more holistic message about its outcomes — not just the division and chaos coming from the negotiating room, but also the real efforts and purposeful learning emerging outside it.

Competing stories from COP27

The big diplomatic win dominating COP27 news was the creation of the loss and damage fund to compensate vulnerable countries for climate impacts. Certainly this was important, both morally and to maintain the legitimacy of the Paris Agreement, which is partly rooted in meaningful global consensus. But the victory was largely symbolic, punting on all the hardest questions about how the fund will work (stay tuned for a big fight in 2023 over whether high-emitting developing countries like China should be required to contribute). Still, it was unexpected and an uphill battle. Going in to COP27, loss and damage funding was widely seen as a non-starter (developed countries balked at the cost and precedent), but Europe, with the most at stake in maintaining global climate solidarity, blinked at the last moment and agreed, leaving other rich countries little choice but to follow. Ultimately, the celebration following the loss and damage agreement seems to stem less from achieving meaningful progress and more from well-managed expectations.

On other issues seen as key going into COP27, the negotiations ended with even less forward movement. On mitigation, only 30 countries heeded last year’s call for all countries to update their pledges to cut emissions. The final COP27 decision included no decision to phase out coal or fossil fuels and only a weak reference to the target of stopping warming at 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels, to the bitter disappointment of the EU and other developed countries. (Never mind that actually stopping warming at 1oC is essentially impossible and has been for a long time.) On adaptation, the final decision was procedural, setting out a plan to negotiate rules and metrics that might eventually lead to a global goal. And on climate finance, negotiators began a multi-year process to set a new annual goal for how much money rich countries should provide to the developing world; meanwhile, the existing $100 billion promise remains unmet.

But the disappointing and slow results in the formal negotiating rooms obscure important gains outside it. On climate finance, for example, a partnership announced last year between South Africa and several G-7 countries, who will invest $8.5 billion to facilitate a fair transition away from coal, made an important advancement with the publication of an investment plan. A second such partnership for $20 billion was announced with Indonesia, and similar agreements are being negotiated with Vietnam, India, and other big coal consuming nations.

Other examples of government actions — along with private sector initiatives — abound. The financial sector rolled up its sleeves and got to work transforming their high-profile promises into concrete and credible moves to direct capital away from high emissions industries. Meanwhile, a new door opened for cooperation between the United States and China — cooperation that will be vital for any future agreement to have real impact, given China’s large and growing emissions profile. Unlike diplomatic outcomes, which are centrally reported on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) website, these kinds of examples emerge piecemeal, across the media, sometimes during COP but often after the fact.

Fixing the COP

The effort to stop global warming is advancing, and COP must advance with it. For a long time, what was needed was global consensus on the need to do something and a framework for driving collective action — the stuff of formal diplomacy and universal participation. Now, with the Paris Agreement adopted and its rules mostly worked out, those diplomatic needs are waning. Much more important, as COP27’s Egyptian hosts rightly identified, is implementation. Implementation doesn’t happen by global consensus; instead, it happens in small groups of motivated governments and firms learning how to cut emissions — groups who are arriving at COP in bigger numbers and with better intentions each year.

Can COP become tethered more tightly to what matters?

In principle, the formal COP process could pivot to focus more on facilitating implementation — for example, by doing what has long been done in the Montreal Protocol and helping governments and firms learn which new technologies and shifts in business practice actually help fix the environmental problem at hand. Doing that, however, will be hard because conflicts are rife. Even getting an agreement on the need for review will inevitably end in gridlock. For example, the Paris Agreement’s formal “enhanced transparency framework,” — the process for reporting and reviewing countries’ climate activities — instead of being a vehicle for sharing progress, critically evaluating efforts, or learning, is much more focused on country-level reporting and self-declared compliance. The resulting biennial reports, often hundreds of pages long, are posted on the UNFCCC website and largely ignored by people working to cut emissions in key sectors.

Meanwhile, the reality at COP meetings is, on its own, already evolving in the right direction. As one veteran attendee put it, “COPs used to be 80% negotiations, 20% trade show, now it is the reverse.” Increasingly, folks who are changing facts on the ground — creating new industries, shifting capital, testing new technologies, experimenting with new local and regional policies — are showing up. That’s a good start. The trade show has already become a premier place to showcase how the world is grappling with the transformations needed to manage climate change.

The trade show could become more purposeful if some of COP’s leaders would lead. Unlike the negotiations, which are centrally organized by the UNFCCC, there is little rhyme or reason to what happens around the edges. Organizations spend many thousands of dollars on pavilions, side events, and exhibits, and feel pressured to fill them with content — or at least words and flash. That content is difficult to follow, either virtually or in person, because it is decentralized, disorganized, and lower in coverage-priority than the negotiations. Being there feels like thrift store shopping — digging through a huge bin of miscellaneous events happening at once to find a few gems.

A motivated COP presidency could help create more order in the side activities of COP so they are less of a bazaar and more of an actual conference. (The U.K. did that in Glasgow, and the next hosts — the United Arab Emirates — are well positioned to do something similar.) A laser focus on productive problem-solving would require organizing these activities in a way that fits the problem — by sector — and making sure that alongside the inevitable bazaar there are some more highly organized elements.

Industrial leaders should also be invited to play a bigger role, by showing what implementation means in practice. Many important initiatives are taking shape, such as in steel, shipping, aviation, finance, and many other sectors. But the leaders should do more to show how the varied experiments they are running are panning out in practice. In effect, the world is running a series of experiments, sector by sector, without yet a reliable mechanism to learn from all that investment.

Making COP positive and productive won’t be easy, but it is important. The current system is highlighting global cooperation at its very worst, spotlighting disagreements that are unavoidable and unsolvable while burying in chaos the good news of the trade show. Real progress is unfolding, in pockets of first movers who are changing facts on the ground. These first movers inevitably won’t march to the drummer of diplomatic consensus.

[teachandwrite-blog]

Did you know that one particle of light (called a photon for those of you who aren't science nerds like me :) can be in one place and another particle of light can be in another place and if you changed one then it would affect the other?

It's true!

They are that intimately linked together.

Elizabeth Landau, who works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California wrote about it in an article titled "Particles in Love: Quantum Mechanics Explored in New Study."

That article helps us understand “entanglement,” an idea published by John Bell in 1964 that said that even though information cannot travel faster than the speed of light (Albert Einstein proved this), particles can still affect each other when they are far apart.

Even though there are two photons, they behave as if they are one. What you do to one affects the other, even if they are separated in space and time.

In 2015, three separate studies were published on entanglement, and all three studies were consistent with Bell's idea.

Those studies showed that any model of the world that contains variables that are hidden (as the world of the tiniest things does within quantum mechanics) "must also allow for entangled particles to influence one another at a distance."

Francesco Marsili of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who collaborated with colleagues on a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters titled "Strong Loophole - Free Test of Local Realism" said this.

Bell's idea makes me wonder - are we as human beings like entangled photons?

When I was a boy, I walked down the newly plowed row with my grandpa, feeling the warm, red clay on the soles of my bare feet, listening to his stories.

I held a tomato plant in my hands, the rich, black potting soil falling off of the small, vulnerable roots, as he knelt and dug a place for it in the garden.

“Hey,” he said, “here's something my daddy told me when I was little.

God gave you two ears and one mouth so you can listen twice as much as you speak.

If you do that, you'll learn something.

If you don't, you won't.’”

I especially remember his stories about his childhood on the family dairy farm in Greenville, S.C. in the 1920s.

I heard hard work in his voice and saw struggle in his face when he talked about those times.

He was a son of the South Carolina soil, a soil that had produced slavery and Jim Crow.

His stories reflected his philosophical shift from the idea of white supremacy to the idea of equality.

He described the black folks he’d grown up with in words both simple and complex.

“I guess I looked around our farm and saw the black folks as tools,” he told me once.

But there was a teenager, about my age, who worked on our place.

His name was Billy, and he helped me with my work."

"One day," he continued, "We were in the barn together, cleaning up the milking area, when he cut his hand on a piece of metal.

Daddy wrapped it up in a rag soaked in kerosene, as was the remedy for most farm accidents at that time, and asked me to drive him home.

As we headed toward the black folks part of our town, I thought to myself, ‘Billy must get up very early in the morning, earlier than me, to make it to our house on time.’

As we drove up to his house, I thought, ‘Can Billy stay warm in there?”’

As I saw him holding his injured hand and watched his momma hold him up and lead him up the creaking steps and through the rickety door, well, it seemed to be one of the first times I knew that black folks had hands and feet and needs just like me.

They weren't tools.

They were people.

They weren’t even they.

They were us.

We were them.

We were human beings.

ALL of us made from the dust of the earth and the breath of God.

In that moment, my grandpa learned we cannot be separate and equal.

As a matter of fact, we cannot really be separate.

What happens to one person affects another - no matter what separates us.

We are like photons.

Good begets good.

Bad begets bad.

If we're good to each other then we'll be like photons in another way, too.

We'll be particles of light.

[kirklandkirkland8]

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