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frozenmiwa · 4 years

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Review: Rise of the Turtles part 1 (TMNT 2012)

I know, I know I promised to post this during summer but instead I ended up editing my TMNT 2012 fanfiction. I ended up having some technical difficulties with this post. I did watch the episode but somehow all the screen shots I took just vanished. My guess is some form of Windows update happened and poof, all screen shots were gone.

I actually just got the first season on DVD yesterday – I finally ordered it online three or so weeks ago, I’ve been looking for Finnish release of the show ever since 2014 when it started to air in Finland but we got nothing. Not that I minded, the dub was decent but definitely lot worser than the dub 2003 series got from the group called Dubberman. So I’m more than happy to have the UK release of the first season.

Firstly I’d like to address one thing: I was hesitant to watch this show because I don’t like CGI that much anymore since it’s everywhere these days, but I was interested in it after scrolling some Turtlepedia especially after I saw one of my absolute favorite character from the 2003 show, April. When I read about Donnie’s crush on her, I recalled their relationship in the 2003 series – seeing Donatello and April interact was one of my favorite things about the show so naturally I was interested to see how well 2012 series pulled that off. Then I had this boring weekend and I decided to give it a try. I did and absolutely loved the show, I loved the turtles, I loved what they did with Splinter, I even loved this one character I thought I wouldn’t, what I didn’t love however was April – instead Karai became my favorite character.

But we get to that when we get to that. Let’s start this thing!

Like with the previous post I’m not going to do full plot summary here, instead I’m doing this brief summary. If you are interested in full summary please go to sites like Turtlepedia for that!

Now this episode starts similarly to the 2003 series. We are introduced to our main characters as they are in training session. It turns out the turtles are celebrating their fifteenth birthday today and wish to go top side for the first time even though Splinter is hesitant to let them go. Eventually he does and the turtles get to see the what the world looks like outside sewers. It seems to be full of wonder… and dangers. Turtles witness a family of two, father and daughter getting kidnapped by a group of identical men, but are unable to rescue them due to their inability to work as a team. And Mikey finds out those men weren’t exactly human… but no one believes him. The group returns to the lair and they get scolded by Splinter for letting the kidnappers getting away because they couldn’t work as a team – then again, he does admit it’s partially his fault as he never trained them to fight as a team. While Splinter suggest they have another year to wait until their next visit to the top side, Donnie isn’t having it as he wants to save the poor kidnapped girl, he fell in love with at the first sight. After some convincing Splinter agrees to let them go and save her. Before they go however Splinter makes Leonardo their leader – the group does need a leader in order to function correctly after all, but as to why he chose Leo, isn’t clear. So, to the back side we go, after some time they manage to find one of the kidnappers and chase him until his car falls over. When Raph opens up the back door to the car a mysterious cannister filled with green ooze rolls over – looking a lot like the one broken cannister the turtles have in their lair, the one that had something to do with their current forms. And with that the first episode ends.

What I liked about the episode

+ Turtles actually acting like teenagers. I don’t think we have seen that in any other incarnation despite the show being called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.

+ What they did with Leo’s personality. I was so used to Leo being this perfect serious leader who’d win any training session against Raph, seeing Leo actually losing against Raph not to mention having this kind of geeky awkward side to his character was refreshing to see.

+ Master Splinter. I liked how he looked nothing like his former counterparts, I loved how they brought up his personality and most of all now he actually felt like a caring father to the turtles instead of being just their teacher. Not to mention how cool his design looks in this show!

+ The plot in general. For a pilot episode it did good job at presenting our four main characters, showing they, each have different personalities without spending too much on that. It had this sense of wonder when we see the turtles discovering the world for the first time. And there was action included as well but not in a way that our heroes just swoop in and save the day, I liked the fact they messed it up on their first try. I also liked how the episode didn’t end with turtles saving the day but rather with a cliff hanger because that would get viewers to want to catch the next episode – unlike 2003 series where it just ended, personally I wouldn’t have waited to see the next episode, unlike with this 2012 show.

+ Interaction and comedy between the turtles was well done, I definitely did have some laughs here and there.

+ The way flashbacks and ending stills are done in this version. What can I say? I just love the comic book style they went with!

What I didn’t like about this episode

- Well in general I liked this episode fine; it really didn’t have much to complain about, characters were solid, their backstory was solid, story was solid and the action was solid. Over all I’d say it’s a good episode. But if I had to pick one thing I did not like; it would be the way April was presented. Unlike the turtles she didn’t seem like a character, just a pretty girl shown to our faces who needed to be saved. I know that’s how it was intended but if I’d have to pick one thing I didn’t like about the episode, this would be it.

And now let’s say few words about the dub my country eventually got...

When this series finally started to air in Finland you better believe I got up every Sunday to watch this show, not because I hadn’t seen it, it was January 2014, I had already seen the episodes couple of times in English but I wanted to check out the dubbed version especially after seeing the voice cast. Just by looking at the voices seemed like this dub would go either way. It could be good or really bad. Like with seasons 3-4 and 6-7 of TMNT 2003 a group called Dubberman. And I wasn’t completely trusting for the fact they would do the show justice. I mean they did skip over the season 5 in 2003 series – and later season 3 in 2012 series so…

The dub was decent, not great, not the worst we could have gotten but decent. There were some errors like they called Raphael “Rafaello” or “Rafa” for short like in the dubbed VHS/DVD release of 1980 series – luckily, they stopped doing that after few episodes because it bothered me a lot. Another thing was how those Japanese phases were pronounced – in this episode by Leo. They didn’t sound right at least when you compare to the original version.

The voice cast was okay. It consisted of some familiar and great voice actors like Jon-Jon Geitel as Leo who has also voiced characters like Jack Frost from the Rise of the guardians or Jake Long from American Dragon: Jake Long – I think this is where I first heard his voice acting. More recently he voiced Aladdin in the live action version from 2019. Another familiar voices we had were Aksu Palmén as Donatello who had voiced characters like Hiccup in How to train your dragon, and Markus Bäckman as Master Splinter – It’s better I won’t go in too much details on his voicing career because he has done a lot of good voice acting in TV and Disney movies. These two were probably the most suited for their roles. Especially Markus Bäckman as Splinter. He sounded just right for the part. Then there was Henri Piispanen who I hadn’t heard much voice acting from before TMNT. I think he was solid pick for Raph – not as good as Sean Astin but they could have gone for worse. Then there were couple unknown actors Miro Loopperi who voiced Mikey and Ella Jaakkola who voiced April.

Miro Looperi did fine job as Mikey but he didn’t really sound like him. This reminds me of 2003 series as Mikey had a voice actor in the Finnish dub that I liked, but one that didn’t sound like him when compared his original voice. This has the same feeling to it. And now Ella Jaakkola, she had this high-pitched kind of bitchy voice I found annoying but at the same time I thought it kind of worked for April’s character because I knew what would become of her character in season 2. I remember thinking: “I can’t wait to hear this voice in Mutation Situation!” – Too bad they changed her voice for season 2.

Now, don’t expect me to do this thing for all the episodes where I talk a little bit about the Finnish dub as I’ve only seen the first season dubbed – I don’t even know when season 2 aired. And I don’t have many notes about the dub. Nor do I remember much of it. I have notes for I think five or so episodes and very good memory for Karai’s debut episode but that’s about it. As I said earlier so far now DVD releases have been made in Finland so I would only have access through streaming services to seasons 4 and 5 – which I haven’t even watched completely yet. I can only hope Netflix or Viaplay would upload the dubbed versions of TMNT to their servers but as we lack DVD releases or reruns of seasons 1 and 2 and season 3 in general that’s very unlikely.

And now some screenshots!

Would you look at that? Leo actually lost to Raph.

Is that supposed to be Splinter? He looks kind of cool - were my first thoughts when he appeared on the screen.

Happy Mutation day! I just love their expressions here.

And it’s flashback time! I really love the way they did and animated the flashbacks in this version.

Splinter holding the broken mutagen canister.

...And Mikey giving it a hug.

They are finally able to go to the top side. Look at how happy they are - I mean even Raph is smiling.

Well I just like this shot of Splinter.

Leo and Space Heroes. I love how proud he looks here.

“Hai, sensei!” - This is probably one of my favorite scenes in this episode. It shows that over protective side of Splinter which is one of the many things I love about the show.

Turtles entering the top side for the first time.

Donnie geeking out at computer stuff while Raph is not interested. Personally being a geek myself, I see lot of myself in Donatello during this moment.

Turtles are about to find out what pizza is.

Oh, look at that it’s a love interest... I mean it’s my least favorite character... I mean it’s April.

And Donnie is in love with her. Just like that.

I know April is supposed to be scared here but I find her expression hilarious. It cracks me every time.

Fighting is not going too well here.

Or here.

Saving April.

I really like this shot of Donnie smiling. He looks kind of adorable. I mean who would scream after seeing that adorable face?

April of course!

I find Donnie’s reaction and posture here priceless, it’s like: “Oh my god, what did I just touch?”

April is being cornered by creepy men.

And Donnie’s offering to help her.

But that doesn’t really work out. Mikey looks adorable though!

I guess The Kraang didn’t fancy April’s screaming either.

And here’s Mikey, facing a suspicious man all by himself.

...That is not a man at all.

Okay what the hell is that thing?

You know what Mikey, I totally agree with you.

Turtles are having a conversation about the leader stuff. And they all can’t believe what they just heard.

Here is Leo facepalming. One of my favorite scenes in the episode.

“I thinking of something green. Green.” “Is it Raphael again?”

Cornering Snake.

Ending still.

Anyway, this was my review for the first episode of TMNT 2012. Next time I think I’m doing review for the second episode of 2003 series, so stay tuned for that. Or something.

#TMNT 2012 #tmnt2012review #tmnt2012season1

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eurosong · 5 years

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My ESC 2019 ranking

Hey there, folks - after a lot of deliberation, I’ve decided upon my ranking of this year’s songs. I feel quite passionately about this year’s field, as always, and make some trenchant remarks, but a lot of them are tongue in cheek, and no shade is intended on those who like the songs I don’t or vice versa. Here’s my ranking with my thoughts on why I put each song where I did.

41. Croatia – The Dream I try to find a redeeming quality in every song, but sometimes the task proves impossible. This ironically-named nightmare of a track sounds like a poorly-produced early 00s track that tried to straddle the line between classic and futuristic and failed at both. The usual things that I hear in its defence are that Roko has a good voice, and that the Croatian segment is better. To the first point, maybe, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the voice doesn’t shine through the scream mode of most of the song; to the latter point, if you know some BCS, you’ll know that the Croatian language bit is as cloyingly cliché as the English part. Some people are saying that this could be a surprise qualifier. If that happens, I will shed tears of blood.

40. France – Roi If France don’t change their national final system to equalise the jury and televote more after this year, I don’t know when they will. Destination Eurovision had a bunch of good songs, but thanks to the power of a Youtuber’s fanbase, one of the least remarkable and most cloying songs got the nod instead. Roi is an unabashed hymn to self with the most criminal franglais abominations (rhyming beaucoup with boo, really?) to which I’ve ever been subjected. Now it’s supposedly got a chance of winning thanks to a gimmicky staging, which I feel uses people as props. I wouldn’t even mind the antipathetic performer and cringey, self-centred lyrics so much if the tune were interested, but it’s equally empty and pompous.

39. San Marino – Say na na na Well, this song certainly does get me saying nah, nah, nah. I do not get the amount of good will for it, as I neither find it a good track, nor enjoyable ironically like Who we are or Chain of lights were. It’s a “party track”, but the party in question is the kind I want to flee where the food is bad, the music is obnoxious and overbearing and the ambiance is that of an uncomfortable throwback. Bewildering how this is considered a worthy qualifier.

38. Moldova – Stay I swear Eurovision has songs like this just to be able to detect extra-terrestrials, because if anyone says this song is their favourite, and they’re neither Moldovan nor Romanian, then it confirms to me that they are aliens because this is banality writ large. Three minutes of contradictory and cliché rhymes (“it’s now or never, it’s forever”. Ok then mate), dull music, little progression, an oddly unpleasant vocal and even a staging that comes second-hand.

37. Finland – Look away My impulse is to look away from this song indeed – a dated slice of repetitive, oddly downbeat despite being uptempo EDM slathered with a simultaneously overwrought and undercooked social message and brought to us by an uncomfortable duo who look like two acquaintances whose fishing trip got interrupted abruptly and they had to cook up a Eurovision song last minute. There is nothing about this I like at all.

36. Israel – Home The one faintly interesting thing about this song is the remarkable wailing in its first few seconds, but they removed even that. This has to be one of the most maudlin songs I have ever heard, delivered gratingly. A friend of mine nicknamed Kobi the “Joystealer”, and the name is very apt. I feel like all the joy in the world is out of reach when listening to this lament, which is syrupy and bitter at the same time, like a coarse cough medicine. The “I am someone” has to be one of the most cloying lines of the entire year, too.

35. Estonia – Storm Estonia having to resort to sending a croaky renta-Swede to sing a budget Avicii b-side in front of a Windows XP screensaver with lyrics that imaginatively rhyme “this” with, well, “this” is like seeing someone who had always dressed elegantly having to resort to sporting torn, worn, ill-fitting hand-me-downs that were already out of fashion when bought first hand. This land of song and art can and should be doing so much better.

34. Montenegro – Heaven The fact this ironically infernal song is not just not bottom but also almost avoided my bottom 10 just goes to show how deep the bottom is this year. Sounds like Podgorica’s 56th best sixth form choir got some cassette tapes of bad late 90s R&B-lite, got a donation of a dodgy Casio keyboard and, at the last minute, got their granddad to do a bit of fiddling, mixed it all together and the result was this chaötic hot mess on ice. It’s a shame, because these kids seem genuinely nice, and they don’t deserve to be lumbered with the albatross around their neck of this song and the resultant cast iron “last in the semi” result it will achieve.

33. Switzerland – She got me There’s little separating the female attempt at a duego and the male one for me. Luca radiates a smug energy that annoys me more, but the song is a smidgen less generic, but then using the same dancers as from Fuego made the decision easier. I’m not sure what she got him, but it certainly wasn’t a grammar book, as the song is filled with bizarrely affected ungrammatical English, because I guess it’s uncool to properly conjugate.

32. Cyprus – Replay It seems almost self-parodising that Cyprus lamely returned to try to catch lightning in the same jar with a song that is entitled, and feels like, a giant replay. Fuego was an encapsulation of many things I really don’t like at Eurovision – a lyrically empty song with limited musical merit or memorability that got a lot further than it would off the basis, mostly, of staging. This year, the staging is worse and the performer is less charismatic. If it does as well, I will be astounded.

31. Norway – Spirit in the sky What if Aqua came back – perish the thought – and, for their comeback single, took a rejected b-side from the late 90s of theirs in their typical bubblegum style, but injected it with a dreadful attempt at joik and an aesthetic inspired by their newfound animal spirits? It would sound something like this bizarre Norwegian song, whose victory over En livredd mann still bewilders me. It’s a bit infectious, but so are many diseases, and part of the reason that it buries itself into your mind is because of its pretty flagrant lifting of last year’s “Monsters”’ chorus, which in itself was all too familiar. One of the year’s biggest cringefests for me.

30. Lithuania – Run with the lions Take a guy most noted until now for screeching in the world’s worst falsetto whilst pretending not to sing, while a drag act that barely qualified as a baroness let alone a queen wás pretending to sing, also badly. Give him a song that advocates running alongside large carnivores who’d probably find humans an attractive snack. That combination should at least be interesting, but it’s one of the dullest propositions of the year. The only real interesting thing is that dodgy falsetto making a reappearance. It’s pleasant enough but forgotten instantly.

29. Russia – Scream Russia confined themselves to a few fruitless years in the desert with the Samojlova charade, and now they look to return to ESC superpower status by bringing back the guy who won them the public vote back in 2016. Their logic in trying to go one step further, though, was rather flawed. Concentrating on winning over the juries, they took for granted that the public was going to enjoy this rather melodramatic effort as much as they did You are the only one. I doubt they will, and I doubt the jury will be much swayed from last time. Musically, its orchestral touches represent a step up from YATOO for me, but it is let down by the emo lyrics and some bombastic staging.

28. Belarus – Like it When I first heard this song, where “you gonna like it” is repeated approximately 14 thousand times, my first impression was “no, I certainly am not going to.” It’s a bizarre stream of non-sequiturs dolled up with a technicolour assault to the eyes. I’ve softened to it somewhat, in part because of a reimagining of the lyrics as being a call for help after getting drafted into Eurovision by Lukaszenka, but I’ll still be stunned if it qualifies.

27. United Kingdom – Bigger than us I had a Freudian slip a few days ago when writing the “Undo my ESC” post – I wrote “Bigger than us” as “Better than us”. A fair swathe of the year’s field very much is more remarkable than this anodyne X factor winner’s single which seems to be aiming for 19th rather than first. Michael is a likeable character, but unfortunately that doesn’t come across too much in his live performance, most notable for him flapping around his arms as though they were on fire.

26. Iceland – Hatrið mun sigra Musically, there are elements of this that are really up my street. Decent throwbacks are rare, but the 80s’ techno ambience of the track is pretty good. I just wish it were not accompanied with a disdainful hauteur and the OTT attitude of a bunch of sophomore arts students who’ve just discovered irony. The last thing the world needs now is more hate, ironic or not.

25. Sweden – Too late for love Sweden made one step in the right direction this year – they’ve sent a man rather than an overgrown embryo, and someone with a bit more humility than Grosso last year. It’s a much better song for me than the past two attempts, but that’s not saying much – manufactured gospel has little soul, and there’s a charisma chasm here only partially filled by drafting in American mammas to sell the song as something more than what it is.

24. Poland – Pali się This is one that I wish I liked more. It’s middle of the pack for me. I like the fact that there are clear heritage influences but find the song itself to be rather too linear and the voices too shrill – and I am a fan of white voice.

23. Macedonia – Proud I had high hopes for Macedonia as I adored their artist, Tamara’s, imperious Brod što tone back in Skopjefest 2014 – a song that frankly got robbed of representing Macedonia. Where BST was subtle and poëtic in its message, Proud, which I regret wasn’t in Macedonian also, is rather too much on the nose for me and sounds a little like a charity single. This is augmented by the rather basic video which reminded me a little too much of Bebe’s “Ella.” Nonetheless, it’s a nice composition and well sung.

22. Spain – La venda Spain this year had a selection that they called “eurotemazos”. It’s difficult to translate, but Eurobangers, smashes or hits all carry a shade of the meaning. As soon as I heard that, I knew it was an ill omen, and indeed, the list of songs was full of bad attempts at bops and a few soporific ballads-by-computer. La venda was the best of a bad lot. Miki has energy but the song is completely inconsequential.

21. Germany – Sister Germany have once again invited disaster by inviting Chaosmeisterin, Barbara “Wild Eyes” Schönberger back to compère the national final. The end result was this inexperienced wildcard (when will you ever learn, Germany?) clinching the win with two gals who’d never met before this year singing about sisterhood in a group called S!sters with their song Sister. This is hotly tipped for last place in the final, but I feel it has sóme merit. The verses, and especially the bridge, are lovely, and seem to be building to something great – until we get a really generic, squawked chorus where the two non-sisters try to outshriek one another.

20. Australia – Zero gravity I’ll never get over the fact that we could have had something truly Australian in all senses of the word for once, and instead we got this. It’s catchy but repetitive and rather gimmicky, and I lament that it will qualify over better songs thanks to a rather cringey staging gimmick.

19. Belgium – Wake up This truly is a musical coitus interruptus. The moody verses get you in the mood, building a sense of urgency and direction, only for everything to get abandoned without warning with a very dreary, incongruous chorus. “City Lights” this ain’t, and it’s a shame, as it’s still decent, but could have been so much more satisfying.

18. Czechia – Friend of a friend Some countries take decades to find their niche at the contest. It seems like Czechia has found theirs in the space of a year and a bit, and found a particularly narrow niche. Field a cutesy lad with a retro-inspired, somewhat catchy but also somewhat problematic song inspired by infidelity. Last year’s “Lie to me” was written from the perspective of the cheated; this year’s, from a potential cheater who spends half the song listening with his girlfriend to his neighbours having noisy sex and the other half protesting he barely knows the female neighbour anymore. Truly weird.

17. Denmark – Love is forever This song reminds me of one time I was by the seaside and got offered to try a freakshake. It was one of the most OTT sweetest things I’ve ever had in my life. I enjoyed it, but it’s something I could only enjoy on an annual basis. This song is much the same. It’s bringing the Gallic cuteness where France failed, and the fact Leonora looks into your soul unnervingly whilst singing just adds more interest to the song for me.

16. Azerbaijan – Truth Azerbaijan bring a halfway decent song for the 2nd time so far, by my count. This is nowhere as near as good as “Skeletons”, but still strong. I like the atypical lyrical matter and the fact that the Symphonix crew created something contemporary but wearing Azeri traditional influences on its sleeve. The unplugged version of this is even better.

15. Netherlands – Arcade Perhaps I would enjoy this more were it not for the intense amount of hype, the hubristic arrogance of many people in thinking the win is already in the bag, and the amount of condescending barbs flung my way on other corners of the net for not considering this some transcendental masterpiece that deserves to win more than any other song. It’s not in the same league as the oft-compared, timeless Amar pelos dois for me. It’s a nice, heartfelt song – albeit one that relies too much on a head voice that I find rather unappealing – and it has a few clever turns of phrase, but I will never understand why this one has been singled out when there are several songs I consider more moving in this final.

14. Georgia – Sul tsin iare This song has really grown on me. It has an incredible, almost scary intensity and was written on an epic, orchestral scale. It feels like the music to the climax of a war film. I felt what it meant before I understood the Georgian. I particularly love the chorus backing Oto and the staging that matches the song’s drama.

13. Hungary – Az én apam I expected a lot of things from a Joci Papai return, and this song only delivers some of them, but it’s a song worthy of enjoying in its own right. If Origo was fire and had an undercurrent of hurt, Az én apam is water, but is warm in its own right. It’s a nostalgic song with the same poetry I expected of Joci.

12. Latvia – That night Latvia’s song has been criticised for not being very impactful, and it isn’t, but therein lies its charm. It’s a low-key, saudadic effort that beautifully occupies three minutes. It is the kind of track I imagine listening to whilst, and which makes me imagine as a result, driving down a long, lonely road at night in the rain. It’s hushed, it’s delicate, and it sounds to me like petrichor smells.

11. Greece – Better love Greece is sending something very atypical from them, almost as an allergic reaction to doing so badly with the more ostensibly ethnic “Oneiro mou” last year. I’d be disappointed, but this is really quite good indeed, a very professional and rounded effort that has produced a soaring, anthemic song. Katerine’s voice has a beautiful, dark and deep huskiness that imbues a certain quality too. My only problem with this song are the careless lyrics that seem like a compilation of Instagram clichés.

10. Ireland – 22 My dear Ireland sneaks into my top 10 for the first time in a few years thanks to a full-on earworm of a song that has become one of my most played tracks this year. This song is very simple, but sometimes unassuming simplicity is elegant. It’s got a retro, blue-eyed soul feel and is at once nostalgic and catchy. It deserved a lot better than the slot of death to which Björkman consigned it.

09. Malta – Chameleon Malta getting into my top 10 for the first time since 2014, with a song that is even more contrary to our expectations of Maltese songs than “Tomorrow” was. This song is aptly named, as it is an explosion of colour – not just in the clever video, but also, the music itself is so vibrant and fun. The only part I don’t like is the rather cliché bridge, because both the drop-based chorus, the slow build of the verses and the exuberant post-chorus are really good. GIVE ME X I’M A Y is one of the lyrical memes of the year and is infectious. From beige to a rainbow; well done, Malta.

08. Slovenia – Sebi Slovenia are on the money for the second year in a row. Whilst “Hvala ne” was an in your face, high-octane buzz of a song, this year, we’ve gone in the completely opposite direction: a very contemplative, intimate song that imbues a sense of peace and harmony. What they do have in common is some of the best lyrics of the year. In Sebi’s case, the text is graceful in its effortless simplicity and minimalism. It feels like the only thing that matters during those 3 minutes for the song’s performers are each other, which creates a particular atmosphere indeed.

07. Albania – Ktheju tokës When I heard the venerable Festival i këngës, Albania’s selection process, was essentially going to revamp itself, I was worried that it would lose its magic, but in the end, I needn’t have so much. For the second year running, the best song by far won – a song full of dramatic potential. Thank heavens they left the song in the wonderful mellifluous Albanian language and did not dig out the song’s heart with a needless revamp. I hope Shqipëria can keep this trend and momentum up. Ktheju tokës is a heartrending song about immigration and divided families, inspired by true experience, and performed with power and style by the enigmatic Jonida.

06. Armenia – Walking out Another country for whom I have a lot of time at the contest is Armenia, who always tend to bring something different to the show. I was initially a bit confused by their effort this year because of its abrupt stops between different parts of the song which at first sounded rather jarring. Now, this, and the great variation in tone and style between the verses, the gentle bridge and the ferocious choruses are part of what make the song for me. Srbuk has charisma and a fierce set of pipes. All these elements have made Walking out one of the major earworms of the year for me.

05. Austria – Limits The first time I heard this, I was underwhelmed. It’s a nice song, but it is lacking a bit in instant impact. Nonetheless, something about it demanded repeated listens; with each one, my appreciation for this confessional, Kate Bush-inspired slice of heartrending emotion grew exponentially. I am hoping that the live performance will give it the instancy it needs to bring to life how exceptionally good a song this is. It’s up there with the very best in terms of the lyrics. It’s so personal, so intimate, so searing and one of the most underrated tracks of the year. 04. Serbia – Kruna Pretty much everyone who knows my ESC predilections knows I am a huge fan of Serbia. They generally stick with their own language, and bring songs that highlight their rich musical traditions. My support isn’t categorical – I despised “Beauty never lies” and felt let down by last year’s style pastiche, though I felt Balkanika were wonderful contestants – so this year, I was relieved to see them back at the height of their powers with an unassumingly lovely ballad, performed with power and purpose by the mesmerising Nevena. It’s a song of few words, and it feels like every single one was weighed out carefully to pack the most meaning. Delightful.

03. Romania – On a Sunday One of the biggest surprises of the season for me has been Romania. I had no interest in their national selection, and was nonplussed when this won, albeit grateful that it beat two truly dreadful frontrunners. My first impression was that it was an odd but catchy song, and that it was weird and a little funny how the grown woman singing it seemed to throw a tantrum in the middle of the performance. Something about it made me listen again, and again, and again – and then the amazingly theatrical and imaginative video came out, which added to my appreciation even more. It’s a really emotional song, which somehow invigorates rather than saddens me, perhaps because of the bewitching power of Ester’s performance. She delivers this with an unbelievable intensity and has such a singular voice. I fear for its chances because it’s not the most accessible song – but I really hope this will at least qualify.

02. Portugal – Telemóveis I remember my first reäction to this well. I was confused and a little perturbed – it seemed like the rantings of a madman over highly dissonant, if rather bewitching, music. It stuck in my head, though, and very soon, the confusion grew into appreciation and then full on love for probably the most singular, sui generis offering of the entire year. This is a song that sounds timeless but futuristic; that could not have been composed by any other country, but which blends influence of fado with sounds from the subcontinent, the near and far east and what seem to be other planets. The text – all too often dismissed as “lol he’s singing about cellphones, how random lmao” – is a deep, introspective, metaphorical look at mortality that is gushing with saudade. The fact that this, the most forward-thinking proposal of 2019, might not even qualify is scandalous; it should be in it to win it.

01. Italy – Soldi As much as I adore Telemóveis, there’s a song that I love even more. The first time I saw Soldi performed live, it was like a punch to the gut in the best possible way. This song about a deadbeat dad and how money can tear a family apart is just one example of how Italy is brimming with exceptional lyricists. I’d translate some of my favourite lyrics, but firstly, I find every line to be powerfully moving, and secondly, the English can’t quite do justice to the perfectly measured rhythm and cadence of the original as well as the emotion. On top of that, musically, it’s one of the freshest tracks of the year, with super modern production but symphonic touches. Who thinks of making a trap-inspired song, but with an orchestra? Italy, that is who, and I so, so hope they finish this barnstormer of a decade for them with a much awaited win.

#eurovision #esc #esc 2019 #eurovision song contest #opinion #eurovision 2019

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

France's Macron calls Amazon rainforest fires an 'international crisis'

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/amazon-fires-macron-g7-intl-hnk/index.html

The Amazon is burning because the world eats so much meat

By Eliza Mackintosh | Updated 1 hour ago Aug 23, 2019 | CNN | Posted August 23, 2019 12:48 PM ET |

(CNN) - While the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest may constitute an "international crisis," they are hardly an accident.

The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country's so-called "beef caucus."

While this may be business as usual for Brazil's beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on in horror.

So, for those wondering how they could help save the rainforest, known as "the planet's lungs" for producing about 20% of the world's oxygen, the answer may be simple. Eat less meat.

It's an idea that Finland has already floated. On Friday, the Nordic country's finance minister called for the European Union to "urgently review the possibility of banning Brazilian beef imports" over the Amazon fires.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of beef, providing close to 20% of the total global exports, according the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) -- a figure that could rise in the coming years.

Last year the country shipped 1.64 million tonnes of beef -- the highest volume in history -- generating $6.57 billion in revenue, according to the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association (Abiec), an association of more than 30 Brazilian meat-packing companies.

The growth of Brazil's beef industry has been driven in part by strong demand from Asia -- mostly China and Hong Kong. These two markets alone accounted for nearly 44% of all beef exports from Brazil in 2018, according to the USDA.

And a trade deal struck in June between South America's Mercosur bloc of countries and the European Union could open up even more markets for Brazil's beef-packing industry.

Speaking after the agreement as announced, the head of Abiec, Antônio Camardelli, said the pact could help Brazil gain access to prospective new markets, like Indonesia and Thailand, while boosting sales with existing partners, like the EU. "A deal of this magnitude is like an invitation card for speaking with other countries and trade blocs," Camardelli told Reuters in July.

Once implemented, the deal will lift a 20% levy on beef imports into the EU.

But, on Friday, Ireland said it was ready to block the deal unless Brazil took action on the Amazon.

In a statement Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar described as "Orewellian" Bolsonaro's attempt to blame the fires on environmental groups. Varadkar said that Ireland will monitor Brazil's environmental actions to determine whether to block the Mercosur deal, which is two years away.

He added Irish and European farmers could not be told to use fewer pesticides and respect biodiversity when trade deals were being made with countries not subjected to "decent environmental, labor and product standards."

In June, before the furor over the rainforest began, the Irish Farmers Association called on Ireland not to ratify the deal, arguing its terms would disadvantage European beef farmers.

Deal or no deal, Brazil's beef industry is projected to continue expanding, buoyed by natural resources, grassland availability and global demand, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

And, with that growth, comes steep environmental costs.

Brazil's space research center (INPE) said this week that the number of fires in Brazil is 80% higher than last year. More than half are in the Amazon region, spelling disaster for the local environment and ecology.

Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at INPE, told CNN that the burning can range from a small-scale agricultural practice, to new deforestation for mechanized and modern agribusiness projects.

Farmers wait until the dry season to start burning and clearing areas so their cattle can graze, but this year's destruction has been described as unprecedented. Environmental campaigners blame this uptick on Bolsonaro, who they say has encouraged ranchers, farmers, and loggers to exploit and burn the rainforest like never before with a sense of impunity.

Bolsonaro has dismissed accusations of responsibility for the fires, but a clear shift seems to be underway.

And if saving the rainforest isn't enough to convince carnivores to stop eating Brazilian beef -- the greenhouse gas emissions the cattle create may be.

Beef is responsible for 41% of livestock greenhouse gas emissions, and that livestock accounts for 14.5% of total global emissions. And methane -- the greenhouse gas cattle produce from both ends -- is 25 times more potent that carbon dioxide.

An alarming report released last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, said changing our diets could contribute 20% of the effort needed to keep global temperatures from rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Namely, eating less meat.

Still, global consumption of beef and veal is set to rise in the next decade according to projections from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

A joint report predicted global production would increase 16% between 2017 and 2027 to meet demand.

The majority of that expansion will be in developing countries, like Brazil.

France's Macron calls Amazon rainforest fires an 'international crisis'

By Helen Regan and Jessie Yeung |

Updated 11:55 AM ET Published Aug 23, 2019 | CNN | Posted August 23, 2019 12:57 PM ET |

(CNN) - French President Emmanuel Macron has angered his Brazilian counterpart by calling the wildfires blazing in the Amazon rainforest an "international crisis" that should be on the agenda at the G7 summit in Biarritz.

"Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest -- the lungs of our planet which produces 20% of our oxygen -- is on fire. It is an international crisis," Macron tweeted Thursday.

"Members of the G7 Summit, let's discuss this emergency first order in two days!" he said, adding the hashtag #ActForTheAmazon.

On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reiterated Macron's stance and said that international cooperation is needed to protect rainforests.

A Downing Street spokesperson told CNN that Johnson believes that "we need international action to protect the world's rainforests" and he "will use G7 to call for a renewed focus on protecting nature and tackling climate change together."

Earlier, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that he would be ready to block a trade deal between the European Union and South American trade bloc MERCOSUR unless Brazil acted on the Amazon.

Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro blasted Macron's offer as "sensationalist" and accused him of using the fires for "political gain."

"I regret that President Macron is seeking to instrumentalize an internal issue in Brazil and in other Amazonian countries for personal political gains," Bolsonaro tweeted.

"The suggestion of the French president that Amazonian issues be discussed in the G7 without countries in the region participating is reminiscent of a colonial mindset inappropriate in the 21st century," he said in a second tweet.

The G7 nations are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.

Brazil's space research center (INPE) said this week that the country has seen an 85% increase in fires this year, compared with the same period last year. More than half were in the Amazon region, spelling disaster for the local environment and ecology.

And 99% percent of the fires result from human actions "either on purpose or by accident," said Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at INPE. The burning can range from a small-scale agricultural practice, to new deforestation for a mechanized and modern agribusiness project, Setzer told CNN by email.

Environmental organizations and researchers say the wildfires were set by cattle ranchers and loggers who want to clear and utilize the land, emboldened by the country's pro-business president.

Amnesty International on Thursday said responsibility for the fires "lies squarely with President Bolsonaro and his government," adding that his government's "disastrous policy of opening up the rainforest for destruction (is) what has paved the way for this current crisis."

In a Facebook Live video Thursday, Bolsonaro suggested multiple parties -- including ranchers, NGOs and indigenous communities -- could be to blame.

"Who carries this out? I don't know. Farmers, NGOs, whoever it may be, Indians, whoever it may be," Bolsonaro said. He went on to say there are "suspicions" that ranchers are behind the forest fires and appealed to the Brazilian people to "help us" combat the blazes.

'LOOKING AT UNTOLD DESTRUCTION'

The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world and accounts for at least 10% of the planet's biodiversity.

It's home to huge numbers of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles -- 75% of which are unique to the Amazon. A new plant or animal species is discovered there every two days.

But the forest and its inhabitants are facing an unparalleled threat from deforestation -- 20% of the Amazon biome has already been lost to mining, logging, farming, hydropower dams and roads, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Deforestation accelerated more than 60% in June 2019 over the same period last year, INPE's data shows. The Amazon lost 769 square kilometres, a stark increase from the 488 sq km lost in June 2018. That equates to an area of rainforest larger than one-and-a-half soccer fields being destroyed every minute each day.

The Amazon forest also produces about 20% of the world's oxygen and is often called "the planet's lungs."

Before the fires, land conversion and deforestation caused the Amazon to release up to 0.5 billion metric tons of carbon per year, according to the WWF. Depending on the damage from the fires, that release would increase, accelerating climate change.

"The Amazon is incredibly important for our future, for our ability to stave off the worst of climate change," said Christian Poirier, the program director of non-profit organization Amazon Watch. "This isn't hyperbole. We're looking at untold destruction — not just of the Amazon but for our entire planet."

ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE BLAMING BOLSONARO

More than two-thirds of the Amazon are located in Brazil and environmental groups accuse Bolsonaro, who has previously said he is not "Captain Chainsaw," of relaxing environmental controls in the country and encouraging deforestation.

When running for president, Bolsonaro made campaign promises to restore the economy by exploring the Amazon's economic potential. Now, environmental organizations say he has encouraged ranchers, farmers, and loggers to exploit and burn the rainforest like never before with a sense of impunity.

The pro-business Bolsonaro has hamstrung Brazil's environmental enforcement agency with budget cuts amounting to $23 million -- official data sent to CNN by Observatorio do Clima shows the enforcement agency's operations have fallen since Bolsonaro was sworn in.

The director of Brazil's space research center INPE was recently fired after defending satellite images that showed deforestation was 88% higher in June than a year earlier -- data which Bolsonaro characterized as "lies."

"The vast majority of these fires are human-lit," said Amazon Watch's Poirier, adding that even during dry seasons, the Amazon -- a humid rainforest -- doesn't catch on fire easily, unlike the dry bushland in California or Australia.

Farmers and ranchers have long used fire to clear land, said Poirier, and are likely behind the unusually large number fires burning in the Amazon today.

This year's fires fit with an established seasonal agricultural pattern, said CNN meteorologist Haley Brink. "It's the best time to burn because the vegetation is dry. (Farmers) wait for the dry season and they start burning and clearing the areas so that their cattle can graze. And that's what we're suspecting is going on down there."

#science #amazon #brazil #south america #the americans #climatechangeisreal #climateaction #climate crisis #climate change #u.s. news #rainforest #environmetalists #environment

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enbyleighlines · 5 years

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I’m seeing a lot of post about “Moomins” and characters from a handful of users I follow. I had no idea this series even existed, could you give me a little history in it? How did you learn about it? What’s it about? What do you like about it?

I would LOVE to answer this question!! Sadly, I am not an expert. The tumblr user @moomintrivia has a LOT of great and in-depth information about the topic that you should check out

So I’m just going to give you a brief overview

The moomins are a fictional fairy-tale inspired race created by Tove Jansson. The first published instance of these characters occurred in the beloved Finnish children’s novel The Moomins andthe Great Flood, which was published in 1945. Since then, it grew into a nine book series, then a comic series, and then multiple TV adaptations.

It’s always been wildly popular in Finland and Japan, but recently, a 3D TV adaptation called Moominvalley released earlier this year, inspiring a surge of fanart that began spreading moomin mania all across the internet.

Like you, I discovered it from seeing the fanart on my dashboard. I was first drawn to it because of the amazing character designs. Although I had never seen the characters before, I felt a huge wash of nostalgia looking at them. Plus, the soft “living in nature with a small but close community” aesthetic really hooked me in.

I think a large part of its popularity is its setting and main family, the Moomins. They live in a sort of idealized world, where everyone in the community knows one another, and even though all the characters have their own flaws and annoying quirks, for the most part they accept one another.

For example, Moominpappa loves telling dramatic stories, and he quickly gets bored with domestic life and routine. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Moominmamma is a family woman who really enjoys domestic life. Despite this seemingly incompatibility, they get along just fine. They go on the occasional unprompted trip to sate Moominpappa’s wanderlust, and then once Moominpappa starts to miss the comforts of home, they return.

Snufkin, too, is a character who is fueled by his need for freedom. He doesn’t like being tied down, and especially hates privatized property, because he thinks that no one person should be allowed to hoard a piece of nature to themselves. His best friend is Moomintroll, who doesn’t like to be left alone. Snufkin’s need for solitude sometimes clashes with Moomintroll’s desire to spend time with him, but neither character is villainized for their needs. They find ways to compromise, with Snufkin promising to spend three out of the four seasons of the year in Moominvalley.

Little My, especially, is often affectionately called a “gremlin” by fans. She’s a mischievous character, pulling pranks on people, and constantly trying to figure out everyone’s secrets. Despite this, Little My is very much beloved by the Moomin family, who have more or less adopted her into the family.

But the thing I love the most from the Moomins is the values they preach. Here are just a few to come to mind:

“Everyone has a right to having at least one secret.” (Moominmamma, 1990 anime version)

“The world is full of great and wonderful things for those who are ready for them.”(Moominpappa, from the books)

“You can’t ever be really free if you admire somebody too much, I know.”(Snufkin, in several adaptations)

“But one needs a change sometimes. We take everything too much for granted, including each other.”(Moominmamma, from the books)

“Perhaps I better not do that. I won’t be able to appologize, because I’m right.” (Moominmamma, Moominvalley 2019)

It’s very much an optimistic, beautiful world, where tolerance is a huge reoccurring theme. Additionally, since Jansson herself was an anti-fascist woman who had relationships with both men and women, her work really resonates with modern-day queer people, who live in countries (like the USA) whose governments are becoming startlingly more and more fascist.

Or, put more simply, moomins are a free source of serotonin for those of us with extreme anxieties about the current state of the world.

#long post #moomins #moominvalley #asks #anon #anonymous #Anonymous

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monabela · 6 years

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eey @rukkilill this is your @hwdevents Secret Spectres gift! as soon as the letters ‘SSSS’ caught my eye, I knew what prompt I’d be using, because... I love SSSS. I hope you like it! :D

of silence

characters/pairings: Estonia/Finland (could be read as platonic or romantic; not the focus)

word count: 1242 summary: This can’t be how it ends, Estonia thinks. After everything his people have been through, a stupid illness can’t be the end of them. And yet, he’s helpless against it.

warning: mentions of death and illness,, and badly described body horror

It’s the sixth day of what will later be called year 0 when Estonia sees Finland off on one of the last flights to leave Tallinn, hugging him hard in the hall of the nearly abandoned airport. Every tourist has been sent home, wherever possible, with several countries having closed their borders. Both Finland’s and Estonia’s governments have plans in that direction, although they’re waiting to see what Sweden and Russia will do.

It has been chaos, these past days. Not just in their corner of Europe, but all over the world, people are getting ill.

They’ve both been through pandemics, but it seems worse now that the lines of communication are so short. Spain sends updates on the original eleven patients, who are in his country, daily. They’re not bettering.

“Take care of your people, Est,” Finland tells him, fitting his hands around his jaw in that way he does. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too,” he replies. And, putting his own cold hands over Finland’s, “I love you.”

“Never doubted it.” He smiles. “I love you too.”

There’s no see you soon, Estonia realizes later, as if they both knew that they wouldn’t see each other for years to come, that the small stretch of sea between them would become an insurmountable barrier.

It’s late autumn, and when Estonia gets home after eating in Tallinn’s Old City—his people are resilient and refuse to close their shops and restaurants yet, even with the tourists gone—his phone vibrates with a message from Finland, telling him he got home safely and that he lost his dog in his snowy backyard. Estonia grins. He always manages to lose the fluffy white thing the second any snow hits the ground. She always turns up fine.

He sends a message back, and then one to his boss, asking for information on how many people are sick in his country now. It’s not enough that he can feel it, not yet. If this gets bad enough, he knows that he’ll start experiencing some symptoms of what they’re calling the Rash. Luckily, they don’t seem too bad. Nausea, vomiting. That rash, of course.

No one has died, and he prays it stays that way.

A wave of shock rolls across the world the next day, so palpable Estonia can feel it before he hears the news.

The Rash is deadly.

His government snaps into crisis mode. There’s talk about closing the borders immediately, about quarantining patients. Estonia still can’t feel them, but he guesses it won’t be long.

Latvia calls, sounding remarkably calm. His situation is much the same.

The second he hangs up, there’s a call from Finland.

“Hey, Fin—”

“Spain says they’re hiding something,” Finland bursts out. He’s never been patient. It makes Estonia smile, although the message worries him. The original patients, six now, are in Spain. If anyone would know, it’s him.

“Something like…”

Finland sighs, quiet for a moment. There’s chattering in the background. He must be dealing with his government too.

“Not sure. He seems distressed. Only used one exclamation point.”

That is severe, for Spain. For something to faze him at his age, it must be bad. Estonia takes his glasses off, rubs a hand over his eyes.

They’re both silent for a while, listening to the other’s background noises, his breathing. Neither of them is good with words, but they’ve learned to read each other in different ways.

Someone calls for Estonia.

“I have to go, Fin.”

“Yes, me too. I’ll let you know if I hear from Spain.”

“Thank you. Take care.”

“You too.”

The days pass silently. Literally, in many ways, as the citizens of Tallinn, of the rest of Estonia, finally cave and close up shop, relocate to family in the countryside, to one of the many islands. They’ve started quarantining newcomers there. Estonia hates it, but understands it’s for the best.

Updates from the rest of the world are becoming increasingly scarce. Journalists are staying home, by choice or necessity. The government members have scattered across the country. Only a handful remain in Tallinn.

Finland hasn’t found his dog.

They still speak every day, but the conversations are short.

“How many?” Estonia will ask, and Finland will tell him how many of his people are sick, that no one has died.

The day of the first confirmed Finnish death is the day Estonia discovers what Spain said the doctors were hiding. He thinks he knew, in hindsight. The harmony of his people, always at the back of his mind, has become discordant, and he wakes up short of breath on the seventeenth day.

He didn’t dream, certainly not the terrifying dreams Norway and Iceland report having.

It’s worse than that, because the Nordic brothers see things in their sleep, animals and people ripped apart by the Rash, the illness infecting their minds and tearing their sanity to shreds along with their bodies, until nothing remains of them but empty, monstrous shells.

It’s worse, because Estonia knows then, they’re not dreams.

He’s faced many horrors in his life, too many to count, and always emerged stronger. But he’s never looked at a thing carrying only the suggestion that it is—was?—human, with hollow eye sockets and torn flesh, and heard it plead for help with a voice piercing through his skull, like a shout rising above the harmony.

He can feel it’s one of his people. She’s one of his people. Or was. He stares at her. She stares back.

One of her arms is bent backwards unnaturally. She’s still using it. There are protrusions under her rash-torn skin that he fears could grow into something horrible.

“Hᴇʟᴘ ᴍᴇ,” the once-human horror rasps. Her torn vocal chords shouldn’t be working. Nothing about her should.

“How?” Estonia asks. “How can I help you?”

“Iᴛ ʜᴜʀᴛs.”

He clenches his eyes shut.

This can’t be it. After everything his people have been through, this can’t be how it ends. They don’t deserve that.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I’m so sorry.”

Villages go quiet as winter sets in, while spring arrives. Estonia doesn’t feel sick, but almost wishes he did, as he knows he doesn’t because everyone who gets the Rash is lost to him, whether to death or something worse.

Finland radioes now, because Helsinki’s been evacuated, and he’s out on the lakes, where reception is bad.

The world is in disarray.

Estonia has eaten practically nothing for days to leave more for his people, when his boss finally decides to leave the mainland, effectively condemning it. Estonia knows there are people left out there, but also knows he can’t protect them alone, and can’t ask the weakened ones left here to risk their lives.

They all know who he is, what he is, now. He needs them together, because even if they’re all that remains, they are Estonia, more than he is.

He radioes Finland a last time before he leaves for the islands.

“It’s the end,” he says. Finland crackles an exhausted laugh. It’s been a long few months, and the ones ahead look longer yet.

“We’ll meet again, Est. In a year, or a century. I promise. Our people will get through this too.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

He prays, on the cold coast, in the old, pagan way he remembers, for the first time in centuries. It seems fitting.

The world is silent beyond the islands.

#rukkilill #hetaliawritersdiscord #aph estonia #hetalia #thanks for reminding me I have an ssss blog that's been dead for a year #which is now alive again #aph finland #u: apocalypse #u: canon #w: 2500 #on that language tree I'm pretty sure there's like a tiny leaf representing estonian #estfin

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gwendolynlerman · 6 years

Text

11 questions tag

I was tagged by @foxlanguages and even though I believe I have already done this tag, I'll gladly do it again!

RULES: answer the 11 questions. Make 11 of your own and tag 11 people.

1. Would you change the color of your eyes?

No, they're one of the few things I love about myself.

2. What's your favorite time of the day?

I prefer the afternoon.

3. So far, which year of your life has been your happiest?

2016 has been my favorite year so far.

4. Have you ever confessed to your crush?

No, I'm way too shy.

5. Name two languages you wouldn't want to learn.

This is a very hard question, because I have never thought of not wanting to learn a language.

I'd say that I wouldn't want to learn Galician or Portuguese, as they are very similar to Spanish, meaning that I can usually understand them without having studied them. There are other languages that I can understand without knowing them, such as Catalan and Italian, but they seem more attractive to me 🤷🏻‍♀️

6. What's your favorite Greek myth?

I've always had a soft spot for The Odyssey.

7. What places would you go to if you went on your dream trip?

Ideally, I'd visit every country on Earth.

Keeping it real, I'd love to go to Brasil, Egypt, Finland, Greece, India, Paris, and the United States.

8. Do you believe in ghosts?

No, I'm a very sceptic person.

9. How many apps do you have in your phone? How many of those you use on a daily basis?

I have 44 apps, of which I use 14 on a daily basis.

10. What's the prettiest thing in your room?

Me! (I wish 😂)

I have a drawing of Katniss Everdeen (made by someone who is not me) that I really like.

11. Post a photo of your pet, if you don't have one then post one of a pretty flower near your house.

I have four pets, so I'll post a picture of each and write about them.

We bought Cielo ("sky"), a parakeet, on a pet shop in 2010 together with a hamster named Rayo ("lightning"), which sadly passed away not long after. Cielo belongs to one of my sisters.

After the death of my hamster, we decided to adopt a dog from a shelter. And Bombón ("chocolate" as in "a box of chocolates") came into our lives in 2011 and he is now almost 15 years old. I take care of him.

I found Gabi, a tortoise, in our garden in 2013. We didn't know at first, but we then discovered that it belonged to a neighbor, who let us keep her. She belongs to my other sister. This picture was taken when we took her in. She's much bigger now.

In 2014, we went to Toledo, a city near Madrid, and we visited a museum where there was a cat who had recently had babies. The owner offered us one when he found out we love animals. We called her Grace and took her home. She belongs to my sister, the one with the parakeet, and she's almost four years old. The first picture was taken when we brought her home.

My questions are:

What would you like to work as?

What's your favorite type of jewelry?

Would you ever eat insects?

What do you like the most about studying languages?

Would you like to live in a different country?

Where would you go if you could only visit one place for the rest of your life?

Who do you trust the most?

How would you like to die?

Dogs or cats?

Would you ever kill someone?

How was your first kiss?

I tag @dialect-warrior, @frenchy-french, @langsandlit, @languagemoon, @languagesandfrens, @languageoclock, @languagepixie, @lemonadeandlanguages , @learningrussianwithanna, @polyglotten, @polyglottraveler, and anyone who wants to do it.

#tag

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apparitionism · 6 years

Text

Sugar 2

Aaaaand now I’d like to wish @baeringandwells a very happy New Year! Tracy Bering, longing, and fluff: in the first part of this sweet tale, those boxes were all checked, and here in part two, they are still check, check, and checkity-check-plus-check. This concluding part got a little long... what a surprise, right? You know that once these loons get to yammering, I’m loath (or for those of you across the pond, loth) to shut them up. So it’s lengthy. And lordy is it sweet. I mean, I think so; you might not... check your pancreatic function, anyhow, just to be safe. (P.S.: ENORMOUS thanks to @kla1991 for running the holiday show this year!) (P.P.S. To anon: I do indeed have an AO3 account. I’m apparitionism there, too.) (P.P.P.S. To ants-in-Finland anon: I’m laughing, but also, thank you. Sincerely.)

Sugar 2

An enormous fir tree indeed dominated the space into which Myka and the others had been transported, or which had replaced their normal surroundings, or whatever kind of non-natural thing had happened to turn a vaguely normal Christmas Eve into... no. No, no, no.

But then Myka saw Helena. She wore a uniform of some kind, a swallowtail red coat featuring gold buttons and braid and epaulets, while on her head perched a tall black-and-gold top hat/crown thing. Her face displayed unnaturally heavy makeup that elongated her jaw in a way that seemed designed to suggest...

“No, no, no,” Myka said aloud, but she was afraid it could no longer be denied. “Somebody tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

“What does it look like?” Helena asked. “A Christmas scene, orchestrally accompanied, in which one finds dancing toys, including toy soldiers, and... mice? And you seem to be wearing a nightgown. Charming, but not generally how I picture your sleepwear. Not that I have pictured it. Of course not. There would be no circumstance in which—” She cleared her throat. “In any case, as for myself...” She looked down at her arms, at the gold-buttoned front of her coat. Raised her hands to her head and touched her hat. “Fascinating.”

“That’s one word for it,” Pete said.

Claudia said, “I wouldn’t be pointing fingers, man. What’s with the ears and the tail?”

That made Pete whip his head around to regard his rear end, to which a tail seemed to have been tied; his ears, too, sported attachments that made them look bigger. More animal.

“Best guess,” Myka said, “given that there’s also a crown? He’s the Mouse King.”

Pete reached up, took off his crown, and held it up in front of them all. “Lookit that! Royalty! Good for me! But how do you know I’m a mouse?”

“Because,” Myka said, and she briefly entertained the idea that if she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true.. but she of all people knew that never worked. She sighed and gave up: “Helena’s the Nutcracker.”

Pete snickered. “Appropriate.”

“You should be happy that I am not in actuality such an implement,” Helena said, “given the effectivity I believe I mentioned earlier. You should also be happy that you do not have seven heads.”

Pete had nodded enthusiastically at her first statement, but in response to the second, he cocked his head in question. “Kind of a random thing to put on my ‘thrilled-about’ list.”

“The Mouse King has seven heads in the Hoffmann,” Helena informed him. “I concede that would be a difficult effect to achieve in a ballet, which I presume, given the music and the abject horror on Myka’s face, this is.” She turned to Myka and said, “My most sincere condolences.”

Claudia said, “Waitaminute. Who am I supposed to be?” She fluttered the edges of the cape that draped her shoulders.

“I think you’re Drosselmeyer,” Myka told her. “He’s Clara’s—or, I guess my—godfather. He’s the one who made all the dancing toys, and the Nutcracker too, as Clara’s Christmas present. He’s a little creepy.”

“Goals. What about Tracy? Nothing’s different about her outfit.”

Tracy stood at the side of the... was it a stage? The side of the space, whatever it was, and she said, with a hint of a pout, “No costume? I’ve got to be somebody who isn’t in the ballet.” She perked up. “Maybe I’m Balanchine! Or Tchaikovsky!” But then she pouted again. “Probably just the narrator, though. Helps the kids in the audience follow the story... because a lot of them want to, unlike Myka, who was always too busy being traumatized.”

No kidding I was traumatized, Myka thought, and then: Tracy. Oh god. “Okay,” she began, but she could barely speak; her breathing thinned and shallowed and she thought she might pass out, because what explanation would she give for this? “Tracy,” she tried, “this is a really vivid dream you’re having. You fell asleep, and that is what this is. Okay? That’s all this is.”

Tracy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say. But I’m going to assume that that’s about as true as your unconvincing story of how a tornado destroyed my nursery.”

Pete said, “But also, your pregnancy hormones made you not remember the tornado. That was an important part of the unconvincing story.”

“Right,” Tracy said, poker-faced. “I’m just saying that if this were actually a dream, I don’t think any of you would care so much about trying to figure anything out. Because I, as the one having the dream, would already know.”

Helena laughed. “Tracy, I find you to be not unlike your sister, in some rather salient respects.”

Myka said, and as she spoke she realized Tracy was saying the exact same thing with the exact same intonation, “Is that good or bad?”

Helena pronounced, “And upon this evidence, my lord, I rest my case.” Said to a presumably nonexistent judge, but Myka wasn’t feeling entirely safe about any presumptions at this point.

“The Case of the Similar Siblings,” Claudia offered.

“Hey, why are we never in an episode of Perry Mason? That’s a great show,” Pete said.

Clearly, being rodent royalty did nothing to tamp down his ability to be annoying. “What a great idea, Pete,” Myka fake-enthused. “Start throwing out suggestions of new ways to crazy up our lives. I mean, why not ask why we’re never on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick?”

“Because I don’t want to be on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick. You wouldn’t want it either. You wrote a check to some ‘save the whales’ group two weeks ago; we all saw you do it.”

“My point was that nobody wants to be in anything.”

“That’s so untrue. This time of year, I’d kill to be in Die Hard. Besides, you were pretty happy to be in that detective-noir-thingy, weren’t you? Or maybe you changed your mind, because it turned out not to be a love story after all?”

He’d moved closer, practically in her face. Why was he being so confrontational? For that matter, why was she herself being so confrontational instead of trying to figure out how to get them all out of this?

Myka opened her mouth to ask, but Helena preempted her with, “I have a different question, one that may be slightly more pertinent: am I indeed expected to lead the dancing soldiers into battle against the dancing mice? The troops seem to be looking to me for choreographical guidance.” It was true; small soldiers shuffled their tiny toy feet as they turned hopeful little faces toward their Nutcracker commander. Helena spread her palms helplessly at them, then looked to Myka and Tracy.

Tracy said, “I don’t know how ‘my’ dream is supposed to work. I’m guessing that you people are way more experienced with things like this, and tornadoes. But it does seem like a good idea to follow the plot, doesn’t it?”

“Very well,” Helena said. “Be advised, however: I cannot dance.” She proceeded to prove that. Myka wasn’t sure how she felt about dancing being the one thing Helena Wells wasn’t able to do with preternatural skill... Helena seemed to be performing some unholy cross between hopscotch and a waltz, though the hopping was mostly a product of her attempts to avoid stepping on the soldiers and mice, none of whom stayed in formation. That in turn, of course, was the fault of their respective leaders, and Myka hadn’t expected to discover, not on Christmas Eve, that neither Helena nor Pete, who now marched with the mice, was capable of guiding an army of tiny creatures in terpsichorean combat. You really did learn something new, or several somethings new, every day.

Claudia had her arms crossed, watching the mayhem. “I have a really boring part in this show,” she announced.

Myka said, “I’m wearing a nightgown.”

“I give,” Claudia said. “Your part’s worse.” Her expression changed from grumpy to thoughtful. “I really feel like this is not what was supposed to happen. Or maybe it was, but I wonder why so trippy?”

“Supposed to happen? You did this?”

“I didn’t do this. At least, I didn’t think this was what I was doing.”

Myka could not imagine that a more frustrating group of people existed. Anywhere. “Not. For. Personal. Gain. Why aren’t we all required to have that tattooed somewhere visible?”

“It isn’t for personal gain! It’s for general Warehousical gain! Well, maybe a little bit of personal gain, just as a byproduct, but I swear to you, artifact usage is not involved here.”

Pete shouted, from the battlefield, “But why would you do anything at Christmas? You know how Christmas makes the Warehouse—whoops, hey Tracy, I mean ‘some storage facility’—lose its mind.”

“The thing I did, I didn’t do it at Christmas,” Claudia said. “And I didn’t even really do it. Plus there wasn’t really a single ‘it’ that was done. By me or by anybody—I mean, anything—else.”

Tracy said, “I’m sorry to interrupt all this clearly very important dream exposition, but Pete, you need to attack Helena.”

“I what now?”

“You’re the Mouse King,” Tracy told him. “You fight the Nutcracker, and you do it now, given the music.”

He brandished the sword he was holding. “Okay by me. H.G., you game?”

“I... suppose? En garde?”

Under other circumstances, Myka would have found Helena’s puzzled regard of her sword adorable. As it was, though, she was holding the blade completely wrong, so Myka went to her and moved her arm into a slightly more appropriate position. She asked Tracy, “Why couldn’t I be one of the ones with a weapon? I’m the only one who can actually fence.”

Tracy said, “You sort of do have a weapon, and you get to use it, but you have to let go of Helena first.” Myka dropped her guilty hands. Tracy went on, “Now you hit Pete with your shoe. To distract him.”

“Well, it’s no epée, but: with pleasure.” She took off her shoe—a dainty little ballet slipper that she probably couldn’t have taken a decent fencing stance in anyway—and whacked him over the head.

“That all you got?” Pete taunted, but now he seemed more silly than annoying.

“Now, Helena, the sword!” Tracy urged.

Helena squinted at the sword again. “I would say ‘with pleasure’ as well, but I don’t actually want to hurt him. Today.”

“We’ll do the thing where you ‘stab’ between my arm and my body,” Pete suggested, “and then I can finally do the death scene that wins me the Oscar.”

“Dance it. You have to dance it,” Tracy said.

Pete looked even more excited. “Dance it? Yes ma’am. You can all thank me later for the colossal moves I’m about to bust. Best Christmas present you’ll ever get.”

The moves Pete busted were “dance moves” under only the broadest definition of the phrase, in that he was moving, and the music continued to play. He spun; he shimmied; he sashayed; he struck poses. When he started in with what Myka was pretty sure was intended to be breakdancing, Claudia groaned, “My eyes. My sad, sorry eyes.”

Helena remarked, “The Nutcracker, having done this murderous deed, would feel such remorse that he, or rather I, would naturally turn his, or rather my, eyes away. Don’t you think?”

“Coward,” Myka said. “Look on his Works, ye Mighty, and despair. I know I am.”

“You don’t appreciate anything old school,” Pete grunted out, while attempting to hop on one hand. He fell over with a crash.

“She appreciates everything old school,” Tracy corrected him.

Myka wanted to say, “Definitely one thing—one person—who is very old school.” That one person who was very old school had accepted Myka’s challenge to keep watching Pete, and Myka let herself spend a moment enjoying Helena’s face as she worked to hold back what had to be either nausea or laughter. At last Helena gave up, and once she had allowed herself several low chuckles, she caught Myka’s eye and said, “He’d have been perfectly justified to laugh at me as well. And he does at least have great enthusiasm.” Myka had to agree: Pete did always commit. No matter what...

His commitment ended with him stretched out on the “stage,” twitching to show that the last of his mousy life, or maybe the horrified spirit of Terpsichore, was leaving his body.

Tracy said, “Pete, that’s enough. Next step: Myka and Helena, get in that bed over there.”

“Tracy!” Myka yelped

“Don’t be a prude. It’s in the ballet.”

Myka said, “I’m not being a prude.” And she wasn’t, not a prude, just a person who couldn’t stand the thought of getting something she wanted but not really getting it...

“You’re always being a prude,” Tracy said. “Get in the bed. It’s totally innocent: Clara’s just sleeping with the Nutcracker.”

Pete said, “That doesn’t sound innocent. That sounds like this ballet’s about to get all—”

“Pete!” Tracy interrupted. “You are not helping.”

Claudia remarked, “It’s weird how often people named Bering say that.”

Myka heard them, but hearing was her least important sense right then; far more worthy of her attention were sight and smell and touch—and taste, she wanted that too, but she couldn’t be that bold. She settled for resting her head on Helena’s epauletted shoulder, feeling the warmth of her skin through the stiff-collared neck of the coat. She sighed.

She might have imagined it, but she thought she felt Helena’s chest rise, fall; heard a heavy exhalation: was Helena sighing too? And then she didn’t care, for a red-sleeved arm found its way around her shoulders.

“In bed with you.” The words left Myka’s mouth of their own accord.

****

“In bed with you,” Helena breathed in response to Myka’s words.

Helena closed her eyes, let the strange, wonderful sensation of bodily peace have its way with her. Oh, Myka, don’t move; don’t ever, ever move, she thought, but then: Or, better, move only to be closer to me; move only to put your mouth on mine... she felt such thoughts might become speech, might already have become speech, here in this unreal realm...

Then, though, she had a sensation of awakening... but Myka’s head was still on her shoulder... and Helena knew, then, that that sensation was perfect. The caress of her hair, the warmth of her breath. If Helena should turn her head, and if doing so should join their lips, how surprised Myka might be—but how soft her mouth. How soft and warm and wanted... and if Helena were very lucky, how wanting. Because each moment of this dream, no matter its dreamer, was leading Helena to stronger hope. If her eyes could remain closed, if she could continue holding Myka to her, perhaps she could maintain that hope—

“I can’t see,” she heard Pete complain. “Why’d it get dark?”

Tracy said, “First act curtain.”

“What happens next?” Claudia asked.

“Myka’s favorite part,” Tracy said, and in her voice was a note that reminded Helena greatly of Myka, but only at her most playful...

“Oh god,” Myka said, removing herself from Helena’s embrace, and she sounded not at all playful, “it’s the—”

“Land of Sweets!” Tracy crowed. “Is it wrong of me to be really entertained by this?”

“It’s your dream. Knock yourself out,” Myka said. She let herself fall back against Helena’s shoulder, and Helena rejoiced. Then, tragically, Myka sat up. At that point, Helena opened her eyes, just in time to see Myka stand up.

Helena reluctantly followed suit... and thus they were no longer in bed together.

“I’m in a different outfit,” Myka said.

“So you are,” Helena said, for Myka was indeed wearing not the modest, girlish nightgown of the previous act, but a more traditional ballet costume, with a silvery, bejeweled bodice and a skirt of pale pink gauze. Then Helena realized: “So am I.” Hers, too, was more obviously ballet-suitable: a rather princely doublet and breeches, all white.

“I sort of miss the uniform. You looked dashing,” Myka said.

“Do you think so?”

“I haven’t ever seen you in a uniform before. Also the hat. It really worked for you.” She turned her eyes away, as if sudden self-consciousness were the price of such statements of appreciation.

That made Helena, in turn, bold. “I shall never again go hatless,” she said, but instead of declaring it, she whispered it. Into Myka’s ear, which pinked.

Tracy said, “Interesting. Doubling the parts.” They all, Helena included, looked at her in question, and she went on, “Small companies sometimes do that.”

“I guess we’re a pretty small company,” Claudia said.

Tracy crossed her arms and regarded the new setting. “Although I’m not sure why we need anybody playing any parts, here in this dream I’m having, if mice and toy soldiers and cookies actually can dance. Those are real pieces of chocolate jumping around to the Spanish Dance, aren’t they? Maybe you crazy people are right; maybe this is a dream.”

“It. Is. A. Nightmare,” Myka said, and Helena did believe that from Myka’s perspective, that was absolutely true: candies of many sorts danced before them—some seemed a bit disappointed at the less-than-enthusiastic response they were receiving from the small Warehouse “company”—and sugar saturated the air, from which the occasional powdery granule seemed to spontaneously precipitate. Pete stuck his tongue out in an attempt to catch some as the rest of them continued to regard the dancing confections.

Claudia said, “Dream, nightmare; I think it’s none of the above. I think we’ve been put on hold, in some cosmic sense. I have never been so bored. It’s all just dancy-dance-dance.”

“Now, now.” Helena admonished. “Even if you have no appreciation for Tchaikovsky, consider the poor marzipan’s feelings.”

Pete gave up trying to catch sugar in his mouth. He complained, “What about my feelings? All I feel is hungry. Particularly since my super-aerobic dance of death. I should make workout videos.”

“I should get an insulin shot,” Myka said.

Claudia nodded. “No lie. I feel like I’ve got sugar in my hair. Gross. Here’s hoping maple syrup shampoo never becomes a thing.”

Myka said, to her sister, “See, Claudia understands.”

Tracy was listening to the music, her head cocked. “Myka, I really hate to break this to you, but...”

“But what?” Myka asked, in the tone of one who feared that Tracy did not in fact hate the news she was about to break.

And indeed, Tracy began to laugh. “You, sister of mine, are the Sugarplum Fairy. Merry Christmas, sweetie.”

Myka began muttering, “I think you really are dreaming, and I think it’s some kind of revenge fantasy thing where you get back at me for that time I hid your toe shoes, which I apologized for, twenty-five years ago, and yet here you are, still holding it over my—”

“But in what might come as positive news,” Tracy said, in a conciliatory tone, “Helena seems to be your Cavalier.”

“That’s awesome news!” Claudia enthused. “Probably.”

“They’re going to dance a pas de deux here in a bit,” Tracy told her.

“Even. Awesomer. Again, probably. One question: is it, you know, all romantical?”

Tracy nodded. “Basically the only really romantic thing in the show.”

“Sparkly.” Claudia looked to the heavens and pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.

Helena said, “I myself am not finding fault with the situation. But is there some reason you are having such an excessively positive reaction?”

Claudia pointed her pressed hands at Helena. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve sussed out what’s happening.”

“You have determined that your function is Riemann-integrable,” Helena tried.

Tracy remarked, “And here I thought it was me, having a dream. A revenge dream.”

“It is,” Myka said, with no cheer. “And in your dream, Claudia has sussed out what’s happening and Helena’s doing a callback to something that wasn’t funny the first time. And now everybody can wake up so I can get out of this Sugarplum outfit and brush my teeth.”

“I don’t think we can wake up yet,” Claudia said. “Because here’s how I think we get out of this: you dance that dance that’s the only romantic thing in the show. And you mean it.”

“What do you mean, ‘mean it’?” Myka asked.

“What do you think ‘mean it’ means? It means mean it!”

Mean it, Helena thought, and she said, “Ah. Ha. Really?” She fought to keep her face from revealing her eagerness for that romantic dance—she would mean it; she could not help but mean it; and the extent to which she would mean it would be so readily apparent—

“H.G., you look like you’re gonna throw up,” Pete announced. “And hey, so does Myka.”

Helena noted that Myka’s face did seem to be fighting with itself, much as Helena’s own must... and she should not hope it might be for the same reason, but she did hope it all the same...

Tracy said, “That is not what Myka looks like when she’s about to throw up.”

“It’s what Myka looks like when...?” Claudia prompted.

“When it’s Christmas morning and she’s unreasonably terrified that she might get what she wants. She’s good with anticipation. Terrible with actual attainment.”

“Tracy, you should do it,” Myka said. She looked down at her body, touched the gossamer skirt. “I can’t dance. You can dance, and I can’t.”

Helena regarded that hand, resting on that skirt: it was shaking. She wanted to take it, raise it to her mouth, and kiss it. Instead, she said, “Perhaps in a dream you can.”

“But what if I can’t? What if it’s important to be able to?”

Helena tried to keep her tone light. “If that is the case, Pete and I have doomed us.”

“I don’t want to be doomed at all,” Myka said, and her voice gathered strength as she went on, “but in particular, I don’t want to be doomed by doing a dance about sugar in a ballet version of a fairy tale I don’t even like. That’s literally adding insult to injury.”

“I think you’d be doing a dance as sugar,” Tracy told her.

“Indignity to insult to injury. I really think you should do it instead.”

“There is no production of this ballet in which the narrator dances the pas de deux,” said Tracy. She could sound quite starchy when she wished to... Helena imagined that Myka must historically have responded rather poorly to that. But then Tracy’s voice softened. “Besides. There’s no reason for me to dance with Helena.”

“There’s no reason for me to either!”

“Isn’t there?” Tracy asked, and the starch was back.

“There shouldn’t be!” Now Myka’s eyes were wide, and her body seemed poised on the edge of movement, as if she might take off running, just to get away.

If only we could have stayed in bed together, Helena thought. Then she might have been able to maintain a belief that that was what they both wanted, that it was not anything from which Myka felt she needed to escape. “Perhaps there should be such a reason; perhaps there should not,” she said, then looked to Claudia. “I may be mistaken, but I believe it is time for you to make some statements that are about what they are about.”

Claudia swallowed, and possibly she was the one experiencing nausea now. “Are you sure?”

“As mentioned, I may be mistaken. So of course not,” Helena said.

“Good point.” Claudia sighed. “Okay, see, one of the things that the Caretaker’s supposed to, uh, do, which I personally did not know, prior to, you know, Caretaker Bootcamp, is to make sure that the agents... you know.” She fluttered her fingers.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, and Helena was certain that for once, he was speaking for them all.

“You know,” Claudia insisted. “Make sure they... get along. In the ways that would be best for them to... get along. But the thing about Mrs. F is, she kind of had... let’s say, some old-fashioned ideas. About who would. Or should. In what ways. And she and the... storage facility, they spent a lot of time and energy engineering... an outcome. But that was a major oops, because general wrongness. So anyhow, after some conversations about what’s what, which let me tell you I never expected to have to be the one explaining, some things got... put back. But then obviously there was, you know, another thing that needed to be addressed. So here we are.”

Myka shook her head. “That was... incomprehensible.”

Claudia shrugged. “So much for subtlety. Mrs. F thought you and Pete, right? And so she and the storage facility set up dominoes to maneuver that into happening. But obviously, big no on that, so we fixed it. But just as obviously, another... uh. Situation. Needed to. Let’s say develop? And that was my job.”

“You’ve been trying to get Myka and H.G. together,” Pete said.

“Right.”

But why take such a long way round?, Helena wondered. She did not have to ask aloud, however, for Pete saved her the trouble. He scratched his head in puzzlement and said, “In the weirdest way possible? Was that part of the bootcamp? ‘Whatever you do, do it weird’?”

Waving her hands at him, Claudia shouted, “If the whole thing happened to be entirely up to me, I’d just hang some mistletoe and say ‘Now smooch!’ Actually I wouldn’t even bother with the mistletoe, because why wait? But I’m pretty sure you know just as well as I do, bootcamp aside, that if it’s the storage facility running the show, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than just turn around three times and spit. Also I might not have full control of the dominoes yet, okay? Do you have any idea the kind of inbox situation I’m dealing with here?” Her gestures had escalated in intensity throughout this recitation, leaving her panting as she finished.

“But what if this is wrong,” Myka said, and Helena ached to think that she did believe it to be wrong. “It was wrong with Pete; I knew it was wrong.”

Claudia said, “I told you, Mrs. F blew that one. It was wrong.”

That did nothing to lessen Myka’s evident despair. Helena could not stand to let her think that Helena herself harbored any reservations, regardless, so she said, “I don’t want anyone, least of all myself, forced into anything. Having already been placed into many circumstances not of my choosing. But—”

“See?” Myka said.

“But I don’t care. I do want you.”

“And I want you, but—”

“You do?” Helena could scarce believe her ears; if that were true, then why the despair?

“Of course I do. Wait—you want me?”

“Of course I do.” She had never said anything more true.

“But what if this isn’t even what we want? What if it’s just what the Warehouse wants us to want?”

“I could not possibly care less,” Helena said, and she meant it. “What I do care about are the fascinating ways in which articulating the words ‘what’ and ‘want’ make your mouth move.”

“Don’t charm me. I don’t know what to do when you charm me. And I told you, I can’t dance. I can’t.”

Helena said, “Then don’t think of it as dancing. Tracy, tell us what narrative purpose this interlude serves in this ballet.”

“The Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier... it’s generally thought of as a way of modeling romance for the young Clara, or if the same ballerina’s dancing both parts, letting her experience romance in its most perfect form. An ideal representation.”

Helena turned to Myka. She said, as gently as she could, “Providing an ideal representation of romance—that, we can do. Can’t we?”

Myka didn’t immediately answer.

And now Helena did not intend to sound desperate, but she knew she would... “Please say yes. I don’t care about the Warehouse and what it does or doesn’t want. Please say yes.”

Myka did not say yes. But she did take a step toward Helena, and Helena’s heart leapt. But then: “I don’t know what to do,” Myka said.

“You might swoon for me,” Helena suggested lightly.

“I’m not much of a swooner,” Myka said back, not quite as lightly.

“It’s true that your spine and shoulders are somewhat rigid.” Helena put her hands on those rigid shoulders, as if to test them. But instead she let her warm hands rest on Myka’s nearly bare, yet incongruously warm, skin.

Myka gave a small shrug to her shoulders, and Helena tensed; did Myka want to shake her hands away? But Myka said, “Then again you could swoon for me.” And she moved her own hands to Helena’s waist, seemingly to support her, should her body indeed collapse.

“I fear it would seem overly theatrical,” Helena said, as a tease.

Myka smiled. “We’re in the middle of a fake Warehouse-contrived ballet, and you’re worried about seeming overly theatrical.”

This smile was one more of play than of joy, but Helena found it transporting all the same. She leaned close to Myka, so close, such that she was once again speaking directly into her ear. “What about this,” she said. “I want to kiss down and up again the length of that straight, strong spine.”

Myka’s hands tightened on Helena’s body. “You win. That might make me swoon.”

“And then breathe against the nape of your neck,” Helena said, for good measure.

And now into Helena’s ear, so close as to make Helena’s very skin vibrate, Myka said, “If we were not in the presence of witnesses, so help me god.”

Helena said, after a throat-clear, “And yet I have heard that you are always a prude.”

Myka shrugged again under Helena’s hands. “Tracy and I did grow up together, and she does know some things about me. But she doesn’t know everything.”

“No one knows everything,” Helena said, with an intentionally casual answering shrug. “So it should be hardly surprising that we two extremely intelligent, well-educated women might not be able to execute a perfect pas de deux. But... shall we make some attempt?” And now she did remove her hands from Myka’s shoulders and instead raised her arms, offering them as if to lead one of the partnered dances her parents had insisted she at least attempt to learn as a girl: right hand at waist level, left hand raised to receive the lady’s right. The gentleman’s role had seemed so much more compelling then, and was doubly so now, as Myka, despite her protests that she knew nothing, moved into the hold as if she, too, had been subjected to such lessons. “All I can remember, even vaguely, are the waltz and the polka,” Helena said. “Is this a waltz?”

“It’s probably not a polka, and I know in a waltz you count to three. Let’s give it a try.”

Surprisingly, then, they began to waltz. Their slow three-count had nothing to do with the music, as far as Helena could tell, but that could not matter. Mean it, Claudia had said. An ideal representation of romance, Tracy had said. At this moment, Helena had never meant anything like she meant her heartfelt hold of Myka’s body, and she could think of no model for romance more perfect than herself and Myka, counting to three in unison, trying unsuccessfully to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, looking down at their feet, looking back up again into each other’s eyes, smiling, looking away...

Helena heard Claudia say, “They really can’t dance.”

“Not at all,” Tracy agreed. “And yet...”

Helena did not dare break her count, or her concentration, but she suspected Claudia was nodding her own agreement with Tracy’s implication.

Myka was the one to break, though, for she said, “Did you hear Claudia? She said we can’t dance. I told you—”

“Then stop trying, and kiss me instead.” Helena had thought to say that as a tease. An absurdity: of course Myka would not kiss her, not here, not now.

But Myka did not hear it that way, and the way Myka heard it? That was how Helena had indeed meant it, and she understood Myka’s anxious words in response: “I thought we were supposed to dance. Besides, this shouldn’t be how we—our first—”

“First doesn’t matter.” So now, now, let the first be now... “No one kiss will matter—all of them will.”

“All of them...”

“Yes,” Helena said, with conviction. “All of them. The entire... what should the collective noun be? An osculation, perhaps?” She could do this, could give Myka a moment to think, to consider, to decide—to remember—that any first need not, and in the case of their own interactions, had not, set the tone and tenor of all that would come after.

Myka took that moment. Then she smiled and said, “A canoodle.”

Helena countered with, “A prurience.”

“That’s a little too lascivious. And don’t say ‘a lascivity,’” Myka added quickly. Then she tried, “An amatorium?”

Helena considered. “Not quite. I propose that we continue these attempts presently. At which time, I will emerge victorious.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself. What if I come up with the winner?”

Tracy asked, seemingly of no one in particular, “Is this part of their representation of ideal romance? Or are they like this all the time?”

Pete said, “They do not know how to shut up about this kind of thing. Never have. Storage facility didn’t maneuver ’em into that. Then again that’s probably what they think romance is.”

“I don’t have to bother figuring out what a storage facility called ‘the Warehouse’ has to do with anything, do I, because at some point I’ll ‘wake up,’” Tracy said. “Right?”

“Or something about hormones,” Pete assured her.

“Fantastic. Look, just tell me Helena isn’t going to hurt my sister.”

Helena tensed, waiting for Pete’s response. Pete took his time in answering, but he finally said, “I don’t think I can tell you that. I mean, she did before.”

Points for honesty, at least. Helena looked to Tracy, Pete, and Claudia and said, “Never again. I swear, never again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tracy warned, and Helena did not doubt her intent.

“Hey,” Myka said, “I think that should be my line. But I’ve got a revised version: don’t make promises if you don’t intend to keep them. I know there’s no knowing what will happen.”

Helena said, “There is indeed no knowing. For I would have wished—but would not have dared—to consider a Christmas Eve on which I would be dancing with you.”

“We’re not even dancing,” Myka said, and it was, as far as it went, the truth. They were no longer moving, and Helena’s arms around Myka were no longer positioned with any formality.

But as far as it went, it did not go far enough. Helena said, “It is the oldest dance imaginable. And we are beginning it.” She paused. “Are we not?”

Myka said, simply, “Yes. We are.”

The kiss was surely no revolution in the art: their mouths moved together with a gentle yet intensifying pressure, and what innovation could she and Myka bring to such an old, simple action? Well, one at least, for what other perfect match of lovers could lay claim to having been separated by a century—then, after closing that gap, having waited still more years for the match to be made?

Such an old, simple action, and yet it carried such meaning, serving as both a culmination and a beginning... once begun, though, they did not stop, until they had kissed again, and again, and again, and once more. Helena drew back a bit and breathed out, “Five.”

That made Myka draw back slightly too. Puzzled: “That’s not a very creative collective noun.”

“But it is more than four.” Helena did not intend to brag, but it was objectively the case that five was more than four.

Myka laughed a small laugh, one that said she understood. “Okay. Six,” she said, and made it true.

“Seven,” Helena sighed, after she had made that true as well.

They were engaged in eight when Helena heard Pete say, “I think it’s working. Are we waking up?”

A veil fell again, a slow darkening followed by a slow brightening. And there they all were again, back in their old familiar living room, but in a newly familiar position: Helena’s arms were still around Myka, and Myka’s mouth had just left hers, and Helena tried to tell herself that waking up would be all right, that they would make the best of whatever happened; but she could not now imagine being satisfied to return to that stasis that had been not quite enough.

The floodgates had failed.

****

Should I move? Myka asked herself. She and Helena were locked in an embrace, and Myka felt her pulse in her suddenly lonely lips, felt it as a beat that wanted to push her forward to meet Helena’s mouth again. But they were in the real world now, and what if waking up again, here, meant that nothing had changed?

Tracy, as if she had read Myka’s thoughts, said, “It is all a dream of course.”

Myka stepped away from Helena’s arms. She didn’t look at Helena’s face. “Of course,” she said. “Of course it is. I mean, I’m so glad you think so.”

“I mean in the ballet, you idiot,” Tracy said. “That whole second part, about the Land of Sweets: Clara dreams it.”

Now Myka did look at Helena. Bleak, soft, sad: her eyes reminded Myka of her haunted hologram gaze, that gaze that knew so deeply how punitive her unreal body was. A constant “look but don’t touch” taunt... and Myka did not know if Helena understood that Myka, too, had felt it as punishment.

But a real body stood here now. “Then I don’t see why she—I mean I—would ever want to wake up,” Myka said. She took Helena’s right hand in both of hers, raised it to her mouth, and kissed it.

Helena made a small noise—disbelief?—but she put an arm around Myka’s hips and looked a question at her. Myka nodded. Helena said, “Then you should not have to. Wake up, that is.”

“Even though it’s too sweet for you?” Tracy asked, and her skeptical tone was clear. “In all the ways, I would’ve thought. Based on your... history.”

Helena, obviously emboldened by the location of her arm, exclaimed, “Tracy Bering, are you attempting to talk your sister out of this? Or are you simply making certain?”

“Trying to make certain. I’m getting that it’s important. I’d like things to work out the way they should, because I’m betting that if they do, I get to go home and everything will turn out okay. It’s like with Dad and that haunted book or whatever it was.”

Myka blanched. “How do you know about that?”

Tracy rolled her eyes and said, “Because I talk to our parents, Myka. You should try it sometime when nobody’s about to die.” Her tone became nonchalant. “You might want to try it sometime soon, in fact, because I bet you’d prefer to be the one to tell them about Helena... and you know bad I am at keeping a secret...”

Helena, exclaiming again: “Tracy Bering, are you now attempting to blackmail your sister into visiting your parents?”

“I’m just making statements that are true. What Myka does with them is up to her.”

And now Helena was laughing. “Tracy Bering. You are a Christmas gift I did not expect.”

“Hey! What am I exactly?” Myka said, and she hadn’t expected to be possessive, but: she put her own arm around Helena. And pulled her close.

Helena’s smile turned incandescent, but her voice was familiarly sly as she said, “If recent events are to be believed, you are my sugarplum. And/or fairy.”

Claudia spoke for the first time, as if she were trying out her voice to make sure it still worked. “H.G.,” she said, and coughed, “if you don’t make the dingy-ding-ding part of that song your ringtone for her, I will lose all respect for you.”

Pete chimed in with, “We all should have that as our Myka ringtone. ‘Is the Sugarplum Fairy calling you, Pete?’ ‘Yes. Yes she is.’”

“I’m strangely comforted by all of this,” Myka said.

“Are you really?” asked Helena.

“Well. It pretty much shows that nothing’s going to change.”

“Nothing?” Sly again.

“One thing. A very important thing.” She leaned her head against Helena’s neck.

“Two things,” Tracy said. “Don’t forget about Helena meeting the parents.”

“The parents of Myka and Tracy Bering,” Helena said, and her tone was one of “what manner of creatures are these.” “Hm. These parents, who named their older child Myka Ophelia Bering, and their younger, Tracy... Desdemona Bering?”

Tracy laughed. “Oh, good guess. But no.”

“Portia?” Helena tried, and Tracy shook her head. “Bianca?” Another negative. Helena twisted her lips one way, then the other. “Surely it couldn’t be Cleopatra.”

“I wish,” Tracy said.

“Why couldn’t mine be Cleopatra?” Myka griped. “Do you know how many times people have told me ‘get thee to a nunnery’?”

“Please don’t,” Helena said. “For I would be obliged now to come and liberate you from it, and I really don’t need to add to my offenses against religion. And the religious.” She turned back to Tracy. “It certainly can’t be Helena.”

“No, but you’re getting warm,” Tracy said.

“Hermia?”

“Still warm...” Tracy said, and she winked at Myka.

“Here it comes,” Myka agreed.

Helena pounced. “Ha! In the fairy realm, one Bering a sugarplum, the other a queen: Tracy Titania Bering. Observe you.”

“H.G.,” Claudia said, “it’s ‘look at you.’ Or ‘get you.’ ‘Observe you’ sounds weird.”

Tracy said, “I like her version. In fact I like her.”

“So the Wells mojo works on all the Berings,” Pete said, but he didn’t sound completely like himself. Myka put a mental post-it flag on that so she would not just not forget it, but also come back to it.

“If there is any such thing as Wells mojo, I would much prefer it work only on one particular Bering.” Helena emphasized her point by kissing Myka’s cheek. Myka reciprocated. It was ridiculously satisfying.

“That’s okay by me,” Tracy said. “If I’m lucky, Kevin will remember that he likes one particular Bering too.”

That made Claudia say, quickly, “I’m sorry, Tracy.” She put her hands in her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders; she might as well have been captioned “embarrassment.” “The whole thing, all the straight-up lunatic reasons for it all... I’m also sorry that I’m technically not supposed to explain why I’m sorry, but I’m really really sorry. If it helps, I think if you’re not mad at your husband anymore, he might not have much of an idea that you ever were.”

Tracy waved the apology away. “Myka’s involved, so the reasons can’t help but be lunatic, and it’s not like I’ve never been furious at Kevin before today. But no matter how my little not-exactly-breakup works out, it does bring up one thing that our ideal lovebirds over there need to remember: the honeymoon ends.”

Claudia said, “I guess not today, though. Gotta say I’m a little surprised how strong the ‘mean it’ mojo carried over.”

Helena had been nosing against Myka’s neck, but now she raised her head and asked, “And how are you finding this part, Claudia? That is, if I have interpreted your previous metaphor correctly.”

“Don’t get yourself carbonite-frozen, is all I ask,” Claudia said.

“I have had enough of enforced immobility, thank you.”

Tracy said, “Then I think you should try movement instead.”

Myka was not particularly proud of how quickly her mind took that and went south—and then she was further flustered by Helena’s saying “What?” with a level of startlement that suggested she’d had the same thought.

Tracy started laughing. “Good god, your faces. I meant you should take a dance class.”

****

The entire rest of the evening, Myka let go of Helena only once: she went to the kitchen, where Pete was hunting through the refrigerator for food he hadn’t yet introduced himself to. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” he asked, his head still inside the appliance.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Mrs. F should apologize. We were both bystanders.”

“Not innocent, though,” she said, to the back of his head. “You committed. I didn’t.”

He didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.

“You’re going to freeze your face,” she told him.

“I’m not in the freezer,” he said, but he did stand up and close the door. “I’m sorry too.”

“What for?”

“I committed. You didn’t. Should’ve told me something, right?”

“I don’t know what should’ve told either of us anything.”

He turned to face her then. “You and H.G.” He puffed out a breath. “You look good together. I don’t just mean you’re both pretty—I mean you are—but you look good together. You look right. Sound right, too. You did, even before. That should’ve told everybody everything they needed to know.”

“Nobody here seems very good at paying attention,” Myka said.

“Well, Claudia is. Mostly. And Steve. Abigail too.” He sighed. “The newbies. Maybe the rest of us have been here too long.”

“‘The rest of us’? We just spent Christmas Eve in a ballet because ‘the rest of us’ apparently can’t be trusted to run our own lives,” she told him, and he huffed the start of a laugh. That seemed like a good sign, so she went on, “What I’m really saying is, you better stick around, because I need your help.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, and he turned back to the refrigerator.

“No, I mean I need your help right now. Helena and Claudia are explaining to each other why the Warehouse database should be made out of blockchain. Or something. And if they run off to the storage facility tonight to make that dream a reality, I’m holding you responsible.”

“You got some other plans?” he asked. And then he waggled his eyebrows.

It was all going to be all right. They’d probably still have a hiccup or two or several, but it was all going to be all right. “I didn’t spend Christmas Eve in some stupid ballet for no payoff, Lattimer.”

****

A year ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve this way.

Pete and Claudia were still engaged in their video-game duel, although at considerably reduced volume... Tracy Bering had retired to the guest room after a long telephone conversation with her husband, whom she still loved, and who still loved her...

As for herself and Myka: alone now, in a darkened room, in a bed, continuing their dance...

There was no suggestion, on either of their parts, that they “take it slow”; no angst-ridden worries as to what the morning would bring; no hesitation at all—and if that was due to holiday disinhibition or the knowledge that there truly was no time like the present or even just the flat simplicity of two eager, tender adults willing and able to indulge their bodies with what was wanted, Helena could not have said.

What she did say, in a dark quiet moment right as Christmas Eve was becoming Christmas morning, came in response to Myka’s whispered, post-indulgence question, “And we’re sure this is real?”

“I hope so,” she said. Then, “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t expect an act curtain to fall, but your sister is right, of course: the honeymoon does end.”

Myka stretched her straight, strong spine—the length down and up of which Helena had indeed kissed. She said, “If it does, then we’ll just have to have a second one.”

“I had no idea you would be so romantic,” Helena told her. For Myka had indeed been romantic—she had said unabashed words of love, and of want, and Helena had answered them in rapturous kind.

“I didn’t either. Maybe it’s some aftereffect—excessive sweetness. It’ll probably wear off.”

“I suspect we’re likely to have more problems if it doesn’t wear off than if it does. As you’ve no doubt noted, I’m not especially sweet myself.”

Myka said, “I beg to differ,” and she kissed Helena again and again and again, as if she had found a secret fount of edulcoration, as if she could not get enough of all that her mouth encountered...

Much later, Helena murmured, “Torturous journey,” as she let her fingers trace an easier, smoother one across Myka’s collarbones.

“And we didn’t even know it was one. Not while we were on it.”

Helena sighed. “Blame the storage facility.” She paused. “Not a sentence one expects to utter.”

“Do you care? If we’ve been... nudged? Pushed?” Myka’s hands had been moving too, over Helena’s back, sliding over scapulae, then moving to Helena’s shoulders, down her arms. Now they stilled, waiting.

Helena sighed again. “Nudged, pushed. Flung? Away from each other, now toward each other. I care only that it took so long for the storage facility to get it right. I don’t appreciate the detours.”

“For my sanity, I’m just going to pretend that the storage facility isn’t as influential in everyone’s business as it apparently is. But I have to say, I think my parents are going to wake up tomorrow morning pretty confused about why they booked themselves on a cruise.”

“And yet they might enjoy it. Opinions can change, in the event. For example, how do you feel about The Nutcracker now?”

“I don’t want to tell you.” She shifted a bit, abruptly awkward under Helena’s weight. “You’ll take it the wrong way.”

Helena slid fully off of Myka’s body, turned on her side, and propped herself on her elbow. “You continue to find it your worst nightmare,” she guessed, though it seemed more a certainty.

“I can’t help it. I still can’t stand it—and I don’t understand why the storage facility had to stick us in that sugary horror show anyway.”

“Hm,” Helena said.

Myka said, with apology, “You’re thinking the honeymoon’s over right about now, aren’t you?”

“That is not at all what I am thinking. I am considering two questions. First, which of us, you or myself, has no objection, philosophical or otherwise, to the consumption of sweets?”

“You...” Myka said, but now with suspicion.

Helena chuckled. “And second, which of us was cast as the Sugarplum Fairy... the one who, we might say, is made of sugar?”

Myka closed her eyes. She made the same hand-to-forehead gesture she had, so much earlier in the evening, with Pete: as if she were attempting to ensure that her brain remained in place.

Helena, greatly satisfied, continued, “Thus I am thinking that the storage facility stuck us in that sugary horror show in order to indicate that I should—”

The hand that had been at Myka’s forehead moved swiftly to cover Helena’s mouth... but Myka smiled.

****

No, a year ago, even a day ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve–become–Christmas morning this way. Even if she had, she would have told herself that such satiety could never be more than the stuff of fantasy... the stuff of sweet dreams.

But even the sweetest of dreams sometimes come true.

END

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Sugar #B&W Holiday Gift Exchange #part 2 #I would apologize for the joking around at the end #but I swear to you I tried to land the piece at least six different ways #and they all refused to avoid going there #so I felt I had no choice #blame the storage facility #anyway hiya 2018 #let's see whatcha got #I know there'll be some Bering and Wells #certainly from me #and I hope from everybody else too #here's to sugary dreams #for them and for us

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karanan · 6 years

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Eleven Questions Meme (again)

I got tagged by multiple people so I’ll put them all in the same post. First off, tagged by @tehjai, thank you!

1. How many houses have you lived in? Hmmm... 8, two of which were in Sweden, the rest in Finland 2. If you could sit down for lunch and a chat with anybody, living or dead, who would it be? John Boyega. U can laugh but I secretly wish we were friends, we’re the same age and he’s just amazing 3. Do you have pets? No. :( But next week I’m babysitting my friend’s shibe and two cats!! They’re my little four-legged nephews and niece and I love them! 4. What is your favourite type of soup/stew? I used to hate soups but now I’m a soup convert. I really like kale & broccoli soup. Also potato and leek soup is great 5. What is your least favourite popular character trope? I’ll admit I have a hard time with some Overpowered Child tropes when they’re not handled well and don’t take into account that the character is a, you know, bloody child. Or at least that used to grate my nerves, I might’ve gotten more chill over the years. Other than that, the obvious ones; offensive character tropes that ultimately never get called out or condemned for it 6. If we could really bend the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) like in the shows Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, which would you want to bend the most? This is embarrassing but I’ve never watched the show. Fortunately I have heard of it because I live on the internet. So I don’t know the specifics of the powers or anything but I’ve always had a deep fondness of water

7. Music preference: lyrical or instrumental? This question is mean. I think my playlists are more or less 50/50. I think of vocals as another instrument, not to dodge the question or anything. If I have to choose, I’ll go with instrumental. You can always make up your own lyrics and sing along

8. Coffee or tea? Tea. Get the horrible bitter bean juice out of my face

9. What’s an interesting name for an every day object that’s unique to where you were raised/your family/where you live now? (eg a bubbler in Wisconsin) Man I’m blanking out despite having a usually very rich and entertaining dialect. The only thing I can think of is this thing that my brother and I do where we call juice concentrate “saft-som-int-e-röve-saft”, like, that entire row of words every time. It literally translates to “juice-that-isn’t-ass-juice”. I think it started in the grocery store with something along the lines of “can you pick up some juice, the kind that doesn’t taste like ass?”. Not interesting but certainly unique

10. Where would you like to go on vacation? Somewhere really warm and really gay. With a beach. Or literally anywhere, I’ve never been on a vacation

11. Are you disappointed that my questions aren’t that deep? No, this is just as fun, also requires less effort which is always great

Second, I got tagged by @aspyforthethrone, thank you!

1. How old were you, when you first discovered Star Wars? I can’t even remember, it was so early in my life that I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know of Star Wars. My parents are huge Star Wars nerds so yeah

2. What is your favorite food? Spring rolls!

3. How long have you been on tumblr? Since 2012

4. How’s the weather where you live at the moment? Juuust above freezing, sunny and pleasant if windy during the day, and then it drops to -10C at night

5. What was the first movie you ever saw in the cinema? Holy shit I don’t remember. Could’ve been the Lion King?? My parents only ever took me once or twice

6. I’m gonna steal that one: who is your favorite fictional character? I hate picking one but I’m gonna go with Obi-Wan Kenobi, he’s always a sure choice and I’m deeply fond of him

7. If any fantasy animal etc would be possible, what pet would you like to have? How about something I could fly on? Like a pegasus or gryphon or something

8. Which Swtor character do you like the least? Skadge or Broonmark or Rusk, can’t bring myself to care

9. If you could live on a Star Wars planet for real, where would you like to live? Actually I’m gonna go with Zakuul. Obviously garbage-tier leaders and their culture apparently includes shit like turning Alderaan into a real-time real-life Game of Thrones, but the lack of morals aside, they seem interested in culture and art and the standard of living seems ok (if you don’t live in the slums lmao). The architecture is awesome also and things turn out kind of ok for them. I mean it’d be entertaining for sure

10. Where would you go for a date? In a bar/restaurant, movie theater or stay at home? Or something else? Oh gee I haven’t done a whole lot of dating in my life so I’m not sure. I love going to the cinema but if you’re trying to get to know someone, it’s probably not ideal. I’ve never been on like a planned “first date” so I have no idea what to expect from one. But honestly I think any activity or event can be fun if the company is good

11. Do you think that you could ever lose the interest in Star Wars, and if so why? Or why not? No. My interest may fluctuate but I won’t ever not care. Even if the franchise went somewhere horrible, I’d still appreciate what I got out of it in the past

Since I already did this before, I’m not tagging anyone this time.

#thank you for the tags!#meme thing #about me

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2p-hetalia-universe · 6 years

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2p’s less to more insecure and their biggest insecurities

Anonyme said :From a scale between 1 to 10, rate each 2P that's the most insecure of themselves and name each one that has the biggest insecurity they have.

Warning : The 2p’s are here classed from the more to the less insecure, according to their troubles and personalities. However, if they were in the real life, all of them would be very unstable because if I must class them according to a “normal person”, they all would be between 10 and 6 of instability. So, it’s not because some have a 1/10 that they are in the same state as a sane person. And more insecure is not more dangerous, some are at the bottom of the ranking and are more dangerous that some that are at the top. The ranking would be totally different if they would have been class depending on the dangerousness.

PS : Sorry for my bad english, I’m french...

2p!France (1/10) :

Except that he suffers from a sort of depressive melancholy that makes him drink and smoke almost every time, François has no interest in killing or torturing; he hates that because it brings nothing to him and his legendary laziness push him to do the minimum. His couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude is his main trait; he doesn’t care about anything and nothing really have his interest. He might want to have experiences (mostly sexual ones), but even that does not really interest him. He’s maybe depressive, but he never complains about his life. He’s cold and detached and it brings him a good objective vision of others’ madness; but for that too, he doesn’t care.

Even if he does not care about anything, he’s still human – maybe old from hundreds of years, but still human – and feelings scared him. Not because it’s like a weakness like what thinks 2p!America, but more because he does not understand them and as a writer who analyze others and their feelings that he feels they unsettle him. He prefers to have an impartial vision of others, not like some sort of god, but more in order not to resemble the other nations from whom he feels very detached.

2p!Spain (1/10) :

The only thing that we can reproach Andres is his love for swords and knives, which he makes a big collection in his cellar. If during his pirate period he was way more redoubtable, killing without mercy, he puts it on the madness of adolescence. When he grew up, he became, if not exactly a pacifist, at least less violent. He doesn’t kill, either torture anyone and doesn’t particularly enjoy hurting people. On the other hand, he’s very cold and grumpy, but far from mean and cruel. He yet perfectly knows how to handle fighting sword and this single capacity is enough to intimidate a potential opponent.

There isn’t much to which Andres is really attached to and his quite cold personality does not really tell if he feels insecure about anything. Perhaps he is afraid to fall again in his pirate period and to bring out again the violent and bloodthirsty side that every 2ps possess. He never accepted that he may be as crazier as the others, so fall back into violence scared him.

2p!Canada (2/10) :

Matt is quite calm most of the time, but behind this pacific appearance hides a really close combat expert. He sometimes goes to destroy faces from little rascals with his brother and his famous hockey stick, but that is not often. However, there is one thing for which Matt could become a real murderer; when he goes for a walk in the forest and he discovers hunters killing animals. He often goes out looking for them with his gun and he kills them, sometimes giving the rest to his bear Kuma.

Matt is a loner who lives far from men and their madness, shut away in the forest where he cuts wood and kills hunters. Then, his worst fear is precisely men and even worse the crowd. He suffers from a big ochlophobia which makes him panic if he finds himself in the middle of them. He never goes to the town, barely if he goes to the village near him to restock his fridge. But he never stays long in contact with other men. He’s a lonely wolf who prefers the tranquility of nature rather than human company. The only ones he manages to tolerate is his family.

2p!Germany (2/10) :

Lutz is far away from the others’ mental troubles. He’s a joker, warm and franc character. At first sight, he seems very different from the others 2ps because almost every of them are crazy and murderer, but Lutz also has his inner demons. If he’s ordinary a very good person in the real life, when comes wars or crisis, he becomes particularly violent and cruel when it’s about defending himself. The torture is an activity he then really loves and he’s exceptionally good at it because incredibly inventive when he has to hurt someone.

If he’s creative about torture, he’s not a fine strategist and setting up attack plans are not in his ability. He’s more the big beefy fellow type who’s giving orders and execute them, even if he hates that. If he was smarter, he could be the brain, but that’s not the case he deplores that. He can’t stand people mocking him because of his lack of discernment and his ability to think.

2p!Russia (3/10) :

Viktor is quite sane compared to others. Well, at least, he wouldn’t kill unlike by accident or by absolute necessity. However, he’s quite capable of torturing if necessary and without qualms if it’s a stranger. He may carry a shovel everywhere, but it’s more to frighten people who want to attack him than to bury them. Yet, he still knows how to terribly hurt people when he needs to.

Viktor wouldn’t handle that someone finds out about his weaknesses. He doesn’t know them himself, he even ignored if he has any, but he would be scared that the other nations find out his weak points that they could use to kneel him. He always stays impassible in order to never show anything – but he doesn’t really have to force himself because he already doesn’t feel much- and so others can’t detect any flaw.

2p!Sweden (3/10) :

Bernard perfectly knows how to hide his true side behind a mask of kindness and a pretty smile. But in reality, he can be considered a Yandere, a bit like 2p!England, because he seems like a good person, but he has a psychotic and murderous personality. He’s particularly manipulative because he always wants to have the control of everything and he has a severe lack of empathy. However, he doesn’t kill often, but when he does, he loves to torture his victim before killing them.

Worse than can happen to Bernard could be that he loses all his landmarks. He’s a character that is very attached to his possessions, so much that he even gives names to them: Mr. Beefy for his leather couch, Aurora for his lamp, Kriskin for his favorite chair and even Thurston (2p!Finland’s name) for his bed. Equally, 2p!Finland is for him one of his dearest possessions because he wants him as his wife – even if the Finnish don’t think so. If all of these brutally disappear, Bernard would enter in a particularly brutally mentally outbreak.

2p!America (4/10) :

Allan is a street guy; street fights amuses him and he will sink in with pleasure, and often he’s the one starting them. He has a violent nature and he enjoys hitting other street guys, especially with his baseball bat covered with nails. It’s something very enjoyable for him. Apart from street fighting that allow him to unwind, he has some moments of anger, but never strong enough to hurt his family or friends.

The thing that’s scares Allan the most is his feelings. Unlike his image of a tough guy he wants to show, he’s a great sentimental, as shown by his love for animals. He would like to be indifferent, but when it comes to his loved ones or people he really appreciates, he cannot help but to be concerned. His family is very important to him; 2p!France, 2p!England, 2p!Canada and his friends. Falling in love is the worst for him because he doesn’t know how to handle with his feelings. His sensitivity is his worst weakness.

2p!Austria (4/10) :

Roland is more dangerous that he is unstable, at least, if we can affirm that being attract and use the occult and summoning is not a trait of instability. Indeed, the Austrian’s passion is dark magic and more exactly demons’ summoning for fun or to a precise goal. He’s a character who regularly frequent Satan. There is nobody is particularly close to, except 2p!Prussia he takes as his boyfriend, even if the one concerned is afraid of him. Thus, the only ones Roland really is with are beings from his spells and summoning.

Roland has no one to really cherish because he scares everyone around him and is not afraid of all dark and dangerous things, so he does not really have any insecurity. But he’s so accustomed to rubbing shoulders with the supernatural that he’s really afraid of everything that can be called “normal”. He’s incapable to live like the others with a simple, ordinary lifestyle and he trembles at the idea of going shopping or talking with someone on the street. He’s socially awkward and tends to scare everyone with his sharped teeth and his red eyes.

2p!Denmark (5/10) :

From all of the 2ps, Markell must be the healthiest. He’s a good warrior, but doesn’t feel any pleasure when killing and he’s even disgusted about it. If he could, he would rewrite his past in order to erase his mistakes. Like 2p!France, he feels relatively detached from the others 2ps because he knows he isn’t like them and refuses to be like them. It must be the reason he smokes marijuana, to escape from this crazy world where almost every nation are bloodthirsty murderers that want to hurt for fun. But he’s far from all this and he would like to live in the 1p world rather than here, but that’s unfortunately impossible.

His biggest insecurity is his own world; the 2ps’ world disgusts him and he would like to escape it. He already asked his 1p if he can go on the 1p world, but Matthias refused, it’s impossible. Then, Markell tries a lot of other ways to flee by smoking for example. He fears the night when he would be awake by one of the nations and being murdered by stabbing or die from poisoning during a meeting.

2p!Japan (5/10) :

Kuro embodies all Japan’s worst actions, including Pearl Harbor and the invasion of China by the Japanese where they did a lot of heinous slaughter (Nanking massacre for example) during the WWII, and for which 2p!Japan hasn’t presented any excuses. He’s merciless, he kills in cold blood and according to what his twisted honor dictate to him. He’s not afraid of killing and torturing when his nation go to war. He’s heartless, dangerous and powerful when he wants to.

A little bit like 2!Finland, he could not stand to see his country lose a war and be besiege. However, unlike Thurston, who only fear 2p!Russia, Kuro sees potential enemies in every other nations. His country is an island, so it’s more difficult to invade, so he counts on his nation’s power to intimidate the others, especially western countries. Defeat is not an option for him, particularly after all the slaughters he did and that could create in his enemies a desire of revenge and a humiliation as horrible as he had done.

2p!South Italy (6/10) :

Flavio isn’t neither the type of killing often and if, without enjoyment. Like 2p!China, he kills only if the person is a threat, especially for him or his brother. He tries not to be very implied in his brother’s business, but he still is his second in command as a Mafiosi. He perfectly uses drugs to poison his victims and sometimes uses knives, but it’s rare. He also could have some Yandere traits towards the person he loves, that is to say 2p!Spain that makes him follow him everywhere and always asking for him.

For him, his body is own essence. If it were to be damaged in any way, Flavio would never recover. He’s almost at the point of honoring his image - being a real Fashionista - so if he has a little scar or a button in a visible place, he would fall into a real exaggerated and incredible existential crisis. Better not imagine if he is tortured or disfigured; then, he would die.

2p!China (6/10) :

Xiao doesn’t really like killing, but he will do it if he has to. If someone is threatening his rug market, he would go kill him without mercy. He particularly uses poisons poured into his victim’s food or stab them with little assassin’s knives in a dark area or at a street corner. He’s part of the Chinese triads so he’s an experienced gangster who knows everything about the art of removing people. He then can kill, but he also loves to threaten.

He’s maybe a gangster, but when Xiao is in love, he’s deeply enamored of the person and he can do everything for them and protect them from the entire world, especially his wild life. If something happen to them, he would feel guilty his whole life and never can forget himself for not being able to protect them, even after his finished revenge. Then, when he’s in love, his worst fear is that something happens to this person and not being able to protect them.

2p!Finland (7/10) :

Thurston is a very quickly angered person, sometimes even to the point that he enters into angry phases exceptionally violent, in which he needs to evacuate all of his wrath by breaking things for example. In order to avoid that, he generally takes his gun and his dog and go on a hunt; which is a real way to let off steam for him. The rest of the time, even if he has a grumpy and nervous personality, he’s not a bad man, but a simple bad news or an arguing are enough for his irritable temperament to explode.

The worst fear for Thurston is to be invaded again by 2p!Russia and to not be able to defend himself to repulse him. Being invade is for him a sign of weakness and powerlessness and his first invasion by Viktor centuries before was a really painful defeat. A second one and it would be the worst thing for him. He needs to prove to everyone that he is strong and that he can go up against 2p!Russia as a proof.

2p!Norway (7/10) :

Loki seems to be someone particularly smiling and friendly, but when we begin to enter into his life, he would tend to not want you to leave his side and would grab onto the person when he starts to like them. And the more we stay near him, the more he would show us his unstable and manic side of him by stalking us everywhere to know what we’re doing. He especially does that with 2p!Denmark he really loves. However, he’s very mean and violent with 2p!Iceland (he’s the one who tears off his eyes). It must not be forgotten that Loki is a passionate pyromaniac which explains his burns. He loves to burn everything he can

In addition to being a pyromaniac, Loki also possesses the same magical capacities as his 1p counterpart. However, he’s really afraid of these magic because with him it quickly become out of control. He already summoned powerful demons and spirits who haunted him, which lead him to be scared of his own powers and dark forces he can invoke. That’s why he uses them very little in order to not make him or his close relatives in danger.

2p!Iceland (8/10) :

After being raised by his unstable brother, it’s not very surprising that Egil, even if not very dangerous, has serious mental issues, particularly a borderline personality disorder that makes him have moods swings and wishes of self-harming. He suffers from anxiety, depression and the PTSD complex (a trauma due to repeated traumatic situations over long periods). A great cocktail that makes from Egil a likeable and nice young man from the first sight, but particularly disturbed.

His brother might well be unstable, it doesn’t stop Egil from loving him like a big brother. 2p!Norway, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to see him as a little brother. The Icelandic is very attached to Loki, even if he is cold and cruel to him since he found him on his island and brought him to Norway. He is very destabilized when his big brother isn’t near him and if Loki disappear, it would be a part of Egil’s world would crumble.

2p!Prussia (9/10) :

The biggest problem of Gilen is from far his deep depression, which locks him in an almost constant muteness. His depression causes a lot of stress, a big lack of self-confidence and a self-loathing that sometimes bring him to self-harm that add more scars than he already have because of his wars. His mood is generally very dark and all his words speak about death and pain. His unique way to escape is his daydream when he walks in beautiful landscapes or when he writes in his diary, although his writing still is very sad. He is unstable, but from all of the 2ps, he’s the less dangerous for the others; he can’t hurt anyone.

Finally, the worst insecurity of Gilen is life itself. It’s not beautiful or nice with him, and he tries to stay away from it as much as he can. He must have been weary before his territories’ dismemberment and his nation’s death should have been some sort of comfort for him, but he noticed that he still lived even after his nation’s fall. That’s most certainly what drove him into depression that he couldn’t die with his nation. Now, he lost all hope of dying and lock himself into his sickness.

2p!England (10/10) :

Generally, Oliver would be seen as someone normal, sometimes a little bit too much happy. But he has manic phases, just like Luciano, in which he is quite capable of killing someone, even if it’s with a less violent way than 2p!North Italy. He prefers to pour poison in his cupcakes before giving it to his victims. Although what he does after being as much violent because he sometimes cuts his victims out and stuff his cupcakes with organs. He has an obsessive personality disorder that makes him stick a person he really appreciates like a glue.

However, his good mood only is a mask to hide his fear of losing the ones he really loves, like François his lover-enemy, his two “sons” Allan and Matt and his friends like Flavio. He is terribly afraid of being all alone, also, the distant behavior of his closest family member hurt him a lot. Then, he easily could enter in a depressive phase. It already happens after being insulted or attacked. He is extremely sensitive.

2p!North Italy (10/10) :

Luciano is most certainly one of the most insecure 2ps with 2p!England. He is a maniac who suffers from hyperactivity. As far as he can have self-control when he supervise and give orders, he can also be entirely controlled by his aggressive impulses and enter in a psychotic phase which made him kill on a whim. It’s generally very violent and his favorite way of killing is by stabbing his victim several times. He likes to torture his victims before killing them, especially when he wants them to give him information.

His most important insecurity is his paranoia. He is convinced that everyone wants to make an attempt on his life (after all, he is the boss’ mafia). He also tends to eliminate anyone around him in whom he has doubts, except when it’s someone very close and he appreciates a lot. Then, he would give them the benefit of the doubt and put them under guard. Indeed, because of his oversized paranoia, he will tend to have a lot of spies, which he will order to watch each other. This way, he could have his eye on his enemies, friends, family, colleagues and his own spies.

#2p hetalia #2ptalia #insecurity #biggest insecurity #lesstomoreinsecure

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postsantablog · 5 years

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FROM THERE TO HERE - AND FROM HERE TO THE UNIVERSE FORTH

Curator Panu Johansson's thoughts about the media art pieces in the Young Arctic Artists exhibition of 2019

The third incarnation of The Young Arctic Artists exhibition is currently displayed in Gallery Napa and Studio Mustanapa in Rovaniemi, Finland. The theme for this year's exhibition is the Transmission of Knowledge and the show contains works from altogether eight artists around the Northern Hemisphere. The exhibition has been curated by yours truly in cooperation with Ninni Korkalo. In the following writing I will introduce some of the media artworks of the exhibition. Simultaneously I'll try to open up their background slightly and also present some of the thoughts they have managed to provoke.

The first piece of the exhibition greets the spectator already before arriving to the gallery space. Norwegian artist Guro Rex's video work The Universe Is Da Club is displayed on the gallery window. Short video loop documents an event where a young woman, dressed in the Norwegian national costume, pops up a bottle of champagne. What pops up on the screen after this, is the title of the piece on cheesy gradient letters. It feels almost as if the piece is asking: Are you glad to be alive today? Maybe you should, 'cos this particular space and time, this cosmos, is the place to be.

vimeo

The world of Guro Rex continues downstairs in the first room of Gallery Mustanapa. Firstly the space contains a monitor, where several videoworks are running on a loop. Secondly, on the walls there are a few examples of a somewhat autobiographical email project that the artist is running. And most importantly, this project is something that everyone can participate in. All you need to do, is send a message saying ‘what is love baby don’t hurt me’ to [email protected] and voilà – you will soon start to receive gallery spaces right in to your inbox!

The same personal voice of the author can be heard in the presented videoworks. They are an interesting mixture of just about everything, as if they were results of continuous creative explosions. As a spectator they make you anxious: you have a feeling nearly anything could follow. The colourful mixture of numerous elements create associations towards Jacolby Satterwhite and the continuous poses maybe a hint of Pipilotti Rist, but above all these works seem to be influenced by the current world of online videos on social media.

The ingredients of the videos are familiar, but they are somehow exaggerated so that the result becomes completely overloaded – and fun. The hand-held camera seems to suffer from a chronic shiver, images are transitioned with a very lofi pixelated crossfades and somewhat unrelated clip art animation loops just keep on appearing. Fairly cheap looking background templates are also in frequent use. The videos are mostly concentrated on a person or two, who speak or perform straight to the camera. Sometimes the outcome resembles a video diary, other times a performance. Expressions are unashamedly overstated and voices are often pitched either helium high or extremely low. The chit-chat rolls around topics we all know, from various ”projects” to why ”I'm better than him, they just haven't discovered me yet”.

vimeo

As mentioned, these elements are something that we all know, but it's also important to emphasise that these videos are not plain parodies, nor critique. They clearly benefit from being exhibited in large numbers, because this way it becomes obvious that they are rather parts of the personal expression – or dare I say universe – that the artist has created. Of course it easy to draw links and connections to many directions. For example, one could say that these videos reflect how the artist is looking at our own time through a distinctive prism and simultaneously manages to capture something that is culminating right now. This could very well be the case and that might partially create their charm. One the other hand, their appeal may simply come from the fact that this universe actually is _the_club - and nuff said with that!

https://vimeo.com/gurorex

The Norwegian Sámi artist Elina Waage Mikalsen presents a piece called “Mun bijan iežan beallji ránu beallji vuostá / I put my ear next to the looms ear” in the exhibition. The author defines the work as a sonic loom and that is indeed quite an apt description. During the exhibition the actual piece is displayed in two different contexts. First Waage Mikalsen performed with the piece at the exhibition opening and throughout the rest of the exhibition period the piece is displayed with a running audio loop that was recorded from this performance. Both forms also stand independently on their own feet, hence you can enjoy the exhibited piece without seeing the opening performance.

Elina Waage Mikalsen performing at the exhibition opening. Photo by Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen

The artefact of the piece is an old loom that used to belong to the author’s grandmother. For the piece the artist has modified the old device in a way that it has become something completely else: an instrument. Where there used to be weft threads, there are now strings. These strings are then bent with rocks whose weight tightens them and makes them playable. During the performance Waage Mikalsen also placed several mics around the object to capture the sound of the strings but also the resonances, tones and noises from the object itself. Further on, these sounds were yet modified with electronic effects.

Photo by: Kaisa-Reetta Seppänen

The cultural background of the piece lies in the Sea Sámi culture around the area of Olmmáivággi/Manndalen, where the author’s Sámi roots are located. This area has maintained a rare handicraft tradition of vertical loom, which is the type the loom of the piece also represents. These looms are used to weave multipurpose textiles called as rátnu. Previously used in various purposes in everyday life, today these textiles are more of a decorative. The making these handicrafts was traditionally concerned to be an area of women, and they were sometimes made also together in groups.

The audio of the piece lasts about ten minutes. It starts off with clacks of wood and scraping of the strings. Delay and reverb are apparent right from the start as well. As the works moves ahead, slowly but steadily more and more electronic particles start to appear in the sonic architecture. At one point the strings really start to vibrate and the intensity clearly grows. Banging of the stones can also be heard in the background.

During the last minutes of the audio the author's own singing voice sneaks in to the aural landscape. Do you know the moment when a piece all of a sudden comes beautifully together - when all just clicks? With this work, this is that moment. It is intriguing how this one additional element turns out to be the last piece of the puzzle, that nails the whole. The presence, that is already in the piece, suddenly becomes somehow audible, materialises. But whose presence is that? Is the voice a howl through times, from the past to the present? Or is it the other way around - from here to there? Or perhaps it's both at the same time? In any case one could say that in the piece several elements and their presence overlap in a natural, unforced way. That is: the presence of the author at this time and the strong presence of the history through the artefact. Thirdly there is the soundscape which reflects both today and the past and thus ties these two delightfully together.

Overall, the associations that the works creates in different directions are compelling. Bent strings of course point towards the world of traditional tonal music. When listening the piece, particularly Finnish group Memnon comes to my mind. However, to be precise this piece is not about that. It is neither a collage nor musique concrète which use old archival recordings to create new entities. Nor is it the type of experimental music, which is based on sole experimenting with the technology. Instead of all this this, I would say that this piece is a fascinating effort to interpret the material culture of the past and a soundscape related to it in a completely new way – to put one's own ear carefully against the loom's ear – and place it in the new framework of contemporary art.

https://vimeo.com/elinawaage

https://soundcloud.com/elina-waage-mikalsen

Guro Rex's pieces are not the only ones located in the Gallery Mustanapa. The large backroom of the gallery contains a two channel video installation In Silico by Laura Heuberger, who is a Swiss/Italian artist currently living in Northern Sweden. The title of the piece is an expression, which means “performed on a computer” or “via computer simulation”.

Photo by: Janne Jakola

The piece starts off with a monologue that addresses someone, perhaps the spectator, straightforwardly. The voice is soft and gentle, although the timbre sounds slightly like a machine:

“Hi. Please make yourself comfortable...I never know what to say in these situations. I'm very quiet sometimes. I'd usually rather listen...What's the best icebreaker you've heard? Once, I had someone approaching me with one of those very cheesy pickup lines. It was so weird...I like travelling, seeing new places, meet new people...But it's been a while ago. Now I'm here.”

As the piece advances the viewer travels through different micro- and macrocosms on the screens. Visions that unfold could be sometimes interpreted as pulsating stars and planets orbiting in space, other times as bustling bacteria and other microorganisms under a microscope. The flow of water or other liquid is also a reoccurring theme. The images are accompanied by occasional glimpses of peaceful ambient soundscapes.

On the audio track the aforementioned chat evolves into a long string of topics that reminisce old childhood memories, personal diary notes and philosophical pondering about the nature of existence. But not without interruptions. What takes turns with the gentle voice number one in the audio track, is a second voice, which is clearly synthetic. With a very dull intonation this second voice goes through conditions and details, which would allow a human mind to be simulated. In contrast to the previous personal touch, the overtone of the second voice is clearly formal and academic. That is not a surprise, since the parts spoken by this voice no.2 have been quoted from the article Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom.

What Bostrom is claiming in the article has become known as the simulation argument. Basically what he is saying is, that in the future as the computing power increases the simulation of the human brain might be possible. Bostrom does not claim that we are currently living in a simulation. However, he argues that there are three different unlikely scenarios, out of which one is almost certainly true:

1. Mankind will never evolve to a level where human mind can be simulated.

2. Or then it does, but for some reason – such as ethical or simply a lack of interest – this kind of technology will never be taken in use.

3. Or, we are currently living in a simulation.

The idea that the whole reality as we perceive it is just an illusion, is of course not new. Already Plato presented The Allegory of The Cave that aptly demonstrates how our view of the existence could be only one out many possible. Also the Chinise philosopher Zhuangzi has introduced the famous dream argument, which has also been called “The Zhuangzi Paradox”. According to it we can't really say weather the whole reality is actually just a dream or not. The idea of the reality being simulated or otherwise artificial is also a common theme in Sci-Fi. Already in 1977 Philip K Dick presented that we are living inside a computer simulation. Still, I would say that the modern simulation theories are simply mind boggling.

If the reality around us can be just a simulation or a dream, how do we truly know what’s real? I guess the answer is, that we profoundly don't. But on the other hand: if something feels real, isn't it real - even at some level? And what is “real” anyway - how do you define it? What is the opposite of real? False, unreal, bogus or artificial? Are the stories in the piece real? Does it matter?

Photo by: Laura Heuberger

One of the biggest merits of In Silico is pointing out the vagueness of the border between something authentic and synthetic, real and unreal. It is almost impossible to define it - let alone in a universal way. Another important question that the work touches is the way we are accustomed to outline the situation. You have to be this or that: true or fake. Is this kind of starting point - a dichotomy - even a valid way to describe the actual situation? When talking about simulated reality, most people will probably go over to top and think of something like The Matrix. If something like this is even remotely the case, is a completely different thing. More probable is that this kind of simple reality/illusion juxtaposition is a man made concept. The validity of our reality can certainly be questioned, but a good way to begin the process might be to concentrate on our start off assumptions first.

http://www.lauraheuberger.com

http://www.lauraheuberger.com/#In_Silico

Young Arctic Artists exhibition is open in Gallery Napa and Studio Mustanapa until July 30th.

http://lapintaiteilijaseura.fi/en/gallery-napa/gallery-napa/1402

http://lapintaiteilijaseura.fi/galleria-napa/galleria-napan-nayttelyt/1402

Panu Johansson

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