#and various other horrific media entities

[cypriathus]

POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: There are very brief mentions of torture, suicide, and things related to copulation.

LOHTAZRENDIUS SUBSPECIES

FALLEN ANGEL (plural noun: FALLEN ANGELs): They were originally angels who inhabited the heavenly spheres, but fell from grace due to their actions that went against the celestial code. Once they fall from heaven, the infernal pits taint their magnificent form, making them beastly and fearsome. However, they do retain their angelic form, but their wings, eyes, and/or hair have gone through some noticeable changes. They used to have saliva that can burn naturally sinful things, but has now become an acidic venom due to their tainted holiness. They’re the most well-respected Lohtazrendius breed, often being appointed the supreme kings and queens of the underworld or some other position of high regard.

ARCHDEMON or DEVIL (plural noun: ARCHDEMONs or DEVILs): The first generation of archdemons were the direct descendants of various fallen angels before the other Lohtazrendius subspecies. They’re most commonly the second-in-commands to the armies of fallen angels and/or lesser royalties of the underworld. They’re also the highest members of the supreme court that oversees all infernal laws and punishments.

TREACHERY (plural noun: TREACHERIES): There are four types of treason-invoking demons that are most commonly seen in the Circle of Perfidy. They often play the roles of law-makers, judges, contract-binders, and oath-keepers.

a. TRAITOR OF THE LORD (plural noun: TRAITORs OF THE LORD): They’re the voiceless and physically distorted overseers of those who betrayed their lords and benefactors. They’re capable of rendering sinners fully immobile and horrifically twist them in every conceivable position.

b. TRAITOR OF THE GUEST (plural noun: TRAITORs OF THE GUEST): They’re the crystal-eyed and eternally weeping overseers of those who betrayed their guests. They can cover the eyes of sinners in a visor of frozen ice, rendering them blind and showing that the comfort of weeping has been denied.

c. TRAITOR OF THE COUNTRY (plural noun: TRAITORs OF THE COUNTRY): They’re the stiff-necked overseers of those who betrayed political entities such as parties, cities, or countries.

d. TRAITOR OF THE KINDRED (plural noun: TRAITORs OF THE KINDRED): They’re the wind-protected overseers of those who betrayed members of their own biological family. Besides overseeing those broken family ties, they’re known for greeting everyone they meet with a courteous bow.

FRAUDSTER (plural noun: FRAUDSTERs): There are twelve types of fraud-invoking demons that are most commonly seen in the Circle of Fraudulence. The fraudsters are closely related to the greed demons and green-eyed monsters. They’re often loan sharks, con artists, and business executives who are in charge of advertising and interest rate. They’re also usually responsible for the coverage of news-based media and televised entertainment. They can be seen in many working environments such as casinos, brothels, and businesses that utilise contracts.

a. FALSIFIER (plural noun: FALSIFIERs): They’re demons who naturally declare that all truths are false and actively change documents and records in order to deceive others. They inflict their falsifying victims with various afflictions such as diseases, stench, filth, and thirst.

b. SOWER OF DISCORD (plural noun: SOWERs OF DISCORD): They’re demons who sow the seeds of discord into the brains of their victims in order to disrupt harmony and create disagreement. They hack off the limbs and mutilate the bodies of their victims with bladed weapons. Their victims have to fall in one of three categories: (i) religious schism and discord, (ii) civil strife and political discord, and (iii) family disunion.

c. COUNSELLOR OF FRAUD (plural noun: COUNSELLORs OF FRAUD): They give advice for other fraud-invoking demons and tempt people to commit fraudulent acts. Their victims are people who use their position to advise others to engage in fraud and they punish them by encapsulating them in flames.

d. THIEF (plural noun: THIEVES): They’re stealthy demons who steal from the property of others without using force. They often keep these items to themselves, give them to others, or sell them through various markets. They can create reptilian creatures that prey on their victims in order to show that just as they stole from others, their identity becomes subjected to infernal theft.

e. HYPOCRITE (plural noun: HYPOCRITEs): Similar to the sowers of discord, they sow the seeds of hypocrisy into the brains of their victims. Their hypocrisy is a reflection of their behaviours where they do things that they have told others not to do. They’re often seen wearing leaden robes that are brilliantly glided on the outside and are shaped similarly to a monk’s habit.

f. BARRATOR (plural noun: BARRATORs): They encourage people to vex others with frequent and often groundless lawsuits. They also engage in the act of trading state appointments and religious property, while tempting others to do the same. They torment their victims by immersing them in a lake of boiling tar, which represents the sticky fingers and dark secrets of their deals.

g. SORCERER (plural noun: SORCERERs): These demons consist of fortune tellers, diviners, astrologists, and false prophets who utilise their precognitive abilities for nefarious means. Some have their heads twisted around their bodies, while others have a face blinded by bleeding tears on the back of their heads.

h. SIMONIAC (plural noun: SIMONIACs): They focus on tempting those to commit simony, which is the sale of ecclesiastic favours and offices. They place their victims head-downwards in round, tube-like holes that mockingly resemble a baptismal font. They light the soles of their feet with flames that burn for an eternity.

i. FLATTERER (plural noun: FLATTERERs): They focus on tempting people to commit flattery by exploiting their greatest desires and fears. They punish those who abused and corrupted their use of language to use other people for personal gain. They do this by turning them into wild beasts that howl and fight amongst themselves, while steeped in tar-like excrement.

j. PANDERER (plural noun: PANDERERs): They’re demons who often try to please others for ulterior motives and tempt people to engage in pandering. They’re primarily responsible for furnishing clients with prostitutes or supplying them for illicit sex acts, while collecting their earnings.

k. SEDUCER (plural noun: SEDUCERs): They’re demons who lead people astray with persuasion and false promises. They sometimes carry out the physical seduction of encouraging people to engage in sexual activity on behalf of the lust demons.

a. HERETIC (plural noun: HERETICs): They’re heresy demons who are most commonly seen in the Circle of Apostasy. They punish those who inappropriately abandon and/or renounce orthodox religious doctrine or political belief by encasing them in blazing tombs. This particular Lohtazrendius subspecies are employed as workers for various black markets and overseers of special operations surrounding the military and assassination.

b. BRUTE (plural noun: BRUTEs): There are three types of wrathful demons that are most commonly seen in the Circle of Barbarity. They’re often seen working as executioners, militant soldiers, gladiators, and law enforcement.

c. USURER (plural noun: USURERs): They’re the least violent of the brutes and work on behalf of the greed demons. However, in the eyes of angelic law, usury is an act of violence against pure art. They tempt people to lend money with unreasonably high rates of interest in order to enrich themselves.

d. SODOMITE (plural noun: SODOMITEs): These brutes don’t focus on the sex between people that involve anal or oral copulation. They punish those who have committed bestiality, which is an act of violence against nature.

e. BLASPHEMER (plural noun: BLASPHEMERs): Similar to the usurers, they aren’t violent as they encourage people to speak sacrilegiously about the Hirczalotepus Tejasozuri and/or sacred things. Blasphemy in the eyes of angelic law is considered to be an act of violence against divinity.

f. SUICIDAL (plural noun: SUICIDALs): They are the overseers of those who attempted or died by suicide. They have metamorphosed them into gnarled, thorny trees with their mortal bodies resembling cocoons. These humanoid cocoons are filled foreign, mushy organs that the harpies and gluttons rely on. They can create ferocious, canine creatures that act as guardians of these special trees.

g. MURDERER (plural noun: MURDERERs): They’re centaur-like brutes who punish killers, war-makers, plunderers, and tyrants by immersing them in a river of boiling blood and fire. They shoot arrows dipped in acid at any sinner who emerges higher out of the river or tries to escape.

GREEN-EYED MONSTER (plural noun: GREEN-EYED MONSTERs): They’re envy demons who are most commonly seen in the Circle of Avarice, being closely related to fraudsters and kleptomaniacs. They use their eyes to instill the resentful longing that occurs when someone lacks another’s quality, skill, achievement, and/or possession that they wished they had. Eny demons work in cosmetic and fashion industries, restaurants, and reception offices. This particular Lohtazrendius subspecies also work as janitors, librarians, and suppliers of embroidered items.

FURY (plural noun: FURIES): They’re closely related to the brutes and are most commonly seen in the Circle of Ire. They’re responsible for punishing sinners who committed crimes against the natural order. They primarily focused on homicide, unfilial conduct, offences against other species and/or their own kind, and perjury. They inflicted insanity, pestilence, and hunger upon those who committed these aforementioned crimes during their mortal life.

KLEPTOMANIAC (plural noun: KLEPTOMANIACs): They’re the greed demons that are closely related to the fraudsters and green-eyed monsters. Similar to the green-eyed monsters, they’re most commonly seen in the Circle of Avarice. They focus on punishing hoarders, spendthrifts, and those who valued material goods over everything else. They’re often seen working at insurance companies, banks, financial services, real estate, and casinos. They’re the main subspecies who are in control of all black markets and their supplies.

GLUTTON (plural noun: GLUTTONs): They’re the gluttony demons who are most commonly seen in the Circle of Overconsumption. They focus on punishing those who have a voracious appetite and consistently over-indulge in food and/or drink. They often play the roles of hunters, butchers, harvesters, brewers, cooks, and guardians.

LIBERTINE (plural noun: LIBERTINEs): There are three types of lust demons that are most commonly seen in the Circle of Concupiscence. They focus on punishing those who let their unchecked carnal desires sway their reason. Lust demons work in the sex industry, which includes the direct provision of sex-related services and providing adult entertainment and products.

a. INCUBUS (plural noun: INCUBI): Incubi are male lust demons that actively seek to copulate with sleeping women and create offspring.

b. SUCCUBUS (plural noun: SUCCUBI): Succubi seduce men by appearing in their dreams and use their semen to replenish their health and sex drive as well as reproduce. They also pass the samples of sperm to an incubus who corrupts and strengthens the seed.

c. CONCUBUS (plural noun: CONCUBI): Concubi are hermaphroditic lust demons that prey on both men and women, changing their appearance and genitalia into whatever they see fit.

IMP or FIEND (plural noun: IMPs or FIENDs): They are divided into two different categories according to their family history and purpose. These two categories are uncultivated and sophisticated. Uncultivated imps are animalistic in their biology and way of thinking, often appearing to partially mimic the forms and abilities of certain animals that inhabit their environment. For example, those who live in swampy areas might appear to be toad-like and have sticky tongues, while those living in the ocean might appear to be piscine and are excellent swimmers. They’re primarily quadrupedal and they often act on instinct rather than intelligence. Sophisticated imps are more humanoid, fully bipedal, and aren’t noticeably animalistic in their way of thinking. They primarily utilise their intelligence to handle situations, but they might act on their instincts when it’s necessary. They’re often the most respected and valued servants of archdemons, fallen angels, lust demons, fraudsters, treacheries, and kleptomaniacs. However, both imp types are valued as mage familiars due to their strong connection to the underworld and their unique abilities and characteristics.

SINNER (plural noun: SINNERs): They were formerly humans who committed sins that are viewed as truly heinous and unforgivable by the angels. They’re punished according to the sins they have committed during their life on earth. They’re completely nude with an inside full of purplish blood, unorganised organs, grotesque insects, mud, excrement, and green slime.

#writerscorner #writing #creative writing #second subspecies has finally been introduced! #fictional species #fantasy #monster #multiverse #infernal beings #fallen angels #archdemons #devils #demons #imps #sinners #circles of hell #divine comedy inspired #potential trigger warning #viewer discretion is advised

[silverspleen]

So my buddy @quillusquillus has a fantastic headworld known as Infraflux. Basically post-post-apocalyptic earth where society has been rebuilt after a horrific cataclysm with both magic and technology into strange, bustling, cities and terrible alien wildernesses of various entities that want to kill you. It’s still growing as a setting but is very cool and lovely to read and fantasize about.

They are a bad influence and encourage me to play in their various headworld sandboxes and especially with Silas... and... well.

Q called it “isekai Silas but not really.”

Humans DO still exist in infraflux, somehow. But mostly confined to small, totally racist, human-only communes with no current Infraflux technology. Normal non-human infraflux citizens look at “high content human” people with a sort of air of mysticism, as humans came before the Lore cataclysm and are connected to an ancient period in Earth’s past long lost.

Which basically ensures that Infraflux Silas is a minor celebrity when people learn there’s basically a pure blood human living in their city, only to be crushed when it turns out he’s a shitty asshole who left his racist commune just so he could own a cell phone and eat street food and do crime.

---

So yeah obviously after Q brought up the idea I had to draw it, mostly because I love Infraflux (even if my knowledge of the lore and history from the wiki and my convos with Q is spotty because I forget things). Infraflux cities are fun because you can just go hogwold with weird little background critters and bustling city life stuff. Someday I think I may do a traditional media version of this pic so I can cram even m o r e detail into it. I’m better at fine detail in irl pen vs digital ones. I wanted to make fun wall graffitiiiiiiiiiiii. There needs to be more clutter on the waaaaallls.

I managed to put some canon Infraflux lore stuff in there specifically for Q to notice, and some cool designs that I hoped they’d like, which they did. So mission success! Even though I wanted it to be more cluttered and bustling I am proud of the various people populating this particular street. Backgrounds are hard.

---

You can read about Infraflux and Q’s other headworlds on their art/worldbuilding blog! @quazarshark

#obviously he has a disguise he wears when he wants to not be noticed #it's literally just A Helmet #BAM perfect disguise #infraflux #friends #Dragoon Draws #Dragoons Big Dumb OCs #art

[bradleyknoxfmp]

Research- Symbiotes (Marvel Comics)

First appearing in 'The Amazing Spider-Man No.252' released in 1984 as Spider-Man's new alien costume he obtained during the events of Secret Wars. Symbiotes are a race of aliens that appear to be goo of various colours but when attached to a host it transforms into a horrific monster and unlocks its full capabilities.

During the Secret Wars, an event that took place on Battleworld which was created by the Beyonder an entity who was fascinated with Earth and its super-heroes and villains and so created a planet arena and forced them to battle, Spider-Man's suit was badly damaged and when looking for a way to fix it he comes across a Symbiotie which covers his body and creates him a new black suit.

When returning to Earth after Secret Wars he continues to use the black suit, but he did not know it was an alien trying to attach to him.

The Symbiotie started to take over Spider-Man's body while he was sleeping to fight crime. Mary Jane witnessed this and told Peter Parker about the situation and so he investigated the suit with the help Mr.Fantastic and found out it was trying to fuse with Spider-Man and so he took it off.

The Symbiotie was unhappy with being separated with its host and so it found Eddie Brock and takes him over creating the vengeful Spider-Man villain Venom.

Since then many other Symbiotes have appeared in Marvel media and have become crucial characters in many Spider-Man stories and fan favourite villains.

Later on in 2007, the lore of the Symbiotes origin was expanded on. It was revealed they herald from a planet called Klyntar and are ruled over by Knull, the Symbiotie King.

Also as the years went by the story of Venom changed so people that wished to use him in comic-runs or movies didn't have to include the massive events of Secret Wars. The more modern origin of Venom and the Symbiotes is that they crashed on Earth and was discovered by scientist Curt Conners, and the alien attaches itself onto Peter Parker when he visits Conner's lab. This origin is used in the 2007 film 'Spider-Man 3', Venom's solo film released in 2018 (although Spider-Man is not present in this film so the Symbiotie crashes on Earth and attaches straight to Eddie Brock) and most recently the 2023 video game 'Spider-Man 2' developed by Insomniac Games.

This influences my FMP as the thing consuming the world will be black, gooey vines.

[earthstellar]

Transformers Medical Analysis Essay: What are Cybertronians Made Of? [Part One: Nanites and Human Equivalents]

This is gonna be long, for which I apologise. 

PLEASE NOTE: We will be discussing some actual real world blood stuff here; Nothing gross, just some basics to provide a human comparison for the Cybertronian stuff, and I have used my own blood test results below to help explain these comparisons to you. If you might find any real world medical content gross or potentially upsetting, please skip this post, as I don’t want to upset anyone! <3 

Here we go!

What Cybertronians Are Made Of, Part One: Nanites 

Nanites are mentioned throughout various TF media and franchises, although they seem to differ mildly between each application/description somewhat. 

This makes nanites a good starting point, as we know that at least all Cybertronians/Camiens/etc. have some kind of self-repair function, and this is stated to be either nanites or a multi-system function that includes nanites as a key part of maintaining health and wellbeing. 

In Beast Wars, we get the most detail on certain medical and physiological aspects of nanites, with the nanites inherent to the composition of a Cybertronian body providing part of the basic structure of the protoform, as well as displaying the ability to undergo mutation (similar somewhat to human cell mutations) which allow for the process of Transmetalisation. 

Nanites seem to have many significant functions in the Cybertronian body across multiple TF franchise canons, from being a fundamental construction element, to functioning like human stem cells, to behaving as an immune system in the capacity of self-repair nanites. 

We will focus specifically on self-repair nanites here, as it is sometimes implied in different TF canons that there may be multiple types of nanites present in the Cybertronian body. 

Comparing Self-Repair Nanites to a Human Equivalent: Full Blood Count

We can reasonably compare Cybertronian nanites to human cells, as we can think of these nanites as serving the same purpose as several different cell types in human bodies. 

In regards to Cybertronian self-repair nanites, the most obvious human comparisons would be immune system cells/proteins like macrophages, lymphocytes, mast cells, and Cytokines. 

Five types of white blood cells/leukocytes will appear in the blood generally speaking, and you can see these listed on any Full Blood Count (FBC) blood test. 

To illustrate this, I actually just recently did a few blood test panels on myself, so I have included my own FBC results for you to check out here: 

The five blood test results I want you to focus on are the following, which are the white blood cells I marked in orange/red above: 

Neutrophils

Lymphocytes (B and T Cells)

Monocytes 

Eosinophils

Basophils 

(You might notice that I have a few mildly OOR (out of range) results above; This is because I have Haemoglobin Barts and I am also undergoing HRT, so please don’t be too concerned!)

If any of these results are elevated (high/out of range on the upper end), it can help indicate all kinds of things, from whether or not you’ve had an infection or cold/flu recently, to being used as part of identifying possible autoimmune disorders in conjunction with other more specific tests like an Antinuclear Antibody (ANA) blood test as part of diagnostics for Lupus or Sjogren’s Syndrome, among other conditions. 

We can safely assume that self-repair nanites may be similarly used as part of certain Cybertronian medical diagnostic processes; We will probably only be able to verify this in canon once Hasbro finally listens to me and gives us a Med Bay focused series.

Note for any of you who might be non-clinical medical staff dealing with blood results: Basophils have a tendency to essentially self-destruct in a blood sample that has taken a little longer than usual to get processed in the lab, so don’t freak out immediately if this result appears out of range at first. Remember to check the time the sample was drawn and compare it to the time the sample was actually processed! Obviously, raise it as a potential concern anyway, if you are unsure. 

Why This is Relevant to Cybertronian Medicine and Physiology: Mechanical Lifeforms Are Complex, But in Some Ways, Not Really (Compared to Humans)

Just like human beings have our various immune system cells and proteins, Cybertronians clearly have self-repair nanites as a way to carry out some degree of constant natural defence against both casual and serious damage. 

HOWEVER. 

Whereas humans generally have the five primary white blood cell types which are the “usual” ones we check for in fairly routine blood tests like Full Blood Counts, it seems that Cybertronians have one universal primary white blood cell equivalent (self-repair nanites) that serve the functions of various immune system cells and proteins in human bodies.

To use computer engineering phrasing in reference to human functions, this is (to some degree) essentially biological built-in triple modular redundancy. Multiple types of cells within the immune system in humans all help individually and collectively to identify, locate, track, capture, learn about, and eliminate contaminants or foreign entities like bacteria, among other functions. 

Cybertronians, however, are extremely physically complex in other ways, but their basic structure and core components seem to be fairly minimal based on what we see in canon across the board; They only have self-repair nanites, a single type of nanite, to fulfil all of these varied and complex immune system analogous functions. They only have this singular line of natural defence. 

(This assumption is based on purely what we see in canon; If there are other self-repair dedicated functions, these are not as universally mentioned or mentioned at all in TF media canon, or where they are implied, they are not well defined.) 

While this may still be the most ideal possible natural or innate design for Cybertronian physiology, it is still, of course, essentially a single point of failure (as engineering terminology seems appropriate here), and a pretty serious one at that. 

Now, human immune systems can get all kinds of messed up anyway, and having more types of cells/nanites doesn’t necessarily eliminate a lot of those problems or risks and likely wouldn’t for Cybertronians either if they may have similar potential health concerns, but my point is that the Cybertronian immune system equivalent is extremely simplistic in comparison, which is in contrast with most other aspects of Cybertronian physiology. 

While they do use the plural form, “self-repair nanites”, which could imply the presence of multiple specific self-repair nanite types within the Cybertronian body, this is not specified, and this is never elaborated upon in any TF media to my knowledge. It seems that the use of the plural form refers only to there being many self-repair nanites in the body, rather than multiple types of self-repair nanite. 

Having a single line of immune defence has potentially serious implications in-universe; Just like human beings, Cybertronians may be able to experience problems with their immune systems ranging from potentially serious and chronic autoimmune issues, to being more prone to catching illnesses due to mild immunosuppression caused by chronic processor overload (chronic stress) or inability to recharge/infrequent recharge (insomnia), or possibly even autoimmune responses (see the section on rusting, below, for one theory I have about what may be a canonical example of this). 

This may vary significantly from series to series as well anyway, but we don’t have a lot of canonical medical information to work with about any of this, so this is all conjecture. 

Especially given the conditions of war, it may be difficult for Cybertronians to maintain fully functional self-repair nanites, as it is often the case across nearly all TF media that the bots are usually working with minimal supplies and/or sustaining severe and repeated damage, which provides ample opportunity for natural bodily processes to go wrong in addition or as a result of any external causes of damage. 

Do their self-repair nanites suffer from chronic low fuel levels, which particularly in TFP is a constant concern? 

Ratchet even mentions in the episode Stronger, Faster: 

Ratchet: “If one of you comes back wounded this time, well, our energon levels are nearly depleted.” 

While this may be in reference to concerns around lack of spare energon for transfusion purposes (as energon is treated like both blood and fuel in TFP), we know that it is generally used as supplementary to other medicines/treatments/medical procedures as well, although these are not defined clearly. 

It’s certainly possible that the risk of low fuel levels includes impeded nanite function, and considering that symptoms of low fuel in Cybertronians seem similar to exhaustion/fatigue/starvation in humans, it’s reasonable to assume that yes, running on strictly rationed levels of fuel for prolonged periods of time likely impacts their self-repair functions. 

This has further implications for dealing with everything from exposure to potential pathogens on other planets that may affect them, to recovering from any necessary surgical procedures or battle wounds. 

And, a very good point to make: Under the assumption that there is only one type of self-repair nanite, it may be possible to take a sample of these nanites from a living Cybertronian and reverse-engineer it; Biological weapons are known to exist in canon, and have been used to spectacularly horrific effect, particularly in IDW 2005/Sins of the Wreckers, if I recall correctly. 

What if someone finds a way to simply “shut down” these self-repair nanites? 

What if someone finds a way to, for example, create a biological weapon that induces an immediate autoimmune response, similar to a cytokine storm in humans? 

Which brings us to... 

Self-Repair Nanites, Autoimmune Responses, and Rusting: My Theory 

Cytokines are a part of the human body’s immune response, and are proteins that essentially help to moderate an immune response. If these proteins get out of control, a cytokine storm can result. 

We see a cytokine storm like effect when Cybertronians suffer from Cosmic Rust, which may trigger what appears to be a type of self-repair nanite storm; This might be the real reason for the rapid corrosion caused by the Cosmic Rust.

Rather than being a feature of the rust itself, it may be the case that the rust upon infecting a Cybertronian may elicit such a strong response from the nanites present in the body that it induces a sudden overwhelming and indiscriminate response from the self-repair nanites, thus causing the Cybertronian body to devour itself: 

The self-repair nanites in such a “storm” would not discriminate between healthy metals and rusted metals, and instead surge towards eliminating ALL metals.

This would mean that Cosmic Rust kills primarily by inducing a severe acute autoimmune response, but since we have no actual information on the mechanics of Cosmic Rust (or how it compares to normal rust which seems to occur naturally and seems to present as a somewhat common and relatively low risk issue for Cybertronians), I can’t say this for certain. 

I hope this has been interesting for someone, and if you actually stuck with me and read all of this, thank you very much for putting up with me!!!! <3 

#transformers #maccadam #transformers animated #transformers prime #tfa #tfp #rodimus #ratchet #tf ratchet #long post #cybertronian medicine #transformers lore #transformers essay #transformers medicine #tfp ratchet

[bongboyblog]

A dialect? or a language?

I might lose a lot of readers as a result of writing this post... might even get hate mails (lol), hopefully not. But I think this is a topic that I had to bring up on this blog. So... here we go...

I’ve been seeing a lotta controversy online (including on Tumblr), about whether or not Sylheti and Chittagonian are individual languages. Now, it’s alright if the people themselves don’t want to be called Bengali but there are some points that need to be addressed. I’m not a linguist and these are just the conclusions I have come to after reading some books and doing research online .

A language is a dialect too. It’s just a more widely known, standard, or maybe ‘official’ dialect. The Standard Bengali language is thus a dialect too. But it would be wrong to say that every Bengali speaks in this standard form. Thus those who don’t and yet claim to be Bengali and speak dialects ‘similar’ to the standard dialect can be said to be Bengali. No opposition with that I hope. 

Now the question is, do speakers of these dialects consider themselves Bengali? I’d say part yes, part no. I’ve come across people who argue that Sylhetis are in no way Bengali and then I’ve come across Sylhetis who seem more Bengali than I do. They speak better Bangla than me!

Let me tell the non-northeast Bengalis (since most people are surprisingly ignorant abt it), the people of Sylhet region in post Independence India gave their blood to be Bengali (google the horrific Bongal Kheda movement and the brave Bengali language movement in Assam, India). That’s how fiercely Bengali they are. I don’t know about the Sylhetis of Bangladesh, but the Sylhetis of India do consider themselves Bengali and will hate you if you call them non-Bengali. No kidding!

Also, I’ve noticed that the majority of people who assert that their language is independent and distinct from Bengali are desis living outside of South Asia. Most of them have feeble or no connection with their homeland and never had the chance of learning standard Bengali. I’m saying ‘most’. As such I don’t know how authentic their point of view should be considered. How can you claim your dialect is different when you’re not aware of how different the other dialects are? Again, I repeat, ‘most’ not all.

Then there are people who’ll claim they’re not Bengali because they’re supposedly from a different ethnic group. But Bengali is not merely an ethnic tag. It’s also a socio-political and lingual identity. So it’s fine if your dialect or, ‘language’ if you prefer that, is not Standard Bengali. Or if you look different from a ‘typical Bengali’. As long as you’re from the region and claim to be Bengali, I don’t see any reason why you can’t be a Bengali. 

And just to make it clear, Kolkata and Dhaka Bangla are NOT truly Standard Bangla. Most of us have some regional traits in our speech. We have a ‘Standard’ language so that people from various regions of Bengal (Sylhet and Chittagong fall under this geopolitical entity too) can communicate with each other. Bengali is like an umbrella term, and will lose it’s meaning if everyone assert their regional culture to be distinct and separate.

Ami ki kotha koiDhi bujhoDho to? (Medinipuri country dialect)

Medinipuri Rarhi= Ami ki koitichhi bujhte pattichhen to?

Shadhu (hope I’m correct)= Ami jaha koitechhi apni bujhite paritechhen to?

(Ami ki bolchhi bujhte parchhen to? Are you able to understand what I’m trying to say?) These are just the varieties spoken in West Medinipur! Sylhet and Chittagong are located quite far from Central Bengal (Standard Bangla is supposed to be developed from the Nadia dialect), it’s only fair that their speech will have some variations!!

There are a bunch of people who say that these dialects are ‘corrupt’ Bangla, that’s not true either! They evolved on their own, parallel to Standard Bangla. 

So should the dialects/languages be considered independent languages? I think it should be left to the individual speaker to decide. I or anyone else for that matter have no right in telling people whether or not they speak Bengali or are Bengali. All I want to say is that there’re more kinds of Bengalis than what the media (both South Asian and Western) portray and that all forms of Bangla and Bangali are valid. 

Nomoskar (Nomoshkar is not really the right way to pronounce it, like a majority of Bengalis do. Nope. It’s a dontto so not a talobbo sho. See? I told ya, don’t go by Kolkata or Dhaka standards :) )

I’m open to discussion, as long as you’re willing to listen too. :)

#bengali #bangla #bong's bongo #sylheti #chittagonian #rajbongshi #rarhi #medinipuri #india #bangladesh #shuddho bangla #shadhu bhasha #dialect #language #don't hate me #west bengal #tripura #assam #dhaka #kolkata #sylhet #chittagong #langblr

[atomkrp-blog]

WELCOME TO XAVIER’S, SHIBASAKI NOZOMU !

… loading statistics. currently aged twenty-five, entering first semester of xavier’s in seoul, south korea. decrypting files… mutant has the following records: strength +6 durability+7, agility +5, dexterity +4, intelligence +3. currently, he is classified under tier omega.

BACKGROUND.

shibazaki.

the name falls off the grid as grandchildren after grandchildren marry into unpromising families. those of the gene incapable. varying bodies of normalcy as society boasts to embrace the majority; the conventional, non-threatening fascination there is in being human. it’s safer this way, the family portraits are hung on the walls without a blemish.

all that the ancestors have fought for are stories to be told, memories of nothing, and lies to be fulfilled.

16

“around 5:34pm this afternoon, the midosuji train line has become jammed due to horrific circumstances.”

“another train wreck? well, this is new.”

“no, no, they haven’t said yet. listen.”

“whatever it is, it’s keeping your father from letting us eat dinner.”

the newscaster continues, “witnesses have said that a drunken man fell into the subway tracks just several minutes before the train’s arrival. however, while the story is currently getting live coverage, a student from minamigata high school leaped into the tracks, risking his own life in order to save the stranger.”

“minamigata?” her face sours. the mother sits quietly as she rests the last bit of silverware onto the table. the cameras are shaking while exhaust fumes into focus, hoards of people clearing the area with an obvious dent garnishing the dome of the train. the newscaster, clearly baffled with his precipitating words continues talking about nothing. through the smoke, and in one piece, bodies are struggling to reach the edge of the yellow-tiled floors. a familiar face does the trick.

“shibazaki?”

17

just like in movies, dramas and animated films, tokyo is larger than life. sure, the little quaint neighborhood back in osaka draws a keen number of wandering-eyed folks, visitors or not, but it is tokyo that sets the limits.

the people are a bit colder; cooler. the days are lively as so are the nights spent without a wink of sleep. they move father fast on their feet, speak with a knowledgeable yet standardized tone that somehow rings unconscious to the ears.

“i don’t know,” you reply reluctantly when father asks how you’re liking the new school. “i introduced myself in the front of class and a boy said i sounded stupid ‘cause of my accent.”

father laughs. he laughs with his belly, this loud and humiliating laugh that god forbids it sounds like the rest of the class howling that morning. “tokyo kids are kinda blunt, huh? that’s supposed to be our thing.” mother is nowhere to be found for comfort and reconciliation. she might’ve been upstairs on the phone talking to her sister about you and this mutant related nonsense while having to relocate cities too dense for your liking.

all for your gratitude, though it starts to feel like your father’s. almost as if you’re intended on living a life he failed to have.

“don’t let one kid generalize your entire experience. after all, you just started,” he says with a can of beer in his hand. then he goes onto a lecture that leaves you unattentive. something about the significance of the school with educating young mutants, x-genes, how his great-grandfather would be happy to see you attaining the lifestyle that this entire lineage has been waiting decades for.

everything’s slowly starting to get carved out.

17

“i miss yodogawa a lot, y’know that?”

kaori chuckles on the other end. “pick one. me, or yodogawa.”

“we’ll be adults soon. i can’t say i miss a city without you feeling funny?”

“i never said i was jealous, nozomu.”

“it’s really starting to sound like it.”

her energy reads mildly exasperated, though you don’t mind. it’s all banter.

“anyways,” it’s you that breaks the silence. “i’ll be graduating next spring, and i’ve yet to submit college applications. you think i should take a year off? kyoto university of the arts won’t leave me alone with open house letters filling up my mailbox.”

the line sounds lonely for a few moments until she starts to speak again. “you’re still thinking of studying photography?”

“digital media more or less, but yeah.”

“you’re gonna struggle, maybe not in school but wouldn’t it be hard finding a job? it’s not like you’re going into medicine, or business or something.”

“i like photography.”

she chuckles again, but it’s not the kind sort of chuckle that gives you butterflies the way it would when you were fourteen. “you could profit more off of being in the government doing mutant things rather than taking pictures for a living, nozomu.”

negligible. an uncomfortable feeling sits atop your chest. “kaori, i’ll call you back.”

“what?”

“i’ll call you back.”

19

“super strength, was it?”

“close. it’s, um, enhanced body, actually.”

the boy probably looks not too far off between age, and he nods like he grasped onto a chunk of new information.

“yeah, it’s just basically being able to be strong while fast, with endurance, agility.. a whole bunch of other things that i probably have forgotten, but it’s like a big starter kit,” you say. “kind of.”

“what kinda name did they give you?”

“vigor.” embarrassment is evident in your word for word delivery.

“vigor for strength? it’s fitting! i’d like to see it in action, or see vigor in action.” his smile is wide and annoying, but it’s genuinely friendlier than most. “i’m kazuya, by the way. funatsu kazuya. it’s good to have you on the winning team.”

23

“you can’t go out there again! it’s too dangerous!”

overlooking the earth in shades of red and black, smoke shrouded tokyo’s most impressionable skyscrapers.

“y’know, out of all the dumb things you’ve done, this is really gonna top it all.”

kazuya’s eyes are red with irritation. somewhere on the top of an unknown building, you both watch as the world returns to gravel.

“you gotta trust me on this one.”

he disappears in the humid rain of ashes. descending into a whirlwind of ambulances, broken driveways, and police cars, you pray that he lives beyond today.

the numbers of human and mutant casualties arise. civilians; women and men and children, hidden mutants and humans, fell in the hands of violent, anti-mutant demonstrators. the tokyo institute for the adept collapses to shards.

three months later

strange how life works.

being situated in a neighboring country gone unrecognized than on the map, in history books, and on television. with a scholarship and some pity letters from the japanese and korean prime minister to fund your education, all in praise for your dna makeup.

your journey doesn’t stop here.

MUTATION.

ENHANCED BODY. in which the user who possesses such capacity is granted physical abilities that heighten what is normally considered “peak human performance”. the mutant’s physical power is naturally elevated than those of their classification or species, no matter how little to no effort possible they put in for conditioning and exercise. as necessary, the subject is faster, stronger, and generally resilient to those of their type, however not carrying apparent otherworldly or supernatural qualities.

STRENGTHS.

ENHANCED STRENGTH possessing strength stronger than what is considered normal / beyond of what an average person should entail

ENHANCED SPEED the mutant is able to travel / move faster than what is considered normal out of those within their species

ENHANCED ENDURANCE able to withstand physical stresses with better-staying power than what is considered on an average level compared to those within their species

WEAKNESSES.

balance, mass, and gravity still play a heavy part in affecting the weight on various objects. the mutant is not vulnerable to bodily strain from heaviness.

without proper care, the mutant is susceptible to physical pressure and damage. putting the ability to use outwardly, in place of customary warnings regarding the weight of an object puts the mutant in constant danger.

exerting strength or speed in various parts of the body all entail to different energy levels being at risk for loss. meaning, the mutant’s durability can resist time longer if only focusing on the limbs rather than the entire body.

the mutant can be receptive of breathing or lung-related problems as side effects when actively moving at a fast pace. same applies to strength, lifting or maneuvering heavy objects can stunt breathing.

the current condition of the mutant is vital. if in bad health, it will greatly impact their performance, durability, and longevity as they will decline weaker with execution.

the abilities granted are not supernatural nor mental-leaning. although it does take an adequate amount of focus to rightfully displace power, meaning without other lying distractions, the mutant isn’t relying on mystical entities of the sort

#at:profile #tw train accident

[klaudiaspiechowiczfmp2]

Demons

“A demon is a supernatural being, typically associated with evil, prevalent historically in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, anime, and television series.

The original Greek word daimon does not carry negative connotations. The Ancient Greek word δαίμων daimōn denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin genius or numen. The Greek conception of a daimōn notably appears in the works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates.

In Ancient Near Eastern religions and in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology, a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.”

“Psychologist Wilhelm Wundt remarked that "among the activities attributed by myths all over the world to demons, the harmful predominate, so that in popular belief bad demons are clearly older than good ones." Sigmund Freud developed this idea and claimed that the concept of demons was derived from the important relation of the living to the dead: "The fact that demons are always regarded as the spirits of those who have died recently shows better than anything the influence of mourning on the origin of the belief in demons."

M. Scott Peck, an American psychiatrist, wrote two books on the subject, People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil and Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption. Peck describes in some detail several cases involving his patients. In People of the Lie he provides identifying characteristics of an evil person, whom he classified as having a character disorder. In Glimpses of the Devil Peck goes into significant detail describing how he became interested in exorcism in order to debunk the myth of possession by evil spirits – only to be convinced otherwise after encountering two cases which did not fit into any category known to psychology or psychiatry. Peck came to the conclusion that possession was a rare phenomenon related to evil and that possessed people are not actually evil; rather, they are doing battle with the forces of evil.”

“Throughout the history of religions, varying kinds and degrees of beliefs have existed in various spiritual beings, powers, and principles that mediate between the realm of the sacred or holy—i.e., the transcendent realm—and the profane realm of time, space, and cause and effect. Such spiritual beings, when regarded as benevolent, are usually called angels in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and those viewed as malevolent are termed demons. In other traditions, such intermediate beings are less categorical, for they may be benevolent in some circumstances and malevolent in others.”

“In religions of nonliterate peoples, spiritual beings may be viewed as either malevolent or benevolent according to the circumstances facing the individual or community. Thus, the usual classification that places demons among malevolent beings is not totally applicable in reference to these religions.

The positions of spiritual beings or entities viewed as benevolent or malevolent may in the course of time be reversed. Such has been the case in the ancient Indo-Iranian religion, from which evolved early Zoroastrianism and the early Hinduism reflected in the Vedas (ancient Aryan hymns). In Zoroastrianism the daevas were viewed as malevolent beings, but their counterparts, the devas in ancient Hinduism, were viewed as gods. The ahuras of Zoroastrianism were good “lords,” but in Hinduism their counterparts, the asuras, were transformed into evil lords. In a similar manner, Satan, the prosecutor of humans in the court of God’s justice in the Book of Job, became the chief antagonist of Christ in Christianity and of humanity in Islam. Many similar transformations indicate that the sharp distinctions made between angels as benevolent and demons as malevolent may be too simplistic, however helpful such designations may be as indicators of the general functions of such spiritual beings.”

Demons have been known to humanity for a very long part of history even dating back to ancient Egypt. They existed as a threat and a representation of all the evil in the world. Demons in mythological tales were either born out of the dark gods, were recently deceised humans that suffered a horrific death or possesed people that turned into these beings corrupted by their selfish desires. I feel demons are and always will be a good indicator of how specific cultures depict and understand the ideas of good and evil considering some places and religions consider these beings to be pure creatures of evil whilst others deem them sorrowful souls trying to escape to afterlife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon

https://archive.org/details/glimpsesofdevila00peck

https://www.britannica.com/topic/angel-religion

[aion-rsa]

I Care a Lot: Can Professional Guardians and Conservatorships Really Get THAT Bad?

https://ift.tt/3qCWe0N

This article contains I Care a Lot spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review here.

How odd that in the span of a couple days it seems like everyone is debating the virtues of professional guardianships and what it means to become a legal conservator. Only a week ago, Hulu and The New York Times debuted its social media lightning rod of a documentary, Framing Britney Spears, and now barely more than seven days later, Netflix is debuting J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot, a baroque comedy (or tragedy?) in which Rosamund Pike plays a professional legal guardian who cares. She cares a lot. Just not about her wards.

As becomes queasily apparent early on in I Care a Lot, the things that keep Pike’s Marla Grayson up at night are not the dozens of wards she has a legal responsibility toward, nor necessarily the employees in her company. Rather it’s her clients’ bank accounts where Marla’s interests lie; and she uses them to bill herself hourly rates and underwrites any expenses she incurs while raiding their homes for valuables.

Within the movie’s first 15 minutes, we even see Grayson’s nightmarish con in a nutshell when she has a little old lady named Jennier (Dianne Wiest) declared incompetent because of dementia. Marla shows up on Jennifer’s doorstep with the cops and a court order to lock Jennifer away forever in a nursing home, even though Wiest’s senior has never even seen the inside of a courtroom.

Can something this scandalous and awful actually happen in America? The short answer is yes.

“These stories were horrifying and not uncommon,” Blakeson told The Moveable Fest last September. “So I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole in reading about these various stories happening in various places and thought there was something almost Kafkaesque about somebody knocking on your door and just taking you away for a reason you didn’t think was valid.”

And as has become increasingly publicized in recent weeks, once you get in the system of guardianships/conservatorships, it’s very hard to get out.

Guardianships of course play a pivotal role in modern society. As a legal responsibility created to protect those deemed vulnerable due to a diminished capacity that’s left them “incapacitated” or “incompetent,” guardianship is usually taken up by family members or professionals (mostly lawyers) who agree to manage a vulnerable party’s assets, caring for their estate and possibly their day-to-day person and body. This means a guardian is in charge of their wards’ assets and finances, what doctors they see, what medications they take, where they live, and potentially who they interact with and how they lead their daily lives. One woman in this situation told The New York Times, “It’s worse than incarceration. At least in prison you have rights.”

It’s an arrangement most often used to protect elderly people who cannot care for themselves, but problems can occur when one must decide how to determine someone is “incapacitated” or “incompetent,” and whether a ward needs a guardian in perpetuity. Additionally, just how vulnerable is the position of being a professional guardian itself vulnerable to profit motive?

Most legal guardianships or conservatorships are not egregiously corrupt like Marla Grayson’s racket in I Care a Lot, and many professional guardians will note how difficult it is to manage the affairs of low income individuals who need daily assistance—or how professional guardians are required to step in by the courts when the children of elderly parents enter lawsuits against each other.

However, the details are frustratingly hard to track. The National Center for State Courts estimates the number of people in guardianships is between one and three million in the U.S., but it’s impossible to accurately measure when legal records of guardianships are often sealed and there is no standardized recordkeeping; The Times reported guardianship records are kept separately by each of New York’s individual 62 counties, with no standardized reporting on state or even city totals; and a Government Accountability Office report from 2010 revealed that “we could not locate a single Web site, federal agency, state or local entity, or any other organization that compiles comprehensive information on the issue.”

Rather state by state, and case by case, courts appear to be left to their own devices on how to handle situations—and also uncomfortably relying on what amounts to an honor system regarding professional guardians. As per The Times, the state of New York requires any aspiring professional guardian to only complete a one-day certification course, and according to the aforementioned GAO report, courts require no background checks for aspiring legal guardians. Instead they trust applicants to disclose any previous criminal convictions or recent bankruptcies.

This can create a recipe for abuse and cases as extreme as Pike’s wolfish Marla Grayson showing up at your door with a court order. Famously in New York, Judge John Phillips built a real estate empire in Brooklyn worth $20 million during the 1980s and ‘90s, which included movie theaters that became neighborhood landmarks. Yet after he was diagnosed with dementia and considered incompetent in the early 2000s, he went through a series of legal guardians and somehow was “left to freeze to death in 2008” in a facility unlicensed to treat dementia. While he declined, his guardians had been selling off theaters and various other assets to the tune of millions of dollars.

More recently, and more reminiscent of Marla Grayson, is the case of April Parks, a former Nevada legal guardian who pled guilty in 2018 to six felony charges, including two counts of elder exploitation. The full extent of her abuse, however, was laid bare in 2017 by Rachel Aviv’s harrowing reporting in The New Yorker’s “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights.”

In that piece, Aviv chronicled how Parks amassed more than 400 wards for her guardianship business over 12 years in the state of Nevada—and how each of her wards lost “nearly all of their civil rights.” This is primarily highlighted through the experiences of Rudy and Rennie North, a couple in their 70s who on a fateful Friday morning were greeted at their front door by April Parks and three unnamed associates. Parks was the owner of a company called A Private Professional Guardian—a fact she was so proud about she had her license plate read “CRTGRDN” (court guardian)—and she arrived that day with an order from the Clark County Family Court, which demanded the Norths be removed from their homes immediately.

Unbeknownst to the Norths, Parks had filed an emergency ex-parte petition in the court, which allowed her to claim the Norths posed a “substantial risk for mismanagement of medications, financial loss, and physical harm” without their presence in the court. Indeed, they weren’t even notified the hearing was happening. Parks told the court the elderly couple was at risk due to a rapid decline caused by dementia, as based on a letter from a physician’s assistant Rennie had seen once. Rudy and Rennie had never undergone a single cognitive assessment when the court agreed Parks should move the pair into a nursing home.

It was more than three days before the Norths’ adult daughter Julie Belsche even discovered where they were, with her parents’ home being left empty, causing the daughter to tell her husband she thought “someone kidnapped my parents.”

As soon as the Norths were gone, Parks went through their house with the owner of a company called Caring Transitions, which specialized in estate sales of the assets and belongings of relocated seniors. Raiding the couple’s closets and drawers, in search of paperwork and valuables, had become routine for Parks. Within a month, Parks hired Even Tide Life Transitions to sell off most of the belongings, including two Renoir lithographs valued at $38,000.

The Norths’ case was not unique. As their daughter Julie and The New Yorker eventually unraveled, Parks had wards in nursing homes throughout the county, including 10 in the one that the Norths were relocated to. Many of these seniors were declared in need of legal guardianship in hearings that lasted less than two minutes. Prosecutor Jaclyn O’Malley would later piece together for a grand jury that Parks allegedly built a network of “hospital social workers and medical staff” who helped generate client leads for Parks’ company. In one instance in 2010, the state’s attorney said Parks was “cold-calling” rehabilitation centers in search of a 79-year-old woman who had nearly $700,000 in the bank and no children.

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But all of this was unspooled after years of hardship for the Norths. As per the American Bar Association, guardianship is generally “permanent, leaving no way out… until death do us part,’” and the Norths seemed to face that truth when they couldn’t even hire a lawyer to argue their case.

Their daughter also reported they were “overmedicated to the point where they weren’t really there” in their nursing home.

All these seeming horrors were committed by a sophisticated engine of care that makes I Care a Lot’s Marla Grayson appear like small potatoes. Yet the legal authority of professional guardians is so protected under the cloud of sealed documents that it wasn’t stories of glassy-eyed medication or the lack of due process that actually brought Parks down. The narrowly defined felonies she pled guilty to involved perjury under oath and double dealing in her accounting—like charging her wards $100 each for the hour it took to deliver unsolicited Christmas “gifts” of cheap socks purchased from the nearby department store.

It got Parks a sentence of 16 to 40 years in prison. Still, the most egregious cases are far from the only ones to care about, and in reality there isn’t a Peter Dinklage there to bargain for each senior who may think they don’t need a professional guardian.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ufAF8A

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[ladystylestores]

Falun Gong: Can a religious group that wants to bring down China’s Communist Party survive in Hong Kong?

Marchers, dressed all in yellow, carried purple lotus plants, yin-yang symbols, and other traditional Buddhist icons. But it was their giant banners, held aloft or mounted on small floats, that indicated this was not just a religious rally.

“Keep away from the Chinese Communist Party. Stop the persecution of Falun Gong.”

A religious movement that emerged in China in the mid-1990s, Falun Gong surged in popularity nationwide before it was banned and brutally suppressed on the mainland in 1999. But it continues to operate in Hong Kong thanks to the territory’s greater human rights protections.

Crossing the border by bus from China and seeing Falun Gong practitioners handing out anti-Communist Party leaflets was once one of the most visible signs of Hong Kong’s relative autonomy from Beijing.

All that could soon be deemed illegal under a sweeping new security law passed by China for Hong Kong last month that criminalized “acts of secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.”

Similar laws in China have been used to go after Falun Gong practitioners, which Beijing denounces as an “evil cult” that “preaches heretical fallacies that are anti-humanity and anti-science” through the control of people’s minds.

Falun Gong practitioners reject these charges and maintain they have been unfairly targeted and suppressed by the Chinese authorities. Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are believed to be held “at various prisons and extralegal detention centers” in mainland China, according to Washington-based rights group Freedom House — an accusation Beijing also denies.

“The new National Security Law will act like a sharp knife hanging over the (association) and the heads of every Falun Gong practitioner in Hong Kong,” said Ingrid Wu, spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Falun Dafa Association. “We are very concerned.”

Hong Kong officials have claimed the new law is necessary and will only affect a handful of individuals. In early July, Chief Executive Carrie Lam pushed back against the suggestion the law would undermine people’s freedoms.

“The legal principles that we attach a lot of importance to, like presumption of innocence and no retrospective effect and so on, are being upheld,” she said. “Instead of spreading fear, the law will actually remove fear and let Hong Kong people return to a normal, peaceful life.”

A government spokeswoman did not respond to emailed questions about concerns regarding religious freedom under the law.

Hong Kong has long been a safe haven for entities which could never operate in China, from banned religious movements and labor rights NGOs, to big tech firms blocked by the Great Firewall. The fate of groups like Falun Gong — fierce opponents of Beijing who, while not the immediate targets of the law still come within its broad remit — will test those assurances to the hilt.

New age religion

Founded by Li Hongzhi in northeastern China in the early 1990s, Falun Gong blends traditional Chinese qigong practices and new age beliefs. It was once promoted by the Chinese government and state media as part of a nationwide qigong craze, but as Falun Gong grew in size, attracting millions of followers, the authorities turned on the group.

Li encouraged a blistering public relations strategy in a bid to win over the critics, and between 1996 and 1999, the group staged some 300 protests and demonstrations, historian David Ownby writes in “Falun Gong and the Future of China.”

This culminated in an audacious, and strategically disastrous, demonstration around central government headquarters in Beijing involving around 10,000 practitioners. It was the biggest protest the capital had seen since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and was the beginning of the end for Falun Gong in China.

The protesters in Beijing were calling for the removal of restrictions placed on the faith, but the Chinese authorities responded with a massive crackdown and huge propaganda push demonizing Falun Gong.

“I was shocked,” said Rose, a Hong Kong-based Falun Gong practitioner. “I had friends who were traveling between Hong Kong and Beijing, they told me a crackdown was about to take place, but I said this was impossible, Falun Gong was just a belief, nothing political.”

Originally from mainland China, Rose began practicing Falun Gong after moving to Hong Kong in the late 1990s. CNN is withholding her full name due to fears of prosecution under the new security law.

After Falun Gong was banned, Rose’s husband and several of her close friends urged her to keep a low profile, to just do her exercises and readings at home. But she was sure there had been some sort of mistake, and so, just has her fellow practitioners had done in Beijing, she sought to appeal to the government, to make the case for Falun Gong.

“A group of us went to the Liaison Office,” she said. “But no one came out, we stayed there for 24 hours.”

The Liaison Office is the Chinese government’s Hong Kong headquarters, long a symbol of Beijing’s influence over the city.

Days turned into weeks, then months. Every day, Rose and a small group of fellow practitioners gathered outside the office on 160 Connaught Road to attempt to have their message heard.

One day the protesters were joined by a group of Swiss practitioners who had originally hoped to travel to Beijing to protest but were denied visas. Police attempted to remove the group, which, according to court documents never numbered more than 16, and was “peaceful and largely static.”

Police moved to clear the protest, however, and charged the Falun Gong protesters with obstruction, among other offenses. The case eventually wound up at the Court of Final Appeals, where Hong Kong’s top justices ruled strongly in favor of the right to protest and use “reasonable force to resist being subjected to unlawful detention.”

The case was a major victory not just for Falun Gong but for anti-government protesters in general, securing — until last year’s anti-government protests — the right to stage protests outside the Liaison Office.

New restrictions

While Falun Gong practitioners are not the primary target of the new security law — which is at times clearly designed to criminalize acts seen during last year’s anti-government protests — they and other groups like them could still fall foul of its broad remit.

In particular, the new offense of subversion makes it illegal in many circumstances to advocate “overthrowing the body of central power of the People’s Republic of China.” Given that the PRC government is indelibly intertwined with the Communist Party, Falun Gong efforts to get people to quit the Communist Party in protest, or otherwise harm its activities, could be deemed criminal.

The new crime of “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security” could also be used to target Falun Gong. While not a top-down religion like the Catholic Church or other similar faiths with large numbers of followers in Hong Kong, Falun Gong is headquartered in the United States, where Li Hongzhi has lived since 1996, and this is where the group’s main media and lobbying arms are also located.

Under Article 29 of the new law, anyone who “conspires with a foreign country or an institution, organization or individual outside (China), or directly or indirectly receives instructions, control, funding or other kinds of support” from such organizations, could be prosecuted if they are found to be “provoking by unlawful means hatred among Hong Kong residents towards the Central People’s Government or the Government of the Region, which is likely to cause serious consequences.”

With initial prosecutions under the security law all related to recent protests, Falun Gong practitioners could find themselves — if the law’s critics are correct — being a test case of another sort, an expansion of the law’s remit to ban activities that have long been verboten on the mainland.

“How the situation of Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong evolves in the coming months and how much of the repression leaks over from the mainland is a very important space to watch,” said Sarah Cook, a senior research analyst at Freedom House and author of “The Battle for China’s Spirit: Religious Revival, Repression, and Resistance under Xi Jinping.”

Outside of the protest movement, Falun Gong is among the most vocal and visible opposition to the Communist Party, in both Hong Kong and elsewhere around the world. While the group is somewhat detached from the mainstream opposition in Hong Kong due to its conservative religious beliefs, this has not stopped its presence in the city being symbolic, and many followers take a sort of pride that even Falun Gong can operate in Hong Kong, given the huge antipathy Beijing has towards the group.

“The ability of people in Hong Kong to practice Falun Gong legally and openly is important both symbolically and practically,” said Erping Zhang, a US-based spokesman for the group.

Zhang said that as well as the new crimes created under the law, he was concerned about the broad rights it gives Chinese security services to operate in Hong Kong, even extending Chinese jurisdiction over certain cases and allowing people to be taken for trial on the mainland.

“It could truly take a horrific toll on Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong and create huge losses for those who have benefited from the practice and activists’ awareness raising activities,” he said.

Cook, the Freedom House researcher, said that any curtailment of Falun Gong in the city “would be a bad sign and a potentially worrying precursor to a crackdown on the broader religious community in Hong Kong.”

“Within China we’ve sign time and again since 1999 how the rules, tactics, and even security forces initially created to persecute Falun Gong are then expanded to other targets,” she added. “It may only be a matter of time before we see that in Hong Kong too, unfortunately.”

But not all religious groups are alarmed. In a letter to the religious newspaper Church Times this month, Paul Kwong, Archbishop of Hong Kong, praised the new security law and pushed back against criticism from figures including Cardinal Maung Bo, president of the Asian Bishops’ Conferences.

“Many critics do not accept the fact that we are part of China,” Kwong said. “They only emphasize two systems, not one country. I cherish our Hong Kong freedoms — in particular the freedom of religion and way of life — as much as anyone, and I don’t think this law will change any of that. I am also proud to be living in China.”

Freedom of speech

Numerous concerns have been raised about the new law’s potential effects on freedom of speech in Hong Kong, with people already moving to scrub their social media and remove posters and pamphlets criticizing the government from shops and restaurants.

Media groups have expressed alarm about the law, with the Foreign Correspondents’ Club writing to the city’s leader Lam “seeking clarity on specific areas where the new law is vague and where terms are undefined, particularly regarding the press and freedom of speech.”

Lam previously said “the law has clearly defined the four types of acts and activities which we need to prevent, curb and punish in accordance with the law.”

“If the Foreign Correspondents’ Club or all reporters in Hong Kong can give me a 100% guarantee that they will not commit any offenses under this piece of national legislation, then I can do the same,” she added.

Here again, Falun Gong may find themselves at the inadvertent frontlines of Hong Kong’s battle for civil liberties. During a recent protest against the law on July 1, Falun Gong practitioners could be seen handing out flyers saying “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party” as well as copies of Epoch Times. The newspaper, which was founded by Falun Gong practitioners and remains closely linked to the group, is one of the most vocally anti-government publications in the city.

Its Chinese edition refers to the coronavirus as the “Chinese Communist Party virus,” has called on the West to “fight back” against the Party, and regularly publishes stinging critiques of Beijing.

Representatives for Epoch Times in Hong Kong and New York did not respond to a request for comment.

Like Apple Daily, a pro-democracy tabloid owned by tycoon Jimmy Lai, currently facing charges related to last year’s protests, Epoch Times could be a canary in the coal mine for Hong Kong’s media freedoms. Both papers have cultivated influence in Washington — something that could both help or harm them, leading to politicians speaking out in their defense, but also Beijing casting them as colluding with foreign forces.

Lai has long been close to Republican Party politicians, leading to claims of his being a foreign agent in Chinese state media, while the English edition of the Epoch Times since 2016 has aggressively targeted Trump voters, with opinion content taking on an increasingly right-wing stance.

In 2019, the paper was barred by Facebook from running ads on its platform, after finding it violated the company’s policies with pro-Trump campaigns.

Uncertain future

Hong Kong and Beijing officials have repeatedly claimed that the security law is both necessary and restrained, and will only affect a tiny handful of individuals in the city, mainly violent separatists.

Paraphrasing former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about Hong Kong’s success after China took control, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said this week that under the new law “horses will run faster, stocks will be more sizzling, and dancers will dance more happily.”

But with moves to ban books and expand police powers of surveillance and censorship, the scope of the law would appear to be expanding.

Falun Gong practitioners, as well as many other groups in Hong Kong opposed to Beijing, may not immediately feel the sting of the new regulations, but they were poised for the worse. After years of suppression in China, however, the group is better prepared than most for how to function behind the scenes, even if that will require a complete overhaul of its Hong Kong operation.

Zhang, the US-based spokesman, said that within China still, people “continue to practice Falun Gong in private and many go out and discretely disseminate information to help other Chinese see through the CCP’s lies and cover-ups.”

Many practitioners in Hong Kong are in the city because they fled China, and Wu, the local spokeswoman said some may choose to go overseas should the law target them.

“The Falun Gong community is diverse; each person makes their own decision based on their family and other situations,” she said. “But most of Falun Gong practitioners that I know plan to stay in Hong Kong. We feel it is our responsibility to continue our peaceful efforts of raising awareness of the persecution and calling for justice, and tell the world what is happening in Hong Kong.”

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[kingoji]

Shin Godzilla initial thoughts

I have finally gotten around to watching Shin Godzilla this week, via less than legal means. Shut up. I'd have paid for it several times over by now were it an option for me, and will undoubtedly be paying for it when a western release is announced to own. I support this shit right up the jacksie. Anyway, this is a film that I had been dying to see, and as such am filled with thoughts now that I have done so. These thoughts I now spill like bodily fluids from my pulsating gills all over the tarmac. gonna try and keep all the major spoilers out of this one, but be warned I'm not exactly a professional media journalist. If you want to avoid spoilers then either skip the synopsis or just don't bother reading this. And to be fair, this is already FUCK long. If I were to discuss the spoilers I'd need to write a book or some shit. ONWARDS!

SYNOPSIS Tokyo Bay security are investigating an abandoned sailboat when the water beneath them begins to boil, followed by an underwater detonation of unknown origin which sends water high into the sky and also damages an underwater traffic tunnel. The Prime Minister's cabinet quickly convene and begin an investigation, but before they can reach any conclusions an enormous creature comes ashore and decimates the local area before returning to the sea. As part of their ongoing investigations and preparations should the creature return, the cabinet forms an unorthodox thinktank composed of low-rankers and radicals to consider the seemingly impossible biology of the creature from outside of the box, and the US offer some results of their own as well as potential military aid. As this think tank hits upon a possible method of combating the creature, it returns to land and cuts a swath through the city impervious to all attempts from the Japanese Self-Defence Forces to halt it. Eventually reaching the heart of the city, the military bombardment upon the creature finally causes it to retaliate with devastating radioactive attacks before entering a state of dormancy to re-energize. Eyes opened to the potential for global disaster the monster represents, it is reluctantly agreed that the US be allowed to vapourise the creature with a nuclear attack. The Japanese government step up their earlier devised plan to combat the creature as a final Hail Mary before the nuclear strike can occur, and successfully manage to chemically halt the nuclear fission within the monster, effectively freezing it solid.

***

As is becoming traditional when Toho reboots the character, a big part of the hype machine comes from the radical redesign of the monster. When the Heisei era began in 1985, the last time Godzilla had been seen he was a slimmed down, big-eyed, children's hero; Here he was back to his dark, bulky persona with many design elements reinstated from the original 1955 design that were gradually shed through out the series (such as ears, fangs, and additional, more savage looking dorsal fins), and he just looked shockingly mean. When the Millenium era began people had gotten used to a very standardised (but also iconic) look that was maintained throughout the Heisei; With Godzilla 2000 we were introduced to a more reptilian monster with a jagged aesthetic, irregular teeth and fins (which were now a silvery purple) and, for the first time ever, a green hide. Unlike the Showa and Heisei eras, the game plan for the Millenium was to make films largely free of continuity, each a new and unique take on the mythos, with the idea being that the most successful would be the themes and tone carried forward in future installments. As such, Godzilla's design varied from film to film, each intended to be quickly distinguishable from the others at a glance (the two exceptions being the design from Godzilla X Megaguirus, which simply carried over a more streamlined version of the Godzilla 2000 look as it had proven immediately popular, and Tokyo S.O.S was a direct sequel to Godzilla X MechaGodzilla so the design remained the same, only with scarring from the previous film's climatic battle). Such it was with Shin Godzilla. Toho remained secretive about the new look for the monster, allowing the tidbits of news released about production to build viewer anticipation. For one, there was the involvement of Hideaki Anno, who had developed a reputation for unique and disturbing visuals thanks to his work on Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is not only full of giants and monsters itself but is also a deeply psychological work.  Then there was effects director Shinji Higuchi, who is probably most famous in the west for the live-action adaptions of Attack On Titan but who is more notable amongst Kaiju fans for his work on the Heisei Gamera films which are considered to be among the best Kaiju films ever filmed and were even at the time leaving the Godzilla movies in the dust visually. There were the reports that Godzilla would be portrayed entirely with puppetry and animatronics with minor CGI enhancement, which had gotten mixed reviews when implemented on the Attack On Titan films. There were the rumours that Godzilla would undergo various mutations during the course of the movie. And so on. When we finally got to see the design for the movie, reactions were again drastically mixed. This new Godzilla was almost skeletal with tiny beady eyes and a jaw full of needle-like teeth that burst erratically from his lipless maw, and a tail long enough to swat the sun out of the horizon. I, personally, was simply fascinated. I didn't love the design, but I certainly didn't feel the need to take to the internet with hateful rhetoric. I chose instead to more analytical. I had faith in the creators, in Anno in particular, to have done something so drastic for a reason. There had been early interviews with Anno and Higuchi where they talked about wanting to take the monster back to his horrific roots, about making the monster a walking nightmare. They are said to have looked at old production materials for the original 1954 movie, sketches and maquettes from the time, and to have worked from that. Ideas true to the original concept that never fully made it on film or faded out over time, such as the idea that Godzilla's hide was so rough and rigid because he was supposed to have been deeply scarred by the atomic testing he was exposed to was re-examined and thus, the Godzilla of this film has a body that is a black as burn scars, with crimson seams lining him like a cracked scab over an unhealed wound; he has no lips or eyelids or ears because they were all burned away; his musculature is sunken and sickly like someone who had radiation poisoning. His new design evokes all of this despite not sharing the same origin as the 1950's inspiration. And yet, it all works perfectly for the new story behind him. There are other changes that I won't go into here, and which stem from Anno's talent for twisted physiology and visuals that are repellent on a primal level, but which are no less perfectly suited to the story being told of this new Godzilla. Godzilla's powers are also looked at through a new lense for this film. He has always been shown to possess great healing abilities, although his amazing cellular regeneration has rarely been touched on beyond the typical sci-fi tropes of weaponising or attempting to harness it, with disasterous results. Throughout his movie history Godzilla has developed new abilities sporadically (although most are forgotten by the next entry). He has been shown to be able to utilise his nuclear energy in varied ways, from different strength oral rays to emitting the energy bodily as a destructive burst to even, yes, jet propulsion. This new movie essentially combines all of this into a single genetic thread which becomes the backbone of the movie, put poses it all in such a new and refreshing way that you don't really realise during viewing that this, all of this, has been touched on before, albeit in a very casual and throw away manner. What makes all of this so wonderous for me as a lifelong fan, is that it signifies a change in the way Toho operate. Traditionally the studio have been so rigid as to what can and cannot be done with the the character that they had become notorious and almost self-defeating. They dearly want for their flagship character to be respected and successful that they have in the past stifled creativity.  How many stories can you do about this same unchanging being? To be fair to them, they inched in this direction a little with Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (generally considered the best of the Millenium movies, coincidentally, though not by me), although that was really a departure in terms of the 'why' only rather than the 'what' and 'how' of Godzilla's existence. The Toho of ten years ago wouldn't have even allowed the look of this monster, let alone the recreation of history, biology, and very nature of it. Godzilla has always been a creature of intelligence, but Shin Godzilla is a being of pure instinct. It has no motive or goal, it simply acts. In the past, you've always been able to pin a fairly succinct label on the various incarnations. Originally he was a nuclear alegory. He was a territorial animal. A superhero. A force of nature. Shin Godzilla doesn't feel like any of those things to me. The only word I can think of that fits is simpy "Entity", with all the mystique and ominous connotations that word may imply. The tone of the movie is quite an odd one to explain. It is, at first glance, played straight. Reactions to the monster and the events that occurr around it are logical and fairly realistic, the seriousness of the situation is never downplayed, and yet it manages to avoid heading into too heavy a territory. More astute viewers may pick up the first time of the dry humour throughout the film, though I admit I was on my second viewing before I let the humour come to me. I think the first time I was just too focused on 'new Godzilla film, must absorb it all'. Examples that come straight to mind are in a cabinet meeting early on in the film, one member issues a bunch of orders for things to be done in a manner which might usually initiate a scene change but here is met with confused glances from other cabinet ministers before one asks "whom exactly are you addressing?" and THEN the scene changes, or when the think tank are exchanging what they've learned so far one asks for analysis on behavior to which another responds "He just walks." The film is political satire, but very subtley done, often poking at the state of current buerocracy. for example, the PM's cabinet meet in his office to discuss this mystery in the bay, and after deciding that they need to actually make some plans they move down the hall to a conference room, only for them to witness new developments on TV which means they need to go back to the PM's office to discuss it there. Similarly, when the JSDF's forces are preparing to engage Godzilla they request permission to open fire, and we follow that request down a chain of command as one person asks his superior for permission after another until we reach the Prime Minister who says yes, and then, inevitably (though we are graciously spared it), the answer has to go back down the line from person to person. I've also seen online a number of people who complain that the film is anti-US (typically from Americans) propoganda. Utter nonsense. This film portrays the USA as a people who can and have made mistakes, and some of those mistakes may have consequences for Japan, but they are never villified. They are actually often portrayed as sympathetic. The fact of the matter is that America has always had a hand in Godzilla, fictionally. It was their atomic testing which awoke the monster in the original film, and it was their actual atomic deployment in real life which inspired it. To be insulted by a film because it reminds them of that is beyond hypocritic, considering the hundreds of films Hollywood must have put out by now where the 'foreigner' is the enemy. But that's enough of the serious stuff. It cannot be denied that the attachment of Hideaki Anno as writer/co-director of Shin Godzilla brought with it a lot of expectation. Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime he created in the mid-nineties in the midst of clinical depression and under a studio going slowly bankrupt, revolutionised a genre and inspired a generation of creatives. It viewed typical Super-Robot series tropes through cynical eyes and turned the cast stereotypes on their heads. It got darker as it went along, riddled with psychological themes and visuals that varied from blatent to so-subtle-it-took-scholars-to-find-them, and a use of religion and christianity in particular that left anyone with any kind of religious leanings feeling a little uncomfortable. Despite all this, it is possibly one of the biggest success stories in anime, with a legacy as strong today as it was twenty years ago. It is possibly also the biggest 'love it or hate it' situation outside of Marmite. So you can imagine that his mere involvement with a new Godzilla stirred the pot significantly. I would like to take this opportunity to state right here and now to anyone who hates Evangelion; Do NOT use that as an excuse to avoid this film. Tonally and thematically, this could not be any further removed. Sure, there are directorial choices made here that are pure Anno, but there is none of the angst, depression, or misery that you may associate with Evangelion. This story is very stripped back and to the point, even for a Godzilla movie. The monster IS the story, and everything else in the film is a reaction to him. The only sub-plot, such as it is, is also part of the direct investigation of the monster. There are certainly things that are "Pure Anno" in this movie, but as I say this is pretty much entirely on the visual side of things, and I'm pretty sure that even "haters" would appreciate what he brings over. For one, this is an incredibly 'talky' film. But the way it's shot is still fast paced and even the slowest scenes are structured in a way that will make them interesting to watch. From scene changes signified by the putting down of a phone, for example, to close-ups of the speaker from an unusual angle (a little too high, from just off the side, etc), to mid-sentence cuts from one shot of the speaker to another to add emphasis. There are a lot of directorial choices which have plainly come from someone whose background is in animation, and the relative freedom that affords in creating a shot. The way he goes about portraying Godzilla himself is also refreshing. He brings with him some tricks he developed with his giants in Evangelion that will be familiar to fans but still feel new and exciting when applied to Godzilla. From his first scene of the monster making landfall echoing his slow reveals of the destructive 'Angels' of Eva (quick cuts of a mostly obscured form, a screen-filling eyeball, and eventually, a full reveal that is still not what you were expecting to see), to his use of shooting the environment to portray scale (to a footstep each, we are treated to shots of a beached boat bouncing in the air, the tiles of  a rooftop bouncing up and sliding forward, and the branches of a tree shaking and startling birds into flight). Yet for every trick he brings to the table, there is a throwback to the older style of making monster movies. For example, he often gives us a shot with Godzilla so far in the background you almost miss him, which is something which always made the Showa era films feel like they were more than rubber suits on a sound stage. In fact, his love of the Showa era is ever present, as the entire library of sound effects for this movie comes straight from that period (with the exception of a couple or roars from the Heisei era). Again, as a fan who grew up with them, these are a delight. Imagine if you can hearing a sound of an explosion as distinctive to you as the sound of Star Trek's torpedoes, a Lightsaber turning on, or a Transformer changing shape.  Yes, I'm a nerd, but that's what it's like for almost every sound in the film. And while we're on the subject of audio, I would be remiss to not speak about composer Shiro Sagisu. Shiro is a long-time collaborator of Anno's, having composed the scores for everything Evangelion (from the entire TV series to the five and counting animated movies) as well as Anno's teen-romance deconstruction anime His And Her Circumstances. In fact, if anything about this film can be accused of being "too Eva" it would be because Sagisu has a fast-paced, drum-heavy "Preparation" theme that he seems to use for everything he works on.  There are several variations of this one theme in Shin Godzilla alone, and they will always invoke Evangelion to me, as I'm sure they will to many others. But before I come accross as being too negative here, let me clarify that I adore his music and own every once of his scores I could get my hands on on CD, including this one.   One particular motif which feels fairly unique to his works is his inclusion of English-language vocal choirs for his more atmospheric pieces. It adds a sobriety to proceedings, and can also make something feel truly apocalyptic. His two major cues for Shin Godzilla that were heavily featured in promotional materials are Persecution Of The Masses and Who Will Know?, both are slow and melancholic, and during the film were used in places one might not expect to hear music of their tones typically. Unless you are a fan of Anno and Sagisu's previous collaborations, as you will no doubt have learned how they defy expectations even in sound design. As with the sound effects though, the score is also riddled with throwbacks to the Showa era and, in particular, legendary composer Akira Ifukube (who composed Godzilla's tradtional theme as well as most of the more famous themes of the series). The choices of music to reinstate are more evidence to Anno's love of the genre, as, aside from the music which plays during Godzilla making landfall for the second time, all the selections are obscure or odd variations of particular cues. Some aren't even from Godzilla films originally. From what I've seen online, the reactions to this movie are typically favourable. There are a few people that can't seem to get beyond the changes made to Godzilla himself, but that may be attached to a typically western mindset that I'll get to in a moment, because it's a mindset that even those who enjoyed it have displayed; That anything that happens in this movie is somehow permanent, that because these changes were made here, that is how things will be for the character from now on. Shin Godzilla was one of the most financially successful movies in Japan in 2016, which all but guarantees that a new Godzilla film will comer sooner rather than later. But will it be a direct sequel, which is what most folks I'm seeing online are assuming it's a given that it would have to be. No, it really doesn't, and in my opinion the biggest reason that Shin Godzilla works is that it's standalone. It has in traditional Anno fashion ended in a way which leaves more questions than answers, but that doesn't mean those questions are intended to be answered.  What Hideaki Anno like to do is riddle his works with clues, seed them with potential, and leave his audience to try and figure things out. The state of things in the world of this movie at the end are such that any direct sequel would have to leap through some logistic and continuity loopholes just to get off the ground, but I'll say no more about that. As much as I love this film, I don't want another like it. I wouldn't particularly like the changes made to Godzilla to become the standard. What I do want is for the next film to take the lessons learned here, technical, artistic, logistic, and creative, and run with it and give me something as impressive as this, but just as different. And if that were to involve a step back to a more traditional state for the monster, and the world he inhabits, so be it. I'm one of those wierdos that thinks Godzilla can carry a film with no other monsters in it and should do so more often, so what do you care what I think?

#Godzilla #shin godzilla #shin gojira #godzilla resurgence

[bluewatsons]

Pierre-Louis Patoine, William S. Burroughs and The Wild Boys Against the Language Virus: A Biosemiotic Guerilla, 39 Revue sémiotique canadienne RS/SI 19 (2019)

Summary

This article proposes a biosemiotic reading of William S. Burroughs’ The Wild Boys – A Book of the Dead (1971), showing how literature, by cutting up narrative structures and syntactical units, can fight the language virus' configuring of human vitality, just like bacteria uses CRISPR-Cas9 to cut-up the DNA code-chains of threatening viruses. We will see that, supported by the shared biosemiotic nature of literary texts and biological forms, this parallel extends beyond the metaphorical to reinsert literature within the realm of living processes.

Certainly one of the most brilliant writers of the postwar period, William S. Burroughs’ influence on the cultural avant-gardes of the late 20th and early 21st century is pervasive. He has been called the godfather of the Beat poets (Kerouac and Ginsberg were friends), an inspiration for the punk rock movement of the 1970s onward (David Bowie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry and Kurt Cobain all had their picture taken with him), and the first of the cyberpunk writers (such as William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, and Bruce Sterling). His influence is often attributed to the power of his subversive imagery and to his use of the cut-up technique, a formal innovation that gives its characteristic style both to Naked Lunch, first published in 1959 and the object of two censorship trials, and to the “Nova Trilogy” formed by the Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket that Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). Following on their heels is The Wild Boys – A Book of the Dead (1971), which uses "cut-up- like" techniques in a slightly toned down manner.

Subversion and experimentation are crucial to Burroughs’ oeuvre. But they cannot be separated from its intense connection with the biological, with the experiences of aliveness it gives its readers. Of course, all literature is connected with the biological, as writing and reading are practiced by living entities (individual writers and readers, and their communities and cultures, co-evolving with entities and materials such as paper/trees and ink). Moreover, all literature expresses or creates fragments of vital experience; meaning-making and interpretation are embodied through the reader’s neural simulation of sensory and emotional images, with its accompanying postural, muscular and visceral correlates (see work on embodied cognition such as Gallese and Lakoff 2005; or Boulenger et al 2009). These biological and physiological aspects of poetical and narrative practices are widely shared, but the entanglement of Burroughs’ writing with the biological, the physiological, the botanical and the animal remains extraordinary, immersing the reader in strange ecologies where his sensory-motor, metabolic and reproductive modes of being are reconfigured.

This is especially true of his classical works from the “long 1960s,” a period that ends with the publication of The Wild Boys – A Book of the Dead in 1971, and of Port of Saints in 1973. Reaping the fruits of the four experimental novels that precede it, The Wild Boys succeeds in balancing the disruptions of the cut-up with a relatively stable narrative frame combining multiple figurative threads, chronotopes, voices and points of view. The experimental force and subversive seduction of this assemblage are of a biosemiotic nature: it is through its interbreeding of bios and semiosis that its images (iconic legisigns, to use Peirce’s typology; see Fisette 1996 about their importance in art and literature) allow us to experience unusual desires and modes of reproduction. In The Wild Boys, the entanglement of Burroughs’ writing with the biological is born out of a phenomenology of animal-vegetal-media becomings in which hybrid life-forms oppose the biopower of the language virus and its deadening forces of mind- and body-control, a confrontation that plays out at various scales of the text (syntactical, narrative, imaginary, conceptual). In this, The Wild Boys lengthens the aesthetic and ethical axes that pass through Naked Lunch and The Nova Trilogy, and that are explicit in the 1970 essay The Electronic Revolution.

Approaching The Wild Boys: text and context

The Wild Boys opens with a “Mexican scene,” viewed through the floating eye of a camera- vulture, and centered on the fortune-teller/newspaper seller Tia Dolores and her husband Tio Pepe (who casts spells on sleeping or drunk individuals by whispering deadly suggestions in their ear, such as cuerpo carbonizado... cuerpo carbonizado; a demonstration of the physiological performativity of language aimed at by Burroughs' writing). Dolores and Pepe are somehow protecting their delicate son Joselito against aggressive pistoleros and neighbors. Joselito is a “little kitten” of Lola, the three-hundred pounds drug seller that feeds her queer protégés with her “great purple dug[s] bitter with heroin” (1971: 11). We won’t see these characters again, but the stage is set: queers, drugs, violence, non-normative bodies, folk- shamanism, a fantasized Latin-America, and media (especially photography and film) are all crucial dimensions of the surreal universe of The Wild Boys. The seventeen following chapters travel through different spaces and times (with special focus on chronotopes such as Marrakech/Tangier/the Blue Desert 1976/1988, and St Louis Missouri 1920), between which characters, words and images circulate. We explore these interconnected chronotopes through the erotic/exotic/media experiences of characters such as the young men Audrey, Kiki and Johnny, or CIA agents and US Army personnel. The main thread emerges through recurring images and phrases: it is that of the “wild boys,” an international (mostly Latin American and African) network of gloriously hybrid shamanic young men (“snake boys in fish-skin jockstraps,” Warrior Ants division boys, “glider boys with bows and laser guns, roller-skate boys–blue jockstrap and steel helmets”: 147). These boys are preparing to free North America and Western Europe from the “police machine and all its records” and “all dogmatic verbal systems” (139-140). This loose narrative is constituted by a variety of images intermeshed with first- and third-person testimonies: sepia photographs in gilded books (memorabilia from the American 1890s and 1920s), the recurring “penny arcade show” but also military films from the 1970s and 80s. These media presences often lead to ekphrasis (the vivid description, by a text, of an artwork). Indeed, ekphrasis is an organizing principle of The Wild Boys: images become so vivid that they turn into worlds that characters penetrate, just like the reader can enter and inhabit Burroughs’ textual worlds. The ekphrastic text – by becoming an inhabitable space, a habitat – possess a form of biological agency not unlike the power of Tio Pepe’s words to change the embodied destiny of his victims.

It is useful to give right away a feel of the novel's use of these ekphrastic gates and openings. As an example, let us take chapter eight, “The Miracle of the Rose,” a title that functions as an homage to Jean Genet’s 1946 novel of the same name. The chapter begins as a conventional narrative:

June 23, 1988. Today we got safely through the barrier and entered the Blue Desert of Silence. [...] I have two guides with me Ali a Berber lad with bright blue eyes and yellow hair a wolfish Pan face unreadable as the sky. The other Farja of a dusky rose complexion with long lashes straight black hair gums a bright red color. We are wearing standard costumes for the area: blue silk knee-length shorts, blue silk shirts, Mercury sandals and helmets. (71)

The flashy, vivid colors (blue and bright blue, yellow, dusky rose, bright red) and pop, exotic and surreal imagery (blue silk shorts, a Berber lad, a Pan face and Mercury sandals) make the scene vividly imaginable, an immersive set up in which the reader can project himself, identify with the first-person narrator in his interest for these attractive, fantasized guides. The text describes the character's march through the desert and their arrival to ruins with a “room with rose wallpaper.” Ali and Farja will then engage in sex, which will rapidly become oneiric as “nitrous fumes twisted from the pink rectal flesh in whorls of orange and sepia” (73). Human and vegetal will then conflate in an erotic/horrific configuration, making the text jump to another diegetic level:

A scream of roses burst from tumescent lips roses growing in flesh tearing thorns of delight intertwined their quivering bodies crushed them together writhing gasping choking in an agony of roses sharp reek of sperm.

Sepia picture in an old book with gilt edges. THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSE written in gold letters. I turn the page. A red color that hurts transparent roses growing through flesh the other leans forward drinking roses from his mouth their hearts translucent roses squirming in naked agony [... sentence continues without stop] musty house slow smile you there dim jerky bedroom 18 on the top floor : : : my flesh : : : I could : : : the film breaks : : : jerky silent film [...] : : : sadness in his eyes 1920 movie (p. 73-74)

From the first-hand account ("Today we got safely through the barrier") to the "sepia picture in an old book" that becomes in turn a hallucinatory experience and then an old film (sepia, broken), The Wild Boys bounces from one level of reality to another. These jumps, made possible by the intensity of images, colors, textures and scents, are offered to us as mode of reading, tempting us to enter physically Burroughs’ text by letting ourselves be conquered by its images, and by embracing our potential for hybridizing and for biological communion with media-animal-vegetal bodies (“I turn the page feeling the rose twist alive in my flesh”: 77).

This biosemiotic use of ekphrasis serves Burroughs’ project of intensifying vital experience against the constraints of good taste and good sense prevalent in his time. Although we cannot consider this artistic project as a pure product of its historical period, it is still fomented during the American 1950s and 1960s. It resonates with the zeitgeist of these decades obsessed with social and ideological control, marked by McCarthyism and the development of cybernetics, by the Cold War and its fear of brainwashing and mind-control (see Dunne 2013 on this last point). Control is thus central to these decades' imaginary, and it is precisely against this paradigm of control that the counterculture and hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s will try to free mind and body. Burroughs' writing is related to this movement, and shares its concerns with issues of control and liberation (it is unsurprising that the main element Deleuze (1992) took from him is the very term “control”). But his oeuvre takes a unique stand on these issues by linking them with the virus as a non-human force of control operating through language.

At the time Burroughs is writing against the “language virus,” the "viral paradigm" that will develop in the 1980s with the parallel emergence of the AIDS epidemic and of computer viruses (Bardini 2006) has yet to emerge. Moreover, in the 1960s, microbiology has not become the game-changing field it will become in the 2010s with the development of environmental microbiology and of studies of the human microbiome. Rather, in the decades when Burroughs composes Naked Lunch, The Nova Trilogy, and The Wild Boys, it is molecular biology that is on the rise. Indeed, in April 1953, Nature publishes the seminal article of Francis Crick and James Watson, and that of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, both of which proposing a basic structure for DNA. Ten years later, in 1962, Crick, Watson and Wilkins (Franklin died in 1958) get the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material” (Nobel Foundation). This award fuels the popularization of genetics, during the same period in which Burroughs’ theorizes the “language virus.” These events resonate with each other, as in both cases, code and control are associated; the genetic and the linguistic codes both appear to drive human destiny, and to supersede human rationality and autonomy (see Hayles 1999 for details on the "rise of code" in the last decades of the 20th century and its impact on conceptions of the human). Of course, genetic and linguistic codes do not obey the same principles. Even though the informal nature of genetics has lead many scientists to compare it with language, for example with algorithmic languages (or cybernetic programs) in the work of geneticists François Jacob, Jacques Monod and André Lwoff (Bardini 2011 : 72), or in that of linguists following the pioneer work of Roman Jakobson (1973), like Bel Enguix and Jiménez-Lopez (2012), this comparison cannot be done lightly. Charbel, Queiroz and Emmeche (2009) or Bardini (2011) remind us of the fallacies involved a strict analogy between genetic and linguistic signs. Still, the genome-as-language metaphor is still in use, and might hold some heuristic value. In a short clip for Franco-German TV channel ARTE, microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier (2016), head of the Max Planck institute for Infection Biology and official co-developer (with Jennifer Doudna) of the technique using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit human genomes, explains how the later "works kind of like a word processor, with which you can erase words, put new words, and even correct a precise letter." The textual description of CRISPR-Cas9 reveal the existence of parallels between genetic and linguistic processes, parallels we will follow to understand Burroughs' biosemiotic guerilla against the controlling power of code.

Uncovering the language virus

In his essay The Electronic Revolution, first published in 1970, Burroughs explicitly articulates his theory of the language virus. Although it reads like a scientific or philosophical argument, The Electronic Revolution should be understood as an integral part of Burroughs’ artistic oeuvre: its free and energetic style, and its integration of fictional characters (such as Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz from The Wild Boys, who also appears in Burroughs' interviews in The Job 1979) marks it both as a direct appendage of the novels of this period, and as their interpretive key, a manifesto expressing some of their political and aesthetical underpinnings.

Many ideas from The Electronic Revolution can be traced back to Kozybski's "General Semantics" that explain how our knowledge and experience are limited both by the structure of our nervous system and by that of our language. A somewhat neglected part of the 20th century's intellectual history, Korzybski's ideas has influenced directly or indirectly thinkers such Baudrillard, Deleuze and Foucault (Bardini 2014) and writers like Robert Heinlein, A. E. Van Vogt (Konstantinou 2014), and of course Burroughs who, in The Electronic Revolution, discusses Korzybski's (1921) theory of time binding (i.e. through writing, humans can maintain information across time) before postulating that language, and especially the written word, is a virus:

We may forget that a written word IS AN IMAGE and that written words are images in sequence that is to say MOVING PICTURES. So any hieroglyphic sequence gives us an immediate working definition for spoken words. Spoken words are verbal units that refer to this pictorial sequence. And what then is the written word? My basic theory is that the written word was literally a virus that made spoken word possible. The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host. (2005: 4-5)

Two words are important in this provocative reversal of the traditional ontogeny of language (as here, writing precedes speech). The first one is sequence: the viral agency of the written word is linked with its syntactical arrangement. It is because words form sequences of images, hieroglyphic chains of moving pictures that they are viral agents. The linearity and consecution of written words appear to condition the concepts (images) to which the spoken words refer. The second important word is literally: for Burroughs, the language virus is not a metaphor, but an evolutionary fact, even if it is a hypothetical or even a mythical fact. This evolutionary myth is later elaborated through sensuous, physiological images of the infection that forced apes into humanity:

One reason that apes can’t talk is because the structure of their inner throats is simply not designed to formulate words. He [Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz] postulates that alteration in inner throat structure were occasioned by virus illness... And not occasion...

This illness may well have had a high rate of mortality but some female apes must have survived to give birth to the wunder kindern. The illness perhaps assumed a more malignant form in the male because of his more developed and rigid muscular structure causing death through strangulation and vertebral fracture. Since the virus in both male and female precipitates sexual frenzy through irritation of sex centers in the brain the males impregnated the females in their death spasms and the altered throat structure was genetically conveyed. (2005: 6)

Through the fictional figure of von Steinplatz, Burroughs calls forth a “deep history” of language rooted in animality, body modification, death and sex. This mythography insists on the biosemiotic linkage of the physiological and the linguistic; a violent and erotic linkage created by a virus able to supersede voluntary behavior and “precipitate sexual frenzy,” leading to its own transmission and flourishing.

This primordial infection leads to speciation, as the host forms a symbiotic relationship with the virus, eventually seeing it as “a useful part of itself” (although the pioneer work of Lynn Margulis on the genetic and evolutionary consequences of symbiosis has been around since the 1970s – see for example Margulis 1976 – speciation by symbiosis has only recently become widely accepted by biologists in the 2000s (for the speciation of eukaryote cells) and the 2010s (for the holobiont as a level on which natural selection operates; for details see Brucker and Bordenstein 2012, Rosenberg 2014, and Bapteste 2017). Burroughs then explores various configurations of the word virus, mainly theological (the Fall from Eden) and media/political (the Watergate scandal), before explaining that once it has accessed the cell, viral infection enters its third and final step, the production of objective reality:

Number 3 is the effect produced in the host by the virus: coughing, fever, inflammation. NUMBER 3 IS OBJECTIVE REALITY PRODUCED BY THE VIRUS IN THE HOST.

Viruses make themselves real. It’s a way viruses have. (2005: 7)

Objective reality is thus produced alongside coughing, fever and inflammation. In Burroughs' symptomatology, these belong to the same biosemiotic order: that of embodied living. In keeping with Korzybski's "General Semantics," this production of reality is specifically made by phrases and media sequences, by syntactical chains associating affects and images, words and behavioral responses. Indeed, for Burroughs: “The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association. When the lines are cut the associational connections are broken.” (2005: 13) This strategic cutting of lines of association will be instantiated in his use of the cut-up technique, of which we will discuss in a moment. The obvious relation between the cut-up and Burroughs' anti-viral guerilla has been discussed before (for example in Batt 1976 or 1992, or Lydenberg 1987), but we will see here that this formal strategy, with its mythical-biological roots and implications, is close to actual biological dynamics.

In the last section of The Electronic Revolution, Burroughs identifies a number of words that would be responsible for mind control and the viral production of “objective reality”:

This IS OF IDENTITY. You are an animal. You are a body. Now whatever you may be you are not an “animal,” you are not a “body,” because these are verbal labels. The IS of identity always carries the assignment of permanent condition. [...]

THE DEFINITE ARTICLE THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, THE wrong [...]. The definite article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take its place. [...]

THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and replaced by juxtaposition, by AND. (2005: 33-34)

It is not a coincidence that THE and OR are targeted here: an article and a conjunction, they are syntactical words, they create sequences and association lines. Of course, deciding to replace them by A and AND does not suppress the sequentiality or associativity of discourse. But it identifies syntax as a site of power (the power to control thought and the forms taken by human lives). And even though Burroughs does not implement this grammatical utopia in his own text, its sole existence destabilizes both the essentializing tendencies of conventional syntax, and the “coherence imperative” nested in the logical law of non-contradiction. Indeed, the "is of identity" and the definite article "the" assign an essence to an entity, an essence that we tend to treat as permanent and stable. "Either/or" are logical operators that reinforce this identity, as an entity cannot be both A and non-A: you are either male or female. The contestation of this “law of identity” inherited from classical logic appears under various guises during the 20th century, notably through developments in quantum physics and thought experiments such as “Schrödinger’s cat” in which material states are undecidable. It is also central to A. E. van Vogt’s novel’s The World of Null-A (1948), which was inspired by Korzybski's elaborations on "non-Aristotelician logic." Interestingly, Korzybski also evokes the viral nature of the “language of identity”:

Identification appears also as something ‘infectious,’ for it is transmitted directly or indirectly from parents and teachers to the child by the mechanism and structure of language, by established and inherited ‘habits of thought,’ by rules for life-orientation, etc. (1994: xci)

Burroughs follows Korzybski's denunciation of the infectious grammar of identity when he designs novelistic spaces where ontology is fluid and metamorphosis reigns. Naked Lunch, The Nova Trilogy, and The Wild Boys provide the reader with a psychedelic drug against the viral constraints of enforced individual identities. By allowing the reader to become an eel- boy or a mutant erotic tree in a non-linear narrative, The Wild Boys destabilizes simultaneously the linear logic of language and story, and the biopolitical and anatomopolitical (Foucault 2012) constraints on our bodies (such as the imperatives of reproductive, monogamous heterosexuality, that imply a normative “life syntax”).

The cut-up: a tactical move against viral agents of mind control

In Burroughs' novels, the association lines through which mass media and language exert their control are attacked by various strategies. One of these strategies is the cut-up technique used in the Nova Trilogy, where Burroughs would cut a page in four, and rearrange it to create new associations. This rearrangement generates or accompanies numerous repetitions and variations of images and passages. Through these variations, things are rarely assigned permanent condition: characters are never quite definite, they inhabit spaces that are both past AND present, both mythical AND realist; episodes are not cause OR consequence, they are cause AND consequence, and so on. Thus, Burroughs’ writing embraces contradiction and simultaneity, refusing the coherence imperative and laws of non-contradiction that are the backbone, as Barthes (1975: 3) argues, of so many of our legal and social institutions: court, school, polite conversation... but also gender, professional identity, and so on.

Across the Nova Trilogy, Naked Lunch and the Wild Boys, phrases and scenes are repeated, reappearing in rearranged form, disrupting the mere possibility of narrative progression, of a linear narrative efficiently oriented toward resolution. For example, let us have a look at the following passage of The Soft Machine – a call sent by Uranian Willy the Heavy Metal Kid to resist and attack the ready-made sentences and fixed images disseminated by the evil Nova Mob, an alien force of mind and social control:

Photo falling – Word falling – Use partisans of all nations – Target Orgasm Ray Installations – Gothenburg Sweden – Coordinates 8 2 7 6 – Take studio – Take board Books – Take Death Dwarfs – Towers open fire.

Calling partisans of all nations – Shift linguals – Cut word lines – vibrate tourists – Free doorways – Photo falling – Word falling – Break through in grey room. (1967: 156)

The key action here is “cut”: the action that disconnects, that stops the efficacy of control formulas, stops the machine, stops the film (“Photo falling – Word falling”). We can see here that such cutting is operated not only on narrative sequences, but also on syntactical units, disjointed by dashes creating a syncopated rhythm. But larger elements, such as images, scenes or narrative conceits, are also cut-up, displaced and re-contextualized. This is what happens with the passage above, re-used three years later in Nova Express, in a slightly different context, since the call for revolt is now “heard” from the point of view of a technician working for the Nova Mob:

The Technician mixed a bicarbonate of soda surveying the havoc on his view screen – [...] – Personnel decimated – Board Books destroyed – Electric waves of resistance sweeping through mind screens of the earth – The message of Total Resistance on short wave of the world – This is war to extermination – Shift linguals – Cut word lines – Vibrate tourists – Free doorways – Photo falling – Word falling – Break through in Grey Room – Calling Partisans of all nations – Towers, open fire – (1965: 63)

As Noëlle Batt (1976) demonstrates, syntagmatic rupture and contextual displacement reorder the temporality of the reader’s experience: as she encounters a sentence met previously, she is projected in the past, while she knows she might read it again in the future. The reader’s temporal consciousness is thus disorientated, and freed from linearity and straightforward succession and causality.

The repetition of a limited number of similar images, often surreal and erotic, disrupts narrative progression, while intensifying these images. Thus freed from the chains of narrative syntax, they become alive, materially dense, physically present through embodied interpretation, resonating in the reader’s brain, muscles, viscera and loins, replacing the viral structures of logical thought and stereotypical narrative sequences by psychedelic images, acting like drugs able to “clean the doors of perception” (to use Wordsworth’s phrase after Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison). The last pages of the chapter entitled “The Wild Boys” represent explicitly the breaking down of a fluid narrative scene into discrete images, the passage from the “film of reality” to an evocative and syncopated “story book.” The scene, in which the wild boys fallen in combat are given the possibility to be reborn through homoerotic shamanic reproduction (aligned with Donna Haraway’s (1991) vision of cyborg reproduction), is also useful to think about the Burroughs’ refusal of the normative "life syntax" (grow up, marry, have children...):

The boys create offspring known as Zimbus. [...] Zimbus are created after a battle when the forces of evil are in retreat... (1971: 155)

A boy with Mongoloid features steps onto the rug playing a flute to the four directions. As he plays a phantom figures swirl around him taking shape out of the moonlight, campfires and shadows. He kneels in the center of the rug playing his flute faster and faster. The shape of a boy on hands and knees is forming in front of him. He puts down his flute. His hands molds and knead the body in front of him pulling it against him with stroking movements that penetrate the pearly grey shape caressing it inside. The body shudders and quivers against him as he forms the buttocks around his penis stroking silver genitals out of the moonlight grey then pink and finally red the mouth parted in a gasp shuddering genitals out of the moon’s haze a pale blond boy spurting thighs and buttocks and young skin. [...] The Zimbus sleep in the blue tent. Picture in an old book with gilt edges. The picture is framed with roses intertwined . . . two bodies stuck together pale wraith of a blond boy lips parted full moon a circle of boys in silver helmets naked knees up. Under the picture in gold letters. Birth of a Zimbu. Boy with a flute charming a body out of the air. I turn the page. Boy with Mongoloid features is standing on a circular rug. [...] I turn the page. A boy is dancing will-o’-the-wisp dodges in front of him. I turn the page. (1971: 160-161)

Here, narrative progression is disrupted by the repetition of the scene in reversed-ekphrasis (as the diegetic scene becomes a series of images in a book with “gilt edges” and “gold letters,” signs of nostalgia and materiality in The Wild Boys). Abstracted from their context, these images gain autonomy and intensity. Eventually, they will themselves fall victim to disconnection, but on the level of the sentence, as the last image of the chapter is itself an a- grammatical sentence made of recurring elements in the novel (“Dawn short framed in roses dawn wind between his legs distant lips”).

In The Wild Boys, just like images are freed from the logical chains of narrative, desire and eroticism are freed from the biopolitical logic of monogamous heterosexual reproduction, a logic that might be traced back to the language virus. This link between reproductive and linguistic politics is articulated in The Electronic Revolution:

I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It will be seen that the falsifications of syllabic Western languages are in point of fact actual virus mechanisms. The IS of identity; the purpose of a virus is to SURVIVE. To survive at any expense to the host invaded. To be an animal, to be a body. To be an animal body that the virus can invade. To be animals, to be bodies. To be more animal bodies, so that the virus can move from one body to another. (2005: 35)

The essentialist assignation of identity through logical syntactical units based on the "IS of identity" is here presented as being part of the biopolitical rule of the virus, where reproductive norms are imposed through repetitive discourse and narrative. But contrarily to Foucault, that ascribes the biopolitical imperative of heterosexual reproduction to national- capitalist projects of turning the social body into a competitive productive machine (2012: 14), for Burroughs, it is the non-human, viral agency of the language-virus that presses for the proliferation of humans. Against this systemic, non-human agency, and as we have just seen, he creates homo-social communities and modes of reproduction founded on cyclical reincarnation, thus disobeying the demands for production and growth typical of competing industrial societies. The wild boys are not workers, but fighters, roasting their enemies for sustenance and living in nomadic networks that oppose the forces of modern- heteronormative-liberal-industrial/agricultural capitalism. Burroughs’ claim that “word and image acting as viruses [facilitating the proliferation of bodies] is not an allegorical comparison” might appear far-fetched. But we will now see that similar ideas on virality and code circulate within various scientific circles.

The language virus beyond Burroughs

One of the most famous iteration of the "agency of code" idea is articulated by anthropologist Terrence Deacon in The Symbolic Species, his work on the co-evolution of language and brain:

Of course, languages are entirely dependent on humans, and are not separate physical organisms, replete with their own metabolic processes and reproductive systems. And yet their very different form obscures deep similarities to living processes. They might better be compared to viruses. Viruses are not quite alive, and yet are intimately part of the web of living processes. [...] They are minimally packaged strings of DNA or RNA that regularly happen to get themselves insinuated into cells that mistake them for their own nucleotides and haphazardly replicate them and transcribe their base sequence into proteins. [...]. Languages are inanimate artifacts, patterns of sounds and scribblings on clay or paper, that happen to get insinuated into the activities of human brains which replicate their parts, assemble them into systems, and pass them on. (1998: 112)

Just like in Burroughs’ mythos, here the "language virus," passed from generation to generation, is located within a human evolutionary history, as it forms a symbiotic relation with its host. Deacon then goes on to compare our relation with language with the one we have with our intestinal microbiome, as in both case, the partners (humans-language / humans-gut microbes) could not survive without each other, both needing cohabitation to flourish, to co-evolve and co-adapt. But the language/virus parallel is not only made on the grounds of their shared ability to form symbiosis. As Deacon mentions here, language and viruses are both semiotic entities. Indeed, viruses are “strings of DNA or RNA.” And as the Puppet Master, a consciousness born from the sea of global information networks, says in Ghost in the Shell (Oshii 1995): “It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself.”

I mention Oshii’s anime to show that Burroughs’ campaign against the language virus is part of a broader history surrounding the idea that code possesses autonomy, a destiny, and maybe even an agency (especially linguistic, genetic, and digital codes). Notably popularized by Richard Dawkins’ controversial book The Selfish Gene (1976), the idea that the genetic code uses individual humans to perpetuate itself echoes with Burroughs myth of the language virus, extending it within the scientific domain. The validity of the science notwithstanding, Oshii's masterpiece shows that the posthumanist (in the sense of Hayles 1999) perspective can lead to fertile artistic propositions: Burroughs writing against the viral biopower of language opens toward a reconsideration of the role we assign to literature in relation to ecology and to life processes. Such reconsideration is also demanded by the striking (albeit relative) similarity in the cut-up strategy used by Burroughs and in that of certain bacteria in their fight against viruses.

CRISPR/Cas9: cutting the virus, reprogramming the code

Indeed, bacteria such as Streptococcus pyogenes are able to cleave the genomic sequence of invading viruses (bacteriophages, or just “phages”) with their “scissors,” the Cas9 nuclease enzyme (Heler et al 2015). This strategy is considered an adaptive immunity, as the bacteria, when infected by a phage virus, can copy parts of the viral genomic sequence and integrate them inside its own DNA, interspacing these foreign sequences (called “spacers”) between redundant parts of its own DNA (called “CRISPR repeats” or “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats,” discovered by the team of Yoshizumi Ishino in 1987). This integration of copied spacers leads to a co-evolution of the host and viral genomes, allowing the next generations of bacteria, when they encounter the virus, to efficiently identify it, generating RNA molecules that will guide Cas9 to target the viral DNA sequences originally copied, to splice them and in so doing incapacitate the attacking bacteriophage (Yin 2012). Burroughs uses a similar strategy: his texts use the written word (the virus) against itself, cutting its stereotypical sequences (syntax, narrative) to disable it.

According to the classical model of molecular biology, established by Crick and Watson’s double-helix model in the 1950s, the physical gene is “a linearly organized set of instructions that gave rise to phenotypic expression” (Charbel et al 2009: 34). Although Charbel, Queiroz and Emmeche criticize this quasi-mechanist vision of gene functioning, we see that linearity appears as a central quality of the genome. In CRISPR-Cas9, it is the structural quality of linearity or “sequentiality” that allows the bacteria to disable the invading virus, as its "lines of genetic code" can be copied, pasted, and materially cut up. These operations on linear structures are strikingly similar to Burroughs’ cut-ups that cleave the sequences of the language virus, the lines of association created by discursive norms. Just like in a literary text, the "meaning" of a genetic sequence changes with the order of its genes. This was known as early as 1925, when Sturtevant discovered the “position effect” according to which the position of a gene in the chromosome can change its effect on the phenotype (Charbel et al 2009: 30). Thus, the determining factor in the genetic shaping of living matter is not only the material specificities of a particular gene sequence, such as their quantity for example, but the relations and combinations happening within a complex biological system: “Both many-to- one and one-to-many relationships between DNA sequences and RNA/polypeptide sequences give support to a picture of molecular complexity in which the amount of genes is not the crucial feature, but rather complex information networks, such as those meditated by transcription factors , and intricate patterns of gene expression which allow of a huge diversity of proteins and RNAs based in a limited number of genes. (Charbel 2009: 49). The same logic applies to language, where a "huge diversity of meanings is based on a limited number of signifiers." As a consequence, the cutting up and recombination of code sequences is a powerful way of producing new meanings, and of proposing alternatives to stereotypical narratives "programmed" to help the proliferation of humans and their language virus.

But the parallels between CRISPR-Cas9 and Burroughs textual guerilla do not stop at the cut- up. Notice that the bacteria first “copies” parts of the invading DNA, that it then integrates between “Palindromic Repeats” present in its own genome. In a sense, Burroughs’ writing operates in a similar manner, insofar as it works by decontextualizing syntactical units (copying them out) from their original locus (normal language), and re-contextualizing them within his text, which is frequently redundant (if not palindromic, although it would be interesting to seek palindromic structures at various levels of his works). Even though the redundancy and non-linearity of Burroughs’ novels from Naked Lunch to The Wild Boys might not be properly palindromic, it allows them to use a form of resistance to the stereotypical syntactical associations of the language virus, a form of adaptive immunity akin to CRISPR-Cas9 in the sense that both are integrative cut-up strategies. The similarity in the techniques used by bacteria and by Burroughs to fight against viral forces might appear coincidental (and probably is), but still it reveals the centrality of code both in the development of our civilization and in that of living forms. In this sense, Burroughs was right in identifying writing (a coding practice) as a biological, viral force.

Concluding with The Wild Boys – A Book of the Dead

By cutting up the language virus, Burroughs' images and narrative are freed from the imperatives of efficiency, resolution and reproduction. Instead, they offer queer forms of vitality and desire:

In jade aquariums human rectums and genitals grafted onto other flesh... a prostate gland quivers rainbow colors through a pink mollusks... two translucent white salamanders squirm in slow sodomy golden eyes glinting enigmatic lust... (1971: 20-22)

Burroughs' mutant life forms are not fit for reproductive growth. On the contrary, they offer pleasures that are often deadly, like a pharmakon able to cure the over-efficacy imposed by the viral forces of code that has led humans to proliferate, in overflowing, ecologically threatening reproductive vitality. By inhabiting his novels, the reader is caught in singular assemblages where the vegetal, the animal and the technological collide, where fluid genders abound, where media and pharmacology open up hybrid possibilities of living and feeling, and where things are never assigned a definite, exclusive identity. This experience of metamorphosis and narrative circularity counteract the language virus, opening toward less systemic forms of communication, toward semiotic techniques that are more idiosyncratic and local, such as the one used by the wild boys:

Exchange of spells and potions. A common language based on variable transliteration of a simple hieroglyphic script is spoken and written by the wild boys. In remote dream rest areas the boys fashion these glyphs from wood, metal, stone and pottery. [...] These words objects travel on the trade routes from hand to hand. The wild boys see, touch, taste, smell the words. (1971: 151)

Just like Burroughs writing gives us a sensual experience of language, words used by the wild boys are fashioned in a slow, "arts and craft" manner that disrupts the acceleration of global communication and capitalism. Against efficiency and growth, stability and linearity, Burroughs cuts global language and networks with arts and craft and sensual signs, signs forming ekphrastic images that can be entered, touched and smelled. The abstract code, systemic and syntactical, is replaced by concrete word-objects, felt experiences that are not conventional and interchangeable, but sensual and always singular. By doing just that in its own writing, Burroughs situates literature in the biosemiotic realm, where signs are connected with the physiological. This reconnection of literature and biology is charged with political, economical and ecological potential. By overthrowing the language virus and its demands for efficacy, production and reproduction, The Wild Boys dreams of overthrowing the colonial world order, allowing Western Europe and North America to be saved through the destruction of its "coded" civilization by hordes of erotic wild boys from Africa and South and Central America (1971: 138). Even though the world has changed much since the control-obsessed 1950s and 1960s, Burroughs’ visions, in their celebration of nomadism, erotic hybridity and queer materiality, can still act as a powerful antibody for the virus of ready-made thought and narrow-mindedness, a biosemiotic cure much needed at a time when humanity has to question its own habits and proliferation.

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#literature #analysis #beat generation #william s. burroughs #beat literature #semiotics #biosemiotics #literary analysis #analogy #language virus #CRISPR-Cas9 #cut-up technique #biopower #posthumanism #allegory

[shesaidwithirony]

The Trouble of Definition, or Lincoln's Ax

The Nansen Passport provides a unique challenge to its analysis as a medium, dead or alive. Like Lincoln's proverbial ax, which had both its handle and head replaced several times yet was still held to be a single continuous entity, the Nansen passport is a chimerical entity that while giving the impression of definitional finality is in fact a loose convergence of policy, paper and personal information. First, the physical content of the passport is hardly unique, for it is nothing more than a sheet of paper (or, in its later iterations, a booklet) with printed categories to be filled in by the issuer, along with space for a photograph and the signature of the holder. There are no patents directly associated with the Nansen passport- unless one were to count the paper that was used for as subjectile, the printers used to inscribe the documents, the pens used to fill out the form, or the camera used to capture the holder's photograph. How, on a material level, is it possible to differentiate the Nansen passport from other printed material, or even worse, from other passports?

Even more disconcerting is the fact that the Nansen passport was not issued by a single governing body, but rather by the 52 governments who had ratified the original Arrangement. While there was a degree of uniformity in these documents (in particular, the "Nansen Stamp" which officiated the document and also helped to pay for the administrative costs of the Refugee Committee), there were no requisite similarities between the various Nansen passports produced by the different countries. As there is no defining unity at the material level, or even necessarily in the form of the document, one could argue that Nansen passports could at least be distinguished by their use and purpose- given to refugees to be used as identification when traveling outside of the host country. Yet even this definition is problematic, for the Nansen passport was ostensibly only given to Russian and Armenian refugees, and their power and worth varied depending on the host country and over time (later Arrangements granted greater rights to passport holders, but fewer countries ratified these Arrangements).

Further complicating matters is the UNHCR, which encourages host countries to issue temporary travel documents to the stateless, and the International Red Cross, which is able to issue emergency travel documents in particular circumstances (Torpey, 144)- is a Nansen passport by any other name not a Nansen passport? A tissue that is not a Kleenex is still considered a tissue, and is often called a Kleenex; plasma screen televisions have little to nothing in common with their original ancestors, yet in common language and in concept they are the same media. How then is it possible to draw a clear line between refugee passports issued in the interwar period and those created after World War II? It is difficult to argue that this is a case of remediation, for the purpose, materials, and even form of the modern refugee documents are no more or less varied than those issued under Nansen's name. Can a form, or more to the point, a form of forms be delimited as finite media that transcend the grouping of "documents", regardless of its historic importance? As somewhat whimsically (yet with deadly seriousness) Jacques Derrida describes the various forms of paper- from toilet paper to identity documents- and wonders if they can be reduced to a "paper principle" (Derrida, 47-48). If the very material with which a document is formed is malleable and unstable, how can one expect the document itself to maintain a coherent being?

It seems that the Nansen passport is then best described using the agency and policies that commanded and shaped its production- the High Council for Refugees and the various Arrangements. In other words, the Nansen passport can only be differentiated from other forms, papers, and passports by its affiliation with Nansen. This is an oddly Platonic argument, in which the passport is merely the physical manifestation of the ideal created by the High Council. In a way, it is the same as arguing that a traditional media such as a television is not the physical artifact or its use, but rather its patent. This definition provides a definitive socio-historical context for the document, which may, in fact, be of greater utility than observing similarities or differences between physical artifacts. The Nansen passport represents a particular technical response to an emergent problem- the existence of stateless persons- that embodies in its deployment the particular constellation of institutional and cultural pressures of that era. It is highly significant that the passport was only granted to people of certain nationalities, for even the stateless were incorporated into the totality of the nation. The Nansen passport is dead, for the legal and social conditions of its creation are no more. Just as the explorer-hero embodied by Dr. Nansen is a ghostly figure of a past age, the Nansen passport is a document that can no longer be produced. The documents produced at the behest of the UNHCR and the International Red Cross are simply temporary interventions in an international regime that has systematically incorporated the stateless through prohibition- the refugee camp is no longer a horrific, ephemeral transit point, but rather a permanent aspect of the modern experience- for example, the camps of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The Nansen passport was an important turning point in these relations, for while his passport offered the possibility of incorporation of the stateless into the nascent state system, it is in fact paved the way for permanent disenfranchisement- the inclusion through the exclusion of the modern camp.

Source: http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Nansen_Passport