#which i think is a fine point but i also think this book centres the 20th century as rhe centre of its universe because thats when merlyn

[mummer]

i dont remember the last time i stayed up too late to read a book in one sitting let alone in less than two hours so i guess i gotta talk about it. Anyway yeah th white literally unparalleled definitely. Like the book of merlyn is definitely a coda and not necessary— the ending of toafk is one of the greatest endings in literature ever, possibly one of the best things in art period — and it is basically animal farm but good (even if it does maintain Communism Stupid in sort of annoying ways lol, oh white you scamp) and it sort of reads like white is arguing with himself and gets too far into the philosophical weeds but it doesnt even matter because every line is like a joy to read and suprising and sad and genius and twee and perfect. weirdly the ant chapter (horrible) and the goose chapter (transcendent) from the sword in the stone are in here, i guess he moved them over to book 1 when he found out merlyn wouldnt be published so as to keep them? i actually think theyre better served in sword anyway but whatever. One of the really great things here is that arthur has this bit where he gets genuinely angry with merlyn for making him have to be the martyr and the king and in charge of making society good and he just wants more life he wants to live peaceful and quiet but he cannot he’ll die tomorrow. like ok robb stark lets gooo!!! very truly heartfelt movement there. uhhh what else. Metafiction, always good in toafk, just lightly dusted here but yeah love it thinking about how merlyn being from the future living backwards is such a wacky thing to do but is also the only perfect adaptational choice to ever have been made in history. I love king arthur so much and we even get to find out that when lancelot died he smelled pure like flowers like a saint does. thanks guys have a good night

[salemlunaa]

Void State for Permashifting/Respawning (i think)

Am I the only one that wants to get into the void to change my life completely and forever? bc i kinda feel like it.

I have HUGE changes that i’m implementing into my dr like new face and body new family, friends, like i’m redesigning a whole ass country for me to live😭😭

and i feel like i see so many posts centred on those who shift for fun to realities that already exist like tv shows, movies and books (which is totally fine!!) and when i say “for fun” i also mean those that have multiple drs (which is also cool!!) and have the intention to come back to their cr when they please, to the point where beginner-shifters are scared they will get stuck in their realities. (and here’s me who wants nothing more than to stay in my dr forever, to the point where i scripted that after a few hours of experiencing my new desired and crying tears of joy, i will forget abt the fact old reality ever existed and it will be like i was always in my dr😭😭)

i love shifters regardless, even those who want to do it for fun, bc it’s amazing we even know abt this life changing (literally) piece of information. This is a safe space for all shifters and manifesters in general But for those who want to use the void to leave to a new, perfect reality with no intention of turning back, this is especially a safe space.

That’s it that’s all.💋💋

[bethanydelleman]

(I think you had a post about that but I can not find it 😢) In a universe where Fanny did accept Henry's proposal, do you think that would have prevented the Maria Affair™? Mary claims he would've been too happy to do anything like that but even if she was right I think he would've eventually gotten used to having won Fanny and go back to his old ways.

Then again if Fanny did start to truly love him, maybe the thought of hurting her in such a way would stop him from having affairs?

I guess my actual question is: How do you imagine their married life?

I wrote a whole novel about this and people even recommend it!

I think logically, the affair could not happen on the same timeline because Henry would be busy getting married, which is what Mary claims:

Had she accepted him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object.

Though this doesn't prevent the affair forever, I am more likely than most to take Mary at her word earlier about Henry being a good husband. She knows Henry very well and Mary is extremely cynical, so she has genuine high hopes!

The thing is, Henry cannot go back to his old ways, not in the same manner. There is a reason he wants marriage as heavens best last gift, because the flirting thing isn't going to work so well when people know he's taken. Maria Bertram thought Henry would propose, he cannot do that if he's married. The way he acts has to change regardless of his morality, but would it change for better or worse?

The difficulty for Henry is that he does not consider what he does wrong, neither does Mary for that matter. Both Crawford siblings act like flirtation is totally fine and they do not seem to perceive the damage or they are wilfully blind about it. To truly reform, Henry Crawford has to understand how he is wrong, and that's a bigger step than say, Mr. Darcy, who knows what is right already but wasn't doing it properly.

As for their married life, I mean part of why I ship Fanny & Henry is because it could be so good! Fanny is shy, but she enjoys herself at dinner parties and balls if she isn't the centre of attention. I think she'd have fun in London, even if a whole season might be too much. Also, she would be the mistress of Everingham! She could buy books and have a fire and her own freaking horse and it would be wonderful.

Whatever else Henry Crawford is, he isn't cruel and I don't think he would mistreat Fanny even if he did fall out of love with her. I think Fanny would adjust and find a way to be happy, just as she did at Mansfield where people did not treat her very well at all, even if Henry didn't reform. But I think he had it in him to reform, all by himself if he actually tried, and that is what I want.

[memphisflash]

📖 The below excerpts are from the book "Priscilla, Elvis & Me" by Michael Edwards. (source: Karine Blanc on FB.)

I want to indicate, as it’s important to note, that Michael Edward's behaviour towards Lisa and his obsession with a child was repellant and sickening. I want to emphasise that in no way do I think he was a decent guy, nor will I ever justify his behaviour's or character !

I'm putting these excerpts up because it demonstrates just how unfair at times, Lisa's life was with her mother. I think after reading this book which I read 6 years ago and read over again more recently, that this was the book that opened my eyes real wide to the personality and self centred persona of Priscilla Beaulieu. Her mothering instincts I feel were shocking at times and her inability to be faithful to any man is extremely telling.

Priscilla moved in Mike Edwards as soon as she moved Elie Ezerzer out. She moved Elie in after Mike Stone and Robert Kardashian. She was with Mike Edwards from 1978 until 1984, a 6 year relationship where Michael has indicated that she cheated on him with at least 4 men within that time. He cheated also.

What stood out was her manipulative behaviour and her deceitful character, constant lies and secrets. Another issue that alarmed me was that after Priscilla caught him taking Pictures of Lisa out at the pool in make up, she approached him in a jealous manner asking "Isn't she a bit young for you Michael"? A normal mother would have seen the dangers and instantly thrown him out for good, but no, Priscilla pursued her highly sexual relationship with him and after 2 times were she witnessed unacceptable behaviours, continued to live with him and allow him to be a babysitter to her young daughter whilst she pursued her need for stardom.

🗒️ The below extract is regarding Michael's daughter and Lisa sneaking out for some drinks when they were teenagers.

"When we drove up, Lisa and Caroline were so scared they went crying into Caroline's bedroom. Grace told them not to worry, we wouldn't hurt them. I went inside the house and got the girls.

"Priscilla wants to see you both," I said.

When Priscilla saw them come to the doorway, she walked up to them.

"I'm so disgusted with you, I can't believe you," she said.

Before either one of them knew what had happened, Priscilla reared back, swung, and slapped Caroline in the face in the exact spot her boyfriend had slugged her in.

Then she swung again, fast, and slapped Lisa.

Caroline turned and ran like lightning, and Lisa was directly behind her. I blocked Lisa, and Priscilla grabbed her by the hair. She dragged Lisa to the back seat of my mother's Cadillac in the driveway, where she started spanking her.

Lisa was screaming at the top of her lungs, and Priscilla was trying to hold her mouth with one hand while hitting her with the other.

Grace and I were in the doorway, and Grace said, "If you don't go out there and stop that, l'm going to” !

At that point, the police pulled up. Grace and I went out to the patrol car and tried to explain that everything was okay, we'd just had a family misunderstanding. The cops walked up to the back of my mother's car and shone their flashlights on Priscilla and Lisa in the back seat.

At that point, the police pulled up. Grace and I went out to the patrol car and tried to explain that everything was okay, we'd just had a family misunderstanding. The cops walked up to the back of my mother's car and shone their flashlights on Priscilla and Lisa in the back seat.

Priscilla had seen the patrol car coming and when the cops asked Lisa how she was, she made Lisa say she was fine.

The cops had no idea what they were investigating in the back of the Cadillac".

🗒️The below excerpt is regarding the housekeepers leaving after Priscilla moved Mike in. Lisa loved them and spent most of her time with them as they made her feel like she had a family ....

"Nearing twelve, Lisa was beginning to blossom, and it was clear that she was going to be a beauty. She resembled Elvis to an extraordinary degree, and looked more like his twin than his daughter. She had the same hairline, eye-brows, and heavy lids. Her hair was light brown, like Elvis's before he dyed it black, and her eyes were pale blue.

In the privacy of her room, she loved to listen to blaring rock 'n' roll. Dressed in black tights like her favorite singer at the time, Pat Benatar, she clutched a toy microphone as she sang along with the records and danced in front of the mirror. Occasionally Lisa played her dad's records, but when she did she always turned the volume down, as if keeping him to herself.

When I got home each evening, I often found her visiting in the servants quarters, watching the soaps with the live-in couple. She looked quite at home, curled up in their bed while the couple sat nearby on the sofa.

The live-in couple were very much a part of the family.

Weekends they spent alone in their room, watching television -Lisa loved the couple like family and didn't want any strangers taking their place.

"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked me. "Who have I got to talk to?"

She was just beginning to accept my moving in, and was upset over yet another change in the household. She continued to remind me that I was to blame for her losing the couple.

"I want to go back to Memphis," she said. "I don't like it here any more."

Graceland had been Elvis's sanctuary and he'd returned there regularly, just as Lisa wanted to do now. Elvis had kept his family together there throughout his life.

"Lisa, they wanted to leave anyway," Priscilla said.

"No, they didn't."

“It was a horrendous period for Lisa, who continued to grieve over her loss of the live-in couple. She was becoming more and more introverted. Priscilla and I were so wrapped up in each other and preoccupied with nightlife, being photographed, skiing, condo-buying in Colorado, charity events, Boozing and having lost weekends together, that Lisa was constantly being left with her grandparents or with Priscilla's sister."

Priscilla was in a relationship and living with Mike Edwards longer than she was married to Elvis.

They were together 6 years.

[doonarose]

Right, so, Good Omens. Legit my favorite book, number one, since I was about 12 or 13 which was… some several years ago (I have tumblr Good Omens posts over ten years old! Gather round wee youngins). Loved the first season, did the book justice, love the actors, love neil, blah blah (a scattering of posts for this from four years ago). Closed circuit for me, though, no work to do, enjoyed, rewatched, enjoyed, left it be, waiting for season two (which I was reasonably convinced was an entirely bad idea, just like I’d been reasonably convinced a TV adaptation of the book was an entirely bad idea, and been happily wrong).

Second season – dunno what I was expecting – but it wasn’t that and I didn’t love it, I was a touch disappointed in it when I first finished it up, because I watched it distracted and having gotten up on the wrong side of the bed or whatever, but sometimes things take a while to settle and find their place in my brain.

We read a book called ‘I for Isobel’ in Year 11 of high school and I hated that book my first read -ranted about how rubbish a piece of literature it was – and my very wise English teacher gently promised she’d convince me otherwise. I still remember the earth-shattering shift in teenaged perception I experienced when I realized I could learn to love a piece of art I had adamantly despised and also, that it made perfect sense that a character such as Isobel could call herself a preposition and be equal parts right and wrong (I was also, most definitely, identifying as a preposition for a while there). Same with Pride and Prejudice, I hated that smug motherfucker and Elizabeth for losing her mind and fawning over him, a different English teacher again told me to sit with it, reread it, examine the angles. Both those books are still in my top ten.

And – don’t panic – at this point, of thinking and watching and thinking, I am enamoured with the second season of Good Omens. Different to season 1, and different to the book, but utterly gorgeous and complex, giddy and romantic and soft but infuriating. I mean, the season isn’t infuriating, in and of itself; it’s very good, except that it sets up our leads to be infuriating, and it does it on purpose and that is infuriating and boy, oh boy, do I love me a ‘shit communication’ trope. Even the dumb teenage humans are bad at communication trope (see: Glee) and the dumb alien and naïve human are bad at communication trope (see: Doctor Who), but, perhaps, especially, the intensely experienced, smart, worldly dumbass angel/demon duo are bad at communication trope. I can buy into the way that season ended in about two dozen different ways, but it certainly made sense to me. Some angles paint Aziraphale as a bit of a dumbass, a bit obtuse, a bit self-centred, and some paint Crowley as the poster-boy for self-sabotaging, woe-is-me, overly-willing martyr. Nothing deal-breakingly bad about those characters, just some very well-fleshed out, obvious flaws bubbling to the top.

So anyway, who the fuck is reading this? I’m writing it despite a ridiculously busy life just at this particular moment in time, because I miss writing. My whole job is writing. Emails, protocols, research proposals, reviews, scientific articles, and I’m just fine at that but Jesus Christ that shit isn’t character or place or emotionally anchored (it is 90% utter bullshit, honestly). We still teach the bloody undergrads to write past-tense, third person, passive voice for fuck’s sakes. We do an assignment where we take marks off for any sort of connotation-laden language and I lose my mind trying to explain to colleagues that their list of connotative words from the 1980s is no longer relevant. That six students choosing to call a particularly clingy amoeba ‘thirsty’ is very connotative and not at all scientific and actually, very much, hilarious.

I’ve known I miss writing for almost a decade. The fleet car I sometimes have to drive locked me out at a service station in the middle of nowhere for two hours. This happened several months ago and it triggered a medium-sized tantrum (for various other reasons) and I therapeutically wrote a 5600 word fictionalized (but honestly, very accurate and quite funny) account of the event. I sent that shit to my boss.    

Anyway, yes, I could write several, long, winding, satisfying fics to follow season two. But that sounds hard and like working in a vacuum and there’s so much source material to align with and so much fanon dissection ahead of me that instead, during all my long drives and boring seminars of the last ten days or so, I’ve been dipping into next kisses.

Because that kiss was rubbish (ohIlovedit). I have theories about that kiss that spin off into complex heaven and hell lore thinking and what all the nuance and foreshadowing mean, but I don’t, just now, have ten days to sit here and think and type (just about the kiss that I’m not at all convinced was primarily an actual kiss). So, I’ve just skipped season 3 (not a typo) and the whole second coming thing, and the whole them not being very happy with each other thing, and also, yes, them being woefully incompatible with each other (and the state of the universe) at the end of Season 1 and all through Season 2 and jumped to the end of Season 3.

It's a warm, sated, luxurious place to inhabit (built on an imperfect foundation of Neil writing the way I think he will, I hope, I’ll beg). They’ll be safe, happy, and openly in love with each other (yes, of course they’ve said it, Season 3 is over so they can’t have not said it – you fool!) and they’ll be talking (#NinaMaggieWisdom). Admittedly they’ll still be pretty shit at the ‘safe’, ‘happy’ and ‘talking’ bits, but doing quite reasonable at the ‘openly being in love thing’, actually.   

And I can totally buy into the ‘angels have no genitals’ thinking or the ‘angels have no gender’ thinking or the ‘angels are asexual’ thinking, that all makes a great deal of sense to me and can be written well, and I can read and enjoy (and could certainly see Season 3 play out like any of these). But I know I would really, really, struggle with those characters (and dare I say, with those actors (stop it)) and my own brain wiring and projection, with trying to not make them romantic.

So I’ve started to mentally play it out romantically. And then tactile. Which became touch-starved, touch-desperate, and all ‘pleasures of the flesh’ and ‘enjoying the human things’. Which, yes, of course, became sexual (do you not know me at all?) but calm down, please (I’m talking to me, lbh).

Anyhow. Next kisses, because that first one shouldn’t count. The timings are malleable, the order of 3-7 are interchangeable. There’s structure and dialogue (and choreography!) for all of them.

The second time (aka the first time it’s overwhelmingly, categorically right, albeit still complicated, and not at all as straightforward as it should be).

The third time (aka not really the third time because they don’t – they can’t – because it’s extremely awkward and weird, maybe they’ll never do it again).

The fourth time (aka, the first time since it was awkward that it’s not awkward, thank goodness).

The eleventh time (aka it’s like in the movies, there’s a rainstorm and they get wet and have to take shelter under an awning, oh my).

The twenty first time (aka the time someone thinks this is an appropriate way to inform their neighbours).

The twenty-fifth time (aka the first time they do it without thinking about doing it).

The forty first time (aka actually this time a bit more than kissing and it’s all together too good for Crowley (it’s not what you think, honest)).

The seventy third time (aka actually this time quite a bit more than kissing and it’s all together too good for Aziraphale (it’s totally what you think)).

I’m dumping this here after a long, personal post, because that way I can delete it and almost no one will have seen it. But it reads too well behind my eyes to not share (but I’m still tagging it because I’m a mysterious enigma of a needy bitch). A lot of this I came up with while driving and I had to stop myself from pulling over on a highway to scribble things down and that felling is gorgeous and so missed. So, I’m holding onto it for tonight by releasing a little bit of it into an abandoned, dormant blog, that seems to have a bunch of ghosts around.

I have scrawled notes from yesterday’s symposium to transcribe and flesh out. And tomorrow I’m getting a new couch delivered.

[oldtvandcomics]

To get some positivity in this tag: Let me tell you about my recent bustrip to Prague! While narcoleptic. It was really great, and a bit tricky, and I think we can use some stories of disabled people doing fun things.

Background story: I was visiting my grandmother, and took the bus both there and back, because it's different, and because I really wanted to actually see some more of the Europe I spent my life running there and back through (we live in the West, my Grandmother in the East). On the way back, I spent two nights in Prague. It was a highly anticipated part of the trip, as I still kind of miss the city after my one year there. It was also the most tricky part of the whole thing to manage.

You see, my bus arrived at 6.00h, and check-in at the hotel was at 15.00h. Which is a good nine hours between the two.

I am pretty much guaranteed to fall asleep every three to four hours.

Rest of the story under the cut.

For those not aware of the weather right now in Eastern Europe: It's COLD. And SNOWY! So when I arrived at the bus station, my first reaction was pretty much "Nope!", and I went into the bathroom to put on an extra layer of clothes. I was fine after that.

You can walk from UÁN Florenc bus station to the Old Town pretty easily, which I knew because as I said, I've been there before. So I walked there, and stopped to buy myself some breakfast in a big supermarket at a metro station. After that, I went the usual way down to Old Town Square and the clock, and continued on to Charles Bridge.

At that point, it was still only between 7.00h and 8.00h, so of course there was close to nobody on the streets, only the people who had to be there. And snow. Lots of snow. Charles Bridge. People. Charles Bridge, normally black with age and full of tourists, was WHITE! And almost completely empty. I was there at sunrise. It was impossible to describe beautiful.

Pictures don't do it justice, but here are some. The river. People. The river was damping!

And yeah, this is Old Town Square.

I usually don't get this magic-place-feeling from Prague, because the people cover it up. Which is actually one of the reasons I like it, they cover up some of the useless noise in my brain, too. I'm more functional in a big city.

Anyway. This was clearly an exception. It really felt like walking in a wintery fairy tale. The only thing missing was a ghost.

After that, I went to the hotel, and dropped off my backpack. I like to travel with a light luggage, which made moving around earlier possible. And hotels are fine keeping luggages locked up in some room before check-in and after check-out.

I then took the tram number 22 direction Nádraží Hostivař. This was planned. One, I know the line, and know that it passes by two big shopping centres. Two, I know that I always fall asleep on any moving vehicle, and public transportation is a reasonably safe place to sleep.

Which is exactly what happened, I woke only when I was at the second shopping centre. So I went and looked at some shops, and bought myself a gift of three ice bear figurines. I sometimes like to take pictures of these plastic figurines, and the snow triggered that. I'm very sorry that I didn't have my actual collection with me. But the bears did a wonderful job, too.

This was behind a random tank station, where there was a table with benches where the snow was still completely untouched. So I played a little around there.

Then I took the tram to the other shopping centre, fell asleep again on the way there, looked a bit more at shops, had lunch in the KFC on the top floor and finished my book, then it was already time to take the tram back to the hotel. I fell asleep during that trip again, then I went to the hotel, checked in and got my room. All in all, I had managed to survive those 9+ hours without any greater discomfort, which is, honestly, better than I'd expected.

The end. Here are some more bears from the next day.

City wildlife. <3

[mariacallous]

I was grabbing a drink with an old friend when it happened. I told her I was excited about an upcoming reporting trip to Vancouver, to interview Naomi Klein. My friend wrinkled her nose, as if the bartender had just farted. Then she asked why I’d give my time to someone who thought the Covid-19 pandemic was a conspiracy.

I sighed. Turns out, she’d been thinking of Naomi Wolf.

You know Naomi Klein, right? Rabble-rousing leftist journalist and climate activist? Author of Gen X touchstone No Logo and the mega-influential The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism? Decidedly not the former liberal feminist writer turned far-out Covid truther Naomi Wolf? But just because they share a first name—and, I suppose, are both telegenic Jewish public intellectuals who found fame through polemical writing—people confuse the two Naomis constantly. Klein gets mixed up with Wolf so much, in fact, a Twitter mnemonic was born: “If the Naomi be Klein you’re doing just fine / If the Naomi be Wolf, oh, buddy. Ooooof.”

Thus the basis of Klein’s new book, Doppelganger. Writing hundreds of pages based on the Twitter discourse surrounding your evil twin is, of course, a deeply questionable choice. Klein openly admits that her family and friends questioned her sanity. As she is quick to point out, though, Doppelganger is not really about Wolf. Instead, the book uses the experience as an entry point to dissect the “intellectual and ideological mayhem” of the Covid era. How wellness entrepreneurs demonize medicine. How the far right appropriates and warps leftist talking points. How parents insist on seeing their children as reflections of themselves. In all this, Klein writes, there’s a new doubling going on—weird fun house distortions of what used to be more straightforward realities. It’s a lively, slightly unwieldy, wholly vital work. It could only be hers.

Klein moved to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia during the pandemic, a riotously beautiful nook of that vast province, where towns are nestled into fjords. It’s a place far more likely to be visited by orcas than members of the US media, and in the interest of saving me a journey on a ferry—you can only get to her home by boat or floatplane—Klein met me at her office at the University of British Columbia, where she codirects the Centre for Climate Justice. We’d intended to stroll around the sprawling, sunny campus, but the conversation kept such an intense clip, we ended up simply sitting for hours.

Kate Knibbs: Doppelganger is much more personal than your previous work. Why?

Naomi Klein: I thought it was really important not to be on the outside of this story, but to be inside, to fess up to my own disorientation. Having a doppelganger who a lot of people confuse me with is a type of losing oneself, and it provided a toehold into this larger and more interesting set of feelings, of being lost in a world we might not recognize.

You listened to conspiratorial podcasts for research, including Steve Bannon’s. Were you ever worried you’d get lost in those worlds?

I felt that way the first time I went to a climate change denial conference. I was a tiny bit worried I would start to doubt my own understanding of the science by listening to them. But the exact opposite happened, because it was so completely incoherent. One guy says it’s getting cooler. Another says it’s getting hotter—but the sunspots! Another guy says everyone should just get air-conditioning. That’s what it’s like listening to Bannon or any of those “intellectual dark web” types. You can see it right now with RFK Jr. He’s saying Covid was a bioweapon. This is also the guy who told people not to wear masks, not to lock down, not to get vaccinated. So which is it? Occasionally Bannon would have someone on who would claim that people were just dropping dead from the vaccine.

Like the whole #DiedSuddenly thing?

Exactly. What you start to realize is that these people are acting as if we were immortal before Covid. As if no one died from anything. What worries me more isn’t that I’m going to start thinking that the vaccines are killing us or anything like that. It’s that I understand why the things he’s doing are so resonant.

Why are they so resonant?

This is Bannon’s gift, sorry to say, and it’s how Trump won in 2016: by identifying a bloc of Democratic voters who had been screwed over by the party because they lost jobs to corporate free trade deals. So the offer was a counterfeit version of the left, which is what right-wing populism does. They were not rewriting trade deals in any significant way that would help workers. They were offering huge gifts to the already wealthy through tax cuts. But when people are desperate enough, they’ll go for a counterfeit.

I have someone close to me who has definitely bought into that counterfeit populism. It’s been hard to watch the change take place.

I’ve had so many conversations with people describing that feeling. It’s like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

But I suppose we all have many competing, constantly mutating versions of ourselves. How do you think about your public persona now?

When we think about performing ourselves, we think about social media. For me, that’s Twitter [since renamed X]. And right now I don’t think any of us feel in control of whatever the fuck is happening on Twitter. But we’re still there, hoping to recapture something. I hope my relationship to my public persona is like my relationship with Twitter. I’m not really trying anymore.

Do you think there’s a way for you to have a conversation like this that’s truly authentic, or are you in some sense creating a doppelganger version of yourself to promote the book?

There’s always going to be some contradictions involved in hawking a book when you’re an anti-capitalist author. I’ve been living with that contradiction for a long time. I find talking to people exciting. I have ideas that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I had the idea to write No Logo while I was doing an interview with a student journalist.

Are your students influential in other ways?

One of the really nice things about being on campuses right now is that, if I was just getting my sense of youth culture through media, I’d think that all young people are constantly posing and performing themselves on Instagram. But it’s definitely a minority. A lot of young people feel alienated from it.

I get a lot of youth culture tidbits from my babysitter, which is how I know that super polished and posed Instagram photos are seen as a geriatric millennial thing.

They want it to look really authentic, to be messy.

I reread No Logo recently. It holds up.

Maybe not the Blockbuster references!

Honestly, we need to bring back your concept of selling out. I got in a lot of trouble on Twitter a few months ago for saying the Barbie movie looked bad. I love Greta Gerwig, but I don’t want to like Barbie! I hate the idea of a Mattel Cinematic Universe.

The thing that’s so clever is that it’s shiny and pretty enough to get the normie Barbie fans, but it also has so-called subversive content for the people who don’t want to like Barbie. It’s genius marketing. But the world is fraying. It’s an odd time for us to get excited about pink plastic.

Probably an odd time for me to be really annoyed about it, too.

No, I think it’s time to have some standards again.

Do you ever think about returning to that mode of criticism?

Just to keep you company?

To keep me company, and because efforts to turn cinema and television into capital-B Brands—the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most infamously—are so much more flagrant than before.

And also to keep us in our childhoods in a strange way. This is not kid content, it’s adult content, but it’s feeding on nostalgia for being 8 years old.

What’s a recent movie you liked?

Despite the critics hating it, I thought Don’t Look Up was brilliant. It was taking aim at the culture of narcissism and distraction at this most critical moment. It was broad, like all of Adam McKay’s comedies. But that was not the problem. The problem was that it was right.

Doesn’t everyone die at the end?

That’s the best part. He fucked with the Judeo-Christian trope that the righteous will be saved.

I do think it was broad.

Well, Anchorman is broad!

True. But I don’t necessarily want my comedy to be didactic. I just really don’t want it to be branded content from Mattel. There’s this amazing Canadian filmmaker, Sarah Polley, and she’s doing a live-action Bambi.

My grandpa worked on the original Bambi. He was an animator.

I read about this. Didn’t he get fired for trying to unionize?

He did. And they had the first strike at Disney during the production of Dumbo.

Have you been paying attention to the strike wave happening?

It’s exciting. I’m really glad that there’s the focus on AI.

What else interests you politically, right now?

I think it’s important to think about where the Covid denialism energy is going now that there aren’t vaccine mandates. It’s morphing, going in new directions, and it’s important to try and follow that.

Which new directions?

There are two main wellsprings the Covid denialism movement drew from. One was the anti-vax people. The other group was climate deniers. Now, when you post anything about climate change, you’ll get hit with “Davos elites, Great Reset.”

When we were talking earlier about how people take leftist ideas and make counterfeit versions of them, I was thinking about how that happened to the shock doctrine—your idea that global elites use disasters to push brutal policies to benefit themselves at the expense of the masses. People co-opted the concept to talk about the Great Reset, saying there was a global conspiracy to use Covid to strip away personal freedoms. Has this changed your relationship to your own ideas? Do you feel less ownership over them?

I’ve never felt I had that much control over my ideas in the culture. I remember Arundhati Roy saying to me many years ago, we can’t control what our words do once we release them. I have tried to correct the record and do my own writing about what I think the shock doctrine is and isn’t, but I think I’ve always felt a bit of detachment around it.

Jane Fonda started her Fire Drill Fridays because of you.

That was just getting somebody at the right moment of receptivity. That’s what Jane did. I take no credit.

Do you believe in the horseshoe theory? Are the people on the far left swinging far right because they’re attracted to conspiratorial thinking about Covid?

There are some people who have decided that Tucker Carlson is a great guy and Trump’s better than Biden. But most of those people I wouldn’t consider very left-wing. Someone like Glenn Greenwald. For a while, he seemed to be a left-wing person because he was against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. But he was a libertarian upset about Bush-era government overreach. So it makes sense, when a government has to robustly respond to a pandemic, that a lot of those people got upset. I know some of these people—Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald—I know that they are not deep left thinkers. We have to make the distinction.

Do you think there’s an incentive to shift rightward now to bolster one’s personal brand online?

Yes.

Could there be a positive incentive the other way? Is it possible to build up an ecosystem of independent leftist outlets?

Remember that idea? We need to invest in media, and not be reliant on quixotic billionaires to find one another. I think we need to get serious about independent alternative media and local media.

Meaning, like, a new Twitter?

The problem with something like Mastodon or the smaller Twitter competitors is that they’re not able to offer what Twitter did at its best, which was this feeling of we’re all having one conversation together.

I don’t know if there will ever be one main conversation again.

I wish Twitter could’ve been turned into a co-op. This is labor we’ve put into this thing. We all wrote for free!

A lot.

There was always something self-exploiting about that. Sure, we were able to share our articles and do self-promotion, but I always knew they were going to try to charge us. It’s too valuable.

There’s a co-op movement for media startups, where the writers own their outlets, but I haven’t seen the same thing happen for social media.

And the thing happening now with AI—it was one thing for all of us to be writing for free for Zuckerberg and Musk, but now it turns out that all of that content is being used to create doppelgangers of us by AI companies. Now that’s going to be used to put people out of work, or cheapen their labor.

It’s accelerating so rapidly. Big outlets are already putting out AI-generated articles.

This relates back to conspiracies and why they’re spreading as quickly as they are. It’s a dangerous time to give people more reasons not to believe what’s in front of them. Anything you’re shown now can be dismissed as fake news. “It’s not even Biden, it’s AI.” We’re barely glimpsing the ramifications.

In Doppelganger, you wrote about a South Korean politician who used AI to look younger.

The thing about the Korean example is, it was not hidden. Everyone knew. And it worked for him. So who knows? As our candidates get older, they may rely on AI doppelgangers. It’s being packaged as a way to reach younger voters, because they prefer synthetic reality.

Have you had discussions with your students about AI? Do they actually prefer synthetic reality? 

Last semester, ChatGPT was really everywhere, and we were discussing how they were not using it to write their essays. I think we’ve overfocused on the plagiarism piece of things. It’s just one element within a completely unstable and frightening future. Maybe it’s helpful writing essays, but they also know it’s replacing entire sectors they may have been preparing for—between not being able to afford living in the city to the acceleration of the climate crisis to AI changing the job market.

I’m aware of at least one podcasting company hoping to use AI to translate podcasts into a bunch of different languages. It sounds cool, but then you think: What about translators?

The thing I find disingenuous is when you hear, oh, we’re going to have so much leisure time, the AI will do the grunt work. What world are you living in? That’s not what happens. Fewer people will get hired. And I don’t think this is a fight between humans and machines; that’s bad framing. It’s a fight between conglomerates that have been poisoning our information ecology and mining our data. We thought it was just about tracking us to sell us things, to better train their algorithms to recommend music. It turns out we’re creating a whole doppelganger world.

We’ve provided just enough raw material.

When Shoshana Zuboff wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, it was more about convincing people who’d never had a sense that they had a right to privacy—because they’d grown up with the all-seeing eye of social media—that they did have a right to privacy. Now it’s not just that, even though privacy is important. It’s about whether anything we create is going to be weaponized against us and used to replace us—a phrase that unfortunately has different connotations right now.

Take it back! The right stole “shock doctrine,” you can nab “replace us” for the AI age.

These companies knew that our data was valuable, but I don’t even think they knew exactly what they were going to do with it beyond sell it to advertisers or other third parties. We’re through the first phase now, though. Our data is being used to train the machines.

Fodder for a Doppelganger sequel.

And about what it means for our ability to think new thoughts. The idea that everything is a remix, a mimicry—it relates to what you were talking about, the various Marvel and Mattel universes. The extent to which our culture is already formulaic and mechanistic is the extent to which it’s replaceable by AI. The more predictable we are, the easier it is to mimic. I find something unbearably sad about the idea that culture is becoming a hall of mirrors, where all we see is our own reflections back.

You reached out to Naomi Wolf and she didn’t respond. If she had responded, would you want to debate her?

I think it’s important to engage with what’s being said and marshal counterfacts. But the idea of just sneering at people is dangerous. I think we do need to debate, but whether that means creating some kind of theatrical Naomi vs. Naomi spectacle—I don’t know about that.

You could be second billing to Musk vs. Zuckerberg.

Anyway, as you know from reading the book, it’s not really about her. She’s just a case study. I follow her down the rabbit hole. But I’m more interested in the rabbit hole.

[gorogues]

Fictober 2023

Prompt number #13 Fanfiction Fandom: Flash Rogues Rating: T – Teen and up Warnings: Injuries, mentions of death, profanity.

Day Thirteen: “Come with me, hurry.”

It was a quiet afternoon, and the Rogues were together in their current warehouse hang-out, mostly doing their own things.  Some worked, some played cards, and the remainder were reading or socializing.  There was a relaxed, happy vibe.

Until Hartley looked up from his book, listening intently to distant sounds with widened eyes.

“Take cover!  Something’s coming!” he shouted, and the other Rogues knew his hearing abilities well enough to pay attention.  Everyone ducked to the ground and under something if possible, and moments later there was a blast of concussive energy which blew out all the windows.

Silence reigned for a few moments -- aside from the cacophony of car alarms outside -- and there didn’t appear to be a second explosion. 

“Everyone okay?  Lisa?” Len called, coughing from the dust and debris which covered them all.

“I’m fine,” she answered wearily as Roscoe pulled himself off her, having tried to shield her before the blast.  His nose was bleeding and his ears were ringing, but he insisted he was also fine.

Mick had ducked under a table, which splintered but fortunately protected him from a large chunk of ceiling that had collapsed onto it.  He climbed out from underneath with some pained grumbling, but was mostly unhurt.

“I’m all right, but that was intense,” Hartley announced as he stood up, though visibly unsteady.  “So, so loud.”

“Thanks for the warning.  You saved us,” Len said appreciatively, offering him a supportive hand for balance.  Soon the Rogues had staggered to their feet, all battered and bruised but with no serious injuries.

“We should get out of here in case this place crumbles,” Len told the assembled group.  “And these kinds of explosions usually come with other bullshit, like aliens or some kind of multiversal crap.  We don’t wanna get stuck in their path.”

The others nodded and made their way out through the debris, stepping gingerly around the broken glass.  There was destruction all around their building but not many people to be seen, since the Rogues typically chose their headquarters in quiet warehouse districts for a reason.

“Let’s head to the city centre.  I’m sure we’ll run into some speedsters soon enough,” Len said to the others, who agreed.

“It’s so eerie,” Lisa remarked as they trudged around the mess in the street.  Alarms were still blaring, but otherwise there wasn’t as much noise or signs of life as she’d expected.

“Maybe everyone is dead,” Roscoe suggested, blunt as always.  Possibly more so than usual, because a nasty goose egg was beginning to appear on his forehead and he seemed vaguely dazed.

“Shut up, Dillon,” Len said tersely, though he’d been thinking the same thing.  He couldn’t allow his people to get distracted while they were still in crisis mode and needing to achieve an objective.

“Wait, I hear somebody,” Hartley said, pointing just up ahead.  The Rogues walked in that direction and found a man trapped behind a pile of rubble, though it wasn’t difficult to free him with multiple pairs of hands working in unison.

“Thank you!” the man exclaimed as Len helped him climb out to freedom.  He wasn’t badly injured, but was scraped and completely covered in dust just as his rescuers were.  “Wait, are you the Rogues?!  Like the criminals?”

“Yup.  Come with us and hurry, we’re looking for help and not seeing anybody,” Lisa replied briskly.  “We need to keep moving.”

“I don’t hear anyone else,” Hartley said softly, shaking his head, which seemed like a definitive answer for the moment.  He and Roscoe were beginning to tire, so Mick did his best to support them both.

The group continued trekking towards the downtown core, occasionally collecting stragglers and sometimes passing by people they couldn’t help.  Hartley perked up once they’d left the warehouse district, telling the others he heard speedsters on the move, which was cheering news for everyone.

Suddenly, a young man in yellow and red came to a screeching halt in front of them.

“Rogues!  Were you part of all this?” Kid Flash demanded in an agitated state, unusually out of breath.

“Nope, but we got people in need of help,” Len said defiantly, stepping between his sister and the teen hero.  Lisa firmly pushed her brother aside and stood in front of him.

“Sorry,I’mjustbeingpulledintwentydirectionsatonce!” Wally replied quickly, almost too garbled to understand.  He picked up a woman who seemed to be the most injured amongst their group and ran her to safety, then returned and took the other stragglers one by one to the triage area in the city centre.

Once there, the Rogues looked around at the injured people who’d already flooded the area, and realized that most of the civilians appeared worse off than they were; more reason to be grateful for Hartley’s early warning.

“We’ll be okay on our own, we know how to patch each other up,” Mick said, and the others nodded.  They were no strangers to mild and moderate injuries from their physically demanding line of work.

“Yeah, we’d just be taking up space somebody else needs more,” Hartley agreed.

Wally ran back to where he’d dropped off the Rogues a minute earlier, feeling like he needed to apologize for accusing them of responsibility for the blast.  He was sure they were waiting their turn for medical treatment, or perhaps pushing their way to the front of the line…he’d always known them to be egocentric and self-interested.

But they were nowhere to be found.

[theanomily]

This is a Bloodline "live react", but also not really because I'm posting my initial thoughts as I read in maybe two goes, depending on the time I can allocate to reading.

Disclaimer: The book has been out for two and a bit years. I hate surprises. Consequently, I know stuff. Specifically, I know that:

Otto "dies" // the volcano explodes. These are somehow linked?

The Queen of Shadows is a Sinistre who... exists // Raven is Nero's daughter. Again, these are somehow linked? Sidenote: hive fantasy au where there's a Nero, furan and sinistre kingdom/royalty

There's a scene in which Nero is tied to a bed?? And I think Anastasia is there?? (*squirts Mr Walden with water*)

There's some Anna kid/super-robot. I assume she wants to kill everyone (mood). Sidenote: given how similar her name is to Anastasia's, there's probably some connection there.

Ms. Leon gets her body back. Her cat's name is Kali.

Pietor has a "lurking heart."

*

Chapter One:

OK, opening with a scene of Nero + brandy into a flashback sequence... very Overlord Protocol. Wonder if that was intentional and if the books may be linked.

Nero is younger than I thought. Much younger.

"There's a fine line between being devoted and pathetic." Oh, I love Elena already.

Clumsy Max. That's all I have to say. See, I thought it was as he was bending to kneel when the shot happened, not bending to retrieve a fallen ring. It's kind of sweet that it's the one time we've seen him display nerves. And it killed his (finace? Girlfriend? Does the proposal count?), generating a Never Again type of instinct and the birth of the max we know and love

KILL ANASTASIA, MAX... oh, you IDIOT. Suppose plot gotta plot, eh?

Dr Higgs... why is that name familiar? Glass tanks. Did he work on Otto back in the day?

Laura seems much more bold than any other book. It's interesting, given that Deadlock has literally just happened.

Shelby's first line is an insult. Now that's the Shelby I love

This is wholesome (barring the implied make outs, of course), but Penny. What has happened to Penny?

Oh no, h.i.v.e.mind is thinking they're having a foursome, isn't he?

Chapter Two:

So Anna is Otto crossed with the Contessa. And the whole initial want to know stuff about her creator? Aka her "parents"? I'm sensing AU potential centred around a more human version of her, yearning for a family to find and slowly being driven into insanity/violence

Oh my god, max on holiday? It's him, he's being controlled by something.

I forget that Raven and diabolus are only friends/kind of close in fanfiction. I have no point to make here. It's just very jarring to read max saying to her that he'll do all the talking as though it's all a political battlefield.

Also, we should actually talk about max's daddy issues

Why is Franz a gym bro now? I suppose he inspired himself to try to attain his ninja alter ego via his newfound shooting skills. Still extremely out the blue. (Oooh, And They Were Study Buddies).

...That better not be the extent of Nigel's self-acceptance arc. Or else I'll have to dust off the old ffn account, and nobody wants that. Mr Walden, my guy, I'm counting on you.

Anna, will you take my hand in marriage?

Ouch, Zero really did just exist to be told "a copy is never as good as the original" and then to have his successor be even better than him.

Chapter Three

Excuse me, I know Otto points it out immediately, but Wing advocating for more aggression? Interesting. Makes sense in context- a simulation, in which he would have been the one getting hurt if they took a more aggressive approach. I wonder if that's going to come into play, perhaps the other way around, in a real situation?

Are they really not going to say what this security flaw is? Damn, poor hive'll never learn

Chapter Four

Why are block and tackle being nice? Wing's right, this is a complete parallel universe

..or perhaps not. Only shelby would dare picture Nero in tights.

Page 66 and hive is already fucked. What I'm hearing is Cypher was a complete amateur

CYPHER BOTS :)

Chapter Six

We are nine books in, and let's be honest. Dr Scott isn't the chief medic, he's the only medic

I forgot to jot down anything for c5, but if I forgot, then I can't have had anything particularily noteworthy to say.

Here, I do find it quite interesting that Anna referred to guns as nasty. Reminds me of those really convoluted family trees in which wing is related to otto (and, by extention, anna) via his parents working on Overlord.

Damn, looks like a united glove isn't good news at all for max right now

Also, I'm still really wondering if Mr Walden just straight up forgot about Penny

[reversecreek]

— 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠… 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐭! 🐇🍎

a o i f e c r a i n .

welcome to marina, AOIFE CRAIN ( woman, she/her ) ! they are a TWENTY SIX year old MEDIUM who resides in PROSPECT HILL. They work as an APPLE JAM MAKER / GRIEF COMMUNE BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THEIR GRIEVING LIVING and are said to look a lot like HAVANA ROSE LIU. People around the island find them to be +GOOFY and +COMPASSIONATE, but also -FLUSTERED and -GUARDED. what do you think?

hiieieieiieeeeeeee it'sa me nai'uigi! (THEE gay mario brother ik a bottom when i see one). so anyway. i figured i'd start off w literally jsut aoife n take it as i go bc i was too ambitious last time n i think i work better w a narrower focus. so ya. without further ado! 🤸 pinty pin pin here!

aoife's mama, siblings n nainai (not me cloned bt the chinese word for grandma which i jst found out n am obsessed w) impulsively migrated to a little rural farmland village in ireland after some unfortunate business w their sperm source (branding him this bc he doesn't deserve to b called a father frankly) n aoife's mama eventually fell madly in love w Some Guy n out popped aoife

(addiction mention/ drugs implied) it ws Naught a happy union n they sadly both struggled w addiction since getting together rly. he kind of was a bad influence on aoife's mum from the start n got her into tht scene. bt like when aoife was tottering around her mum wanted to clear up her act for her sake bc she ws the centre of her whole world bt her dad didn't rly follow suit n as a result things were Not Good n quite the rollercoaster when aoife was little

they were kind of struggling in ireland as it was anyway bc their village was a rather traditional one n income was sparse bc of local prejudices n when things reached a boiling point w aoife's father her grandma stepped in to her mum n was like girl we're outta here.

aoife's two aunties migrated w them to this absolutely ramshackle old creaky farmhouse in prospect hill bc the girlies stick together that they bought fr a pittance bc it was kind of falling apart n all of the big apple trees surrounding it were semi rotten bt they all agreed it ws their fresh start. she has no contact w her father whatsoever to this day bt it's cool <3 they started making apple jam out of the rotten apples bc the bruised fruit makes the sweetest jam n this is kind of symbolic of aoife's positive mindset in life.

aoife's mama remarried a vry sweet introspective repairer of watches who ws strangely also irish n he surprisingly fit right in w the sisterhood they'd created

ANYWAY that's for family bg. as far as abilities go aoife's grandma has always had contact w the other side. it's strange too bc when they were fleeing ireland their grandma jst randomly had this pull towards marina as The Place To Go n it's almost like she cld sense the spn forces there within her. aoife's always had a very visceral attachment to her surroundings growing up bc like she'll. befriend different ghosts in different places n settings r like richly embroidered tapestries she can't help etching her fingers along to appreciate their craftsmanship. aoife believes people n their stories make the world go round <3

being a medium she hs a little oracle business of sorts in a side room of their big farmhouse n has a few sweet regulars who she regularly helps communicate w their passed loved ones. she's a bit too sweet tho n sometimes jst won't charge them bc she feels too mean charging to help them w their grief n some of them r hard for money so she doesn't feel it's right even tho it's like girl u need the income.... bt it's fine.

her grandma is vry powerful bt very controlled whereas aoife gets a bit too attached n is probably more at risk for possessions n such bc she's kind of easily manipulated if she feels for the tall tales a ghost is spinning. speaking of which there's a ghost tht kind of has a crush on her tht lingers in the farmhouse frm time to time n "accidentally" knocks a book off the shelf whenever it sniffs someone hving a crush on her in the air. aoife's like sheldon ur so silly not again!!!!

she's vry goofy. does big ungraceful giddy toothy witch cackles like bunny kicking her feet n everything then gets shy n bashful right after. loves fantasy, intricately engraved swords n the idea of having a pet baby dragon who's always sneezing n accidentally singeing the ends of her hair (bt she'd nvr get mad at them bc it's just so cute). she's constantly embroidering items or crafting a strange little something out of scrap material she finds n regularly has clumsily pinpricked fingers as a result. sometimes she collects twigs to help build birds nests bc she's like they're so little they must be so tired doing it all by themselves!!!!!

hs a HUGE albino rabbit named bo tht seems strangely immortal bt noone ever questions it. carries him around in her arms like a beloved handbag, close confidant n surrogate father all in one. he acts all sweet n soft w aoife then when her backs turned is the antichrist to anyone tht gets near her. it's true love <3

she's vry friendly n open bt romantically she's quite a closed book bc she's never rly witnessed a good demonstration of it.

hs long rambunctious flowing curly ginge hair like ophelia drowning in a pond n wears 4958724975942 rings n vry floaty kimonos n crochet skirts n long lacy skirts n dresses. oh n whenever she sneakily bites into one of their best apples she leaves a little indent frm her gap tooth.

oh also plays the harp n piano so that's kind of fresh n fun

ummmmmmm i think that's it basically so. bye.

[magicalmysteries777]

The Bloody-Handed and The Anguish of Loving Them - Chapter 2.

Summary: Almost a year has passed since Eddie Munson died and it feels like the only person that isn't moving on is Steve.

After spending the night studying a Dungeons and Dragons handbook, Steve is convinced he's figured out how to bring Eddie back. Not only that, but defeat Vecna once and for all too. Now he just has to prove it.

Pairings: Steve Harrington x Vampire Eddie Munson

Masterlist: Here.

Chapter: 2 of 10.

Chapter WC: 2128.

CW: Drinking, depressive episode, PTSD.

This story can also be found on AO3 here.

March 23rd, 1987.

“You sound like an absolute madman, that’s what I think,” sighed Nancy.

     “I’m telling you guys, it’s real,” Steve proclaimed.

     “Steve, it’s a game,” Dustin reassured.

     “I thought so too but so much of it fits. I read the whole book last night and-” he began.

     “Did you get any sleep at all?” asked Nancy.

     “No, but-”

     “Steve, you need sleep. It’s a game. It’s not real,” she answered.

     “But-”

     “Spells and scrolls aren’t real, man,” Mike laughed.

     “You’re not listening to me,” Steve argued back, his voice growing more desperate. “And for the record,” he began, eyes locking on Mike, “your girlfriend has fucking superpowers so don’t start telling me what’s real and what isn’t.”

     “Have you been drinking?” Robin asked quietly. It appeared Robin wasn’t the only one who had wanted to ask as Jonathan and Nancy looked at him expectantly.

     “No,” Steve lied quickly. Nancy raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay, look, I’d had a couple when I started reading but it wore off halfway through the book. Please, just hear me out.”

     “Fine. Go,” Nancy snapped.

     “Will is a wizard-” Steve began. The whole group groaned. “The night Will got taken to the upside down, Mike was Dungeon Master at the game. Will was casting spells left, right, and centre, correct? All of that energy mixed with the psychic mind power stuff that El was doing that night must’ve caused the whole thing to become true. Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I really think I’m onto something. Will the Wise has seer lineage, that’s why Will gained true sight when he came back from the Upside Down. He became his character, don’t you see? You all said you wanted to keep playing. What if you got your wish? This is the game. You never stopped playing. El's psychic powers broke the barriers between real and fiction when she opened the portal. It brought the game to us.”

     “It’s an interesting theory but-” Robin began.

     “The map. Show me the map you were using that night,” Steve interrupted. “Do you have a map of Hawkins too?”.

     “Somewhere on the shelf over there,” Mike answered, pointing to the bookcase.

Steve searched through the case frantically, completely aware that he looked like he was on the verge of a mental breakdown, but he had to prove his point.

“Here!” he exclaimed rushing back to the table. “Can you remember where you all left your character tokens?”

The boys tried as best as they could to be accurate when placing their tokens back down, exchanging concerned glances while they did so.

“Look at these maps side by side, they’re the same shape,” Steve continued, placing the map of Hawkins down on the table.

     “I never actually noticed…” agreed Mike.

     “That one is Will’s token there, right? Compare that placement to the map of Hawkins. It’s in the exact same place as Wills’s house, which in case anyone forgot, is where he went missing. And look-” he continued to ramble. “There. The Rotted Tower, you know the one Vecna rules? It’s in the same place as the Creel house. You can’t tell me this is all a coincidence?”

     “Come on, Steve, let’s go get some fresh air,” Jonathan suggested, rising to his feet. Nancy placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down into his seat. “What is it?”

     “There’s something I haven’t told you,” Nancy admitted.

     “Nance?” Jonathan probed.

     “One of my colleagues received an anonymous tip-off that Hawkins PD is investigating again. Crops are dying again over on Merrill’s patch, ”

     “What?!” asked Dustin.

     “But Dad never said,” El added.

     “It might not even be related to Vecna,” Nancy tried to convince the group.

     “One week before the memorial? I call bullshit, of course it’s connected,” Steve exclaimed.

     “You call bullshit? You want to know what I think is bullshit, Steve?” Nancy replied, obviously irritated.

     “Don’t,” Steve pleaded.

     “I think you’re whole theory is bullshit,”

     “Stop it.”

     “No, Steve, it is bullshit. It’s a game. It’s not real. There is no scroll. Eddie’s gone, we can’t bring him back. Everyone else is moving on so why can’t you?”

     “Remember when nobody believed you about Barb?” Steve replied coldly.

The room fell silent for a few moments before Dustin spoke quietly. “I believe him.”

     “You can’t be serious?” Nancy answered.

     “I didn’t believe in superheroes until we found El. I didn’t believe in monsters either and then I accidentally raised a baby Demogorgon. Why not?”

     “Exactly!” Steve exclaimed, almost frantic. “If the rest of it is all true then why not, Nance?”

     “Nancy, when did you get that tip-off?” Will asked, nervous. All eyes shot to him.

     “Three days ago, why?” Nancy answered cautiously.

Will didn’t answer straight away. It felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room, everyone holding their breath as though their life depended on it until he finally spoke. “It was him.”

     “What?!” left several mouths at once.

     “I woke up in the middle of the night; cold sweats, racing heart, the full works. I thought it was just a nightmare but then I-” he began before letting out a large sigh, “I felt him.”

     “Oh, we’re so fucked,” muttered Robin.

     “So he’s back?” asked Lucas, a sombre expression forming on his face.

     “Technically he never left,” Mike answered.

     “Not again,” whispered Nancy, her eyes filling with tears. Jonathan placed an arm around her and pulled her into his chest.

The room fell silent again.

-

Jonathan ushered Nancy outside for fresh air. Robin sat on the sofa, her head in her hands. Mike, El, Lucas, Dustin, and Will all sat around the table they were previously playing at, now all speaking amongst themselves in hushed, panicked voices. All Steve could do was pace.

He walked hurriedly from one side of the Wheelers’ basement to the other, his hands running through his now knot-free hair whilst he muttered to himself.

“The game is real. Will’s a wizard. El is a mage. The map mirrors Hawkins. The Rotted Tower is the Creel House. The game is real. Will’s a wizard. El is a mage. The map mirrors Hawkins. The Rotted Tower is the Creel-”

     “Would you please sit down and shut up?” snapped Robin.

     “The game is real.”

     “Steve, I sw-”

     “It’s a game. We’ve been playing the game wrong, that’s why we keep losing.”

     “What?

     “If I’m right, which I think I am, then the reason we keep losing to Vecna is because we haven’t been playing the game properly.” Steve turned to the group around the table, his eyes landing on Lucas.

     “Please don’t say it,” Lucas pleaded with desperation in his eyes.

     “Go get your sister.”

-

“You think we can do it?” Dustin asked quietly, ten minutes after settling himself next to Steve on the sofa.

     “I mean, we got pretty close last year, didn’t we?” Steve replied quickly. “Just need to finish the job this time around. Plus, with El and Will actually going into the Upside Down with us this time, I reckon our odds are better. ”

     “Not Vecna. Eddie. Do you really think we can just bring Eddie back from the dead?”

     “Can’t hurt to try, can it?” Steve questioned.

     “Oh, it could hurt. It could hurt a lot,” stated Erica, making her arrival known.

     “Good morning to you too,” Dustin smiled sarcastically.

     “Lucas just dragged me out of bed at nine o’clock in the morning shouting ‘Code red! Code red!’, so you nerds better start explaining. Now.”

-

It took twenty minutes of Steve rambling like a madman to catch Erica up to speed.

“Let me get this straight. You dragged me out of bed on the first day of spring break to come and listen to you have a mental breakdown?”

     “I’m not having a fuc-” Steve began through gritted teeth. “I’m not having a breakdown.”

     “It sounds like a breakdown.”

     “It’s far-fetched, I know,” Dustin began, rising to his feet and standing beside Steve. “But plausible.”

     “Plausible?” Erica scoffed. “Vecna being back? Yes. His theory about us living in a Dungeons and Dragons game along with being able to Eddie back from the grave? No.”

     “I’m with Erica on this one,” Mike agreed awkwardly.

     “I can’t deny I’ve got a weird connection to Vecna but I’m pretty sure it isn’t because I’ve got secret wizard powers from another dimension, Steve. I’m sorry,” added Will.

One by one, everybody except for Dustin began speaking simultaneously with a different variation on why they thought Steve’s theory was a bust.

Steve couldn’t blame them, not really. The wounds from all the pain he’d inflicted on his friends for the last year were still too fresh. He’d let them down over and over again, of course they didn’t trust him. Why would they? Erica was right, he sounded like he was having a mental breakdown. What if he was having a mental breakdown?

Dustin placed his hand on his shoulder supportively. Steve’s mind was flooded with thoughts of Wayne.

The way Wayne had looked at him when he found him drunk and crying outside of the old Munson trailer. The way Wayne silently placed a hand on his shoulder as they both stood there before Steve broke down in his arms. The way Wayne listened to Steve pour his heart out about how much he loved and missed Eddie. The way Wayne poured his heart out about how much he loved and missed Eddie in return. The way Wayne, with his eyes brimmed with tears, had placed a blanket over him after setting him on the sofa for the night. The way Wayne had quietly whispered “I’d do anything to bring him back, you know?” before letting Steve sleep off his looming hangover. The way Steve had whispered “Me too,” after Wayne had closed the door behind him.

“Shut up,” Steve snapped. Conversations ceased and all eyes locked on him. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not because I’m doing this. I’m going into the Upside Down, with or without you, and I’m getting Eddie back. Once I’ve got Eddie back I’m going after Vecna, because I’m not fucking losing him again, okay? I said I’d do anything to get him back and I fucking meant it!”

     “Steve-” Dustin began.

     “So you can either come up with your own plan while I go and do mine or you can-”

     “Steve, I’m coming with you,” Dustin declared. Mike, Will, Lucas, and El all sighed in unison.

     “Looks like we’re in then,” Mike sighed.

     “Seriously?” Nancy asked.

     “Party rules,” he shrugged in response.

     “Will?” Jonathan probed.

     “Party rules,” Will repeated.

     “That’s me and Nancy in then,” he sighed. “Robin? Erica?”

     “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Erica answered.

-

Everyone spent the next few hours with their heads stuck in various Dungeons and Dragons handbooks, making notes of anything that might be usual to them later. Stacks of loose pages and post-its were piled on the table amongst all the snacks that Dustin had brought downstairs for ‘study fuel’.

“Here,” said Mike, handing Steve a sheet of paper from the large binder he’d been reading.

     “What’s this?”

     “List of all the loot and their locations from the game we were playing the night Will went missing. If your theory is real, this is what we’re working with.”

     "Wryms Crossing: 2 health potions, 1 potion of fire resistance, 2 scrolls of fireball, and 1 longsword.

     Rookwood Ruin: 1 great-axe, 1 amulet of misty step, 2 greater healing potions.

     Karlach's Cave: 1 scroll of acid spray, 1 scroll of revivify, and 1 potion of invisibility.

     Will’s Well: 3 greater healing potions and 1 cape of protection.”

Steve studied the sheet with intense focus, his eyes flicking back and forwards between the list and the map of Hawkins. With the help of Mike and Dustin, it took thirty minutes to cross-reference the two. “So… there?” he asked, pointing to the map cautiously.

     “Definitely,” agreed Dustin.

-

“We’re back!” announced Nancy, descending the steps to the basement.

     “We thought you’d got lost. Did you get it all?” asked Steve.

     “Almost,” answered Jonathan, only a few steps behind Nancy. He double-checked the list that was handed to him before they set off to Warzone. “Everything except the booze for the Molotovs. We can get that in the morning before we go.”

     “Anyway,” Nancy quickly changed the subject while trying to avoid Steve’s gaze, “dinners ready, Mom wants us all upstairs. She wants to know who’s staying over tonight too.”

     “You ready for this?” Dustin asked Steve quietly, dawdling behind the rest of the group.

     “The Upside Down or another one of Karen’s casseroles?” Steve chuckled.

     “Both,” he smirked.

     “Casserole? Never. Upside Down? I guess we’re about to find out.”

[where-theres-smoak-2]

What do you think of Mal as a romantic interest? Book, and Series? For me, he was clearly unbearable in the books. As for the series, they revamped his character very well. The Malina relationship was fine in Season 1, but they got so weird in Season 2 for me. They have this strong family energy, almost like brother/sister, which makes me uncomfortable. Not to mention that Mal, no matter how much they changed him for the show, remains the least interesting character in the entire story. I mean, how can a romance with Mal hold sway, when we have tragic soulmates Darklina?!

Besides, I really hope that in the rest of the series, Alina will realize that the Darkling was partly right. I hated when he asked her to let him carry the hatred of this world, and she replied that it was a hatred he had created. Like... No, Alina! The world was shit before the Darkling was born. The world hated the Grisha before the Darkling! Before the Fold!

Throughout the series, Alina says these types of things, which the Darkling contradicts. Like his obsession with the fold.

The writers therefore have a serious interest in highlighting the fact that the Darkling was partly right in the sequel and that Alina realizes this (maybe not only her, by the way), instead of continuing to blame the Darkling for everything, as Leigh Bardugo did in King of Scars...

I'm not joking that in this duology there is dialogue where Alina tells the Darkling that they are busy restoring the damage his wars have caused.

Because apparently, the heroes are also convinced that other countries are at war with them because of the Darkling... Even if we know that canonically, according to what the author herself wrote, this is false. Yet the author never gives this kind of dialogue wrong for her heroes, as if she were desperate to demonize the Darkling...

And I really hope it's not a dialogue, or some type of thing that we will find in the rest of the series.

Well I watched season 1 before I read the books. When seeing them in season 1, I thought they were ok, but I didn't like the whole co-dependency thing they had going on, like her cutting her hand so that she can stay with him at the orphanage and her struggling to summon because she wasn't able to let mal go. The show made it seem like this was really romantic but honestly I found it very problematic. On top of that whilst I thought they were cute as friends I found them boring as a romantic couple. Especially when you have it side by side with darklina whose chemistry just sizzled from their very first scene together and who have this whole yin and yang, destined lovers thing going on. Malina just didn't compare at all. And as you said even though they made him alot more likeable in the show I feel like they stripped him back too far, to the point where he became the least interesting character, you had all these really intriguing and complex characters and then there was mal who was just kind of mr nice guy and wasn't all that fleshed out compared to the other characters.

When I read the books though it was a whole other story, whilst I was indifferent to them in season 1, I really hated them in the books. And it is rare for me to hate a pairing. But I just didn't like anything about their relationship in the books. Alina had a lot of insecurities that were centred around the fact that she felt ignored by mal, she often felt jealousy towards the girls that mal did like. Whilst I am not sure if he himself ever called her it himself or not, he would stand by and not say anything when people called her sticks, a name that she hated. In the books the co-dependency is even worse as pushing down her powers makes Alina physically very unwell, where she is literally wasting away. Despite this mal still spends a good chunk of the books trying to convince Alina to give up her powers. He also cheats on her with Zoya and he is also very controlling of her at times, talking on her behalf instead of letting her make decisions for herself. She also seems lot meeker when it comes to mal. Overall I just didn't think they were at all compatible, it seemed like the books were going out of there way to show everyway in which they didn't work and yet we we're meant to believe this was the great love story of the series.

When it came to season 2, I will say that I found them very cringey at times. Again I get that some of the lines were supposed to be these big romantic gestures, like the whole, your my flag my nation scene. But to me they felt forced and I don't know what it was exactly but I just kept cringing and I'll be honest I really had to fight the urge to just skip over some of their scenes. I also said in a post before season 2 came out that I thought they were going to throw a lot of kisses in there to attempt to make malina more interesting, and in my pinion that is exactly what they did, pretty sure they kiss at least once every episode bar two. Which again to me makes it feel very forced especially as they have a disproportionate number of kisses to all the other couples in the season. Which again to me just makes it seem like the writers are trying to hard. It also didn't work as despite all these kisses people were still more interested in pretty much every other ship. I am glad that they split in the finale and that it looks like they are going to go off and discover who they really are as individuals as II do think that'll be good for the characters.

I think the main problem with the malina relationship is that LB wanted to tell this story of two scrappy orphans fighting against the world. In any other world this might have worked but in this world orphans are very common because of all the wars going on and it doesn't feel like anyone is really against malina. There are also so many other people who are so much worse of than them like the grisha who really do have the world against them, ravka uses them as cannon fodder, Shu Han experiments on them, Fjerdan burns them other countries enslave them. Because of the world these characters are placed in it makes it very hard to care about two random orphans when so many other people are suffering and dying.

I do agree with you that I hope going forward into season 3 that Alina will come to see that Aleks was right, and that the narrative won't go the route of trying to blame every problem ravka has on Aleks. I know it can get frustrating when Alina contradicts Aleks like the whole hate being because of the choices Aleks made. I myself get very frustrated with it, but when thinking about it from the characters point of view it is understandable. We have to remember that whilst we the audience are aware that the grisha were hunted long before the fold and that the creation of the fold was an accident and about luda etc, Alina is completely in the dark. All she knows is what she was taught in the first army, that grisha were privileged because they got nicer tents and bulletproof keftas and live in a little palace. Whilst she has heard some stories that might have given he a little idea of what it was like to be grisha she herself has never really seen grisha oppression first hand. All she knows is that Aleks lied to her and betrayed her and so now I think she just doesn't trust anything he says. I think Alina really needs to see more of the world and actually see exactly what is happening to grisha and for her to realise that tearing down the fold really didn't change anything and that Aleks was right.

[villain-in-love]

Allow me to bring your attention to Alice Baskerville, one of my favourite Pandora Hearts characters and my adopted little sister!

Just as much as I loved Alice from the beginning of the story, I absolutely hated the treatment she got later in the manga. With all due respect, I will never forgive Jun Mochizuki for deciding to turn Alice from a cunning and cocky badass into a comic relief character, who acted like a little kid and only had food on her mind.

So here are a few things I came up with as headcanons, some of them explaining her behaviour and personality, because Alice deserves it.

Warning! Some major spoilers for the manga.

♠ I headcanon that she’s always hungry and craves meat because she’s supposed to eat humans. Unlike other chains she can go without it and control herself just fine (probably because she’s the Black Rabbit), but it’s still the most suited food for her.

♠ She knows about Abyss much more than any other character (the only one who can compare is her sister) because she spent so much time in there, but she also intuitively understands and connects with it because of how closely she’s tied to it, being born in there, and having The Will of Abyss herself as her twin sister.

♠ She misses Alyss, even if she doesn’t realise it.

♠ She may have lost her memories, but not the effect they had on her. Mentally she’s still not okay due to isolated childhood, living through the tragedy of Sablier and literally sacrificing herself to prevent the world destruction, and later spending hundred years alone in Abyss.

♠ Those are also the reasons she acts so feral at times – she’s not very familiar with society norms. Though even if she was, I doubt that she would use that knowledge often, being certain that it’s her Abyss given right to do whatever the hell she wants.

♠ She’s arrogant, a little self-centred, and tactless. Did I mention poor self-control? I mean, she can hold herself together when and where it would give her benefits, but other than that, she couldn’t care less what others might think about her.

♠ Having lost connection with her twin sister (with whom they literally shared a body at one point), she often feels lonely and doesn’t even know why. Given that her entire current existence is a complicated matter, she struggles with a feeling of unease and wrongness that always creeps somewhere in the back of her mind. She tries her best to find things to keep herself busy, so that she doesn’t have to face it.

♠ Yeah, she’s bad at self-reflection. She doesn’t even want to deal with it.

♠ I assume that she had contracts before Oz and that’s why she acted so confident and knew what to do when they met. But those deals rarely turned out how she wanted them to be – she couldn’t get a chance to roam the human world freely.

♠  She spends most of the time in the human world exploring and pocking her nose everywhere she can.

♠ I headcanon that by the end of the manga she develops rather peculiar and seemingly random set of skills and knowledge.

♠ She has more energy than she knows what to do with.

♠ As we have seen, Alice doesn’t know what love and romance really means, but she vaguely knows what “seduction” is. Aka how to make an impression, appeal to humans, and make them do what you need them to do. She can be very flirty, even if she doesn’t think so and doesn’t have any intentions associated with this behaviour.

♠ When she lived in a tower as a human, she read a lot of books, usually the ones about adventures and heroes. A great part of her vocabulary was borrowed from those old books, which is why she can be so poetically dramatic, but even if it kinda fits when she’s fighting, sometimes she starts acting like that in times when it’s out of place.

♠ She’s still 14 mentally, you can’t blame her for wanting to appear cool.

♠ She eventually did pick up “Holy Knight” to read, purely because not understanding what Oz and Elliot constantly argue about is annoying. And then she joined the debate, throwing around controversial opinions that often left Elliot and Oz pausing in shock, trying to process what they just heard. What’s funny is that sometimes Alice’s commentaries actually made a lot of sense. Too much sense.

♠ While she was stuck in Abyss for 100 years, Alice often got into fights with other chains to entertain herself. She soon realized that she’s much stronger than most of them, and while it did give her some kind of ego bust and satisfaction, she was also disappointed by everything being too easy and thus not giving her enough adrenaline.

♠ Somewhere in the second part of the story she goes through the identity crisis because of gradually getting stripped of the Black Rabbit powers, which started returning to Oz – the original Black Rabbit. With that, Oz slowly became the one to handle most of important fights and dangerous situations, leaving Alice with nothing to do and even slightly upset, because being a powerful chain was a point of pride for her for so long.

♠ With Oz having his own identity crisis in canon, I think it would be nice to have Alice go through the similar thing to parallel it, especially since their identities and their misplacement are closely tied together. It would also allow for better character study and development that canon Alice didn’t get enough.

♠ Алиса – воплощение выражения “всё гениальное – просто”. Пока все остальные ломают головы и сверханализируют, Алиса посмотрит, сплюнет, назовёт всех дебилами и выдаст решение проблемы в двух шагах.*

♠ Just keep in mind that her solutions can often include violence and brute force, so if you’re a pacifist, be ready having to ask someone else.

*I’m can’t currently figure out how to translate it in it's full meaning (the translations i get from from different sites are not good enough), but I want it to be here.

[hellenicsun]

So this October I started my degree doing Ancient History & Archaeology, and all was fine and dandy UNTIL THIS MORNING. And here I’ll tell you why for a second I considered going home:

• 7am I wake up being blasted in the face by a fire alarm that sounds like a screeching bird with a megaphone, and whilst you might think 7am is a normal time to wake up, as a uni student it is not. The past two days we’ve been woken up by uni staff so we were all excited to have a lie in! Not anymore though, because we had to rush out of our beds and try and figure out where to go. It also started raining, which was so fun! 🥲

• I get back to the flat, go back to sleep and wake up to my flatmate slamming the kitchen door as if he’s trying to fight it, then went to check my IPad to see what work needs to be done, and voila! I see my assignment which was supposed to be due 12pm on Sunday has actually been changed to 12pm Friday. I also have a full day tomorrow and library work and a seminar after lectures, so I’ve only had today to do my assignment (and I’ll maybe pull an all nighter to get through it since I’m not done!).

• I though, “oh it’s only 500 words it’ll be fine!” But ohhhh no no no. Silly me. I had to find two city plans (one of Athens in 400BC and one of my home city), but wait, it can’t be off the internet, it had to be scanned from a book or article. And so I searched high and low for my Athens plan, and after about three hours I finally got one I could use. But then it came to my home city and turns out there’s no books or articles with a city plan of it in! Lovely. So I’ve picked some random map of the city centre and I’m hoping for the best.

• Then, 5 mins ago, I decided I can finish things at some point tomorrow night since I’m not even writing anything that makes sense, but I just realised I’ve got to wash my dishes before I can even think of relaxing. And to make matters worse, one of my flatmates has all her friends round in the kitchen (which is fine — except I look like a sleep deprived rat lmao).

I swear I’m just stressed and I actually love uni, but dear gods I need to catch a break!

[onelungmcclung]

Telegraph crossword: Cracking hobby won the day

The boffins of Bletchley cut their teeth on the Telegraph crossword, says Sinclair McKay.

“We were very good at crosswords,” says one of the veteran codebreakers of Bletchley Park, “and also anything to do with anagrams. And of course Scrabble.”

When I wrote my book The Secret Life of Bletchley Park I interviewed brilliant men and women – mathematicians, linguists, debutantes – who had smashed the German Enigma codes in the Second World War. I found that they were not your average eggheads or scientists. Cryptography was a fine art that required an aptitude for lateral thinking, even a certain amount of psychological acuity.

Famously, one method of recruitment to the top secret code-breaking centre in Buckinghamshire was by means of a Daily Telegraph crossword competition; one winner solved the puzzle in 12 minutes, and was thereafter covertly inducted into the mysteries of Bletchley.

Perhaps tellingly, after all these decades, some Bletchley veterans now still swear by their Telegraph crossword. And the link between crosswords, cryptography and mental gymnastics is intriguing to say the least, with lessons for us all.

A recent Cambridge study suggested that further education can help prevent the onset of dementia. Other reports in recent years have suggested that the same is true for word games.

So is there something inherently beneficial about crosswords? Should we all be allocating part of a day to solving them? Are puzzles good for us?

They are certainly embedded deep in the national consciousness. Indeed, part of the reason that interest in the work of Bletchley Park continues to grow (the museum is a thriving attraction and the archive is about to go online) is that codes are perhaps the ultimate expression of the British puzzle obsession.

It is an obsession that embraces not merely crosswords; it stretches back centuries and pulls in everything from elaborate medieval riddles to beautiful and fiendish yew mazes.

We might even count the whodunnit, which is now practically a native art form. How many versions of Sherlock Holmes is it possible to produce? How else to account for the record-breaking sales of Agatha Christie? When reading or watching such things, what else are you doing except pitting your wits against an author who has encrypted the mystery’s solution deep into the weave of the story?

During my research, I was struck by the recurrence of this taste for recreational puzzles; the veteran codebreakers I talked to had this strong leaning during the war and carried that shrewd, lightning-fast cleverness all the years after.

Solving problems or crosswords is partly to do with the ability to look at things in a different way. Codebreaker Mavis Batey – who helped Britain win the Battle of Matapan in 1941 by cracking the Italian Enigma – recalled how years after, she retained the ability to transpose letters and numbers automatically.

“My daughter worked in the Bodleian Library,” she says, “and one day, she mentioned she had been working on ‘J’ floor. ‘J’, I said: ‘10 floors down’. And she looked at me oddly and asked how I could have instantly known that.”

One codebreaker explicitly likened cryptography to crossword solving, pointing out that no matter how fierce the pressure they were under, the codebreakers had to train themselves to approach the problem coolly.

“Just imagine the codework in front of you is a crossword. If you had someone breathing down your neck saying: ‘You’ve got to get it done in five minutes’, it wouldn’t help at all.”

Wren and codebreaker Jean Valentine recalls how she got drawn into this secret world. “When I filled in my form,” she says, “they asked for hobbies, and I put ‘crossword puzzles’. They were looking for people who could think laterally.”

Just recently, another Bletchley veteran wrote to our crossword compiler complaining that if anything, the puzzles were getting a little too fiendish. Obviously the complaint has been taken very seriously. But on the other hand: shouldn’t it be regarded as the highest compliment that a puzzle compiler could possibly be paid?

And even if you don’t believe crosswords are good for us, the lively debates they always provoke must surely be beneficial.

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay (Aurum) is available for £18 plus £1.25 p & p from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1514 or books.telegraph.co.uk) Bletchley Park Museum (next to Bletchley railway station; 01908 640404; www.bletchleypark.org.uk) is open year round

(archive link)

[dionysiospsychas-photography]

CHANGING STRATHCONA: SOME HISTORY

… Some years ago I lead architecturally themed tours of various Vancouver neighbourhoods, and Strathcona. They were tailored to photographers, but also included relating architectural information and neighbourhood history. So, like a photo walk it was mostly people photographing on our route, but like a tour there were stops to speak about the style and details of some building, or share the history of some house, or recount a part of the neighbourhood's urban planning history.

In preparation for our Changing Strathcona photo walk last week I went back to sources to detail what I had noted on the urban redevelopment issues of the neighbourhood, Chinatown, and Vancouver in general, and how they affected its communities. What actually happened however, because most attendees have heard my schtick before, we concentrated on exploring and photographing. But I was open to questions and stories, and we had nice conversations about history, design, and scandals along the way. The post about the photo walk, with photos, will come later.

I have the luxury of much free time presently, so going back to well known books by local authors and long running blogs, and discovering new blogs was informative and fun. The list of books, articles, opinion pieces, posts, guides, and reposts is nicely long, but I will not list them here. However, I will make another post with links to blogs and online resources for everything Vancouver history.

For now, I will acknowledge the work by some local authors, historians, and organizations that have contributed to my knowledge of Vancouver history and continue to inform me of future issues, such as John Atkin, Chuck Davis, James Johnstone, Michael Kluckner, Eve Lazarus, The British Columbia Black History Awareness Society, The Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia, Heritage Vancouver, The Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, Vancouver Heritage Foundation, and Vancouver Historical Society.

What is evident here is the lack of mention about indigenous communities. The issue of displacement and dispersal of the local indigenous communities goes beyond Strathcona, which is my focus here, but I will search and read more about them in future.

Here is a little background about me. I am originally from Montreal, Quebec, born and raised, and my parents immigrated from Greece, hence the strange name. So culturally, I have French and Greek habits, especially culinary. And I still consider myself French-speaking Canadian, altho having lived in Vancouver now over ten years, the language motor needs a warm up. Also, I am a practising architect; it's fine.

So, none of the above is actually relevant to the subject of this post, or this blog, but I do not think I have mentioned these things before. However, when I began practising photography and exploring the streets, alleys, and parks of Montreal, up, backwards, and over again, I also became interested about the city's history, architecture, and urban planning. And those subjects have been enduring interests for me. So of course, plopping into a new city and leading photo walks, learning about Vancouver's own history, architecture, and urban planning was (is) fun and complementary, and relating that information is meaningful. But my focus is still photography and exploring the city.

I am also glad to have had my friends Sharon and Colin photo walk with me all these years, and who co-hosted on our Capture Strathcona photo walk.

Okay, here we go, and abridged history. This is a long post, so have a warm cupof in hand. Also, sorry, it might be a bit dry.

Strathcona history

The Hastings sawmill nearby (at the end of Gore Ave) attracted industry and residents to the area starting in the late 19th century, becoming a company town with a general store (now in Point Grey) and a school. With Canadian Pacific Railway choosing Vancouver as a western terminus for passengers, the fledgling neighbourhood saw great expansion between 1886 (Vancouver's founding) and the 1920s.

A working class area of immigrants and visible minorities, the area became a tight knit community and so Vancouver's first neighbourhood. It came to be known as the East End (the original) to distinguish it from the affluent West End. In the 1920s, Vancouver consisted of the West End, Downtown, the East End, Mount Pleasant, False Creek and Kitsilano. The name Strathcona was first used by city planners in the 1960s when redevelopment plans were conceived, after Lord Strathcona School, which was founded in 1891 and initially called East End School, and renamed in 1900.

Communities living and working in Strathcona included Japanese (also in Japantown), Chinese (also in Chinatown), Italian (the original Little Italy, around Union St), Portuguese, Ukrainian (see Ukrainian Hall), Russian (see Russian Hall and Holy Trinity Church), Jewish (around Heatley Ave and the synagogue), Black (around Hogan's Alley), Norwegian and Swedish (around Prior St and Lutheran Church which became Fountain Chapel).

Many Chinese, Italians, Japanese, and Blacks came to BC in the late 19th century with the promise of a livelihood and making a new home. They worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway, in forestry and mining projects, and established in farms and fishing villages. They also served as cheap labour on many occasions for many years. As well, Black people settled in Strathcona due to the proximity of the Canadian National Railway (now Pacific Central Station) and especially the Great Northern Railway from the U.S. (now demolished) because many of them were employed as porters. (This is a ridiculously short and simple account of the history of these communities in BC. I will have links to learning resources in another post.)

Urban renewal in Strathcona

Let us begin with the bad stuff. Together with neglect of Strathcona by the City of Vancouver, the slow, structural decline of the neighbourhood began with it being zoned (partially or mostly) to industrial, rather than residential, beginning in 1931. The area north of East Hastings St and east of the CPR were not going to see new residential construction. This made it very hard to obtain mortgages to buy houses or borrow money for renovations, and so the neighbourhood began to deteriorate.

(Click to visit links to larger images or posts.) General redevelopment plan for Vancouver, 1962. Notice the proposed area extends further east and to south False Creek.

Redevelopment plan for Strathcona, 1963. Areas 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7 were demolished for new public housing and parks. Properties north of Hastings, area 5, were also acquired by the city and demolished, and eventually became industrial buildings. Presently, I do not recall a single house east of Heatly Ave.

Hogan's Alley and other parts of Strathcona, had been referred to as "slums" before that by businessmen and city officials, and was proliferated by the press who also qualified the neighbourhood as ill repute and unlawful. But by resident and law enforcement accounts, the neighbourhood was just poor.

The (now infamous) report on slum clearance and rehabilitation of Strathcona in 1950 by Leonard Marsh pointed to infrastructure improvements and new neighbourhood amenities, repair or removal of sub-standard commercial and industrial buildings, and provision of new private and public housing for all populations current and future. It was later used by city planners as justification and program for their "urban renewal" plans.

In the 1950s, the City stopped maintaining the area’s roads and sidewalks, and the other communities began to disperse, while the Italian community had essentially moved on to the new Little Italy about Commercial Dr and East Hastings St.

Concept for the redevelopment of Strathcona from the L. Marsh report, 1950. Image by Lani Russwurm of "Vancouver Was Awesome, A Curious Pictorial History" fame, who has written a good long post and has other nice pics from the report.

Redevelopment study for Strathcona by the city planning department which includes rows and rows of townhouses, mid-rises, and high-rises. I mean, it could have worked, but I think at the expense of community and cultural history. Also notice the proposal for heavy industrial zoning (which typically includes the processing of raw material into manufactured products) around Powell St. Altho this area today is still zoned industrial, "heavy industry" is confined north of the tracks, like the sugar factory, the organics recycling centres, and the cargo terminals.

The proposed redevelopment plans (in both the Marsh report and city planning department plans) would have featured clusters of townhouses, block upon block of "walk-up" mid-rises, and some high-rises, arranged around great open spaces, as well as central commercial and educational amenities. But practically, there was no public or neighbourhood consultations, compensation to homeowners for seized property was inadequate, and all levels of government failed to properly plan for the replacement of existing housing or relocation of residents in a timely manner. That is, they were demolishing faster than building.

In my opinion, in the report, the descriptions of the buildings and lots were exaggerated and (maybe unwittingly) fear mongering. The approach was influenced by post-war attitudes of solving structural and social issues with "slum clearing." The neighbourhood needed infrastructure repair for sure, incentives for renovations, and slower replacement of residential stock. The proposed redevelopment plans did not consider scale, variable density, mixed-use development, green spaces as buffer or future expansion, various modes of transport, and importantly, culture. Urban planning and architecture more recently does consider those aspects. But, there is a "but" there.

View of the old McLean Park, 1961. It looks nice. It could have used some trees tho. If only they rehabilitated rather than become demolition crazy. Still, the new McLean Park in the heart of today's Strathcona is pretty sweet.

Aerial view during construction of McLean Park public housing. They cleared the original park (see above) to put up blocks and then razed another block to make a park. Also, as my main photo walk buddy would say, "wtf, that's way out of scale!"

Residents became aware of the failures of other completed urban renewal and housing projects across North America and so protested the redevelopment plans. More importantly, they wanted to retain and renovate their eclectic mix of housing stock for future generations (see SPOTA below). In retrospect, the failure of large public housing projects was due to ill urban planning and architectural conception, lack of subsequent municipal support, and continued racial discrimination, I think.

Despite opposition from residents in the 1960s, a housing complex was built over a park, a block of houses was demolished to make a new park, another block of houses was demolished to make a field for the school, and four plus blocks to build another public housing project and make space for industrial buildings.

And then came plans for the big bad freeway network.

Freeway project

The postwar economic boom greatly increased car ownership and greatly slowed down traffic on the old transportation systems. So, since more affluent citizens moved to suburban developments and rapid transit was dismissed, the province conducted a study and planned a monster of a freeway system including new roads, viaducts, ramps, tunnels, and even a bridge: 8 lanes thru East Vancouver, Strathcona, and Chinatown to Waterfront connecting North Vancouver with a bridge or tunnel; a north-south connector thru Mount Pleasant; two other freeways connecting Downtown; and always the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts, but with more ramps.

Partial plan of the proposed freeway system, 1968. From "Historical Atlas of Vancouver" by Derek Hayes and posted on the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project blog. It's car lane crazy.

So in the late 1960s, Strathcona and Chinatown were newly threatened with demolition and loss. There was huge public protest to the freeway plans and the consequent destruction of residential blocks, appropriation of land for right-of-ways, and creation of no-man's lands. When the federal government declined in 1967 to contribute to the project, it meant the beginning of the end of it. And no monies were to come from the provincial government. With the new P.E. Trudeau government, the feds shelved any crossing project, and together with newly elected pro-transit governments at the city and provincial level, the freeway plans died.

A view of Hogan's Alley, about 1958. You have likely seen this photo before, and the Vancouver Archives has more. Personally, I think it looks fine; just needed some care after being neglected for decades.

However, demolition of the old viaduct and construction of the new Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts had already begun. And unfortunately, two blocks of Hogan's Alley had been destroyed to make room for them. The lingering members of the Black community helped fight the plans for urban renewal, but it definitely dispersed after the partial destruction of the neighbourhood.

At the opening of the viaducts, citizens showed the current mayor just how mad they were, and later voted in reform-minded candidates (like future mayor and Premier Mike Harcourt) and mayor, who then introduced public consultation for development projects.

SPOTA

By the late 1960s, many blocks of Strathcona were replaced with mid-rise blocks of public housing, which many residents chose not to relocate. The fear of further demolition of their neighbourhood, lose of their homes (houses or apartments) and cultural home life, residents organized to save a part of the city they felt was home.

To fight continuing redevelopment of Strathcona and the proposed freeway project, residents formed (1968) the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association (SPOTA). Co-founders of the tenants association, Mary Lee Chan, a community leader, and Walter Chan, business owner, were greatly involved with informing and rallying the residents of Strathcona and Chinatown, organizing protests, and writing about the negative consequences of the redevelopment projects and the injustices to displaced residents. Together with their daughter Shirley Chan, they raised awareness of the effects of these projects and gathered sympathy and support from surrounding communities, Vancouverites, and levels of government.

Photo of the Campbell-Raymur project site, 1 in above redev plan, after demolition. Notice the Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Church and Russian Hall behind it still standing. They were like the only buildings not marked for demolition in that project area.

Not wanting to see more of the neighbourhood misguidedly razed, SPOTA with the help of allies (Chinatown residents, other communities of Strathcona, architects, lawyers, planning department employees, etc.) instead petitioned for funds to rehabilitate their homes, replace demolished housing, and allocate funds to improve infrastructure. Having met federal ministers in 1968, and convinced them that current urban renewal strategies were wrong, the feds stopped funding for all urban renewal projects. There would later be a federal task force to study housing and urban development, and the report called for the stop of large scale demolition of existing housing, better assessment and selection of removal, reforms to loan programs, and changes in planning strategies. In the next year, SPOTA and all other levels of government consulted and came up with a trial rehabilitation plan for existing buildings, streets, and sidewalks. And it was successful; hundreds of houses were repaired.

The Strathcona Area Housing Society was then created to help study, design, and oversee new residential construction to replace that demolished, between 1974 and 1982. Many new dwellings (duplexes, triplexes, and the Joe Wai Special) were built, designed by important Vancouver architect Joe Wai. Later on, Joe Wai would help design the Mau Dan Coop Housing Project in Strathcona, the West End Community Centre, Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and the Millennium Gate.

A composite map I made showing Strathcona and Chinatown with what was lost from the first phase of the city's urban redevelopment plans (in blue and dark magenta), what I think could have been lost with further commercial redevelopment (in cyan), what could have been completely lost as well but thankfully not (in light magenta), and what I think could have been lost from the freeway project (in red). Houses and commercial buildings are part of a city's material culture, and dismissing their community value does not hint to the healthy evolution of a city, I think.

By the way, the provincial government designated Chinatown a historic district in 1971, and the federal government designated Chinatown a national historic site in 2011. And presently, parts of Chinatown, Gastown, and Yaletown are specially zoned "Historic Area Districts", so they typically benefit from specific design guidelines, and maybe even extra scrutiny by the Urban Design Panel. (Even tho the meetings are really serious and really are fun, do not get me started on that bunch.) Strathcona, however, is not a protected neighbourhood at the provincial or federal level.

Importantly, the contribution of SPOTA profoundly changed the way planning and development is executed in Vancouver.

The present issues and future of Strathcona and Chinatown... are for another post.

P.S. If you have any corrections, elaborations, or suggestions for this post, please tell me what by contacting me thru my email.

So, how about you; have you explored Strathcona? What did you like about the neighbourhood? Send me an email and tell me what you think.

DP, 2023-05-02