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thetriggeredhappy · 3 years

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recently rediscovered your blog and read the fic from your dad spy au where scout starts out as the "guard" and then becomes scout from there and lemme tell you that shit put me on some s-tier brainrot. like a cranial decay type beat.

i had a concept in my head that instead of being hired as a guard, he could have been hired as a right hand man to the administrator like pauling, because i think hed be awesome in that position. like imagine having a personal merc who can get in fast and out even faster. but maybe he would stay in the base like the rest of them, sort of like a secret on call intel gatherer, who also maybe sometimes has to dig a couple graves. and also like, nobody on the team expects anything from him at first because its this 20 year old newbie kid. hes dressed in his formal clothes and he talks like somebody from relatively around boston but not quite. i can just imagine one day he comes back during a team dinner with his shirt half untucked and stained with blood, hair disheveled as he asks soldier if he can borrow his shovel, or him debriefing them for a mission when miss pauling is busy. same vibe as the fic i mentioned before but scout gets to have a job as cool as miss paulings. honestly id write it myself if i didnt have the attention span of a fly

anyways your scout content gives me life thank you

scout teamfortress but 20% more competent standing next to miss pauling teamfortress while she's doing her job and doing like silly quips and otherwise contributing nothing like it's a buddy cop film is literally my fucking ideal

(warnings for some canon-typical violence)

“Oh, Pauling, it’s good to see you again,” greeted the chairman, smiling in an imitation of a grandfather and clasping her hands perhaps too-kindly considering she barely knew him. “Young as ever, and still so stylish, I see. And who’s the new fellow?”

“He’s just here to help with transport, Mr. Montgomery, nothing unusual,” Miss Pauling replied, returning his smile and adjusting her glasses. “Heavy cases, you know how it is.”

“Of course, I remember you almost toppling clean over last time we made a trade!” Montgomery agreed, frowning at the memory. “You’ll pull a muscle that way, better to be careful. It’s a pleasure to meet you, young man. And your name?”

“Mr. Normandy, sir,” the new kid replied easily enough despite his slight East Coast accent, giving the man a firm handshake, expression neutral and stony, the picture of professionalism. Internally, Pauling breathed a sigh of relief.

“Firm grip there, young man,” Montgomery praised, nodding approvingly. “Tennis player, perhaps? Or golf?”

“Baseball, sir,” he replied, still evenly. “First baseman.”

“Ah! Of course! Were you any good?” Montgomery joked.

“At everything but playing in front of the crowds, otherwise I’d be in the major leagues,” he replied, tilting his head just slightly to imply that he was joking, his sunglasses glinting at the movement, and Montgomery barked a laugh.

“I like this one, Miss Pauling!” Montgomery said, and Pauling just barely caught herself from physically relaxing at it.

“We do too, Mr. Montgomery,” she agreed. “I was under the impression that you’re very busy today, so we won’t keep you for too long, we just wanted to sort out the final details surrounding the manufacturing rights for the—“

“—Pacific Northwest branch, up into British Columbia and Alberta, of course,” Montgomery agreed, nodding faintly. “Of course, of course.” He turned to regard his own man in a dark suit, the one standing to the right, who appeared to be unsuccessfully trying to stare down Normandy, who was completely ignoring him. “My briefcase, please.”

The man handed over the briefcase, and Montgomery put it on his desk, opening it and pulling out a sheaf of papers. “All our requests are submitted and approved, at this point we just had a few dustbins to take care of regarding initial percentages and making sure everything is wired to the correct accounts, which names are undisclosed, things like that,” Pauling explained as he glanced through the papers.

“Right, right, everything looks good here,” the man murmured, nodding to himself, sending his long-white hair just ever-so-slightly out of place. “I’m assuming these more sensitive documents should be sent some way besides through the mail?”

“If you finish them today I can take them with me, otherwise either me or Mr. Normandy can return to pick them up at your convenience,” she replied, to which Normandy gave a singular nod.

“Oh, it would only take me a short while,” Montgomery said, waving a hand. “We have a lovely lounge just down the hall from here if you’d prefer to wait there, it should only take me ten, fifteen minutes at most. In the meantime, I do believe there’s also the manner of payment for services rendered.”

Miss Pauling tilted her head just slightly to one side, confused.

“I arranged with Helen already,” Montgomery explained, not looking up from where he was initialing a few things. “The payment, rather than being wired, she asked to be made in material investment. A venture of mine from years ago that she’s willing to sit on. Rather than gold or bonds, she agreed to take some old currency of mine that my family collected, from early 18th century New Zealand and Australia. Monetarily it’s worth around the same, and I’m quite a bit attached to it to be entirely frank, but it was at her request to buy the whole collection from me, and after years of the work we’ve been doing together, well, I’d never trust it with anyone else.”

He gestured to the other man, the one on his left, who stepped forward to hand him a manila envelope, which he passed to Pauling.

��Inside is both keys, the door alarm codes, and all other security information for the building where the collection is being stored. They’ll ask for a few codes and confirmation of identity, only because several other art collections and artifacts are being stored there by other affluent individuals such as myself.”

“Thank you, Mr. Montgomery,” Pauling said, taking the envelope gratefully.

“Think nothing of it, my dear. Helen talked me into it all her own,” he said easily enough. “Now, gentlemen, if you would let Miss Pauling and Mr. Normandy into our lounge? I should have these wrapped up before any of us can even think about lunch, eh?”

One of the suits showed the two of them through the doors and down the hallway, through two doors bracketed by similar suits who simply nodded politely at Pauling and ticked their chins at Normandy as they passed them.

Normandy posted up beside the door for all of three seconds before they shut and Pauling pulled her glasses up, rubbing at the bridge of her nose and making a vaguely distressed noise. He then promptly relaxed, instead leaning his hip against an armchair probably worth the same amount as a small car. “So, uh, we’re glad that he’s giving us a bunch of commemorative coins from when dinosaurs still walked the earth?” he asked just below normal speaking volume, eyebrows raised.

“Yes. Very glad. Because unlike about six people total on the planet, he hasn’t figured out yet how valuable those are.”

“What, is a picture of a kangaroo on some copper really gonna make up for a couple hundred thousand American dollars?” Normandy asked, sounding doubtful.

“Not copper. Something else,” she replied. “I can’t tell you much more about it other than that, but these coins are made of something priceless to us. And to the Administrator.”

“…Love? Memories? The magic of family?” he joked, cracking a smile, and she rolled her eyes, moving to open the envelope and start reading the papers inside. “Hey, uh, not to question whether my job should exist, but what the hell am I doing here, exactly? Besides carrying a briefcase. Like, chivalry isn’t dead but I really don’t think you need me carrying your bags and holding the door for you.”

“You’re helping with security, basically,” she replied, adjusting her glasses to squint at tiny handwriting about the collection. “Mr. Montgomery is trustworthy, but he mostly hires out to… well, people like us. His security detail is mostly people we’d rather have screened, freelancers, stuff like that. A lot of people we contract out to are like that. Most of them have heard about me and know better than to try and pull something, since I can hold my own pretty well, but if they haven’t, seeing a second person might persuade them to think it over again.”

“Oh, so I’m like, uh, when it says ‘tow zone’ next to the no parking signs even though nobody checks, or when they’ve got a camera in the corner of the store that isn’t even plugged into anything,” he said, and the looked up at him, confused. “Like, uh, what’s the word… I’m a casual deterrent.”

“Sure,” she said, because it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, shuffling the papers back away and closing the envelope again, making a note to ask the Administrator if she should change their current containment procedures to be closer to Mr. Montgomery’s. “Just… if there’s a fight, you deal with it, otherwise you just stand there and look like you’re paying attention.”

“That’s what the sunglasses are for,” he agreed. “I was blinking morse code at the guy across from me literally the whole time.”

“You know morse code?” Pauling asked, surprised.

“Just the alphabet, ‘S.O.S.’, and ‘ass’.”

She rolled her eyes again, and that’s when the door opened.

She expected Mr. Montgomery, not one of the men in suits. “Excuse me, both of you, if you don’t mind,”the man said, accent having the slightest English tilt to it, a Londoner if Pauling had to guess. “You’re Miss Pauling, the Mann Co. affiliate, yes?”

“That’s me,” she agreed, hesitant, and glanced at Normandy.

“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. Mr. Montgomery have you the wrong envelope on accident,” the man said apologetically, extending a hand forward. “We apologize for this unfortunate mix-up, it’s really quite embarrassing, but those documents are sensitive and we’ll be needing to see them back now.”

Pauling looked at him, and within a moment, shifted her expression. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she agreed, nodding. “No, right, of course. These aren’t the papers for the currency collection?”

“I’m afraid not,” the Brit agreed, head tilting just slightly, hand still extended, moving a fraction further forward.

“Well, thank goodness we figured out now and not with us halfway back,” she joked, and moved to hold the folder closer to her body. “I’ll take this right back to Mr. Montgomery, then.”

“He’s sent me to correct the error,” the man explained simply.

“Right,” she said, and saw in her periphery that Normandy had already started sneaking a hand in towards his primary, clearly having pieced together something she was only suspecting. “We can bring this to his office, then, right down the hall.”

“You misunderstand,” the man said, taking a step forward again. “I’ll be taking it to his office myself.”

“That’s funny,” Pauling said. “I didn’t realize you had clearance to be in there. Or to be carrying a semi-automatic instead of a standard handgun.”

The Brit reached for the semi-automatic, and before he could even get it out properly, Normandy hit one clean shot to the side of his head and another to his thigh, sending him crumpling to the ground.

Pauling had only as far as pulling her own handgun free, thumb on the safety, and breathed a sigh of relief, glancing over at Normandy, shifting to more comfortably hold her gun. “Quick reflexes,” she noted.

“Just noticed a lot sooner, maybe,” he shrugged, stepping forward to glance over the body, tucking his gun back away.

“What was your hint?”

“He’s here to give us the right folder, yeah? Well, why were his hands empty, then?”

She was just starting to nod and realize that as well when a second man shouldered through the door, holding a gun at the ready. Normandy scrambled to draw his own, but Pauling fired a shot into his knee, shoulder, and neck to send him dropping before he was even close. “There’s quick on the draw, and then there’s prepared,” she said pointedly. “Gotta think of if there’s more than one, new guy.”

He nodded, and drew his gun again, bending to hit the guy on the ground at the temple hard enough to knock him out if he wasn’t unconscious already. He then glanced up at the sound of a shout from the other side of the door, two men shouldering through, guns drawn but lowered. It was only the firm eye contact they made with both her and Normandy that made her pause the millisecond it took to realize these ones weren’t trying to kill them.

“Pauling, what on earth is going on here?!” Montgomery demanded, entering the room and staring with wide eyes at the bodies on the ground. “What could’ve possessed you to—“

“He was trying to run off with these documents,” she explained quickly, gesturing with the envelope. “He knew whatever was in here was valuable.”

“He drew his gun, sir,” Normandy added, tipping his head down towards the body, and Pauling glanced down as well and found herself a little surprised. He’d rearranged the man just slightly, apparently, adjusting the arm to be holding the gun a bit further outward. “Other one was aiming to kill.”

“My, my,” Montgomery tsk’d, shaking his head as he surveyed the scene. “What a mess. My apologies, Miss Pauling, Mr. Normandy.”

“It’s alright, but you need to start doing more thorough checks on your staff, Mr. Montgomery,” Pauling stressed.

“He’s only been here two weeks, sir, he was one of the men we hired in a hurry after the incident last month,” one of the bodyguards said, and Montgomery shook his head.

“Thank goodness nobody was hurt,” he sighed. “Mutiny, and besides that, they’re bleeding on my carpet. Here are those papers, Miss Pauling—what a day, eh?”

“It’s really alright, we handled it,” Pauling assured him, giving her bravest smile, a little exasperated now.

“Right, right, you and the first baseman,” he agreed, and Normandy fought back an actual smile.

“If you’d like, we can take care of those for you,” Pauling said, gesturing at the bodies. “To pay you back for the carpet and the scare.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Montgomery agreed, clearly relieved.

“My dad’s gonna be pissed, by the way,” Normandy was so helpful as to say on the way back up the path to the base. “And you’re fielding that.”

“About the suit, or the fight?” she asked, glancing at his clothes where he was somewhat covered in a fine dusting of mud and grime from the gravedigging, shovel still in his free hand.

“Both. Mostly the fight. Your fault for saying it’d be an easy one to start with,” he said.

“If it was going to be that much of a problem, you wouldn’t have gotten this job. I’d just have made you go do dishes all day or something,” Pauling replied.

“Point taken,” he said, walking ahead to get the door, holding it open for her. “Wait, we’re allowed to mention what we do, right? Just not names?”

“Or locations, even with travel distance. Round up to the hour if it comes up,” she replied.

“Sure, sure,” he agreed, trailing a step behind her as she led the way through the base.

In the common area, there was a bit of a ruckus happening. Soldier, Heavy, and Demo appeared to be having some kind of arm wrestling competition on a rapidly-toppling table, the Engineer was on a stepstool trying to fix the ceiling fan, and Sniper appeared to be half-watching the beginnings of an argument between Pyro and the Spy regarding use of the oven as Medic patched up a burn on his arm.

“Hullo,” Sniper greeted the two of them, sounding a little bored, Medic giving them a brief, polite nod. Normandy’s eyebrows were raised pretty far as he surveyed the room.

“Hi, Sniper,” she greeted in return, then cleared her throat, raised her voice. “Team meeting in five minutes! New mission for next week!”

Groans from the room at large, the eight mercenaries starting to finish up what they were doing and filing out. Spy moved over, glancing over Normandy and starting to talk to him in rapid-fire French, picking smaller bits of gravel off of his suit as they walked.

“Alright,” she addressed the room, Normandy peeling off from getting mother hen’d by Spy to stand next to the blackboard with her. “Monday, you’re all going on a transport mission. Getting the truck from point A to point B with everything in the boxes intact. Already we’ve had to put up with some people trying to get ahold of these things, so bring your guns.”

“Oh, our guns, you said? Lads, this is a serious one, keep your heads on a feckin' swivel, she’s sayin’ we might even need guns, can you believe it?” Demo faux-gasped, and chuckled when Spy bopped him on the arm, rolling his eyes at the Scot's theatrics.

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved off, flipping through the papers a bit. “So Engie, I’ll need the keys to the truck, me and Normandy are going to be loading those tomorrow, all of you need to be at this drop point bright and early.”

“How early?” Heavy rumbled.

“Six. Hour and a half of drive from here.”

Some complaints from the room that she sighed at.

“Hey, hey, calm the hell down,” Normandy cut in, and she glanced over at him where he had his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. “You chuckleheads get to have all eight of you to unload the damn thing, me and Miss P gotta do all the rest of this on our own and probably kill twenty guys on the way there and back. She had to be up at 6 AM, workin’ since 7 AM, lunch break at noon and nothin’ else, and we just got back now at, what, fuckin’, 10, 11 PM? Any of you work her shift and then see if you even got the energy to complain about wakin’ up early, how about that?”

The room went utterly devoid of complaint or backsass. “Thank you, Normandy,” she said politely, and he just nodded once, glancing off to the side. “Anyways, anything new on this end? Spy, how are you adjusting?”

“Very well,” he said simply. “I have nothing pressing to say. Once I’ve been updated from the stock weaponry provided here to my requested preferred weaponry, I believe I should do just fine.”

“I see you already have Herr Normandy digging graves,” Medic chimed in. “Straight into the hard labor, ja?”

“Eh, hey, y’know, it’s why they keep us young people around,” he shrugged, grinning, and there was a brief uproar to drown out Medic’s entirely offended scoffing and Spy’s snort-laughing.

“Get ‘im, lad!” Demo cheered, and Normandy indeed looked fairly proud of himself.

“Monday, transport mission,” Pauling noted over the noise, writing it up on the chalkboard to hide her own smile from the room. “Normandy, you and me are doing the boxes tomorrow. Everyone on the same page? Good. Dismissed. Oh, and Pyro—stop taking the fire alarms down when they beep. They’re beeping because you light things on fire in the base. Do that outside.”

“Oh, hey, uh, helmet guy, All-American Beef,” Normandy called, and Soldier straightened up. “Here’s your shovel back. Gettin’ my own tomorrow.”

 Soldier walked directly over to him, clasping a hand on his shoulder. “That’s a high honor, Cadet,” he said, tone grave. “Do not take this responsibility lightly.”

“I, uh, I won’t?” he said hesitantly, and blinked a few times as the shovel was carefully taken from him before it was promptly marched from the room in double-time. Only then did Normandy look over at her. “So he’s always like that?”

“You’ll get used to it,” she assured, dusting chalk from her hands. “You should get to sleep soon, we have to be up early.”

“Sure thing, Miss P.”

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #my fanfiction #dad!spy #father-son bonding au #shut up me #que?#in this au he picks a fake name like she does. later i think demo starts calling him norman and some of the others do as well as goofs #also apologies for montgomery i couldnt quite get away with not naming random rich guy. just barely scraped by with guards one through four #everybody talks

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drnikolatesla · 4 years

Text

Nikola Tesla’s World Wireless System

By J. J. J.

Nikola Tesla’s theories, experiments, demonstrations, and inventions throughout his lifetime of work proved that his “World System” would provide:

1. A perfect “secret signal service” through exclusive wireless waves for communication and entertainment: What Tesla referred to as his “Art of Individualization,” this concept makes it possible to transmit an unlimited number of signals or messages thoroughly non-detectable and exclusive both in the active and passive aspect. Such messages are completely non-interfering and non-interferable, e.g. each signal has its own unique identity (like snowflakes), irrelevant of the number of stations or devices simultaneously in operation. This literally translates to our internet and wireless communication today, but far more advanced. Today, we use communication satellites to bounce signals off other satellites and send these signals to other points around the globe. We need satellites to accomplish this in that conventional physics states that every effect diminishes with distance (inverse square law), so the signals sent on earth either dissipate with distance and/or do not follow the curvature of earth because of the concept of line of sight. This is why we can only receive radio signals at certain distances from the station. Therefore, we use satellites to bounce signals off other satellites to reach other parts of the earth. With Tesla’s system, however, satellites in this sense become obsolete. His system could send instantaneously messages all over the world, set and regulate all clocks, act as a universal stock ticker, reproduce art and photography, and allow exclusive use of video, audio and text communication (this is also how Tesla predicted smart phones a hundred years before they were developed). How would he do this? Tesla used the earth as a conductor (or a wire), and sent the energy through it with no loss of energy. With this method, the problems of energy dissipation are solved. What Tesla discovered was that the earth as a whole possessed certain periods of natural vibrations, and by impressing electrical vibrations of the same periods upon it with his transformer, they could be thrown into oscillations of tremendous nature. Thus, Tesla posited he could collect this energy and transmit it with his Magnifying Transmitter to any place on earth with no loss of energy (and practically instantaneously so). He proved this method in experiments at Colorado Springs where he sent a longitudinal wave all the way around the world and back to his receiver traveling at a mean velocity of 292,812 miles per second. I know some may balk at sending anything faster than the speed of light, but I will remind them that the speed of light is a constant, it is not a limit. The velocity of light is an expression of the ratio of energy to mass. Tesla’s waves worked on different dimensions. The electromagnetic waves we use in today’s technology travel at the speed of light, but due to the nature of these waves (which are similar to light), they diminish with distance. This is because their electromagnetic lines of force and their magnetic lines of force intercept the angles of one other, causing resistance (radiation resistance). This is also why they eventually lose energy. Tesla, on the other hand, used an oscillating wave, or a longitudinal wave, in which the electromagnetic and magnetic forces run parallel with each other (hence there is no friction or loss of energy). As a result, the more power he used, the faster and further these waves would travel. Imagine what can be accomplished with waves that do not diminish with distance!

2. The operation of flying machines by wireless power: The flow of Tesla’s currents are confined to the earth, but with his machine, he could create an electromagnetic field in the atmosphere surrounding it. Tesla theorized that if lightweight electric motors with attached circuits are placed in the airplanes (or other flying machines) and are accurately attuned, energy will be drawn into these circuits from the electromagnetic field powering the motors (similar to submerging an empty bottle in water then poking a hole in it - the energy from the electromagnetic field would flow into the circuit the same way water would into the bottle). This concept could therefore revolutionize a whole new world of transportation!

3. GPS: Global positioning could be used not just on the earth’s surface, but via the earth’s interior as well (ex. finding mineral deposits, submarines, etc.). This is accomplished by setting up and maintaining longitudinal stationary waves in the earth, subdividing its entire surface into zones of electrical activity. This also allows data points to be collected regarding the earth’s dimensions, as well as the positioning of moving or non-moving objects by analyzing the way waves react to objects within it or without it. This would help in navigation, prospecting, or basic radar by determining positions and size of objects, in or outside earth, by determining latitudes and longitudes, the speed of travel and the respective courses followed.

4. An artificial Aurora Borealis: By shooting charged particles at the atmosphere in the sky, Tesla’s system could create the same effect that occurs during the Northern Lights. This would contribute to the concept of night vision and constructing related devices for human use based on this phenomenon.

5. Operations of all manufacturing and transportation machinery: With much more power than his “Art of Individualization,” Tesla could send power through the earth to any point on the globe (regardless of distance) and provide a business or home with enough horsepower to operate and run all its machinery, including transportation machinery. Note this would not be “free energy”, as the conspiracists of the internet assume. Tesla never said anything about free energy. We would still have to subscribe and pay for this energy just like we do today, but at a much cheaper cost.

6. Interplanetary Communication: Tesla understood that if we ever want to make contact with intelligent life on other planets, or even communicate with humans traveling through the depths of space, we would have to use radio technology to do so. He believed that with enough power drawn from energy sources (such as Niagara Falls) to power his transformer, he could create billions of horsepower, and with his Magnifying Transmitter, send his oscillating wave signals (which travel many times faster than light) to the far reaches of this galaxy.

7. Irrigation and fertilization of the world by wireless: Using wireless power, farmers and land owners would be able to pump water and irrigate their land from energy sent thousands of miles away. Tesla also believed that weather was of electrical origin, and thus could be controlled by electrical means. In other words, with a properly developed apparatus (different from his wireless system), he could pull water from oceans by hydraulic force, turn it into vapor and carry it in cloud form to arid parts of land (make it rain, so to speak). Also, with fertilization, we know that an excess of nitrogen in the atmosphere is a bad thing, and not enough nitrogen in the soil will cause growth deficiencies in plants. Tesla’s experiments in Colorado Springs showed that the nitrogen in the air could be burned with electricity. By burning the right amount of nitrogen in the air, it could be turned into a fertilizer of sorts.

8. Magnetizing of enemy battleships, submarines, and airplanes to attract missiles: This notion speaks for itself. By using magnetic waves, the metal of enemy machinery could be magnetized and therefore cause it to attract missiles.

9. A particle beam for defense: Tesla did not believe in war and had always thought that strife or conflict could be cured by some way other than by brute force. His idea was to create a machine that would give all countries a defense weapon that would render them entirely impenetrable to enemy attacks. All have seen the photo of Tesla sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs where there are artificial lightning bolts filling the room over a hundred feet in length. His idea was to control this energy in a very high vacuum tube and disperse the energy in any direction desired - this was his defense weapon for war. Unfortunately, his hypothesis was ignored and America subsequently suffered the attack on Pearl Harbor four years after Tesla proposed his invention to world governments.

I presume most people would be skeptical about how safe Tesla’s “World System” would be. If the whole earth is electrified, wouldn’t we get shocked constantly? Not the case. Tesla used electrostatics, e.g. when an electric charge is at rest, as opposed to direct current (DC) electricity and alternating current AC which are electricity moving through wires either directly or back and both. Both DC and AC are very dangerous if touched. Tesla would speed up his alternating currents so fast that the electricity would become static electricity. It could then be stored, or pass through the physical body with no harm. He demonstrated this in lectures throughout the 1890s by passing thousands of volts of electricity through his body and shooting electricity out of his fingertips. Static electricity is already all around us. It’s similar when you rub your socks on the carpet and can walk to the other side of the room and shock someone - this static electricity is stored in your body, but doesn’t harm you. The shock might slightly startle your friend, but nevertheless is still harmless. Also, unlike the wireless technology we use today - which is ninety percent radiation - Nikola Tesla’s system is clean energy. His system reverses what our technology does and uses only ten percent radiation, and ninety percent current waves. This is why there is no loss of energy, and why we should be implementing and utilizing Tesla’s system.

Our current existence would be far more advanced had Tesla been allowed to share his work with the world. Although we are advancing with greats strides in technological achievements, we are still hundreds of years behind the future Nikola Tesla hoped and dreamed for.

“My project was retarded by the laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.”

–Nikola Tesla

(“My Inventions – V. The Magnifying Transmitter.” Electrical Experimenter. February, 1919.)

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ghost-in-the-hella · 3 years

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73. “I missed you.” Gideon/Harrow

Took me a bit to get my head around this one, but I think it worked out well enough in the end. Consider this an AU where the Emperor never summoned the heirs of the Houses and Gideon therefore successfully escaped to the Cohort. Contains some mild spoilers for Harrow the Ninth, I guess? Kind of?

---

In the opinion of Private First Class Gideon Nav - rising BARI star of the Cohort, dirty toenail of the Emperor, ladykiller in her own mind - closing time is the best time. As much as she loves the hustle and bustle of the mess hall during its peak hours - chatting up all the uniformed honeys, filling three or four elaborate orders at a time like the coffee rockstar that she is, showing off her sick coffee-slinging skillz with style and flair rivaled by none - there’s something soothing about the quiet at the end of her shift that speaks to her soul. The mess hall empty save for a handful of stragglers and night owls. The slow work of cleaning the machines. The pervasive near silence in which every move she makes echoes in the cavernous space.

It reminds her a bit of nights in Drearburh spent jogging in the recyc mist with only the sound of her own footsteps and breath for company, and enough time has passed since those lonesome nights that she can feel a tinge of nostalgia for them even as she internally celebrates her successful escape. She thinks of the Ninth House rarely enough these days that she can indulge in some light nostalgia without immediately feeling salty about the absolute shitshow that was her entire childhood and adolescence.

Gideon’s got her back to the counter, wiping out a portafilter and whistling a jaunty tune, when she hears someone step up to the counter. She’s about to tell her unfortunate customer that she’s all closed up for the night - technically she’s still got ten minutes on her shift, but she’s already cleaned out the coffee urns and wrapped up the pastries so seriously fuck off already - when she makes the mistake of turning around. She is immediately and viscerally reminded of the Ninth House again the second she locks eyes with the young woman before her, and it’s not just because she looks like a skeleton.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus looks different, of course. She’s almost a year older, for one thing. For another, her face isn’t covered with ten pounds of ancient paint, revealing an awkwardly ferrety visage that Gideon would hardly recognize if it weren’t for the bottomless black eyes in them and how deeply they stare into her golden ones. There are dark shadows under her deeply set eyes that render her face at least partly familiar, as they echo the sockets of a skull. Her mouth is pinched, as if the stick up her ass has finally penetrated all the way to her cranium and jammed her lips shut. Her nose is thin and sharp as a knife. Her chin looks like it would put someone’s eye out if they were fool enough to try to embrace her, assuming Harrow didn’t slit their throat first for the very attempt. She’s wearing Cohort whites rather than her familiar billowing black vestments, and the uniform makes her look sallow and somehow even more painfully thin.

“Griddle,” she says before Gideon can start to wonder if she’s somehow stumbled into an alternate reality. For how different she looks, clearly Harrow hasn’t changed. Gideon rolls her eyes and returns her attention to the portafilter. “Is this how you treat all of your customers?”

Beneath her typically peevish tone there’s something unfamiliar in Harrow’s voice, something it takes Gideon a good twenty seconds to decipher. Holy shit, Harrow’s nervous. Gideon’s seen Harrow be nervous before, but previously it’s always been buried under considerably more makeup and Gideon generally hasn’t been the cause of it.

“Customer, huh? Sorry, I naturally assumed you were here just to make my life hell again. Drag me back to Drearburh kicking and screaming, something like that. I didn’t think you might actually be here for a cup of coffee.”

“Yes, well, as usual you are mistaken. I was informed that on this deck’s mess hall I would be able to find a coffee adept who’s considered something of a genius with BARI. I certainly didn’t expect it to be you. I thought surely you’d be on the front lines on some distant planet by now.”

Gideon scoffs. “You don’t expect me to believe you joined the Cohort just to get a decent cup of coffee, do you? I mean, I know it’s all ice cold sludge on the Ninth, but damn, girl.” She fetches a porcelain mug (the darkest one she can find: it’s charcoal gray, but that’ll have to do) despite the fact that Harrow has yet to place anything remotely resembling an order and begins preparing her special extra-dark brew. It’s bitter enough that it’s unlikely to overwhelm Harrow’s stunted palette, and she should appreciate its blackness.

“Of course I didn’t join for the coffee,” Harrow snaps. It’s funny: her face is much more expressive without her skull paint, but Gideon finds it harder to read. “If I’d known you were the so-called BARI star the others keep rattling on about, I wouldn’t have bothered with coffee at all. I was lured into a false sense of security by the word ‘genius.’”

Gideon grins smugly as she flips the mug expertly into place in a daredevil move that usually earns her at least a smile if not a room number. “I guess some folks appreciate my brilliance.” She braces the triple-shot portafilter against the counter with one arm and effortlessly tamps the espresso grounds with the other.

Harrow scowls, and it nearly makes Gideon homesick. “Your brilliance remains to be seen.”

Gideon locks the portafilter into place and hits the brew button, counting off the seconds in her head. “That’s fine; you’ll taste it soon enough.” As the espresso streams beautifully into the mug, Gideon adds a liberal sprinkle from the jar she’s marked Gideon’s Special Dark Mixture of Doom and Ecstasy.

“I must admit, I didn’t expect to see you here so long after your… departure from the Ninth. I assumed you would have been deployed by now.”

“I was,” Gideon says with a shrug as she flicks the espresso machine off, trying not to sound butthurt about it. “Served for nearly a week before I got injured. Caught a leg full of shrapnel defending my commanding officer. I wanted to stay in the field - it was only a damn limp - but they didn’t want to risk me losing the leg to infection.” She removes the portafilter and bangs the wet grounds out into the garbage. “They started me behind the counter here while I was recuperating, found I had a knack for it, and I haven’t been redeployed since.”

Harrow’s face cycles through several dozen expressions that Gideon can’t quite parse before settling on ‘carefully neutral.’ “How is your leg now?”

Gideon stirs the brew with a wooden swizzle stick to help the BARI blend dissolve. “I’ve got some gnarly scarring, but it only hurts first thing in the morning.” And by the end of her shift most days. And if she walks too much, or stands too much, or sits too much. “Don’t worry, though; I look even hotter with the scars.” Gideon winks while Harrow groans, and for a moment feels like old times. She sets the steaming, fragrant mug down in front of Harrow. “So. What’s your story? I didn’t think anything short of a summons from the Emperor Undying himself would lure you out of Drearburh.”

Harrow eyes the drink as if she expects it to bite her. “I have no story,” she says without affect. “I am here to bring honor to my House.”

Gideon wipes the portafilter with the rag at her hip and locks it back into the machine, then hits the brew button to run hot water through it. “That’s some classic Harrowhark Nonagesimus evasive bullshit if I ever heard it. Why are you really here? The congregation finally all die out?” She jabs the button again and the water dribbles to a halt. “Oh, shit, did they finally figure out about your parents??”

“No and no,” Harrow says firmly. She leans in and gives the cup an experimental sniff. “I have simply decided that I can serve my House better as a Cohort necromancer than as the Reverend Daughter. What better way to disseminate the gospel of the Ninth and expand our congregation than by showing the universe what the Ninth House is capable of.” She attempts to take a sip of her drink and promptly scalds her mouth.

“Careful, it’s hot.” Gideon studies her and shakes her head. “Y’know, you almost had me, but no. Maybe that’s how you rationalize it to Crux and Aiglamene, and maybe even to yourself, but that’s not why you enlisted.”

Harrow looks strangely vulnerable with her pale and naked face and her seared lips. “Would you believe I wanted to test my mettle and prove that I am indeed the greatest necromancer of my generation on the field of battle?”

“No,” Gideon replies bluntly. Harrow’s studying the steaming beverage like she can’t figure out how to drink it without injury, and she probably really can’t. Gideon still remembers how steep her learning curve was when she first encountered hot drinks after nearly two decades of nothing but cold. “Here,” she says, taking pity on her old nemesis. “You’ve got to blow on it to cool it off. Like this.” She bends and purses her lips, cascading cool air over the surface of the hot BARI drink.

The outer edges of Harrow’s ears turn pink. Gideon realizes all at once that Harrow’s not looking at her like she’s a nemesis at all. If Gideon had to classify the look Harrow’s giving her, it’s more akin to how the handful of fellow Cohort recruits she’s hooked up with since enlisting looked at her right before they hooked up. The idea of that look coming from Harrowhark of all people makes her palms sweat. “Harrow,” she says tenderly, as one peels the hard rind from a soft fruit, “Why did you join the Cohort, really?”

Harrow worries her lower lip between her sharp, bone-white teeth until it starts to tear and bleed. “I missed you,” she confesses, dredging the words up painfully like vomit.

Gideon nods as if this were a perfectly normal and comprehensible thing for her oldest - and only, really - enemy to say and not the most unfathomable thing she’s heard in her entire life. “You should aim better next time.”

Harrow turns livid at that. Rather than using her words like a normal human being (because when has Harrow ever done anything like a normal human being?), she snatches up her mug with the expression of someone who’s just taken a step out onto a tightrope only to end up tredding in flaming dogshit. She pivots with a dramatic whirl that doesn’t quite work without her flowing black robes and takes a sip of her coffee as she goes. She stops short and her eyes widen in the universal expression of ‘holy fuck that’s way more delicious than I expected.’

Gideon grins as she heaves herself up onto the counter, sliding across and landing lightly on the other side in a super cool move that would sweep any girl off her feet (even if the girl in question were a dessicated bone witch). “Oh, fuckin’ get over here,” she says, pulling Harrow into a hug that nearly causes her to drop her mug in alarm. “I missed you, too.”

#prompt fill #prompt fic #fanfic #prompt ghost #ghost writes #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #griddlehark #coffeehouse AU #Cohort AU

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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Fuck Your Red Revolution: Against Ecocide, Towards Anarchy

Let Go Of Your Tedious Slogans

"There's no ethical consumption under capitalism" is a tired meme that I wish would die. So often this slogan is used by reds to pooh-pooh those of us that strive to make life choices that aid harm-reduction in our communities and our natural environments.

Vegan diets, bicycling, dumpster diving, upcycling, guerilla gardening, permaculture, squatting, illegalism, food forestry, communes, self-sufficiency, and all the other "lifestylist" pursuits "individualist" anarchists undertake to minimize their harm on the environment are shamed and mocked by many anarcho-communists, social-ecologists, anarcho-transhumanists, syndicalists and other industry-upholding anarchists. These reds are well-versed in workerist rhetoric, and see all lifestyle choices as "a distraction" from the global proletarian revolution they see as their singular goal.

You'll hear them talk down to other anarchists who are discussing ethical ways to curtail their consumption, especially people that live off the land or otherwise limit their participation in industrial civilization; people they loudly dismiss and condemn as "primmies" or "lifestylists".

They'll tell us to stop living our lives in the pursuit of personal anarchy because "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism". In the red mind, as long as a capitalist system has been imposed on the world, there''s no point in reaching for anarchy until that system has been overthrown and replaced with their system. Regardless of how unlikely it is that this will happen in our lifetimes.

Using "no ethical consumption" to shame people for making the effort to live more conscientiously, and decrying all individual action as "counter-revolutionary" or "liberal" comes from a deeply authoritarian mindset reminiscent of toxic Maoist purges that punished people for dressing differently or having hobbies or doing anything but devote themselves 100% to destructive industrial labor and the glory of "the revolution" (almost always manifested in the form of a red state).

The red influence in anarchist discourse is unfortunately dominant in most developed parts of the world, and collectivist-minded anarchists insist every anarchist devote themselves to their pipe dream of a mass uprising to seize the factories from the capitalists and turn them over to the workers. They postulate that democratized factories will be more beneficial to workers because they'll receive a bigger piece of the industrial pie. This is true. But then they claim their ideology will "save the environment" because a worker collective won't be greedy and destructive like a capitalist board of directors. This is of course completely unfounded and blatantly ignores the history of collectivized industry and its devastating effects on the environment. The glaring reality is that industrial societies all eventually lead to ecocide, without exception.

Countless Marxist revolutions in history did so much damage to the environment that entire territories, such as the area surrounding Chernobyl, were rendered uninhabitable to humans. Babies continue to be born with birth defects today, and cancer rates in the regions devastated by socialist industry continue to be sky high.

Let's take a brief look at the former USSR's legacy of careless industrial destruction, with 3 examples.

The Ural River in Magnitogorsk, Russia is still saturated with toxic boron and chromium levels from the nearby Steel Works, poisoning the entire ecosystem and its inhabitants.

The Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest inland water body in the world was largely replaced by the newly emerged Aralkum Desert after the Soviets drained two rivers for irrigation. The sea is now just 10 percent of its original size.

Run-off from oil fields near Baku have rendered all the local water bodies biologically dead, killing off every lifeform that prospered in those ecosystems for millennia.

These are just 3 examples of devastating ecocide caused by the push for industrial growth (which is required to achieve communism according to Marx), and they of course only ever achieved more capitalism and more misery, because industrialism and the continued pursuit of menial labor will not liberate people.

Changing from a vertical to a horizontal hierarchy will benefit the industrial workers in some material ways, certainly, but the wholesale destruction of our planet will not slow down one bit just by instituting a power-shift from bosses to workers. Industrial production depends on non-stop growth, and when you tie the success of a society to industrial production, you create a recipe for disaster. Workers won't vote to scale down their industry or its environmental impact as their livelihoods depend on their industry's growth.

And they certainly won't care about anyone who isn't also an industrial worker, or preserving their foreign way of life. Indigenous people and anyone living off the land will effectively be seen by red-society as an undesirable out-group. Anyone that can't measure up to workerist standards of productivity will be seen as a strain on the industrial grind. An enemy of the red revolution.

Any "counter-revolutionary" rebel who dares stand in the way of industrial growth and the spread of industry across land and sea is effectively a liability that needs to be expunged to safeguard the revolution. This is the power of the collective. Comply or be crushed. Red or dead.

So you see, the people parroting "no ethical consumption under capitalism" at you don't actually have any intention of curbing their destructive consumption, even under communism. Even under anarcho-communism. If anything, they hope to increase their consumption by acquiring more spending power. With communism, they'll be able to consume as much as a middle-management boss does under capitalism because all workers will receive an equal share (until resources run out and their society collapses).

You cannot grow infinitely on a finite planet, and all industrial ideologies, regardless of whether they brand themselves as "libertarian" or "authoritarian" seem to ignore that simple fact because it would expose their ideology as having zero long-term viability in a world already experiencing unprecedented global collapse.

Harm Reduction is Valuable

There's always a more ethical alternative to everything. That's the whole point of anarchy, to analyze our actions and our impact on our environment and limit harm, counter authority as much as possible. Ethics isn't an all or nothing proposition - there are varying degrees of harm.

Just because some solutions aren't 100% pure and wonderful doesn't mean they're not worth doing over much more harmful alternatives. Anarchy is about subverting authority by finding more ethical solutions to every problem we come across.

Here's an example of several levels of harm reduction that can measurably make a difference. Things that stone-faced reds will no doubt decry as "lifestylist" simply because they don't succeed in immediately overthrowing capitalism and bringing on a communist utopia:

Eating vegan locally-grown pesticide-free unprocessed food is absolutely more ethical than eating imported processed meat.

Why?

Far less carbon is burned to grow / store / transport / process / store again / re-transport the food. Workers involved in "organic" agriculture aren't exposed to the much more dangerous conditions of slaughterhouses / battery farms / pesticides / ships / warehouses. Far less animal suffering and death goes into producing the food. These are real metrics.

There are of course still many downsides to for-profit agriculture including desertification, exploitation of migrant labor, and destruction of native ecosystems to plant monocultures. But it's still much better than the alternative which ensures far greater harm by every metric...

For instance, the container ships that transport imported food and industrial products burn highly-polluting "bunker fuel"; the black, tarry goo that's left over when all the higher quality fuels like petrol, diesel and kerosene have been extracted from crude oil. In 2009, confidential data was leaked showing that a single container ship produces as much pollution as 50 million cars. The ship workers will be the first to breathe in these highly concentrated fumes. Avoiding imported food goes a long way in fighting exploitation.

Buying seeds / cuttings / grafts and growing your own food in a community garden, as well as dumpster diving from outside supermarkets is more ethical than buying locally grown food from a for-profit business.

Why?

Even less carbon is burned, waste is diverted from landfills, there are no workers to exploit or endanger, there is no animal suffering and death if you use no-till methods. You control everything that goes into the soil (and ultimately your community's bodies) and can thus stave off desertification and actually improve the soil and rebuild the ecosystem.

Downsides: Native flora is displaced in favor of domesticated food crops. Land ownership feeds the state via taxes (unless you use squatted land to plant the garden). Living in a city means you'll still be consuming a lot of things you can't produce yourself in your limited space. But again, this is a measurable improvement over the previous scenario.

Moving out of the city to a rural area and living as a subsistence farmer to grow all your own food in a food forest you plant, giving away or trading your surplus. Foraging for food where it's sustainable to do so. Planting trees on every unused piece of land you see.

Why?

Erosion and desertification is effectively stopped in its tracks wherever food forests rise. The trees clean the air of carbon. Trees are by far the plants most adept at evapotranspiration, and are integral to the water-cycle all lifeforms depend on. The climate in the area is safeguarded, with increased humidity and rainfall.

Forest gardening rewilds the planet. Pre-civilized peoples made the rainforests as abundant as they are by curating them and spreading the plants they found most beneficial. If enough people planted food forests in an area, the local population could sustain themselves by hunting and foraging the way they did before civilization.

So future generations are given the invaluable gift of autonomy from the industrial system, and the knowledge and incentive to resist industry's violent encroach on their way of life.

Personal Action Doesn't Happen in a Vacuum: Working Towards a Lasting Cultural Shift

When a group of people choose to e.g. not consume cow products, that directly creates less demand for cow products. So over that group's lifetime, less forest will be bulldozed to graze the cows that they didn't eat. Less cows will be impregnated by robotic rape machines. Less veal calves will be snatched from their mothers, put in dark little boxes for a few weeks and then slaughtered so the mother keeps producing milk for the dairy industry.

Some of the people vegans interact with will be influenced by their ethical choices and way of life and be inspired to also work to minimize their harm on the ecosystem. They'll also adopt a vegan diet, and influence people in their lives to follow suit. One vegan becomes two, two become ten, ten become ten million. The cultural shift spreads far and wide, touching countless lives and changing the course of history.

So in this way, an individual action gradually becomes a collective action. People slowly emulate others after being exposed to their lifestyle and ultimately the local culture is forever changed. All cultural shifts start out with a few innovators and gradually expand to the rest of the population as others see the benefits of the new culture.

Likewise with permaculture and food forests. People start planting food forests and others take up their example and pretty soon you have thousands of acres of land that are saved from desertification and become refuges for wildlife.

There are countless places where this is demonstrable, including where I'm from (somewhere in Western Asia). Each indigenous family in these mountains has a small plot of land that we cultivate. The more people choose to use mixed forest farming methods instead of standard sprayed monocultures, the more people are influenced to follow our example. They see how successful food forests are at feeding our families and the culture gradually shifts.

There needs to be a cultural shift that precedes and guides any revolutionary movement otherwise you'll just end up replicating capitalism like Marxists have done time and time again. People who live destructive consumerist lifestyles that cause ecocide in exchange for fleeting material comforts won't be capable of shifting to ethical lifestyles just because "the revolution" happened. They'll simply replicate their destructive ways under the "new" political system and the "revolution" will have been for nothing. Capitalism will have just been given another paper mask to hide behind as it drags us deeper into the black hole of industrial apocalypse.

Fuck Your Luxury Space Communism

A single cruise ship emits as much pollution as a million cars. Cruise ships dump 1 billion gallons of sewage into the ocean every year. Knowing these facts, how can any anarchist decide to directly fund the cruise ship industry by saving up money and booking a cruise holiday?

Reds will tell you with a straight face that capitalism is to blame for the cruise industry's rampant polluting, and "after the revolution", the cruise industry would do no harm because it would be worker-managed.

In reality, a truly communist society would necessitate that cruises be free to every worker as a reward for their labor. Which means far more globe-trotting tourists and far more cruise ships in the oceans. Carbon burning and pollution would actually increase greatly.

But let's ignore that for now. We don't live in a revolutionary communist society and we will not see capitalism go away in our lifetimes. Global capitalism is more ingrained in society than ever before. Anarcho-communists are such a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of any population. Reds telling "lifestylists" to stop giving a shit about anything other than "overthrowing" capitalism, something we clearly don't have the support or firepower to do, is blatantly ridiculous.

Continuing to eat meat / processed foods / buying a new phone, games console, tablet every year / using disposable plastic bags / toilet paper / chlorine cleaning products / building poorly insulated over-sized concrete buildings / not composting your waste / salting the snow / heating a pool / planting a lawn / going on a cruise / etc / etc because "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism" actively stands in the way of positive change and directly promotes inaction / harm. It actively prevents the culture from shifting towards anarchy.

"We'll go on this cruise now and help contribute to ecocide, but it's okay because we'll consume ethically after the glorious revolution" couldn't be a more ridiculous standpoint, but it's essentially what the "no ethnical consumption under capitalism" slogan has been turned into. It's a sad state of affairs when this empty rhetoric passes for revolutionary thought in red circles.

Ethics-Based Choices Aren't "Liberal" Just Because Pompous Reds Say So

Consumption under capitalism (or socialism) isn't ethical, but that's no excuse for inaction. There's no global revolution coming to change the way we live overnight. History has shown us the impossibility of that notion - with countless "revolutionary" societies repeating all the mistakes of capitalist ones.

But we can have small local revolutionary action in the here and now that can lead the way to sustained change at a wider level. Just ask the Zapatistas and similar indigenous and anti-civ anarchist movements around the world. No one is going to tell them to throw in the towel and conform to globalist capitalist / communist industrial civilization because all consumption is somehow equal.

Anyone can make personal ethics-based choices and also organize collective action. I have no idea why so many collectivists see these pursuits as being mutually exclusive. But you'll be sorely disappointed if you thought a global collectivist revolution was something that was realistically attainable. The world is far too diverse to be molded into a uniform entity controlled by a 19th century ideology designed to serve European factory workers.

Ignore the sanctimonious blathering of boring ideologues. There's nothing "liberal" about living what you preach. You claim to oppose hierarchy? Then live your life dedicated to minimizing hierarchy wherever you can. Set an example. Face the beast head on and stand your ground until you breathe your last breath. Because what else are you going to do?

Reds! Listen up, friends. Mocking people for caring about minimizing the harm they do and for thinking long and hard about the ethical implications of their actions doesn't make you somehow more radical than them. It just makes you a smug fuck. I don't care how many marches you've waved your shiny red flag at. Being able to recite the words of a long-dead white philosopher doesn't make you special, so shut up about "lifestylism" already.

When we see exploitation and engage in direct action to fight it, that doesn't make our fight useless. We have to live in this world and people are dying in it. All around us scores of people are suffering and dying. To ignore that and do nothing because our actions to relieve that suffering won't install communism to free the sacred workers from their bosses would be fucked.

Capitalism & Communism Are Cut From the Same Exploitative Industrial Cloth

The collectivists who see no problem with oppressive constructs like industrial meat consumption will immediately discount anti-authoritarian actions that aren't wholly-focused on abolishing the capitalist class and seizing the means of production. A lot of these red-anarchists are channeling Murray Bookchin as he delivered his anti-"lifestylism" screeds late in his life. They dream of seizing the means of production and thus receive a bigger share of the spoils, so it terrifies them that green anarchists instead want to set the factories and shopping malls on fire.

Reds see dumpster divers, illegalists, vegans, sustenance farmers, bike punks, squatters, naturists, communers and other "lifestylists" as a "distraction" from their driving singular desire to replace industrial capitalism with industrial communism. They want to remove the bosses from the equation, but keep everything else almost exactly the same: Workers, factories, battery farms, globalization, ecocide... Even prisons and police in a lot of cases. They want everything industrial society has forced on the world, except this time, they swear it'll be "more egalitarian" with "direct democracy" and an equal share of the industrial pie for every worker.

These red-dyed wannabe-industrialists insist we abandon our hard-fought battles and join them in pushing (waiting) for a more egalitarian industrialism that'll give us a fairer share of the profits gained from waging war on the wilds.

They love to accuse anarchist "lifestylists" (green anarchists especially) of somehow conforming to the system... By struggling against it? Their pissy Bookchin-inspired rants accusing anti-civs of being in a "death cult" or of being "counter-revolutionary" (while they themselves embrace ecocide and mass-extinction) really makes no logical sense to me. Green anarchists like the water defenders in Canada right now are actively putting their lives on the line to fight against the march of industry, while these yuppie killjoys sit in their comfy suburban armchairs typing up walls of snark to diminish the people who prove everyday that they live and breathe anarchy.

Sure, the Bookchinites, Chomskyists and assorted anarcho-brocialists will show up at an orderly protest in their officially licensed Guy Fawkes masks, and they're always in the front row of their local union meeting, eager to read a deadly serious statement from a stack of printed A4s. But how does that give them the superiority complex to voice their disgust about "edgy lifestylists"? It should be obvious at this point that communism isn't going to save the world, yet they imagine themselves as the governors of righteousness.

Protesting is just another cog in the democracy machine. The illusion of choice. It accomplishes nothing. It certainly doesn't make you more revolutionary than an anarchist who makes the conscious choice to live as ethically as possible. People that think they've achieved something worthwhile because they've held up a pretty sign at some protest are fooling themselves. All they're doing is asking their rulers to be nicer rulers. Rulers aren't giving up their power because you made a sign. You're not better than "filthy lifestylists" because you quoted Kropotkin at your union meeting that one time.

Both protests and unions as well as ‘lifestyle choices’ have long been co-opted by the system and are not going to loosen the death-grip it has on the planet. The system has become quite adept at swallowing up all attempts at revolution and turning them into Bizarro-revolutions that can be whitewashed and monetized to further the system's growth. I don't need to remind anarchists that communism was instantly turned back into industrial capitalism every time it was attempted. The "Communist Party of China" is perhaps the most powerful upholder of capitalism in the world today per capita.

Embracing Pointed Distractions & Recognizing Ideological Greenwashing

Collectivists will often butt in when others are talking about methods of harm reduction and insist we stop talking about "pointless distractions" and instead focus on achieving their much-hyped global worker-society they promise will come if we just hold hands and march in the streets until everyone sees how awesome we are. Then the masses will all join us to overthrow the capitalists and install communist utopia, just wait and see!

A lot of reds will even claim that all discussion about ethics and social justice is elitist and classist "liberal posturing" aimed at dividing the working class. The worst of them will insist that class is the only issue we should be concerned with. To hell with feminism, post-colonialism, the environment and all other "distractions" that don't interest white male workers. Workerism and class reductionism are fond bedfellows.

Being a vegan or a dumpster diver or a forager or a squatter or a self-sufficient cave-dweller need not have anything to do with shaming other people. It's simply the way someone chooses to live their life for a multitude of reasons; a lot of them informed by ethics, but also to pursue the happiness that every human desires.

An individual anarchist's decision to live more ethically is not some kind of narcissistic circlejerk the way collectivists like to present it. All anarchists have different motivations and different ethics. We all live in this world, in this time, and we can't just pretend there's some grand global homogeneous revolution right around the corner that's going to save humanity from the rapidly approaching industrial apocalypse if only we chant loud enough and post more luxury space communism memes to our Facebook profiles.

It's especially perplexing watching reds scorn anti-civs since none of these purported "communist revolutionaries" have demonstrated any real inclination to address the industrialist disaster that has been wrought on our planet beyond farcical promises of "space-colonization", "Star Trek replicators" and "asteroid mining".

Even those rare reds who bother to give consideration to ecology in their theories continue to glorify civilization, industry and democracy as liberators. So called "social-ecologist" Bookchinites promise that the planet can be saved if we just "make more democracy!" Then we can all participate in (profit from) the industrial system with our voting power, and opt to use "ecological technologies" such as solar and wind energy to power the machines.

Never mind the Chinese sustenance farmers who have carcinogenic industrial waste dumped on their lands everyday from those solar panel factories; they're just not thinking ecologically enough. And the Ghanaians who wince when mountains of worn-out solar panels are piled up in their backyards with the rest of the West's obsolete tech are just impeding ecological progress with their divisive nitpicking! It's almost like they don't want Europeans to have two electric vehicles in every garage? So ridiculous!

When you give a majority group legitimized power over minorities, they always use it to oppress them. All power corrupts. Collectivism breeds hierarchy because the interests of the dominant group e.g. factory workers aren't the same as the interests of minority groups e.g. indigenous herders or queer folk or sex workers.

If you think your average meat-and-potatoes white male worker is going to suddenly become enlightened and compassionate towards the plight of minorities when you give him the power of direct democracy, as social ecologists and other red anarchists envision, you haven't been paying close attention to the world around you. Time and time again, voters have successfully used their vote to deny rights to migrants, sex workers, trans and gay people, and anyone they see as differing from their normative standards.

Understanding the Coercion Behind the "Collective Good"

Reds expect you to put the needs of the almighty collective above your own needs, but the collective good matters little if your individual needs are ignored by the collective.

All too often, Western reds demanding you obey the "collective good" are simply engaging in red-washed white supremacy where the "collective" just means "white working men", and the "good" just means "our profits". Putting the will of the dominant population in society before your own needs and desires is an incredulous proposition. The profits of the white working man should not be of any concern to e.g. a brown unemployed woman.

Collectivism is kind of a ludicrous concept if you really think about it. We can't paint seven-billion people that have wildly different ideas of what life should be as one unified entity because they're not one unified entity. Collectivizing them as one group; "the working class" in our minds makes no logical sense and does nothing but fuel the industrial wasteland rapidly decimating the entire globe. Why should all humans be seen as workers, why should each of us be measured by our capacity to produce industrial goods?

People from different places have different needs. Marxism deals with this by separating people into classes and telling us to only concern ourselves with the worker classes and to hell with the peasant classes and the hunter-gatherers and the pastoralist nomads and the "land-owner classes".

This "land-owner" class includes indigenous peoples living off of their ancestral lands and exploiting no one, but again and again socialists have targeted them for genocide for not fitting into their ideological framework. Then the imperialist socialists seize their land and commercialize it so they can profit. For examples, see the Kazakh famine-genocide perpetrated by the USSR because the nomadic Kazakhs resisted the rigidity of forced collectivization, or the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran and resulting famine that was orchestrated so the red Russians could take control of Iran's oil fields, or China's current ongoing land seizures across its territories and forced internment and "re-education" of a million Uighurs.

The very idea of the worker class trumping everyone else is a proven recipe for colonialism and genocide. Individuals who avoid consumerism and live deliberately; apart from the system aren't exploiting anyone, but throughout history collectivists have caused untold death and suffering trying to shape indigenous lands into their image. Collectivism is far more dangerous than "lifestylism" to anyone who would fail to fit into the collectivist's ideological dogma.

Constructing a homogeneous group; a worker collective, and telling them they're the only group that matters; the upholders of the holy revolution, and they need to purge anyone who would threaten their revolution by not falling in line with the red agenda is not something that has ever led anywhere good. Forced collectivization gave us the Soviet Kazakh genocide, the Chinese Great Leap Forward genocide, the Soviet Holodomor genocide, etc. And it ultimately gave us collectivist capitalism like we see now in China - the most ecologically destructive form of capitalism there is.

Communism and other red ideologies (including the ones purporting to be anarchist) create as big an in group / out group divide as capitalism. The power just shifts to the producers rather than the owners. And historically it's just as brutal in its treatment of the out-groups. Anyone that doesn't want to be part of the industrial system, like the Kazakh nomadic herders, is basically fucked. You dissent, you die.

The red ideologies view the entire world through a Western industrial worker-serf lens. But the whole world isn't organized like the industrial West and it's unfair to force Western values and economic systems on everyone.

Indigenous farmers in post-colonial places are treated as pariahs; 'kulaks', and massacred for having 'owned' the ancestral land they sustain themselves with under capitalist definitions. Just because the poor in industrialized capitalist nations don't own the land they work, doesn't mean the poor in other parts of the world where there is no lord-serf system in place are bad.

A garden that you and your family / tribe tend to and depend on to survive is personal property, but communism has always treated it like private property. Like growing your own food is reactionary and a threat to the "revolutionary" government. The USSR even banned people from planting gardens at home so they'd be forced to depend on the collective for food. To keep them tied to the factory assembly line.

Nomadic herders and roaming hunter-gatherers are likewise criminalized and starved out because there can be no room for people that don't submit to the industrial work system under communism. They're grouped as "individualists" and punished for resisting collectivization.

Reject Collectivism, Embrace Anarchy

Collectivism, whether it be communist, fascist or capitalist ideologically isn't something that serves my interests as an indigenous subsistence farmer and forager living in these remote mountains. Whatever industrial dogma I'm ordered to live my life by only serves to feel my heart with sorrow. I will loudly reject the idea of a collective society at every opportunity, regardless of its ideological alliance. All industry kills all life.

I'm an anarchist. Even the idea of a "society" governing my way of life makes me vomit a little. Your needs aren't my needs, I don't want to go where the collective wants to take me. My lifestyle and my ancestors' lifestyles are likely nothing like yours and we shouldn't be meshed together as a singular entity just because we're both forced to work the machines.

Setting up living, breathing alternatives to the industrial system crafts non-coercive relationships between humans, non-humans and our environments better than unionism and other workerist pursuits ever will. Workerism only further ingrains us in the system and makes us dependent on it, and then if we do manage a revolution by some miracle... We just reproduce the capitalist system again because it's all we know. Working examples of anarchy like self-sufficient food forests are far more revolutionary to me than a union or a protest march. All applications of anarchy are important, but I value anarchy that I can see and touch.

The only revolution I'm interested in is one that removes dependences on artificial structures. I want to be liberated from the system, not become the system. The collective isn't my master. The collective is really just another state, however nicely you package it.

Red anarchists - If you don't take responsibility for the harm you do, no one will. There's no rapture-like revolution coming to wipe out capitalism's sins and absolve you of any guilt for your part in it because "no ethical consumption". There's only this life you're living and your choices absolutely matter. They shape who you are and the impact you make on your environment and your culture. If you just keep doing harm and blame your actions on capitalism, you're no different than any CEO dumping toxic waste in a river in China. Harm reduction in your community is something you have direct control over. You can choose to not dump that waste. Or you can dump it and justify it to yourself by saying "it's okay because capitalism did it".

The entire "no ethical consumption" argument and similar condescending slogans parroted by half-assed socialists are just a way to justify their inaction in the face of devastating oppression.

It's become increasingly unlikely that we can stop the unraveling global mass extinction event that industry has wrought on the planet, but anarchists have never let impossible odds stand in our way before. We fight because we exist and we exist to fight. Whatever the odds.

We can either choose to take action to resist the violent system starting on an individual and on a local level, or we can live and die waiting for capitalism to magically go away worldwide while participating in it fully and thus furthering its growth and increasing its violence.

"Think Globally, Act Locally" might be a cliche, but it's really the only power we have. If we don't take action in our own neighborhood in every way we can, why even pretend to care about anarchy?

Everything we do to resist the ecocide is worthwhile. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

#anti civ #communism #extinction rebellion #ecocide #post left #anarcho communism

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moonbelt · 6 years

Text

»whiplash | 05

↳ fake dating au | college au

⇢ pairing: chanyeol | reader

⇢ genre: slight angst + fluff + sexual themes

⇢ word count: 8.471

⇢ description: as an aspiring big-shot photographer in a slump, you’re looking for something that inspires you and unfortunately — or maybe not — it comes in the form of a guy named Chanyeol.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 [final]

There was nothing particularly fascinating about love — in your opinion. To be frank, you thought the whole experience of butterflies in your stomach, fire in your veins as you fell in love was one of the most ridiculous clichés ever created.

The idea of love, at first sight, was amusing to the say the least. Everyone wants to believe in things written between starry nights and coffee dates. But at this point in life, you'd resigned yourself to think that kind of love only existed through the confines of recorded videos and fabled literature. Why build yourself up only to have it ripped apart?

But here's the thing about preconceived ideas. There's an eighty-twenty percent chance that your preconceived conceptions are wrong.

Relationships were just another type of addiction that gradually pulled you under until you lost who you were among someone else. And it was always something you'd thought people had fallen into willingly. People claimed they wanted love and friendship, but when it came down to it, all they really wanted was to change and control each other. To have someone put them on this grand pedestal. To have a distraction from being alone so they wouldn't have to take a hard look at themselves.

In the name of love, people do stupid things and hold on to beliefs that are in every sense of the word; broken—and even hazardous to their wellbeing. You swore you wouldn't be like one of those people. You regulated your interactions with anyone you felt even an inkling of a connection with. You rationalized everything you felt to mean something smaller. You didn't rely on them for anything and that made you stronger and more ineffable.

You'd accidentally fallen in love before, and all it did was cement your theory about intimate attachments equaling weakness. You had firsthand experience of how letting down your guard bruised you more than you could handle. And you didn't — couldn't — go through that again.

And yet, all those convictions swirling in your head do nothing to stop you from standing outside the one person that threatens to dismantle all your theories front door. Here he stands right in front of you, looking at you with a mix of disbelief and — you're not sure, vulnerability?

All the oxygen in the room evaporates to somewhere you don't know as Chanyeol moves closer into your space. Well, his space if you're being technical. You're the one intruding on his turf. Did he get taller and broader since you last saw him three weeks ago? You're not sure, but his frame takes up all the air around you and your mind short circuits for a minute or two.

It grates on you that your body still reacts when you see him and that your heart still gets so excited from being in mere breadths away from him.

"In the neighborhood and thought you'd stop by and say hello?" He's the first to break this stalemate silence and you recognize the sarcasm and thinly laced anger dripping from his tone, his eyes not once straying away from yours.

"No, I came to talk to you," as a second thought you add. "If that's okay."

You understood his anger. Heck, if the situations were reversed you doubt you wouldn't be snarky and sarcastic to him as well. He pushes himself past you and slides his keys into the door, his entire demeanor closed off. "Do what you want, but you should have called first. I have stuff to do."

He pulls his front door open and angles his head behind him to look down at you, waiting for you to say something in response.

"I... I didn't think I would be here today."

Your voice falters a bit but you refuse to back down. Even though being near him makes your insides want to burn. You came here to say something and goddamit, you're not leaving until you say it. Even if he doesn't care about it anymore.

"Look, [Y/N], I don't — we shouldn't do this." He steps into his apartment and now it feels like you are divided.

You look at your surroundings. You don't want anyone to just walk out and hear the two of you, for what its worth, you still have a smidgen of pride remaining. "Can we talk inside?"

"I'm not sure there's anything we need to talk about," he crosses his hands across his chest. "You made it clear that you didn't want to see me."

You feel so small and so stupid and although you're not one to usually regret your decisions. You find yourself doing exactly that. "I'm sorry, Chanyeol." You really are but now that you're standing face to face with him, the words that you had practiced in your head have faded into nothing. And your apology sounds weaker than you thought it could be.

Chanyeol closes his eyes, breathing in for a moment and you take this time to really look at him. His hoodie is three times too big for him and his hair doesn't look like it's seen a brush in days. He doesn't look that good. Not bad or deprived...just not good. Just not how he usually he does. It's light, but the shade deeper circles under his eyes tell you that he hasn't been as well off as you had originally thought. To be frank, he looks dead-tired. He steps away from his door and motions for you to walk in.

Unlike the last time you came over, there are no stray track pants littering the floor. In fact, his apartment looks impeccably clean. And for a moment you accommodate the idea that maybe he hasn't been hanging in here more than necessary. The pit in your stomach digs harder, making a house.

Another round of uncanny silence slips above the two of you. And although you had this fire burning through you earlier to have this conversation with him, now you're not ready for what's to come. "Can I, uh, use your bathroom?"

He raises an eyebrow at that but doesn't say anything to it. "Knock yourself out."

You try not to scamper to the bathroom but you're sure it must still appear that way to him regardless. Ah, shit. You're tempted to call Sehun for an impromptu pep talk. Or better yet Kyungsoo. Sehun's great and all but you need some quick words to raise your confidence bar.

You shut the bathroom door and lean against it, hoping that the few minutes you spend here would be able to help you figure out what you needed — wanted — to say. Thoughts and emotions collide catastrophically in your head and you're afraid your nervousness would render you incoherent if you don't get a grasp on the situation soon. You lean over to the sink and click it on, dousing your face repeatedly with cold water. You pat your cheeks and will your heart and mind to still for just one moment. You can do this. You've come this far ahead already, you can't back down now.

When you return to the living room, Chanyeol is standing in front of the kitchen's island, his bottom lip trapped between his teeth and his attention focused solely on the notepad in front of him. He's furiously writing away and for a moment you're tempted to not disturb him.

You've seen him write a few times and no matter how many times you do, it still manages to mesmerize you all the same. You could watch him do this until the wee hours of the morning — not asking questions and never interrupting his work. You silently adore him — his intense focus and attention to emotion and details and then, out of nowhere or maybe out of somewhere really deep within you. You realize this unabated truth: that you love this man, and that it has drowned you.

Because of this, you decide that you need to use this tension stringing and knotting together in your stomach for good. So, you clear your throat and alert him to your presence.

He looks up from his work and a small but somber tilt peeks out on his lips. And a sharp pang filters through you, your fingers suddenly more jittery than before. "So, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

You fiddle with your fingers to prevent you from biting them to all damnation. If you were any closer to him, you bet he would hear the loud gulp you take to steady yourself.

"I like you, a lot. I love talking with you, I enjoy your company. You're dedicated and smart and...although I say I hate your puns, I find it oddly very sexy. I love how you're sure of yourself and your craft. I like how you're a really good friend to me and I hate that I was coward enough not to return the favor. Chanyeol, God, Chanyeol, I..." You trail off. You feel so incredibly stupid. Christ, why do you feel so pathetic?

As perfect as that all sounded, you knew there was no way Chanyeol was just going to accept that. You catch his gaze and he sighs out. "But?"

"I didn't think you could like me back."

Your answer lights something in him because the amount of irritation that floods off of him is enormous. He laughs but it comes out as disbelieving and mocking. "And now you think I like you? Is that why you're here? Did you decide on your own about my feelings about you?"

Biting your cheek hard, you do your best to keep your spine straight. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" His fervor has dimmed but you still hear it. "I want to know why."

"Why what?" You move your eyes from the top of his head to his face.

"Why you can say all those pretty good things about me—how you like me so much, how good you think we could be together— but then didn't even attempt to do anything about us. Is it me? Is there something about me that makes everyone think they should keep me around but not too close? Like I'm some sort of medal? Why am I never enough?"

You don't know how to go about this. There's raw neediness in his voice and he truly is asking for your answer. You wish you could scream at him that he is more than enough. More than anything you'd ever been used to. More than enough. Always more than that. You can tell its something that's plagued him for days on end and if you didn't know much about Chanyeol, you wouldn't understand the underlying question.

It doesn't matter that you didn't shatter his heart like Mai did; the principle is the same. Of course, there are things that you would never be able to prevent, no matter how hard you try, but you could've prevented this. You didn't have to chip at his slowly-mending heart, you didn't have to decide about stuff all on your own.

"I thought I was doing both of us favors. I thought I was preventing everything from getting messy. I —"

He stares at you and you can't form the words anymore. There's so much swimming in his eyes— anger, vulnerability, confusion, desire. But among all that, you know you're looking at a man who has feelings for you. You aren't alone in this.

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"It's not that simple."

"I didn't say it was. But rather than try to sort things out, you just packed yourself up and didn't look back."

You remain silent because you're not sure of what to say or rather, you're not sure how to say it. Frustrated by the lack of words on your part, Chanyeol maneuvers around the island countertop until he's somewhat close to you. He runs his hand through his hair once, twice and then again for good measure. "Why did you come here, [Y/N]?"

"Because I had to tell you. I couldn't leave it like that, it didn't feel —"

"So? Has this helped you? Did you need to see first-hand that I'm unhappy or something? Because this certainly hasn't helped me any." He places a hand on his forehead, tired, and is about to turn on the heel of his foot and walk off when you reach out and grip the edge of his sizes-too-big hoodie.

"Chanyeol."

He jerks his shirt away from your grip and whirls back so fast, your brain stutters from the whiplash and you barely have enough sense to move back to avoid crashing into him.

"Or did you come to fuck me? Is that what you came for?" He pulls the hoodie off his head in one swift motion, revealing the basic tee under it. "Have a repeat of the last time you were in here. I mean this is all fake, isn't it? The only real thing that happened between us was the sex, right?"

"Stop."

He doesn't. He keeps plowing. You don't even have buttons to push but he presses them all. The second button, the third, then the fifth... He keeps going, laying out all these things bare for you to hear. And even though some part of you had expected this, you can't help the closing feeling enrapturing your throat.

You interrupt his tirade. "You deserve more than I — anyone — can give you."

That wasn't an explanation for the things you've done; it was a withdrawal. But you meant it. He does deserve better. Someone who doesn't let insecurities or 'what if's' dictate their life. Someone that wants to be with him unapologetically. Someone who wasn't riddled down by plays of other people's bad choices. Someone who wasn't scared of problems that haven't even happened.

Is it so wrong to still want to be with him even though you acknowledge all these faults?

"You're absolutely right." He shuts his eyes for a moment before re-opening them. "I do deserve more. I deserve someone who wants to be with me in the way I want to be with them. And maybe it's my own fault for growing all these feelings for you when you never promised anything more than a pseudo-relationship. But you know what?"

You don't know and now you wish you had said everything you wanted to say earlier. There's no stupid right time to confess to someone. There's no way you can control something like that.

"I didn't think I was in this alone. I was foolish enough to think you were right there with me, breaking your ridiculous rule about repressing your feelings to dust."

Seconds tick on to minutes and you can feel your heart wrapped around his fist. Why did you ever buy into the stupid idea of trying not to fall in love with someone? What have you gained doing that? Yeah, sure heartbreaks are a pain in the ass and devoting yourself to someone only to have them trample on your feelings is a horrible situation. But, who says that's the only outcome? Why are you supposed to live your life being afraid of getting hurt? People — you — deserve to have that one good thing.

All putting up barriers around your heart does is make you more alone. Not alone alone, just lonely.

He motions with a tilt of his head to the door. "You should go... if you have nothing to say."

But you have a lot to say. So much in fact, that you stammer a good minute before anything useful falls from your lips. "I'm not leaving." Not again.

"[Y/N]," he says now and it's more of a plea than anything. Maybe he thinks you came all the way here to make a clean break from him? You didn't come here to tell him your feelings and then just leave. You came here to...You came here to come to terms with this feeling imploding in your chest.

"I am right here with you. I just..."

"Just what?"

"There are all these signs in my head telling me about everything that can go wrong but I also can't seem to fucking walk out that door."

He licks his lower lip and sighs. Not an exasperated sigh like all the others he's been letting out, it's more of a resigned sigh. Like it's clicking that you're not leaving here until the two of you have ironed this whole situation out. He leans back on the corner of the island counter, and the two of you have a mini stare off. Maybe he thinks you're gonna bolt out of the door the minute he blinks, you can't blame him.

"What made you think that I couldn't have feelings for you?"

First, there was that talk. The one you had the night before you cut off all contact. He'd talked about finding this wonderful person that was made for him and about the kind of love that only existed within beautiful literature. It wasn't something you'd ever associated with yourself. You and love and relationships had never been on the same page. And to be frank, you'd never even given it a chance. Never even entertained the idea. Until your walls came crashing down and the only thing that seems remotely relevant is that you don't need — you don't have to be on your own.

"I mean you're...you," you stumble around blindly. "You could have anyone you want."

A soft, if slightly incredulous yet unexpected laugh filters from his lips."You'd think I'd be able to make my own decisions at my age."

"Shut up," you mumble, averting your eyes to anywhere but him. "I'm not good with these things."

"What things?"

You don't realize he has moved from his position until he's ridiculously close to you that you can feel his body heat. Or maybe it's yours? Your chest is pounding faster than before. And you swear your bones are lighting with charged electricity. He must sense that you're not going to answer him because he doesn't waste time before adding:

"I want you. If I can have anyone I want, don't you think I should get to have you?"

"I don't want you to settle for me. I don't want you to regret any of the time you spend with me when you find someone greater."

Chanyeol furrows his eyebrows, puzzled. "Greater? Settle? [Y/N], when have I ever implied that being with you would be settling for something lesser?"

You huff out a frazzled breath, not wanting to relive that day but having to do so all the same. "You're waiting for your perfect person. I don't want to get left behind because of that."

"Oh, my," Chanyeol squints at you like he can't quite believe your thought process. "Sweetheart," he chastises and a part of you — a really minuscule one — melts.

"What?" You're not annoyed but a spike of mild irritation floods your veins.

"Just because I said that doesn't mean —" he cuts himself off. "Since you clearly didn't get what I was trying to say; lemme lay it down again." Chanyeol cocks his head to the side. "I was trying to hint at you. That I think this," he uses a hand to demonstrate between the two of you. "Is the real thing."

Hearing those words from out of his lips is like something akin to an epiphany. This chemistry that has been brewing between the two of you wasn't something you conjured up all on your own. It takes all your willpower — fortunately, that's a lot — to restrain yourself from turning into some inebriated schoolchild. However, try as you might, you can't stop the fragile smile from creaking at the corners of your mouth.

You manage to nod, barely. "But?"

"But I — we — should take it slower this time."

"Slower?" You probably sound dumb repeating what he just said but it's because you want to be sure. "That's not a thinly graced no, is it?"

He laughs at that and your body sings. "Of course not. I just think the both of us we have to sort some shit out... from scratch."

Again, you nod because you can't seem to be capable of doing anything else. Chanyeol moves away from you and finally plops down on one of the beige sofas in his admittedly big living room. He gives you a look, beckoning you over and you do as he implies. Sitting close but not too close to invade any personal space.

"The point," he strums along, "is that I get it, okay? You've never had an actual relationship before. You're thinking about all these possibilities that could happen but I don't care. And I'm not asking you to be my girlfriend right away, in fact, I'm not asking for any of that right now."

You twist your lips up at what he's saying, not quite understanding. "Then what are you asking for?"

"For a date," he says simply. "One date. Maybe two—"

A part of you bows to the heavenly power of euphoria.

"—or maybe four. Point is, I wanna keep seeing you."

You watch as he rakes a hand through his floppy-ish dark hair. Damn, he looks soft. He doesn't notice your little gawking fest because he continues on.

"I don't care when. You want to get a burger at night, cool. Early in the morning, great too. I'm willing to play by your guidelines, so long as you promise to communicate with me on things that are bothering you."

Pleasure and presentiment wage a war inside your head. "You'd really do that?"

You hold your breath when he fixes you with a firm, intense gaze. Then he wacks your chest and convictions even more by asking. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

Oh fucking no.

There must be something monstrous brooding on your facial features — not that you deny it — because Chanyeol cracks up like a geezer, laughing. You believe in love, of course, you do. But love at first sight? You'd rather cough up a lung than have a belief in something as fickle as that.

"Calm down, [Y/N]. I'm not saying that I fell in love with you like that."

You don't know why the sigh that reverberates through your body is one of relief. It's not like you don't want Chanyeol to be in love with you but it's the principle of the thing. You'd rather him fall in love with you as he got to know you, not some superficial shit like love at first sight. You scoff inwardly to yourself. "Then what are you saying?"

"I'd seen you a few times around campus before that day at the beach," he admits something you had no prior knowledge of. "And yeah, I'll confess, I thought you were hot — no, beautiful — but it's not like I was desperate to find out who you were."

"Great boost of confidence, thanks."

He shakes his head at your drooling sarcasm, grinning. "Make up your mind, sweetheart. Do you want me to be ridiculously enthralled with you, or do you want me to be honest?"

You bite down on your lower lip to keep the sly smirk from painting on your lips but he notices it anyways, so you give up and let it out. "You walked into that one."

"Anyway, I'd seen you before. Multiple times, probably. But the day, when we made eye contact? When you actually spoke to me? Something extraordinary happened then," he says matter-of-factly. "And I know you felt it too."

Does he have no sense of shame? Or where you just strung too tight? Your eyebrows lift up as you scoff lightly at him. "I've never seen a guy that throws around 'love at first sight' without looking at least a little bit embarrassed."

Chanyeol shrugs, not caring, a small smile gracing his features. "What can I say? You bring out the different sides of me."

You highly doubt his statement. For whatever it's worth, you think Chanyeol to be the kind of person that has little to no shame about the things that he holds close. The tension around your stomach uncoils itself and you loosen into the sofa.

"Okay, I'll admit, I did feel something." You raise a hand and scratch the skin under your eye. "Where are you going with this?"

"I don't want you to run off again. This connection between us? I wanna explore it."

"Me too."

His eyes light up like Christmas candles and for a second you're tempted to reach out and brush the tips of his hair and before you can weigh pro's and cons of it, you push forward and do just that. When he leans into your touch though, the entirety of your insides feels content.

Chanyeol says he wants to take things slow — for your sake — but at this moment, you want everything other than slow. You want his hands on you, you want his body flushed hard against your body, you want him with every fiber of your being. No halfsies this time. You feel safe with his hands wrapped around you and by shit, you want them around you right now. But you promised to abide by these new set of rules, you're not going to rush anything. You're not going to repeat your father's mistakes, you're not —

He clears his throat and your attention flitters back to him, your ears fiery hot because you've been caught absent-mindedly thinking about him. "Kissing you isn't rushing it, is it?"

An airy giggle bubbles up from your throat. "Are you asking for permission?"

"That and I hope we're both on the same page."

You shake your head at him. "I would never mind kissing you, Channie."

Maybe it's your nickname for him, maybe it's the permission you've given him, but either way, he's kissing you before either of you can think. And it's the kind of kiss that goes from a dim kindling to an inferno in one hot second.

His tongue slides through your parted lips in a deft stroke and you gasp at the intrusion. It takes about a millisecond — you're not counting — before you're kissing him back. Tongue dancing in intricate moves with his for a few earth-spinning moments. You can't seem to get close enough. Your fingers want to pull at his clothes but you still have an inkling of rationality to push them through his hair instead.

In stark comparison to the last time you kissed him, you are positive that this time, you're not the only one. Chanyeol winds one set of his fingers behind your neck, the other cradling your face, and tilts your head to the side to deepen the kiss. Your body presses deeper into his and his large frame steadies yours as he lets out an intensified groan that zips straight to your core.

"Tell me to stay," you breathe out, barely a whisper. Your body language speaking volumes in and of itself as you try, desperately, to catch your breath.

Your on either side of his lap now, your legs spread out. Chanyeol's head rests cooly on your forehead and for one dark moment you imagine him with all his clothes off on the floor and your bodies getting closer in more ways than one.

"No."

His answer startles you into clarity and for a brief minute or two, you stare at him shocked. Did he just? You open your mouth several times before you close it again. Willing everything you have inside yourself to say something back.

"Y-you don't want me to?"

Chanyeol shakes his head, a ghost of a smile not on his lips but in his eyes. "I don't want to command you to stay. If you want to stay then stay."

Yeah, that's all well and good. "But do you want me to?"

"I'm not saying this for my own benefit. I want you to make this decision. If you want to stay here — if you want to stay with me, then, I want you to do it because you want to. Not in some roundabout way to please me."

You have no idea where this relationship is heading towards but you know that you're heart is already there with him. For such a long time, you'd believed that being alone was the answer and that you would be better off like that but now, you're not sure anymore.

Being with him is like being on a high. Not the kind of high that makes you feel bad when you hit your lowest point. It's different. It's a kind of high that pulls you up, drags you up from the ground and throws you into the sky, teaching you how to fly — maybe — along the way.

There's a door inside of you that Chanyeol is knocking on and finally, you open it. "I want to stay."

And Chanyeol doesn't slam the door shut. "I want to stay with you too."

Chanyeol keeps you to that promise of taking you out on numerous dates. You can't count with two hands how many you've been on in the last month or two or three. Point is, you're spending more time with Chanyeol than with Sehun, [he's characteristically jealous], but you don't mind it.

This time you're back on a beach. Not the same as the first one you'd gone to, instead you and Chanyeol had driven an hour and a couple more to a different one that promised clear water and bustling people. The only thing seemingly true about that statement is the people. But it's not like you could do much harm to something you found on the internet, so you let it slide.

It's supposed to be date #24, but you're not counting. He's perched on the sand, scribbling away in that leather-bound book of his and you're busy taking shots of other people that peak your interest. You like dates like this, the ones where the two of you enjoy each others company more than anything. Sometimes when his eyes catch yours, he throws a silly face your way and you make it a point to stick your tongue at him and stomp away.

Once you've decided that you've taken enough photos for the day, or maybe it's just the exhaustion finally catching up to you, you flop down on the sand beside his body. He flips his notebook shut and glances your way, a really wide smile gracing his face. And shit, you feel amazing when he smiles at you.

"Question."

He lies on his back, body incredibly close to yours. "Fire away."

"You ever heard of sporks?"

"A what now?"

You roll your eyes at him, plowing your hands through the sand and reveling in the feeling of it cascading through your fingers. "I know you heard me. Please don't make me repeat my idiocy again."

He chuckles at that. "If you don't mind me asking: what the fuck are sporks?"

Sitting up, you clear your throat, preparing to give him a lecture for a lifetime.

"They're like forks but also spoons. You've never seen one of those before? They kind of look really stupid and are really inefficient but they sound cool so..." you shrug your shoulders.

"You're trying to tell me that a bunch of stuffy old people at some big company sat down in a meeting and came up with...that?"

You nod your head, shooting him a faux-prideful smile. "That's right. One of man's many wonders."

He rolls, literally he does, across the sandy plain. His throaty laugh coming out in breaks as he clutches his sides in despair. You laugh alongside with him, albeit not as loudly, and watch him as he claps his hands like a seal. It's endearing, really.

"Question." He says a thousand minutes later when he has finally regained composure, sitting cross-legged in front of you.

"Shoot."

"Did you ever think of me as naïve?" His eyebrows furrow at his own question. "Maybe not now, but before?"

You tap your lower lip as you mull over it. Well, you wouldn't say that Chanyeol was naïve. Hopelessly optimistic, yes, but not downright naïve. But maybe that can be considered as naïveté to some degree? You have no idea but you decide to go with it.

"Maybe a little. I mean, you were talking about all that love love stuff and I was skeptical about it so, of course, it seemed like you were naïve to me."

"Great," he drowns in his own sarcasm. "How about now?"

"Uh, lets just say your hopeful optimism is one of the reasons I love you."

"So, you love me." If it's a question or a statement you don't know.

"Was this just some roundabout way to get me to say that?" You scoff at his antics, shaking your head in mock-disappointment.

He raises his hand in surrender. "What? Me? How dare you accuse me of such a thing?"

You burst out laughing at him, small — ridiculously small — tears bundle at the edges of your eyes. "I love you, Chanyeol. I thought we'd already gone through this?"

You had... Maybe a month ago? You're not that good with the semantics but one night in the fast food joint near your apartment, the two of you were having one of your impromptu get-togethers. You'd tried and succeeded in stealing a handful of his fries as he looked at his phone for a second.

He'd caught you in the act but had allowed you continue on. You smiled like you were insane and sighed out. "Man, I love you." At first, it shocked him more than it did you. You stared at the red tabletop for a good thirty seconds before Chanyeol snorted aloud and grinned at you, teeth and all. "Same, sweetheart."

For some reason, he hadn't asked you to explain anything. The two of you carried on, you with stealing his fries and him with stealthy taking out of your drink that he claimed to hate, but ended up worshiping. And for the first time, you realized that love wasn't something that came in with a bang! Yeah, sure connections happened like that. It was either there or it wasn't. But with love, it was something you couldn't hide. It brought you to life. And it was always there, whether you try to acknowledge it or not.

"We did," Chanyeol's voice brings you from the past. "But I'll never get over hearing you say it."

The insides of your stomach do flip flops and inhale dandelions. It's a beautiful feeling, to feel loved and to love someone back. Soon after that, because you and him promised to watch some new fantasy/horror movie that just came out, the two of you pack camp and head back home.

These days, you hang out more in his place than yours. Not necessarily because you want to. Sehun just seems to always have his girlfriend over and you'd rather not third-wheel if you can help it. Plus, it doesn't help that Chanyeol's apartment is super welcoming and compared to your apartment, the WiFi there is spectacular. And let's not forget, it's easier to steal his sweatshirts when you spend most of your time there anyway.

Getting home is faster than it was to go to the beach and you're surprised that neither of you are as tired as you had expected. Chanyeol is still wary of watching the horror movie though, he has this look on his face — like you kicked his puppy or something. You would never do such a thing but with the way he's looking at you, you wouldn't be able to tell.

"Relax, sweetheart," you fling the endearment haphazardly, grinning lopsidedly. "I'll protect you from the big bad murder guy."

The two of you are situated on his bed, his laptop on his lap. You're about to hit play for the film to start and Chanyeol looks like he's actively forcing himself not to scream. The movie hasn't even started yet.

"What if it's not a guy?"

You shrug. "Doesn't matter. I'll fight any monster that comes for you, sound good?"

He must figure that this is as good as it's gonna get because he nods and you immerse in the movie. He clutches your arm tight and doesn't let go but at least he keeps his eyes open. Forty minutes into the movie and you realize what a horrible mistake you've made. There's absolutely nothing great about this movie! The generic couple of college students that went somewhere with absolutely nobody for spring break, somehow end up pissing off the resident serial killer and hence have to survive.

As usual, everyone but the person that caused the whole mess dies first. You tsk at the laptop screen, highly dissatisfied with your choice of entertainment.

One of the women decides it’s a perfectly good time to go skinny dipping with the love of her life — they are supposed to be hiding from a murderer. What makes this a time to go have a sexed-up scene is beyond you.

"This bitch is stupid and now the only guy worth any common sense is gonna die."

"I thought you wanted them to die?"

"Not like this. They have to put up a fight for it to mean something. Now it's just like they want to die, you know?"

He doesn't know but he doesn't say. Even though you're not particularly loving the movie, Chanyeol seems to be enthralled by it. He seems to be the target audience the producer was aiming for. You rest your head against Chanyeol's shoulder; bored. At least one of you is enjoying it. Occasionally, Chanyeol's scream lights up the room and you laugh meekly at him while trying to subtly calm him down.

You're about ready to doze off when you hear the buzz from the front door. Someone's here. Your head jerks towards the wall-clock. It's almost 12 am. Why would someone feel the need to come over now? Chanyeol is gone with the movie and you figure you'd rather go and check who's there. Wary, you pull the covers away from your body and head to the living room.

The peephole in the door does nothing to tell you who's out there. All you can see is a maroon colored shirt, you sigh to yourself, unbolting the door and opening it slightly. Your breath hitches in your throat when you find Mai standing there. For a brief second, you're tempted to slam the door in her face.

Her expression darkens the moment her eyes find yours, her pretty face a mixture of shock, ugly jealousy and anger.

"What are you doing here?" She demands like she has some kind of right.

Man, you're tired to a Capital T with dealing with this girl.

You've never prided yourself on being the bigger person, but you see yourself doing so right now. Holding your hands to your side.

"Ha, I think the more important question is, what are you doing here? And why? It's not like you're welcome or anything."

The wrinkles in her forehead — that you hadn't noticed before — tighten. "Can you not be rude for, like, one second?"

"Not exactly," you don't see the point in fueling this jealous rivalry she has going on.

She's the one that's been playing Ms. Rude since you'd set eyes on her. You wonder where she gets her self-confidence from and if you can get it in a bottle. And then you snicker at your own thought, cracking yourself up.

Mai decides to ignore your answer. "Is Chanyeol here?"

"He's watching a movie."

She nods her head, trying to peer on her tippy toes last you. "Oh, I see. How about you?"

This time you can't stop the snicker from leaving your lips. "What about me?" You cock your head to the side. "No, Mai," you pronounce the words extra slowly to prove a point. "I am not currently watching the movie."

Intense annoyance flares through her eyes. "Can I speak with Yeol? I need to speak with him. Can I come inside?"

You gawk at her for a second, maybe more. You can't believe her. In fact, you've never understood her at all. An enigma that you have no intention of trying to figure out.

"I don't think Chanyeol would like you coming inside his apartment unannounced. Why don't you try calling him and stop by some other time?"

Chanyeol's ex rolls her eyes as she twists her lips into an ugly frown. "He doesn't answer my calls. You think I would be here if he picked up?"

Well, you don't know.

"I think you should go."

"Look, I need to talk with him."

She emphasizes the need part so eloquently that you have the urge to ask. "Why?"

Mai doesn't like to be questioned apparently, because she scowls even harder. "That's none of your business, __."

Classic Mai, fucking up your name for some type of dominance quest.

"It's [Y/N]," you force out in a pseudo airy voice. "Which I know you know. And you know what?"

She doesn't move a muscle to interrupt so you press on, sneering at her. "I know you're trying to make me feel like I'm having your leftovers or something by purposely messing my name up every goddamn time you see me, but it's not working. You can call me whatever the heck you want and it won't change the fact that I'm Chanyeol's girlfriend."

And you know, you shouldn't be egging her on. It's only going to bite you in the ass later on but by fuck, you can't stop. The sight of this woman—this woman who had the most beautiful man [in and out] in the whole world and then proceeded to cheat on him with some low life sets you on fire. You can't shut up and frankly, you don't even want to.

You push the door open a little bit wider. "He loved you. He's been keeping the truth about you from his mom for months. His entire family thinks he cast you aside when in reality, you're the one that shattered his heart. You're the one that made him feel like he'd never be enough. He didn't tell Yixing, your best friend, what you truly did. Everyone thinks you're some kind of victim, bullshit."

It's a small tick but you see a part of herself cringe back at your words.

"But you don't deserve it," you tell her. "And you don't deserve anything with Chanyeol. You're here to apologize, right? To try and win his forgiveness so he never talks to his parents and Yixing about it, right? You don't want anyone to think of you as a monster, even if you know you are one."

This time she has the decency to feel embarrassed or maybe humiliated. You can't be bothered to look for the difference. It doesn't matter to you either way.

"B-but I love him," she says, and for what it's worth, some hidden part of you hears her.

You're sure your mother loved your dad. Or at least, at some point she did. But humans have to be held accountable for their actions. If only everything could be forgotten. If only. But people's hearts don't deserve to be trampled on like that. They don't deserve to have their trust severed by someone they would've given all their days for. And you'd be tenfold stupid to ever agree with ideals like that.

"Do you realize how unfair your love is?" There's a sharpness to your voice you don't recognize.

Mai is stunned into silence and you bite your lower lip, contemplating if you should go on. And maybe it's the look in her eyes that says she's not ready to give up that makes you add your next sentences.

"I won't stand for you weaseling your way to him only to break him again. I'll tell him you came by but honestly, if he asks for my opinion on the matter, I'll tell him you're not worth any of his time."

"[Y/N]," she pleads. There's a huge desperation swimming in both her voice and eyes.

"You hurt Chanyeol. I'm not letting you hurt him again. So you can go back home. Pick up your phone and call him because I'm not letting you into his apartment."

"Or don't at all."

His throaty voice grips you and has you whirling around, startled. Even Mai looks shocked beyond compare. He pushes forward and looks down at Mai directly and she cowers a little bit. He sighs out, running a hand through his spazzed hair.

"Look, Mai. You exhaust me. If someone ignores your phone calls, the general consensus is that they don't want to talk to you, isn't that correct?"

She doesn't nod but you're certain that if she could, she would've. But instead, you answer in her stead. "That's right."

"Exactly," he smirks at you through your haze before turning back to his ex. "I really don't want to talk with you. Every time we do, I get drained of all my happiness and end up hating you even more. You already made your decision and I've made mine."

Moments pass with the three of you standing like that, not doing anything. And you think maybe Mai has become incapable of using her words. You clear your throat and two pairs of eyes flicker onto your frame.

"And that's that. Drive safely," your voice has softened but you're sure she can hear the finality in it.

You don't know what she does next because before she can do or say anything, you're closing the door in her face. Happy to finally not be looking into her eyes. Ah, you hate this ex business. You never know how Chanyeol would feel about you crossing over this line. You never talk about Mai with him and you don't want to start now. But maybe it's good he knows? What if she comes back again and—

"You know, I've never had someone defend me like that."

"Must be dating the wrong people."

He chuckles and this is the first time you've seen him not get emotionally down after seeing Mai. And God, if it doesn't feel good. You reach forward and wrap your hands around him, drowning in the smell of him and the rigid feel of him.

"Yeah," he laughs out. "Must be."

You grin into his shirt. "How much did you hear?"

"Almost all of it. Can't believe you adore me this much, [Y/N]." His hands close tighter around your torso and you breathe out deeply.

"Yeah well, you would've done the same."

Feeling him nod, your ears heat up and you pull back from his body in hopes that he doesn't notice it but he does and his smile looks like it could carve heaven right in your chest. He reaches down and traces his fingers across your cheek.

"More likely than not. I mean, I do love you."

He cups your cheek and you lean into it. You have Chanyeol. Not for a halftime. Not just parts of him. Not the good parts that he just wants to show you. You have all of him. Everything. The character flaws, the greatness — everything.

Relationships had always seemed like a type of addiction that people had fallen into willingly but now, with this guy that made you want to glide across the earth with him. You realize that you will gladly allow it drag you down and consume you, especially because he's right by your side. He had waited for you and now, you waited for him. It's about opening yourself up to one another, imperfections and all, trying to find a half that fits with you.

It's a craving for something deeper. Something the words in Chanyeol's book or the pictures you take can't depict. It's something you feel and only then can you truly understand why it's important to not be so alone.

"I love you," Chanyeol pecks the tip of your nose and then the side of your mouth. "I love you," he says again, this time obnoxiously. He grabs your face between both of his palms and continues the process everywhere else.

You try to squirm from his lips. "Oh my gosh, stop!" But when he doesn't, you drag your body away from him — a huge feat in and of itself — and run as fast your legs can carry you back to the solace of his room and slam the door closed, leaning against it.

"Hey! Open up! I'm trying to love my girlfriend here!" He shouts, cackling, as he pounds mockingly on the door.

"Shut up! I'm not opening this door unless you promise to not slobber all over my face."

"How can I promise something so—"

You kick the door with the side of your foot as a warning and he backtracks.

"Of course, I'll stop. I'll swear." He chants tauntingly but you pull the door open anyways.

Not expecting him to push the door open so fast, you practically jump back until the heel of your foot feels the edge of the bed. You wag your finger at him with as much fervor as you can muster. "Don't do it."

But he does it. And suddenly your back is on his bed, his face inches from yours, his body hovering above yours and your breaths mangling into each other. He doesn't move any closer, so you do the honors of pushing up on your elbows and planting your lips on his. It's intoxicating and has you giggling in minutes. He abides with your demands quickly, not wasting time in tangling his tongue with yours.

"Love you," he pulls away from your lips and proceeds to kiss all over your face but this time you're smiling uncontrollably.

"Say it again."

He does and how your body sings. And then another realization dawns on you. If love was a competition, you're learning a lot from him. You don't need Chanyeol. Christ, no. You want him. You want him so much that it consumes you and fuels you up. He's teaching you that you don't have to walk through fire to prove you want him or love him and there's no need to be so nervous about the things you don't know.

This is foreign territory, sure, but he's showing you the ropes. And with the way he's looking at you, you can't exactly complain. He uses a hand to raise the end of your — his — shirt up and his lips placate themselves on the most sensitive points of your stomach.

Yeah, he's definitely on a mission to show you all the affection you've been missing. One touch on your heart at a time.

a/n; this is the end of whiplash!! i really hope you enjoyed it and please send me feedback or anything you liked from it :)) thank you so very much for reading! and please do tell me if you liked this!! im happy you stayed with me >.<

⇢ masterlist

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thesteadydietofeverything · 7 years

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The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a (fun) shallow novelty

In a recent Time interview, Sony Europe Exec Jim Ryan argued against the concept of backwards compatibility à la Xbox as a viable business plan, positing that for as many people that ask for it, very few actually take advantage of it. “That,” he said, “and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?” His statements may reflect the actual opinions of a certain segment of the gaming community, but they also come off as shortsighted and just kinda...dumb. He’s (first of all) bashing products once made by his own company, which for pure business reasons sounds some alarms. But more than that, he’s making an argument against the durability of games, asserting that unlike other forms of art, they have an expiration date, largely connected to the visual style allowed by the hardware limitations of the time they were made in.

While the Activision-produced Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is removed from Sony’s legal grasp, to a degree, this ground-up remake of the classic O.G. Playstation platformer series is in line with Ryan’s realm of thinking. This isn’t a “remaster” in the way that most games that bear that designation are, no mere cleaning-up and up-resing to make those chunky 90’s polygons tolerable on modern TVs, though perhaps it should have been. Rather, this is more a Gus Van Sant’s-Psycho-kind of shot-for-shot recreation of the original games in a brand new engine, and the good news for the Jim Ryans of the world is that it looks great. Fans of the original trilogy such as myself, whose ravenous nostalgia for all things pre-aughts knows no bounds, will undoubtedly spend the first few minutes of this game in slack-jawed awe at their childhood game rendered in all its colorful, rounded, shiny 2017 glory.

Some of that awe may go away, however, once those players get to, say, the second level of any one of the three games packaged, and start dying. Players at this point might have one of two reactions - “Shit, I forgot how hard this game was,” or “Shit, I don’t remember this game being so hard.” Both of these reactions are valid. The original Crash Bandicoot games, once you got past the rollicking soundtrack and vaguely-creepy but mostly-cute anthropomorphisms, were occasionally grueling obstacle courses fraught with trial-and-error frustrations. They were awkward 3D platformers that had trouble grappling with the idea of what a 3D platformer could even be, requiring the precision controls of 2D genre classics like Mario but in practice, controlling in the stiff, wonky way many games of the 32-bit era did. Even if this was a straight remaster of the original games, many players may have found themselves running sideways off a straight platform because of the bafflingly 3D controls in ostensibly 2D sections only so many times before they became a little disillusioned at how unflatteringly these games have aged. Naughty Dog may have gone on to be one of video game’s greatest and most celebrated developers, but it took a while to reach that peak.

But there’s more to it than that. Sure, on the surface level, everything pretty much looks the same - Crash (or, in a welcome addition to these versions, his sister Coco) jumps, spins, slides and bodyslams his way through the same exact levels with the same exact enemy and box locations that he always has. But upon mere days of the N. Sane Trilogy’s release, many articles and blogs ran about the ways the new game’s engine failed to fully replicate the physics and mechanics of the originals. Now the developers at Vicarious Visions themselves have confirmed these departures, the two most egregious of which are faster falling animations and pill-shaped collision boxes - meaning that many would-be close-call landings of the original games are now perplexing misses of the new games. As someone with the physics of the original games ingrained into my muscle memory, this deviation was particularly hard to accept for me; it wasn’t until probably ⅔ of the way through Cortex Strikes Back that I felt I may have finally mastered these new mechanics, just in time for the most hand-wringingly, hair-pullingly stressful levels of the game.

One can only wrestle with this kind of no-cigar approximation for so long before one starts questioning what the point is. Why remake these games in this way? Most players of the original games will be put off by the subtle-but-ever-present gameplay changes, while newcomers will likely be nonplussed by games that, graphical overhauls and Unity-based physics changes aside, still feel stuck in gaming’s awkward pre-teen phase. The answer, unfortunately, is probably financial. An HD remake of a nostalgic favorite among a certain generation of gamer is an easy cash-grab - $40 seems like a reasonable enough price for three whole games that have been completely made over from scratch, and even if the details of the way the games play start to grate on players, most will presumably still get what they wanted from the experience, a quick and shallow indulgence in nostalgia with little critical considerations. Truly replicating the original in every way likely would have been a costlier endeavor than deemed necessary for the kind of experience this was meant to be. The apparent success of this release has even sparked conversations about giving other PS1 classics, such as Spyro the Dragon, a similar treatment.

All of this complicates the question set out at the beginning of this review, about the aging process of video games, graphically, mechanically, or otherwise. I will always assert that no such expiration date exists. Developers of console generations long past were limited by the technology they were working with, but that doesn’t mean the art they made wasn’t intentional and worth celebrating. The early 3D era, both in play and look, may have not aged as gracefully as the late 2D era that preceded it, but the blocky, fuzzy-textured art of Crash Bandicoot and other games of its era will always hold a strange sort of appeal to me, and not entirely for nostalgic reasons. This was an era of radical, thorny change, full of potential both realized and missed by developers who had no clue what they were doing, but did it anyway, in a brand new dimension. Exploring the games of this time can be both exhilarating and slightly embarrassing, but rarely boring.

That’s all to say that the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy really never had to happen. A remaster would have been nice, and I will never argue for anything less than the total preservation and accessibility of video game history, but to gloss over the style seems to me the creation of a wholly different thing, just as it would if one were to modernize the English in an old piece of literature. This kind of remake feels like little more than a shallow novelty. It’s a fun shallow novelty, for sure. Despite whatever complaints I maintain about its mechanics, I still played it enough to 100% Cortex Strikes Back and enjoy a considerable amount of the other two games. In returning to them, I still felt the same itch to smash every box, collect every gem, and even give those speed runs a shot. Pulling off a difficult clusterfuck of obstacles unscathed in the later levels is still as exhilarating as ever, and breezing through the early ones is still as satisfying. I expect that others will appreciate it equally. But a shallow novelty it remains. Thankfully, though, the game prepared me to expect little more, so at least it’s not a disappointing shallow novelty.

6.3/10

#Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy #Crash Bandicoot #Games #Video Games #Criticism #PS1 #Playstation #Sony #Retro Games

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hustonmir · 7 years

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day 3 woes

Guys, I promise. Day 3 is THE HARDEST. Stick to your guns!

This email has 3 parts to it: - Part 1 addresses the way you feel today! why are you so lethargic and energy deplete? - Part 2 addresses the whole "drinking your carbs / sugars" philosophy - Part 3 addresses the WHYs...why are we ditching the legumes, grains, dairy, and sugar? (and it's super long, so refer back when you have a little bit of time and as needed throughout the challenge)

I have also included the Book Clubbers and the Talon SOF coaches on this email because heck, this is just fun information right?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Tryyyy to go just minimally crazy tomorrow! Luckily, roasted Brussels sprouts, apple sausage "stuffing," a baked sweet potato, and roasted turkey happen to be all challenge compliant :)

Text me with ANYTHING YOU NEED! Will be checking food logs today, too! :)

In Health, Miranda

Part 1:

From Whole30's Daily Emails for Day 3:

It’s day three, and you might not be feeling quite so bright and shiny today. Remember we said the first week is full of ups and downs? Today, we want to talk about some potential downs you may be experiencing, and give you some light at the end of your tired, cranky, rumbly-tummy tunnel. Tired: You’re probably more tired and lethargic today. This is your body adapting to its new fuel source – fat – and transitioning out of your old “sugar-burner” days. This is normal, and will resolve quickly, as long as you do your part to help. Sleep lots. Take naps. Take time off from the gym, or make it a “half-intensity” week. Don’t lean too heavily on caffeine or sugar from fruit to see you through mid-afternoon slumps. Basically, be patient, accept this is a normal part of your transition, and don’t expect any personal bests in the gym, or miraculous energy highs this week. Those things will come in due time, we assure you. Cranky/Moody: At this point, you may be kind of cranky about the foods you “can’t” eat. Your brain is probably throwing tantrums; missing sugar, cookies, cheese, or wine. The fact that you’re tired isn’t helping your mood, either. We have just one word of advice—patience! This passes within just a few days, as much of it is blood-sugar-regulation related. As your hormones start to get back into balance, your mood will regulate too – and once your energy picks up, your brain stops fighting your efforts, and you start feeling the magic, you’ll be brighter and shinier than ever. Detoxin’: You may be experiencing some physical symptoms; the result of your body starting to heal from the damage done by your old less-healthy food choices. Acne and rashes, worsening allergies, and digestive distress are common during this first week. Sometimes, things get worse before they get better, but know this is a common, even healthy stage as your body starts to heal. Be patient—by the second week, these should be largely resolved. So, what Dallas and Melissa Hartwig are trying to say...is to BE PATIENT! The glory days of TIGER BLOOD are not too far away!

** IF you are still feeling crappy/lethargic in a few days...then think about the amount of STARCHY CARBOHYDRATE that you're getting. Are you eating JUST leafy green veggies? Carbs are NOT the enemy, right? Think about getting some more sweet potatoes into your life. More than just sweet potatoes: pumpkin, spaghetti squash, acorn squash...all are examples of yummy fall/holiday-esque starchy veggies!

Part 2:

So you guys! I have received TONS of questions about drinking your sugar. Aka juice, energy drinks (even FitAid and KillCliff). I just wanted to address this: juice is NOTHING but SUGAR + WATER and will do you absolutely no favors when trying to tame your sugar dragon and sugar dependence. I would one thousand percent rather you EAT your sugar (even your cheats, should you choose your 2 TBSP agave / stevia). Yes yes, sugar has vitamins and minerals and whatever, but has ABSOLUTELY NO FIBER. There is NOTHING in your gut that will help qualm that huge sugar / insulin spike that occurs when straight sugar hits your gut! That's why we emphasize whole foods; the fiber in fruit helps with that insulin spike a little bit.

Getting your mouth and your mind connected with your stomach is one of the key things we want to achieve here. Your eyes, and to an extent, your brain knows you're eating fruit, drinking juice, having that paleo-ized dessert, but your stomach doesn't know that. Your stomach recognizes it as sugar. Even your tongue recognizes it as sugar!

Please let me know if you have any questions! Remember, default to WHOLE FOODS FIRST. Protein + produce with a little bit of fat (and don't be afraid of SOME starchy veggies!)

Part 3:

Today I wanted to get into the WHY? Why are we asking you to SKIP the grains, the legumes, the dairy, the SUGAR, and the alcohol? We briefly touched on this at the potluck, but I want to have it for you in an email for you to be able to refer back to.

Grains: Despite the inclusion of a mountain of grains in the US government’s food pyramid grains aren’t that great for you. They’re just not.

There are several problems with grains but we’ll focus on just two: Carbohydrate content: Grains are simple carbohydrates. That means they break down into sugar quickly. This causes a spike in your blood sugar levels, which in turn causes a spike in your insulin levels. High insulin levels prevent your body from burning fat because they cause your body to focus on converting the excess glucose in your bloodstream into energy and storing the rest as fat. Constantly eating simple carbohydrates (especially in the quantities that the FDA recommends) is a surefire path to chronically high blood sugar levels, which can lead to obesity problems and pre-diabetic symptoms. Anti-nutrients: We try to avoid grains largely due to the fact that they contain the following anti-nutrients. Lectins: Lectins are sticky proteins and anti-nutrients. They’re found in various plant species and serve to WARD OFF their plant/animal consumer /predator enemies (self-preservation). They’re hard to avoid altogether but a higher consumption of lectins can lead to intestinal damage, compromised intestinal bacteria, and leptin resistance – a pre-diabetic condition. While lectins are not completely avoidable, grains are chock full of them. In fact, out of all the food groups, it’s grains that contain the most lectins (although legumes are in second place). This is why we recommend staying away from them and eating other nutrient-dense foods with lower lectin levels. Phytates: Phytates are a main form of energy storage in plants. Unfortunately, unlike plants, humans are unable to digest phytates. That doesn’t sound too bad until you take into account the fact that phytates bind to minerals (magnesium, calcium, zinc and iron) in the body, rendering them useless to absorption. By binding to these minerals, phytates make those minerals unavailable and take them out of the body. So even if the grains you’re consuming contain a plethora of minerals, your body is unable to process those vitamins and minerals because they’re taken right out of your system. Gluten: Well, gluten. Gluten is a whole other animal. In fact, we’ve got a whole mini section on it. Gluten is probably the worst offender out of these three anti-nutrients. We hate gluten. Here’s why. Why Gluten Is NO BUENO

Gluten is a protein which causes an allergic reaction in some people (up to one third of the population). It can cause a wide variety of issues including vomiting, bloating, stomach pain, and diarrhea. Yeah – that doesn’t sound like much fun, huh? Severe versions of this are called Celiac Disease. This actually truncates the villi in the small intestine (villous atrophy).

Unfortunately even gluten-free foods, while better than gluten-full ones, still have many of the anti-nutrients and carbohydrate issues listed above.

Legumes: What about legumes? Hummus is healthy, right? Legumes aren’t entirely bad (especially if you’re comparing them to donuts, milkshakes, and pizza). Yet there are plenty of reasons as to why the excessive intake of legumes should be discouraged. Here are a few reasons why legumes are not clean.

1. Low nutritional value: Those in favor of legumes stress their high nutritional value, but legumes are only high in nutritional value when they’re raw. Once cooked, legumes lose most of their nutritional worth. They are thought to be a good protein source but, while that is true, the quantity and quality of protein provided is still nowhere near as good as that provided by some animal sources. Legumes do contain moderate quantities of nutrients like calcium, magnesium, iron, and potassium but, unfortunately, when you consume legumes, most of these nutrients aren’t absorbed due to elevated levels of phytates.

2. Presence of phytates: See Grains Section (Phytates can also inhibit some enzymes that are important for digestion, like amylase and pepsin.)

3. Presence of lectins: See Grains Section

4. Presence of saponins: Legumes are rich in saponins. Saponins have a tendency to bind to the surface of the intestinal cells and enter the bloodstream along with bacteria and other hazardous irritants and chemicals. Saponins can lead to the destruction of red blood cell membranes.

5. Rich in protease inhibitors: Protease is an enzyme secreted by the human gut. It is responsible for breaking down proteins. The presence of a protease inhibitor can inhibit the normal functioning of protease. This can lead to the overproduction of certain enzymes, causing allergic reactions, chronic inflammation, and leaky gut.

Dairy:

Did you know that humans weren’t made to digest milk products after age 2? Humans are some of the ONLY animals on earth that eat milk and dairy after age 2. That’s why we have such a high rate of lactose intolerance in the world. You, as a human, are really not supposed to be able to digest milk and cheese after 2 years of age. This is why GI discomfort, skin rashes, excess gas, and other GI ailments exist when some eat dairy. Rates of lactose intolerance are up to 80% in Asian populations, believe it or not!

That really should say enough as to why we’re eliminating dairy. Milk, buttermilk, yogurt, cream cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, heavy cream, ranch, and (gasp) even butter are all dairy products. The only difference between them is the level of PROCESSING. Well, that and the level of lactose. Lactose is milk sugar. You’ve heard of glucose and fructose, right? Sucrose? Lactose is another type of sugar. The body produces lactASE to digest lactOSE. Oftentimes, lactose intolerance exists because your body doesn’t produce enough lactase. We’ve said it multiple times but it still stands true – your body is a magnificent machine; if you don’t use your lactase, you lose the ability to produce it.

Why is GHEE okay on this challenge? It's butter, right? Because ghee is made by REMOVING the milk sugar / milk protein. Ghee is pure liquid deliciousness (golden fat) and therefore will not interfere with any potential lactose/lactase thing you have going on!

But what about eggs? Where do eggs fit into this whole thought process? They’re not really meat, well, sort of…but they’re certainly not dairy. What is the recommendation? Eat some eggs please. Eggs are really one of the best things you can eat for breakfast, lunch, snacks, whatever. And I’m not talking about egg WHITES. Whites have protein, yes, but the yolk also has protein...AND has the vitamins and fat that make the egg a complete little pod of goodness. They contain tons of protein, good fats and zero sugar. Go ahead and enjoy your eggs, everyone! The cholesterol thing is a thing that faded out with the food guide pyramid; yes, egg yolks contain cholesterol. No; dietary cholesterol does NOT (unless you're part of a very small population) affect your body’s blood cholesterol. That is mostly dictated by heredity and physical activity. We as a society are learning more and more about cholesterol as the days pass – for example, your overall cholesterol doesn’t tell you the entire picture. What is your HDL to LDL ratio? How much HDL do you have floating around? Those are the important questions that you should be asking your physician!

Keep in mind, you were not meant to digest dairy after age 2.

And last but not least:

SUGAR:

Sugar is found in so many foods - especially refined foods. We know that refined foods are not our friend…we want to eat as close to nature as possible. Back to our roots. Back to the origins.

This brings up a little bit of an internal argument. Sugar is naturally occurring in some things - as a matter of fact, sugar comes from plants. It comes from sugar cane and sugar beets. There is also tons of sugar in fruit, right? So am I supposed to stop eating fruit?

The quick answer is…well, don't stop eating fruit, y'all. We want you to begin to make the mouth-body connection of “how does this food make me feel?” We are happy to tell you that we will NOT be removing fruit. Ever. We ARE, however, going to ask you to watch your portions.

In your body, sugar acts like any other drug would act. It is an addictive substance that acts on several body systems – the nervous system (think pleasure centers), the cardiovascular system (think inflammation), the digestive system (tied to the cardiovascular system), and even the respiratory system.

Simply put, we don’t want sugar in our bodies. When you eat sugar, your body is able to use most of it as quick energy (think sugar high). We already have tons of floating sugar in our circulatory system and oftentimes we have too much.

The more sugar that is in your system, the harder the pancreas works to release insulin to counteract the floating sugar. After a while, the sugar in your body starts to resist the insulin that is trying to counteract it (insulin resistance). Also, the pancreas, after a while of this intense work, can start to fatigue and the cells that release insulin will slowly start dying. Yes, dying. Did we mention that the floating sugar in your system (the unused stuff) is also being stored in your fat cells and making the fat cells LARGER and more in number? Fat cells are tricky little things; once they are created, they never go away. They only grow and shrink. Quite literally, if you lost 50 lbs. of fat over the next 6 months, your fat cells would just shrink down to almost nothing; they wouldn’t disappear. That’s why it’s so easy to put weight back on once you’ve lost it. This is just to remind you that every decision has a consequence – both negative and positive. By completing the Holiday Challenge, you are empowering yourself with knowledge to make good decisions and yield positive consequences.

Unfortunately, ARTIFICIAL sugar isn’t much better. First of all, it’s chemically altered. Remember our discussion about whole foods? At least sugar exists in nature; artificial sugar is created in a laboratory setting and oftentimes is several thousand (yes, thousand) times sweeter than sugar. To put that in terms that make sense – 1 tsp of Splenda is perceived by the taste buds to be 1000x sweeter than 1 tsp of sugar. Do you think your body knows the difference between sugar and Splenda when it hits the tongue? Even though it does not have caloric value, no – your body thinks it’s getting sugar and LOTS of it. AS SOON as a carbohydrate hits your tongue, your body prepares itself for the carbohydrate load. It does the SAME THING with artificial sugar! Your body prepares to get calories and sugar and prepares to deal with them. The body is an incredibly intuitive machine. It gets confused when you give it artificial sugar – quite literally, where are the calories? Also, who knows what those chemicals are doing to your body? We do know one thing; with consumption of artificial sweeteners, you are more likely to crave sugar more. Think you’re doing yourself a favor by drinking tons of diet coke? You, my friend, are more likely to break down and eat a pint of ice cream or a Twinkie than someone that avoids diet coke. You really begin to break that sugar addiction when you stay away from sugar and sugar substitutes. After a while, you won’t miss it. We promise.

This also goes for “paleo” sugar – agave nectar, honey, maple syrup. Yes, it is found in nature. However, yes, your body will freak out if you eat it. Fructose, sucrose, glucose all act the same way in the body. We’re trying to get you to lose that craving for sugar…quite certainly; eating “paleo” sugar isn’t going to do you any favors.

Sugar in food → increased sugar in blood → increased insulin release from pancreas → used or stored as fat.

What about my sweet tooth?

We understand that during the next 6 weeks you will likely have a craving for something sweet, so how should you proceed? Here are some things to keep in mind. As we mentioned above, sugar will ultimately hinder your plans to stay slim so if that is a goal…avoid it! If you must have something sweet go with fruit, especially berries. Almond or cashew butter is also a great sweet treat. If that is not cutting it, good quality super dark chocolate is an option for long-term lifestyle, but we prefer you not eat that during the 6 weeks of this challenge.

Bonus: ALCOHOL

Alcohol is a very controversial subject. Many people have various beliefs about alcohol: whether we consume it at all, what we consume, and what is considered to be “healthy” and “paleo.” Carbohydrates and proteins have 4kcal/g and fat has 9kcal/g. It just so happens that alcohol is essentially its own nutrient and has 7kcal/g. It closely resembles sugar and has a unique way of metabolizing in the body. This challenge is not emphasizing counting calories, but in relative terms, we would like you to put GOOD nutrients in your body. Alcohol has empty calories and zero nutritional value. Oftentimes, you also get your spirits mixed with sugary mixers. Think about it – juice, tonic, margarita mix, soda. Yikes.

Also, feel free to discuss your concerns with me - not just about alcohol, but about all of this!

So let’s say you ARE a drinker…and you’re not about to go cold turkey on the alcohol. Let’s approach this from the same way we’re approaching the holiday season. Elimination…slowly but surely. Let’s start with leaving out the grain alcohols. Beer, grain-based spirits (moonshine, whisky, bourbon, scotch), and some types of vodka and gin (distilled with grains). There are some vodkas that are “gluten free” – we’re still watching out for those because they're distilled usually with corn aka another grain. Try Ciroc if you MUST have vodka – it is made from grapes.

Next, we’ll talk about rum. Rum is distilled from sugar cane. And liqueurs are often made with sugar, too. From there, we have tequila (fermented agave), and wine. Just remember…when you reach for the tequila – WATCH THOSE MIXERS. A paleo margarita consists of club soda, lime juice, and tequila. Notice I didn’t say agave nectar. Try a grain-free vodka and SODA WATER with lime (not TONIC). Tonic has tons of sugar. Juice is a no-no on sugar week, so good bye gin and juice.

For this challenge, try to use your "cheats" with wine and tequila. If you’re looking for maximum weight loss, try to keep your alcohol intake in moderation. Yes, red wine has resveratrol and tannins…antioxidants, if you will…but the antioxidants are actually found in the SKIN of the grapes…and what does wine NOT have? Skin, perhaps?

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