#you can do that without domesticating them i suppose but it would remove some ecological ethics concerns to a degree

[anonymouspuzzler]

If you could domesticate any single animal, what would it be?

i want to be friends with crows

[no6secretsanta]

warming up

for: @flat-san

from: @iwatch-theworld

Happy holidays! Here is a sort of modern-ish AU fic that I hope qualifies as “super schmoopy fluff” :) Getting to write Safu and Inukashi was a delight, as well as writing their group dynamic with Shion and Nezumi, lol. I hope you enjoy, and have a wonderful holiday season & rest of the year! <3

***

            “How lame,” Safu sighs.

            “Seriously,” Inukashi agrees. “That’s probably the worst I’ve ever seen.”

            “Like a grade schooler made it.”

            “My dogs could do better.”

            Nezumi narrows his eyes at the two idly making prodding remarks and leaning casually against the wall of Karan’s bakery. Safu is wrapped up in her baby pink scarf, arms crossed, snug and cozy, and Inukashi is wearing a black jacket so long it reaches their knees, their hair loose and messy. “All your dogs can do is turn the pure white snow into a putrid yellow,” he retorts. “This is nearly perfect.”

            “Perfect, he says,” Inukashi scoffs.

            “The head. It’s off 4.1 centimeters on the left,” Safu points out.

            “Are you serious?” Nezumi laughs, disbelieving. “You can tell just by looking?”

            Safu furrows her brow. “Of course.”

             “Well, if you don’t like it, make one yourself instead of standing there uselessly.”

            “You’re the one who said you could do it. We’re testing your skills.” Inukashi smirks.

            “Shion and I are already experts,” Safu retorts, not looking at him, examining her fingernails. “It would be unfair.”

            “Is that so? One of the boy genius’s many talents is that he’s a master in snowman-making?” Nezumi retorts.

            “Don’t turn your anger on me, Nezumi,” Shion says, squatting, examining Nezumi’s ever-so-slightly lopsided snowman. “There’s no shame in not being good at something you’ve never done before.”

            “Hey, wait, who said it’s not good? And why would I be ashamed of something so—”

            “There you go.” Shion grabs a handful of snow, smooths it into the side of its head. “I bet that feels better, Mr. Snowman. We’ll get you some arms and eyes soon, too.”

            “This is ridiculous,” Nezumi mutters.

            “Don’t be a sore loser,” Inukashi jabs.

            “Shion, that’s not fair. He was supposed to do it himself,” Safu says, lifting herself off of the wall and walking over to where Shion and Nezumi are. Inukashi follows closely behind.

            “He made most of it. Besides, wouldn’t you feel bad for the snowman if we just left him like that?”

            Safu eyes Shion for a second, hesitates before saying, “I suppose so.”

            “Well, there you go. It’s done,” Nezumi says, shrugging his shoulders. “We’re finished here. I’m leaving now.” Without waiting for a response, he turns his heel to start heading away.

            But Shion reaches out, places a hand on his shoulder. Nezumi freezes. “Wait. I just said he still needs a face. You can’t quit partway through.”

            Nezumi almost sighs, catches himself, says, “And where are we getting its face?”

            “My mom has some raisins she said we could use. I’ll be right back.” Shion removes his hand from Nezumi’s shoulder, and Nezumi watches him as he walks back to the bakery. Once inside, Nezumi turns his attention back to the snowman, blank-faced and empty, for a few moments, but feels two sets of eyes boring into him. “Can I help you two?”

            “What a brat,” Inukashi says.

            “Childish. Immature,” Safu agrees flatly.

            “Doesn’t know a damn thing.”

            “You’re the ones who suggested this,” Nezumi shoots back. “Why do you care so much about my snowman crafting abilities? I bet you don’t even know either, Inukashi.”

            Inukashi sticks their tongue out.

            “Simple-minded. Foolish,” Safu continues.

            “Vague. Pointless,” Nezumi retorts.

            Safu sighs. “I never cared for doing this,” she gestures to the snowman, “but Shion loved it when we were little. I don’t know why. Personally, I think snow is much more interesting when you look at individual flakes under a microscope—”

            “Yeah, yeah, you’re a huge geek, we know.”

            Safu continues, unruffled. “And the point you’re not getting is that this is something fun Shion likes. And you’re not taking advantage of it.”

            “Like a big dummy,” Inukashi teases.

            “Enough from the peanut gallery,” Nezumi snaps.

            Tongue again.

            “Inukashi’s right,” Safu asserts. “At least act like you’re having fun. Instead of being a… a boring…moody—sort of—”

            “Dummy!” Inukashi helps.

            “Dummy,” Safu agrees.

            Nezumi sighs for real this time. Dealing with Shion is one thing, an ordeal in itself, a not depleting but still relatively significant toll on his energy reserves. Inukashi used to be a small annoyance, like a buzzing fly, miniscule and easily swatted away, not too difficult to handle, but ever since their group expanded and they became friends with Safu, the two had become a tiring pair to deal with.

            But while Inukashi was a brat, like a kid sibling, Safu was someone more on equal footing he could exchange quips with, and he respected her insight.

            Most of the time. Like when she’s not calling him a boring, moody dummy.

            “And what? You two are trying to create some sort of romantic atmosphere with snowman building and insults? It’s working wonders so far. As you can see.”

            “It would be easier if you had a better attitude,” Safu says.

            “And it would be easier for me if you weren’t here.”

            “We’re just helping you get it off the ground,” Inukashi says.

            “A sort of friend-hangout-turned-romantic-date thing,” Safu adds.

            “Didn’t ask for your help,” Nezumi says.

            “You need it, though,” Safu counters.

            “You—”

            The bell above the door of Karan’s bakery jingles, and Shion returns, a small basket in hand. “Sorry I was gone so long,” he says. “Mom actually didn’t have any spare raisins—raisin bread has been popular lately, for some reason. But we found some dried apricots instead.”

            “…Great,” Nezumi says, completely unable to care about the dried fruit.

            “I’m glad you found something, Shion.” Safu smiles, any trace of harshness from the previous conversation vanished from her expression, replaced only with the gentle warmness she always has around Shion. “We’ll leave the finishing touches to you boys, then. Inukashi and I have other plans.”

            “Plans? You two?” Nezumi queries.

            “She’s gonna help me identify all the dog breeds I have,” Inukashi says, grinning, obviously excited. “Don’t know ‘em myself. Just know which ones are the fluffiest, best blankets, which are siblings, stuff like that. Don’t know anything about breeds.”

            “Didn’t know you were a dog person,” Nezumi says to Safu.

            “I’m not partial to any particular animal. But Shion’s interested in ecology, and I’ve helped him study sometimes. I know all the different kinds of both domestic and wild dogs and cats, a variety of fish, rodents, trees, fungi, and more.”

            “It’s true,” Shion says. “But she’s lying about not being partial to particular animals. Safu loves cats.”

            Nezumi’s not sure why, but Safu almost immediately blushes, as if embarrassed by her fondness of cats. “Well, anyway, we should be going. See you later.” She grabs Inukashi’s hand and starts powerwalking away. Inukashi sticks their tongue out at Nezumi one last time as they’re pulled along.

            Nezumi makes no reaction, just turns back around to face Shion, and as soon as he does Shion grabs his wrist, his fingers ice-cold, and puts a piece of dried fruit in his palm.

            “We’ll start with his eyes,” Shion says. “And try to make it as symmetric as possible. For Safu.”

            Like she really cares, Nezumi thinks, but instead he says, “Hey, maybe you should be wearing some gloves. Your hands are freezing.”

            “Oh. I hadn’t noticed.”

            “Hadn’t noticed? Jeez, what an airhead you are. Would you not notice yourself freezing to death unless I said so?”

            “Of course not. I was just…caught up in the moment.”

            “Don’t be so ‘caught up in the moment’ you get frostbite.”

            “We’re almost done. I’ll be fine.”

            Nezumi clicks his tongue. “Stubborn, this one.”

            “You seem like you’re in a worse mood than usual today,” Shion notes.

            Suddenly, without prompting, Safu’s voice enters Nezumi’s head then: Dummy. It would be easier if you had a better attitude.

“Who has fun out in the freezing cold like this?” Nezumi defends, jamming the apricot Shion gave him into the right side of the snowman’s face.

            Shion places the left eye on. Then starts putting the mouth pieces below. “It’s possible. But you have a point.”

            As Shion places the apricots on one by one, Nezumi can’t stop staring at his hands. As Shion places the last one, Nezumi reaches out, on impulse, automatically and without thinking, to grab Shion’s still-frozen hand.

            “Let’s go somewhere warmer,” he says, tightening his grip on Shion’s hand, “before the both of us start freezing to death.”

            Shion holds his gaze a moment before saying, “You really hate the cold, huh.”

            “Of course I hate the—” Nezumi starts. Almost sighs, doesn’t. “We finished the snowman, didn’t we? Let’s go somewhere else now.”

            Shion snaps a picture of the snowman on his phone with his free hand. For Safu, Nezumi thinks, finding it amusing that Shion was misinterpreting Safu’s interest in the snowman for interest in the thing itself, and not her interest in Shion. Though of course he thought that way. It was Shion.

            “If you’re cold, I know a place we can go that’s really warm,” Shion says, reciprocating Nezumi’s hand squeeze.

            Nezumi’s first instinct is to argue, to be the one to take the lead, choose the place, but he remembers his earlier sharp remarks, remembers Safu’s voice in his head, and he decides Shion can at least choose the place, and Nezumi could figure out what to do there, as long as they were out of the damp snow and frigid air.

            So he says, “Alright,” and Shion starts leading him away from the snowman, their hands still linked, slightly warmer than before.

***

            “And this one is a Golden Retriever—obviously, ‘cause its fur is gold—and this one is one of our warmest, a Bernese mountain dog, bred and raised in the Bernese mountains themselves—”

            Inukashi is going on and on about all their different dogs, proud, smug, Safu grinning, amused, by their side, Nezumi and Shion standing in their doorway, a crowd of dogs surrounding them, eager to greet the new guests. Shion is kneeling on the floor to pet some of the smaller puppies. Safu sits on the stairs with a Pomeranian in her lap. Nezumi is looking off to the side, nonplussed, his hands in his pockets.

            Inukashi is holding some light brown fluffy puppy, saying, “This is some mutt, not even Safu could tell, but she thinks it’s some kind of lab mix—”

            “Shion, we really had to come here? We just escaped them,” Nezumi says in a low tone.

            “There’s no place warmer than Inukashi’s,” Shion says, as one of the dogs Inukashi recently identified as a Chow Chow licks his face.

            “And this one—”

            “We’re just here to warm up,” Nezumi interrupts. “So if you would kindly show us your warmest, furriest pooch, that’d be great.”

            Inukashi, still excited over their newfound knowledge, ignores Nezumi’s rudeness and says, “That would be this ol’ boy,” patting a large, white and very fluffy dog. “He’s a Great Pyr—Great Pire?—Great—”

            “Pyrenees,” Safu helps.

            “Great Pyrenees!”

            “We’ll take him,” Nezumi says.

            “Then take him and go. You’re the one who interrupted us. Me and Princess Science were having a perfectly good time without you, you know.”

            Nezumi sees Safu blush slightly at the nickname, and he can’t help but be amused. For all her haughtiness and brainy-ness, there were times where she was strikingly girlish, and the book-smart rich kid melted away to reveal the normal teenage girl she was underneath. Shion was like that sometimes, too, rattling off complicated theories one second, caught up in something small and human the next.

            Safu catches him looking at her, and her expression changes from sheepish to annoyed. She looks like she wants to say, What are you doing here, anyway?

            Nezumi smirks, ignores Inukashi, turns back to Shion. “Shion, do you hear any yapping from a tiny, unruly pup?”

            Shion looks up, distracted, from the growing crowd of puppies at his feet. “What? No, all the puppies here are so well-behaved. I’m impressed!”

            Nezumi facepalms. Inukashi laughs.

            The Great Pyrenees, now in front of Nezumi, gives a low, soft, “Boof!”

            “The old man’s waiting on ya,” Inukashi says.

Without hesitation, Nezumi nods to the stairs, says, “Let’s go.”

            The old dog slowly leads them up the stairs, into the guest bedroom, used to the routine. He stops, looks back at them, and once they’ve entered the room, plops itself not on the soft mattress of the guest bed or the plump love seat in the corner, but on the floor.

            “Cheapskate.” Nezumi clicks his tongue. “Only one dog for two people, and it wants us to sit on the floor.”

            “Don’t complain. It’s better than being outside in the cold still, right?” Shion sits up against the wall on the floor by the dog, and the dog moves over to Shion and licks his hand, his face, then promptly sits on him. Then looks expectantly at Nezumi.

            Nezumi, still feeling stubborn, doesn’t want to sit on the floor, but quickly it dawns on him that they’re finally alone (not counting the dog), and even if the pup and Safu are in the same place, they’re downstairs  and away from them, and this is probably the closest they’re getting to alone time today.

            “Alright, old man, you don’t have to give me those puppy eyes.” Nezumi sits down next to Shion, and the dog adjusts itself so it’s now spread out on both of them, a cloud of cotton puff. Nezumi and Shion are shoulder to shoulder, Shion’s arm moving up against Nezumi’s as he pets the dog.

            “Petting dogs is relaxing. If you pet him, maybe it’ll help your bad mood. It’s scientifically proven.”

            “I’m so sure.”

            “It is.”

            “I’m not in a bad mood today,” Nezumi asserts. “This is my normal self.”

            “You’re usually grumpy, that’s true. But today you seem even grumpier.”

            “It’s that damn Inukashi’s fault. And Safu’s. Their stupid snowman trial.”

            “Like I said earlier, there’s nothing to be ashamed of—”

            “I’m not ashamed.” Nezumi sighs. Why was he in such a bad mood today? It was Inukashi and Safu’s antics, and layered beyond that, all the previous prodding from Safu about Shion, that Nezumi should be doing something more for him. Something like what? Something to meet her standards, her romantic ideal for Shion? What did she know, anyway? He thought she would give up once he and Shion got together, but ever the perfectionist, she seemed bent on making sure Shion was happy in the way she wanted. As if she could tell him what to do? Screw that. She can take her controlling, pretentious ideas and shove them—

            Suddenly, Nezumi felt something warm on his hand. It was Shion, taking his hand and bringing it to the dog’s fur. “Then relax. Pet a dog. We might as well enjoy it while we’re here.”

            Their hands joined again, Nezumi is brought back to the moment, here at Inukashi’s, under their dog, because Shion brought them here. Swept away from one thing to another, first in Safu and Inukashi’s plans, then Shion’s. So much for him taking the lead. His hand between the smoothness of Shion’s skin and the softness of the dog’s fur, he notices Shion’s hand is much warmer now, and relenting a bit, he’s glad they came here. After all, he wanted Shion warm, wanted them alone, and here they were, ready for Nezumi to finally do as he wished.

            So Nezumi slides his hand out from under Shion’s, gently lifts Shion’s fingertips with his own, kisses Shion’s knuckles. “As you wish.”

            Shion’s ears redden. The dog on top of them yawns, stretches, nods off to sleep. Silence lingers a few moments, and Nezumi begins to retract his hand, but Shion quickly grabs tight onto his fingers. Without words, they’re holding hands again, wrists resting on the dogs back, moving slightly with the dog’s steady breathing.

            Shion leans into Nezumi. Nezumi places a subtle, quick kiss onto Shion’s forehead. Then he says, “Next time, however, I want to be alone. Completely. Not even in the same house with someone else.”

            “No argument. But when we are with the others, try to at least be civil.”

            “No promises.”

            “Nezumi—”

            “Okay, okay. I’ll try. But only if they do.”

            Shion sighs. Rubs his thumb along Nezumi’s hand. Nezumi tenses slightly at the gentle motion, then lets himself relax. An innocuous gesture. An innocuous desire for civility. So simple, so silly, so breakable, vulnerable, fragile. Safu is in Nezumi’s head again, telling him to do more for Shion, telling him to have a better attitude. In this quietude, this warmth, with Shion idly resting beside him, his guard loosens, and he starts to think: she’s right.

            Not that Nezumi’s done anything wrong, exactly. But maybe Safu has a point.

            Because when Shion’s desires are simple, to make a snowman, for peace among loved ones, to relax and be together, maybe Nezumi can try to comply a little easier, without fighting everything first, without trying to escape.

            Muffled, he hears Inukashi’s raucous laughter downstairs, Safu’s Hey! followed by a few dogs barking excitedly. Here, in the guest room, tucked away from it all, shoulder to shoulder with Shion, Nezumi finally gives in.

            “Man, I’m beat,” he says. “This pooch really is warm. I could take a nap.”

            “You never take naps.”

            “True. But I wouldn’t mind staying here, until this guy wakes up.” Nezumi pauses. “Or…for as long as you want.”

            He waits for a response. Gets none. He looks to Shion, wondering if he’s said something strange—at the very least, he’s said something uncharacteristic.

            But Shion is asleep now, breathing steadily in time with the dog. Nezumi sighs.

            Oh well. Screw it, he thinks. Giving in, he closes his eyes, too, rests his head against Shion’s, letting himself relax into the warmth of the two sleeping bodies. Oh well…

[dweemeister]

Pom Poko (1994, Japan)

As one of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli, the late Isao Takahata famously did not know how to animate. Whether because or in spite of that, he became the studio’s philosopher-poet – posing mature questions of ethics and humanity to audiences that no one else working in animated film could accomplish. Takahata’s third film for Ghibli, Pom Poko, breaks the fantasy-reality polarity he shared with Hayao Miyazaki (who just finished 1992′s Porco Rosso and was underway with 1997′s Princess Mononoke).

Yet this is a fantasy striking for its allegorical richness, even if the quasi-documentary, voiceover narration-heavy approach to the story makes this one of Takahata’s weaker films – a weaker film judged within lofty standards, however. The film revolves around a group of tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs), some of whom can shapeshift, as they combat the ever-encroaching urban and suburban sprawl to their forests. Their tactics are initially successful, but – as consistent with Japanese mythology – their indiscipline, prideful factionalism, and inability to effectively communicate among those growing factions doom the lifestyle they hold dear. Which other director of animated film, past or present, could express those aspects through tanuki, letting them become reflections of the vast tapestry of human behavior? I can think of no one else but Takahata.

It is the late 1960s in the Tama Hills in Kanagawa Prefecture, just southwest of Tokyo. Japan’s post-War economic boom has precipitated into a skyrocketing demand for housing, and the Tama Hills have been designated for significant residential and commercial development. By the early 1990s, New Tama is threatening the tanuki’s forest and resources not provided by human litter and trash are declining. Led by matriarch Oroku, the militaristic Gonta (Takahata’s loving parody of Miyazaki’s dictatorial attitude to work at Ghibli), the wise and wizened elder Seizaemon, and a young up-and-comer named Shoukichi, the tanuki resist the humans by committing sabotage at the construction sites. Some of the leaders advocate for simply scaring or intimidating humans (recall that some tanuki can shapeshift); others are more interested in killing or maiming as many humans as possible. No matter which tactic is adopted, the developers send new and more employees – forcing the tanuki to send a few their own to seek out the advice of master shapeshifters from across Japan.

For older viewers who are creeped out or will not see this film because of its depiction of tanuki testicles, if pure disgust is the only reason why you are discounting Pom Poko from your movie-watching options, you need to be more open-minded in what makes quality cinema. In Japanese art, tanuki have always been shown with their testicles, and often using them in creative ways (as a drum, a backpack, etc.). This is always handled with a wink by Takahata, with no self-seriousness whenever tanuki testicles are being used in transformations.

Pom Poko has been described as an ecological fable within the canon of Ghibli’s pro-environmentalist films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Only Yesterday (1991), and Princess Mononoke. Consumerism and unrestrained capitalism are fundamental to the environmental destruction that occurs, disallowing humans and tanuki from living in harmony as they used to before Japan’s reintroduction to the international theater. But these themes are not fundamental to Pom Poko. The film’s human characters are caricatures, somewhat removed from ever being fully understood by the tanuki. What the tanuki partake in – the ideological divisions that corrode their culture despite a clearly-defined common goal – is the true focus of the film, not the supposed sweeping declarations of how humanity should learn how to coexist with nature. With a story by Miyazaki and the screenplay by Takahata, there are also references to Japanese folklore and culture that will escape almost all Western viewers (including this one), but these never detract from the feelings of cooperation and selflessness, betrayal and disillusionment that define the tanuki struggle against the human developers. Just be prepared to research certain cultural elements that made no sense afterwards.

The tanuki are riven by internal differences that leads to an unorganized response to the human developers’ progress. Central to the quandary is the balance between intimidation, scaring the humans, and violence. Tanuki elders hold mass meetings with the entire populace – due to their species’ tendency to party hard after even the most inconsequential success, their audience seem too distracted to take successive debates and wisdom-laced speeches seriously. There is too little effort to listen to the tanuki leaders and, eventually, master shapeshifters and learn about their disagreements. Such disagreements are embodied in the belligerent Gonta and the peaceful Seizaemon and Oroku. Gonta believes only spectacular violence can alter their apparent fates. He launches unauthorized offensives with the most disgruntled tanuki to obliterate infrastructure and send construction workers to their ghastly ends. Later, Gonta even attempts a failed coup against Seizaemon and Oroku, believing their methodical approach to the situation is leading to their imminent destruction. The violence accomplishes little, as the humans do not understand the root of this ecoterrorism.

Seizaemon and Oroku are more interested in understanding human culture than Gonta, urging transformation-capable tanuki to integrate themselves into among humanity to learn as much as possible. But the transforming tanuki scouts largely observe humanity from a distance, rarely inquiring to humans about the nature of their culture – its history, its contemporary demands, and why its envisioned future is what it is. The first meaningful conversation with a human is initiated by Shoukichi at a moment far too late to salvage the tanuki’s society. When everything else has failed, a fantastical display without words of what was the symbiotic relationship between humans and tanuki will save the latter from extinction. As Seizaemon and Oroku become obsessed in understanding humanity without communicating with humans, they lose sight of the transformations within their own ranks. These two are blindsided by too many things. They fail to anticipate Gonta’s treachery despite obvious signs of his combustible impatience, fail to intuit the widespread inattentiveness of their mass meetings, or – in the most underdeveloped subplot of the film that Takahata should have paid more attention to – fail to detect the fatalism of the non-transforming tanuki that sees them join a suicidal Buddhist dancing cult that results in a massive waste of life.

Pom Poko is a film defined by poor leadership. Their internal discord is preventable and surmountable as the tanuki leaders decide to ignore the welfare of those who cannot transform or those who do not adhere to their adopted strategies. Poor communication is rampant. The rigidity of their beliefs hastens their downfall. Contrary to the expectations of the leadership, the introduction of the shapeshifting masters only exacerbates their dilemma – the masters are basing their approach on ancient anecdotes and an assumption that talking with humans need not be considered. Like in Grave of the Fireflies, pride might be the tragic flaw of the protagonists. But where pride in Grave of the Fireflies leads to the deaths of a pair of siblings, pride is projected onto saving a collective in Pom Poko. When pride presides over a group through its leaders, disaster is destiny.

This is not to say Pom Poko is only a dour piece examining effective leadership. The film is also a broad comedy not above fart jokes, slapstick, and situational humor. One of the funniest, enrapturing moments is thanks to animation directors Megumi Kagawa and Shinji Ôtsuka (both of whom have served in various roles on almost all of Ghibli’s films). Tragicomedy is complicated to execute, and Takahata just about manages the balance here – Pom Poko’s tragedy never interferes with its comedy and its comedy usually does not cheapen the tragedy. Vacillating between the two tones will be jarring for those without grounding in live-action classic Japanese cinema – a bittersweet celebration in the film’s final moments is followed by a closing, ascending shot reminiscent to the final moments of Grave of the Fireflies. There, the tanuki have been forced to assimilate to human culture. Displacement, not just by physical means, abounds. If it is not obvious yet, Pom Poko (the highest-grossing domestic film at the Japanese box office in 1994) should not be considered a gateway Studio Ghibli film and plays better in tandem with live-action Japanese movies.

Behind the scenes, a special relationship that helped Studio Ghibli further cement its place in Japanese popular culture was just beginning. Nippon TV (NTV; a major broadcast network in Japan) chairman Seiichirô Ujiie began to help produce Studio Ghibli films beginning with the studio’s 1993 television special Ocean Waves (a testing ground for Ghibli’s younger staffers; it was released elsewhere as a theatrical film). Pom Poko was the first feature film he co-produced (alongside Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki and Ritsuo Isobe) for the studio, beginning NTV’s long-running association with Studio Ghibli – in Japan, NTV is the exclusive broadcaster of all Ghibli films and is usually the first network to provide breaking news of Studio Ghibli activities. Ujiie was involved in the production and financing of almost every Ghibli film released after Pom Poko – his passing in 2011 made producing new Ghibli feature films much more difficult. Ujiie professed that he was a Takahata fan, once proclaiming that he would fund any of the director’s projects, even if they lost money (such as 2013′s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, in which Ujiie received posthumous credit).

Task any other animation director with Pom Poko, and they would probably deliver a more juvenile, less considered film. Of all Takahata’s films, Pom Poko may be the one work that could only have existed through animation. It is his least intimate Ghibli movie as it adapts an epic war story within a faux documentary structure. On the surface, it seems like Takahata is taking fewer risks than usual because of animation’s necessity here. Look closer and, in the same tradition of Watership Down (1978... though not nearly as serious as this movie), Takahata is sharing ideas seldom depicted in animated or live-action cinema. Pom Poko is not his finest outing nor is he at his most visually inventive. But to compare this with his other films is to compare artworks operating at a mesmerically high standard.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[your-dungeon-is-problematic]

Selkies (AD&D)

Selkies! Everybody’s favorite Celtic seal-women! ...Well, they’re usually women, anyway. Women who put on sealskins that transform them into seals. Unless they’re seals that remove their skins to transform themselves into humans? Bit of a chicken-or-egg dilemma there.  Though something I cannot ignore right now is that the art in this edition for selkies is nothing short of hideous. Lemme tell you, the weird misshapen webbed hands, the tiny legs coming out of that squat flat butt, that face, it’s just so unappealing. All you had to do was draw a seal, and then like some tasteful shot of a woman draped in a sealskin right next to it, with the connect between them fairly implicit, not this weird not-quite-one-not-quite-the-other look y’all got going on.

General: “Selkies are seal-like beings that have the ability to change into human form for a few days at a time.” ...A few days? That’s it? What for? In most selkie stories I’ve ever heard about, yes, the selkie does eventually return to her seal form, but it’s more just that she has this innate desire to be free and in the sea, whereas this seems to imply some kind of like...physical limitation? Is this an Animorphs situation? Will the selkie become human permanently if they’re in human form for more than a week? “When in their true, seal-like forms, they are nearly indistinguishable from normal seals. Close inspection of their arms, however, will reveal the presence of slightly webbed hands instead of fore flippers and legs instead of a tapering body and rear flippers.” Yeah, “Close inspection”, my ass. The structure of those grody hands are pretty markedly and immediately distinguished from a regular seal flipper. The only time this guy wouldn’t get weird looks was if the water was murky. And even then, most people who got a good look would be all, “poor dear, it’s got malformed flippers”. And the legs, just... no, that’s pretty much entirely different from a seal’s legs. It gives the body an entirely different profile. The selkies will look like potbellied swimmers in wetsuits from a distance, only for people to think they’re just really misshapen seals for whom every waking moment of life is agony with their accursed limb deformities. And then someone will probably be like, “Oh wait, they’re probably just selkies.” Like I really don’t think this was the best way to go for this creature, guys. You should have given them a regular seal form, and a regular human form; this half-and-half thing they got going on is nothing short of disturbing. And like, there can still be telltale signs in either form that this is no ordinary human/seal, like maybe some kind of special birthmark, or maybe selkies in human form are notably hefty, because the seal blubber doesn’t just disappear when the sealskin comes off, but this ain’t the way I’d go, with the limbs, and...yeesh. “Once a month, each selkie is able to assume human form for about a week. Usually selkies prefer to briefly visit the realm of men (which they call the ‘overworld’) out of curiosity, but sometimes they are ordered to go forth and purchase desperately needed supplies or information.” I’m still weirded out by the timescale provided, here. That doesn’t seem long enough. A week per month? But at least the reasons given for why they go to the surface are certainly reasonable. For fun, when it isn’t for food or information. Simple but not stupid. “When in human form, selkies are very attractive indeed and their fine looks have broken more than a few overworlders’ hearts. Their eyes are particularly noticeable as they are always either a bright emerald green or startling light blue. Since the selkie transformation is not a spell or magical effect, only spells like true seeing will reveal a selkie’s true nature, although their peculiar mannerisms and predilection for seafood also might.” I like this, honestly. Unless you know to look for the eyes, or if they’re really, really not good at blending in with the surface-dwellers, selkies are hard to suss out. Adds an air of mystery when the party’s benefactor only shows up a week every month and insists on holding meetings at the local crab shack. And then someone makes the connection and all the eccentricities click. 

Combat: “Since selkies are unable to swim quickly while carrying weapons, 90% of selkies encountered underwater will be unarmed. They use their sharp teeth whenever they are cornered but prefer to use their impressive speed underwater to escape superior odds. If encountered on land, selkies are wise enough to bear human weapons, most likely swords scavenged from the wrecks of ships.” ...Nothing much to add, really. It’s all fairly sensible. Seriously, selkies are hard to make unlikable, to me.

Habitat/Society: “Selkie communities are divided between male and female, with females usually outnumbering males, as male selkies are he hunter/gatherers throughout the often dangerous waters nearby.” Ugh, I say that and they immediately fall into the same bizarre job dichotomy the centaurs did... “However, both aspects of selkie “community” (domestic and provider) are equally respected within the lair, and no sex is accorded undue privileges.” Oh! Well, that’s good at least. You immediately caught yourselves, selkies. Don’t disappoint me, now. “Selkies inhabit only colder waters and there are both saltwater and freshwater varieties. Selkies almost always build their lairs in water-filled regions--selkie young must be raised in an air-filled environment for about their first year.” Huh! Well that’s...interesting, I suppose? “As mentioned earlier, selkies often find and explore wrecks of sunken treasure. Most selkie communities have hoarded at least some booty (especially pearls), keeping those otherwise useless trinkets only for purposes of trade with the overworld.” This is one of those times where again I’m like “then what the fuck else do they have for currency, unless they have some sort of barter system or communistic command economy type thing going on?” I mean, okay, yeah, a lot of times in an emergency situation when it comes right down to it, money doesn’t *do* anything...but in day-to-day situations, you exchange it for goods and services! How ‘bout that shit! You use it for trade, but it’s otherwise useless? ...Well yeah, guys, it’s money, that is its use. Like, duh. I know you’re trying to make a little bit of a hippy-dippy “they’re like, beyond money, maaaan!” sort of statement, but it comes off to me like you’ve just said “they use money” in the most roundabout way possible. Granted, they only use money with surface-worlders, and that does leave gaping holes in how their society works, but whatever. “Only selkies who have visited the overworld many times have ever acquired a taste for ornamenting themselves like overworlders, and can be distinguished from more traditional selkies immediately. For obvious reasons, these more experienced selkies are often the best representatives to deal with if one is an overworlder. Selkies can be hired and have a limited knowledge of overworlder culture.” Of course, the whole fact that there are more surface-experienced selkies out there, kind of raises the question as to what one of these selkies would do in the fairly-typical-in-the-old-tales scenario where their sealskin was stolen. ...Though, that said, hold on: where are their transformative sealskins? I don’t think I’ve seen anything in this passage that more than vaguely hints in the direction of their traditional, mythological means of going from one form to another. Which is frankly bizarre. Why even have selkies if you’re not going to include the sealskins...? “All magical treasure recovered by selkies is immediately commandeered for the good of the community and the lair’s defense.” Ah, so they at least have some sort of community militia, outfitted with the best salvaged magical loot. Good! This is a good thing. I like it.

Ecology: “Selkies are omnivorous, preferring to eat fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and various forms of seaweed. Those that have visited the surface are often partial to human fare as well. Selkies are particularly suceptible to fine wine, which is to be expected since these intoxicants are unknown below the seas.” I mean I guess that makes sense? I just fear that too much wine will like, get some landlubbers who’ve caught onto the whole selkie society to start economically exploiting the selkies by selling them wine, and... Eh, you see where I’m going. But like I said, it makes sense, to me. “Selkies are sensitive about their environment and harvest only what they need to survive. It is worth noting that selkie representatives lobby heavily whenever local overworlder environmental issues threaten selkie existence. Most selkie communities have learned the value of dropping a few pearls here and there in order to get what they want from men.” Well, they’re a cut above the centaurs by actually trying to actively influence human environmental policy through financial incentives. Being the change they want to see in the world, and all that. “While selkies in human form are quite beautiful, they are fortunate indeed that their pelts have little value in overworlder markets. They are, therefore, without any special enemies besides those common to seals and all ocean-dwelling beings.” ...Huh. You know, it’s weird, but I think that is the first, last, and only mention of the whole selkie pelt thing, and even then the fact that its tied to their transformation is only implied. So if you had no idea what a selkie was coming into this, I guess you’re going to be a tad confused where this note about the pelt is even coming from.  Also is this meant to be a subversion of the common selkie narrative of “selkie in human form gets stuck that way when some prick takes her pelt and forces her to marry him” thing? Like “Oh, uh, seal pelts aren’t worth much, so, uh, you don’t gotta worry, or nothing.” It’s weird.

Selkie, Leader: “Each venerable leader of a selkie community can cast the following spells once per day, one spell per round: augury, cure light wounds, and cure disease. Leaders can also cast weather summoning and control weather once per week. Selkies fear the wrath of the sea should they ever use their powers for ill.” ...Wait, all selkies need to do to get these spells is to...get old? Or do they need to both be old and be generally accepted as a leader of their community? I do like the sort of ominous warning at the end there. It almost implies like, a wrathful sea god, or something, who will totally Odyssey you for a decade if you screw with him.

Overall: ...I like ‘em! You know, it’s weird that the whole pelt transformation is only even implied just the one time in the text, but they seem pretty placid and agreeable. Totally unlike the centaurs from last time, geez. Really my biggest critique is that their seal form is ugly as all hell. Look at that thing. Honestly. Just, draw a seal, have them be a seal in seal form. They won’t be able to use weapons, but seals got big ol’ teeth, you guys. They’ll be fine.

[anthropologyarda]

Ecology & the Death of the Two Trees

What happened to the elves when the Two Trees of Valinor died?

Now I don't mean historically - I have the Silmarillion for that. I mean scientifically what happened as a result of the loss of their light source, and what were the practical consequences for the elves.

Because I think the Undying Lands were dying.

The sun affects life on Earth in many complex ways that scientists are still trying to understand, but for us, the most important thing it does is act as the energy source for many of our planet’s processes, such as climate and plant photosynthesis.

Now imagine that instead of a sun as a planetary "engine", you have two trees that wax and wane. Whatever works for you. The bottom line is that strong, powerful, holy light energy - enough to power all of life's processes - is being emitted all of the time. Light is essential to the survival of Earth-like life. Plants need it to grow, and all animal species get their nutrients directly or indirectly from plants.

Now imagine some catastrophic event *cough Melkor* suddenly stops those great lights from shining and all you have left are the stars. Boom. The entire ecosystem goes from having a constant, unrestricted supply of energy to having little to none. No more light, no more energy, no more photosynthesis. All those plants supercharged on tree light? They wither and die. The happy little rabbit that ate those plants? Rail thin and starving. The fox that ate those rabbits? Dead. I think you can see where this is going. Destroy the cornerstone and the entire ecosystem collapses like a tower with no foundation. And the elves of Valinor are part of that ecosystem.

To further compound the problem, the loss of light probably also equals the loss of heat energy. In real life the phenomenon is called an impact winter or a volcanic winter depending on the source. Either way, the environment experiences prolonged cold weather it probably isn't prepared for. An impact winter is like a side of bad news to a main course of terrible news.

So what? Lots of plants and animals die, but famines eventually end. Time passes, the environment recovers. Let's examine timeline a bit. According to Tolkien Gateway, five Valian years passed between the death of the Two Trees and the rising of the moon and sun. In solar years this equals 48 years before Valinor’s energy source was restored. 48 years. Step back and think about how well a bunch of species adapted for unending bright light survived for almost half a century of dim starlight. The answer is not so much 'everything died' as 'everything went extinct'. (There is also the option that the plants and animals of Valinor aged at a slower rate than their Middle-earth counterparts. This doesn't really help them survive for half a century of poor conditions, but it does stop them from adapting more quickly to the new environment.)

I don't think I'm exaggerating. There is actually a legitimate precedent for 'the sun's rays are blocked and everything goes extinct.' It is called the K-T mass extinction event and you might recognize it as 'that thing that killed all the dinosaurs.' Scientists estimate that 50% of all species living at the time were wiped out.

Now that we have our premise let's get to the silm-related part of this equation: what about the elves?

Were the elves starving in the middle of paradise?

Here is where the science ends and the speculation begins. Aman is the land of the Valar, and  I can't imagine they would do nothing as the land withered around them and the Eldar starved. The question is how much could they do.

I will therefore examine three lines of conjecture: one with the best set of outcomes, one with the worst, and one with moderate outcomes.

The big variable here is how much power the Valar could wield reliably long term without harming the elves, and what it means in terms of their control over the land that Valinor was created entirely out of their power.

First outcome (good end): Valinor was supposed to contain all of the plant and animal species present in the world, and some that lived only in Valinor. To me this implies two possibilities.  One is that the environment was incredibly diverse geographically in order to support those species. While we know little about Valinor, I feel like the general aesthetic of 'paradise' does not support deserts and I can't come up with enough isolation mechanisms to explain dodos.

The other possibility is that the Valar systematically altered plant and animal species via magic to coexist without problems and to adapt to the unusual conditions of the Trees, supplementing this engineering with climate control that kept all of Valinor without severe storms or cold. This implies a huge investment of power which might yield a corresponding amount of control. So in this scenario the Trees die, Valinor's ecology goes into an emergency state but is kept alive and nourished by the Valar who have absolute power over the substance of their creation. Perhaps a few especially delicate species are lost, the weather might experience a few fluctuations and crop yields would not be as high as previous years. Everyone is living a little lean compared to previous bountiful years which adds to their general anxiety and fears, but starvation is not something anyone is seriously concerned about.

Second outcome (bad end): Tolkien tells us that Valinor was already a product of extreme bio-engineering. Any product of such extreme artificial conditions will immediately come into distress when exposed to natural environments, like if you tried to grow a tropical orchid in a dry climate. He also tells us that when Melkor put much of his power in the substance of Middle-Earth he 'lost' that power in a sense. It was not beyond his reach and influence but it could only be put to limited new uses. Therefore the Valar might be less powerful than they were when they created Valinor as well. Like Melkor they might retain influence over the material but in less direct ways. Add to this that the Valar, unlike Melkor, have a specialization of their power (Manwe rules the sky, Ulmo the sea etc.). Yavanna and Vana's powers might have been the only useful ones, possibly with Manwe's control of the weather via his sky powers aiding. So the question in this scenario is if the powers of those two Valier would be enough to avert large scale catastrophe.

The key here is not the plants but the animals. No Vala is credited with the creation or influence over all animals. Certain Valar have favorites like Orome's horses and hounds or Manwe's eagles so they might exercise some power over them. But there is no Vala for tree frogs or iguanas or rats. So the Trees die; Yavanna and Vana desperately try to stretch their power out over Valinor to keep everything impossibly alive. That takes care of some portion of the vegetation. If it was anything less than 100% than some individuals are starving and dying over that 48 year period of darkness. The death toll goes up as the percentage of vegetation preserved goes down. But not all animals eat plants. For the carnivores the news is all bad; loss of population in prey species means less to eat for them and some or many of them die. Then we add in environmental effects. For species that need specific climates to thrive the loss of the trees creates a suddenly unstable or inhospitable environment leading to population loss or extinction. Environmental cues for reproduction, flowering and other rhythms of living organisms are also negatively affected.

For the sake of this scenario we will say that Manwe's efforts at maintaining the climate and the sisters' powers are not enough by a significant margin to prevent these effects entirely. Recall our earlier tower metaphor. Like removing individual bricks, each species starts being unable to hold up the weight because of decimation or extinction. Not all species are equally affected; the most specialized who can't adapt fast enough - perhaps entire lineages who are no longer capable of surviving in the new environment - die out first. These might be disproportionately the native species, those most magical and beautiful like the mallorn trees without whom the land would be infinitely poorer and lose some of its magic. 

At first the effects are small, but they begin to accumulate and trickle down from the top through links of predation, parasitism, and cooperation. Natural systems are incredibly interconnected and no species is capable of surviving in a vacuum. If enough animals die even the plants don't escape the consequences. Eventually plants aren't pollinated by insects or their seeds aren’t spread by animals; the disaster begins to affect them too, adding extra pressure to the sisters’ powers. The Valar might have to simply abandon some areas to concentrate on keeping the edible, intensively farmed crops alive to feed the elves. The elves’ domesticated animals might not feel the same pains as their wild counterparts, but if the situation grew especially dire they would have to be abandoned to free food resources for their masters. Even if complete environmental collapse is avoided Valinor is still left with a diminished and traumatized natural environment, and the elves become intimately knowledgeable of the specter of starvation.

Then we have the third, and in my opinion, the most likely middle outcome that falls somewhere in between the best and worst outcomes. In this scenario the Valar have some, but not absolute power over the material of Valinor, with Vana and Yavanna having proportionately the most control, concentrated in the plants. Complete environmental collapse is avoided, but the losses of plants and animals are not light, and are noticeable to the elves.

The Teleri are in the best position in the midpoint scenario. Deep water ecosystems are much better insulated from large scale natural disaster, but coastal regions exposed to tree light would have been badly hit. But heir food supplies from the ocean would have been fairly secure.

The Vanyar might experience some scarcity, but they have the smallest population and live closest to the Valar. The areas where they lived may have held the best preserved areas for plant life. 

And then there’s the Noldor. They lack the advantages of the Teleri and the Vanyar. They have a larger population, no marine resources, and liver farther from the Valar. No doubt they bent their full technological might towards coming up with solutions, but I think they may have begun to seriously fear running out of food, the longer the darkness lasted and they still heard nothing from Taniquetil. For many of the youngest elves, this would have been the first time in their lives they experienced scarcity and food insecurity, and that must have been terrifying. The Valar would not have allowed them to starve, but that fear would have been present in the minds of the Noldor, and been an additional impetus to spur their return to Middle-earth.

Now after all this famine and extinction business, Yavanna and Nienna go coax fruit out of the trees, the sun and moon rise, and everybody lives happily ever after right?

Wrong. (What did you expect? This is the Silmarillion. Nobody is ever happy.)

Jump across the ocean to the Sindar in Beleriand. They don't know anything about the nastiness in Valinor that just went down. They're getting along just fine in the near-dark, thank you very much. Then the sun rises, blinds them, burns them and then shivs them in the back as a parting gift.

Besides supporting the food chain and all life on Earth, the sun also powers the weather and climate (shorthand: weather is short term, climate is long term).

I'm going to overlook the fact that supposedly Yavanna put all the animals into a stasis like state called 'the sleep of Yavanna' after the Valar left for Aman, because what the heck were the elves eating otherwise? And no, the answer is not plants. Many of our edible plants like fruits, nuts, and vegetables need animals for survival. Bees and other bugs pollinate them and animals eat the fruit and disperse the seeds. For the remaining cereal crops insects living in the soil like earthworms have a vital role in maintaining soil aeration and quality, not to mention bacterial flora's role. (I assume here that since elves and humans are capable of producing fertile hybrids we have similar dietary needs)

I'm also going to ignore the fact that weather is impossible without the sun's energy (thus no hydrologic cycle and no drinkable water) and just say that the sun rising at the least must have added a ton of energy to a stable climate, creating a temperature spike and kicking off abrupt climate change on a worldwide scale.

Yes, I just suggested that Middle-earth experienced global warming.

I've already talked about a probable famine and mass extinction in Aman, so let's think about what the effects sudden changes in rainfall and temperature might have on Beleriand! (hint: polar bears)

That's right! More famine! More mass extinction! Lots of crispy plants, dried up rivers and poor harvests. Some of the elves may have had protection. Like the Valar, Melian's power might have been helpful keeping Doriath supplied. Ulmo and his maiar might also have helped the elves on the coastline keep cool and fed.

We know little about the Avari but it seems to be implied that they were the least centralized of the elven kindreds and most nomadic. I don't know if this is fannon or cannon, but I always considered them be be most similar to hunter gatherer peoples rather than settled farmers. If so, they would have been the hardest hit of all the elves of Beleriand because their food supply would be almost entirely dependent on the availability of local plants and animals. This would actually be a good explanation for the dissolution and extinction of Avari culture if survival demanded they go seek out settled peoples with more reliable food supplies.

[spamzineglasgow]

Dogs in Fiction (Canine Crisis); (Maria Sledmere)

In this essay, Maria Sledmere responds to ‘The Trouble with Dogs for Writers’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard in The New Yorker. 

> It’s easy to get yourself familiar with the aesthetic and sensory tastes of Karl Ove Knausgaard. Read just one volume of his six-part series, My Struggle, and you’ll find out exactly how the Norwegian author likes to relish his cornflakes, observe the sky or hide at a party. The beauty in Knausgaard, I suppose, is how he makes of daily life a literary form of crack cocaine: this furiously addictive rush, without hits of which we would suffer immensely. The cognitive estrangement he casts by ‘slow’ forms of attention prompt various kinds of reawakening in the reader. Boiling things down to simplicity explodes in curiosity over component parts; I found myself extrapolating similar kinds of Knausgaardian introspection and reverie in the weeks after finishing A Death in the Family. Everything was a crumb that fell out of something; every action, event, thought or sense seemed to contain the kernel of a grander knowledge. But like crack cocaine (at least, er, as I imagine it), the after effects of this attentiveness, this intensity of suspended experience, are pretty nauseating.

> Therefore it’s with some relief that I stumble upon a short extract from Knausgaard’s book Summer, a collection of essays on everyday things and concepts, part of his Seasons quartet. The subject is a familiar one within the sphere of domesticity, but not often noticed within fiction: dogs. Sure, Virginia Woolf wrote that autobiography of Elizabeth-Barrett Browning’s dog, Flush, and maybe you read Jack London’s The Call of the Wild as a kid. The fictional dog I remember most is probably Garth Nix’s Disreputable Dog, the anthropomorphised, wise and wayfaring hound in Nix’s YA novel Lirael. It’s maybe easier to think of cartoon dogs, dogs in children’s books. Snoopy, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Can we take dogs seriously in fiction, or must they remain peripheral, comic or secondary, often as placeholders for human affairs? Knausgaard, it seems, doesn’t hold much lingering affection for dogs. With all their insistent yacking, dogs carry the law of father: the barked impasse of communion between dog and human represents, for Knausgaard, ‘a kind of law, they marked a boundary I couldn’t cross, and it was the dog that enforced it’. He goes on to explain that this comes, partly, from a sense that dogs embody, in their pathetically loyal, pleading behaviour, his own weakness: he can hardly look at his family’s dog, ‘without a feeling of irritation or even rage rising in me, the way it often is when one recognises one’s own least attractive traits in others’.

> The identification is so strong that Knausgaard starts to view his dog as a shackle on his writing. Dogs demand routine, movement, companionship: they have to be ‘walked several times a day’, they have to be accompanied. In that sense they’re a practical impediment to the solitary requirements of the writer’s life, imagined as a kind of hermetic stasis. To write, for Knausgaard, is to be free of the ‘law of the dog’, a ‘a place where one can express oneself freely’. I’m struck by how this attitude differs to that of someone like Donna Haraway, canine enthusiast par theoretical excellance, or poet Eileen Myles, who recently published Afterglow: a dog memoir, about their pitbull Rosie. For Haraway and Myles, dogs are companions: a source of creativity, flourishing, of interspecies exchange and biosociality. Haraway, in her Companion Species Manifesto, even claims an ethics for the stories told ‘about dog-human worlds’. Playing with one’s canine, walking one’s dog, Haraway argues, helps us realise ‘that history matters in naturecultures’. Kinship reveals the contingency and enmeshment of our being. Dogs, as domestic animals, raise all sorts of interesting ecological questions about coexistence and hospitality, how ‘animal happiness’ might differ from that of humankind, as well as the ways in which our affective natures overlap. Is it a coincidence that Knausgaard’s title, ‘The Trouble With Dogs’ seems a provocative repartee to Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene? There seems an almost mythic divide between Knausgaard, giving up his irritating dog to a loving family, and Haraway’s ‘Positive Bondage’ of human-dog relations—a sense that one cannot write ���objectively’, but rather in collaboration with the ‘objects’ (animal or otherwise) of a story?

> For all Knausgaard likes to linger on objects throughout his writing, there’s a remove here, perhaps. There’s still a very clear human orientation. A specific gaze that is the masculine anthropos in moments of strength or glimpsed vulnerability. The weirdly alluring thing about Knausgaard is his embodiment of that straw man of the vigorous novelist, fighting against himself as much as the world; the way he perceives dogs reflects the absurdity of that position, that absolute anxiety about the animal that impersonates one’s inner animal. Note the slippage: personify/impersonate, the animal/human, animism/humanism. The Animal, as Jacques Derrida put it, That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). And yes, Derrida, who questions whether there can be ‘animal narcissism’, who documents the eerie, arresting ‘animalséance’ that arises in ‘the single, incomparable and original experience of the impropriety that would come from appearing in truth naked, in front of the insistent gaze of the animal, a benevolent or pitiless gaze, surprised or cognizant’. Musing one’s nudity before the gaze of the radically animal other, we have to confront a special kind of meta-shame, a shame ‘for being ashamed’. Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that I think of cats when I think of poets: those slinky mercurial beings who owe loyalty to no-one but elicit your affection with every sideways smile of a tail-licked sentence. Who loiter and wallow in shame, their own or otherwise.

> But we are talking here of dogs, not cats. I write this in the living room of my flat, with my friend’s dog Maisie, a six-year-old black lab whining in the corner. She’s going through her first ‘season’, the time of her first period. She’s moody and languid and all the women in the room relate to her trouble. If Derrida sees the cat’s gaze as a threat to his phallus (and of course cats are often linked negatively to femininity, witchcraft and the like), then Knausgaard sees the dog as a pitiful embodiment of his failed masculinity at the point of manly assertion, the law of the father. Is it that dogs, like men, create the ties that bind them? Dogs cower, fight; dogs piss on lawns; dogs eat everything; dogs die outside the pack; dogs allow themselves to be domesticated, chained. In one sense, we might think of Knausgaard’s aversion to dogs as a reflection of that romanticised writerly introversion, the self-flagellating need to sacrifice social contact and give space to poetic ‘genius’, to mark territory. The parasitic psyche of a dog just can’t be a part of that; he requires a cleaving, whereas writing for the likes of Haraway and Myles seems to spring, often, from collaborative, interspecies storytelling. Much more can be explored here: the binaries of active/passive, physical/cerebral, man/woman, master/slave, culture/nature—to name but a few in our theoretical bestiary.

> The essay, in its single paragraph ramble, sort of resembles a dog walk. And of course at the end, we come to that phrase: ‘The Dog’, asserting its presence again. Knausgaard tries to walk away from dogs, explain their trouble, but he lands back at the dog, the law of the father. He admits of the dog a sort of haunting within his ipseity: ‘The Dog’, we discover, was actually the original title of Knausgaard’s ‘first autobiographical manuscript’. When I think about it, dead dogs, mutant dogs, haunting dogs are everywhere. The dog on the front lawn speared with a pitchfork, the central cipher in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The dog with a human heart in Mikhail Bulgakov’s political satire of the New Soviet man, Heart of a Dog. The dogs that refuse to breed in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, unlike the obnoxiously fertile cats, who Crusoe must kill, as Jane Goldman argues, to assert ‘his own sovereignty’. I’m reminded of brooding stoner bros on that Mac DeMarco album, This Old Dog, but also of Knausgaard’s canine self-loathing, when Goldman points out how Crusoe sometimes refers to himself as ‘Dog’, ‘in a sanguine, matter of fact way, when recalling the danger of losing his life, his own sovereignty: “I only said to my self often, that I was an unfortunate Dog, and born to be always miserable”’. Somewhat companionably, he later uses the term in reference to Friday, his human subject: ‘“You Dog, said I, is this your making us laugh?”’. Where is the line between companionship and subjugation, submission? Terror and humour, master and slave? How do we relate in writing to the objects and animals that make up our worlds, our stories, our selves? Where do we, as beautiful souls, come apart as fallacy? How can we unravel in words the sovereignty of the anthro: as species, experience, as being itself; is it time, even for the more dog phobic among us, to embrace or question or love the trouble, to unsettle its position within our lives, our bodies, our homes? Will we find ourselves tangled in our own leads, running away with multiplicity?

As for me, I’m gonna go buy a goth collar for the anthropocene.

~

Text: Maria Sledmere Image: Dallas Reedy