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retrocontinuity · 3 years

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Eat, for this is Her Body: Chainsaw Man and the Doxology of Cannibalism

"One day," Anthony Oliveira writes in "The Year in Apocalypses," [Jesus'] disciples approached their master while he was silent in prayer and made a request: 'Lord, teach us how to pray.'" From here, Jesus teaches them the Lord's Prayer, what the Catholic Church once called "the summary of the whole gospel":

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Denji is no one's disciple. When we first meet him, he is closer to how Oliveira describes Jesus himself, "homeless, gleaning for food in the field like a sparrow and relying on the kindness of strangers to put him up, . . . a man cheerfully resigned to powerlessness." And so, Denji doesn't need to be taught how to pray. He has always known. Every bone in his body at the opening of Chainsaw Man sings out the Lord's Prayer: "forgive me my debts", "deliver me from evil." And, of course, Denji is intimately familiar with the prayer's most pitiable, most powerful line. It's this line that he cries out to Makima when he rests, Pieta-like, in her arms at the end of the first chapter. It can only be this line, one that Denji might have written himself:

Give me, from this day forward, and for all the rest of my days, daily bread.

Bread runs throughout CSM like a mocking scent that you only fully identify in the last two chapters. It should have been a sign to all of us when the first meal Makima buys for Denji is not bread (but rather a hot dog and udon noodles). It isn't until Denji meets and enters Aki's home that he is seen making a hideously overladen slice of toast for himself, luxuriating in having all the toppings he was denied. The morning after she forces Denji to open the door to Power's death, Makima makes the very breakfast she once promised to serve Denji: eggs, coffee, salad, and sliced bread. But this is a meal that Denji never eats—maybe the only meal in the entire series that he, a survivor of the meanest starvation and poverty, ignores. There is only one other time we see this meal in CSM, and it is subtle, almost off camera, though no less meaningful: in Chapter 53, after Reze's death, as Denji sits down to breakfast once more with Power and Aki.

To revisit CSM's public safety arc is to see all the ways the plot connects itself to food and the act of eating, both appetizing and revolting, both profound and profane. Denji, eating gyoza at a bar for the first time. Denji being forced to swallow barf as he is kissed for the first time. The Fox Devil, who eats indiscriminately and on command, who refuses to return to Aki after being fed something disgusting. A fox that is hunted and transformed into stew. Denji eating sandwiches at Reze's cafe. Aki and Angel eating noodles. A woman sitting down to eat a hamburger for the first time, before she commits mass murder. She is worried she has lost her taste buds, yet she exclaims, "So delicious!" We know, later, that this woman is a liar, that no part of her is what she presents herself to be. Should we take this moment at its face value then? Was Santa Claus simply lucky enough to have preserved her sense of taste? Or was it her one last act of humanity, to recognize that it is not enough just to eat, that man does not live on bread alone, that there must be at least food that is also delicious, that inspires people to get up and dance—even if it means she has to lie about what she can experience?

Food is necessary for survival, and CSM is a story about survival. But CSM is also a story about glimpsing the after. After you know you can keep living, what next? After you are no longer starving, after you have been forced to kill a friend, after you have touched your first boob, after you have been betrayed, what next? After you are tired of eating toast with jam for breakfast, what do you eat next?

The version of the Lord's Prayer we tend to recite asks for "our daily bread." But this, most modern scholars believe, is a mistranslation. The Greek adjective as it appears in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke is "epiousios," which doesn't mean "daily" at all, but rather something too complicated etymologically for me to even begin to parse. The point is that what we ask for in the Lord's Prayer is not just bread for today, but bread for tomorrow. Both the physical bread and the spiritual bread. Bread on this kingdom of earth, and bread that is the kingdom of heaven. Bread to feed our bodies, and bread to feed our souls. The realm of the divine is full of these moments, isn't it? Of two things existing at once, in one.

Denji starts the series asking for daily bread, and ends the public safety arc with Nayuta, Makima's reincarnation, asking him for daily bread. Trash heap Denji, living with his not!dog Pochita, really was just asking for daily bread. A slice to eat for breakfast, maybe even with butter and jam. But he too learns that bread, physical bread, is not enough. Merely to subsist, to eat good food, is an empty life. And what he must give Nayuta is not just bread, as was given to him. Otherwise, he will be trapped in a cycle of creating more Makimas. Instead, he must give her a relationship, a family, a world that Makima was unable to create. He must give her, in Pochita's words, lots of hugs. He must give her, in the words of the Lord's Prayer, epiousios.

To be clear, I am not arguing that CSM is meant to be read through a Catholic lens, and I doubt Fujimoto had all of this in mind when he wrote it (though he must have thought something, given that he drew a very large print of Gustave Dore's "Satan descends upon Earth" in Makima's entranceway!). But there is something primal (primordial?) about the Lord's Prayer. If every reader can understand the horror that the Darkness Devil represents, so too we can understand the intimacy and comfort of the Lord's Prayer. It is, as Oliveira writes, "a simple peasant's mantra for detoxing anxiety." Jesus opens by addressing God as father—not king, not an all-mighty spiritual being, but rather "abba, which is rather closer to 'dad,' and not in the intercultural Greek of his adulthood, but the Aramaic of home and childhood." The Lord's Prayer asks for what we always want, the only thing any of us have ever wanted since leaving the womb as infants: for no bad things to happen, for there to be enough to eat.

Even if what we have to eat is another person.

At the center of the Christian liturgy is the Last Supper, and at the center of the Last Supper is a meal that functions as ritual, abomination, accusation, transubstantiation, paranoia, and an early example of cracking open a cold one with the bros. Here, Jesus shares bread and wine with his disciples and then, as if trying to invent r/creepypasta years before its time, informs them they are actually eating his flesh and blood. This image is so powerful and heretical that the Romans accused early Christians of being cannibals. And why shouldn't they? It's there in the text. "Take, eat. This is my body. This is my blood." Stripped of the grandeur of tradition and ritual, this is downright vampiric. And yet it goes on to become the cornerstone of the Christian faith.

Oliveira begs us to see the Last Supper as a family meal, one shared by Jesus and his found family. "All he is really saying is, 'I hope when you eat together, you remember me.'" It's a good reading, one that moves me to tears, and is the framework through which I see the events of chapter 80. Because Makima is not the first time that Denji "consumes" a friend, and I don't just mean him sucking Power's blood or taking Pochita into himself. When Aki died, he left half his fortune to Denji, who uses it to support himself and Power. They "pigged out on good food," he tells us. This is Aki's symbolic body, through which he provides Denji his daily bread. Eat ice cream and onigiri in remembrance of me.

But it is not how I see the events of chapter 96. Denji does not eat Makima in the context of a feast. He does not partake of her in a communal meal, as Jesus did, among his found family. He eats every bite of Makima alone. Jesus said before his death, "this is my blood, which is shed for many." Yet Denji says to Makima, I alone will absolve you alone of your sins. I alone will bear you alone.

Denji's Last Supper is a lonely remembrance. He is hoping that no one but him will remember her. He is hoping to wholly consume her, because he loves her. "We love as cannibals," French philosopher and activist Simone Weil wrote. "Beloved beings . . . provide us with comfort, energy, a simulant. They have the same effect on us as a good meal. . . . We love them, then, as food." In fact, Weil believed we cannot love any other way. As humans, we are forever doomed to want to eat the ones we love. In order to escape, we must both be devoured by God and then become food for our fellow human beings. As Alec Irwin writes of Weil's philosophy, "the devouring violence of God must be positively harnessed in order to dismantle the machinery of human cruelty."

If Weil is right and being devoured is transformation, a crucial part of salvation, then in eating Makima, Denji redeems her. He turns her into food to break the cycle of her cruelty. For Makima's power itself is consuming, cannibalistic. She "eats" humans in order to use her power, which remains mysterious like God moving across the face of the earth, leaving only broken corpses as a sign of its presence. So it must be Denji, not Chainsaw Man, who does the consuming. If Pochita had consumed her, as she had always prayed for, then it would simply be another act of violence being enacted. Instead, Denji gives her salvation by turning her into human food—his food.

To Denji, Aki was human, his family, his brother, his friend. It is Makima he loves as a God and a woman. To him, she is Satan and God, his betrayer and his creator, his salvation and his friends' damnation. So he must take her, consume her, digest her, excrete her, reduce her to nothing, as she once consumed and excreted and reduced him. "I ate her to become one with her." He ate her to become her. There is no truer form of his love than for Denji to take Makima into himself. I use those words purposefully, because this is the rejection of classic cishet PIV penetration, that old hoary chestnut of men inside women. As Don Delillo famously outlines in White Noise, we talk about sex as if women are containers, rooms, elevator lobbies: "He entered me," "I want him inside me," "I took him into myself." Denji and Makima never have physical sex, but this is a consummation, a reversal of roles. We are given the only sex that Shounen Jump will allow us, with Denji taking Makima into himself. She enters him. She is inside him. He is—physically, emotionally, willingly—penetrated by her flesh. She is released inside of him, becoming part of him.

Because the divine is full of moments like this, isn't it? Of two things existing at once, in one. That is the kingdom and the power and the glory. For Makima now lives in that country inhabited by God, where loving and eating are one and the same. For that country is none other than Denji's body.

In conclusion:

Substitute Makima for "God", and the preceding statements are still rigorously accurate.

Further Reading:

Anthony Oliveira's ongoing podcast reading the Gospel of Mark (Patreon exclusive, but I highly recommend, even/especially if you are a heathen like me)

Hannibal (NBC)

Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson, An Interview with Jacques Derrida on the Limits of Digestion

David Farrell Krell, "All You Can't Eat: Derrida's Course, "Rhetorique du Cannibalisme (1990-1991)." Research in Phenomenology, vol. 36, 2006, pp. 130–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24660636.

Alec Irwin, “Devoured by God: Cannibalism, Mysticism, and Ethics in Simone Weil.” CrossCurrents, vol. 51, no. 2, 2001, pp. 257–272. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24460795.

#chainsaw man #cannibalism as love #love as cannibalism

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metellastella · 3 years

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ATLA Meta: Power Differences

So, there’s a TV Trope that at first I thought might fit with ATLA. ‘Conservation of Ninjitsu.’ It is where, no matter how many guys a person is fighting, they always come out on top. In any world, realistic or fantasy, with no superpowers, this is obviously unrealistic. Samurai and martial artists of the past could excel, sure, but if they were going up against another army, they had to have the numbers. This trope is called ‘Old as Dirt’ because even in Roman mythology it’s mentioned that one warrior ceasing to fight within a battle turned the whole tide. In media this narrative device tends to play out as the ‘hero’ or hero’s team being able to keep up with multiple nameless mooks, no matter how well trained in martial arts they are.

Think, Ninja Turtles versus hordes of Foot Clan.

ATLA is an interesting twist to this, because you’d expect benders to at the very least knock out lots of nonbenders. Those with powers should overwhelm those without, right? And yet, we see the second highest ranking person in the Fire Nation choose nonbenders as her primary fellow combatants! I’ve given a plausible explanation for this with Ty Lee.

In my fic, she has unique senses that allow her to excel past even most benders in hand-to-hand combat. She can track the movement of their gathering chi, and therefore predict what their resultant move will be. And she can also sense chi pathways, so she strikes with a sure hand. For Mai, I haven’t come up with anything specific. But, I encourage you to note, against benders, the necessity of taking up a ranged weapon like throwing stars and knives, as opposed to a close to the body sword or anything like that. Whether Suki was unusually skilled, or over-confident, or thought she had the numbers, or merely desperate in challenging Azula with a katana, that is up to the viewer’s opinion.

In my fic, I also explain how a nonbender might fight or defeat or disable (or kill) a bender, and extrapolate on how firebenders in particular MUST use non-bender techniques if they are to be truly effective in combat.

Did Suki ally herself with benders in other situations? Was Kyoshi wiped of benders like the South Pole? But their leader said that they stayed out of the war. Surely the original KW were benders? Why are there no adult Kyoshi Warriors?

Anyway, I’ve always liked ATLA because the ‘superpowers’ were subtle, and not truly ‘superhuman.’ It not only made the characters somehow more relatable, it blended with the world better and the stakes felt higher when they couldn’t just keep taking hit after hit like your typical superhero. Katara got knocked out in the North Pole, for instance.

So, this all still begs the question, given the scene where Zuko rescued Iroh from earthbenders, are there vast power differences between benders? Are the ‘heroes’ merely good at fighting because of that narrative device I mentioned earlier, or is their ability to fight off many foes at once canonically based? We have some clues to this, as Aang got his master tattoos earlier than any other airbender. It’s even explained by the fact that he’s the Avatar. So it’s not just typical Mary Sue OP, it at the very least has an in-world basis.

Azula and Zuko are powerful because Ozai deliberately sought out the Avatar’s bloodline, according to the comics. Which makes total sense for him to do. I don’t give a lot of credence to the comics because of the way it clashes with what the creators originally planned for the Ursa-Ozai relationship, but the reversal of royalty looking to “marry into” a family because of bloodline is interesting and really points up the sheer importance and power of this world’s Avatar.

Toph is OP because she is blind, and that has given her a unique connection to the earth. Katara is the only one without an explanation or justification.

If you don’t count Iroh, which I don’t. He is just OP. No explanation needed. Ok, so, I could spin a yarn about how the current dynasty of the Fire Nation retained their rulership because they are the strongest firebenders in existence. But that would only have tenuous basis in canon.

Just remember that the dude, practically in the nude, put a beat down on earthbenders that had shields for firebending (a very inventive use for those hard coolie-style hats). And that was when he wasn’t in shape like in the finale, or in this fic.

He also, in canon, as has been covered with Sokka in my fic, bested Azula’s hand picked team of men early in Season 2.

(These chapters I discuss here have not been posted to my fic yet, but they have been written. It's just getting the in-between scenes written that still needs doing.)

The idea with powerful benders accruing wealth or power might partially explain Toph. We don’t know if her parents are benders or not- maybe in current cultural mores they genuinely think bending and fighting are low class. But the idea that’s where her strength comes from back in family history would not be as fun as canonical blindness powering her up.

So, just how powerful is Toph?

She resisted Wan Shi Tong’s entire fricking several story stone library sinking.

When being pursued in The Chase, she made a wall that appeared to extend possibly a hundred feet in each direction. So thick, Azula had to resort to lightning just to break through it. I’m pretty surprised that, with only two nonbenders at her side, Azula even decided to keep pursuing THE AVATAR in that tank, going up against him AND power like that.

Speaking of Azula’s motivations. I’m going to freely admit here that this is an interpretation that is probably far away from what the writers were going for in canon, for Azula’s actions. But, I am attempting to look at it in a realistic lens, which is what I’ve aimed to do for everything possible in that fic.

For example, Azula’s refusing the hostage trade between Mai’s kid brother Tom Tom and King Bumi, I’m sure, was SUPPOSED to come off as conniving, cruel, and heartless, by the writers.

The implication was probably supposed to be here, that she would ‘rescue’ her friend’s ‘baby brother’ IF she were a ‘good person.’

However.

Bumi is an incredibly skilled martial artist who has most likely violently defended Omashu from the Fire Nation for an entire one hundred years. He therefore by default, by view of any even casual outside observer, is either powerful, or smart, or both. Azula would know this in detail, studying the war growing up.

He would be one of these OP benders. Like, REALLY OP.

The idea that a leader of her country should free such a dangerous enemy man posing a threat to her people in exchange for a toddler, is utterly ludicrous.

Now, maybe the writers intended the viewer to logic that out. But I doubt it.

Therefore, drawing kidnappers out of hiding to have a shot at rescuing him would be using her smarts in service to Mai and her family.

#Metella's Metas #atla #atla suki #atla ty lee #atla fanfiction #What Meets the Eye by MetellaStella #WMTE #toph #azula #azula stan #ozai's angels

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jadekitty777 · 4 years

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Snapshot Aesthetics

OKAY BUT FG WEEKEND? WHO’S CRAZY IDEA WAS THAT.

You better know I want to participate though xD I didn’t plan to have an entry for today but, well, things change lol

Day 1: Outfits

Rating: K

Words: 2.2k

Summary: Clover's job was simple: Get the model to pose properly, smile, and take the shot. But the new hire, Qrow, was about to throw a wrench into that simplicity... in more ways than one. [Fashion Model AU]

Ao3 Link: Snapshot Aesthetics

Snap!

The sound of his camera shutter going off was almost inaudible under the early morning hustle that had overtaken the studio. Clover inspected the shot of Elm displaying back on his LCD screen. He shook his head, calling to the stagehand, “Lower the forelights! There’s too much washout!”

“You got it boss.” She saluted, stepping off the scene to go tinker with the fluorescents.

Th telltale sound of stilettos had his head turning, seeing Willow striding over, lips pursed with annoyance. “Are we ready yet?”

“Almost.” He assured, showing her the picture. “Just a bit more tweaking on the lights and we’ll be good to go.”

She placed a hand on her hip, scanning the team critically. “Good.”

“Everything alright? You look…” He mulled over all his safe adjective options, “Unhappy.”

She sighed exasperatedly. “Qrow is causing a bit of a ruckus back in dress. Won’t let Kali even do his makeup.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what I was thinking, listening to Taiyang.”

“It’s probably because the new guy’s pretty.” And related to Raven, he thought but didn’t dare utter the runway model’s name aloud. If he did, then it would make his manager think of her ex-husband and Raven’s agent, Jacques Schnee. That was a nasty pandora’s box he’d rather keep closed.

Nevertheless, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time she hired someone simply based on an affiliation they had to someone in Jacques’ team, thinking it as some retroactive way of getting back at him. Taiyang himself was one such decision, also ironically due his connection with Raven. Though, he’d heard the two’s relationship had been more… carnal in nature.

The plus was, Taiyang had worked out great. He was handsome and jovial and easy to direct on set. Clover’s only hope when he learned of the new hire was that the same could be said for Qrow; but, it was sounding like he had his twin sister’s notorious diva-like personality, if Willow’s frustration was anything to go by. Which meant he was in for a long day.

“Light check!” Elm called, flexing both arms proudly like a muscle builder.

He snapped the shot, then nodded at the quality. “Perfect!”

Willow swiveled, heading for the door. “Let’s get started then.”

Over the course of the seven years Clover had worked for Trendy magazine, he’d discovered that each fashion designer had a specific ‘taste’ they were going for when it came to showing off their line-up and he’d learned to pose the models accordingly to keep their clients happy and coming back for each issue. So, he kept certain things in mind with each designer’s desires, like how Sienna preferred her poses to be as dynamic and wild as possible and Camilla wanted proper posture and a bit of elegance.

Unfortunately, today’s clothing line was from Roman and Neo. Which meant balancing the two designers’ conflicting requirements of flamboyance and subtlety into one picture. It tended to lead to a lot of small changes for limb placement and expression before he ever even rose his camera.

So, it tended to be a relief when the snap sounded off and he said, “Alright, you’re done!”

“Oh, thank god!” Tai slumped over immediately, rolling out his shoulders. “I think my neck has a crick in it.”

Clover snorted. “Alright drama king. Go take a break.” He turned towards the doorway, calling, “Who’s next up?”

He heard Kali’s faint, “Get in there. And stop messing with your hair!”

A gruff voice he didn’t recognize replied, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Before Qrow Branwen walked into the room and stole his breath away.

Though he’d joked before, Clover hadn’t actually known what the man had looked like. He rarely did see new models before their first shoot. But now that he was, it had to be said that maybe Willow had indeed hired Qrow simply for his beauty. In almost every way, he was like a softer version of his sister. Where her skin was striking alabaster white, his had more of a welcoming ivory tone. Where her eyes were bright scarlet, his were a gentle vermillion. And where her hair was an ink black, his held streaks of dusty grey that somehow was just enough to make him appear refined, but not old.

Combine that with Roman and Neo’s classy “modern early-1900’s” style, and he looked absolutely dazzling. It was one of their simpler pieces, but dress had made sure he wore it well, especially with the plain, long-sleeved, white dress shirt that someone had decided to undo the top few buttons off to frame a cross necklace hanging sideways. Pulled over that and adding some muted color was a double-layered vest that buttoned from the bottom of the ribs down. The inner layer was a slate grey while the outer layer was a deep charcoal and had a tasteful embroidery design flowing down the sides. The matching dark grey slacks were fairly standard but nicely fitting to the man’s ridiculously long legs. Completing the picture were some shiny cap-toed black dress shoes.

“So uh, how do you want me?” Qrow asked, fidgeting with the cross-shaped cufflinks of his shirt.

Splayed across my bed. Clover shook himself of any indecent thoughts, nodding towards the set that mimicked an old parlor room. “Center stage, leaning back on the table.”

He nodded, crossing the room.

As they passed each other, Tai offered a thumb’s up and a cheery, “Good luck!”

The little half-grin Qrow offered his friend left Clover floating.

Not that the other man was going to need any well wishes, as he’d decided on something fairly simplistic. As Qrow took position, he directed, “Alright, I want you to rest your hands on the table, in view. Keep your fingers spread out.”

“Like this?” He settled them by his hips.

“Mm no. Spread your arms further apart. Position your hands the other way, pointing opposite directions. Yeah – like that! A little more for the right hand. Relax your shoulders more. No, no not that much.” And on and on it went, as Clover altered each little angle and body part until he had the exact position in mind. Yet, despite the ease of what he was asking for, Qrow’s inexperience meant he had to spend twice as long getting things just right.

It quickly became clear by his 60th order that the older man was growing a bit exasperated.

Clover eyed him up and down. Hummed thoughtfully at the position of where his ankles crossed, the toe of one dress shoe pointed down. “Okay, tilt your left heel just a bit more.”

“Is all this really necessary?” Qrow grumbled, trying not to move anything else but his foot.

“When the client is picky, yeah. And stop clawing your fingers. Keep them flat.”

The other man breathed in and out slowly, carefully resting down his hands.

He gave him another once over. Frowned.

The tension he could easily see doubled as Qrow demanded, “What now?”

“Maybe we should try something different.” He considered.

The words were met with Qrow groaning out, “You got to be kidding me.”

And Willow cutting in, “Go with it. We got to get this shoot done before noon!”

He glanced at his wristwatch. Shit, was it really almost eleven? He still had four other designs to go. “Yeah, alright. Qrow, just try to relax your muscles a bit.” He rose his camera. “Alright, now smile.”

He did, stretching it as big as he could.

Clover looked at him over the lens, raising a brow. “I said smile, not look like you’re trying to imitate clown make-up.” Ignoring the other’s sarcastic laughter, he mulled it over, then snapped his fingers. “Ah, I know! Give me the same one you gave to Tai when you first walked in.”

He could tell it wasn’t quite right when it didn’t have the same cloud nine effect on him as before, but with the clock ticking in his head, he took the shot.

“Alright, that’ll do.” Clover said.

“We’re done?” Qrow asked, not moving an inch, as if worried he’d change his mind.

“Yep. You’re free as a bird.”

That earned him a real laugh. “That was awful!”

For the hell of it, he took another shot.

There was always such a sense of relief when Clover submitted the photos to processing. From there the team would do whatever touch ups were necessary before it went in for print. Normally, the rest of his day was done, but he had another engagement at a rally across town that would keep him busy well into the evening. So, he found himself stepping into the break room, intent on grabbing a cup of coffee and heading on his way.

He was surprised to find Qrow there, huddled in one of the corner tables. He was dressed down, back in his casuals, but still managed to make a t-shirt and some slacks look like runway material. They met gazes briefly, before the elder man’s eyes dropped back to his phone, not saying a word.

Already short on time, Clover was content to leave it like that, but as he finished mixing his coffee together, guilt seeped in. If they were going to be working together, then one of them had to take the first step and it was much harder for the new guy to take it.

“You did good today.” He spoke.

Qrow scoffed. “You kidding? I was a disaster.” He groaned, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll be lucky if they ask me to come back.”

Ah. So, he wasn’t a snob - he was insecure. Clover could work with that.

“Ah come on. It wasn’t that bad.” He crossed the room, turning the opposite chair sideways and falling into it. “You’re just a little stiff. A few more of these and you’ll relax.” He paused, then added, “Oh, and take it a little easy on the people in dress.”

“They were trying to poke my eye out! Whoever invented eyeliner is a demon.”

He guffawed heartily. “It’s not that bad.”

Qrow sighed, ruffling a hand through his hair. “Still, I don’t know what I was thinking, letting Tai convince me to take this job.”

Seemed Tai was doing a lot of that lately.

“I’m not a model. That’s my sister’s gig. And…” Qrow gestured to himself. “I mean, look at me.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure it must get tiring getting all those calls from Mr. Universe asking you to come reclaim your crown.” He countered.

“Tch, if anyone’s got a crown to go reclaim, it’s probably you.” A second later, he seemed to realize what he said and hid his face in his hand. “Oh my god, I didn’t just- I’m sorry, that was inappropriate.”

Clover couldn’t stop grinning. “Relax gorgeous. You’re in the right business to be making comments like that.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Don’t feel so bad, either. You’re not the only one self-conscious around here. Winter? Breaks out before every shoot. James? Has a scar right here.” He ran a finger above the line of his right eyebrow. “And by now, we’ve got to be giving Tai a complex with how much gets altered in processing.”

“He certainly had a lot to say about last month’s issue.”

“Well, you know, we gotta follow those trends and freckles are in.” He was sure there was a lot of talk on the questionable ethics of digitally changing people’s appearances to portray an unobtainable beauty, but it was a topic he wasn’t too interested in engaging with. In the end, it all just came down to the paycheck and keeping people’s jobs. Because if a model couldn’t sell the clothes they were wearing, then they weren’t going to get to keep modeling them.

Qrow leant back, crossing his arms. “Wonder how much they’ll change about me.”

“Well, they’ll definitely take out those cute wrinkles you get around your eyes when you laugh.”

“I wasn’t laughing?”

“Not in the first shot. But I may have…” He shrugged sheepishly. “Taken another one, right at the end? You looked more natural.”

Qrow blinked. “Well. Alright then. Guess that’s why you’re the expert.” His gaze drifted past Clover’s shoulder at about the same time he heard the footsteps. “Hey Tai. All done?”

“Yeah.” The blond replied as he stopped at their table, eyeing him suspiciously. “Hopefully the company flirt wasn’t giving you trouble.”

“Oh sunshine,” Clover drawled, playing it up as he bat his eyelashes at the other man. “I hope you know you’re my one and only.”

He snorted, rolling his eyes. “Save it for the guys actually swinging your way.” He nodded to his friend. “Come on, we better get moving if we want to get the girls on time.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Qrow stood. “It was nice meeting you Clover.”

“Same here. Looking forward to working with you.” He replied sincerely. A pleasant little warmth tingled through him when the sentiment earned him an adorable smile.

As he watched him go, Clover cast his earlier worries aside and decided that this truly was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

#clover ebi #qrow branwen #fair game #fairgameweekend2020 #rwby #fanfiction #Chase Firekitten's Tale

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apenitentialprayer · 4 years

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Hi, are there any catholic theology books you could recommend? I really want to dive deeper into my faith and be ready when somebody tries to bad mouth Catholicism or spread false information. I feel like I should know more than I do? Idk if that makes sense😅

I’m not sure how many books I can recommend that are straight up theology, but I’ll recommend a few, sure! I’m going to start with two that I haven’t actually read yet but have heard good things about; after that, I’ll talk about books I have read and can confirm. First, all of my siblings were given this book the years of their Confirmations; Joe Paprocki’s The Bible Blueprint: A Catholic’s Guide to Understanding and Embracing God’s Word, which is pretty much exactly what it says: a guidebook to learning how to read Scripture. It explains how Catholics view the Bible to be structured, explains different interpretive lenses Catholic theologians have used in analyzing the texts, and ways to quickly locate and reference passages. Likewise, I have heard good things about Matthew Kelly’s Rediscovering Catholicism: A Spiritual Guide to Living with Passion and Purpose, which attempts to bring the essentials of the faith into one easy to read book. I’m looking at the table of contents of my copy now, and among the subjects that the book covers is the basic philosophy of Catholicism, an attempt to describe how to live out an authentically Catholic life, and the practices that are the pillars of a Catholic’s spiritual life. As I have already said, I haven’t read this book, but I have read another of his (which I will recommend next), so I can confirm he is a clear writer. Onward to what I have read.... Matthew Kelly also wrote The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity: How Modern Culture is Robbing Billions of People of Happiness. A very click-baity title, I know. But the book nonetheless has what I thought was a life--changing idea; that as saints in the making, we shouldn’t be worried about the fact that our lives are not continuous streams of holiness. Rather, what makes a saint a saint is that they seize the chance to make moments holy as the opportunities present themselves. Kelly tries to explain how to find those moments where grace presents itself in our lives, and choose to act on those moments. Not so much theology as Christian living, but still, a good (and quick) read. Hilda Graef wrote two books that I am a huge fan of. The first is titled Adult Christianity, and its primary objective is to elaborate on a worldview beyond the “God is the king in the sky who rules all of creation” image. The book tackles the subjects of what it means to believe in a transcendent God, the use of symbolism in religious language, the significance of Christ and how we encounter Him spiritually and in the personhood of our neighbors, and suffering, death, and resurrection. The other one she wrote is The Commonsense Book of Catholic Prayer and Meditation, which talks about the nature of Catholic prayer, the pitfalls many Catholics fall into, and some suggestions concerning methods and guildelines, as well as elaborations upon Eucharistic theology, the cardinal virtues, and praying alongside the liturgical calendar. G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith isn’t really theology in the normal sense of the word, but it nonetheless represents a very important worldview in that it beautifully explains the sense of wonder faith can bring. As the title suggests, Chesterton saw faith primarily through the lens of romance and adventure, and so he emphasizes the fantastical, the paradoxical, the heroic, and the revolutionary elements of Christianity. This is less of an intellectual discussion on Christianity, but more about the mood that faith is capable of producing. Hilaire Belloc wrote a book called The Great Heresies; as the name gives away, it isn’t so much about Catholicism as many of the great movements that have challenged Catholicism (Arianism, Islam, Albigensianism, Protestantism, and Modernism). Nonetheless, what Belloc does is use the differences between Catholicism and these movements to talk about the philosophical underpinnings of these competing theologies. My biggest takeaway from this book is that even seemingly small theological differences can created profoundly different worldviews. I’m going to give you one more modern author before I take a step into the past; Caryll Houselander is the author of one of my favorite books, The Passion of the Infant Christ. This book is important for its concept of the inscape; essentially, the world is patterned after the Life of Christ, which itself is patterned after the Passion of Christ. It’s a good introduction to the concept of typology, but beyond that we have a book with a special reverence for the sacramental aspect of our faith, as well as some profound insights on the Eucharist and how each individual is a mother of the Christ-life. I don’t think I can overestimate how impactful this book was on me. Okay, so now books from the early Church Fathers, which you can find online. I’ll provide links for all of these. The first is one that literally everyone will recommend you; The Confessions of Augustine of Hippo. The book is structured as an autobiography, the story of how Augustine ultimately found the truth of and joined the Catholic faith. It talks about his experiments in philosophy and religion, his relationship with his mother, and the tensions he experienced in his attempts to find God while living a life of fornication. Interspersed throughout are his own observations and thoughts about the nature of God, humanity, sin, and salvation. (X) You might also be interested in his City of God, which is a massive door-stopper of a book that is part Biblical commentary, part history of the world as told through a theological lens, and part defense of Christianity against angry pagans. (x) After that, I’d recommend Athanasius of Alexandria’s On the Incarnation, which provides a short outline of the fall of humanity and its redemption through God’s decision to assume human nature. Athanasius talks about not only why the Incarnation happened, but also how this helps to solve the problem of sin and redemption, and argues against certain arguments made by detractors. (x) Justin Martyr’s First and Second Apologia are two short works that try to justify Christianity in the eyes of the pagan society that he was addressing. He tries to explain some of the similarities between Christian and ‘heathen’ mythology, attempts to show how the great pagan philosophers anticipated Christ in their writings, and provides arguments for how Christians have improved life in the Roman empire. (X, X)

#asks #Catholicism #Christianity #Hilda Graef #Hilaire Belloc #G.K. Chesterton #The Romance of Faith #Caryll Houselander #The Passion of the Infant Christ #Confessions #Saint Augustine #Saint Athanasius #Justin Martyr

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trackmag · 4 years

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Turtle Doves And Pigeon Shit

Romanticism And James Blake`s Can`t Believe The Way We Flow

Romanticism could be argued to be outdated, but once we look beyond the clichés and grasp the ideas behind it, we become aware of its relevance today; In how we live, in what we believe in and argue about.

James Blake released the album Assume Form in 2019. He so far has released 5 Music Videos alongside it, one of which is the video for “Can`t Believe The Way We Flow” directed by none other than Frank Lebon. Frank`s approach to his videos and work so far has been a lush and somewhat wild mixture of techniques and media, leaving him with a massive pot of footage and tools for the hours he spends editing. To some degree even this approach of mixed media is in a sense very true to the fashion, believe and tradition of romanticism. This and many other aspects of the video, is what I hope to discuss and further investigate in the following TRCKMG entry.

Still 01, Can`t Believe The Way We Flow, 2019.

A Short Introduction To Romanticism

Romanticism. I am not referring to roses, boxes of chocolates and the numerous red silk bows we see on valentine`s day. I hereby am referring to an epoch also known as the romantic period. Speaking roughly of romanticism we think of a time between the end of the 18th towards the end of the 19th century. This slice of our history is marked by many very major political and cultural events across Europe and the globe. Some worth mentioning here would be the French revolution (which is often believed to be a starting point of the French romanticist movement) and the industrialization, marked by heavy machinery, steam engines, factories and therefore factory labour. We do, however, believe that the origin of romanticism as a term and way of thinking lies in Germany. Friedrich Schlegel, a German philosopher, author and poet first used the term “romantisch” believed to be in reference to the word “Roman” which is German for novel. Romantic therefore being “novel-like”.

From there on romanticism spread fast across Europe supported by the events described earlier. More than just a fashion moment, romanticism describes a different way of thinking in direct contrast (and perhaps in protest) to the inhumane labour happening in factories caused by the industrial revolution. People needed to believe in something, in more relevant things, in nature, in purity, in emotion and in beauty. So not surprisingly romanticism manoeuvred like a wave, spreading across fine art, literature, poetry and even medicine. What we can see in many paintings of that time, are vast and lush landscapes. Nature at its most triumphant, often alongside a tiny human figurine, humbled by mother nature, reminding the human of his place and scale in this world. This emphasized by the Lyrics in the song: “I`m finding I`m a smaller piece than I thought. Oh no I really am”. Even back then, the immediate threat facing the natural world was carefully depicted in William Wordsworth`s poetry with the arrival of factory buildings and nearby compounds of living quarters for the workers.

Painting by Hans Gude, “Fra Hardanger”, 1847.

With this surface level introduction to romanticism, we now can take a closer look at the actual Music Video for “Can`t Believe The Way We Flow”:

Act One: Red Lit Couples

Still 02, Can`t Believe The Way We Flow, 2019.

The Video starts off with a zoom into a mirror. The reflective image reveals James sitting on a bench. The continuation of the zoom is made with invisible cuts while dark silhouettes pass by, covering James for a mere flash of a blacked out frame. He appears closer and closer after each such black-out. Meanwhile you can hear the pigeons take flight, signalling a start to the song and video - take off. And with the first pigeon shit landing on James` cheek, it`s clear the video with its main plot now begins and the subjects appear.

The 2nd time we hear Can`t Believe The Way We Flow in the Lyrics, the lips of the red lit couples meet. The images flashing by are fragments of their lives in relationships. We aren`t meant to immediately understand who they are, where they`re coming from and maybe more importantly what exactly they`re up to. We only see aspects that should be familiar to anyone who`s ever been in a relationship. For instance, being the most intimate during breakfast where spontaneous conversations can leave you happy as ever or absolutely gutted and devastated, maybe also depending on what occured the night before.

Another place where we find a kind of intimacy where the shared space really gets noticeable to us as lovers, is the bathroom. Apart from the hints of breakfast scattered throughout the video there`s also the toilet. Waste. The toilet which stereotypically always seems to spark arguments. Flush the damn thing, put the seat down, put it up and then down. But it`s also the same space in which we share our toothpaste, standing in front of the mirror before bed. Leading conversations whilst getting ready to go out together. The point being, these images are highly familiar and highly emotional to us. The small window in which Frank lets these images flash across our screens is enough for us to recognize and connect. These are couples in their banalities. We aren`t meant to understand how they got there and where they`re going. We`re supposed to draw from our own experiences, our own relationships when seeing these fragments and glimpses into their lives. It`s a reflection. We still are looking into that same mirror from the first shot of the video, remember?

Still 03, Can`t Believe The Way We Flow, 2019.

Cut between the kisses is a 2D animated kiss, in the same style as the quick drawing we saw flash by on a table earlier. It might be a glimpse into the Storyboard for the video, adding another layer and texture to the visuals. This approach alone can also be read as a nod to romanticism as there was a high exchange between different media and artists. Poets and painters, novelists and sculptor. All echoing and responding to eachother`s work.

Throughout all of this we see James remain seated on that same bench, from the very first frame of the video. An observer. In romanticism, as a response to the capitalist mentality, the flâneur describes a person seen wandering around with nowhere to be or go. Observant, most likely unemployed, playful and sensitive to his surroundings. James is very likely maintaining this role in the video. The careful bystander, observing the beauty around him. Beauty that lies hidden for most others in their hectic lives.

Act Two: Pigeons, Cupid and a Gun

Still 04, Can`t Believe The Way We Flow, 2019.

A culmination of shots of pigeons (and some seagulls) in flight. Close-up of a pigeon`s face, slowly revealed to be sitting on someone`s head. This someone is Frank Lebon`s dad, photographer Mark Lebon. Here he`s also cupid. A cupid who has aged and traded his bow and arrow off for a knotted sniper gun.

Cupid is often described as a winged, nude, young boy armed with bow and arrow. He`s usually depicted as somewhat cruel and mischievous, very aware of what emotional turmoil he can cause in people. Cupid as a figure derives from roman mythology and is considered to be the god of love, or rather the god of being in love. The roman cupid is also understood to be somewhat based on the Greek god Eros, who some believe was a son to the goddess Venus. Eros and Cupid can`t be defeated, any- and everyone falls victim to them and their power. In the following painting, artist Julius Kronberg captured Cupid in his full demeanour in 1885, so towards the end of classic romanticism:

Painting by Julius Kronberg, Cupid, 1885.

Now in comparison to Frank`s take on Cupid we immediately notice the age difference. The world in many ways has become what romanticists had feared; Industrial, concrete, consumerist. Perhaps Cupid had to adjust to survive? Lose his wings and grow up. Wrapped in what seems to be a pvc jacket, not unlike the medical protective suits we currently see a lot. His outfit also contains sketches and scribbles of genitalia. Colours white and red, famously used in the medical field, also symbolizing purity, lust, sin and romance. He`s also wearing red earrings and cufflinks decorated with a more traditional depiction of cupid.

The gun on the other hand, knotted, could also be a nod to the Non-Violance sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, which is in New York. Perhaps a rather twisted musical reference, as that sculpture was made in remembrance of John Lennon. The seemingly unusable gun however, does hold a heart shaped scope through which the absent minded and complacent looking Cupid is aiming to find his next victims.

Enrolling the pigeons to take over the flying and firing arrows part, they soon after take flight once again and a montage of numerous pigeon shit landings are shown, including another drawn Animation of the pigeons` droppings turning into a falling human figurine. Perhaps falling, as in falling in Love, falling for you. Cupid bringing or rather dropping this person into your life. This sequence is concluded by acts of violence followed by tenderness. A slap, a hit, like when love “hits” you. Shortly followed by a gentle caress of the cheek, as though nothing ever happened. So in love that you`re not aware of the violence and force it potentially holds. Another short Animation, single flower turns into a tree, which transforms into a couple in love, a heart in the middle.

Act Three:

Cut to seagulls instead of doves above James. Perhaps accentuating him to be different from all others around him, once again emphasizing his role as flâneur? Or maybe it`s just a subtle teaser for his following music video for I`ll Come Too, which was the next release, featuring a penguin and an albatross.

The couples, still lit in red are holding hands, and then facing the camera. Every individual on their own, staring into the lens, or at their partner. Keeping the mirror in mind from the beginning, this is another very common way for cinema, film and video to become reflexive (film with self-awareness) challenging the viewer in their passiveness and voyeurism.

Still 05, Can`t Believe The Way We Flow, 2019.

The doves once again present by appearing as illustrations on the cushions of one couple. All the people involved appear in lettering over the faces of the couples, including a cameo by the director. Another beautifully added layer to this multimedia approach that lends it`s charm and texture to the entire complex romantic experience.

There`s so much more to see and discover in the video than what I have tried to contain in this analysis. I do hope you`ll go on a search yourselves. The video for James Blake`s song Cant Believe The Way We Flow is linked below:

youtube

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disworl · 4 years

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Alive, indefinitely.

So, since I’ve been dutifully informed that since this is my blog and I can post hwhatever I want, I thought I’d talk a little about my ‘fic ‘Alive, indefinitely’.

The ‘fic was birthed by me realizing the implications of Hussie’s revision that all burgundy bloods have the ability to commune with the dead. For the most part, I dislike his changes where the trolls from Homestuck proper become near stock representatives of their entire bloodcaste, but at least, this one has compelling subtext instead of just seeming lazy. And it is that the bloodcaste that has the ability to commune with the dead is also the bloodcaste that lives the shortest and is the most likely to have friends and acquaintences who die often.

And who better explore that topic than Aradia? So I wrote the ‘fic, and it did branch out to be about her, partially as her role as a rustblood on Alternia. And so it grew bigger than just exploring the subtext. I knew I wanted it in little numbered parts that made vignettes, as I’d been working on writing longer stories and was worried I was losing my edge in vignettes and short fiction. Though the resulting ‘fic ended up 1,677 words (I intended to keep it under 1,000, though I’m not disappointed!), I’m still very satisfied with it and think the vignettes work. With the numbering of the vignettes, I also wanted to do an sort of Epileptic Bicycle and start skipping around numbers, to show that there was different amounts of time passing, and that things were happening in between. And because I just thought it was neat. The idea of a story with missing numbered chapters is very compelling. And anyway, I did have a skip, with the penultimate vignette being 5, and the ultimate being 10 (which upon thought really does make the ‘a lifetime later’ after the 10 work out mathematically*), but it played nowhere near as a big role as I would want to. Maybe some other time.

*Which since all the numbers are roman numerals, 10 ends up being ‘x’, which as a symbol is associated with death. I planned none of that (or at least I don’t remember it consciously) but I will take credit, regardless.

II.

For a second I thought Tumblr was more competent than it is, so I tried to insert a line break, but Tumblr is not competent, so have a fancy second section with big roman numerals instead.

Anyway, I’m just going to note and comment on some specific parts of the passage, because I can.

The internet is wide and wonderful, and it is through there that she learns about archaeology, the wonders lying just beneath the ground and thinks, to be an archaeologist would be an awfully grand adventure.

What Aradia thinks is a fairly straightforward play on the phrase, ‘to die would be an awfully grand adventure’. It's a neat way to both tie back the theme, and it also spared me from figuring out exactly how to phrase it.

She finds especially good company with one boy, his troll tag resting at the top of her chumproll. He’s a rustblood like her, a bit reserved but passionate about the mystery book he’s writing. Occasionally he sends her snippets from it, and while it’s a bit clumsy, he is always eager to hear about her archaeological expeditions, so she never mentions it.

When I wrote this part, I suddenly realized I needed an unnamed rustblood to die. I also realized it would be a good idea to also characterize him a little bit before killing him off, so you get at least the idea of what his and Aradia’s relationship was like, so I decided to use one of my long-derelict fantrolls.

So she starts to rebel. She grows her hair out, longer than the modest shoulder-length cut she had before. She lets it become wild, a sign of her own spirit and power. She starts painting her lips and lining her eyes in burgundy, a mockery of the high bloods who wear their blue hues as a fashion statement.

This is a combination of two of my headcanons about Alternian society: that long, wild hair is seen as a sign of power and sexuality (as expressed by the Condesce and other highbloods), and that wearing hemo lipstick and eyeliner is a high blood fashion trend.

When she is five sweeps old, she makes another close friend. He’s a bit shy, but unapologetic about what he likes – his fiduspawn collection, pupa pan, FLARPing – and that, as much as she loves Sollux, is a breath of fresh air.

Tavros is often done dirty by fanfic and fan-interpretations of Homestuck, and it often intertwines with apologism for Vriska and her abuse of him. He’s treated as a perpetually and naturally weak and insignificant, when having a person who is abusive like Vriska will make anyone unsure and rattled like that. It takes some digging, as the majority of Homestuck takes after Vriska’s batted around Tavros for quite a while, but underneath her abuse (and the effects from that abuse at the hands of Alternian culture) it’s clear that he’s still that unapologetically dorky kid, and even cocky at times. In his trollhandle adiosToreador, he’s not the Toreador - he’s the bull. And hopefully I could express that well in the space that I could.

She befriends Karkat through Sollux, and Terezi through Karkat, and it’s through Terezi that she learns about Vriska.

This is one of several sentences in this ‘fic that employ a certain sense of repetition and rhythm. Part of that is because it gives a motif of time, which is tied to death and destruction in Homestuck, and the other half is because I just... really like writing ‘em.

She still talks with Tavros, however, but now he’s uncertain, hesitant and ashamed, and a fair number of times when she trolls him he doesn’t reply, and when he does more than anything he talks about the things he’s experienced in his dreams, and she knows exactly who has been trolling him even if he doesn’t say it and –

– and Aradia watches her friend become a living ghost, bit by bit.

This is place where I forwent canon the most, earning the ‘fic its ‘mild timeline fudgery’ tag. Throughout writing this ‘fic I constantly had a tab open to either a page in Homestuck or the wiki, or both, in order to make sure I stayed as accurate to Alternian culture that I could (at least, in Homestuck proper). While there were a lot of gaps that I got fill in for myself, it’s just plain canon that Aradia sends the ghosts after Vriska immediately after she knows that Tavros is likely going to be paraplegic for the rest of his life. But I had written the sentence already (one of my favourite lines, really), and it just makes for a better story, at least in this ‘fic. So I kept it like that. There’s also a sort of cut-and-paste fudge in that sentence, too. I remembered that Tavros spent most of his time dreaming on Prospit just so he didn’t have to deal with Vriska’s abuse, but as it turns out, it happens after she god-tiers. So I just turned it into regular dreaming and thereby folded into the above canon discrepancy. But it’s definitely based on that later detail.

iv.

The shock of seeing Sollux actually at her hive is quickly overtaken by the shock that courses through her veins right after she realizes what is about to happen, and far too late to do anything about it.

I knew pretty early that I wanted the vignette of her death to be one sentence long, though I certainly ended up stretching that one sentence fairly far. Either way, it’s very isolated from the rest of the ‘fic, which is fairly on-par for the ‘fic style where a particularly hard-hitting or important sentence gets its own paragraph. Anyway, everyone knows how the story ends, and it’s sudden for Aradia, so I think putting it in one sentence both works structurally and artistically.

She’s tired of temporal inevitability.

She’s free of the endless orders and voices of the dead.

She, for the first time in her life, feels truly alive.

Instead of the pale shadows that clung to her hive, the hollow ghosts that people left behind, the dream bubbles are filled with countless iterations of her friends, and numerous others.

But even then, dying and waking up in foreign surroundings is a shock.

And really, there’s no-one else who would be a better guide to greet the dead.

At this point, I feel again, that going into detail would be dragging things out. I also wanted it to feel significantly different from the rest. So, where the other parts of the story are told through a sort of rolling tone of voice, through ‘the lens of age old history’ the rather straightforward sentences here are meant to sound very present.

#Homestuck #Aradia Megido #Fanfiction #Hemospectrum #Long post-#Commentary #Andrew Hussie's Earthbound fanfiction

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 4 years

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Episode 16 Review: Jean Paul’s Latest Detained Guest

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

I wasn’t going to start working on another review until next week at the earliest, but I have been re-watching the Agatha episodes from Desmond Hall and, oh my Great Serpent, are they terrible! I don’t wish to spoil too much of what happens then because those reviews are a long way in the future, but I will say that (1) I can’t stand Agatha Pruitt and (2) while some episodes of Desmond Hall Part I have decent writing, in others the writing is very, very, very bad. I can’t help but feel sorry for the fans of both this show and Dark Shadows in early 1970, because Agatha would have been swanning around Desmondton getting on everyone’s nerves during the same period as one of the least-loved arcs on DS, the Leviathan arc.*

Normally, I would type out my complaints about Desmond Hall in the OneNote notebook where I take screencaps and save them for when I write those episode reviews in a year or two. However, I felt that I had to mention the awfulness of Episode 91 in this post, because that is what compelled me to return from my hiatus early. I needed to remind myself why I like this show enough to dedicate a whole blog to it, and so I took a (metaphorical) trip back to Maljardin to re-watch and review Episode 16.

Our mascot!

On the last episode, Jean Paul hired Reverend Matt Dawson to conduct a funeral service for his wife Erica, still frozen in the cryonics capsule and awaiting her resurrection by THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES. Now Jean Paul--who has changed into a very nice pinstripe suit--is showing Matt the crypt at Maljardin where the capsule is located. “Even with the electrical connections, the compressor and cryonics capsule, I think this probably will be the best place for the service,” he says to the horrified minister. “Don’t you think, Reverend Dawson?” All Matt can do is smile and nod in response while privately questioning the life choices that led to this moment.

He’s probably thinking, “I left my ministry to stalk a 20-year-old full-time for this?!”

Jean Paul continues interviewing him. “You have no objection to a service without a burial?”

“No,” Matt shakes his head. “I have officiated at many such services, where the body is usually placed in the family crypt.” Considering that the vast majority of families don’t have family crypts--at least not in their basements--I think that he’s humoring Jean Paul. After all, he’s seen so many red flags already--the isolated island, the extreme secrecy, Jean Paul’s reluctance to tell anyone about Erica’s death, the whole cryonics/resurrection thing itself, and now his insistence on conducting the funeral service around a cryonics capsule.

He questions the idea that a body held in cryonic suspension can be brought back to life, and Jean Paul continues to deny that Erica is forever dead. He also continues to insist that the usual laws of nature don’t apply on Maljardin, and that on that island he is God:

Yes, Reverend Dawson, your new client thinks he’s God. There’s another red flag for you, Matt, that Jean Paul Desmond is not a client that you want to work for and you should probably cancel the agreement, give up on Holly, and try to get off the island while you still can.

Jean Paul tells him of a man who was allegedly brought back to life after dying in a blizzard, and who lived three decades as “a soulless corpse, like a zombie” before dying again. After saying “zombie,” the camera cuts to Quito who is spying on them, confirming that Quito is indeed a zombie--although, considering that Quito has emotions (which he expresses through body language) and pets whom he clearly loves, the “soulless” part is unlikely.

Did he offend Quito when he called zombies “soulless corpses,” I wonder?

It’s at this point that handsome devil Jacques takes over and starts trolling Matt. “You are a theologian trapped by your own logic and teachings,” he remarks with a mocking smile. “When you run out of answers, look to the fire god. He’s got some new ones, new for even you.” Which goes over about as well as proselytization usually does: that is to say, not at all, especially without one of those poorly-written smiley-face tracts that are absurdly popular with Christian fundamentalists. But Jacques, unfortunately, is straight out of copies of SMILE THE FIRE GOD LOVES YOU and so has to resort to confusing Matt (and us) with non sequiturs instead:

Jacques: “I don’t advocate or procrastinate.” (That has to be a line flub.) “I live and let live.”

I’m surprised he didn’t bring up the age-old theological question about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin and awkwardly try to connect that to the situation as well.

Matt storms out and Jacques stays behind to gloat. “I haven’t had so much fun,” he quips, “since one of my colleagues fiddled while Rome burned.” This reference to the Roman emperor Nero is without a doubt the clearest evidence so far that Jacques is indeed supposed to be the Devil, who at some point came to occupy the body of Jean Paul’s ancestor.

Back in the great hall, Matt returns to stalking Holly, who once again rejects him, because stalking only leads to mutual love and committed relationships in bad romance movies. He insists that he has something important to say to her, and she agrees to listen, but only for five minutes. He insists that Elizabeth doesn’t like him and that he followed her to Maljardin because he “thought [she] might need [him] for protection, guidance, maybe even comfort.”

According to StrangeParadise.net, this is an allusion to a real person, Reverend Harold Davidson, described in more detail on this page. I won’t copy Davidson’s bio on here because of its length, so I’ll just quote Holly by calling him a “lecherous minister.”

She rejects him, he leaves with his proverbial tail between his legs, then she proceeds to mope while sprawled in Jean Paul’s favorite chair for arguing with Jacques. Alison finds her there and asks what’s wrong, so she starts to explain before Matt arrives again and interrupts by insisting that he’s not trying to keep her from her inheritance like she claims. He’s right, but that doesn’t change the fact that Elizabeth is using him to do just that. Now it’s Holly’s turn to flounce, and she does it with more gusto than Reverend Stalker.

He talks to Alison, who fills him in on the whole situation, speaking again about how Jean Paul thinks he’s God and also about how Matt is now a prisoner on Maljardin.

Alison explaining the concept of a detained guest to Matt.

Matt suggests that Alison get Raxl to try to reason with Jean Paul, unaware of how well that didn’t work out a week before, He insists, though, that “perhaps these Tarot cards [that Vangie gave him in Episode 14] will sway her.” Although Alison is skeptical and so is Raxl upon her arrival, that all changes when he gives her the pack of cards and tells her that Vangie said “that [she] should use them for everyone’s good.”

She knows instantly that Vangie has predicted that Maljardin is doomed.

An interesting conversation between the two follows. Matt reveals to her that she should contact Vangie at “the third hour” (3 AM, also known as the “witching hour” or “demonic hour”), which means nothing to him but “everything” to her. She recaps for him about Jacques Eloi des Mondes, the conjure doll, and the silver pin, mentioning that “the power of the Great Serpent made him an eternal prisoner” for three hundred years.

Raxl: “Jacques Eloi Des Mondes! It must be he who walks. It must be!" Matt: "Impossible!" Raxl: "You believe in God, but what about His work?” [I think this is a line flub for “word,” which would make more sense in context.] “I trust the Tarot cards, but what about the words of the woman who reads them?" Matt: "I'm a messenger, not a convert." Raxl: "One conjure doll, one silver pin. If that pin were still driven into that doll's head, we would all be safe." Matt: "Raxl, that is witchcraft!" [And reading Tarot cards--a form of divination--isn’t?] Raxl: "Do you feel safe, Reverend?"

He gazes at the portrait of Jacques without another word until Jean Paul returns, explaining that he had to apologize to Quito after inadvertently hurting his feelings earlier, most likely with what he said about zombies. He asks Matt if he’s started preparing a speech for the funeral service, and an argument erupts between the two of them:

Did I mention yet that Jean Paul is more than a bit of a control freak?

Jean Paul decides that maybe Jacques had the right idea as far as the detained-guest thing went, and so puts the island on lockdown: “There will be no further trips to the main island and no trips even for mail until a matter between the Reverend and his conscience is resolved.”

Jean Paul is a male example of what is known in certain fandoms as a yandere, or a character who is madly in love, enough to hurt and even kill anyone who they believe is standing between them and their love interest.

Meanwhile in the basement, Raxl performs a ritual to contact the Conjure Man using Vangie’s Tarot cards while Quito enters the Not-So-Hidden Temple. And with that, the episode ends.

Raxl and the Tarot cards.

This was an interesting episode, with Matt as the central character for a change. The major theme of this episode seems to be belief, and how, whether seen through the lens of science (Alison), Christianity (Matt), or voodoo (Raxl), Jean Paul’s plans to revive Erica appear crazy at best and dangerous and/or sacrilegious at worst. There’s also the suggestion that Erica might return as a zombie, which does not seem to bother Jean Paul as much as it should (make of that what you will). Did it make up for the badness of Episode 91? Yes. It’s genuinely a good episode, even though some of the lines don’t make sense--but I think that at least most of those are line flubs.

Coming up next: Raxl sends a message to the Conjure Man, so Jacques decides to interfere. Also, Jacques’ portrait becomes much stranger.

Notes

* I don’t know the exact original airdates for most episodes of Strange Paradise. Maljardin aired from October 20, 1969 to January 19, 1970 in Canada according to StrangeParadise.net, but the show premiered in the United States on September 8, making the US six weeks or 30 episodes ahead of Canada. The YouTube user retronewfoundland has the endings of several episodes on their channel with the original Canadian airdates. The nearest episode to Episode 91 that retronewfoundland has a clip from is Episode 84, with the airdate of February 17, 1970 (a Tuesday). This means that (according to my calculations) Episode 91 would have most likely aired in Canada on February 26, and in the US six weeks earlier on January 15. Either date places it contemporary with the Leviathan arc, which lasted from November 14, 1969 to March 27, 1970 (source).

{ <-- Previous: Episode 15 || Next: Episode 17 --> }

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dustydahlin · 4 years

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Transformation and Renewal - Romans 12:1-2

Subject: The goal of this article is to dissect Romans 12:1-2 so as to identify the relationship between worship and transformation. I intend to help you understand how to have a deeper relationship with God, according to this amazing little Scripture.

{Click here to watch the corresponding video}

Remember the Magic Eye Illustrations of the 1990's? Remember how the discordant patterns and vibrant colors overlaid a single picture that was intended to be seen? The entire point of these visual illusions was to see the picture within the pattern. "If you looked at them in just the right way," you would be able to see the intended picture. (Examples below).

{Fun fact:

These pictures encoded Single-Image-Stereograms (SIS's) in colorful and seemingly discordant patterns. The SIS's are simply a series of dots, strategically placed, that would (when looked at the right way) allow the eye to see a 3D image within the pattern.}

It can be the same same way with the Bible. Sometimes, we can get distracted with the inherent beauty of a particular passage, and/or interpret a Scripture according to our own understanding or presuppositions. It seems to me Scripture can (sometimes) be like the Magic Eye Illustrations. We have an idea as to what the surface patterns are, and yet sometimes we have difficulty seeing the pictures composed inside the patterns. Sometimes this can be a difficulty of Scripture. More often than not, Scripture can be pretty straight forward – more or less direct and clear. Yet in certain instances with certain topics – with certain Texts - it can be difficult to ascertain the full picture. We can see the patterns on the surface. We can see the beautiful colors of inspiration, and the divine brushstrokes of grace. However, there are times where we miss the intended picture because we approach the Word through a postmodern worldview (lens). We read into the Text our own cultural, doctrinal, and/or philosophical presuppositions. Like with the Magic Eye Illustrations, there are some Passages that must be “looked at the right way.” We must diligently apply the rules of hermeneutics to our study of God’s word, in order to see the big picture.

I submit, this is the case with our Romans 12:1-2 Passage. After a little bit of study, I have concluded that I have had the wrong understanding of this Text. Up until now, I have only seen the beautiful patterns presented in it, but I have missed the picture that was intended to be seen the whole time. I believe God has a word for us, today, that will not only challenge how we understand this Scripture, but it will grant us a clearer vision of what a it means to have a deep spiritual life and a deep relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ.

looking into the pattern!

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom. 12:1-2; ESV).

Let us look at some of the significant key words of this Scripture for some understanding.

"In view of Gods Mercies" -

Paul emotes! By the Spirit of God, Paul presents an incredibly emotional plea for the believer to view the mercies of God in such a way that it would cause the heart to respond with worship!

"Paul boldly states the truth of God, but here he comes pleading with us! I see him lift the pen from the paper and look around at us and say, 'I urge you, in view of the mercies of God, God's great mercy to you, His many mercies, His continued mercies.' What stronger plea could the apostle have? And what we are to do? We are to present our bodies to God, not our souls along, to make real, practical work of it" (Spurgeon).

The spiritual implication is this: as we reflect upon, rehearse, and make personal the mercies of God, it should provoke the believer to action.

"present your bodies" -

To the Greek, this would have been ground breaking. During this time in history, the Greeks had an interesting mindset. They firmly believed that "the body" was so evil and so pervasively immoral that there was no reason to "even try" to do good with the body. "An ancient Greek never thought of presenting his body to God. They thought the body was so unspiritual that God didn’t care about it" (Guzik). And not just that God didn’t care about it, He wouldn’t want it. They would have been floored that God doesn’t just want the intellect or soul, He desires physical, outward obedience. This is the key phrase to understanding the this whole Passage. Everything flows from this concept. (See Graph Below).

(By Dusty Dahlin)

"a living sacrifice" -

To the Jew, this would have held incredible significance! They would have understood, better than anyone, what God required for a sacrifice. Levitically, before an animal sacrifice could have been offered to God, it had to be deemed "clean, spotless, and without blemish" (Lev. 4: 3, 23, 32; Lev. 1: 3, 10, Lev. 3:1, 6). They would have had no choice but to bring to mind the mercies of God; they would have understood that this was yet another reminder of the grace of God to justify the individual. They would have known that God's mercy was responsible for, first, having cleansed them and made them righteous. They were, in the sight of God, clean and pure – without spot, stain, or blemish. They understood the implication was that they had been made clean and blameless before God. And so now, they were able to give themselves fully to the Lord.

"spiritual worship" -

This can also be rendered "reasonable service." It seems obvious that Paul seeks to conjure to mind the priestly service performed at the temple. The concept which leaves "worship" and "service" synonymously linked is that of the priestly duties which worships God through serving others.

"And" -

In the Greek, the grammar between verses 1 and 2 should be noted. The Greek concludes that both of these verses are inextricably connected. "Verse 2, while grammatically parallel to Verse 1, really explains in more detail how this giving of ourselves as sacrifices is to be understood" (Douglas J. Moo; IVP).

"do not be conformed" -

This is an interesting word. This word is made up of σύν (which means "beside, with, or accompany") and σχῆμα. The word σχῆμα refers to "the habitus, as comprising everything in a person which strikes the senses, the figure, bearing, discourse, actions, manner of life etc." (Blue Letter Bible). Being that the mind is mentioned a little later, we may be tempted to understand this as singularly referring to the mind, intellect, or thought life. This word, however, must be understood as being connected to the whole way of life. This is helpful to understand this in conjunction with the presentations of our bodies to the Lord – not only the presentation of our minds. This command is that of making every effort to keep from falling into the world's systems and patterns of living. While the world would take and take and take, the Believer is to give selflessly of his whole-self. We are not to present our bodies to corrupt worldly pleasures...

"be transformed" -

Again, this word transformed (μεταμορφόω - metamorphoō) is connected to the offering of our bodies – our entire lives – to God. This can be best understood along the lines of sanctification. As we serve God by serving others and pattern our lives after faithful and sincere obedience, we will find ourselves more and more transformed/sanctified. We must fashion not only our thoughts but our actions in loving obedience to Christ. He did, after all, bestow many mercies upon us. Mercy upon mercy, He justified us and made us righteous before him. We can now understand that we are clean, guiltless, and without spot or blemish. We may now live according to His many mercies and be continuously transformed.

“Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Phil. 3:16).

"renewal of your minds" -

Yet again, the concept of “renewing the mind” is juxtaposed to presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Culturally speaking, it is important to know that a Jew would have understood spiritual transformation and the renewal of the mind differently than we. According to Allen Hirsch, a Jew would have understood that transformation of mind would not only include knowing information, it would have also included action (Allen Hirsch; “Forgotten Ways”). In other words, transformation of the mind would have never have been separated from practice. (See Diagram Below).

{By Allen Hirsch, "Forgotten Ways"}

And so, in true fashion, Paul would have had in mind that as one views, learns of, and experiences the many mercies of God, it would lead to transformation as the individual demonstrates this knowledge through a change in behavior, action, and practice. The renewal of the mind, to a Jew, would have been inextricable from action/practice.

“That by” -

other translations render this “So that.” This communicates a result. “That by/So that” shows what the result of presenting your body before God, in serving others, begets.

“may discern what is the will of God...” -

The result of fashioning one's life – thinking, behaviors, speech, and selfless service to others – is the discerning of God’s will. This is incredible! As we sacrificially give of ourselves for the benefit of others, we position ourselves to hear from God and discern His will. As we view glory, love, and mercy of God, and begin to participate with the Holy Spirit in our progressive transformation through serving the needs of others, the ongoing result is that of spontaneous revelations of God’s will for us.

The Big Picture!

Simply put, the believer can position themselves to experience a deeper spiritual life with Christ through service.

Firstly, as the believer engages in expressions of worship that seek to glorify God through serving others, these acts of sacrificial service help to keep the individual from being conformed to the patterns of this world. Service is a powerful way to battle the selfishness of the flesh and combat the enticing luster of the world.

Also, from a place joy – having experienced the mercies of God – the believer is able to participate/cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of transformation and sanctification.

“I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” (Rom. 6:19).

Like in our Passage, this one also speaks to the fact that we get to participate/cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of sanctification. As we make the conscious efforts to present our members (everything we DO in the body) to God, we hike the trail of sanctification. (Also, reference 1 Th. 4: 3 and 1 Peter 1:2).

Secondly, as we worship and glorify God by serving others, we find greater fulfillment and satisfaction in operating under our divinely intended purpose.

Our Romans 12 Passage is riddled with the reality of our new identity and with our priestly calling. We are to understand that, the moment we placed our faith in Jesus Christ, we have been ushered into the “priesthood of believers.” Like it was in under the Old Covenant, we are also to consider our worship and our purpose the same! We are to serve and worship God by serving the needs of the people. As we continuously learn to submit ourselves to the work of Christ through service, we experience the peace and joy of knowing we are operating under what God would ultimately desire of His children.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

Finally, not only is sacrificial service one of the ways that we get to participate in the many blessings and glories given to those of faith, but is holds a promise of hearing from God. If our desire is for a clearer vision and greater insight into the will of God for us, we will position ourselves – through service – to discern the will of God! The result of sincere and sacrificial service is that of receiving spontaneous revelations of God's will.

Additional Recommendations:

“The Letter to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament)”

“Romans (The NIV Application Commentary)”

“A Theology of the New Testament”

“Militant Thankfulness: An Essential Practice to Experiencing a Full Spiritual Life”

#romans 12:1 #renewal of the mind #transformed #transformation

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green-violin-bow · 6 years

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Hawksmoor, BBC Sherlock and historiographic metafiction

First:

This piece is not of academic quality or rigour. I left university eight years ago; I studied literature in two languages and did well at it. Nevertheless I am no longer in academia and have not written an essay since then. My sources are partial, dependent on what I can get access to through my local library, through academic friends, or what I choose to pay for on JSTOR. I work full-time and have put no time into e.g. referencing (always my least favourite part of essays).

Although I personally hold out hope for unambiguous Johnlock still, I would not class this as a ‘meta’ arguing that it will certainly happen. This is a reading, undertaken for my own satisfaction and interest, jumping off from the inclusion of ‘Hawksmoor’ as a password in one scene of The Six Thatchers. I do not particularly mean to suggest that Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat are deliberately playing with/off literary criticism. They may well be holding two (or more) time periods in tension, however, in a way that I choose to explore through the lens of the literary tools described here. I do not seek to challenge or disprove other fan theories.

I am no television/film studies scholar. There are probably layers and layers of nuance and meaning that I’m missing because I simply have no frame of theoretical reference in that field (and one of the primary ‘texts’ we are talking about here is, after all, a television show). The abundance of television and film references discovered by Sherlock fans have made it clear that the show’s creators deliberately allude to other visual media within modern Sherlock all the time. I believe my approach here is valid because Hawksmoor, a literary text, is pointed to in the show, and because ACD canon itself was a literary text. But I want to flag up this important way in which my analysis is deficient.

I tagged a few people in this but I’m aware this is more of a musing/essay than a traditional ‘meta’ so don’t worry about reading/responding if it’s not your thing!

The Six Thatchers

In The Six Thatchers, Sherlock visits Craig the hacker, to borrow his dog Toby. On the left of our screen (taking up an entire wall of Craig’s house, realistically enough…) are lines of code, in the centre of which is written ‘Hawksmoor17’.

I was interested in finding out more about this. I decided my first port of call would be the ‘detective novel’ Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd.

Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd is a historian and author, who has written a huge array of fiction and non-fiction, including:

London: The Biography (non-fiction)

Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day (non-fiction)

The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (an imagining of the diary Oscar Wilde might have written in exile in Paris)

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (novel, presenting the diary of a murderer)

Hawksmoor (novel)

In his work London is present, constantly, a character in itself, woven into the very fabric of the story as irrevocably as it is into the mythos of Sherlock Holmes.

Hawksmoor

In brief, Hawksmoor is a postmodern detective story, running in two timelines. Each timeline focuses on a main character: in 1711, the London architect Nicholas Dyer; two hundred and fifty years later, in the 1980s, Nicholas Hawksmoor, a detective, responsible for investigating a series of murders carried out near the churches built by Dyer.

Ackroyd plays with the ‘real history’ of London throughout, muddling and confusing the past with fictional events, with conspiracy and rumour.

There was a real London architect named Nicholas Hawksmoor who worked alongside Christopher Wren in eighteenth-century London to design some of its most famous buildings. He also designed six churches. Ackroyd chooses to change the eighteenth-century architect’s name to Nicholas Dyer, and to make Nicholas Hawksmoor the twentieth-century fictional detective instead – a deliberate muddling together of timelines and of ‘facts’.

Ackroyd had drawn inspiration for Hawksmoor from Iain Sinclair’s poem, ‘Nicholas Hawksmoor: His Churches’ (Lud Heat, 1975). This poem suggests that the architectural design of Hawksmoor’s churches is consistent with him having been a Satanist.

As well as changing the historical figure Hawksmoor’s last name to Dyer, Ackroyd adds a church, ‘Little St Hugh’. Seven, in total.

The architect Dyer writes his own story, in the first person and in eighteenth-century style.

Only in Part Two of the novel does Nicholas Hawksmoor – a fictional detective with a real man’s name – appear, to investigate the three murders that have so far happened in 1980s London. Written in the third person, the reader is nonetheless invited into Hawksmoor’s thoughts, his point of view.

As the novel proceeds, Ackroyd employs literary devices so that the stories – separated, apparently, by so much time – begin to blur. In particular, the architect Dyer and the detective Hawksmoor are linked. For instance, both men experience a kind of loss of self, a “dislocation of identity”, upon staring into a convex mirror (Ahearn, 2000, DOI: 10.1215/0041462X-2000-1001).

The cumulative effect of all the parallels is that the reader starts to lose any sense of temporal separation between the time periods; starts to see Dyer and Hawksmoor as almost the same person; to suspect each of them of being the murderer and the detective at the same time. The parallels between the time periods “escape any effort at organization and create a mental fusion between past and present” so that “fiction and history fuse so thoroughly that an abolition of time, space, and person is […] inflicted on the reader” (Ahearn, 2000).

Importantly, I believe, Hawksmoor again and again “tries to reconstruct the timing of the crimes, but this is from the start impossible” (Ahearn, 2000). This is a rather familiar feeling to Sherlock Holmes fans.

At the end of the book, Dyer and Hawksmoor come together in the church, take hands across time, or perhaps out of time. They become aware of one another. Their perspectives dissolve and seem to merge into one person, into a new style of narration not like either of them: “when he put out his hand and touched him he shuddered. But do not say that he touched him, say that they touched him. And when they looked at the space between them, they wept” (Ackroyd, 1985).

Historiographic metafiction

Hawksmoor is a postmodern detective story. It has been classified by critics as a work of ‘historiographic metafiction’. As a detective story, it lacks the most familiar feature – a detective who is able to sort and order the events and facts, before finally drawing together all the threads to present a coherent, satisfying and plot-hole-free conclusion. In other words, a solution to the mystery.

So what is ‘metafiction’? Waugh defines it as “a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (1984).

In Hawksmoor, Ackroyd uses a popular literary form (the detective story) to unsettle our understanding of fiction, reality and history. An Agatha Christie detective novel (for example) relies on an accepted, understood structure, where the reader has definite expectations of what the outcome will be; as such, Christie’s novels “provide collective pleasure and release of tension through the comforting total affirmation of accepted stereotypes” (Waugh, 1984). In metafiction, however, there is often no traditionally predictable, neat, satisfying ending: accepted stereotypes are disturbed rather than affirmed. The application of rationality and logic to the clues gets the detective no closer to solving the crime. Readerly expectation (“the triumph of justice and the restoration of order” [Waugh, 1984]) is thwarted.

Hutcheon coined the term ‘historiographic metafiction’, fiction where “narrative representation – fictive and historical – comes under […] subversive scrutiny […] by having its historical and socio-political grounding sit uneasily alongside its self-reflexivity” (Hutcheon, 2002). It is a kind of fiction that explicitly points out the text-dependent nature of what we know as ‘history’: “How do we know the past today? Through its discourses, through its texts – that is, through the traces of its historical events: the archival materials, the documents, the narratives of witnesses…and historians” (Hutcheon, 2002).

Whereas a ‘historical novel’ will present an account of the past which purports to be true, a ‘historiographic metafiction’ has a combination of:

deliberate, self-reflexive foregrounding of the difficulty of telling ‘the whole story’ or ‘the whole truth’ especially due to the limitations of the narrative voice;

internal metadiscourse about language revealing the fictional nature of the text;

an attempt to explain the present by way of the past, simultaneously giving a (partial) account of both;

disturbed chronology in the narrative structure, representing the determining presence of the past in the present;

‘connection’ of the historical period structurally to the novel’s present;

a self-consciously incomplete and provisional account of ‘what really happened’ e.g. via ‘holes’ in the [hi]story which cannot be resolved by either narrator or reader (Widdowson, 2006, DOI: 10.1080/09502360600828984).

The above points are certainly true of Hawksmoor. The reader of Sherlock Holmes will find some of them very familiar – for example, Watson’s self-conscious in-world changing of dates, names and places; and the impossible-to-resolve timeline. The audience of BBC Sherlock will also find these features very recognisable, especially from Series 4 of the programme.

I’d like to examine BBC Sherlock itself as a ‘historiographic metafiction’: a ‘text’ which self-consciously holds the past and present fictional events of Sherlock Holmes’ life in tension, not merely as another adaptation of the source text, but as a way of destabilising the accepted ‘[hi]story’ and mythos of Sherlock Holmes.

The Great Game

The Sherlockian fandom is well-known for its practice of ‘The Great Game’:

“Holmesian Speculation (also known as The Sherlockian game, the Holmesian game, the Great Game or simply the Game) is the practice of expanding upon the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by imagining a backstory, history, family or other information for Holmes and Watson, often attempting to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. It treats Holmes and Watson as real people and uses aspects of the canonical stories combined with the history of the era of the tales' composition to construct fanciful biographies of the pair.” [x]

There are a number of interesting features about the Great Game. It:

pretends that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were real people;

ignores or explains away the real author Arthur Conan Doyle’s existence;

attempts to use ‘real’ historical facts (texts…) to resolve gaps in a fictional text;

in turn, produces additional (meta)fictional texts, often presented as ‘fact’ in journals set up for the purpose;

in so doing, adds constantly to the (meta)fictional destabilisation of chronology and holes in the story, as different, competing ‘versions’ are added by a multitude of authors.

The Sherlock Holmes fandom, as it attempts to elucidate ‘what really happened’, only destabilises the original (hi)story further – drawing attention, over and over again, to the gaps and inconsistencies in the original canon tales.

I would argue that the Sherlock fandom has been engaged, for over a century, in an act of collective historiographic metafiction.

The writers of BBC Sherlock are aware of themselves as fans, and of the wider Sherlockian fandom. They paid tribute to Holmesian Speculation in the episode title of Series 1 Episode 3. The title – ‘The Great Game’ – is a signal, an early marker of postmodernity in BBC Sherlock, a sign that the Sherlockian fandom will not be absent from this metafiction.

Implicating the reader/audience

There is an interesting moment in Hawksmoor where Detective Chief Superintendent Nicholas Hawksmoor goes to investigate the murder of a young boy near the church of St-George’s-in-the-East. The body is beside “a partly ruined building which had the words M SE M OF still visible above its entrance” (Ackroyd, 1985).

As Lee says, the “missing letter is "U," ("you") the reader” (1990).

Elsewhere in the book, Hawksmoor receives a note instructing him “DON’T FORGET … THE UNIVERSAL ARCHITECT” alongside a “sketch of a man kneeling with a white disc placed against his right eye” (Ackroyd, 1985).

Lee suggests that this drawing refers to “detective fiction’s transcendental signifier” Sherlock Holmes, and that the “Universal Architect, here, can only be the reader, since it is he or she who is in possession of all the histories: the historically verifiable past, the eighteenth-century text and the text accumulated through reading”. Thus, the reader is “doubly implicated not only as a repository of the past, but also as a co-creator of artifact and artifice” (Lee, 1990). In the Sherlock Holmes fandom, this is more true than in almost any other; co-creators indeed.

The missing ‘U’ in Hawksmoor can be clearly linked to the daubed ‘YOU’ in ‘The Abominable Bride’, a sign that, from that point on, BBC Sherlock will be clearly and mercilessly implicating its audience; putting the Sherlockian fandom back in the story, where it has always belonged. This includes the writers and creators of BBC Sherlock.

I also think there is reason to link the ‘YOU’ daubed on the wall to another piece of graffiti in BBC Sherlock – the yellow smiley face in 221b. An all-seeing, ever-present audience within Sherlock and John’s very home.

It is often repeated that Arthur Conan Doyle only continued to write Sherlock Holmes stories out of financial necessity and due to public demand; that he was bored and exasperated by his creation. The Sherlock Holmes fandom is (possibly apocryphally) known as having worn black armbands in the street in mourning for the fictional detective when Conan Doyle attempted to kill him off in The Final Problem.

The Sherlock Holmes fandom has long been considered importunate and unruly. As Stephen Fry puts it in his foreword to The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes: “Holmes has been bent and twisted into every genre imaginable and unimaginable: graphic novels, manga, science fiction, time travel, erotica, literary novels, animation, horror stories, comic books, gaming and more. Junior Sherlocks, animal Sherlocks, spoofs called Sheer Luck and Schlock; you think it up, and you’ll find it’s been done before. There is no indignity that has not been heaped upon the sage and super-sleuth of Baker Street” (2017).

And yet, with every new adaptation, there is a tendency to regard it as a blank slate, in direct conversation with the canon of Arthur Conan Doyle. There is a tendency to forget the changes that fandom itself has wrought on the figure of Sherlock Holmes – a weight of stereotype and expectation which warps the character to a pre-fit mould in every incarnation. As Fry says, Holmes:

“rises up, higher and higher with each passing decade, untarnished and unequalled. Because, I suppose, we need him, more and more, a figure of authority that is benign, rational, soothing, omniscient, capable and insightful. In a world, and in daily lives, so patently devoid of almost all those marvellous qualities, how welcome that is, and how grateful we are, for its presence in our lives. So grateful, that we won’t really accept that Sherlock Holmes could ever be classed as ‘make believe’. Between fact and fiction is a space where legend dwells. It is where Holmes and Watson will always live” (2017).

This is the traditional understanding of Sherlock Holmes and its fandom, and is highly reminiscent of the voiceover by Mary Morstan in Series 4 Episode 3, ‘The Final Problem’: “I know who you really are. A junkie who solves crimes to get high, and the doctor who never came home from the war. Well, you listen to me: who you really are, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the legend, the stories, the adventures. There is a last refuge for the desperate, the unloved, the persecuted. There is a final court of appeal for everyone. When life gets too strange, too impossible, too frightening, there is always one last hope. When all else fails, there are two men sitting arguing in a scruffy flat like they’ve always been there, and they always will. The best and wisest men I have ever known – Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.” [transcript by Ariane Devere]

The conception of Sherlock Holmes as “a figure of authority that is benign, rational, soothing, omniscient, capable and insightful” shows what we, the reader, want: a traditional detective story, with an all-knowing detective, who uses rationality and logic to assess the clues and brings us smoothly, at last, to a solution which reasserts the order of things; where justice is done and society is made safe once again.

BBC Sherlock, however, resists these comforting fictions. The detective unravels, becoming more emotional, more human as the story progresses. Mysteries go unsolved. The narrator gets more unreliable with every episode. Characters inhabit strange states, seemingly alive or dead as the story demands. The ‘rules’ of traditional detective fiction are flouted left, right and centre.

Viewed as a historiographic metafiction, BBC Sherlock aims to hold up the historical text (ACD canon) against the modern one (BBC Sherlock) in such a way as to slough away a century of extra-canonical fan speculation and addition, and give a new reading to canon.

‘Writing back’: re-visionary fiction

I would now like to look at Peter Widdowson’s journal article, ‘Writing back’: Contemporary re-visionary fiction’ (DOI: 10.1080/09502360600828984). He argues that there is a “radically subversive sub-set of contemporary ‘historiographic metafiction’” which, while being “acutely self-conscious about their metafictional intertextuality and dialectical connection with the past”, ‘write back’ to “formative narratives that have been central to the textual construction of dominant historical worldviews”.

Widdowson explains that his term ‘re-visionary’: “deploys a tactical slippage between the verb to revise (from the Latin ‘revisere’: ‘to look at again’) – ‘to examine and correct; to make a new, improved version of; to study anew’; and the verb to re-vision – to see in another light; to re-envision or perceive differently; and thus potentially to recast and re-evaluate (‘the original’)” (2006). He points out that this is closest to Rich’s approach to feminist criticism: “We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us” (Rich, 1975).

This act of ‘knowing it differently’ can also be achieved by “the creative act of ‘re-writing’ past fictional texts in order to defamiliarize them and the ways in which they have been conventionally read within the cultural structures of patriarchal and imperial/colonial dominance” (Widdowson, 2006).

Widdowson lays out what he regards as the defining characteristics of re-visionary fiction, first negatively by what it is not:

Re-visionary fiction does not simply take an earlier work as its source for writing;

It is not simply modern adaptation – instead it challenges the source text;

It is not parody – whereas parody takes a pre-existing work and reveals its particular stylistic traits and ideological premises by exaggerating them in order to render it absurd or to satirise the ‘follies of its time’, a re-visionary work seeks to bring into view “those discourses in [the source text] suppressed or obscured by historically naturalising readings. The contemporary version attempts, as it were, to replace the pre-text with itself, at once to negate the pre-text’s cultural power and to ‘correct’ the way we read it in the present” (Widdowson, 2006).

As to what re-visionary fiction is:

First, it challenges the accepted authority of the original. “[S]uch novels invariably ‘write back’ to canonic texts of the English tradition – those classics that retain a high profile of admiration and popularity in our literary heritage – and re-write them ‘against the grain’ (that is, in defamiliarising, and hence unsettling, ways)”. This means that “a hitherto one-way form of written exchange, where the reader could only passively receive the message handed down by a classic text, has now become a two-way correspondence in which the recipient answers or replies to – even answers back to – the version of things as originally delineated. In other words, it represents a challenge to any writing that purports to be ‘telling things as they really are’, and which has been believed and admired over time for doing exactly that.”

Second, it keeps a constant tension between the source and the new text. A re-visionary fiction will “keep the pre-text in clear view, so that the original is not just the invisible ‘source’ of a new modern version but is a constantly invoked intertext for it and is constantly in dialogue with it: the reader, in other words, is forced at all points to recall how the pre-text had it and how the re-vision reinflects this.”

Third, it enables us to read the source text with new eyes, free of established preconceptions. Re-visionary fictions “not only produce a different, autonomous new work by rewriting the original, but also denaturalise that original by exposing the discourses in it which we no longer see because we have perhaps learnt to read it in restricted and conventional ways. That is, they recast the pre-text as itself a ‘new’ text to be read newly – enabling us to ‘see’ a different one to the one we thought we knew as [Sherlock Holmes] – thus arguably releasing them from one type of reading and repossessing them in another.” The new text ‘speaks’ “the unspeakable of the pre-text by very exactly invoking the original and hinting at its silences or fabrications.”

Fourth, it forces the reader to consider the two texts together at all times: “our very consciousness of reading a contemporary version of a past work ensures that such an oscillation takes place, with the reader, as it were, holding the two texts simultaneously in mind. This may cause us to see parallels and contrasts, continuities and discontinuities, between the period of the original text’s production and that of the modern work.”

Fifth, they “alert the reader to the ways past fiction writes its view of things into history, and how unstable such apparently truthful accounts from the past may be”, making clear that the original text, though canon, was also just a text and should not necessarily govern our perceptions and understanding forever.

Sixth, “re-visionary novels almost invariably have a clear cultural-political thrust. That is why the majority of them align themselves with feminist and/or postcolonialist criticism in demanding that past texts’ complicity in oppression – either as subliminally inscribed within them or as an effect of their place and function as canonic icons in cultural politics – be revised and re-visioned as part of the process of restoring a voice, a history and an identity to those hitherto exploited, marginalized and silenced by dominant interests and ideologies.”

That last point, I think, should also apply to queer re-visionings of source texts (and indeed, Widdowson uses the example of Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation re-visioning Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in his article).

We can view BBC Sherlock as a re-visionary fiction which aims to ‘speak’ “the unspeakable of the pre-text by […] hinting at its silences or fabrications.”

BBC Sherlock as re-visionary fiction

Not only does BBC Sherlock have to hold itself up against the original canon of Arthur Conan Doyle; there is also a century of accumulated speculation and creation by an extremely active and resourceful fandom to contend with.

I think that BBC Sherlock asks us to re-vision ACD canon, but has a few sly jabs at the Sherlock Holmes fandom (including the writers themselves) along the way. Let’s look at some concrete examples:

John Watson’s wife:

In BBC Sherlock, the woman we know as Mary Morstan has no fixed identity. Her name is taken from a dead baby; she is not originally British; she is an ex-mercenary and killer; she is variously motherly, friendly and threatening; she shoots Sherlock in the heart – or does she save his life? In Series 4, her characterisation is more unstable than ever. She is a romantic heroine, a ruthless killer, a selfless mother, a consummate actress, a wronged woman, a martyr, an ever-present ghost, and the embodiment of John’s conscience. She is also the manifestation of the Sherlock Holmes fandom’s speculation about John Watson’s wife: did he have one wife, or six? Was she an orphan, or was she at her mother’s? When did she die? How did she die?

Ultimately, however, if you hold BBC Sherlock up against ACD canon, it highlights the fact that so many Sherlockians have tried to compensate for: in order to reconcile the irregularities in Mrs Watson’s story as narrated by Watson, she would need to be a secret agent actively hiding her identity. Examining BBC Sherlock against ACD canon makes us apply Occam’s Razor – the idea that the simplest explanation will always be best. John Watson’s wife was only written into the story because homophobia was so pervasive at the time that ACD was writing that his characters – and by extension he himself – would have been suspected of ‘deviance’ if there had not been a layer of plausible deniability in the shape of a wife.

And there you have it: the central problem of Mary Morstan/Watson, in both ACD canon and BBC Sherlock – she shoots Sherlock in the heart – or does she save his life? Look at ACD canon again. Does Mary Morstan’s engagement to John Watson hurt Sherlock Holmes, to the point that he replies, at the end of SIGN, “For me, …there still remains the cocaine-bottle”? Or does Mary Watson save his life? In the nineteenth century, suspicion of a romance between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson could have meant imprisonment or even hanging; many men suspected or accused of same-sex relationships chose suicide rather than total disgrace. Mary Watson’s presence provides Holmes and Watson with a lifesaving alibi.

Let’s have a look at this against the criteria for a ‘re-visionary fiction’:

Challenges the idea that Watson ‘told things as they really were’ – instead, it introduces the idea that Watson deliberately obscured the facts of his and Holmes’ partnership

Keeps the pre-text Mary Morstan constantly in view – a startling contrast, which rather effectively comments on the position of both women and queer people in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries

Enables us to abandon our “restricted and conventional ways” of reading the original – if it makes no sense for Mrs Watson to have existed in ACD canon, then the reader must radically reconsider Holmes and Watson’s relationship; no longer ‘just’ a friendship, but a lifetime’s commitment, as close and loving as a marriage. BBC Sherlock encourages this re-visioning by setting Mary up as a rival to Sherlock; by having her attempt to get rid of him; by highlighting that she both kills and saves him. It re-casts Sherlock Holmes as the dominant romance of John Watson’s life, in every version.

It causes us to see parallels and contrasts between the two time periods: the societal homophobia that made Mrs Watson a necessity in ACD canon has largely gone in modern Britain. But BBC Sherlock hints at a profoundly closeted bisexual John Watson who strives after a ‘normal’ wife who “wasn’t meant to be like that”. The continued presence of a Mrs Watson very effectively shows us that societal attitudes are not as profoundly different as we may think.

BBC Sherlock shows us how the existence of a Mrs Watson has been written not only into the [hi]story of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, but into the fabric of society: Sherlock Holmes is a great man, but God forbid he should also be a happy, human man, in a loving relationship with another man. The cultural script has been written: the great figures are either straight, or they are nothing. There is always a wife.

As discussed above, the presence of Mrs Watson is also important politically and culturally. It draws attention to the total lack of agency for nineteenth-century women, and to the restrictive narratives imposed on female characters in today’s culture. It makes terribly clear the extent and dangerousness of the homophobia in nineteenth-century Britain. It highlights the fact that there are still countries today where people are forced to hide their sexualities for fear of being imprisoned or killed.

The Watson baby:

In BBC Sherlock, the woman we know as Mary Morstan is revealed to be pregnant on the Watsons’ wedding day. In ACD canon, Watson never mentions a child from his marriage. In Holmesian speculation, plenty of children have been suggested for Watson, especially since it is often posited that he must have had more than one marriage (that Watson might be infertile is not something the proponents of the ‘Three Continents Watson’ school of thought often like to suggest).

As a re-visionary fiction, then, BBC Sherlock forces us to examine the source text: in a time when reliable contraceptive methods were virtually non-existent, why did John Watson and his wife never have a child?

The options, broadly, are:

Mrs Watson was infertile (if Watson only had one wife)

Watson was infertile (if he had more than one wife)

They didn’t have sex, either due to ignorance (but Watson was a doctor…) or reluctance

Mrs Watson only ‘existed’ because societal homophobia made her a necessity (see above).

John Watson:

In Series 4 of BBC Sherlock, John behaves in an unrecognisable manner: he beats Sherlock bloody, so that his eye is still bloodshot some little time later. This is said to be due to the pain of losing his wife, and the fact that her death is Sherlock’s ‘fault’.

Viewed as re-visionary fiction, as metafiction, BBC Sherlock here satirises the idea of the ‘deutero-Watson’ which has existed since Ronald Knox wrote his Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes. It also, however, critically examines the fact that, in ACD canon, there are (at least) ‘two Watsons’: one, the narrator, seemingly the most reliable and loyal of fellows, straight (in all senses) and true, good in a fight; and a second, the ‘true’ John Watson behind the narration, the man we discern when we look beyond the surface of the tales. A man who is devoted, above all, to Holmes; prepared to adopt Holmes’ habit of ‘compounding a felony’ to follow the idea of justice as opposed to law; prepared, in fact, to break the law if Holmes thinks it right; prepared to abandon his wife at a moment’s notice, when Holmes calls; prepared to alter all kinds of details in his stories to protect their participants. (Also, presumably, a bit of a joke about the accidental ‘dual personality’ that ACD gave his Watson by naming him James and John on different occasions.)

Looking at ACD canon through the lens of BBC Sherlock, the entirely unreliable nature of Watson as a narrator comes to light, but the enduring feature of his stories – his love for, and loyalty to Holmes – provides the obvious answer to why he should be so unreliable. Watson may be ‘two people’, but he lies, he breaks the law, he abandons his wife and his patients for only one person: Holmes.

Ultimately, the reader understands that they have been lied to, because the truth would have been impossible to tell at the time ACD was writing. Famously, the final story in the Sherlock Holmes canon, The Adventure of the Retired Colourman, ends with the words, “some day the true story may be told.”

If BBC Sherlock is seen as re-visionary fiction, Series 4 of the programme becomes a representation of the artificiality of the construct that we think of as BBC Sherlock and – viewed through its lens – ACD canon becomes visible as an equally artificial construct, filtered through the writings of an unreliable narrator and governed by the societal and cultural imperatives and prejudices of its time.

Every trick has been employed in Series 4 to highlight its artificiality: lack of coherent structure, temporal uncertainty, incoherent character arcs, introduction of a deus ex machina character, fluctuations of genre, and members of the crew actually appearing on screen. Just as in Hawksmoor, the ‘case’ of Series 4 defies solution. BBC Sherlock and Hawksmoor are both postmodern detective fictions. We have been told that this is ‘a show about a detective, not a detective show’. The form of the show, like the form of the traditional detective novel, leads us to expect a neat, tidy ending, explained carefully by an all-knowing figure of authority. The makers of BBC Sherlock, however, have done everything they can to pantomime a lack of care for, or understanding of, their own show. They have simultaneously inserted themselves into the story (Mark/Mycroft; giving varying accounts of when/how Series 4 was written; lying and saying that they lie) and withdrawn the ‘grand narrative’, the fiction of the omniscient narrator.

Why?

For over a century, ACD canon has been read in the same way: as the most archetypally logical detective story available to us. The fact that the canon is a huge mess of inconsistencies, requiring the collective effort of thousands of people to pick away at, is typically explained by the idea of an omniscient but uncaring storyteller: Arthur Conan Doyle.

This is particularly ironic for a fandom which supposedly wishes to disavow the existence of an author at all.

And yet, the problem is, if you don’t slip into extra-universe speculations on ACD’s attitude to Sherlock Holmes, you have to face head-on the conclusion that Watson is a very, very unreliable narrator indeed.

And you have to face why.

@devoursjohnlock @garkgatiss @221bloodnun @tjlcisthenewsexy @may-shepard

#sherlock meta #hawksmoor #bbc sherlock #acd canon #historiographic metafiction #postmodern detective fiction #hawksmoor17

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anniversary-magazine · 4 years

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In Conversation With Conceptual Artist Pedro Reyes

Contemporary conceptual artist and traditional stonemason; architect and activist; engineer and craftsman. The cross-disciplinary nature of Pedro Reyes' work - which encompasses performance, installation, video, sculpture, and activism - makes a strong case for multiplicity.

Acknowledging the poetry of form as well as the power of politics, Reyes' work layers complexity, humor, rigor, and design. Reyes lives and works in Mexico City in a brutalist house of his own design.

Rosie Robertson (RR) Pedro Reyes (PR)

RR: Having first trained as an architect, you now create time-based, conceptual performance art, and sculptural works; was it a childhood dream to become an architect?

PR: As a child, my grandfather was a significant influence because he taught me algebra and mythology at the same time, he would take a Greek or roman myth, and then he would pose a problem in algebraic terms. For instance, a simple arithmetic problem would be: Jason has to kill the hydra, but can only catch two heads at a time; how hard does Jason have to work? What that taught me was that you could have myths translated into a formula, and those myths could change or be rewritten using the same elements that gave me the keys to eventually perform. On the other hand, my father was also a significant influence because he taught me engineering drawing. He did not mean to impress me, but to give instructions for someone to build something. The acknowledgment that "if you can draw it, you can make it" gave me the necessary skills to become a sculptor.

RR: Coming from an architectural background, does your artistic practice share a similar relationship with the notions of time, space, politics, and the body?

PR: In architecture, you have to respond to a program, you have to solve a problem, which has stayed with me in my art practice. I expect from my pieces some degree of accountability. I am interested in measuring what that impact can be. It actually took me a long time to start making art pieces for art's sake only.

RR: Your artistic output seems highly collaborative, often coordinating/working with several organizations and individuals who contribute to the overall project. Even working with stone must also require many technicians and craftsmen, particularly on a large scale. As it is often stated, 'art cannot be made in a vacuum' - however, I wonder if there is a part of your artistic practice that is more solitary?

PR: Sculpture has always been a collective undertaking. If you walked in a sculptor studio from the Renaissance or other eras of human history, you would systematically find a group of people working on a single carving due to the heavy labor required to carve stone. I am very much interested in keeping that craftsmanship alive. In the studio, some maestros have many years of experience, and some people who started to learn the craft are now on their way to becoming maestros themselves. However, there is a lot of thinking process that must happen in solitary, for me that is mainly distilling thoughts that may be vague ideas that I have found in old books and that I keep in notes, and then at night, I translate into drawings, and those drawings will lead to new works. Drawing is certainly something that requires me to be alone.

RR: You have collaborated with your partner, fashion designer Carla Fernandez. Does having an intimate relationship and in-depth knowledge of each other's work inhibit the work, or does it speed up the process thanks to the 'couples’ shorthand' that inevitably forms in intimate relationships?

PR: Yes, I collaborate with Carla on many projects. We know how to let each other do what they do best, which helps us move projects forward. What is most important, however, is to share a cause and be concerned with a social or political issue. Because when you do some kind of activism, solidarity is essential, even if it is the companionship of a single person, it makes a world of difference.

RR: Your work includes video, sculpture, performance, activism, and installation - does the freedom to work in any medium feel freeing or overwhelming?

PR: Augusto Boal warned us about the "Che Guevara Syndrome," because as Che Guevara made a revolution in Cuba, then he went on emancipating countries and went to Angola and almost got killed, and then went to Bolivia and was killed there. So, the warning is that you have to be careful about the number of revolutions you undertake; if you embrace too many, you may not be able to complete much.

Feeling overcome by the news and the 24-hour news cycle is commonplace - particularly in the current political climate of polemics, outrage, and misinformation. Though it was made in 2013, your work Colloquium is an elegant expression of the present-day political and cultural landscape.

RR: Where do you get your news from, what role does it play in your life, and do you feel that the news cycle feeds your work or distracts you from it?

PR: My news diet is a mix because often, I follow the social media accounts of activist groups, which often are quite radical but give you an unfiltered and critical "temperature" of local environments. Nevertheless, they have a global resonance because you see how things really are. Instagram accounts such as @heavydiscussion and @blackpowderpress, as well as hashtags like #nfac report events that you won't see on the mainstream press. However, I am subscribed to other news outlets such as The Economist, The Guardian, etc.

RR: Though your work often deals with heavy and complex subject matters, the tone is playful and humorous. Fine art, video/performance art, and activism all have a reputation for being somewhat po-faced or self-serious. I wonder if you actively inject humor into your work to change this perception - or to make the work more digestible - or is humor part of your character and the lens through which you see the world?

PR: Studying humor, you find that most jokes have a setup and a punchline. And the way that punchlines work is through shock; in the setup, you have a course of action where you detect that something is going in the wrong direction, but then the punchline is such a big disappointment that the way you cope with that shock is with laughter. I thought to myself what would be an "upward drop," a punchline so hilariously optimistic, so ridiculous, that it also leads to laughter. But most importantly, wild visionary ideas may have more traction than reasonable reforms. It is crucial to have this kind of exaggeration to create a compelling vision.

RR: Do you believe in the power of art and/or politics to inspire or mobilize change? Why?

PR: I believe that by action or inaction, we all shape the world and that art can produce change. If I destroyed 1,527 weapons, I like to think that some lives were saved by taking those guns out of circulation, and if I planted 1,527 trees, that also has an impact. However, I don't think that all art has to serve this purpose. The beauty of art may also be in its purposelessness, where the aesthetic experience has in itself, a use. Life is miserable without art, and culture is a basic need. That is one of the main reasons I am working on reactivating libraries. Reading a book is a life-changing experience, and literacy is one of the few things that has been proved to foster social mobility.

RR: As you mentionned, the 2008 artwork 'Palas por Pistolas' was an invitation to the inhabitants of the Mexican city of Culiacan to donate their guns in exchange for coupons and vouchers. The resulting collection of 1527 deadly firearms was then melted down and turned into garden shovels, which are used for planting trees in schools and art institutions. The spades are potent symbols of optimism and activism - I wonder what is the role of the gallery, and how do works of real-world activism change or transform in the neutrality of the white cube?

PR: I have never shown Palas por Pistolas in a gallery context, it has been shown in biennials and museums, but every time that it is shown, the piece is activated through the planting of trees. The museum has to organize a tree planting, which involves the local community and creates an opportunity to talk about gun control. There are two ways to look at the museum: as a fridge or as an oven. Museums are like fridges in the sense that they have a perfect temperature to keep works safe for posterity, but also, they can work as ovens where you cook new realities, and both functions are essential.

RR: Your work is multi-layered, and the objects presented to the audience have had a life before reaching the gallery space. Is it essential that everyone connects with the work's concept and that they understand its "story"? Or are you at ease with the experience of the work varying depending on the viewer's engagement with it?

PR: Art objects indeed tell a story, but often I am interested in the artwork being a platform for the audience to find a place where they can tell their own story. This is the case of Sanatorium, where there are pieces where I ask the audience to ask a secret, which is anonymous and put inside a bottle, and in exchange, they can read someone else's secret. Or I ask them to write their epitaph, and then you can also learn how different people's epitaphs accumulate. These artworks become more vibrant with the public's input, where content is generated by the user, and they continue to grow through this collective process. When I make instruments, it is up to the musicians to come up with music at the moment of interpretation, so I love doing work that is not a definitive creation, but that is only a steppingstone in the process of collective creativity.

RR: More traditional art forms, such as your sculptures in stone, are more open to interpretation. Are the sculptures rooted in the act of making - more preoccupied with shape, texture, color, and composition - or is there an equally direct 'message' or story behind these works as there is with the activism?

PR: In sculpture, form is meaning, and there is more to form that can be translated into concepts. That's the beauty of it: a sculpture consists of thousands of decisions. These are made during the process, often in a direct battle between hand and material, the sculpture's body, and the force applied to the operation of shaping, of sculpting. You think by doing. Some sculptures are abstract, and others are figurative, and many are something in between, but I certainly produce sculptures that have an "agenda." If I make a bust of a thinker, it works as an index for the body of work of that person, or they may reflect a moment. For instance, in 2016, I made a wood version of the liberty statue, so it looked like a trojan horse. It was a commentary on the permanent state of war where the United States waged war against other countries with the pretext of exporting democracy. The only ones who profit are the military-industrial sector that has hijacked US politics. I also made a Protesters series, where I wanted to retake the format of the statue. Statues have always been prominent figures, mostly men, and I wanted to make a monument to the anonymous protester who takes his own physical body to the streets, nowadays even risking their personal safety as a last resort to produce change.

RR: What do you find more inspiring: nature or man-made structures?

PR: I would say that I am more interested in art than nature. In art, you have interpretation, and I'm always interested in how judgment is produced, how it occurs. However, in sculpture, you still have a very close relationship with nature, mainly because you have to understand the structure of matter.

RR: What is beauty - and what role does it play in your work?

PR: Beauty is a difficult thing to describe or to define, first because the term doesn't have much currency in art. Also, it is a dynamic term, in the sense that there are aesthetic dimensions that vary according to each person's taste. However, when something is well resolved, it is because the artist has spent time taking care of composition, and as he may also be aware of the relevance, the work may have in its current context. If you notice, what I am saying is full of abstractions, it is always easier to pinpoint examples and then talk about its properties.

RR: Which artists, architects, or activists most inspire you?

PR: I have been lucky to have great mentors and teachers, to name a few. Antanas Mockus, a philosopher, mathematician, and former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, has been very influential. In 2016, I also had the chance to work with Noam Chomsky while teaching at MIT, on the making of a theatrical production called "Manufacturing Mischief." Another significant influence has been professor Doris Sommer from the Cultural Agents at Harvard University and writer Lauren Berlant at the University of Chicago.

RR: Do you like to live with your own works?

PR: I do live with my works, and there is a courtyard in the studio where the works spend some months before they are shipped to shows or collections. It is a stone garden where I get to spend time with the works because once they are gone forever. It is there where I test the resilience of the work because you aren't always in control of the context. Hence, the works must be good enough to resist a bad display in the future, so I am still happy to advise the placement and installation of the work.

RR: Any book suggestion(s)?

PR: Currently, I am enjoying reading the biography of Victor Serge, a communist revolutionary.

All images by Alex Lesage

#Pedro Reyes #Sculptor #Activist #Mexico City #Carla Fernandez #Featured

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 4 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/neptune-stations-directout-of-chaos-emerges-clarity/

NEPTUNE STATIONS DIRECT~OUT OF CHAOS EMERGES CLARITY

By Sheri-Horn Hasan

Neptune, the second slowest moving planet in our solar system, takes nearly 165 years to complete a full orbit through the zodiac. Invisible to the naked eye until observed by telescope September 23, 1846, Neptune is the only planet in our solar system discovered through mathematical prediction rather than via empirical observation.

This belief that Neptune existed—based on French astronomer Alexis Bouvard’s deducing that an unknown planet was causing unexpected changes and gravitational disturbances in Uranus’s orbit—set the stage for our modern astrological “take” on Neptune and its meaning in our individual charts.

King of the oceans, the Roman Neptune (Greek Poseidon) rules primarily the seas and all other waterways, earthquakes, and horses.

Water shape shifts; it flows; such fluidity helps us all adjust, fill, buoy or, more negatively, drown. Ergo, Neptune’s not exactly a black and white kinda energy…

Often, water correlates to mood, intuition, sensitivity, and empathy. Represented by the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves as the tide rises and recedes, Neptune’s indicative of a collectively eternal situation that calls for a certain amount of surrender in order to go with the natural flow…

Because of the shape-shifting nature associated with Neptune, often we may have difficulty with boundaries between ourselves and others, as well as with seeing emotional situations clearly.

Hence, Neptune correlates to the state of chaos–of not intuiting clearly if we’re up or down, emotional or rational, realistic or fantastical—you know, the kind of dilemma that often befuddles so many of us mere mortals here on planet Earth.

Neptune intuits, it doesn’t think, it has no opinion, as Jungian astrologer & artist Erin Sullivan points out in her book “Planetary Retrogrades.”

“It has moods, feelings, sensations, images, fantasies, nuances, hints and visions,” Sullivan explains. “It is redolent with insinuation.”

NEPTUNE’S LAST RETROGRADE

When Neptune last stationed retrograde back in , or appeared stop in the sky and move backward in June 19, at 18°43′ Pisces, this represented part of its annual planetary motion for approximately five months.

All planetary retrograde motion is actually an optical illusion. However, both ancient & modern astrologers recognize retrograde periods as times of internal withdrawal. When Neptune began its backstroke through the heavens, it was time to allow ourselves to go inward, into that liminal space, as Jungian astrologer Liz Greene would say, and allow ourselves to dream.

Neptune retrogrades affect us all on a subtle level because Neptune is defined in modern astrology as an “unconscious” planet. Its retrograde periods allow us to withdraw by obscuring the boundaries between the “real” and “imagined.”

It’s here, in this liminal space, that our dreams arise out of unconscious desires rather than rational ones.

However, because Neptune’s energies are not initially discernible (read: not conscious), its effects are both more subtle and longer term. Thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors may come without a fully rational explanation or concrete understanding of the “why” behind them during Neptune’s retrograde period.

YOUR NEPTUNE STORY

As the planet of illusion, confusion, & delusion, Neptune’s retrograde—through whatever house in your chart–tells us where you may be, shall we say, a little less reality-based, and a little more prone to ignore or transgress emotional boundaries.

Neptune’s location in your birth chart by sign, house, and aspect, also tells us where you may be, to put it more bluntly, a little more delusional. The degree to which this influences your life will vary, depending on how your soul chooses to both perceive and manifest your natal Neptune energy into the world around you…

I like to use the word “devotion” when describing the energy of Neptune, because I find it to be the planet that connects us to our own individual sense of what’s worth surrendering for (or to) based on the rest of our natal energies.

In the 7th House of partnership, for example, it might be devotion to relationships; in the 2nd House to a sense of one’s values. Devotion would be defined in either realm through both a more romantic, spiritual, and/or charitable mindset.

This is not by far the only way to interpret Neptune natally in these houses, I’m simply using them as examples…in addition, having Neptune in configuration with other planets in one’s chart can cause one to manifest certain patterns of “Neptunian” behavior in the outside, objective, empirical, ego-oriented world.

The question, as always with Neptune, is are our perceptions based on reality?

TIME TO TAKE OFF THOSE ROSE-COLORED GLASSES!

Just as organic life emerged long ago out of the chaotic “soup” mixture of non-living inorganic molecules through some form of physical and chemical reactions between water and matter, so does Neptune’s movement from retrograde to direct motion allow us to flow from chaos to clarity.

In a sense, Neptune’s retrograde period is often a chaotic one because we’re asked to right brain it, visualize, believe in the psychic and spiritual world without requiring (or demanding!) empirical proof that either one exists.

Neptune direct is a time to draw back the curtain, pierce the veil, and generally let in the light of day so we may see clearly once again. But that’s only if we’re willing to wake up, take off our rose-colored glasses, and look at both ourselves and the world around us from a new and different perspective…

This is the only way to bridge the gap between what formerly seemed “real,” but isn’t. This is the only way to integrate the energies of the subconscious into the conscious brain and to move forward in holy matrimony of these two, with peace everlasting, until death you do part…

GROUNDING OUR DREAMS

Now that he’s stationing direct again—meaning he’s moving forward in the sky rather than appearing to swim backward—Neptune calls us all to move forward and ground what we’ve been dreaming about into concrete manifest reality.

What helps us to ground our dream?

Understanding that we are capable of achieving anything we want in this lifetime, and evaluating how much of the things we want to accomplish out in the world are driven by unrealistic attitudes or unfounded suppositions.

Saturn in Capricorn allows us to see that what we’ve dreamt about from a more realistic lens then while Neptune was retrograde. This is an extremely grounding energy.

And, while Saturn in Capricorn may be quick to dismiss our ideas as pure fantastical thinking, we all know that the seeds of reality (read: clarity, discernment) lie in chaos.

Those who don’t distinguish between the retrograde and direct motion may move forward attempting to ground dreams, but lacking the ability to do so. But if we use his energies wisely, Saturn in Capricorn will test our hypothesis and tell us what is concretely possible.

However, Saturn in Capricorn can also bring us down, down, down, which is not a place we want to go. The shock of our incapability to manifest our more Neptunian dreams in the real world will be proportionately equal to how unrealistic these dreams were in the first place. That’s how the universe rolls, as always it seeks balance…

I’m mindful of Katy Perry’s lyrics from her song “Wide Awake”:

“Falling from cloud nine Crashing from the high I’m letting go tonight Yeah, I’m letting go tonight…

Gravity hurts You made it to sweet Till I woke up On the concrete…”

Neptune’s retrograde periods are about assisting us to bridge the gap between romance, illusion, fantasy, and our psychic and more spiritual orientations (read: less egoic, less belief system oriented.)

So, the question becomes: do we allow ourselves to entertain the practical, useful, physical, tangible, concrete methods of grounding a dream that might have seemed grandiose or impossible or wildly unrealistic when in the Neptune retrograde period?

We may now discover ultimately that what we thought a person or situation was about is far removed from the actual factuality of their situation.

I CAN DREAM, CAN’T I?

The key held by Neptune is that it allows us to lessen the gap between complete fantastical thinking and overly pessimistic or naysaying hardcore reality…

Nobody says not to dream. In fact, evolutionary astrologer Steven Forrest would say that if you have Neptunian or Piscean energy anywhere in your chart—and we all do somewhere—that it’s necessary and beneficial to be allowed to dream…

However, as Neptune proceeds to move forward in the sky from now until June 21st 2019, we are all called to integrate whatever we’ve dreamt about—whether relationship, career, money, or anything else—during its last retrograde period.

That means we can all ask ourselves where we may have set out to save, conquer, or martyr ourselves for the sake of another or others, and/or otherwise sacrifice ourselves for a devotional purpose we felt was bigger than simply our more shallow, mundane, earth-bound world.

Now is the time to find a way to make our dreams come true by using sound judgment and rational–rather than fantastical–thinking in order to discern where adjustments now may be necessary to bring some of these wilder, more fantastical thoughts, plans, and dreams to fruition.

Namaste…

******

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imaginetonyandbucky · 7 years

Text

Helping Hands

Chapter Twelve: Showing One’s Hand

It was utterly and completely unfair of Lewis to send him this perfect picture of masculine beauty, dressed in the colors of early morning light and looking like a hipster angel.

Tony sighed, shoved Loki’s butt out of his face, and got a mouthful of angry cat tail for his trouble. It was damned hard to look dignified with an over-enthusiastic cat on his desk. “Is it time for the awkward conversation, then?”

Bucky scrubbed at the back of his neck, looking at Tony from under his thick lashes, and that was just fighting dirty, that’s what that was. “Hey,” Bucky said, “next time you’re plannin’ on pitchin’ me out of an airplane, a parachute might be nice. Not sayin’ I couldn’t’ve handled it better, but…”

“Told Happy it was a word,” Tony muttered, then gestured to Bucky. “Nothing, don’t mind me, talking to myself. Go on.”

“I suck at apologies, Tony,” Bucky said. “Every time I say sorry these days, and believe me, I say it a lot, what I feel like I’m doin’ is sayin’ ‘excuse me that I exist and that I’m inconvenient that way.’ I begrudge and hate every single one of ‘em. Sorry comes out of my mouth coated with bile. I hate the taste of it.”

Tony shrugged like he didn’t care. “You don’t have to apologize for existing.”

“I… um,” and Bucky was blushing, hot, red and furious, spreading from under the scarf and staining his cheeks. “Shit. I… it wasn’t nothing. It was… um. I ain’t never been with a man before.”

Tony blinked. That wasn’t anything he was expecting. “You’re a virgin? How is that even possible?”

“Christ’s cup,” Bucky swore, ducking his head. “No. I was married for twelve years. I mean… I… bisexual. It’s a thing. It’s the box I check at the doctor’s office, but it was… sort of theoretical until--”

“Until this afternoon,” Tony said. Wow. He hadn’t seen that one coming. Tony remembered his first time with Sunset Bain, who’d been the first girl he’d slept with, and remembering how weird and strange that had seemed to him. He’d been used to a man’s body and shape, and it had taken him a while to figure out how it all worked, all over again. Suddenly everything seemed a little bit clearer. Bucky hadn’t nudged him on the bed as a one-and-done, an experienced bathroom-quickie sort of guy.

So much more of everything made sense. Tony couldn’t quite put himself in Bucky’s shoes; he’d been outed at twelve, so he had no real context for that, but he understood better now Bucky’s sheer rage at the photographs and the reactions of co-workers and neighbors.

Tony had decades of experience and it still made his heart race when someone started flinging homophobic slurs around. It had to be especially hard for a man who’d had his first homosexual encounter at nearly forty and then was immediately outed on a national scale. Sweet Tesla, it was a wonder Bucky was even here, talking to Tony now.

“It meant something to me, I promise,” Bucky said. “But then your…”

“Yeah, Lewis is a bit much sometimes. Taser-queen, too, so don’t ever get on her bad side, you wouldn’t like that.”

Bucky ignored that and ploughed onward, as if he’d worked out his whole speech and was determined to get through it. Maybe he had. “I… I dunno, felt like what we’d just done was… tawdry, somehow. Dirty. I… it’s fuckin’ hard to admit things are, you know, what they are. And here’s this woman commenting on… I thought I was going to die, right there on the spot.”

Tony smiled, a bit rueful. “You have to understand. Darcy’s been, as the phrase goes, all up in my business, for several years now. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that you might be shy.”

Bucky made a growling sound deep in his chest. Loki gave the man a completely pissed expression and fled from the room, his tail bristling.

“I got a lot from Big Jim about bein’ a man,” Bucky said. “What that meant and what was expected of me, and when your publicist started talkin’ to us about pretending to be in a relationship, like I was your whore or something. I felt like I’d finally gone and dropped the one thing that kept me part of my dad’s life, the one thing he was proud of. That I was a man. I know, I know, it’s stupid but... I ain’t gonna say sorry, Tony. I can’t. The words, they stick in me, an’ you deserve better--”

“Ug, no,” Tony said. “No, and no, and no. Definitely not. I have been on the other side of some pretty terrible relationships, and people using me to get to my money. I would… believe me, I never want to be on the other side of that stick. I don’t even think I could, and my opinion of myself couldn’t possibly get much worse.”

Bucky blushed even redder, and Tony started to worry that he might get a nosebleed, like one of those hyperactive anime characters that Bruce was so fond of. “So, um…. Maybe we could try it out?”

Tony replayed the conversation in his head a few times -- he had a gift for memory that was more of a curse in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep for constantly replaying the less pleasant conversations in his life -- and it still wasn’t making sense. Like, they’d cut to commercial and left something out to make the time-slot.

“Try what?”

“Darcy’s idea. We could…”

“Pretend to be in love?” Tony sighed.

“No, idiot,” Bucky snapped and Tony had to swallow a laugh, because he sounded so damn frustrated and it was actually sort of cute. “The relationship. Look at it as... on-the-job training, or something. Sounds like, whatever my pride wants to believe, I don’t have much choice but to let your people fix this mess. I don’t want anything to happen to Stevie, or the twins for that matter. So. We have three to six months of living in each other’s back pocket anyway. It’s a little more hard-core, reality show sort of dating than most people have, but…”

“You want to go trial-by-fire on being boyfriends?” Tony said. Under his desk, he pinched his own arm, trying to see if he was, actually, asleep and dreaming. Ow. No, still here.

Bucky shrugged and nodded and Tony tried to marshal all the reasons why this would be a terrible, awful idea, except there was one thought that stood out among all the rest: he wanted this. And maybe in some other life, Tony had been cautious or prudent, but it hadn’t yet happened in this life. In this life, Tony had never walked away from something he wanted just because it was a bad idea.

“Okay. Sure. You got it,” Tony said.

He was pretty sure this was going to star in his next unofficial biography as the all-time worst plan ever, but Bucky was leaning in his doorway looking like a Roman god, and Tony just… gave up.

Tony had met dozens, perhaps hundreds, of lawyers in his lifetime and he had to say that Clint Barton didn’t look anything like any lawyer Tony had ever met. For one thing, he was wearing a purple and black tank top and had arms like a Mr. Universe contestant. Clint also wore a pair of discreet hearing aids and watched carefully whenever anyone was talking. He had blue eyes and a killer stare, with buzzed sandy blond hair and while Steve didn’t look very much like his father (though he acted a lot like his dad, down to mimicking Bucky’s expressions and gestures with adorable accuracy), it was easy to see the Barton bloodline when comparing the boy to his uncle.

“Hey, kid,” Clint said, ruffling Bucky’s hair so hard that it fell out of the bun, scattering it all over his face.

“My brother-in-law, Clint,” Bucky said, slapping Clint’s hand away. “Clint, Tony.”

“Pleasure,” Clint said, pumping Tony’s hand twice with professional smoothness.

“How’s Nat?” Bucky asked, as they moved into Tony’s enormous front parlor.

“Wants me to smack you in the head about eight times for worrying the shit out of us, firecracker,” Clint said. He turned a conspiratorial look on Tony. “Can you believe this asshole? I’ve known him since he was all of thirteen years old, went on doubles with him all through high school while he was dating my sister, and then he’s in the hospital for a week and doesn’t call, doesn’t text, I get nothing from him until yesterday when he asks me to represent him in a legal agreement? Seriously, you’d think I never dumped a bucket of ice-water on him and Sarah while they were playin’ doctor just under my window.”

Bucky shuddered, rubbing his arms. “And he says I’m the asshole,” Bucky protested. “And you only doubled with us because of Barney.”

“My older brother,” Clint explained. “He… was a little over-protective.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Bucky muttered.

“This sounds like a story,” Tony admitted. “Get you a drink? Tea, soda, water? Whiskey?”

Clint made a show of checking his watch, then gave Tony a wide grin. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

“Whiskey it is, how do you take it?”

“What label?”

Tony rattled off a quick list, and Clint jumped at the Bowmore. “Just in a glass, my man,” Clint said. “A religious experience shouldn’t be diluted.” Clint knocked back the whiskey, took half of it in one swallow and then inhaled, flailed around a little like a muppet and grinned. “Oh, this is fine. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Tony said, shaking his head. Still a little too early for him (he was trying so hard to be good, especially since he had guests) so he poured himself an iced tea and dumped about eight spoonfuls of sugar into it.

Clint finished off his drink and set the glass aside, digging into his briefcase for a pack of papers. “I have to say, Mr. Stark, these are some very generous terms.”

“Well, technically, Bucky’s on a 24/7 work schedule for the next three months, at least, which is a lot of overtime. The newspapers don’t sleep, and anyone with a telephoto lens could be watching at any moment, so we have to be prepared. There’s a bonus in there for situational hardship, but it’s standard SAG wages,” Tony explained, stirring his glass and watching the swirl of sugar in the bottom. “He’s not a guild member, of course, but it’s just easier to calculate everyone in the same manner.”

“A what?” Bucky asked. Tony had watched him painfully read through the contract, but apparently not much of it had stuck. Well, that was why he’d called the lawyer brother-in-law, Tony supposed. Not everyone was weaned on contract legalese.

“Screen Actor’s Guild,” Tony said. “Preserving my reputation is an exercise in lying, and the best professional liars are actors.”

Clint snorted. “No, they’re not.”

“Lawyers, guns, and money,” Bucky quipped and Clint followed up with a surprisingly melodious singing voice, “won’t get me out of this.”

Clint pulled out a pair of glasses and slid them onto his nose; Tony noticed that it made a great deal of difference to his air of competence. A suit jacket would make him downright formidable. “My suggestion, here, Buck,” he said, tracing down the document, “is this clause, Section VII, line 4 through 12. Rather than re-locating Steve after the contract is ended, I think you should push to keep him in the new school for the duration of the school year. It’s hard on kids, relocating. It’s a privately-run school, so where you end up living after the contract ends won’t be a hardship as far as attendance goes. But we might also want some wording in there for continual transport to and from, at least for this academic year.”

Tony hadn’t even thought about that; he’d been kicked out of so many different boarding schools and academies, he wasn’t sure he’d finished a single school year in the same building as he’d started it, but he was also a genius and the classwork had been only of minimal importance, anyway. He did most of his learning on his own, through trial and error. Professor Xavier was a personal friend of Tony’s, and there were aid packages, but the tuition was still pretty high. Tony wasn’t going to push back on that change, though -- the tuition was the same whether Steve was there for three months or the full years, so the only real change was the additional transportation.

“And here,” Clint said, “we can’t direct deposit, at least not right now.”

“That’s the fastest, most secure --”

“I don’t have a bank account, Tony,” Bucky admitted, scratching at his chin.

Tony blinked. “Wha--?” Tony had dozens of personal accounts, not to mention expense accounts and investment accounts and credit cards. How did someone even function in the world without a bank account?

“Look, banks charge all sorts of monthly fees, especially if you actually don’t have enough money to pay the damn fees,” Bucky muttered, defensively. “And there’s all sorts of overdraft fees and… it ain’t worth the bother. An’ I don’t even get paid at work with a paycheck, I have a… a company debit card. They add funds to it. ‘Course there’s fees for that, too, whenever I use it, especially if I need cash.”

“How do you… I don’t know, pay your bills without a checking account?” Tony asked. Not that Tony had ever written a check in his life that wasn’t a publicity stunt for some charity or other.

“Money orders,” Bucky said.

“Don’t they charge fees for that, too?”

“Look at you, got almost as much sense as a real person,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes.

Tony nodded, staring at the floor. He’d never been poor; not even faux poor like some of his trust-account friends back at school, whose parents had threatened to (and on a few occasions had done so) cut them off from time to time. He’d never done those food-stamp challenges or poverty tourism events. First off, most of the celebs who tried them failed miserably and publically, and secondly, it seemed beyond rude.

Empathy wasn’t putting yourself in someone else’s shoes; it was about recognizing that their pain was real and legitimate. You didn’t have to understand, you didn’t have to feel it, or be able to relate. You just had to recognize pain when you saw it. Tony scoffed at himself. Like a poor marksman, he kept missing the target.

“Anything else?” Tony asked, once Clint had worked through the rest of the document with Bucky, explaining and clarifying. “If not, I’ll get Hill on it, and she can have a fresh copy sent over.”

“Oh, Maria?” Clint said, looking up. “I thought she was still at S.H.I.E.L.D..”

“My benefits package is better than a government contractor,” Tony said, buffing his nails on his shirt. Tony noticed Clint’s glass was empty. “You want a refill on this?”

“I’m a full partner, Stark; don’t think you can get me to jump ship,” Clint said, wagging his finger, “not with that kind of bribe. But yes, please.”

Tony moved over to the bar, but still caught Bucky’s low, worried voice. “Do you think I should sign?”

“Ah, firecracker, I know. It tastes like shit in your mouth,” Clint said. Tony peeked at them in the reflection over the bar. “But, yes. Yes, you should. It’s an opportunity, the kind most people don’t see in a lifetime. Even one year in Xavier’s school can mean a huge opportunity for Steve. And we’re talking about enough salary here for you to go back to school and finish your bachelor’s, Buck. You really should do this.”

They weren’t exactly being subtle, but Tony got the feeling that it would be better to pretend he wasn’t listening, and so he poured himself a drink as well, squelching a nasty spurt of guilt. Fuck it.

“Okay,” Bucky said, his jaw tightening like he was steeling himself to put his hand in a fire. “Okay.”

“Nat and I have your back,” Clint said, “whatever happens. You know that, right?”

Bucky leaned against his brother-in-law and Clint wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “I know.”

Tony brought back drinks and handed one off to Clint, knocking his back and feeling the burn. “Tell me, why do you call Bucky ‘firecracker’?”

Bucky blushed, brilliant red, hiding a sudden and sly smile behind his hand that lit up his whole face. “That was years ago,” he protested. “Not my fault, totally not.”

Clint flicked a hand in Bucky’s direction. “He burned my grandmother’s gazebo down.”

Over Bucky’s protests, shoves, and eventual clocking Clint over the head with one of the couch cushions, Clint told the story, which was long and involved and ended with a much younger Bucky, Clint, and Sarah diving behind the picnic table for cover as a stray spark ended up in their bag of illegal fireworks that eventually burned the backyard garden structure to the ground.

“Honestly,” Clint said, “I’m surprised he ended up a sniper. I would have thought the army could have made use of his demolitions expertise.”

“Asshole,” Bucky said, shoving his brother-in-law again.

Author Note: I have some poverty feelz again. Some of this stuff is directly from my personal experience. Also, BANKS SUCK. Secondary Note: the Lawyers, Guns, and Money is a line from a Warren Zevon song of the same title. Check it out, it’s cute. @tisfan - feel free to follow me and come chat...

#winteriron #prompts #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #tisfan #helping hands AU #clint is a lawyer #that thing with gazebo?#Totally happened when I was a kid #don't ask too many questions #clint with hearing aids

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