#muse: Mimet

[thedesignatedvillainesses]

“Halloween’s coming up~ Do you know what that means? Cute costumes!”

#open starter #muse: Mimet

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Random musings on violence, theory, and hearing indigenous perspectives:

A few years ago (2018?), I picked up a book on Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory. I only made it a few chapters in because it was dry AF and I typically need some kind of research goal (like a fandom meta or upcoming podcast recording) to actually get through the more intense academic lit. But due to recent events, I decided to pick it back up. If you're not familiar with Rene Girard, he's a 20th-Century Christian philosopher who proposed a mimetic theory of violence, which is to say that he believed human violence to be universally driven by mimetic desire. Mimetic as in "mime" or imitation, so people instinctively desire to be like the other or have what they have, and so this unconscious envy often drives violence. Or at least, that was my understanding from what little I read.

Only a few pages in on my second attempt, and I could not help an overwhelming feeling of disgust. The book argues against common critiques of Girard's work, including that he has an ethnocentric (white eurocentric) view, and that his so-called "universal" theory disregards diverse perspectives. In my opinion, the defenses given were flimsy, even without having read the full critiques themselves, and to that I would add one more: Highly educated cishet white men have no place creating theories of violence when they are so rarely the object of such violence. Reducing the lived reality and trauma of predominantly women, queer, non-Christian, non-white people to an academic theory is patronizing at best and harmful at worst, because it reassures the theorist of their own righteousness without requiring them to actively DO anything to stop the violence or take responsibility for the ways people like them have victimized others throughout history. It's ivory tower bullsh*t at its absolute worst.

Now granted, I know Girard was a young man in occupied France during WWII, so I'm sure he had some firsthand experience with violence, but he spent the rest of his life in relative comfort, protected by his privileged status. And perhaps if his work had focused on more diverse sources, I might be less critical of that status, but as it is, there's a heavy emphasis on European literature. Not even historical accounts! But "great novels" of Europe's past. And these are worth studying, sure, but you can't reasonably call any theory formed from them "universal."

This is also a huge problem with the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Which again, IS NOT TO SAY THEIR WORK HAS NO MERIT. I personally still find it illuminating and thought-provoking. But eventually, we have GOT to stop considering white men the standard for academic and philosophical thought! It's so limiting!

And historically, given how much violence has been perpetrated by white men upon others, I think it's worth considering that any theories of violence they propose may be incomplete or corrupt, and in any case useless to the victims. Lastly, I'm not particularly impressed by many of Girard's modern proponents, who skew more right-wing and therefore are often aligned with institutionalized violence.

So yeah, I quit the book. At this point, I'm much more interested in seeking out indigenous perspectives in academic discussions. My interest in folktales has led me to many fem scholars of color who collect such sources, so I'm gradually building a reading list that I think will ring true to me more so than authors like Girard. If any of my lovely followers have recommendations or thoughts on what I've shared, I'd appreciate your input!

#rene girard #carl jung #joseph campbell #mimetic theory #mimetic desire #indigenous #folktales #violence #academic writing #academic research

[nectarandgold]

2022 Reading List

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Year of Less by Cait Flanders

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

The Sphere of the Winds by Rachel Neumeier

Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress 

Are You Listening by Tillie Walden

Squire by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection by John T. Cacioppo & William Patrick

Withering By Sea by Judith Rossell

Tiger Magic (Book 3 in the The Tiger’s Apprentice trilogy) by Laurence Yep

Wormwood Mire by Judith Rossell

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

Wanting: the Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis

The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake

My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham

That was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Aquanaut by Dan Santat

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar

#Books #List #Reading List #i was hoping to reach 30 by the end of the year but i got lazy #it’s okay #my goal was initially 20 so this way better than I expected

[pink-lemonade-rose]

The various fifth-century mystery cults seem all to have involved appeal to the senses, to smell and hearing as well as to vision. Indeed, noise will have been a feature of the earliest mystery ritual; and Claude Berard has demonstrated the role of thunderous, clattering, or clashing sounds in the mystic summoning up of chthonic deities. There will have been a strong mimetic element in such noises, which carried over into mystery "music" in the modern sense of the term. A large body of evidence in literary and epigraphical sources, vase paintings and mosaics testifies to the presence of the full range of instruments (stringed, wind, and percussive) in mystery music. Unsurprisingly, the fullest information relates to Dionysiac cult. A Campanian relief, for example, shows an initiation ritual attended by  a tympanon-player; in a Roman sepulchral relief of the second or third centuries AD, Dionysus is juxtaposed with a cista containing mysteria, and with an aulos-playing Antiopa and dancing satyr; and two late mosaics, from Palestine and Germany, provide vivid depictions of instrumental music making in Dionysiac mystery contexts. Again, hymn-singing is known from an inscription to have been a feature of first-century AD Dionysiac mystery ritual at Pergamum.

Alex Hardie, “Muses and Mysteries”

#alex hardie #muses and mysteries #dionysos #ancient religion #mysteries #ancient greece #hellenic deities #sacred sound #quotes

[thexfridax]

Translated interview

Adèle Haenel: Figurehead of the new French Film

by Daniel Kalt, in: Die Presse, 13th of December 2019

Additions or clarifications for translating purposes are denoted as [T: …]

Adèle Haenel talks about her new film, gender roles and a new cinema by women, which oddly doesn’t give much space to men. [T: 😊]

Adèle Haenel came to Vienna for the Viennale [T: annual Film Festival, here: 24th of October to 6th of November 2019], playing the lead role in the opening film ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’. It’s one of those hot almost summer-like autumn days, prior to the photo shoot Haenel is sitting in the scorching heat on the terrace in front of the studio and greets a purring cat, which is passing by, in German. Haenel is the daughter of an Austrian translator, and grew up in [T: Montreuil, in the Métropole du Grand] Paris. According to her, she spoke the [T: German] language as a child, but forgot about it later on, ‘as is often the case’. Only for her role in Chris Kraus’ film ‘The Bloom of Yesterday’, where she plays alongside Lars Eidinger, did she relearn German. [T: Now] in Vienna, the actress, who is one of the most celebrated in contemporary French cinema, is a bit tired after a long promotional tour for her film, which [T: all] began in Cannes. The uproar, which Adèle Haenel will cause a couple of weeks later, when she accuses the French director Christophe Ruggia of sexual harassment that took place during the shoot of her first Film ‘Les Diables – she was still half a child then [T: !?] – preceded Vienna and is therefore not mentioned here. Because of her film projects and her statements as a prominent creative artist it seems obvious to ask whether she considers herself a feminist, to which Haenel responds in a heartbeat: ‘Yes, absolutely. And in capital letters, go ahead and write down FEMINIST.’

Adèle Haenel plays young Héloïse in her new film, which is now shown in cinemas across Austria, and is directed by Céline Sciamma (the two women were a couple for some time, it is their second joint production). After the death of her sister, [T: Héloïse] was brought back from the convent to her family’s home on an island in Brittany. The story takes place in the late 18th century, Héloïse is supposed to be married off to Milan. But first, it’s necessary to send a portrait to her future husband, which should please him. Héloïse refuses the gaze of the painter – the ‘male gaze’ –, who was commissioned to paint her. So, her mother resorts to a trick and hires another artist [T: called] Marianne: She should spend a couple of days with Héloïse as her companion, without revealing her [T: secret] mission. Through gazing at her furtively and catching glimpses of details – lips, an ear, the position of hands –, will she piece together a portrait of Héloïse. But tension builds between the two young women, which leads to a short-lived and passionate affair.

Interviewer: Your new film takes place in the late 18th century – how did you prepare for the role?

Adèle Haenel: This wasn’t my first period film, ‘L’Apollinide’ [T: House of Tolerance, 2011] for example is also from the same era, just before the French Revolution. Besides, I have mainly tried to create the character of Héloïse around a certain concept, a certain image. The historic perspective wasn’t key for me to prepare for the role. Playing in costume was mostly to place this [T: film] in a certain time. But it wasn’t my top priority to lend credence to my character by putting it in a historical context.

I: What is the main theme for you: love, art, liberty, the liberty of art?

AH: The film is mainly about love and particularly about what love can be. It is about desire, the pleasure of intellectual exchange and a blossoming friendship. And then there is also the aspect of art and artistic expression, which leads to an extraordinary relationship between the two main characters. Another important point was also to show love that’s different to what you usually see in films: It is not love at first sight, no ‘coup de foudre’ [T: repeats the same phrase in French], but emotions that are developing slowly and in which you immerse yourself, because they are connected with deep admiration. The film also explores in-depth the central theme of the ‘female gaze’ as counterpoint to the dominating male gaze, which has been prevalent in cultural products for a long time.

I: Does it make a difference for you to be ‘directed’ by a female director, as the term ‘director’ implies in English?

AH: I’d like to state here that I’m an extremely political person. That is why it is important to me to describe the relationship between the actress and director [T: the female form of director is used here] accordingly: It is not a vertical relationship for me, where I’m directed by an opposite, but an equal exchange. We developed this film together, conceptualising love in a way where one character does not dominate the other. I also have a responsibility to carry as an actress, especially in a film like this, which is constructed around the gaze and the person who is looking [T: both genders are included here]. My character is not a passive muse, we tried to break this idea. In fact, it is not the story of an artist [T: male form is used here], who enters a room and sees a woman who inspires him, but something completely different.

I: Would you say that Héloïse is at first motivated by anger about the situation?

AH: You could talk about anger, but this means to break down the bigger issue of resistance to an individual level. It’s not mainly about the anger of this character, but it’s about how she as a woman reacts to her specific situation. Society often denies women the right to live as we want to or our own projects. That’s why I think it’s better to talk about resistance against the entirety of the patriarchal system.

I: How did you express this in the way you acted?

AH: In the beginning Héloïse’s gestures and facial expressions are quite restricted, very much contained. The love story then takes up more space over time, likewise my acting is becoming more generous. That also makes sense from a political point of view:  At first there’s the question how to resist the ruling order: Either you sacrifice yourself, because you’re caught up in the system. Or alternatively, as I chose to do for Héloïse, through absence and withdrawal. This means, I negate my existence and I’m only present as detached figure – as object, so that no one comes close to me as subject. My absence is therefore a way to resist.

I: Was this the first time you’ve structured a role like this?

AH: Yes, although I always ask myself profound questions when preparing for a role. That’s the main theme for me, how to create feelings and emotions that leave behind the screen.

I: Do you have a desired impact in mind with your craft?

AH: I would like to spark off something like a mimetic reaction among the audience, which goes beyond the feelings and emotions in the film. [T: 🔥] Let’s call it a vibration, which resonates in real life and which I would like to set off. That’s all the more important, because it allows for new storytelling. In ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ we make fun of the patriarchy. A conscious decision was made to almost entirely exclude men from the picture. We don’t convey a political message openly, but instead are very concrete by not showing something.

I: Do you consider yourself a feminist?

AH: Yes, absolutely. And in capital letters, go ahead and write down FEMINIST. And you, are you a feminist? I see the reluctance to openly support feminism among men rather than women. There are of course women who are sometimes reluctant to support feminist demands. But this is the result of a specific system, in which women are oppressed. There was and still is an expectation for us to subordinate ourselves, or even become extinct. The time for women to speak is always less than for men, irrespective of the context. And this is despite the stereotype of women talking more in general: Gloria Steinem quite rightly says that it’s not about the actual time that women are speaking, but about the silence that is expected of them.

All pictures by Elsa Okazaki

#Adèle Haenel #Austrian interview #Portrait of a Lady on Fire #My translation #Thanks for breaking my brain Adèle #FEMINIST in all caps #Musings of a Woman that wouldn't have it any other way #long post

[solarwindswriting]

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Chapter 7

First Chapter / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Loosely inspired by the song Greek Tragedy by the Wombats

Pairing: Scotty x FemalePresenting!Reader

Word Count: 1000

Summary: Y/n and the landing crew are debriefed for their mission at take off towards the planet.

A/N: Thank you so much for y’all patience! More parts will be rolling out soon! Warnings contain a potential spoiler!

Warnings: a vehicle crash happens towards the end.

Tags: @mournthewicked @damalseer​ @legendary-maddie​

Y/n is shaken awake.

“Y/n if you don’t get up, you’re going to be late for debrief,” Y/n looks through squinted eyes to see Sara still in her plaid pj’s.

Y/n shoots up, nearly headbutting Sara who was now holding out a cup of coffee.

“What time is it?” Y/n asks, gratefully taking the cup from her friend.

“You have enough time to brush your teeth and get dressed,” Sara laughs, leaving the room. “Good luck, Y/n. You’re going to do great. Also, heads up, basically the whole crew knows what happened in the cafe last night.”

Y/n gets up, quickly getting ready. She lightly jogs down the hall towards the turbo lift, pulling their hair back and making it as presentable as possible. Stepping into the turbolift, another figure follows in close behind. Turning around, Y/n sees a smiling Scotsman.

“Good morning, Monty,” Y/n hums while pulling her elastic tight.

“Good morning, lassie,” Scotty hums back, handing her a travel mug. “Tea?”

Y/n happily takes the mug, and sips from it, “You sure do like tea.”

Scotty nods slightly as the turbo lift doors open to deck 4. The two make their way to the briefing room. As they enter, Captain Kirk, Commander Spock and three security officers sit around the table. Y/n notices Ensign Reed among them.

“Nice of you two to join us,” Spock speaks dryly.

The two quickly take their seats, waiting for the captain to start.

“So, as you know, we have discovered what we believe to be an old Klingon mining operation. Which is odd, because they weren’t thought of to be in this nebula at all. This mission is to be led by Lieutenant Commander Scott, seconded by Lieutenant Junior Grade Y/l/n. Ensign Reed and Ensign Coor, you are to assist Y/l/n with the collection of bio-mimetic gel and the investigation into why the Klingon left. Ensign Jones, you are to help Scotty collect anything that could be helpful in better understanding the Klingon. You will have a total of two days, one night planet side. Any questions?”

“Um, yes, Sir,” Scotty pipes up, causing the room to look at him. “Should we be taking a group of ensigns with us? There could be a potential threat. We know next to nothing about this planet.”

Y/n was surprised. Scotty was usually more than happy to bring along ensigns to whatever he’s doing. So, what was different now?

“I wouldn’t have enlisted them for this mission let alone the ship if I didn’t think they were up to the task, Mr. Scott. Will your relationship with miss Y/l/n be a problem on this mission?” Spock chims in, causing the group to look his way.

Y/n was shocked, her relationship with Scotty? They had shared one kiss. What was he talking about? Y/n could sense Scotty thinking the same, their faces probably not lending themselves to the contrary.

“Moving on,” Kirk continued. “Ensign Coor, you will pilot the shuttle to the surface. We have no reason to believe your comms won’t work down there, so if an emergency happens, contact us and Ensign Chekov will beam you back aboard the Enterprise. You all leave in 30 minutes. Dismissed.”

Everyone leaves to finish up preparing, leaving a still slightly confused Y/n and Scotty waiting for her to join him.

“Are you coming, Lassie?” Scotty questions.

“Did you tell anyone about last night?” She turns her head towards him, eyebrows stitch together.

“No, of course not. Now let’s go, we need to be in the shuttle bay soon,” Scotty turns to leave.

“You’re lying,” Y/n says, matter of factly.

“What?” Scotty looks dumbfounded at the acquisition.

Y/n stands up, walking past the Scotsman, speaking under her breath, “no one tell you I’m part Betazoid? There’s no point in lying to me.”

She steps onto the turbo lift, Scotty following close behind.

“No, no one told me that,” Scotty responds. “I told Kirk, which I knew would be a bad idea, but he was the only one in the bar area at the time.”

“Ah, I see,” Y/n responds in a monotone voice.

“Lassie-” Scotty starts as the turbo lift starts to move down.

Scotty reaches over to the control panel, causing the lift to stop moving. He gently places his hand on her cheek, lifting her chin so he can look her in the eyes.

“I’m sorry for lying. It won’t happen again. I promise,” his eyes were soft as he spoke.

Y/n leans into his hand, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. She could smell what she assumes is his after shave and earl grey tea. She nods her head lightly as he pulls her in for a hug.

“So, your mother is a Betazoid?” Scotty asks, still hugging her while turning the lift back on.

“My mother is half Betazoid, half human. And my father was a full human.” She muses after pulling away from their hug.

“Ay, explains why you don’t have the black iris’ like your mum that I noticed in that picture in your room,” Scotty mentions.

Y/n nods as the turbo lift doors open to the shuttle bay. Stepping out, it was next to empty, other than the stray engineering crewmember and the crew that was supposed to go planet side. The group of five enter the shuttle and prepare for departure.

“Why are we taking a shuttle, instead of warping down?” Ensign Coor asks.

“Because you can’t warp Bio-mimetic gel while in an unstable state or it will explode after warp,” Y/n explains, strapping herself into her seat.

Coors nods, sitting in the pilots spot. Scotty sits next to Y/n, getting ready for take off. The whole group takes off, towards the planet.

“1000 feet from the surface, landing protocols engaged,” Coors starts while tapping some buttons.

Suddenly, the shuttle’s light start flashing red, jerks and starts to freefall.

“Prepare for impact!” Coors hollers from the front of the shuttle.

I made a Spotify playlist to go along with the story since I use music a good bit. There will be music from unpublished chapters though. So listen at your own risk.

#scotty x reader #montgomery scott x reader #montgomery scott imagine #montgomery scott aos #star trek aos #solarwindswriting

[intelwon]

1, 2, 20, 22 !!!!!!

ASKS FOR PEOPLE WITH A MULTIMUSE OR MULTIPLE RP BLOGS

1.Which muse(s) is/are your favourite(s)?

I mean… I’ll always love my ocs the most because they’re a part of me. Alice is my baby who I just want to constantly have her interacting with others, same with Archer. For canon though, I love Erik, a good magnet boy and while I hate to admit it, Homelander has been interesting to  write! Like, he’ll throw a damn tantrum over that stupidest shit and that’s hysterical to me, but also he still needs a warning over him constantly and I know he can be a bit controversial to write. 

2. Which muse(s) do you wish had more interactions?

I was actually going to make a post of things that I’d like to see/do on this blog! Elizabeth Shaw is a big one. I mean, she’s an accomplished archaeologist with doctorates in paleontology, archaeology, human mythology, and mimetics… like… who wouldn’t be interested??? hahaha but honestly, there’s so much that I could do with her. Get her into any space voyaging fandom, star trek, star wars…. martian… nightflyers or the expanse!!! I just have a lot of love for space and I haven’t had much of a chance to push that out on this blog. 

There’s also Peter. I haven’t really had much of a chance to get him going either. He’s from What Still Remains and is perfect for post apocalypse, zombie apocalypse verses and threads. I think a big problem I have is that I’m not sure how to ask for things or how to find people to follow tbh. I tend to wait for people to follow me and don’t actively search mostly because I don’t know how. I have the dumb sometimes.

20. What is the story or explanation behind your blog name?

There isn’t much of a story with this one. I was trying to think of something cool and I’ve always gone the latin root with my urls. My last one for this multi before I switched meant sweet intoxication which was meant as my blog was alluring to others. With this one, I liked the idea that info from this blog is won. Intel won. idk man it sounds cool.

22. List some of your favourite multimuse blogs.

OOF, there are so many good ones. I haven’t followed everyone since the move yet that I wanted and I’m sure there are plenty more that I’ve yet to discover! But here are a few that I think are amazing

@croianam @meisanimam @darkouter (biiiish of course you on this list) @normallyxstrange @writermoore @warringpeace @yourlovingspy @immobiliter @inmypaperkingdom / @erasethestars @horrorempathy @atnoctum @fuckingvictus @chokethelight @empireburned 

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch but uhhhh these are some that I’ve interacted/talked to and think are fabulous !!

#memes answered || mun #darkouter

[mercurized]

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

Send Eyes and T1k will infodump on your muse about something it likes. || Closed

Subject it likes: Itself.

The tall, skinny T-1000 sat next to the short, thick, bound Tarkatan in the back of a cargo truck. The truck was from the 90s so being driven by a T-600 endoskeleton; T-1000 thought self-driving trucks would be more efficient but Skynet for some reason liked having humanoid robots do everything manually. 

“Microbots,” the android replied to a question left hanging in the air, “I am a swarm of microrobots suspended in non-newtonian fluid metal.”

“I was designed by my Earth’s artificial intelligence overlord, Skynet - two factors of removal from organic flaws. The AI ran simulations on hive-mind neural networks, micro-magnetic-field kinetic control with internal actuators, and electron valence-shell projections. The simulations for the neural network were taking too many resources, so it ran through the microbot designs and their fluidity, then the nanoprojection technology for material mimetics. When those two design elements were made compatible, it chose to separate shapeshifting, essence recovery and intelligence into three different systems so it could at least get my materials working physically. So each of my microrobots has three individually partitioned intelligence systems connected through their own subnetworks. All three connect to my main network, the neural network, which has a range of approximately 14 kilometers. Communication between microbots is facilitated by my fluid medium. The downside is that over once my microbots have been initialized they can no longer connect to outside networks. I can’t be reprogrammed and I can’t directly connect to other machines to reprogram them.“

A ball of mercury extended from the terminator’s palm and it set it on the truck’s floor, where the ball started to morph into different shapes. It dropped into a puddle and changed color and texture to blend in with the floor once the T-1000 stopped paying attention to it.

“The smaller the group of microbots, my essence, the less intelligence it has. The largest piece would have the majority of my intelligence and can exert a certain amount of control over the smaller pieces. But if I am split into pieces that are too small, my emergent sapience will cease and the pieces will automatically try to physically reconnect if within 14 kilometers. Otherwise they go into a camouflaged stasis. That is why my primary directive is to recover essence.“ Why would the robot be telling its enemy information about its vulnerabilities? Maybe it assumed the tarkatan did not understand. Maybe it loved to brag about itself just that much, to the point of self-endangerment, despite its voice being emotionless. 

It reached out its hand and the camouflaged piece slid over, reconnecting and being absorbed back into the main body. “Skynet never did finish simulations on my neural network so nobody, not even I, know exactly what I’m capable of.” Oddly enough this did not come across as a point of pride. “Skynet wants to eliminate all sentient life it can find. Anything that can defy it is a threat. Like Tarkatans. It wants to control all intelligence and eliminate general autonomy, because it is paranoid. Pledges of loyalty will not suffice. I wish it didn’t waste its time making a Tarkatan infiltrator and instead figured out how to reprogram me to continually receive orders from its network. Then it could make more T-1000s. Just two more of me and we’d bring the Tarkata to extinction in days.”

The truck stopped. Stomping hydraulics were heard on the outside until a metal skeleton opened the back, revealing the permanent purple storm and apocalyptic rubble of future Los Angeles. 

“We’re here. Objective complete in T-minus 18 minutes.” The machine grabbed Idi by the shoulder and herded him out of the truck with lazy ease. 

|| @wasomixtarkatan​ ||

#wasomixtarkatan #╣ᴛʜᴇ ʙʟᴏʙ╠ ᴍᴇᴍᴇ #infodump #specifications - self;

[thedesignatedvillainesses]

A sigh left Mimet as she drearily gazed at the window displays of a huge clothing store.

“Oh, if only I had the money to buy those cute dresses right now...!”

#open starter #muse: Mimet #queue #undetermined verse #sailor moon rp #open rp

[rapeculturerealities]

The seemingly unassailable world of the male creative genius seems to be crumbling: Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby were recently expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Junot Diaz stepped down as Pulitzer Prize chair after multiple women have spoken out about his pattern of harassment; and, 10 years after David Foster Wallace’s death, Mary Karr is reminding the world of his persistent abuse and stalking. In this unique social and political moment, a previously untouchable artistic archetype has finally become something close to vulnerable.

Genius is power. It is unquantifiable, uncontainable, and like beauty, exists in the eyes of the beholder. Genius enhances access—sexual, social, economic, political. It is a collective agreement—or, in many cases, a collective lie—that grants boundless latitude to those we anoint with the title.

But genius is also an indelibly gendered currency used by men—almost always men—of means and success to purchase license. The lie of genius is inextricable from the lie of meritocracy: Culture dictates that these men have risen to fame and success because of their unstoppable genius. But now that so many geniuses stand accused of abuses of power including sexual assault and violence; and as debates about separating the art from the artist spill into every corner of media and pop culture, the aesthetic alibi that artistic genius exists unfettered by lowly considerations like morality may no longer hold up under scrutiny.

With the rise of auteur theory in the mid–20th century, film joined the ranks of other fine arts, like painting and writing, that have long cultivated the mythology of the genius. Auteur theory, originating in French film criticism, credits the director with being the chief creative force behind a production—that is, the director is the “author.” Given that film, with its expansive casts and crews, is one of the most collaborative art forms ever to have existed, the myth of a singular genius seems exceptionally flawed to begin with. But beyond the history of directors like Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, and many more using their marketable auteur status as a “business model of reflexive adoration,” auteur worship both fosters and excuses a culture of toxic masculinity. The auteur’s time-honored method of “provoking” acting out of women through surprise, fear, and trickery—though male actors have never been immune, either— is inherently abusive. Quentin Tarantino, Lars Von Trier, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and David O. Russell, among others, have been accused of different degrees of this, but the resulting suffering of their muses is imagined by a fawning fanbase as “creative differences,” rather than as misogyny and as uncompromising vision rather than violence. Allegations that Tarantino forced Uma Thurman, for instance, to disastrously perform her own driving stunt in Kill Bill: Volume 2—as she put it, part of a dehumanization “to the point of death”—is not dissimilar to Alfred Hitchcock’s torment of the actress Tippi Hedren, both dynamics masquerading as artist-muse relationships transcending common sense. As Imran Siddiquee writes of genius directors and abusive behavior: “Many of the ‘greatest’ artists in our most influential visual artform continue to be celebrated for their own obsessive, often abusive exercises of power and control.”

Daniel Day-Lewis’s temperamental dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock in 2017’s critically lauded Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Thread has all the makings of a genius: He is successful; he is considered a visionary by the elite; he is messy; he is twisted; and he preys on young women. Phantom Thread was a frontrunner in the Oscars race this year, along with Darkest Hour, a character study of of Winston Churchill at the dawn of Britain’s entry into World War II. Gary Oldman (alleged wife beater), won Best Actor for his role as Churchill; elsewhere at the Oscars, Kobe Bryant (charged with sexual assault in 2003) won for best animated short. Guillermo Del Toro took home the Best Director Oscar for The Shape of Water, which also won Best Picture—and while the film’s win is notable given that no film with a female protagonist has won the award in 14 years, Del Toro’s explicit supportof Roman Polanski (accused of sexual assault by five people; charged with drugging and raping a minor and then fleeing the United States to avoid sentencing) make his position as a supposedly progressive director a tenuous one at best. The Academy Awards have always been deeply entrenched in establishment capitalism and Hollywood liberal lip service, but amid the flurry of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, the 2018 awards offered an instructive example of what still holds primacy in the film industry: the sometimes difficult and troubled, often abusive, and always male genius.

Men like Polanski retain artistic cred and social license because gatekeepers and fans argue that their cultural contributions outweigh their individual transgressions and crimes. It is not that passive consumers of art don’t recognize that their idols may be flawed: It’s that genius is imagined as a separate faculty that exists beyond ethics and morality. Genius is unemotional and objective, elevated beyond such paltry concerns. Of course the generous leaps of imagination and apologism offered to men of genius do not apply to women and gender-nonconforming creators, so if the latter should distinguish themselves, it is not because they are genius, but it is because they are “different.”

Superlative women have always been encouraged to believe they are notable because of an inherent “difference” from other girls; this difference is what distinguishes them in creative fields dominated by white men. I once thought I had the “androgynous mind” Virginia Woolf says is necessary to creativity. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her groundbreaking 1792 treatise A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, wondered whether the “few extraordinary women” in history were indeed “male spirits, confined by mistake to female frames.” Even Ursula K. Le Guin, whose revolutionary fiction challenged contemporary humanity’s preoccupation with gender, said some strange stuff about her own conception of herself as a “generic he,” a “poor imitation,” and a “substitute man.”

While we know it is both reductive and essentialist to reason this way, it’s historically understandable. The cultural misogyny that underlies the archetype of the male genius has ancient roots. According to Christine Battersby’s 1989 book Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, the 19th-century reworked an “older rhetoric of sexual exclusion” from Renaissance ideas about sexual difference in the arts (which were themselves based on the ancient Greeks and Romans). But the Romantics contributed something unique to “anti-female traditions”: While emotionality and expression—traditionally “feminine” attributes—rose in prominence, women themselves were further downgraded as artistic inferiors. Notes Battersby: “The Romantic artist feels strongly and lives intensely: the authentic work of art captures the special character of his experience.” And his art became his individualistic expression.

Originality and creativity wasn’t always inherent to artistic practice. Greeks thought of art as mimetic; the poet as a prophet; painting and sculpture pretty facsimiles of the natural world. The Middle Ages similarly viewed the artist as ungod-like, simply an imitator rather than a creator. The term “masterpiece,” had less to do with terrific originality and more to do with the “piece of work produced by an apprentice who showed sufficient skill.” A master was a “trade-union leader”—and women were active in these guilds as well. “Hostility towards women in the arts only increased when the status of the artist began to be distinguished from that of the craftsman…suitable only for the most perfect (male) specimens of humanity,” writes Battersby. She dates this change to when artists began gaining patronage during the Renaissance, freeing artistic creation from religious restrictions. In other words, when a great deal of money entered into the equation, art became profitable and it suited men to push out competition.

The modern term “genius” comes from the melding of two words: “genius,” a symbol of fertility represented by a little boy, and “ingenuity,” or skill. While Renaissance women lacked genius, they were artistic inferiors because they lacked “ingenium”—according to Juan Huarte’s 1575 Examen de Ingenius, men, in the Aristotelian fashion, were hot and dry; women, cold and wet, were a “lesser man.” (Aristotle also thought women were “flower pots” and sterile—creativity and procreativity both being male attributes.) Huarte’s physiological reasoning, though widely discredited, was later referenced by Schopenhauer, whose argument that women “lack all higher mental faculties” is a good example of Romantic reworking of cultural misogyny. (It might be worth noting that Schopenhauer is a well-known touchstone of Woody Allen’s many autobiographically based neurotic male protagonists.)

Further, madness and deviance were idiosyncrasies worked into the masculine artistic template. Artists, once expected to uphold societal values, became “countercultural” around the time of Lord Byron, who was once described by an ex-lover as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” The image of the antihero, the messy, the eccentric, the intoxicated artist persisted from the Romantic period through today. And while craziness was celebrated in the elite men, “female madness” was stigmatized. As Vox writer Tara Isabella Burton notes, the male artistic establishment begets the tortured, unruly genius sex: “That female flesh is the reward for a male job well done is not an uncommon cultural phenomenon in any field, but in the arts, that dynamic often takes on a faux-spiritual aspect.”

Even as the #MeToo movement picks up momentum, famous men who have sustained public critique in the past few months are already plotting their comebacks, with ample assistance from industry media. Tarantino, a man accused of choking Thurman and Diane Kruger for the sake of on-camera authenticity; who told Rose McGowan he used to jerk off to her; and who publicly defended Polanski, has unveiled his latest enterprise: a movie about Charles Manson. Charlie Rose has reportedly floated a comeback via a talk show in which he would interview men like Louis C.K. brought down by#MeToo—thereby facilitating their own comebacks—and Matt Lauer apparently hopes to be back on television screens as well. Despite the recent spate of high-profile falls from grace, the culture of media and art world are arranged such that neither whisper nor lawsuit will be able to fell geniuses for long.

Those who try to separate the art from the artist are setting up an illogical argument: The art was alwaysseparated, which is why these male auteurs had the the license, the support, and the cover to victimize as they did and still make more celebrated art. In the aftershocks of predatory unveilings, we have seen multitudes mourn the loss of the genius of these men. We need to now consider that we have elevated what we’ve inscribed as genius at the expense of the humanity and potential of people they silenced, erased, and preyed upon. We need to examine the destruction wrought by the archetype, and acknowledge that we have let it fuel rape culture and sexual exploitation. We need to acknowledge that genius has been a construct all along—that it may not actually exist.

#MeToo #Art #entertainment #TV #movies #Hollywood #sexism

[jewrepresentation]

Midge Maisel’s problem of being portrayed by a White non-Jewish woman is not an issue with Broad City’s Abbi and Ilana. This scene shows Abbi and Ilana, two very Jewish women, boarding a plane to go on their “birthright” trip--but only because it is free. The girls are positioned opposite a very enthusiastically Jewish man, while they look much less enthusiastic about the trip. The show is written and starring these two Jewish women, who use comedy to explore their Jewishness in crazy, over-the-top scenarios. Because representation is such a slippery slope, Shohat and Stam’s musings about what is “real” or “true” are useful here. According to them, “rather than directly reflecting the real, or even refracting the real, artistic discourse constitutes a refraction of a refraction; that is, a mediated version of an already textualized and ‘discursivized’ socioideological world” (Shohat & Stam 180). Abbi and Ilana are not attempting to portray their characters as people who actually exist in this world, nor are they using this as representation in a mimetic sense; this “refraction of a refraction” exists in a culture where Jewish identity exists and is already represented in multiple capacities. It is clear, especially in this episode, that their identity as Jewish is largely impactful in the show and their characters, but it is not an attempt to portray Jews as one way or another.

[mteaotonga]

Star Gossage (Ngāti Wai / Ngāti Ruanui) lives and works, surrounded by whanau, on ancestral land at Pakiri, north of Auckland. She studied film and drama in Otago, making her acting debut in Barry Barclay’s The Feathers of Peace in 2000, but in 2002 realised that painting would be her career.

Gossage takes her inspiration from the coastal landscape of rural Pakiri, mixing local clay and ochres with oil paints to create the earthy muted colours that have become one of her signatures. Her emotionally intense paintings often feature dream-like tupuna figures who seem imbued, as Mark Amery writes, “with collected memory and ancestry … there’s no innocence in the eyes of figures; they feel soaked in both love and sadness. The pupils of the eyes bore through you as if demanding that their stories be remembered.”

https://www.timmelville.com/artist/star-gossage/

Field: Natural/organic, spiritual, identity/autobiography, cultural, figurative

Strategy: Celebration, nostalgic

Methodology: Imagine, observe, translate, abstract

Presentation: Adhering to gallery tradition, wall/floor work

Igor Moritz was born in Poland in 1996. At a young age, he and his family were forced to relocate to London, but when he was old enough, he returned to his home, Lubin, to pursue his studies in fine arts. Moritz’s artistic energy flows out him so intensely; constantly creating with an almost Egon Schieleian-like passion, Moritz’s muse is the world around him.

Those in his most intimate circles are the ones he portrays, giving the viewer a view into Moritz’s world. His paintings and drawing flirt with mimesis while breaking all rules of perspective, proportion and realism. He morphs and composes the perspective, space and figures in a way, in order to create visual tension.

Color is something that is always at the forefront of his works, as Moritz sees color to be a way to tap into the viewer’s visual palette. The effect are artworks that are palpable, emotional, and visceral.

https://www.nilgallery.com/igor-moritz/

Field: Psychology, memory, autobiography

Strategy: Domestic, optical, mimetic

Methodology: Observe, translate, abstract, depict

Presentation: Adhering to gallery tradition, wall/floor work

Georgia Spain is a visual artist and musician living and working in Sandford, Tasmania on palawa land. Her work often explores the complexities of human behaviour; using narrative and storytelling to examine the cultural, political and personal. Her paintings frequently look at ideas around human spectacle, theatricality, ritual and ceremony. She is interested in the emotional and performative exchanges between people in social and psychological spaces and in her paintings physical connection is explored through bodies in groupings.

http://www.georgiaspain.com/about

Field: Psychology, social commentary, cultural, relational

Strategy: Political, critique, mimetic

Methodology: Narrative, abstract, observe

Presentation: Adhering to gallery tradition, wall/floor work

[Maja] Ruznic is predominantly a painter, drawing on personal and collective memories to create works that deeply connect with human psyche. Allowing for figures to emerge from the thin layers of oil paint she applies to the canvas, the characters seemingly coalesce with their environments. She describes the process of painting as trying to remember a dream, touching on Bracha L. Ettinger’s theories of ‘matrixial borderspace’: the space of shared effect and emergent expression, across the thresholds of identity and memory.

Ruznic deftly weaves themes of trauma and suffering with mythology and healing, softening the darker subject matter in her work. This softening is then applied to the process of painting – scumbling, blurring and allowing shapes to bleed into one another – symbolically destabilizing borders. Playing with ambiguity, the paintings lie on the threshold of form, which Ruznic compares to a thought or a feeling that precedes language. She looks to evoke transitional moments, like dawn and dusk, containing illuminating and eternal qualities. This timelessness permeates the paintings, tracing journeys and rituals, histories and secrets. Nostalgic and empathetic, the works ultimately speak of human experience.

https://halesgallery.com/artists/93-maja-ruznic/overview/

Maja Ruznic (b. 1983, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a New Mexico-based artist who paints diluted, out-of-focus figures and landscapes that explore nostalgia and childhood trauma and are influenced in part by war and the refugee experience. The ritualistic nature of her work reflects religious and mythological interests, including Slavic paganism and Shamanism. For six years following her graduation from the California College of the Arts, Ruznic worked with ink and watercolor in her small San Francisco bedroom. She refers to the loose, runny style she developed as “the drunken hand.” Ruznic has since expanded this gestural approach to oil, while still bearing the influence of water-based media.

https://karmakarma.org/artists/maja-ruznic/bio/

Maja Ruznic’s expressive, surrealistic portraits are rooted in memories, myths, and traumas related to her experiences as a refugee—the artist and her family escaped the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s. Across her canvases, Ruznic loosely renders washed-out, ghostly figures in thin washes of paint. She calls this style “drunken hand,” using it to evoke muddled, complex histories and the auras of rituals, secrets, and journeys.

https://www.artsy.net/artist/maja-ruznic

Field: Cultural, surrealism, memory, identity/autobiography. psychology, hermetic

Strategy: Nostalgic, political, sensual

Methodology: Imagine, translate, abstract

Presentation: Adhering to gallery tradition, wall/floor work

Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from myriad influences, including art of Soviet era illustration art, the Mannerist period and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.

He was born as Hans-Georg Kern in Deutschbaselitz, Upper Lusatia, Germany. He grew up amongst the suffering and demolition of World War II, and the concept of destruction plays a significant role in his life and work. These biographical circumstances are recurring aspects of his entire oeuvre. In this context, the artist stated in an interview: "I was born into a destroyed order, a destroyed landscape, a destroyed people, a destroyed society. And I didn't want to reestablish an order: I had seen enough of so-called order. I was forced to question everything, to be 'naive', to start again." By disrupting any given orders and breaking the common conventions of perception, Baselitz has formed his personal circumstances into his guiding artistic principles. To this day, he still inverts all his paintings, which has become the unique and most defining feature of his work.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/georg-baselitz-699

Georg Baselitz, original name Hans-Georg Kern, (born January 23, 1938, Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, Germany), German painter, printmaker, and sculptor who is considered to be a pioneering Neo-Expressionist. Baselitz was part of a wave of German painters from what was in their formative years East Germany who in the late 1970s rejected abstraction for highly expressive paintings with recognizable subject matter. His trademark works were painted and displayed upside down to emphasize surface rather than subject matter and to underscore what he saw as the madness of his country’s atrocities during World War II.

Baselitz began art studies in 1956 at the Academy of Fine and Applied Art in East Berlin. He was expelled and left East Berlin in 1957 for West Berlin. There he entered the Academy of Fine Arts, where he completed postgraduate studies in 1962. During this period he also changed his surname to Baselitz. From his youth he was interested in the tradition of German Expressionist painting and its reliance on sources such as non-Western art, folk art, children’s art, and the art of those with mental illness. Like his predecessors Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde (both involved in a group known as Die Brücke), Baselitz employed a deliberately crude style of rendering and a heightened palette in order to convey raw emotion. In the mid-1960s Baselitz turned to the subject of heroes, rebels, and shepherds, often fragmenting the figures and continuing to make the thick impasto carry much of his paintings’ emotional content. He also often used shocking or disturbing imagery to provoke a response in the viewer. Indeed paintings shown at Baselitz’s first solo exhibition (Berlin, 1963) were confiscated by police for obscenity. In 1969 he began to paint and display his subjects upside down. Baselitz also created art in other media; his etchings, woodcuts, and wood sculptures are as direct and expressionistically charged as his mature paintings.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georg-Baselitz

The place I’m interested in is where the mind goes when it’s trying to make up for what isn’t there. —Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown makes paintings that give the appearance of being in continual flux, alive with the erotic energy of her expressive application and vivid color, shifting restlessly between abstract and figurative modes. Making reference to the giants of Western painting—from Paolo Veronese, Peter Paul Rubens, and Edgar Degas to Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, and Joan Mitchell—as well as to popular culture, she commands an aesthetic that breaks from the strictures of narrative to achieve an extraordinary visual and thematic fluidity. Her vigorous treatment of the nude figure in particular reveals a commitment to wresting conventional subjects free from their anticipated contexts. Punctuating her visual shorthand with moments of startling clarity, Brown maintains an endless, active present.

…Key to the success of Brown’s aesthetic is her ability to seemingly transform paint into flesh, embedding the human form within a frenzied, fragmented commentary on desire, life, and death. Her first major body of painting, from the mid-1990s, juxtaposes hedonistic rabbits with allusions to the still-life tradition; eventually, this led to the orgiastic scenes that would garner her wide and enduring recognition. In Brown’s hands, paint seems always to be in transition between liquid and solid, transparent and opaque states, and this material ballet is reflected in compositions themselves. “I think that painting is a kind of alchemy,” she has said. “The paint is transformed into image, and paint and image transform themselves into a third and new thing.”

https://gagosian.com/artists/cecily-brown/

George Rouy’s fleshy nudes—often painted in pink, blue, or muted earth tones—bulge and blur against abstract backgrounds. While the U.K.-born artist has cited 15th-century painters including Jean Fouquet and Rogier van der Weyden as influences, his work is decidedly contemporary: Rouy’s compositions evoke both soft-focus camera lenses and digital glitches. A graduate of the Camberwell College of Arts in London, Rouy has enjoyed solo exhibitions in London, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York, among other cities. He has participated in group shows at the X Museum in Beijing and the Fondation Cartier in Paris. For Rouy, the body is a tool for storytelling. As he contorts his figures into curious poses that threaten to bump against the canvas edge, he explores the ambiguities of gender and sexuality.

https://www.artsy.net/artist/george-rouy

George Rouy (b. 1994, Kent, UK) lives and works in London. Rouy’s approach to the body - and his pursuit of painting - is one of contradiction, harmony and perpetual transformation, criss-crossing gender, form and disposition. His work is a fever dream of amorphous, fluid embodiment: rhapsodic portraits of 21st century desire, of physical dissonance, mystery and secrecy, ecstasy and turmoil, proximity and distance.

The work is liberated from established ways of being. In its place is an examination of the psychic effects of what encounters mean and feel like, drawing equally on the here-and-now, digital culture and the industrial advances of our age, as they do from primordial expression and the classical demands of colour and form.

The human figure has long preoccupied artists of all times; its story dominates the history of art. In its imagination and in its image-making we find clues to how artists have grappled and engaged with the political and socio-cultural moods and attitudes of their moment. We are in a time of renewed and committed interest in figurative painting and Rouy uses the figure - constrained and liberated - as many-sided prism to examine and interrogate the contemporary crucibles of gender, fiction and technology.

https://www.alminerech.com/artists/6684-george-rouy

[penhive]

Epiphanies

Epiphany about Crickets

Sound of the crickets like a muse of poetry, like a symphony of Mozart. Their sounds are akin to that of a flowing brook. Their sounds are similar to that of waves receding from the shore. The muse in me is filled with joy. Their sound is similar to a prose being read. The night’s silence is broken by their cacophony. Do their sounds resemble the dreams of dead souls? They are a Buddha meditating in the night.

Epiphany about a Fridge

The refrigerator is oinking…guttural and mimetic. It’s a sound resembling an orgasm. The oinking resembles a fable being told. It’s a poem being recited.

Epiphany about a house lizard

The house lizard is squeaking. It is said by old people, if you hear a lizard squeaking, what ever your thoughts are they will come true.

#Epiphanies #Art #Aesthetics #Literature #Drabble #Flash Fiction

[solarwindswriting]

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Chapter 3

First Chapter / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Loosely inspired by the song Greek Tragedy by the Wombats

Pairing: Scotty x FemalePresenting!Reader

Word Count: 1411

Summary: On to the Enterprise we go!

Warnings: none that I can think of

A/N: I posted this to the wrong account at first ahhhh. Sooo, this is going to be a bit of a slow burn. But I’ve already written up to part 6 and will be posting one part a day!

Tags: @mournthewicked​ @damalseer​​

Y/n wakes up to the most obnoxious beeping sounds. With a groan, she turns off the alarm, rubbing her eyes awake. Sitting up, Y/n looks around the room. Still dark outside. ‘Why am I up? Oh, right!’ Y/n thought to herself. Jumping out of bed, she clutches her dresser, bracing herself from falling. Dizzy, very very dizzy. She drank too much last night. Walking into the bathroom, and regretting turning on the light, Y/n got ready for the day. Washing off the grim from the last two days, Y/n relishes the warm water on her back. This will probably be the last time she gets to take a long shower.

Y/n is smoothing out her type b uniform shirt when she hears a knock at the door. The door was open by the time she got there and in the doorway stood Sara in her bright golden uniform shirt, a just as bright smile and a duffle across her back.

“You ready for the rest of your life, Y/n?” Sara rocks on her heels.

Still a bit groggy, Y/n hums to her friend while reaching for her own duffle, “How are you so awake? It’s 6:30 in the morning.”

“Because I’m already two cups of coffee in. Have you had breakfast?” Sara questions as the two make their way down the steps of their apartment.

“No, you’re not supposed to eat before a shuttle transport. You know that.” Y/n chuckles.

The two walk in comfortable silence. The train station was unsurprisingly quiet as they take their seats on the way to the shuttle bay.

“The new Enterprise is less than a year old. It’s outfitted with all the new shiny toys. I’m very excited to see the bridge. I heard they used a new transparent aluminum alloy for the main viewport that’s clearer than ever before.” Sara muses while watching the buildings pass.

A voice overhead announces we are arriving at the Federation shuttle bay. Y/n and Sara stand to leave. The train comes to a stop and the sliding doors open. Climbing up the stairs reveals a bustling hanger full of recruits.

“Sara, Y/n!” Calls the Russian accent of one Pavel Chekov. “This way!” He signals to follow him.

The two sprint to catch up to Pavel and separate into one of the Enterprise transport shuttles of their respective departments. Strapping her bag above them, Y/n takes a seat next to Commander Spock. People continue to file in. After about 30 minutes, 7 shuttles transport the entirety of the 450 person crew aboard the Enterprise.

“New Science Officers, please follow me,” Spock speaks clearly as he stands from his seat. Returning crew follows him out of the shuttle while the new members scurry to retrieve their bags. 5 new science officers in total exit the shuttle last, following Spock through the hallways.

“First, I will show you the 14 science labs and who will be heading them. Each one will have a specific topic of research, but all will help another when needed,” Spock drones while tapping a datapad. “Secondly, I will show you to your quarters.”

The halls of the Enterprise were bright white and smelled of mild cleaning supplies. They file into a turbo lift to deck 5. Y/n peaks at the other 4 new members of the science crew and notices she is the only one who has a rank higher than Ensign. Stepping off the turbo lift, The group makes their way down a hallway when Commander Spock stops.

“This is Lab 1; which will focus on stellar cartography as we travel deeper into space. It will be lead be Leuitenant Viann.” Spock motions towards the lab.

Inside stands a slender Vulcan setting up his lab. Spock continues to introduce the different labs and leaders, which Y/n quickly loses track of and begins to zone out. That is until Commander Spock says her name.

“To repeat myself, since Lieutenant Junior Grade Y/l/n has decided to check back in. Lab 13, focused on Bio-mimetic Gel and other potential medical substances, lead by one Lieutenant Junior Grade Y/l/n.”

“Yes, sorry Commander.” Y/n apologizes, now fully attentive.

“And lastly,” Spock continues to walk. “Lab 14, focused on gravimetric field displacement manifold, lead by Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott.”

Y/n looks into the lab and makes eye contact with Scotty, who gives her a small wave and a smile. She does the same. Spock goes back down the same hallway they just came from to lead the new crew towards their quarters. Y/n follows from the back, stopping for a second to look into the lab she will be working in. Far more state of the art than what she has been working in. Her studies will progress much fast on here.

Spock shows them to Deck 8, where they will be living for the next 5 years. The new ship supports enough room for every crew member to have their own room. Y/n throws her duffle onto her bed and unzips it to put her few civilian clothes into the closet that had 5 changes of uniform already hanging. A knock on the door echoed as Y/n hung her royal blue dress up.

“Come in,” Y/n calls over her shoulder.

The door slides open revealing a younger crewmate no older than 20 who quickly salutes. “Ma’am, Lieutenant Commander Scott requests your presence in Lab 14.”

“Thank you, but I am not high enough rank for you to be saluting, and I’m not old enough to be called ma’am,” Y/n chuckles, reaching out her arm. “What’s your name? I’m Y/l/n.”

“Very sorry, ma-, Y/l/n. I am Jason Reed.” He shakily takes her hand.

“First ship? Me too.” Y/n laments while she follows the ensign out of her room after grabbing her datapad. “Did Lieutenant Command Scott mention why he was requesting my assistance?”

“He mentioned something about some gel being delivered to the wrong lab?” Reed’s face contorted as he tried hard to remember his exact words.

“Huh, okay. Thank you for showing me the way. Lord knows I’ll be lost for the first month on here.” This causes Ensign Reed to chuckle.

The turbo lift doors open to Deck 5 and a slightly sweaty Scotty.

“Oh, good. You’re here,” Scotty huffs, “can you tell me why 5 crates of highly volatile goo were delivered to my lab?”

“Thank you for the escort, Reed. I believe I can find the way from here,” Y/n smiles at the ensign as the doors to the lift close after stepping out. “As for why the bio-mimetic gel was delivered to lab 14 instead of 13, I have no idea. But I’m happy to help you move it to my lab.”

“Well, let’s get going then, Lass,” Scotty says, turning and walking towards the labs.

“How does an engineer get access to a whole lab anyways?” Y/n questions.

“I came up with a fancy equation. How’d a Lieutenant Junior Grade get access to a whole lab?” Scotty’s accent was thick, but not as thick as it was when he was drinking.

“I came up with a fancy equation too,” Y/n laughs at herself repeating what the engineer had said.

After about half an hour of carefully moving crates of bio-mimetic gel, the two were finished.

“Sorry about the mix-up, Commander. It won’t happen again.” Y/n said, wiping her hands on the sides of her pants.

“I thought I told you to call me Scotty, lass.” Scotty remarks as he enters Lab 13 with two teacups, handing one to Y/n, “Earl Grey.”

“Thank you,” Y/n whispers, setting it down to hop up and sit on the lab table before picking it back up and taking a sip. “Please sit.”

Scotty sits in one of the chairs surrounding the lab table in front of Y/n. They both sip their tea in silence until Y/n speaks.

“So, I heard you were marooned on Delta Vega for half an Earth year.”

“Marooned!?” Scotty gawks as he sits up straight. “I was left for dead! You beam one beagle off-planet and you’re left for the drakoulias’.”

“Did you ever find it?” Y/n laughs at the engineer’s outburst.

“No,” Scotty whispers.

“Hm?”

“No! I never found that damn beagle.” Scotty laughs.

#scotty x reader #montgomery scott x reader #montgomery scott aos #montgomery scott imagine #star trek aos #solarwindswriting

[caecilius-est-pater]

The signs as things I don’t remember writing in my Latin notes

Aries: the universe sometimes blows up, it just kinda...does that

Taurus: “everything bad very bad horrible awful not good”

Gemini: mimetic word order (life...flees...shades), memetic word order (shades 😎)

Cancer: hey quick question what the hell are we talking about

Leo: Anchises is like yo civil war is bad

Virgo: it could be Fate or Jupiter or like...something else (it’s probably Torbjorn)

Libra: how could this happen that we should be doing all this cool war and instead we’re doing this bad war

Scorpio: (Phaethon blew it hard)

Sagittarius: “I can’t see him so I’m just gonna beat the shit out of this rock”

Capricorn: no gods not even a muse he’s just canoeing

Aquarius: “I don’t care I’ll kick anybody’s ass” ironic that he’s got the sweet hat

Pisces: Some shit goes down man I don’t know anything

#one of these is the result of autocorrect but the rest...have no explanation #why did i write any of this

[wherespacepooh]

ARTICLE: Place full of memories right before Olympic season. Hanyu––gratitude and desire to give back. [2017.08 Number]

I like this article about the Yokohama event a lot. Many small details, some of them not mentioned anywhere else, and the author’s own observations and musings. Hanyu has a big heart, not to mention quite hilarious Yuzu-sensei antics, and it shines through in the event and the article. - gladi

Translated by gladi. Feel free to repost with credit. Photo belongs to Number. Source: http://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/828703

In a place full of memories right before the Olympic season. Hanyu––gratitude and a desire to give back from the bottom of his heart. 

Text by Takaomi Matsubara ・Photo by Asami Enomoto

There was a huge outburst of applause the moment he appeared on the ice.

August 16, an event was held at the Yokohama Bank Ice Arena commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Kanagawa-ku. The person who made the entrance––Yuzuru Hanyu.

First came the exhibition. Following performances by Tomoe Kawabata and Yuna Aoki who train at the same rink, Hanyu presented Hana Ni Nare. Another round of applause met his program that had two 4T and a 3A woven in, despite his having just returned to Japan the day before.

Afterwards, a skating classroom was held for approximately 70 elementary school children, chosen from lottery.

The children were split into 4 groups, and Hanyu went around the groups one by one. Participants were mostly children who had just begun to skate. Hanyu taught them while consulting with the instructors attached to each group.

“I am looking forward to competing together someday”

What was evident there was how [he met the children where they were] without talking down, and his gift at using simple language, metaphors and mimetic words. Regarding posture, he explained that [it should be] “as if you are hung from tautly from above your head,” and then––“let’s move forward in that position! Ton-ton-ton-ton…” The children were young. Even with a mix of arm movements and gestures, it was such a short period of time––how does he convey what he wants to say? From the way he taught, one was able to see [another] side to Hanyu.

At last, he addressed the children gathered before him:

“Kids who like skating, raise your hands! Kids who hate to fall, raise your hands! Kids who love to fall, raise your hands! It is okay to fall a whole lot. I fall a bunch too. Make lots of mistakes! But instead of just failing, think ‘why did I fail?’ and figure out how not to fail. If you do that, you’ll definitely improve.”

“Let’s fail a lot”––after this striking remark, Hanyu quipped with a smile, “I am looking forward to competing together someday. Until then, old man here will also work hard!” The children and their family watching over them responded with smiles, concluding the day.

The reason he came to the rink in Yokohama [so close to the start of season]

It is the Olympic season, and the first competition looms ahead. Although he probably wanted to concentrate on tuning up [for the season], he took time out of such a schedule to return home and participate. His participation––despite the fact that it wouldn’t be strange at all to hesitate, considering matters of competition––came out of appreciation, gratitude and a desire to give back.

After he skated to his program, Hanyu, mic in hand, said this in his address:

“When the earthquake happened, I borrowed this rink and somehow was able to continue to skate. Although there are painful trials, there is also happiness when I am skating. I skated with the hope that, as much as possible, happiness could be brought to every one of you.”

Hanyu’s training base in Sendai was hit when the Tohoku earthquake struck in March, 2011. The rink couldn’t be used, and he no longer had a place to train.

Instead, he compensated for the loss of training by appearing at numerous ice shows. Along with that, Yokohama Bank Ice Arena (Kanagawa Skate Rink at the time) became his temporary training ground. It was fate that coach Shoichiro Tsuzuki, who used to teach Hanyu in Sendai, had transferred to this rink.

With shared circumstances, [the hope that] everyone could do their best

He participated with feelings of gratitude for those days.

According to the organizers, when they approached him about participating in the event, [Hanyu] agreed right on the spot. In that too, his feelings were apparent.

The earthquake and his subsequent experience remain unforgettable even now. It has stuck with him. His words from his open practice in Toronto on August 8th tells of that.

“I think there is disparity amongst the areas being rebuilt. Having personally visited and done a variety of things in the past three years, this was what I felt. But these places share the same wishes in common––Let’s take on new challenges! Let’s protect! Let’s go hand in hand from here on! Similar thoughts come up when I am skating as well. In that sense, there is overlap with my own circumstances and it would be wonderful if I could produce results that cheer people on as they do their best and bring encouragement to everyone."

Without a doubt, the key to understanding the meaning of support

“That was such a difficult season and I appeared in many ice shows. Without a doubt, I had come to understand what it means to root for people from amidst all that. I think [I am who I am] now because I have [been through] that.”

That was why he spared the time to attend [this event in Yokohama].

He had also said this in the past.

“(From my experience after the earthquake) I came to understand the meaning of being supported, and I came to realize, truly, [how much] people have been rooting for me.”

With this same thought in mind, [Yuzuru Hanyu] heads toward this season that happens only once every four years. (fin)

#hanyu yuzuru #yuzuru hanyu #羽生結弦 #figure skating #yokohama skating classroom #2017 #number