In my landmark analysis of The Wind Rises, I interpreted the film in terms of Miyazaki working through his feelings on his life’s work—perhaps regret and shame thinking of all the sacrifices from others it took to bring his work to fruition, to pursue his desires and ideals; his ideas on what “beauty” is and perhaps how glad he is that it exists/is created in spite of all the suffering that may be attached to it. I did not talk about the relatively more straightforward ways of reading the film, which is of course about Japan during World War II: Miyazaki reflecting on the factors that drive history, what it means to live through, to be embedded in—and to look back on—so much violence; Miyazaki reckoning with his own family’s role in the imperialist war effort as well as his lifelong infatuation with the aesthetics of military machinery. Considering these modes of interpretation together yields a portrait of a man and his art—Where does it come from? What does it value? Where does it want to go? As such, The Wind Rises is arguably a very rich and fitting swan song. And yet, with its grounded, adult perspective on the war, the film also sticks out like a sore thumb in Miyazaki’s oeuvre and maybe always sat uncomfortably as a conclusion to it.
For those who feel that way, The Boy and the Heron should come as a welcome addition to Miyazaki’s filmography. It is, after all, a return to fantasy adventure with a child protagonist—something that feels, at least more so than a quasi-biopic of an aircraft engineer does, like quintessential Miyazaki. But crucially for our purposes, the film is not just a return to a familiar form (often quite literally a sum of everything that came before it), it is an extension of and second half to The Wind Rises. Through the lens of my interpretation of The Wind Rises, The Boy and the Heron is like an inversion of The Wind Rises in that it foregrounds the concerns with artistry and legacy while keeping the war in the background and frame of the narrative.
Two scenes in The Boy and the Heron in particular reminded me of The Wind Rises. First is the scene of the dying pelican, which visually recalls the scene of the ill man in Princess Mononoke but in terms of the content of the dialogue reminds me more of the scene in The Wind Rises of the children turning down Jiro’s offer of castella cake. It is a reflection on poverty, pride, and survival. In the context of these films, we are led to consider specifically the condition of the Japanese people, the things they were driven to do, and are left to draw our own conclusions with regard to the nuances.
The other scene, of course, is the brief moment of Mahito looking at the windshields his father brings to the house and remarking on how beautiful they are. This scene embeds in The Boy and the Heron Miyazaki’s preoccupation with the aesthetic allure of aircraft originally designed for warfare, a contradiction between beauty and violence that is mirrored in the dream world that Mahito ultimately decides to reject.
In the dream world in The Boy and the Heron, there are so many echoes of past Miyazaki and Ghibli films it is deafening. Seemingly contrary to Jiro’s solemn resignation to the world of pyramids, Mahito rejects the dream world he’s inherited and ventures to build something new in the real world. But I’m not sure they are so far removed from each other. They are complimentary views of the same object (Miyazaki’s legacy), one from his own perspective and one from the perspective he hopes for future generations to take—one of not overly attaching themselves to some old fool’s dreams. In The Wind Rises, perhaps Miyazaki tries to celebrate his life’s work without celebrating it. In The Boy and the Heron, he gives us the greatest hits slideshow we wanted and then some—a celebration of the joys and tribulations of the creative act he so compulsively pursued—but not without gesturing to us nonetheless to peer beyond the curtain.
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Leucism and Kimba
So this is gonna be real life facts (ones I'd say are interesting) mixed with some fan stuff, you don't need to know about the franchise to understand this, but it will be long and only slightly hinged.
Grab a snack, a drink annnnnnd...
What is a Kimba?
(Kimba (1965) running)
This guy, the titular hero of Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion franchise (AKA Jungle Emperor Leo(direct translation), Janguru Taitei(untranslated title))
For now, all you folks need to know about him is that he comes from a long lineage of lions with uniquely white fur.
Gee, you know what else relates to lions, white fur, and genetics, oh boy, a segway into the next thi-
What is a leucism?
(Pronounced 'luke-ism')
(Animals with a leucistic disorder, leucistic peacocks look neat, though, they all do)
leucism is a variety of conditions causing a lack of pigmentation in animals.
"Isn't that albinism?"
They're comparable, but seperate, their causes are different, also no leucistic condition removes eye pigmentation, so, Kimba's blue eyes aren't a problem.
(Kimba (1965) running, he does that a lot)
Now I'd like to go over every major leucistic condition and compare/contrast them to what we can note about Kimba.
No, I am not joking.
(OH MY GOD ITS SO CUTE I- er, this is a real life white lion cub, owing its white fur to a leucistic disorder)
Something to remember, most of these conditions don't (or don't to our knowledge) affect lions and could be easily swatted aside as such, but KTWL (Kimba the White Lion) is a work of fiction which consistently does absurd things, for example, Great Mother, a surviving mammoth who lives on a magic mountain and has magic powers or a blue lion (no I won't tell you what makes him blue), so I'm willing to brush aside SOME realism... also I researched them so I want to talk about them.
Yes, there is a condition that causes real life white lions, buuuuut I'm saving that can of worms for later.
Easily disproven
These ones don't work for several reasons, I'll be using only the most glaring issues for the sake of brevity.
Vitiligo & flavism: These two conditions happen over the course of one's life, but we see Kimba near birth, and he possessed his white fur.
Chédiak–Higashi syndrome: Causes symptoms (including but not limited to: peripheral neuropathy) which Kimba almost certainly does not have.
Isabellinism: affects only birds and leads to a golden white, not a snowy one.
(An isabellinistic bird, majestic fellow, eh?)
Xanthochromism: Makes things fucking yellow.
(A xanthochromistic (pictured right) and normal (pictured left) Argentine horned frog, so cool.)
Axanthism: only affects things with light reflecting pigments, and can only make things with normally yellow color have white color.
Amelanism: Meaning lacking melanin, so those black tipped ears and tail would be a no-no, yet we observe numerous pelts of his ancestors all with the exact same ears, and, we have reason to believe, the exact same tail (his father also possessed the same tail)
Okay, that was the bulk of the list, we're making good progress.
Maybe
These ones are harder to disprove, but I'd still say they're obviously not what we're looking for.
Piebaldism: Now, this one seems convincing as it can generate black AND white fur, it is genetically dominant, therefore, could lead to the continous lineage (where at least one of few children seems to always inherit it) but it lacks the uniformity, as I said, every white lion posses the same pattern, with few inconsistently appearing exceptions within the franchise, we'll get to that later on, the point is, consistency is the rule, chaos is the exception, and piebaldism is too chaotic.
(Piebaldistic animals. That squirrel looks so neat! Like his back is covered in snow!)
Waardenburg syndrome: Specifically type two is a strong contender, most notably because it causes bright blue eyes (or a blue and brown eye, sometimes) along with its other effects, HOWEVER, it also causes congenital hearing loss, and in cats (Felis Catus or house cats, technically, but they're the closest comparison I have to lions) said hearing loss is more common and more extreme, I doubt Kimba has that. Type 1 and type 3 cause other malformities that Kimba visibly doesn't posses.
Not sure
I tried, but my research was not conclusive, if you have answers, I'd be glad to hear them.
melanophilin: it is listed, but isn't a disorder, it is a carrier protein, I did some research and disorders with this protein don't seem like they'd make the snow white color we're looking for.
Undisputable
Oh, uh, there's nothing here, we've gone over every major leucistic disorder, there ARE more, but we'd be here all day, and so little is known about them it'd be arbitary.
Well, we're not through with every leucistic condition on the agenda, there's still...
THE CAUSE OF REAL WHITE LIONS
That's right, we've made it.
There's obviously a myriad of similarities, Tezuka was probably inspired by the real life white lions.
For example
(Pictured left, Kimba (1989 anime series) and his love inyerest, Raiya, a fellow lion, but not a white lion. Pictured right, two lionesses, one being a white lion)
The jarringly (among other lions) snow white fur.
(Sorry the images of Kimba's paw sucks, you won't believe it, but it was SO difficult to find a pic online with his paw pads in it, real life white lions? Pfft plenty of pictures in an instant.)
(Yes, pink is the unpigmented color for paw pads)
The pink paw pads
(Pictured left, Kimba's father (2009 movie) pictured right OH MY GOD SO CUTE)
The genetic basis allowing for lineages that share the trait
So then, this is it?... no, no, no, no, sadly, no, not so simple, there is one glaring inconsistency.
Firstly, an aside: I tried researching the specific cause of white lion leucism (it comes from a mutation for tyrosinase) but very little is known about it exactly, though, I gleaned something just by using the oldest tool in the zoology briefcase, me own eyes.
Notice a difference between Kimba and EVERY image of a white lion I've provided? Here, have some more white lion.
(Look at 'em all!)
From male to female, newborn, to cub, to adult, one consistency that Kimba does not share, maybe you already noticed and want me to get to the fucking point, maybe I will, maybe I won't, okay, I will.
(Circles denoting where Kimba posseses the trait, 'x's denoting where the real lion cub does not)
Black fur, Kimba has black fur on the tips of his ears and tail, no image of a real life white lion that I've seen has that pattern, or ANY black fur (wait, did I just retread my point about amelanism? Damn), and I'm lead to believe that does not occur amongst real life white lions, so then...
Kimba is a an anomaly
(From top left to bottom right Kimba's aunt (1989) Kimba's father (2009) and Kimba's father (1989)
In the 2009 version the only white lions we see are Kimba and his dad, and his dad lacks the black fur, in the 1989 series the only white lions we see are Kimba, his dad and aunt, both of the latter lack the black fur, but Kimba retains it in all versions.
Perhaps the cause of white lions is the same as real life white lions, and Kimba is a very rare anomaly within an anomaly, I don't know a whole lot about genetics, but that sounds reasonable enough for KTWL standards.
Buuuuuut, every other version, including the manga that started it all has other white lions retain the same color palette, and even show dozens of white lion ancestors, and a DISTANT white lion ancestor who all have the same palette, so, this anomaly theory is ironically only relevent to anomalies, the 1989 series and 2009 movie, what about for the whole franchise, well...
I don't know
Here's where I'd like to pull something out my hat and save the day with the obvious and true answer... but, there isn't one, at least, not one I found, sooooo, yeah, everyone must come to their own conclusion, maybe you even disagree with some of my reasoning and come to a conclusuon I've disregarded!
I'd love to hear your take away, and what comes next is merely my own personal take.
I don't know (good ending)
i don't know, and that's the point, I like that conclusion, the Kimba franchise contains mystisms, but never delves into them, leaving them as strange mysteries, it is a story about the exotic, it is ever out of reach.
I choose to believe white lions are semi-magical, thus why Kimba's lineage is the ONLY white lions we see in a franchise that stretches from 1950 to 2009, with over a hundred episodes, thus why white lions seem to always produce a white lion cub, but usually only ONE white lion cub, and the rest resemble the mother, because it works by magic rules.
In the 1989 version(and possibly others) Kimba is directly or indirectly likened to the supernatural, the Great Mother, a huge mammoth who can summon powerful snow storms in tropical Africa treats Kimba as such.
Simply, it can't be explained IRL, that's pretty cool, not everything needs to be explained, and MAGIC!
Thanks for sticking around through my insanity, hope you learned something and had fun, I did!
(Normally I'd put a pic riiight here to close things off but I hit the Tumblr image limit, didn't even know they had one)
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y‘all, lyctorhood is genetic
Which is a huge mindfuck
But let’s start with my reasoning for this theory. Which is very simple: when John and Wake discuss her plan, John initially thinks her plan was to kill a lyctor‘s child to get a giant thanergy explosion. And he says that it was a good plan. So we know, that at the very least, John is convinced that a lyctor‘s child is different than a regular child, aka that lyctorhood is to some extent hereditary.
And that just brings us to so many questions: why would he assume that? I honestly intuitively thought that lyctorhood wasn’t genetic, that it was simply something done to the body but not to its DNA. Because (not 100% sure on that) literally everything you do with your body doesn’t change your DNA (not taking epigenetics into account but we aren’t manipulating our dna with that yet). So that’s the norm for people. Why would John know that it’s different for lyctors? Did one or more of the lyctors have children? Did he specifically establish their weird breeding pods to stop that from happening? (I honestly don’t think so, but it is weird that they use technology to have children. Do they have to? Did necromancy fuck up their ability to have children? (Actually I think the books mentioned that about Harrow‘s parents but I don’t have the quote))
Also, if a lyctor‘s powers are (even if just to a small extent) inheritable why make more lyctor’s why the eightfold word? Why not just have them have children? Especially since it could be literally outsourced to their pods? The obvious answer would be that the bond between parent and child is an incredibly strong one. Maybe John didn’t want to risk anybody rebelling against him because of their child. (Also, mildly related tangent: I might be wrong here, but it seems as if parent child relationships like we have them (and expect them!) don’t really exist in the locked tomb universe. Harrow certainly doesn’t have anything close to that. Gideon here is the exception, since she expected (and wished for) her mom to love her, to the point of fighting with Harrow over it. So there is an expectation of parental love. But if that’s the case where are everybody‘s parents? With most of the cast of the first book being children and young adults, I would expect parents to be mentioned. But they aren’t.)
But most importantly of all, this puts the whole idea that lyctors are powered by the souls they devoured, into question. Because it’s not like the soul or the link to it would be passed on to the child. So maybe the lyctoral process fundamentally changes the lyctor and then only the changes are passed on? Because I doubt lyctors can be made as easily as „just by having a kid“. Especially with all the thematic weight that is placed on the sacrifice and the horror of devouring another person to reach lyctorhood. One can only become a lyctor for the price of a soul and eternal regret. I cant imagine a child could just get the same powers without any sacrifice.
(Also Gideon’s inheritance from John is heavily likened to a lyctor’s child, but I don’t think that it checks out. John is definitely something else than a lyctor, whatever he is or did)
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Are Areo Hotah chapters maybe an insight how the average guy thinks when is entangled in the Players of the game . Of All the Servants and Guards who Varys questions on the latent schemes. On the people who only know about classiefied information because their line of work brings them to evesdrop on the players. On All people, who want life a simple life
None of the above, for me. Rather, I see Areo as another exploration of the Kingsguard - but uniquely, and pointedly, from the point of view of someone who is not at all part of that organization.
Indeed, what makes Areo Hotah interesting to me is that he is a nearly exact expression of the fundamental ideals of the Kingsguard. Prince Doran explicitly underlines the parallel, reminding the Sand Snakes that the knights of the Kingsguard “are sworn to obey, just as my captain is”. Indeed, “Serve. Protect. Obey.” is not simply Areo Hotah’s creed, handed down by the bearded priests - it is an almost perfect summation of the (ostensible) duties of the Kingsguard (compare, say, that would-be Kingsguard beau ideal Barristan Selmy’s observation that “[t]he first duty of the Kingsguard was to defend the king from harm or threat” and that “[t]he white knights were sworn to obey the king's commands … serve his pleasure and defend his name and honor”). If the Kingsguard are not required to literally abandon their birth names upon joining, they are required to surrender all right to family claims and inheritance; similarly, Areo Hotah gives only the briefest thought to the birth family back in Norvos who sold him to the bearded priests when he was a boy. Just as the Kingsguard are forbidden to wed or have children, so Areo has since the age of 16 been ritually married to his “ash-and-iron wife”, the longaxe. Likewise, just as Daenerys teases Barristan with the Westerosi riddle “Who listens to everything yet hears nothing?” - with Barristan correctly answering “A knight of the Kingsguard” - so Areo’s role in the story is to listen to everything the Prince of Dorne chooses to say and hear, but to offer virtually nothing in the way of his own commentary or input (becoming, in fact, something of a background character in his own chapters, an observer rather than a primary actor).
Yet Areo Hotah, of course, is not a knight if the Kingsguard, nor could he be mistaken for such. Where the knights of the Kingsguard might show some allegiance to the Faith of the Seven - if only given the historical connection between the religion of the Andals and their introduction of knighthood to Westeros - Areo’s role as protector is inextricably linked to the dominant religion of Norvos and its de facto theocratic bearded priests. Where the knights of the Kingsguard wear as the emblem of their office a white cloak - which, as Arys Oakheart so notably demonstrates, can be removed or hidden, effectively erasing the Kingsguard knight’s identity as such - Areo Hotah bears the symbol of his guardianship literally burned into his chest - a hidden designation, but also one which cannot be removed. Where any aristocratic Westerosi boy, steeped in martial tradition from a young age, might dream of a place in the Kingsguard as the acme of a chivalric career, Areo Hotah held no agency over his fate; his family’s poverty rather than his personal ambitions determined his training with the bearded priests, who thereafter (at least according to Areo Hotah’s WOIAF app article) appear to have “assigned [Areo] as a guardsman to the family of Lady Mellario”. Areo is, in sum, a foreigner - not born to Westeros, its faith or its knightly legacy, especially not the Kingsguard.
That dichotomy - Areo as the most basic ideals of the Kingsguard, presented in a man completely outside the organization - allows Areo Hotah to serve as a contrast to the Kingsguard POVs GRRM writes in the main novels. Not for Areo Hotah the question of his role’s mandated obedience, such as arises in Jaime’s story; he shows virtually no reluctance to any directive from his prince (only rigidly and almost automatically allowing Obara to pass him when Prince Doran commands it). Not for Areo Hotah the question of what it means to serve a prince, and when that vow of service might be forsaken, as arises in Barristan’s story; indeed, Areo seems to have weathered the transition from the bearded priests to the family of Lady Mellario, and from Mellario’s service to Doran’s, without any apparent internal strife or conflict. Not for Areo Hotah the crisis of love, or lust, versus duty, over which Arys Oakheart agonizes (even while ignoring his far more serious moral failings); Areo’s clear paternal affection for Arianne does not prevent him from cutting down her lover in front of her or arresting and imprisoning her and her cousins at Doran's directive. Indeed, it may not be coincidental that Areo Hotah has already killed one member of the Kingsguard and may yet kill another (as he ominously predicts that Balon Swann “will not die so easy as the other”, while promising to himself that “[i]f it came to that [i.e. fighting and killing Swann], Hotah would be ready”): against this most elementary embodiment of the Kingsguard’s values, neither the soiled knight Arys Oakheart (as his POV chapter so appropriately names him) nor the evil-compromised Balon Swann (who could only badly dissemble to the Martell court regarding the plot to murder Trystane on the return trip to King’s Landing) can stand up and live.
In that sense, Areo’s POV functions, I think, almost like Victarion’s. I don’t mean to suggest that the two men are similar in personality or outlook or that GRRM is mocking Areo as he is clearly mocking Victarion, but rather that the commentary and conflict is external to the characters rather than internal. Victarion, infamously “dumb as a stump”, never questions his place in the universe, no matter how awful, hypocritical, or (now) doomed it might seem; rather, through him, GRRM underlines how terrible the Old Way system of the ironborn is in this most devoted adherent to it. Similarly, Areo Hotah does not examine or criticize his role as Doran’s captain of the guards; indeed, in his second (and, for now, final) chapter, Areo refuses to answer the existential question Doran poses, instead noting internally that “all he knew” was “Serve. Protect. Obey. Simple vows for simple men.” In that inflexible fidelity to his creed, Areo Hotah serves as further commentary on the Kingsguard as an institution.
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Sort of inspired by your discussion of Jenny needing to go to London alone to really grow into herself and mature as a person, in an ideal world in which none of the main characters were forcibly tethered to the UES or its more toxic inhabitants post-high school, how do you generally - like broad strokes - imagine them developing as people in college and throughout their twenties? I always wonder where everyone might have ended up had they not been constrained by the type of narrative they were living in, and I’d love to hear any headcanons you have on the subject!
I've been thinking about this on and off since i received it (an embarrassingly - for me - amount of time ago) and now finally feel like I can answer.
because, like, what if we weren't constrained by the harsh realities of making tv? what if the rules meant that they could leave new york?
well, first, let's dovetail off jen moving to london and blossoming, and send eric along with her. he can go to cambridge, or any of the other big name universities in the area, and he and jenny would be flatmates and live their own hilarious queer sitcom of being students in london.
I've already plugged nads' yale au in my answers this evening, but I still really like the idea of dan and blair attending yale, and outside of the maelstrom of manhattan drama, they settle into their own selves and learn they could actually...like each other? and then they fall in LOVE
as far as careers, they are the most driven. and we've talked about novelist dan and editress blair and art historian blair and college prof dan.....but lately I've been thinking about blair working in costuming. It's not high fashion design, but I think it's a great synthesis of the things we know blair loves: literature, film, history, art history & fashion history, Evil Dictator of Good Taste, being a specialist and big boss on a niche subject...yeah...
i still enjoy the idea of vanessa being at nyu, or at another arts college in nyc, and making her own way and building her own story (without being boxed in to the secondary character of anyone else's story!) I like the idea of her attending Tisch too, and expanding her skill set into screenwriting in that way.
to plug another au by a friend, S's goodbye stranger introduced the concept of Serena attending Berkeley, and I LOVE it. I love that for her. Berserk-ley. I think that school in that part of the country would be where Serena would really thrive. She becomes a full glamorous SF queen. perhaps she opens a coffee shop. Blair is outwardly mortified but inwardly very proud.
As for Nate, I think he is the character who really should take a gap year. It's never questioned, but the way he is yanked around by the collar those first two seasons, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that nate would decide that he needs some time to figure out what it is he wants.
sidebar: bc the serena gap year felt disingenuous in many ways, yk? serena was so eager to leave new york and go to school and study. she likes learning, we see it, and the opportunity to reinvent herself that college would provide....why would she walk away from it? except for TV Reasons.
so, I like the thought of nate taking at least a year. traveling, volunteering, maybe he takes a community college course or two. he falls off the grid for a while and he realizes how healthy and how happy he feels without the constant eyes and pressure of his family & gossip girl. and after that time, he's found what he actually wants to do, and goes to school to do it. -- as always, I'm fond of nate working in health care, as a nurse or pt or something, but it could really be anything. teacher? chef? social worker? children's librarian? (actually culinary student nate has come up in convos with ivy & cherry before and I am into it.)
and uhhhhhh i guess chip wiskers can crash his inherited business and money into the ground bc lets be real that fucko would try to launch his own cryptocurrency and since he seems to hold such disdain for education and self-betterment, he stagnates and falls off the face of the earth byeeee
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Hello, I love your pjo analysis posts and how much you try to keep it within its canon material.
The books let us know that Percy’s fatal flaw is loyalty and we see that often, while Bianca’s ghost kinda implies that Nico’s fatal flaw is holding grudges. My question is, what would you think is Will’s fatal flaw? Or a fatal flaw within the Apollo cabin in general?
Aww, thanks, anon! I always like keeping things within canon universe where possible because that's how my brain works, so I'm glad people like that I do that :D
Still on holiday with no books access, so this'll likely be a short answer at least for now, but a fatal flaw is definitely something I've thought about for Will, and could easily conclude for a couple of other of the cabin seven kids, too, so I'll give a brief rundown of my thoughts here and maybe revisit this later in more depth if that's something that people would want.
So, let's start with Will Solace's Fatal Flaw.
I'm certainly not original in this one, that's for sure, but my thought is that Will's fatal flaw is Responsibility or Self-Blame (specifically regarding patients under his care). I actually wrote a fic based on this premise, Fatal Flaw, a couple of months back. We see flashes of Will's stubbornness and sense of obligation when it comes to healing throughout canon - first with Annabeth, where he doesn't stop until she's out of danger even though it drains him to the point he looks "as pale as" she was, then again at the end of HOO where he's been working non-stop in the infirmary for I think it was two days solid, with the implication that he hadn't been taking a break at all during that time. We also see this in THO where he not only pushes himself to heal Paolo and the other wounded campers despite being worried about his siblings, he also yells at Apollo until Apollo gets his priorities straight, too.
At the very least, Will feels responsible for the well-being of his patients to the point he doesn't step back until they're out of danger, so it's natural to extend the idea into his fatal flaw being that he can't stop until they're out of danger, and that he himself runs the risk of burning himself out (perhaps even literally) trying to save someone who's past saving. As healing is shown to sap Will's energy in TLO (although not so much later on, perhaps because he's been forced to heal so much he's grown more powerful to compensate for that), the risk of it draining him and killing him is there, which would fill the condition for it to be a fatal flaw.
There are two other Apollo kids whose fatal flaws I have an idea about. I don't subscribe to the idea that the whole cabin would have the same fatal flaw, after all they're all unique people even if they have the same godly parent, but it does make sense that demigods might inherit one of their godly parents' potential flaws (for Poseidon, we see a loyalty to his children regardless if they end up good or evil, so loyalty is certainly a factor; for Hades, we see him holding grudges against Olympus; Athena also shows an inability to admit to being wrong at any point; Apollo we got an entire pentalogy focusing on his character and the need to put responsibility solely on his shoulders is one such flaw, but also arrogance and anger, amongst other things, which is where I'm going with these next two kids).
The next kid I'm gonna briefly talk about probably won't surprise anyone who regularly talks to me because he's arguably my second-favourite Apollo kid and one that takes up a lot of my headspace at the moment, and that's Michael Yew. While his appearances are limited and only within one book, we do actually get a reasonably feel for his character. I'm tossing up between two potential fatal flaws for Michael - Anger and Pride (both of which are known Apollo traits). On the one hand, he's written as a character with a short fuse who gets into arguments and apparently scowls a lot, so it's logical to assume that his anger is going to get him into a lot of situations that he would be better off avoiding, but on the other hand, pride is what stops him from bending the knee, from apologising for his angry outbursts and making amends (we see this with Clarisse and the flying chariot - yes, there is a lot of anger involved in there, but there's also pride on both their sides; neither is truly willing to concede to the other, and they continue to clash). Anger gets him into messes, but his pride is what keeps him there, so they're arguably both strong candidates.
The other one I have an idea for, mostly because Apollo also expresses some concern about it in the book, is Austin Lake. Kayla, despite having equal amount of page time, more or less, I don't have pinned down well enough to theorise rather than headcanon, but with Austin I think we can make an educated guess that his might be Arrogance or Over-Confidence. He's a popular internet (or at least youtube) sensation, apparently, which could feasibly get to the head of a thirteen or fourteen year old boy, and in TON he tells Apollo that he can handle clearing the way for him, giving him a grin that Apollo himself says reminds him of his own, reckless and arrogant, approach to some things (I don't remember the exact quote but it's along those lines). From that, I'd say it's pretty inferable that Austin's fatal flaw is somewhere in that area.
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k/arakuri c/ircus self-insert time baby!!! or at least like. some notes on the lore and some quick refs done on picrew because i still haven't managed to draw one 💔 SOMEDAY.....oh well. okay anyway
his name is silvio/silvi!! i'm shipping him with d/ottore, a/shihana and george...<3 (the latter two being kind of a poly ship with him...sometimes?? it's complicated. i'm also considering making a separate s/i to ship with d/ottore, but for now i'm just concentrating on silvio. his relationship with the automata also starts off in a...kind of messed up and not so great way but i actually love them dearly and my personal headcanon includes a Big Reconciliation linked to the pionniers' own redemption/character arc and all that lmao)
he drank some s/hirogane's blood (or a very small portion of aqua vitae?) when he was very young. not sure yet about the exact reason n circumstances at play here, i'd kinda like it to fit in with the plot but we'll see!! most of all i just kinda need it for convenience and for his story to work lmao
this obviously didn't turn him full s/hirogane, but gave him the usual perks - a more "durable" body, faster healing/cell generation, sliiightly slowed down his aging process (i think it's just delayed by a few months probably, but he also tends to look a little younger than he actually is, which is about 27-30), plus some 'inherited' knowledge about fighting techniques and how to handle a marionette - but he definitely needs some help to learn how to put these things into action.....
the midnight circus comes to spread zonapha syndrome in the small european town he lives in when silvio is around 8-10 years old. given his immunity, he's the only one not affected. this puzzles the automata for a little bit when they come across him, but they eventually decide to just kill him off some other way....which is when col/umbine comes in to stop them. not out of mercy or pity towards this child, but because silvio reminds her of something she'd been pondering for a little while now - while reading the usual romance novels (and a few other books that piqued her interest here and there) she realized that they would frequently bring up the topic of parenthood, something that seemed to be quite important to many humans
even though she didn't really understand the concept in its entirety (just enough to realize that automata aren't really capable of conceiving and raising children the same way humans do), she started to wonder if maybe, by learning more about this seemingly important part of humanity and maybe even taking part in it somehow, she could come closer to understanding what it means to be human herself, and thus closer to making francine smile (something something the way francine actually already discovered how to smile/feel human by becoming part of a family and selflessly sacrificing herself for the child she was taking care of which is also in stark contrast to col/umbine's approach to 'parenthood'? i guess)
so in a way, this child seems like a lucky find and col/umbine decides to take it with her to try and get an idea of what it means to become a parent. the other automata aren't as excited about her plan as she is but they know there's no point in arguing with her, so they just let her go ahead - besides, if the human should become troublesome in the future they can always still get rid of it
silvio, unable to process everything that is happening, simply lets himself get dragged along. over time, he also begins to repress the memories of his old life & self in order to survive in this new environment and try his best to uh. make some kind of 'home' of it
he also goes nonverbal for a while after getting picked up by the midnight circus, which is why col/umbine simply decides on the name silvio for him seeing how nobody actually knows his real name (i originally wanted her to name him after the protagonist of a romance novel or something but i have. zero knowledge about that genre and didn't wanna get that deep into research so i decided to stick with the commedia dell'arte theme and picked a name frequently given to the male part of the innamorati/lovers. so his namesake is technically col/umbine's male counterpart but he's obviously not supposed to become her lover in any way...i just thought she'd give him a name related to love/romance lmao)
also some gender stuff that i don't wanna get into TOO much right now but it's kinda important to me: despite not being born as one, colu/mbine and the other automata simply assume silvio is a boy judging by his looks and just go with that. obviously the automata don't really have much of a concept of gender so it doesn't really influence the way they interact with him all that much, besides giving him a male name and using male terms when referring to him. silvio's pretty much fine with that and still continues identifying as male after leaving the midnight circus....although his whole relationship to gender is definitely influenced by growing up around the automata and doesn't really align with how many humans think of it (so in simpler terms, i guess i'd say he's a nonbinary/genderweird trans guy - like me <3)
ANYWAY, soon after taking silvio in, col/umbine realizes that she doesn't really know how to properly take care of a human child and that the whole thing seems kinda tedious. she starts out actually asking almendra for advice a couple times, which quickly turns into col/umbine leaving silvio in her care entirely and not really paying attention to him anymore most of the time. considering he's usually pretty obedient and eager to learn, she doesn't think it's necessary to get rid of him entirely and instead hopes he can be of use to the other automata in any way.
so he turns into a bit of an errand boy, usually getting ordered around by the lower-ranking automata while the pionniers usually don't really take notice of his existence...except for uh. d/ottore but that's not really until much later
almendra, originally a little irritated by columbine pushing him on her, quickly takes a liking to him (to her own surprise?), so she becomes a bit of a mentor/grandmotherly figure to him and teaches him about fortune telling <3
ANYWAY. when the sh/irogane finally attack the midnight circus and silvio realizes the missiles are about to hit, he's also at a point where he realizes he's spent most of his life in this tent surrounded by puppets, and he doesn't like the thought of dying here...at all. so he decides to get the hell outta there by assisting a/shihana and george in their escape in exchange for getting to hitch a ride on the clown train.....
he gets wounded in the process somehow and eventually collapses along with ash/ihana. they're both taken to the same hospital at the military base, where they slowly start getting to know each other a little while recovering, and after getting released a/shihana pretty much just tells silvio to come with him and accompany him for a bit since silvio basically has no other place to stay and also very little (practical) knowledge of how the world outside the tent actually functions and a/shihana's still bored.
he also gets his own marionette later, with a/shihana being the one to teach him how to properly use it :}
aaand so far that's the basic outline of what i've got in mind!! i did leave out a bunch of stuff since this is already. a lot. but i definitely wanna talk more about his relationship to everyone at some point <3
(also tagging @frogmoji @dissonantyote as promised 🤝)
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• Paternal Wishes •
This is for the fatherless girlies out there 😔-/HEAVYLHJ My dearest genshin anon I wish you knew how many fatherless jokes I made behind the screen as a I typed this piece, as a Diluc kinnie I have bullying rights ok-
⚠️ Mentions of Death ⚠️
Taglist: @luvielle @citirusu
Diluc is a callous man, that was probably a wayward adjective most can silently agree on when it comes to describing the Ragnvindr Master. But when he found a special someone to settle with a decade ago everyone collectively agreed that something changed within him. It wasn’t an obvious effect of domestic life nor was it a fatigue specially gotten when tending to your family rather, a relieved glint within his gaze whenever his attention was unoccupied by his usual work.
Then came the day that another close beloved left him behind, the grief reopened past wounds that no one dared remind besides his ever elusive “brother”. The fire his vision ignited became dangerously desperate, it wasn’t the mighty flame that stretched its blazing wings across the air but an avian who departed from its flock too early, desperately flying away to try and find its kindred within the cruel night’s wind.
The line of nostalgia came to a halt when he snapped his gaze away from the candle light, sighing as he averted his scarlet gaze back to where you sat, a bright youngster who couldn’t keep their nose out of a book and Diluc didn’t mind this one bit. The Ragnvindr blood had always been a dominant gene, and you proudly showed off the bright red locks you inherited from your dear father, but your smile and the way your eyes glinted with excitement was unmistakably gotten from your passed parent. Something Diluc had always said he moved on from, but white lies can’t go against burning red, right?
And if he endured that grief to this day then what more would you have to bear should he also fall into the clutches of an untimely death. Such a pessimistic line of thinking made him question how late it was but realistically speaking who do you have left besides him? Sure you were well loved by the people of Mondstat and you have your fair share of friends your age, and he knew deep within his heart that your Auntie Jean wouldn’t neglect you with his wishes but then again she was in the same risk of deathly peril as he was. Barbara? A respectable role model for his child one he wouldn’t mind you looking up to as both an Idol and a familial figure.
“Papa? Do you wanna read?”
Diluc snapped out of his trance, your youthful voice brought him back to reality after staring off into space for a minute too long. You seemed to have taken it as him eyeing your fairy tail book and after working for so long today maybe he wanted to consume something more fictitious rather than the mundane paperwork? That’s what you thought at least.
The older redhead only replied with a dry chuckle, standing up ever so slowly before approaching your much smaller figure and hoisting you and your book up in order for him to slip into your seat— garnering your figure to make rest on his lap. His words of assurance towards your question managed to tug a smile on your expression.
The book you held was a special gift from Lisa for your last birthday, a beige leather book that had a compilation of children’s fairy tales. The current story you were reading was that of a Fairy kingdom where the royal heir goes on adventures with the aid of a holy songstress, an other worldly pirate, a northern toy maker and a benevolent kitsune. Meeting all these people reminded Diluc that perhaps you had a brighter future compared to what his intrusive thoughts entailed. You were currently at the part where the royal heir had finally returned to their kingdom not knowing that their father the King had grown ill.
Diluc grimaced at the scene especially when your innocent mind pointed out how much it sucked that the Heir wasn’t able to spend much time left with their papa. In an attempt to stop you from going down a dimmer line of thinking like he did, he took the reins and began reading for you. You’ve always been unconventionally bright, perhaps you just got it from both parents, something he’s simultaneously cursing and thankful for. And so on he read with the gentlest tone he could muster lest he fail his attempt.
“Even when the fairy king became one with the flowers… He’d always watch over his child, from young royal to a proud monarch. Plucking a flower from the ground is rather… iffy but, know that the absence gives new space for something only the royal child can make. One day you’ll make something of your own and when you do, many people will be there to cheer you on” “Really?” “Of course sweetheart.”
Soon enough you finally retired to your quarters, book clutched within your arms as Diluc pulled your thermal blanket over your figure. He softly shut the mahogany door before turning on his heel to trudge back to his office, passing by the foyer’s open window where he had a perfectly good view of the star littered sky above. Deep down he wished it was him instead of his beloved, he shook those thoughts away allowing his gaze to linger a little longer whilst his thoughts slowly drowned back into the plane of what ifs.
His comrades, his family, his allies, he truly hoped that one day you’ll have your own chosen kindred just like him, ones who wouldn’t allow your hopes and dreams to fall and shatter on the ground into unfixable pieces. That was wishful thinking— even with his current efforts, the world as is was crueler. He ought to send a more realistic wish, one where he hoped that one day you would have people to help you pick up your pieces. A young flame as bright as yourself can pull it off… This was a fact he can count on even beyond the grave.
“Dawn always comes… and until then, sleep well, dear.”
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Junebug - a bittersweet one for you, more or less set in two sides, because the dimitri energy got me thinking
What if shortly after his brush with death from the Outbound Flight, Thrass decides or you convince him to visit his birth family and introduce them to Themis.
Can you imagine the weird mix of emotions going on? How do his parents react to his scars? To the news of their other son’s career and exile? To the fact they’re grandparents now?
They’ve missed so much of their children’s lives and more or less resolved to be ok with that through virtue of they have to be.
And maybe Thrass gets to learn what really happened to Vurika, or it’s at the very least confirmed his suspicions. And it just makes his resolve to protect Themis all the stronger.
…
I don’t know, I just think there’s potential there
Oh my god no this is SO for real though
He had always made a point to visit his family after he was taken away. He wouldn't really say "adopted." That wasn't what it was. Not to him at least.
The visits hadn’t dwindled since you married, nor since you both had been preparing for Themis's arrival. But to protect his family, to keep them from worrying, he hadn’t told them of it. Not yet.
And then came the accident. His parents had never been told what happened. After all, in the eyes of the Chiss Ascendancy, they were not his parents. All they knew, for ages, was that their son had stopped coming to them.
Now? Now that he was back, healed (as much as he could be, at least), and with you... he should be glad to return to his parents, to explain everything. But... he fought against it.
"I can't," he said when you suggested the idea to him, "I can't let them see me like this."
"Thrass... you can't keep them in the dark like this," you told him, "They must think you're dead. Or that you've forgotten them..."
He was silent for a while. All he stared at were his hands. "You know... whenever I visited..." he began, smiling despite the sadness, "They wanted me to play music for them... At first, it was just to hear my progress as I learned... and then it... turned into our tradition. But... if I go back now..."
You knelt in front of him, touching his hands, far too aware of how fragile they had become. They shook, out of fear or pain, you couldn't say. Perhaps it was both.
"You came back to us... I know they would want you to come back to them," you said, "Don't you think it's time?"
As if to stop him from answering too quickly, Thrass felt something cold rest upon his hand. Looking down, he saw Themis, a tiny frown on her face as she concentrated, carefully dabbing his scarred knuckles with an ice pack. There was a time when nothing but his ambitions mattered. So many years of his life dedicated to getting into the room where it happened. And now that it's gone, all that work wiped out in a single moment... he had this. This small girl who went out of her way to take care of him in a way she should never have had to. And you, you who stayed with him through everything, despite the Mitth's insistence that he was dead.
He knew. You were right. At the very least, his family deserved to meet you and Themis.
His parents didn't know what to feel first. The anger at his absence all these years, the relief that he was alright, the shock at the scars running from legs to his face, the surprise at the family he'd built. Every emotion fought for its place at the forefront of their minds. And they settled for an embrace.
"Vuras..." said his mother, already managing to be out of breath, "It's... truly you..."
"I... I'm sorry I kept you waiting," he said with a nervous smile, still unable to avoid humor at a time like this.
"We thought we had lost our last child," his father added tightly. You saw Thrass's composure from his father, the ability to do what he believed in, even if such things managed to be the most difficult in the world. The weight that rested on Thrass's shoulders was inherited, and the constant shame that came with being a Kivu only became heavier after Thrass's incident. And yet... he must closely resembled his mother. From the color of his eyes, to the proud nose, to the gentle way his lips rested apart. She looked like a woman who came from somewhere and chose something else. You saw a similar path written in her son's face.
"I might very well have been lost," he said quietly, "If not for... well..."
He looked to you and Themis, standing formally by his side. His mother covered her mouth in the realization, and his father looked close to tears, though you knew he would never admit to it.
The woman looked as if she had so much to say, yet no words to say it. All she could offer was a quiet "thank you," over and over again, holding both your hands in hers. "We had always begged for fortune to look after our sons. Perhaps... it truly did, by sending you in its place."
His mother's attention turned to Themis, and as she began the process of learning her grandmother's trust, Thrass spoke with his father.
"You haven't heard from... Thrawn?"
"No," said his father, almost wincing at the piece of the Mitth that attached itself to their youngest son, "We haven't heard from him since the day he was taken." It was something Thrass knew well, yet he had hoped otherwise. His brother hadn't even looked back when Thurfian had come for him. It haunted their parents, despite their attempts to imply otherwise.
"Nor Vurika," his father added, causing Thrass's attention to pique, "Though that's to be expected, considering..."
"Considering... what?" Thrass pressed.
Below, Themis presented her grandmother with a small purple candy, taking the woman aback.
"Isn't this your favorite?" the child asked entirely innocently.
"How did... you know?" Thrass's mother asked, receiving only a shrug in reply. She looked up to his father, and gave a stiff nod as she frowned.
"Considering... that," his father said simply, gesturing his head towards the child, "It's genetic, you know. You won't be able to hide it from them for long."
"That... has been considered," Thrass said, glancing at you, "I know what they say of Skywalkers. I know it's considered an honor, but I... can't see it that way. I had to hide it from Thrawn, especially... of all people... With what he believes in, what I've come to believe... I simply can't let anyone take her. She's... not for them to take."
His mother nodded sagely. "That's what we said, too. But they would have taken her whether we let them or not."
"I can't leave you both behind," Thrass said, "Not after I've been gone so long... not after Thrawn's exile..."
It was what they had heard. Thrawn was high enough rank in the Ascendancy that the news of his exile had reached even the most obscure families. They had grieved it long ago. They had grieved him the moment he had stepped from their arms.
But they no longer had to grieve Thrass.
"Vuras," his mother said warmly, standing to hold his shoulders, "You've returned to us, shown us that you're safe. It's all we could ever want. Now, you must do what is best for your family. If that means you must leave, then we shall happily watch you go, knowing that you all will be safe."
And suddenly, you realized why his mother's name sounded so familiar. Vurini. She was once Syndic Zirini, the famous and well-spoken syndic of the Arizi family, one of few born to the name. Long ago, she had once been known for her ability to convince nearly anyone to join her sides, no matter what the decision might have been. And one day, many say she disappeared, took the money and trekked off to gods-know-where. The truth, it seems, was much simpler than that.
For a reason you couldn't identify, your breath caught when his mother took his hands, peering at the scars. "Music can be made in many ways," she said to him, "A few lines can't stop that."
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Rosie’s eldest children across timelines / pairings (at least with the LI’s, not including other ocs 👁👄👁) bc I’ve been thinking about them. They’re funky in their own special ways ♥♥
Laoise (Rosie / Julian): congratulations bestie you inherited both your parents’ mental illness and none of their extroversion 🥳 ! Grumpy she/they with a propensity for fire magic who honestly just wants to be left alone so she can study architecture and naval history.
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Willow (Rosie / Muriel): He got his daddy’s build but unfortunately not his brains. Bless his heart he’s a bit of a menace; his favorite past time is throwing logs off cliffs to watch them explode. Likes to carry people around and also likes getting into fights at the tavern. Big softie for his younger siblings though
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Sasha (Rosie / Portia): Oh my god she’s one of those kids that's always either climbing a tree or taking something apart to try and figure out how it works. Definitely gets into any projects to modernize the city (big steampunk vibes?? maybe??) I think it would be something she would bond over with Nadia :”) ♥
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Poppy (Rosie / Asra): ART KID 👏 You know those girls who like always have paint on their clothes and their hair tied back with a paintbrush in it? And a windowsill full of succulents? Yeah that’s her. Very chill and laid back. Does a lot of painting and some pottery work, she likes to mix magic in with the watercolors to get some really beautiful special effects, i think its something Asra would have taught her ♥
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one time i wrote this post halfway out and then was like mmmmm nevermiiiiind and deleted it bc i didnt like my formatting so ive decided to do it AGAIN and just have 0 format hahaha
and im gonna hide this one so i can just be messy and bullet point it but TO PREMISE just MYYYYYYY thoughties on the triplets and nicknames and whatnot hahaha :))))))) just stuff pertaining to names lol,,,,, keep it broad,,,,,,,,,, (YOU GUYS DO WHATEVER!!!!!!! dont stick to this reliably or anything for a guideline i just ponder it every so often LOL)
i actually dont think id considered chakotay naming them when theyre lil salamander nymphs or anything when i'd started the au and jellybeans doing that was SUPER CUTE :) i love Starlight for amelia more than my original idea (which was that kathryn would nickname her that) and i heckiggn ADOREEEEEE him calling philippa Pip. i love both junior AND wanderer for ed im not really set on one or the other hahaha, both make sense.
i think chakotay would be the only one to call philippa Pip and shes VERY fond of him calling her that. (greedily fell in love with this nickname because its the same name John gives to Chiana in farscape and when she asks "why Pip" he explains it's because she's his favorite traveling companion heehee)
with amelia as Starlight im like mmmm MAYBE kathryn would call her that,,, but i think it'd be kinda like using "darling" to her or "precious" :3 definitely chakotay still calls her that though
same with Pip for philippa like MAYBE kathryn slips an "oh, Pip" every so often but its rare or late in the game
most people probably nickname philippa as Peppa
i think alice had the idea one time that amelia would be nicknamed mealybug (meeliebug??? meelie???) i thiiiink by philippa, kinda derogatory but playful, i like that one :)
love that da vinci calls amelia Mia :3 very on brand with her mother
edward is very Ed-zoned by most people, very casual about it, probably doesnt vibe his full name very much lol.
ummmm admittedly i havent read any books pertaining to Chakotay's name culture all that much, supposedly it exists i just havent gotten to it yet, but MAYBE edward would have an inherited name pertaining to that. i'm not sure though. put a pin in that one haha.
ummmm my weird take on kathryn is that (at least in the beginning) she lowkey loathes the shortening of her children's names so she'd pretty strictly refer to them by their full names. like her son having her father's name, philippa (maybe) being the name her and mark had wanted to potentially name a daughter, amelia being AMELIA. like IN TIME i think she'd come around to stuff like Peppa and Ed, but for a long while there's a formality she upholds about her children's names. likeeee idk in some book canon it talks about how kathryn hated when phoebe would call her Kitten (something her father would call her in the Autobio canon,,,,,), shed subsequently call her sister Phoebs which she hated, but there's also the kathryn nicknaming of Goldenbird by her father in Mosaic canon. BUT she always refers to herself as kathryn and rarely do we see any deviation from that,,, likeee with Q calling her Kathy,,,,, and all her silly holodeck names which are equally as lengthy as her own name lol.
philippa HAAAATEEEEES hearing her mother's stern scoldy mother voice call her by her full name, its grating and irritable and doesnt help matters when they quarrel constantly
like they idea that tom calls philippa Pumpkin specifically. :) just as i want to kiss the brain of whoever came up with the idea that he'd call miral Peanut... BRILLIANT... i can see chakotay Also calling philippa Pumpkin though,,,,, head empty on the other two in regards to Tom,,, maybe Honey for amelia idk lol
chakotay gets papa/dad/daddy zoned to the kids, Tom is Tom :) b'elanna is b'elanna
kathryn gets all your typical mom variations but lol i think philippa has AT LEAST once referred to her as Kathryn out of spite <3 maybe amelia calls her captain/admiral more than she should :')
im sure SOMEONE would refer to philippa as Eyebrows,,,,,,,
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How i meet your mother and the story of how Arya Maxson was concieved - Chapter 18
Im not doing fine, like 0 fine, absolutly horrible, I hate it, this days has been horrible
If you are very very very delighted with one fic and want a continuation I didn’t write or post you can donate me at least $5 bucks, most of this fics have next chapters I don’t finish because lack of motivation but hey a $5 is a $5, I see a few reviews and comments that fics that are abandoned months laters receive comments of wanting to know what happens next. Here it is, I finished my handling with you all, enjoy the fic
This time he wasn’t as defeated as the last time, he was confident, happy to tell everybody he was going to be the best dad ever with the most amazing woman he ever met
He was still late tho, intentional, to see if they fucking go home to mind their own business but they didn’t retire from the conference room at all.
Still, today he had the conversation prepared, in total control, nobody was going to mock at him, specially with the proof he now had…
He open the gate and enter like anything happened.
-Welcome to the quarterly meeting renamed into how Arthur Maxson knocked up his only sentinel? –said our dearly maester Maxson to everybody in the room with a shiny smile.
Silence.
Of course, nobody liked that
-Very funny Maxson –said one of the elders reunited, already prepared for his unnecessary sarcasm.
-We wanted to congratulate you personally on your pregnancy –said a second elder.
-Even tho we are a little late on dates…
-Don’t worry, I'm sure you alll wanted to make sure we made it through the first trimester without an abortion –said Arthur more spicy than he ever was in this room.
-Well yeah –said a third elder- basically –the first elder looked at him bad- why should we lie? –a fourth elder covered his face with his hands out of shame.
-We are glad the medical supplies you asked us arrived to the citadel safely –said the first elder- I was surprised when you asked
-I had plenty of confidence we would reach to the point were knowing the sex its necessary –reply Maxson
-A healthy girl, im excited to see her first blood samples to check on the mix of Noras blood and yours, maybe there’s no much difference and she inherits the good genes of her mother.
Gosh hopefully that’s the case.
-With the information you gave us the mother is in good state too –said a fifth elder- it’s a shame you retired her from the brotherhood so early, so much potential wasted, she had a good trajectory of service.
-On the contrary, we are planning on having kids until the last of her fertile years
Then everybody in the room busted in laughs
Wa-What did he say? What was so funny?
-Oh he is on that fase right now –said the second elder
-We all have been there
-Kiddo when the first son arrives its all stars and flowers
-But you want me to have more kids –repeated Arthur, more Maxson offspring
-More heirs to your last names if something happens to you or the first one, replacements–the fourth elder laugh. Ok that was just fucked up.
-You know how difficult it was to keep you alive as a kid? And you were the only one! You are alive and breathing by miracle practically
-So what’s the problem…-Arthur didn’t stand this people, they were pretty unpleasant.
-Eventually you will overpass the blooming fase of the first pregnancy –said another- but yeah I agree is a good idea to use until the last of her fertile years, she gave as much needed to the brotherhood service since the beginning, now she can serve…in some other fields…-not exactly as a woman since she didn’t have much future bearing children but yes as a clean adn genetic bank…while bearing children
Arthur didn’t like at all that comment it was disdainful and very disgusting about her.
-Please be extra careful with the radiation around, for pregnant woman its not just dosis of rad-x and that’s all, it can cause abortions or premature deliverys –the third elder spoke- I have a bad experience with that
-We heard she doesn’t exactly lives here in the citadel
-No, since she is retired having an outsider living in our barracks will be a mistake, right now its an exception because she is under medical treatment after…
-After her settlement was attacked –damn Maxson had to shut when they said that- we heard
-You should probably want to fix that Maxson –said the fourth elder- we appreciate her efforts after retirement to make the wastelands a safer place and even giving the brotherhood a space in Tenpenny Tower to rest and recharge energy’s but intervene so she doesn't get in trouble especially now, and for the next few years if she is really the woman you chose to have your offspring.
-Which we really encourage because she is a really good match for you in all senses–said the fifth sighting- she could at least keep the title for the records tho
-I was about to offer myself to court her in the last meeting if Maxson refused-oh boy if he rejected her Nora would accept this old gag? It wasn’t on the contrary on her intentions exactly, it could still serve her purposes of having resources to keep their child safe
-Oh please air comes when you jack off surely –the two elders were joking between them.
The fourth elder speak again- I just wanna say this because I think is important: the fact she ask to not be a sentinel anymore removes her obligations to the brotherhood and the codex, which is concerning for you Maxson - our dearly maester Maxson look at him- Her own place with her own obligations and problems seems like a good excuse to walk away and leave the father figure aside, we ask you to please be present so that does not happen, your children, your legacy, are more your responsibility than hers. Be careful with them.
It was obvious for everyone that they weren’t together romantically as a couple that’s for sure, but nobody was saying anything about it, maybe they see it as a benefit. Mother and father agree to be together and have the Maxson offspring until she cant bear more children. Both strong names with big inheritances and properties
That hit like a rock the bottom of his head: Then what? She will leave? Stop talking or asking help? No way, theyll have to raise them together, raising children takes a lot of time and if they plan to have many…
Its true anyway, he accepted losing her as a capable and excellent soldier and having her as a mother, and he expected her to be a good mother.
What happens after her 60s? sure she can go around to do works and missions surely because he knows her capacities but she will also have to take care of small children and teenagers with him…truth is he preferred his kids to have a complete family, he didn’t have the chance, he wanted to experience what a true complete family is, and be the protagonist if he could, be the father along with a mother, she has that experience, at least for a brief period of time, that’s why she looked for him.
-Like we said before –spoke the first elder at seeing Maxson disturbed- we are glad to have pictures of a future member of the family at this point, hope the next reunion is between crys and dirty diapers
Family? They aint his family
Arya is.
Nora stay in the citadel for three weeks until the bumps and scars on her scalp disappeared and her exams were much better. For Arthur it was like a dream, they did it like rabbits all days even if it wasn’t necessary because she was already pregnant, very pregnant, even the following transvaginal echography was perfect, there it was his princess, moving and eating, he was waiting eager and crazy for her first kicks!
Arya was a little behind in that regard, kicks starts at 4 or 5 months and she was nearly 6 now…but Arthur was happy that he was in good terms with her mom, he can enjoy this moments, the pregnancy was a thing of both parents after all
And gosh her tits were getting filled so quickly, the growing was so fun to see and play with in bed. Nora liked it a lot too
She even has leaks of…she says its more oils and water than milk but it fulfilled all his pregnancy kinks so bad, it tasted so good, poor Nora was pretty ashamed when her clothes get wet, she started wearing hoodies on top of her dresses to not be ridiculized. He said its fine no one would mock at the elders woman but understood what she mean and why she was emotional sometimes, he understand and did his best to cope with her raising hormones, its fine, he was happy to have her there at his side and she seems happy with the company too.
-Hey I have to tell you something -she told him in a moment of peace while sewing small holes in some stockings- I have to leave to Pittsburg for a week at least.
Wa Whyyyyy? Arthur looked at her very very disturbed.
-No way –he said sitting at her side trying to be as clear as possible- what in the world do you have to do there? –that nasty horrible place full of trogs and illness in the air…
-I have some errands to do in the forge –she said calmly- you don’t think my money machine is automatic don’t you?
-You are far too pregnant to risk yourself like that -said the man in denial.
-Well some issues in the forge requires my attention and presence
-That place is full of radiation everywhere, people gets sick just staying around
-Im aware –he raised his eyebrows and shoulders like asking-I now is a risk but I have to…
-No you don’t –Arthur was perplex- you don’t have to
-Im having a problem with my providers how do you expect…?
-I don’t know, send me, I can…-he truly was lost and didn’t know but the way she laughed at him was nasty-what’s so funny?
Cunt.
-What makes you think you know anything about my business? –she said with an innocent smile, appreciating his gesture- what I have to do at Pittsburg? –it was pure innocence from him, he really was nice
Its true, even if they expend a lot of time together he didn’t know her, he didn’t know her enough or even that much, they were almost strangers. Its like they agree to be parents and that’s all, its all what she wanted from him since the beginning.
She offer everything of herself for the opportunity to have his seed and he never asked anything.
-Well you can tell me or give me-he was interrupted
-Orders?
The word was instructions but…
-I don’t want you getting sick because of radiation.
- I'm also afraid of losing our baby if I go there-a hand of her pose on top of his, making him jump in his place- but I have to go for things to not fall apart.
-Please let me help you –their baby was too valuable to loose-im sure I can pay in caps whatever amount you are going to lose with that provider…-she laughed painfuly now.
-You don’t know anything at all –the hand over his pressed with her fingers- There are many problems that I decided to ignore since I became pregnant and that are now accumulating like a snowball falling down the slope, I have to go to solve them, to put my face and my presence, the image that I am still very alive and that no one can keep the forge
Arthur sucked air into his lungs to the stomach and breath out. Then look at the ceiling. Sometimes she was too far from him.
-Please be careful, you are not immune to radiation as you may think –she was strong, many levels above people, with perks and qualities most doesn’t have but that doesn’t make her inmortal, less Arya.
-I know, I still have to figure out a plan to avoid radiation to make me feel bad–much more affecting Arya, he crossed his eyebrows and use all his brain capacity to think.
-I suppose I can ask a team of scribes to modify an exoskeleton of a power armor to make the torso more bigger, it’s the only thing you grow, you are still thinn
-My feets doesn’t agree with that –the hand she was pressing was raised and moved to his lips where he leave a soft kiss- I have two sizes down before my first pregnancy, once your feets grow they stay like that, that’s why I don’t have a big collection of shoes
She was trying to diffuse the subject –Nora –he called, wanting her to pay attention-I really don’t want you to go there
He was thinking in all the horrible scenarios were something can happened to Arya.
-But I have to, theres also problems I promised to fix months ago…
-Please think in our daughter, I don’t want anything happening to her –does he really need to beg for her to not put in risk their baby?
-Obviously I don’t want neither –she didn’t like what he was implying- Im sorry
-Can I go with you? –she instantly denied with the head, like she knew that at any point he was going to ask that.
-Do you want to?
-Absolutely not but I want to protect Arya and…-that’s right, the only real connection they had together is their daughter, and if he protected their baby, he protected her.
-Im not a sentinel anymore I cant have brotherhood influence-Arthur interrupted her.
-Please that’s bullshit you have been sentinel and owner of the forge for 6 years now it doesn’t matter if there’s brotherhood presence…
-I cant –she simply said- I will not, you are an elder, I cant hide that from nobody
He almost wanted to cry, it seems like she planned this for a long time, she wasn’t backing up with anything.
-How can I prevent you from going? -what did I have to do? Lock her in a room at least until she gave birth to their daughter? That aint right.
-You can’t –she simply said, moving her hand to his cheek to caress it- I have to go and solve a lot of management and logistics problems
He stay in silence, his chest was trembling, he feared.
-Its going to be a long week –he knew she was lying, it was going to be more than a week, her missions never were short, she takes her time.
-Let me promise you something -for the first time he saw her falter in something, give in, was it due to something hormonal? Nora had never felt sorry for him nor had she felt sorry for him, she was not that type of person-in case of anything happens im sending a radio signal –he shaked his head amazed
-Of course if something happens you are going to radio for help you moron–now she place a finger in his lips, he didn’t like that, you just don’t shhhhhh the elder.
-Let me finish, once I feel Arya first kicks im sending a signal asking for elder Maxson to come immediately to Pittsburg
Well with that he can negotiate.
She hugged his head and Arthur lay his forehead on her chest, breathing, taking big breaths
-I wouldn’t want to miss that for anything in the world
-Ill be extra careful okay? –it didn’t matter, nothing matters.
-I cant stop you from going anyway.
He could choose to use violence, his power, there was nothing stopping him, she wasn’t a sentinel anymore, there wasn’t a rank subject and they weren’t married, if he retained her in a room or captured her it would be just the elder keeping hostage a civilian, big thing, he wished from the deepest darkness of his heart to do the impossible to stop her and…he woundt…for some reason he couldn’t understand, something was stopping him.
It wasn’t exactly his daughter, in fact the baby was consuming him into a void of darkness difficult to get out, making him wish for her mother to get hurt and impossible to move away from his side where she was safe. The other side of his mind was praying for her safety out there in the wastelands, it was inconvenient, even dangerous for his baby to trust in this woman, but the other side of his mind cared.
He cared.
Knew all the negative things she had and still cared. And if by some reason, crazy reason, she asked for help, he was ready for it.
Arthur only hoped this didn’t hurt much to any of them
0 notes
I began writing this essay while putting off writing another one. My apartment is full of books I haven’t read, and others I read so long ago that I barely remember what’s in them. When I’m writing something, I’m often tempted to pick one up that has nothing to do with my subject. I’ve always wanted to read this, I think, idly flipping through, my eyes fixing on a stray phrase or two. Maybe it will give me a new idea.
In this moment of mild delusion, I’m distracted. I’ve always wanted to write an essay about distraction, I think. Add it to the laundry list of incomplete ideas I continue to nurse because some part of me suspects they will never come to fruition, and so will never have to be endured by readers. These are things you can keep in the drawer of your mind, glittering with unrealized potential. In the top row of my bedroom bookshelf is a copy of Flaubert’s final novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet. Something about it seems appropriate, though I’m not sure exactly what. I pluck it down.
***
Bouvard and Pécuchet is at heart a simple novel, though its episodes could branch out, fractal-like, into infinity. There is a reason Flaubert never finished it, despite working on it for at least eight years before dying of a stroke at the age of fifty-eight. Originally titled “The Tale of Two Nobodies” (literally “The Two Woodlice”), its protagonists are two copy clerks, who, in the middle of nineteenth-century Paris, meet on a bench on a boulevard. Superficially, they are complementary opposites: one short, one tall; one ascetic, the other sensual. In a deeper sense, they are the same: office workers who perform questionably meaningful tasks while trying to cling to a bare sense of individuality. They strike up a friendship—they are amateurs, dilettantes, believers in progress. They are, in Flaubert’s imagination, men of their time. As they grow bored with their jobs of rote reproduction, they set out to fill their leisure with the pursuit of knowledge:
They learned about discoveries, read prospectuses, and their newfound curiosity caused their intelligence to bloom. On a horizon that receded further each day, they glimpsed things at once strange and wondrous.
(I am relying here on Mark Polizzotti’s translation.) After Bouvard receives an inheritance from a recently deceased uncle, the two men hatch a plan to remove themselves from the city’s bustle and the drudgery of their work. They will use the money to buy a modest estate and live a life of freedom as country squires: “No more writing! No more bosses! Not even rent to pay! For they would own a house of their own! And they would eat chickens from their own farmyard, vegetables from their garden—and would dine with their clogs still on!”
Liberated from the office, they now can do whatever they wish. Why not tend their own garden, as Voltaire’s Candide once exhorted? Well, curious minds that they are, they want to learn the best way to make the garden grow. So they turn to books, and become case studies in the dangers of overestimating one’s own intelligence. If they are gardening, they think, why not turn to agriculture, too, and make better use of their land? Their plants die. Why do the plants die? Because, Bouvard and Pécuchet conclude, they didn’t sufficiently understand the hard sciences—and so their study of chemistry begins. Chapter by chapter, Flaubert lampoons his poor pair, who fail at discipline after attempted discipline: landscape architecture, anatomy, history, literature, phrenology, religion, even love, and on and on. In each pursuit, they never lose the optimism or the hubris of thinking they can put their knowledge to work in the world. When they become interested in pedagogy, they adopt a pair of abandoned children who are at turns mystified by and contemptuous of their efforts to improve their well-being. The fruit trees fail, the novel is abandoned, a cat is boiled alive, the children cause scandals.
Commentators have remarked on the static structure of the novel: the reader must be willing to hear the same joke told repeatedly in different variations—a joke that punishes its pitiful protagonists over and over. Each time, this odd couple believes that they are close to a breakthrough, or at least to something like fluency, in their newly chosen field. But when difficulties emerge, failure follows quickly: “They gave up.” This futility is matched by, or even enhanced by, their optimism. Each time they surrender, they find something else to become engrossed in. Is this perseverance, or life as a great chain of distractions? And have they tricked themselves into thinking it matters?
***
What is distraction? Maybe it is just the need to be diverted: from the direction you originally set out on, from what it was you thought you wanted to do. After all, to desire something requires projecting yourself into the future—how do you know you’ll still want it when you get there? And along the way there are so many attractions, way stations, spots of time. Even an annoyance can be a pleasure: a fly keeps buzzing around your head while you try to write the next sentence, a ringtone interrupts the movie, and—it’s you. Just this one time you’ve forgotten to turn your phone off. If only the world would stop bothering you, you could finally get down to work.
Bouvard and Pécuchet, you may think, aren’t exactly distracted. In fact, at times they seem nearly maniacal in their thirst for knowledge. But isn’t the idea that] they are potentially interested in everything a kind of curse, something worse than indifference? As fast as they find a passion, they can be drawn away from it. They are avatars of the societal affliction Flaubert called la bêtise—mankind’s universal stupidity. Their curiosity has no staying power—it’s just the dirty runoff of a Zeitgeist that tells them to improve themselves, improve the human race. Their distraction implies a lack of concentration, the mark of a bad student. And they are tragic because they want so much to be good, to get the right answer. All the worse that they’re not reflective enough to see that all the spinning of their wheels will never lead anywhere. (But how could anyone think that and keep going?)
Now that I no longer work a forty-hour-a-week job, I tell many people I am writing a book. It is going along, I say, but slowly. How is it that so many chores, parties, trips, assignments, and plainly wasted hours intervene? Not everyone is distracted from their most cherished goals. But I think everyone is distracted from something—it is desire’s shadow, trailing behind our self-presentations. By beginning anything, we create the possibility of detours.
***
Today, it’s a commonplace to call the internet the ultimate distraction. While putting off writing this piece, itself already a distraction, I maintained a powerful ability to introduce obstacles to its completion. Recently, during another attempt to write, I snapped to my senses hours later, as if smash-cut through time, and realized I had been watching skateboarding videos on YouTube. I have never skateboarded in my life—I am not certain I have ever even attempted to put two feet on a board. I binged a Thrasher series called My War, about skaters who have struggled with a particularly difficult trick and persevered. I watch a skater known as Jaws ollie a massive twenty-five-step staircase in Lyon, tear his MCL, and come back, months later, to essentially jump off the side of a building repeatedly until he lands the trick. There’s no way this can be good for your body, but I find myself strangely compelled by the almost religious dedication. In their pursuit to hurl themselves down large flights of stairs, the skaters are committed.
I close the browser. There is an entire genre of commentary based around the idea that computers or the internet are having a deleterious effect on our attention spans, even on our reading comprehension. We are never present, the platforms having gamed out our interests better than we can ourselves. We contemplate putting our phones in automatically locking pouches before we sit down to dinner. I’m not sure it’s so simple—everywhere, a lot of work seems to be getting done, and every day we seem to be faced with more text to read than ever. I return to my document. I take some disparate phrases from my notebook and start to arrange them into the lines of a poem. Even doing something ostensibly virtuous, I am still attempting escape. I start looking at one of the pdfs I have open in Preview: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
All that we should do is just do something as it comes. Do something! Whatever it is, we should do it, even if it is not-doing something. We should live in this moment. So when we sit we concentrate on our breathing, and we become a swinging door, and we do something we should do, something we must do. This is Zen practice. In this practice there is no confusion. If you establish this kind of life you have no confusion whatsoever.
Ah, turning to Zen—a bit of a cliché, I think, but still. Haven’t I been doing something, even sitting in front of this machine? I’ve at least been the swinging door, letting the rest of existence pass through me.
***
Flaubert did an immense amount of research for Bouvard and Pécuchet. While writing the novel, Flaubert read around fifteen hundred books in all the subjects that his Nobodies attempt and abandon. Perhaps Flaubert, in some sense, became one of la betîse himself, because he would never become a master of agronomy, anatomy, or pedagogy—only a master of the pen, an “homme-plume,” as he called himself in his letters. And the more he reads, the further he gets from completing his universal book.
Even the protagonists, having learned something despite themselves, can’t help but become melancholy, like Flaubert. In their defeat they become strangely sensitive, easily disturbed:
Then their minds developed a piteous faculty, that of perceiving stupidity and being unable to tolerate it. Insignificant things saddened them: newspaper advertisements, a burgher’s profile, an inane comment overheard by chance. And reflecting on what was said in their village … they felt upon their shoulders the weight of the entire world.
In order to write an essay on a new topic, often one has to sail a little in the dark. I am not a Flaubert expert. I can write this essay only as an amateur: the breadth of scholarship on one of the giants of the novel is too daunting for me to do it otherwise—I would have to give up before I began.
Research easily becomes its own distraction. Fiction writers are not unfamiliar with this crisis, having placed their character under a tree, then specifying what kind of tree it is, then wondering if that tree would be in flower at this particular time of year, whether it grows in the particular geographical region where the story takes place. We can become masters of rationalizing the inessential.
There’s a kind of comfort in toying with a large body of knowledge, the way in which you can avoid writing a paper by entering a rabbit hole on Wikipedia—beginning on the front page and finding yourself reading about Byzantine dynasties, or non-Newtonian fluids, or Rome’s Crisis of the Third Century. Maybe this activity, even if it never gets us anywhere, is something closer to play. And without it, at least from time to time, we become dull.
***
Despite all the hand-wringing about distraction, it’s asked less often what it is that what we want to attend to in the first place (or, if answered, numbingly conventional—we want to “be more productive”). Today, being distracted usually has a negative connotation, because it most often means “not working,” whether you’re watching the World Cup from a browser window stashed behind your spreadsheet or you’ve decided to go to the bar on a Tuesday night instead of staying in and writing your three hundred words or polishing your presentation or organizing your sock drawer. A common idea of distraction presupposes that you’re turning away from something more important that you ought to be paying attention to instead. And you ought to be working all the time.
In order to succeed in a hypercapitalist society, we must focus. And to focus usually means to specialize: acquiring a skill, becoming a special version of ourselves—a person with a “bit” that distinguishes us from the cross section of people who otherwise share our Google AdSense data metrics. It can be hard work to become this particular, outward-facing self. The idea returns to me to the old chestnut of Marx’s in The German Ideology, imagining a different way of life:
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
We live in nothing close to this hypothetical society, and we may never. But if Marx’s hunter-fisherman-shepherd-critic (an animal lover!) can be really envisioned, it’s clear that he is not distracted. Whatever he does is what pleases him. He is always where he wants to be.
***
There is a curious kind of essay that exists now, that is half-literary, half-personal: My life with author X. A year of reading author Y. The hope is that the personal touch might refresh the dusty pages of the classics—or, more likely, that great literature can buttress a first-person narrative that doesn’t quite cohere into a finished story, not yet quite heroic enough. An earlier version of this essay had more of me in it.
During Bouvard and Pécuchet’s brief turn as authors, they experiment with comedy and pick up Xavier de Maistre’s 1794 A Journey around My Room, a “travelogue” of sitting still (it was written while the author was under house arrest) that blows up mundane details to mock-heroic proportions. They are quickly discouraged:
In this kind of book, it seemed, one must always interrupt the narrative to talk about one’s dog, one’s slippers, or one’s mistress. Such a lack of inhibition charmed them at first, then struck them as imbecilic—for the author erases his work by shining too much light on himself.
It feels good to erase myself, at least for a while. Still, something weed-like in me wants to make myself visible, to be a voice as attractive to you as Flaubert’s was to me.
***
Flaubert rose late, around ten, and took his time in the morning. At eleven, as one of his biographers, Frederick Brown, reports, he fortified himself for his task:
Unable to work well on a full stomach, he ate lightly, or what passed for such in the Flaubert household, meaning that his first meal consisted of eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The family then lounged on the terrace, unless foul weather kept them indoors, or climbed a steep path through woods behind their espaliered kitchen garden to a glade dubbed La Mercure after the statue of Mercury that once stood there. Shaded by chestnut trees, near their hillside orchard, they would argue, joke, gossip, and watch vessels sail up and down the river. Another site of open-air refreshment was the eighteenth-century pavilion. After dinner, which generally lasted from seven to nine, dusk often found them there, looking out at moonlight flecking the water and fisherman casting their hoop nets for eel.
In June 1852, Flaubert told Louise Colet that he worked from 1 P.M. to 1 A.M. A year later, when he assumed partial responsibility for Liline’s education and gave her an hour or more of his time each day, he may not have put pen to paper at his large round writing table until two o’clock or later.
Among the many things he is famous for, Flaubert is known as a perfectionist, a meticulous craftsman refining the rhythm of each sentence until it possessed the cold polish of a gem. He complained frequently of his slow progress in his letters—the legend is that he wrote at a pace of about five words per hour.
But can all the time spent at the desk truly be accounted for? Is it possible that, despite his protestations, Flaubert was simply … goofing off sometimes? I will leave that question for the experts, but I know I have been prone to say the work was going very slowly when, in reality, I was doing something else.
And wasn’t that time that Flaubert spent before he set down to work, the time of a cup of cold chocolate and then the orchard, watching the sailboats pass by, a very good time after all?
***
Commentators have speculated that Flaubert considered appending to his novel a document he had written some years before, the so-called Dictionary of Received Ideas, a compendium of the banalities and clichés of his time—the nineteenth-century French equivalents of telling people that New York City rent is too damn high or that our country is more polarized than ever. The brilliance of the entries, which are alphabetically arranged, is in their teetering on the brink of being taken seriously:
ILLUSIONS: Claim to have many. Lament having lost them.
IMAGES: Poetry always contains too many of them.
IMAGINATION: Always vivid. Guard against it. When one has none, denigrate it in others. To write novels, all you need is a little imagination.
Flaubert never finished Bouvard and Pécuchet, but he left notes about how it might end: After a climactic confrontation with their village neighbors, who have put up with their eccentricities for long enough, the two Nobodies finally feel defeated. Exhausted and penniless again, they decide to return to their first love: copying. They “smile when they think of it.” The Dictionary, the fruit of their renewed scrawling, would both demonstrate their “learning” and release them, blissfully, from thought.
According to Flaubert, the use of the dictionary was not just to collect people’s stupidities—instead, it was to make one afraid to speak at all, since whenever you open your mouth, you may immediately find yourself saying something that isn’t your own. It takes immense effort and concentration to become new. Still, one wonders what Flaubert would have done for material if everyone had simply shut up.
***
I’m staring out my window at my desk—surely a timeworn part of the writing process. It is late summer now. A female cardinal, its colors muted but beautiful, has gone away after spending the day as my main attraction. I’m wrapping this up, getting ready to go to dinner. Wondering how this got started, how and why I wrote several thousand words about something I still know rather little about, really. And thinking about everything else that could have been in it (Thoreau, the class where I first read Flaubert, every terrible thing I saw and felt because I came of age “online”) that I left out. I think about how much more I enjoy starting things than finishing them. I’ve always wanted to feel full of potential, more even than needing that potential to be realized, maybe. As you get a bit older, disappointment arrives to fill that space. But it gives things their contours, too—if you’re committed, you chip away against that newly evident limit. Hoping to go a little further next time.
***
In 1875, Flaubert, stymied by his research for and the slow pace of Bouvard and Pécuchet, began a side project. He wrote the stories that would later be collected in the volume known as Three Tales. The first and the most famous is called “A Simple Heart.” It is both connected to and completely unlike his encyclopedic monument to human stupidity. The tale focuses on the sad, slow life of a woman named Félicité, the housemaid of a well-to-do widow in a Norman town much like the one Flaubert grew up in. Félicité has few distractions to speak of, because her life has virtually no pleasure. For a modest sum, she “did all the cooking and the housework, she saw to the darning, the washing and the ironing, she could bridle a horse, keep the chickens well fed and churn the butter.” She toils thanklessly for her mistress for years, appearing, to the bourgeoisie that frequent the house, to be indistinguishable from the furniture. For Félicité, anything that disrupts this backbreaking monotony is something to be savored in memory: the man who tried to court her when she was a young woman, a dangerous encounter with an angry bull in a pasture, even the death of her beloved nephew, a sailor, on the other side of the globe. These detours from daily routine are, in fact, the signature moments of her life.
When Félicité receives a parrot from a neighbor, a gift that reminds of her of her nephew and the New World to which he might have sailed, it is a balm from beyond: something to care for that is not merely a matter of survival, something harboring a mystery, however small. After its death, the parrot is stuffed and becomes a kind of object of religious adoration for Félicité. She imagines that she sees it, her last vision, at the moment of her death.
For a man who spent his time cursing the world for its idiocy, this is a moment of remarkable imaginative sympathy, and of love. The fugitive moments in between our lifelong undertakings, whatever their ultimate worth, may be what we are searching for all along. Maybe we are distracted because we are still learning how to live.
0 notes
I began writing this essay while putting off writing another one. My apartment is full of books I haven’t read, and others I read so long ago that I barely remember what’s in them. When I’m writing something, I’m often tempted to pick one up that has nothing to do with my subject. I’ve always wanted to read this, I think, idly flipping through, my eyes fixing on a stray phrase or two. Maybe it will give me a new idea.
In this moment of mild delusion, I’m distracted. I’ve always wanted to write an essay about distraction, I think. Add it to the laundry list of incomplete ideas I continue to nurse because some part of me suspects they will never come to fruition, and so will never have to be endured by readers. These are things you can keep in the drawer of your mind, glittering with unrealized potential. In the top row of my bedroom bookshelf is a copy of Flaubert’s final novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet. Something about it seems appropriate, though I’m not sure exactly what. I pluck it down.
***
Bouvard and Pécuchet is at heart a simple novel, though its episodes could branch out, fractal-like, into infinity. There is a reason Flaubert never finished it, despite working on it for at least eight years before dying of a stroke at the age of fifty-eight. Originally titled “The Tale of Two Nobodies” (literally “The Two Woodlice”), its protagonists are two copy clerks, who, in the middle of nineteenth-century Paris, meet on a bench on a boulevard. Superficially, they are complementary opposites: one short, one tall; one ascetic, the other sensual. In a deeper sense, they are the same: office workers who perform questionably meaningful tasks while trying to cling to a bare sense of individuality. They strike up a friendship—they are amateurs, dilettantes, believers in progress. They are, in Flaubert’s imagination, men of their time. As they grow bored with their jobs of rote reproduction, they set out to fill their leisure with the pursuit of knowledge:
They learned about discoveries, read prospectuses, and their newfound curiosity caused their intelligence to bloom. On a horizon that receded further each day, they glimpsed things at once strange and wondrous.
(I am relying here on Mark Polizzotti’s translation.) After Bouvard receives an inheritance from a recently deceased uncle, the two men hatch a plan to remove themselves from the city’s bustle and the drudgery of their work. They will use the money to buy a modest estate and live a life of freedom as country squires: “No more writing! No more bosses! Not even rent to pay! For they would own a house of their own! And they would eat chickens from their own farmyard, vegetables from their garden—and would dine with their clogs still on!”
Liberated from the office, they now can do whatever they wish. Why not tend their own garden, as Voltaire’s Candide once exhorted? Well, curious minds that they are, they want to learn the best way to make the garden grow. So they turn to books, and become case studies in the dangers of overestimating one’s own intelligence. If they are gardening, they think, why not turn to agriculture, too, and make better use of their land? Their plants die. Why do the plants die? Because, Bouvard and Pécuchet conclude, they didn’t sufficiently understand the hard sciences—and so their study of chemistry begins. Chapter by chapter, Flaubert lampoons his poor pair, who fail at discipline after attempted discipline: landscape architecture, anatomy, history, literature, phrenology, religion, even love, and on and on. In each pursuit, they never lose the optimism or the hubris of thinking they can put their knowledge to work in the world. When they become interested in pedagogy, they adopt a pair of abandoned children who are at turns mystified by and contemptuous of their efforts to improve their well-being. The fruit trees fail, the novel is abandoned, a cat is boiled alive, the children cause scandals.
Commentators have remarked on the static structure of the novel: the reader must be willing to hear the same joke told repeatedly in different variations—a joke that punishes its pitiful protagonists over and over. Each time, this odd couple believes that they are close to a breakthrough, or at least to something like fluency, in their newly chosen field. But when difficulties emerge, failure follows quickly: “They gave up.” This futility is matched by, or even enhanced by, their optimism. Each time they surrender, they find something else to become engrossed in. Is this perseverance, or life as a great chain of distractions? And have they tricked themselves into thinking it matters?
***
What is distraction? Maybe it is just the need to be diverted: from the direction you originally set out on, from what it was you thought you wanted to do. After all, to desire something requires projecting yourself into the future—how do you know you’ll still want it when you get there? And along the way there are so many attractions, way stations, spots of time. Even an annoyance can be a pleasure: a fly keeps buzzing around your head while you try to write the next sentence, a ringtone interrupts the movie, and—it’s you. Just this one time you’ve forgotten to turn your phone off. If only the world would stop bothering you, you could finally get down to work.
Bouvard and Pécuchet, you may think, aren’t exactly distracted. In fact, at times they seem nearly maniacal in their thirst for knowledge. But isn’t the idea that] they are potentially interested in everything a kind of curse, something worse than indifference? As fast as they find a passion, they can be drawn away from it. They are avatars of the societal affliction Flaubert called la bêtise—mankind’s universal stupidity. Their curiosity has no staying power—it’s just the dirty runoff of a Zeitgeist that tells them to improve themselves, improve the human race. Their distraction implies a lack of concentration, the mark of a bad student. And they are tragic because they want so much to be good, to get the right answer. All the worse that they’re not reflective enough to see that all the spinning of their wheels will never lead anywhere. (But how could anyone think that and keep going?)
Now that I no longer work a forty-hour-a-week job, I tell many people I am writing a book. It is going along, I say, but slowly. How is it that so many chores, parties, trips, assignments, and plainly wasted hours intervene? Not everyone is distracted from their most cherished goals. But I think everyone is distracted from something—it is desire’s shadow, trailing behind our self-presentations. By beginning anything, we create the possibility of detours.
***
Today, it’s a commonplace to call the internet the ultimate distraction. While putting off writing this piece, itself already a distraction, I maintained a powerful ability to introduce obstacles to its completion. Recently, during another attempt to write, I snapped to my senses hours later, as if smash-cut through time, and realized I had been watching skateboarding videos on YouTube. I have never skateboarded in my life—I am not certain I have ever even attempted to put two feet on a board. I binged a Thrasher series called My War, about skaters who have struggled with a particularly difficult trick and persevered. I watch a skater known as Jaws ollie a massive twenty-five-step staircase in Lyon, tear his MCL, and come back, months later, to essentially jump off the side of a building repeatedly until he lands the trick. There’s no way this can be good for your body, but I find myself strangely compelled by the almost religious dedication. In their pursuit to hurl themselves down large flights of stairs, the skaters are committed.
I close the browser. There is an entire genre of commentary based around the idea that computers or the internet are having a deleterious effect on our attention spans, even on our reading comprehension. We are never present, the platforms having gamed out our interests better than we can ourselves. We contemplate putting our phones in automatically locking pouches before we sit down to dinner. I’m not sure it’s so simple—everywhere, a lot of work seems to be getting done, and every day we seem to be faced with more text to read than ever. I return to my document. I take some disparate phrases from my notebook and start to arrange them into the lines of a poem. Even doing something ostensibly virtuous, I am still attempting escape. I start looking at one of the pdfs I have open in Preview: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
All that we should do is just do something as it comes. Do something! Whatever it is, we should do it, even if it is not-doing something. We should live in this moment. So when we sit we concentrate on our breathing, and we become a swinging door, and we do something we should do, something we must do. This is Zen practice. In this practice there is no confusion. If you establish this kind of life you have no confusion whatsoever.
Ah, turning to Zen—a bit of a cliché, I think, but still. Haven’t I been doing something, even sitting in front of this machine? I’ve at least been the swinging door, letting the rest of existence pass through me.
***
Flaubert did an immense amount of research for Bouvard and Pécuchet. While writing the novel, Flaubert read around fifteen hundred books in all the subjects that his Nobodies attempt and abandon. Perhaps Flaubert, in some sense, became one of la betîse himself, because he would never become a master of agronomy, anatomy, or pedagogy—only a master of the pen, an “homme-plume,” as he called himself in his letters. And the more he reads, the further he gets from completing his universal book.
Even the protagonists, having learned something despite themselves, can’t help but become melancholy, like Flaubert. In their defeat they become strangely sensitive, easily disturbed:
Then their minds developed a piteous faculty, that of perceiving stupidity and being unable to tolerate it. Insignificant things saddened them: newspaper advertisements, a burgher’s profile, an inane comment overheard by chance. And reflecting on what was said in their village … they felt upon their shoulders the weight of the entire world.
In order to write an essay on a new topic, often one has to sail a little in the dark. I am not a Flaubert expert. I can write this essay only as an amateur: the breadth of scholarship on one of the giants of the novel is too daunting for me to do it otherwise—I would have to give up before I began.
Research easily becomes its own distraction. Fiction writers are not unfamiliar with this crisis, having placed their character under a tree, then specifying what kind of tree it is, then wondering if that tree would be in flower at this particular time of year, whether it grows in the particular geographical region where the story takes place. We can become masters of rationalizing the inessential.
There’s a kind of comfort in toying with a large body of knowledge, the way in which you can avoid writing a paper by entering a rabbit hole on Wikipedia—beginning on the front page and finding yourself reading about Byzantine dynasties, or non-Newtonian fluids, or Rome’s Crisis of the Third Century. Maybe this activity, even if it never gets us anywhere, is something closer to play. And without it, at least from time to time, we become dull.
***
Despite all the hand-wringing about distraction, it’s asked less often what it is that what we want to attend to in the first place (or, if answered, numbingly conventional—we want to “be more productive”). Today, being distracted usually has a negative connotation, because it most often means “not working,” whether you’re watching the World Cup from a browser window stashed behind your spreadsheet or you’ve decided to go to the bar on a Tuesday night instead of staying in and writing your three hundred words or polishing your presentation or organizing your sock drawer. A common idea of distraction presupposes that you’re turning away from something more important that you ought to be paying attention to instead. And you ought to be working all the time.
In order to succeed in a hypercapitalist society, we must focus. And to focus usually means to specialize: acquiring a skill, becoming a special version of ourselves—a person with a “bit” that distinguishes us from the cross section of people who otherwise share our Google AdSense data metrics. It can be hard work to become this particular, outward-facing self. The idea returns to me to the old chestnut of Marx’s in The German Ideology, imagining a different way of life:
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
We live in nothing close to this hypothetical society, and we may never. But if Marx’s hunter-fisherman-shepherd-critic (an animal lover!) can be really envisioned, it’s clear that he is not distracted. Whatever he does is what pleases him. He is always where he wants to be.
***
There is a curious kind of essay that exists now, that is half-literary, half-personal: My life with author X. A year of reading author Y. The hope is that the personal touch might refresh the dusty pages of the classics—or, more likely, that great literature can buttress a first-person narrative that doesn’t quite cohere into a finished story, not yet quite heroic enough. An earlier version of this essay had more of me in it.
During Bouvard and Pécuchet’s brief turn as authors, they experiment with comedy and pick up Xavier de Maistre’s 1794 A Journey around My Room, a “travelogue” of sitting still (it was written while the author was under house arrest) that blows up mundane details to mock-heroic proportions. They are quickly discouraged:
In this kind of book, it seemed, one must always interrupt the narrative to talk about one’s dog, one’s slippers, or one’s mistress. Such a lack of inhibition charmed them at first, then struck them as imbecilic—for the author erases his work by shining too much light on himself.
It feels good to erase myself, at least for a while. Still, something weed-like in me wants to make myself visible, to be a voice as attractive to you as Flaubert’s was to me.
***
Flaubert rose late, around ten, and took his time in the morning. At eleven, as one of his biographers, Frederick Brown, reports, he fortified himself for his task:
Unable to work well on a full stomach, he ate lightly, or what passed for such in the Flaubert household, meaning that his first meal consisted of eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The family then lounged on the terrace, unless foul weather kept them indoors, or climbed a steep path through woods behind their espaliered kitchen garden to a glade dubbed La Mercure after the statue of Mercury that once stood there. Shaded by chestnut trees, near their hillside orchard, they would argue, joke, gossip, and watch vessels sail up and down the river. Another site of open-air refreshment was the eighteenth-century pavilion. After dinner, which generally lasted from seven to nine, dusk often found them there, looking out at moonlight flecking the water and fisherman casting their hoop nets for eel.
In June 1852, Flaubert told Louise Colet that he worked from 1 P.M. to 1 A.M. A year later, when he assumed partial responsibility for Liline’s education and gave her an hour or more of his time each day, he may not have put pen to paper at his large round writing table until two o’clock or later.
Among the many things he is famous for, Flaubert is known as a perfectionist, a meticulous craftsman refining the rhythm of each sentence until it possessed the cold polish of a gem. He complained frequently of his slow progress in his letters—the legend is that he wrote at a pace of about five words per hour.
But can all the time spent at the desk truly be accounted for? Is it possible that, despite his protestations, Flaubert was simply … goofing off sometimes? I will leave that question for the experts, but I know I have been prone to say the work was going very slowly when, in reality, I was doing something else.
And wasn’t that time that Flaubert spent before he set down to work, the time of a cup of cold chocolate and then the orchard, watching the sailboats pass by, a very good time after all?
***
Commentators have speculated that Flaubert considered appending to his novel a document he had written some years before, the so-called Dictionary of Received Ideas, a compendium of the banalities and clichés of his time—the nineteenth-century French equivalents of telling people that New York City rent is too damn high or that our country is more polarized than ever. The brilliance of the entries, which are alphabetically arranged, is in their teetering on the brink of being taken seriously:
ILLUSIONS: Claim to have many. Lament having lost them.
IMAGES: Poetry always contains too many of them.
IMAGINATION: Always vivid. Guard against it. When one has none, denigrate it in others. To write novels, all you need is a little imagination.
Flaubert never finished Bouvard and Pécuchet, but he left notes about how it might end: After a climactic confrontation with their village neighbors, who have put up with their eccentricities for long enough, the two Nobodies finally feel defeated. Exhausted and penniless again, they decide to return to their first love: copying. They “smile when they think of it.” The Dictionary, the fruit of their renewed scrawling, would both demonstrate their “learning” and release them, blissfully, from thought.
According to Flaubert, the use of the dictionary was not just to collect people’s stupidities—instead, it was to make one afraid to speak at all, since whenever you open your mouth, you may immediately find yourself saying something that isn’t your own. It takes immense effort and concentration to become new. Still, one wonders what Flaubert would have done for material if everyone had simply shut up.
***
I’m staring out my window at my desk—surely a timeworn part of the writing process. It is late summer now. A female cardinal, its colors muted but beautiful, has gone away after spending the day as my main attraction. I’m wrapping this up, getting ready to go to dinner. Wondering how this got started, how and why I wrote several thousand words about something I still know rather little about, really. And thinking about everything else that could have been in it (Thoreau, the class where I first read Flaubert, every terrible thing I saw and felt because I came of age “online”) that I left out. I think about how much more I enjoy starting things than finishing them. I’ve always wanted to feel full of potential, more even than needing that potential to be realized, maybe. As you get a bit older, disappointment arrives to fill that space. But it gives things their contours, too—if you’re committed, you chip away against that newly evident limit. Hoping to go a little further next time.
***
In 1875, Flaubert, stymied by his research for and the slow pace of Bouvard and Pécuchet, began a side project. He wrote the stories that would later be collected in the volume known as Three Tales. The first and the most famous is called “A Simple Heart.” It is both connected to and completely unlike his encyclopedic monument to human stupidity. The tale focuses on the sad, slow life of a woman named Félicité, the housemaid of a well-to-do widow in a Norman town much like the one Flaubert grew up in. Félicité has few distractions to speak of, because her life has virtually no pleasure. For a modest sum, she “did all the cooking and the housework, she saw to the darning, the washing and the ironing, she could bridle a horse, keep the chickens well fed and churn the butter.” She toils thanklessly for her mistress for years, appearing, to the bourgeoisie that frequent the house, to be indistinguishable from the furniture. For Félicité, anything that disrupts this backbreaking monotony is something to be savored in memory: the man who tried to court her when she was a young woman, a dangerous encounter with an angry bull in a pasture, even the death of her beloved nephew, a sailor, on the other side of the globe. These detours from daily routine are, in fact, the signature moments of her life.
When Félicité receives a parrot from a neighbor, a gift that reminds of her of her nephew and the New World to which he might have sailed, it is a balm from beyond: something to care for that is not merely a matter of survival, something harboring a mystery, however small. After its death, the parrot is stuffed and becomes a kind of object of religious adoration for Félicité. She imagines that she sees it, her last vision, at the moment of her death.
For a man who spent his time cursing the world for its idiocy, this is a moment of remarkable imaginative sympathy, and of love. The fugitive moments in between our lifelong undertakings, whatever their ultimate worth, may be what we are searching for all along. Maybe we are distracted because we are still learning how to live.
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026.
Before you take a survey, do you read down through to make sure there aren't any questions you don't wanna answer?:
Sometimes. I usually go by the first few questions to see if it’s a boring survey or not. If there’s ever any questions that I don’t want to/feel like answering, I just delete them, lol.
Rate your confidence level on a scale of 1 to 10:
-10.
Do you know anyone who does not like The Beatles?:
Probably.
For every sibling you have, name one food they don't like. If you're an only child, do you ever wish you had siblings?:
Rebecca - I’m not sure, I didn’t grow up with her.
Samantha - meat on the bone. Sonic cheeseburgers.
Jacob - onions, tomatoes, most any vegetable.
Did you have a friend in middle school that you're now enemies with in high school?:
I am not in high school. I never had “enemies.” But yeah, I had friends in middle school that were no longer my friends in high school.
What grade are you in anyway?:
I am not in school but will hopefully be going back to college in the fall if I can manage to afford it.
Do people have any reason to believe you're an alcoholic?:
Nope.
What is one thing you hope your children don't inherit from you?:
My mental health issues.
Why don't you want that passed on?:
Because, who would want their kids to have mental health problems? They are mentally and physically exhausting and cause so much damage and hurt your quality of life. Who wants to have to worry about if their kid is eating too little or eating too much or making themself vomit or misusing laxatives or exercising until they pass out or thinking about killing themselves or hurting themselves? Who wants to see their kids lose friends and have no social life/social skills due to depression or an eating disorder or crippling anxiety? Why would anyone want that?
Hey! Enough with that bad self-talk! Tell me something you like about your body:
I don’t like anything about my body but I guess I can easily get a dumpy... the only good genes I have :p
Rap music: Yay or Nay?:
Yay, depending on the artist/song/etc.
Whoever invented post-it notes was a genius, right?:
Sure...
Does the price of gas outrage you?:
YES. It is just about $5 a gallon here.
Please tell me you know the difference between there, they're, and their!:
Duh.
Are you obsessed with cleaning?:
Yeah.
Where do you keep your shoes?:
I keep them in my closet, on a shoe rack in the hallway, and in a shoe thing from Ikea in my living room.
What do you think of dating websites?:
I don’t have an opinion on them.
Are YOU smarter than a 5th grader?:
I guess.
Don't you think its funny how people will wear those AC / DC shirts but when you mention one of their songs, they go, "What?":
Who cares? Also, you don’t know if they got that shirt as a hand-me down, from a thrift shop, etc due to financial reasons.
What's the strangest thing a complete random stranger has ever done to you?:
I don’t know.
When you said something naughty when you were little, did your parents wash out your tongue with soap?:
Maybe once or twice.
What do you think of spanking little children when they do something wrong? Okay or not?:
I don’t know.
Y'all got a southern accent?:
I do.
Is it true that British accents are overrated?:
Uhhh it’s just an accent. People’s weird obsession with them is overrated.
How does it make you feel that most American families are failing?:
Sad.
When you get married, are you gonna stick out with your husband or get a divorce on the first argument that comes your way?:
I don’t think anyone gets a divorce on the “first argument” but ok.
Did you know that in Japan they have sushi flavored ice cream!?:
Yeah.
What are your thoughts on the popular movie Napoleon Dynamite?:
I’ve seen it once and it was okay.
What's your least favorite month?:
Who cares.
Do you ever just break down and cry for no reason? And doesn't it suck when people come over when you're crying, wanting to know what's wrong, and you really have no clue..?:
Yeah and yeah.
Wouldn't it be EXTREMELY weird if someone fell in love with you after reading your answers to this survey?:
Yes...?
What color is your hair, naturally? Assuming you dyed it, why did you do that?:
Blonde. Because I like change.
Have you ever tried that vitamin water stuff? Is it any good?:
I think I’ve had a couple flavors. The first time that I had it, it was gross to me. I think I liked it the second time around.
Do you love anyone?:
Yeah.
What do you do when you're bored in class and not paying attention to the teacher?:
Daydream.
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Miss me has himbo energy
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