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bard-llama · 1 year

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WiP Wednesday: The Seduction of the Innocent

Okay, firstly, this entire idea is really the brainchild of myself and steveelotaku and we’ve had fun coming up with stuff for it. The title is his suggestion - based on that crackpot book written about Batman and Robin being gay and corrupting the youth of America. It’s PERFECT for a fic that is all about Zuko writing a comic strip to help support his thesis as he goes to Ba Sing Se University lol

Premise: Zuko needs a hobby to keep himself occupied during the idle times of teaserving/vigilantism - and ends up writing. His new BFF Jin also suggests that he apply for Ba Sing Se University when his history of researching the Avatar and their cultures comes out. So Zuko ends up writing a thesis that studying ancient/declining cultures (Air Nomads and the Water Tribes) is worthwhile in the world today (bc the Water Tribes still exist and there’s 1 living Air Nomad). To help make his point/spread knowledge about the different cultures, he and Jin end up creating a comic series about The Adventures of the Blue Spirit and the Avatar (and co). Through the hijinks of the Blue Spirit and the Avatar traveling around the world (remember, there’s no war in Ba Sing Se), they fight crime and evildoers and teach each other about their cultures.

So, right now I’m thinking this is actually 2 fics: a prequel and a sequel. The prequel will be all about establishing Zuko going to Uni and creating the comic and some of its effects (it’s REALLY popular with kids!). The sequel is when the Gaang (Zuko coined the name) finds out about the comics and read them - and then Aang, who KNOWS who the Blue Spirit is, goes looking for the author to confront them. He suspects it’s Zuko, but he doesn’t actually BELIEVE that it’s really Zuko. After all, how could ZUKO get into Ba Sing Se and why would he write comics explaining how the Air Nomads believed in peace?

(For those that dislike shipping in atla, the sequel will have some Zuko/Aang, but probably T-rated teens dating. Not wholly sure yet, but I think the whole series will be T)

So far, I have a few random scenes written, so I’ll share some snippets here, but also, I HAVE to tell you about what steveelotaku came up with for the comic!!!

The Comics

So like I said, the premise of the comics is: the adventures the Gaang + the Blue Spirit get up to, while fighting off their standard array of villains. (Credit for these goes to steveelotaku, who is incredible and came up with GREAT villains!)

The Big Bad: Fire Lord Ozai

But, I hear you say, there’s no war in Ba Sing Se! So how-? Well, the answer is - Zuko REALLY wanted to draw his dad receiving a pie to the face (look, he’s upset about the whole traitor thing and he needs an outlet) from Aang, so he invented a silly Silver Age Comics campy reason for why the Fire Lord hates the Avatar: the Avatar blew storm clouds over his parade and RUINED his hair! (Ozai hates getting wet 😂)

Other Recurring Villains:

Sparkler, the Princess of Pyromania: Fire-themed villain with a mysterious connection to the Blue Spirit and a grudge against them

The Koan: Basically Buddhist Riddler. "What is the sound of one hand picking your pocket?" "If a building blows up, and no one is around to see it, did I commit a crime?"

The Cabbage Merchant of Death: Literally just the cabbage merchant, but breeding his cabbages to attack humanity as vengeance for overturning his cart. (The Cabbage Merchant actually loves the comics and his portrayal. Someone recognized his plight! So he taped one of the panels to his cart.)

The Tapestry: Literally a guy dressed in a tapestry who makes horrible weaving jokes and uses sharp threads. "Knit one, purl-oin two gold bars!"

The Ember Island Jester: The only actor to be fired from the Ember Island Players, because his jokes were terrible. His crimes are all theater-themed and he wears a comedy mask. "Four nations, all alike in dignity, all ripe for the plundering!" "It's curtains for you, Blue Spirit! -drops a heavy curtain on him-"

The Nightingale: Basically the Penguin, but with an army of robot nightingales, like in the old Chinese fable about the Emperor who forgot how a nightingale had brought him joy when a mechanical one is given to him, only for it to save him later. Only this time, the Nightingale is some minor noble who got fired and now keeps pestering Ozai with his robot nightingales and Ozai has to call for the Blue Spirit, much to his frustration. "The Nightingale sings the song of your doom!" Aang: "How does that go?" "Uh...doom! DOOM DOOM DOOM! DOOM doom DOOOOOM!"

Okay, so those are our Villains. Now what about our heroes? Remember, the Gaang is being written by Zuko - who may do lots and lots of research and maybe has stalked them on occasion, but still doesn’t really KNOW them.

The Blue Spirit - Zuko goes in hard on the tropes, so the Blue Spirit is totally the broody badboy. He has a secret identity that no one knows. Also, he tells tea jokes and makes tea puns. Iroh is very proud.

Aang, The Avatar - Aang is the epitome of “peace, love, and happiness make the world go round” (real Aang finds this hilarious) but he’s also an incurable prankster

Toph, The Avatar’s Earthbending Teacher - Toph is the buffest, littlest character there is and it is unclear whether she beats villains with her bending or her fists or if the two are one and the same.

Katara, The Avatar’s Waterbending Teacher - Katara is the scariest motherfucker on the team and Zuko stands by that. She has some of the corny “hope” lines, complementing Aang, but mostly, it’s her determination that makes her scary. When she decides something, it happens. (Zuko might be projecting a bit, but he’s not wrong.)

Sokka, The Avatar’s Jester/Strategist - Sokka is the straight forward comic relief and is a walking joke, but he does tend to suggest the plans that work... they’re just very, very ridiculous, in line with Silver Age comics ridiculousness.

And some choice lines by steveelotaku:

"Holy cumulus, Blue Spirit! The Fire Nation's set fire to the tea tree grove!" "The fiends! It's not enough for them to boil it too long--now they're roasting it to ashes!" "Halt, Blue Spirit! Your pathetic crusade of justice stops here!" "It's that suspicious sous-chef of sabotage, Serial Griller! Fire Lord Ozai's right hand cook!" "That's right, Blue Blunder! And today's special is deep fried masked man with a side of Avatar fries!"

"Blue Spirit! Help!" "By the subtle tang of oolong tea! Avatar, you're turning into a were-bison!" Not a trick! Not an imaginary story! The Avatar's best friend might just be his doom! Can Aang and the Blue Spirit survive...THE NIGHT OF THE APPA-LLING WERE-BISON?!

AND NOW, THE SECRET ORIGIN OF THE BLUE SPIRIT: A nameless warrior stands on the battlefield in the pouring rain. Another village massacred, the survivors left for dead. He alone had dared to speak against this heinous crime, and for that he was cast out from the only family he had. Hiding within a teahouse, he took with him the one souvenir of that battle he dared to claim--the mask of the Blue Spirit, a warrior who had fought for justice against his cruel oppressors. Now, the warrior takes the mantle for himself--to find redemption, or die trying!

Snippets:

The Beginning

Zuko needed a hobby, was the thing. He was really, really busy in Ba Sing Se, between being a tea server and being the Blue Spirit. But there was a lot of idle time in both roles and Zuko just needed something to keep him occupied. It wasn’t supposed to turn into a big thing.

Only one day, Jin had caught him writing at the teashop and demanded to read it and… look. It was just a lark. It was just a funny little idea that he was toying with. It didn’t mean anything.

It was in the afternoon lull and Uncle was, fortunately, in the backroom, doing tea things. Meanwhile, Zuko’s only other customer was an old accountant who was always buried in their books and never registered anything going on around them. They liked Pao’s strongest tea.

This meant that there was no one else around to see the look on Jin’s face when she read through his scrawled handwriting – he was much better at writing with a calligraphy brush, but these days, charcoal was as good as it got – depicting a silly dialogue exchange between the Blue Spirt and the Avatar. It was just one of the questions he’d always wanted to ask the Avatar, one that wasn’t really important, but that had bothered him until he’d researched it anyway.

“Li,” she said slowly.

Zuko gulped. “Yeah?”

“This… this is good,” she said with a tone of wonder. “Seriously, I really like this!”

“You… do?” Zuko blinked, not sure what to do with that. “But it’s – it’s–”

“Funny? Enjoyable? Cute?”

“Dumb.”

“Bullshit,” Jin said bluntly. “You’re allowed to enjoy dumb things, Li. As long as it’s fun, what else matters?”

Zuko frowned. That was not a philosophy about life that he was familiar with.

“Do you think the Avatar really throws pies in people’s faces?” Jin asked with a laugh.

“Oh, that bit I can confirm,” Zuko flashed a brief grin. “I found a letter from the King of Omashu to the Southern Air Temple that very specifically said Aang and his friends had pie’d the King’s Guard.”

Jin blinked. “What do you mean, you found a letter?”

“Oh,” Zuko bit his lip, realizing he really shouldn’t have said that. “I, um. I… studied the Avatar. For a long time. And the Air Nomads and the Water Tribes, a little bit.”

“Really?” Jin looked excited, of all things. “That’s so cool! So you were a mini scholar before tragedy struck, huh? Are you gonna try to apply for Ba Sing Se University? You should!”

“I… what?”

“It’s not often someone from the Lower Ring gets accepted,” Jin said, “but it does happen! And I know you’d study really hard and there are scholarships and things to help pay for it. You should try!”

“I’ll… think about it?” Zuko said, taken entirely off guard.

“You should write more, too,” Jin encouraged. “Honestly, it’s a really fun scene. I kinda wanna draw it.”

Jin’s family ran what was probably one of the best places in town to get writing and illustration done on a budget. This meant that Jin spent a lot of time drawing what she called ‘very boring adverts’. He wouldn’t think his scene was that interesting either, but Jin’s face was genuine and she smiled at him.

“Really?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Jin grinned, “just the visual of the Fire Lord getting a pie in the face–” she broke down laughing.

Zuko flushed. It was possible he was a bit upset with his father for marking him as a traitor and sending his sister to bring him home in chains. And it wasn’t like a little pie had ever hurt anyone…

During Zuko’s Tour of Ba Sing Se University (from the POV of the admissions tour guide)

“As part of your curriculum. You don’t study other cultures, like the Water Tribes and the Air Nomads?”

There was a loud scoff from behind Min and she turned to see Professor Lang sneering down his nose at the kid.

“Of course not,” he said. “What use is there in studying ancient civilizations?”

The kid looked confused for a brief moment… and then he got mad, and wow, he was actually kind of scary underneath that scruffy unkemptness.

“The Water Tribes aren’t dead! And even if the Air Nomads are, there’s still reason to learn about them!”

“And what, pray tell, would that be?”

The kid had a pretty impressive snarl. “The Earth Kingdom has trade contracts relating to the Water Tribes, who are still alive. And there’s one living Air Nomad now, too!”

Min blinked. What did that mean?

“Pah,” Professor Lang spat. “The Avatar is not part of any culture.”

The what?

“The Avatar isn’t told until they turn sixteen. Until that age, Avatar Aang was and still is an Air Nomad.”

What!?

“The… Avatar?” Min said vaguely. How had she not heard about this? “The Avatar is back? And they’re an Air Nomad!?”

The kid looked scared for a moment. Perhaps he could sense how closely they danced to the dangerous territory of current events.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “We, um. We heard before coming to Ba Sing Se that the Avatar is back. And – and he’s an Air Nomad. So there’s relevance in understanding the Air Nomad culture! Because, like…” he visibly flailed for an example that would be acceptable, “like family!” He held up his finger triumphantly. “Culture affects what words mean. In the Earth Kingdom, family is defined as your clan, tied to you through blood, marriage, or contract. In the Water Tribes, the whole tribe is family and everything is done in service to that family. But to the Air Nomads? They defined family as people chosen based on who you wanted in your life. They did not recognize blood ties.”

Min and Professor Lang both stared at the kid.

“How – how do you know that?” Professor Lang asked eventually.

The kid froze. “I, um. I did a lot of research on – on the Avatar and, and their cultures. I’m not making it up! One of their core tenets was that the blood of the covenant was thicker than water of the womb, meaning those who share their vows are more kin than those who share their blood. They were more concerned with spirituality and behavior.” The kid sighed heavily. “I wish my old library hadn’t burned. I had some amazing finds.”

Min’s eyebrow arched. That almost made it sound like, despite the current state of things, this kid had some noble background. Well, well. That changed things.

She clapped her hands together. “This sounds like an excellent topic for a thesis, don’t you agree, Professor Lang?”

“A – what?”

“A thesis, of course. You have an argument to make – that ancient/declining cultures still have a role in our society. Through your course of study here at Ba Sing Se, you will learn how to draft an effective argument, backed by primary sources.”

“I had primary sources!” the kid said, sounding strangely offended.

“Of course,” Min allowed.

“You want this disrespectful brat to write a thesis on such an absurd topic!?” Professor Lang burst out.

“He argued his point well, did he not?” Min shrugged, smiling pleasantly.

“I have another one,” the kid – Li, according to her file – said. “The Air Nomads were pacifists. They didn’t believe in consuming the flesh of any creature, because in their view, violence was abhorrent in any form. So think about it… the – the Avatar’s job is to bring peace and balance to the world, right?”

Min took a sharp breath. That was coming a little too close to–

“Well, Air Nomads were very devoted to peace. They have eighty-seven words for peace, all of which mean different things. Some of which, if applied to the nations by the Avatar, would face significant dissent. So in dealing with the Avatar, it’s important to know that you need to clarify the meaning of things being discussed.”

“And you expect to be ‘dealing with the Avatar’, do you?” Professor Lang sneered.

Li opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Of course not,” he said, “but that’s precisely why the study of these cultures is so significant! Because if it’s not widespread knowledge, then we’re all at a disadvantage.”

Min clapped, “well said. What is knowledge but a tool for the betterment of ourselves?”

“...right,” Li nodded hesitantly.

(For those curious, Professor Lang knows about Aang because the Gaang and Joo Dee went by the university when they first came to Ba Sing Se - but the visit was kept moderately hush hush, because talking about the Avatar can mean talking about the war. This changes when the comic takes off.)

From the next scene

Jin was pacing in Pao’s Teashop as they all waited excitedly to hear the results of Li’s visit to the university. Mushi was channeling his anxiety into making lots of tea, so Jin was spending far more than she should on new pots, but at least sipping tea gave her something to do.

Finally, Li opened the door – and jerked back as everyone in the teashop – four of the afternoon regulars and Jin, plus one couple that had no idea what was going on – rounded on him.

“Well? How did it go?”

“Uh.” Li scratched his head. “I think I’m a student now?”

Jin blinked. “I thought you were just going to apply?”

“So did I,” Li shrugged. “And then I got into an argument with a professor during the tour–”

Everyone groaned collectively.

“Oh, Nephew,” Mushi sighed, coming out from behind the counter and ushering Li into the room.

“Of course you did,” Jin laughed.

“But it was fine,” Li huffed. “In fact, I think it actually helped me? I guess I’m writing a thesis on the Avatar and also why studying other cultures matters?”

“You’re… what?” Mushi said blankly.

Li shrugged helplessly. “It just kinda happened.”

Now we skip waaaaaaay ahead to the sequel, to when the Gaang (well, Aang specifically) finds out about The Adventures of the Blue Spirit and the Avatar

It started with an innocently overheard conversation at a bakery near their Upper Ring house while waiting for the new pies to cool.

“Did you read it?” one girl hissed to another. “Did you see!?”

“Yes!” the second girl sounded so excited that it was hard to control her volume. “I told you! It’s real! Spiritar is canon!”

“I just can’t believe it,” the only boy amongst the group murmured. “I didn’t see it coming at all.”

“That’s because you never listen to us,” the first girl sniffed. “I called the Blue Spirit x Avatar Aang coming from miles away.”

The… what?

Aang blinked, turning to stare at them. “I’m sorry, did you say Avatar?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, who’s asking – oh sweet spirits, it’s the Avatar!” the boy looked like he was about to hyperventilate.

“Um. Hi,” Aang waved awkwardly.

The two girls squeaked and flushed red. “Hi,” they managed, one more easily than the other.

“Did you say something about – about the Blue Spirit and the Avatar?”

“Oh spirits,” the second girl whispered under her breath. “Oma and Shu, why would you do this to us?”

“Um?”

“Okay, so,” the first girl cleared her throat. “Um, let’s start at the beginning. Are you familiar with The Adventures of the Blue Spirit and the Avatar?”

“The… huh?” Aang’s mouth twisted in confusion. Who was the Blue Spirit and what did they have to do with him?

There was a cleared throat from next to them and another woman in the bakery stood behind them. “Hi, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear and – I have a binder just for this purpose.” She pulled out a thick binder full of papers and thudded it down on the table. Then she opened it to a page that had two figures cut out from an inked illustration. One was obviously Aang, though his arrows weren’t quite that big – but the other… the other was–

“The Blue Spirit, you called them?” Aang asked, staring at the mask that he remembered with stark distinction. If the stranger in the mask hadn’t saved him…

But then, of course, the stranger turned out to not be so strange after all. Aang could still feel the rough bark under his fingers as he played with it, waiting for Zuko to wake up.

If we knew each other then, do you think we could’ve been friends? he’d asked, and Zuko hadn’t actually answered, but the blast of fire spoke many words.

“You don’t know them?” the girls all looked up at him with a broken sort of hope.

“I – I do,” Aang answered hesitantly. “But I never got their name.”

“Yes!” two of them high fived and Aang just stared at them. “Uh, sorry.”

“Anyway,” the girl with the binder said, “The Adventures of the Blue Spirit and the Avatar, originally simply titled the Blue Spirit, is a serial comic created by Li and Jin. They’re two artists in the Lower Ring, if you can believe that. But Li attends Ba Sing Se University!”

“Uh. Okay?”

She cleared her throat, flushing. “Um, at any rate, the comics are aimed at children and Li has been recorded as saying that he wanted to explain cultural differences through a fun story. And they deliver! The characters are great, the dialogue is snappy, the illustration is beautiful, and the plots are silly but fun.”

“Nothing will ever top the Fire Lord getting pie’d in the face, though,” the first girl said nostalgically.

“What?” Aang asked.

“Oh, I have that in my binder!” The girl flipped through several pages and landed on a comic panel pasted onto the paper. It depicted – exactly what they said. Fire Lord Ozai – who Aang had never actually seen in person, but he had seen a few paintings and it looked pretty accurate – receiving a cream pie to the face. Actually, the pie was drawn pretty well, too – it even had the lemon curd filling that Aang and Master Gyatso used to add for extra gooeyness.

That was surely just a coincidence, though. Right? It wasn’t like the Blue Spirit could really be–

“It’s a really famous picture now,” the girl with the binder whispered to Aang. “It’s the only thing like it that hasn’t been censored by the Dai Li. See, in The Adventures of the Blue Spirit and the Avatar, the Fire Lord has a legitimate reason to hate the Avatar.”

…was stopping him from destroying the world not legitimate?

“Oh?”

“Oh, I love this one. Show him the comic strip!”

“Here it is!”

Aang looked down to see a single panel of Fire Lord Ozai, this time wailing, “my hair!”

“Uh…”

“The Avatar was flying a kite,” one girl explained, “and he was messing with the wind currents – but it made storm clouds fall on the Fire Lord’s parade and ruined his hair!” They all chortled. “Literally you rained on his parade!”

Aang… did not know how to react to that.

“So anyway, the Avatar and his friends join the Blue Spirit and fight crime and evildoers!”

“Yeah, the Blue Spirit is a vigilante, you know that, of course,” one girl said and actually, Aang had not known that. “So they team up with the Avatar and with the whole Gaang–”

“Pardon?”

“Oh yeah, isn’t it great? It’s ‘gang’ but with 2 ‘a’s, like your name! To encompass all of you together!”

Aang hummed. He did like it, actually. Sokka would be upset that he hadn’t come up with it.

Especially if the person who did come up with it was really–

But surely it couldn’t be. How would Zuko have even gotten into Ba Sing Se?

From the confrontation between Aang and Zuko after Aang tracks down the creators of the comics (with some shippiness)

“Soooo,” Jin drawled, sprawling in a booth in the otherwise empty teashop, “guess what happened today?”

Zuko, busy wiping down a table, didn’t answer.

“C’mon, guess! It’ll interest you, I promise.”

“I dunno. You… had an idea for a comic?”

“That happens every day, Li,” she said flatly.

Zuko sighed. “Just tell me.”

“Fine, fine,” Jin paused, making him wait, and then she burst out, “the Avatar came by the shop!”

Zuko froze, blood draining from his face. The Avatar. The Avatar was here. The Avatar was here and knew about the comics, elsewise why would he have gone to Jin’s family’s shop?

Oh, this couldn’t be good.

“Li? You okay?”

Before Zuko could answer – negatively – the door to the teashop opened and the Avatar walked inside.

Zuko wanted to die. This was it. This was the end of him. This was when his cover would get blown and everyone would know and hate him and–

“Hi,” Aang greeted them pleasantly. “I’m looking for Li.”

Zuko just about swallowed his tongue. There was no way that Aang had failed to recognize him. The change in hairstyle did not make up for the huge disfiguring scar.

Raising a shaking hand, Zuko managed a strangled, “I’m Li.”

The Avatar smiled. What even–?

“I thought it might be you,” Aang said. “But I also kind of thought I was probably wrong.”

Not having any idea what to say, all Zuko could do was swallow drily.

“Huh,” Jin said, “you really have met the Avatar.”

Zuko flushed. “I told you!”

“You say lots of things, though,” Jin contested. Usually, Zuko was grateful that she let his slip ups go so easily, but right now, he was just annoyed.

“I don’t lie,” he frowned. That was a rule for him. His whole identity may be a lie, but at least he would do his best to live honorably.

Aang coughed and Zuko flushed brighter, jerking his attention back to the man who, technically, was still his enemy.

“Sorry,” Jin laughed, holding out her hand, “hi, I’m Jin. I hear you went by my family’s shop earlier looking for us?”

“You’re the illustrator?” Aang asked.

“Yep, that’s me!” Jin beamed, showing off her chipped teeth.

“Wow. You do a really good job of showing different places,” Aang complimented and Zuko stared. What was even happening?

“Oh, that’s all thanks to Li,” Jin demurred. “Sometimes I dunno whether his descriptions are accurate or not, but he believes in them so much that it just seems right to go with it.”

Zuko groaned, slapping a hand to his face. “Jin…”

Aang smiled wider and it made Zuko’s heart pound, cheeks turning pinker. “Well, you both create very good comics,” Aang said casually, as though Zuko wasn’t close to expiring on the spot.

“You – you read them?” Zuko croaked.

“Of course,” Aang said. “We had to see what was being written about us!”

Oh. Great. So all of Aang’s friends had read them. Fuck.

Oh Agni, did that include the most recent issue? Maybe he was lucky for once in his life and it didn’t–

Aang pulled out a comic and the cover was quite familiar. Jin had drawn the Blue Spirit in the middle in a ridiculous pose that really emphasized his butt – even moreso than the original draft, because Jin was an asshole and made the change after he complained. Behind the Blue Spirit were various headshots of the Gaang – Zuko came up with the name and he was rather proud of it – with little hearts all around them.

The cover proclaimed, ONE OF THESE PEOPLE IS THE BLUE SPIRIT'S SOULMATE – BUT WHO!? and the story was all about one of the regular villains, Sparkler – who totally wasn’t Azula – trying to find the Blue Spirit’s lover to blackmail him. After she was defeated, the true lover was revealed… with a kiss, because of course it was.

Zuko felt like he might cry at the absurdity of this being how his life falls apart (again).

“Sooooo, um…” Aang started and Zuko could not look at him.

“In my defense,” Zuko started, his mouth absolutely disconnecting from his brain, “it was a reader request.”

Aang tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, you don’t read the letters at the end of the issue?” Jin asked, “you really should, they’re quite fun. We answer questions and requests from readers – mostly kids, but sometimes their parents, too.”

“And a kid… asked about–?”

Zuko just nodded mutely, but Jin – the traitor! – explained, “they asked about who the Blue Spirit’s soulmate would be. And obviously – ow!” Zuko elbowed her hard in the side, but it was too late. Aang’s eyebrows were high.

“‘Obviously’?”

“I mean, have you read the flirting?” Jin asked. “Li writes fantastic banter, doesn’t he?”

“Fucking hell, Jin, shut up!” Zuko hissed, and he was sure that his face was hot enough to be steaming. Hopefully Jin wouldn’t question it.

“Oh, all right, all right, I’ll let you two talk alone. But don’t forget the afternoon rush will be soon!”

So saying, Jin sidled out the door, headed back to work. The Avatar opened his mouth as soon as she was gone and Zuko quite abruptly wanted her back. He scrambled around for a change of topic and grasped the teapot next to him.

“Tea! Would – would you like some tea? We have–”

“I liked the tea jokes in the comics,” Aang said calmly. How was he calm when Zuko was about to shake out of his skin?

The pottery clattered slightly from his trembling hands, but he served Aang a cup of jasmine tea. “Those mostly came from Uncle,” he murmured.

“Well, they were fun,” Aang said, taking the cup and immediately sipping it as though it hadn’t been poured by his enemy. Then he smiled. “Jasmine. I like jasmine. It was my mentor’s favorite.”

“I know,” Zuko said without thinking.

“You… know?” Aang blinked. “How?”

“Uh.” Oh Agni, how was he supposed to explain this. “One of the Elders at your temple kept a journal. It survived.”

Aang stared. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Zuko nodded. “Monk Tashi. He complained about how often you got into trouble and how Monk Gyatso only encouraged it.”

Aang inhaled sharply, breath hitching at Gyatso’s name. Zuko could only imagine how much the loss hurt him. If Zuko ever lost Uncle…

Okay, that’s all I got, but I’m very excited for this series, so I hope you enjoy!

#atla #zuko x aang #zuko & jin are BFFs #wip wednesday #fic planning #seduction of the innocent

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adhdarcheologist · 2 years

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Getting Into Archaeology

So here’s the thing allot of people think archeology is cool, it evokes images of forgotten sites, adventuring though distant lands, holding history in your hands etc. etc. While I do admit archeology is cool, it’s not exactly what most people see it as. It’s fascinating and exciting but it can also be tedious, tiring and just straight up annoying. It’s such a weird field to be in because of a never ending number of things.

Now, that’s not to discourage anyone from entering the field, not at all. Just that when you do know that the potentially grand or ideal image of it that you have in your head might not be true. Ok but to the point, you’ve considered it you still want to go into archeology. How the hell do you get into it. Well like most things it’s not always straight forward. I’ll break it down into a few different stages and what you might want to look into in each one. Here we go! (apologies in advance for the long text)

High School

> If your school offers anything like Classics or Anthropology try taking some of those. Also keep with History the whole time because it will really help give you a good basis of knowledge to build on. I’d also suggest taking a science like biology or even geology if your school has it. (Do it. Learn where I failed, I promise it’ll be useful in the future)

> Look into any clubs your school might have that can be useful maybe a Classics club? Or an outdoor adventuring one? Photography and even graphic design can be helpful too.

> This is also a good time to look into doing experience digs. This can either be something you pay for and usually you do a day or a few days of digging on site, or maybe you have a local or community dig that’s accepting volunteers. I admit that this while super helpful can be more difficult to do due to accessibility. You have to have the time and ability and money to do this, but if you can I would.

University BA

> Now, the most obvious thing is to do an undergrad in archeology, but it’s not the only way. The thing is allot of schools don’t have an archeology program. This is where related fields come in. Even if a school doesn’t have a dedicated archeology program they may have Anthropology or Classics. This is usually where you’ll find the archeology courses at the school. These are also good departments to get into either as a Major or a Minor because they’ll give you allot of knowledge and skills overall that are still applicable to archeology.

> Other solid options are History ( which most schools should have) or Art history. These might me a little bit harder to relate directly to archaeology in the field but they can give you an amazing overview of the historical and theoretical knowledge that you’ll need. Like I mentioned in the high school section sciences like Biology or even Chemistry can be really helpful especially if you want to go into the more scientific aspects of archaeology or conservation. This allows for a lot more options when you’re looking for a school to go to.

> Overall even if you have an archeology program at your school it’s a good idea to make one or more of these fields a minor because it will help bolster what you know and your adaptability in the future.

University MA

In the past you could usually work in the field with just a BA, sometimes you still can but really it’s a lot harder, way more limited and generally a good idea to go for a Masters if you can. This is where if you did a related field for your undergrad you really want to do archaeology as your major.

> Here at this level you can specialize into certain fields, time periods or material and you can also get a better idea of where you want to work. This includes what you want to do and where you want to do it. Usually a Masters will be 1-2 years depending on the country and the school.

> There’s also a difference between a research and a taught degree. One has more emphasis on your final thesis (usually meaning that it’s longer and you spend more time researching on your own), the other has more emphasis on classes (usually meaning a shorter thesis but more coursework). Neither is better than the other it just really depends on what works best for you.

University PHD

> Ok so this is where it gets a little bit foggier for me because I’m still just at the MA stage, but I can tell you what I know. The thing is you don’t really need a PHD to work in the field but in some areas like curation and obviously academia it may be a must. This will usually take 4 years full time or 8 part time and depends on how much time/ effort/ sanity you have to give to it.

> Now here’s the good thing, they’re usually a paid position at the university because essentially you’re a researcher. This might mean though that you end up helping out with or even teaching undergrads. This also means that you have to apply and get into a phd. This essentially entails making a proposal and pitching it to the admissions team. It’s really helpful if you already have a prof who is willing to be your supervisor, they can really help you manage this process.

> For this degree you’ll really have to have a specific topic in mind and make sure that it’s one you’re willing to write a book on, because basically that’s what you’re doing.

—

I’ll add more info about school and useful skills to learn in future posts but hopefully for now this can give you an idea for what you might need to get into archeology.

#archeology #archaeologist #university #history #adhd #neurodivergent #anthropology #classics

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lboogie1906 · 1 month

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Calvin Coolidge Hernton (April 28, 1932 - September 30, 2001) poet, author, teacher, mentor, and literary critic was born in Chattanooga to Virgil and Magnolia Jackson Hernton. He is known for his seminal work Sex and Racism in America, which gives a bold historical and sociological analysis of how slavery and interracial sex affected relations between African Americans and white Americans.

He attended Talladega College. He spent his summers in New York to be closer to the burgeoning arts movement where he met Langston Hughes. Phylon published his first poem “Remigrant.” He graduated with a BA in Sociology from Fisk University. His MA thesis analyzed letters and editorials written to newspaper editors about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

He took short-term teaching positions at several HBCUs in the South before returning to New York to pursue a Ph.D. in Sociology at Columbia University. He showcased his talents as a poet at Les Deux Megots coffeehouse. He co-founded The Umbra Workshop with a group of fellow poets and aspiring literary figures. The group established the literary magazine Umbra.

He moved to London to study at the London Institute of Phenomenological Studies. He took part in the Antiuniversity of London. He returned to the US and was a poet-in-residence for a year at Central State University before becoming a writer-in-residence at Oberlin College.

He published Coming Together: Black Power, White Hatred, and Sexual Hangups. Oberlin named him professor of Black Studies and Creative Writing. He taught courses in African, African American, and Caribbean literature. He became Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Oberlin. He became a scriptwriter for the television sitcom A Man Called Hawk.

He published Sexual Mountains and Black Women Writers: Adventures in Sex, Literature, and Real Life. Cancer forced him to retire in 1999. He took part in a major conference on Hip Hop at Oberlin College.

He married Mildred Webster (1958) and they had one son. He married Mary Garvey O’Callaghan. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

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artharakka · 3 years

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“I know how this works, I’ve been in shit situations before. Holding onto hope and licking clean the chocolate wrapper for every crumb. Hope is for me now, for the living.”

My (first) interpretation of Rosa De La Torre from a horror audio drama podcast The White Vault ( @thewhitevault ). It has so good writing, characters, voice acting & overall sound design! Go give it a try if podcasts are your thing!

#the white vault #dr. rosa de la torre #mmmm I'm so bad at pinpointing facial characteristics of audio drama characters but I wanted to do some kind of shoutout for this series #might try to draw others also #I also think it has avoided most colonialist tropes that Arctic adventures tend to use so that's a plus!#I mean I'm a white person but I wrote my BA thesis about Arctic colonialism in literature and games so I know some stuff #and this show is very respectful compared to most I think!

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sumquiasum · 5 years

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Turns out the novel I'm reading rn contains passages in French I hate modernism I truly do

#dragon roars #BA adventures #I don't actually otherwise I wouldn't write my thesis on it BUT #Just got punched in the face with some French.

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aboutanancientenquiry · 3 years

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Sacred animals in Ancient Egypt

The tumblr egyptologists in new adventures !

According to their main scholar (https://thatlittleegyptologist.tumblr.com/post/655071178034200576/the-ancient-egyptians-saw-their-kings-as-gods-and ):

“The Egyptians did not worship animals. This seemingly stems from an application of the practices of the late Late Period, and the Ptolemaic period, both of which are not culturally Egyptian.”

And according to the most unhinged among them (https://somecunttookmyurl.tumblr.com/post/655076494248378368/lol-the-intellectual-decline-of-egypt-thats ) :

“not to mention doubling down on the “animal worship” and “cat mummies” after it’s already been explained that those are late period and ptolemaic - yes - greek things that aren;t culturally egyptian and aren’t linked to the downfall of egypt because uh. egypt was already fallen”

So, animal cults and worship were not “culturally Egyptian”, but they would be perhaps...Greek things imported to Egypt !

These claims are of course outrageous and totally ridiculous.

To clarify the things I will quote two excerpts from a recent thesis at the University of Upsala on the cult of the Apis bull. The first is about more generally the animal cults in ancient Egypt :

1.2 Animal cult in Egypt

Animal cults were a part of religious life in Egypt from the Predynastic Period, but in the New Kingdom and the Late Period the roles of the animal cults were enhanced because of several different reasons that will be mentioned further in the text. From that period onwards the animal cults continued to be very popular until the very end of Egyptian pharaonic history.6 It is unclear exactly what the core basis of the animal cults were, what is known, however, is that animals were believed to be special creatures, that they had the ability to speak to gods as they were thought to have one foot in the human world and another in the world of the gods, which were thought to make them more susceptible to communications with the gods.7

They often lived in specially made enclosures in temples and were surrounded with caretakers and priests, they were treated as if they were a god in both life and death, meaning that the burial traditions of cultic animals were a huge happening, comparable to that of a pharaoh, this is seen especially in early periods, where the cult animal is buried in a central tomb complex and burials surrounding it belonged to its family members.8 They had their own staff of priests, with an inner hierarchy and the temples had their own fields which kept them self-sufficient, they were also provided funds by royal grants, as well as gifts from the occasional passing pilgrim.9

The animals venerated in cults can be divided into two groups, sacred animals and votive animals. Sacred animals were believed to have the ability to let a deity incarnate in them, or that the animal itself was a deity who had taken an earthly form as this animal. Votive animals were mummified animals with the function to be buried as an act of veneration to a certain deity, often used by pilgrims.10

The religion of ancient Egypt can be a difficult one to understand completely, as one god can be manifested in endless forms depending on geographic location, its ability and what it is associated with. So, if one god, say Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, can be manifested as an ibis bird, he is not limited to only one ibis, but to all of them. In the case of the Apis cult, the god Ptah manifested in the Apis bull, but only in one bull at a time. After the living bull had died, the ba of Ptah – the godly manifestation – transferred to the new Apis bull and so on. So, the cultic animal itself is not a god, it is only the housing for the spirit of a god to take place in, since the gods cannot manifest themselves on earth in human form.11

As the animal cults around Egypt became more popular during the Late Period, so did the oracular aspect of the animal cults grow in importance. The idea is that oracular sessions allowed a more intimate relationship with the deity than had been allowed before.12 This also ties in with the idea that the spirit of a deity resides in a chosen animal, the oracular practice was a way for the god to communicate with the priests, kings and the elites. There is a distinction made between the people and the priests of animal cults. An ordinary man without deeper knowledge on the theology might see Thoth in every ibis and venerate them as such, but the priests drew sharper distinctions and viewed the cultic animal as a mediator between the gods and humans.13

Ida Kingo “ The Apis cult from the New Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period”, thesis, Upsala University 2020 (https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1451708/FULLTEXT01.pdf ), p. 3

And the second excerpt, more particularly on the cult of the Apis bull, which was the most important among these cults (ibid, p. 6) :

It is during the New Kingdom that the theology behind the cult of the Apis bulls were further developed and increased in importance. The theological meaning of the cult was now the earlier mentioned connection with the ideology of kingship and monarchial ideology, as well as a new feature – the connection to Osiris, the king of the underworld.29 The main benefactors to the burial of the Apis were king Amenhotep III, or rather his son, the crown prince Thutmosis, and Ramesses II, the creator of the underground burial structure known to us as the Serapeum.

It is not entirely certain if the Apis bull was a divine entity on their own when they first appeared as a religious feature, but before long the Apis bull had been connected with the god Ptah, where at first, he was acknowledged as Ptah’s son or messenger, but in the 18th Dynasty30 it is certain that the Apis bull was either the god Ptah reincarnated or a manifestation of the soul, or ba, of Ptah.31 It was also starting from this period that one of the five names of the kings, the Horus name, was the strong bull, connecting the characteristics of the bulls with the power of the king. 32

The burial place of the Apis bulls before the New Kingdom have not yet been located. The hypothesis is that they were all systematically eaten by the king to absorb the powers of the holy bulls. This theory is primarily based on one part of the Pyramid Texts33. The passage, called the Cannibal Hymn34, recounts a time where the king would eat parts of gods to gain their powers.35

It is clear from these excerpts that the tumble egyptologists are totally wrong (again) and that animal cults are present and play an important role in ancient Egypt since the beginning of the Egyptian civilization.

The fact that animal cults became more popular in the Late Period (which IS of course culturally Egyptian) is an indigenous development of an already existing important feature of the Egyptian religiosity, with which the Greeks had nothing to do, as the Greek cultural influence in Late Period Egypt was minimal (the Egyptians have many contacts with the Greeks during this period, but they remain culturally xenophobic) and moreover and more importantly animal cults did not play any important role in the Greek religion (if they existed at all).

BTW If the Late Period (664-332 BCE) is not according to the tumblr egyptologists “culturally Egyptian”, what problem exactly do they have with Herodotus, who described the fifth century, Persian-dominated, Late Period Egypt ? Again, if Herodotus visited and described a country which was not anymore “culturally Egyptian”, on the basis of what qualification do they condemn what he writes ? I think that the mental gymnastics of the tumblr egyptologists are ridiculous beyond description.

I clarify here that the truth is that many things had changed in Egypt in the centuries which had passed from the last period of the New Kingdom till the time of Herodotus’ visit there, that’s why it is erroneous to judge what he writes on the exclusive basis of the evidence from the period of the New Kingdom, let alone of earlier periods. But, despite these changes, no serious Egyptologist claims that Late Period Egypt would not be “culturally Egyptian”.

#Ancient Egypt #sacred animals #animal cults

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antonbrown · 3 years

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Anton Brown, 25, artist

BIO SUMMARY

Anton's parents met at a college business course, quickly sparking up a relationship. One was a city boy, a legacy eager to prove his name, the other an ambitious girl from a small European town, chasing her luck abroad.

They started dating, had a baby, got divorced five years later, and off their son went to live with his grandparents in Europe.

Anton was resentful of his parents growing up, and though he quickly learned to mimic their passive-aggressive behavior, the sheltered upbringing, combined with his grandparent's over-zealous portrayal of their daughter, kept him from ever letting his frustration show.

After his high school graduation, his mother reached out and invited him to spend a summer in New York. Turns out the picture his parents had been painting for years was true - they were both extremely ambitious, undeniably hard-working, and hugely successful in their respective fields. Except - what they failed to mention (or, at the very least, greatly understated) was that their business meetings took place in the most elite of restaurants, the recruitment of new clients happened at the most exclusive events in New York City, and that, wouldn't you know it, his mom even owned a spare studio apartment downtown, just in case a friend ever wanted to crash town for a visit. Lovely.

At the time, Anton's mom had been working her way up the ladder of a prominent New York art gallery. Anton secretly enjoyed the work events she took him to; not only did they inspire his own artistic expression, they just so happened to become the place he met his very first muse

The summer was one of experiments, with plenty of booze, adventure, and sexual promiscuity. Unfortunately, it all came to an end in the blink of an eye, and Anton was sent right back across the Atlantic, back into the close-minded community that wouldn't dare dream of the experiences he'd just had.

He got his BA and MA in American studies and sociology, though he never really had a real passion for either, it just seemed like an easy enough degree to get through. He did do a couple semesters abroad, though never in the US, and lost touch with most friends he made along the way.

He moved to SF soon after handing in his master's thesis, ready for a new start. Well, he thought he was ready, at least, but in the end, moving across the ocean took up so much time and energy, all of those art workshops he said he'd be attending and the job hunts he'd say he'd go on remained nothing but scribbles in a forgotten journal

+ a bonus fact Anton would never bring up

One night in NY, Anton and his new group of mischievous friends spent an evening sneaking booze from an exhibition opening, openly mocking the pieces together. It was meant to make him feel better about his asshole mother, but it ended up giving him the idea for a little "prank".

Long story short, he created a bunch of obviously lazy "modern art", slapped a fake profound message behind it, create a new fake persona to sign under the art, and then used the connections he had made in NY to make it seem like his mom had accidentally stumbled upon the hottest, newest, coolest artist in town, and bam - watch her embarrass herself by putting her highly valued seal of approval on literal piles of trash.

but you see, what this smartass neglected to realize, was that when a prominent figure in the art community presents a new piece as highly desirable, highly desirable is exactly what it becomes - and so a new elusive artist was born. The anonymity only added to the intrigue, and so he eventually decided to just go along with it, sending in pieces every now and then (nearly all of them made during college parties or their clean-ups). He says it's ironic, but he doesn't really mind the money either.

He is trying to become an artist in his own right and is definitely stubborn enough to refuse any and all help from his mom or any of her connections at all.

I'm not saying he's banksy, but I'd like to think at least one of his works stirred up a drunken debate at some academic art seminar

(I also have not thought of his artist name yet, but when I do, you bet he'll hate it and won't want anything to do with it)

#i know bios are on the main so here's a summary and a bonus fact #gc.intro #i'm wondering if i should make san francisco the city he was born in #for the potential connections

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trzpiotka · 1 year

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w 2006 niemiecki dziennik taz wydał krytyczny artykuł o Kaczyńskich i potem prokuratura wszczęła śledztwo o znieważenie prezydenta xD sprawa nazywała się “aferą kartoflaną”, bo tytuł artykułu to “Młody polski kartofel. Dranie, które chcą rządzić światem”

#polski #ba thesis adventure #german

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kataa-floko · 2 months

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Person who got a 2.0 (when 1.0 is the best) for their bachelor's thesis

#sarah rambling #adventures in ba thesis writing

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prolapsarian · 5 years

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Notes to Sean Bonney (1969-2019)

The great ruse of our political epoch: Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, and their crows in press, scorched a set of oppositions in the minds of the people. The whole of society encapsulated in an image of “workers versus shirkers”, “strivers versus skivers.” The great tragedy of our political epoch: the Labour movement, the left, and the social democrats took the bait of these laminated ghouls. They responded simply by saying that there were no skivers: instead there was a worthy working class, labouring away ever harder, and getting ever poorer. They said the whole thing was a myth, that the shirkers were a phantom, a chimera, a scapegoat, an image invented by evil overlords to turn the working class against itself, leaving it prone to the ideologies of reaction. The labour movement talked instead only about the working poor, or the unemployed who wanted always to get back to a good job, on a good wage, forever and ever.

Few resisted the ruse, but Sean Bonney was one of them. Perhaps it was because Sean himself was a skiver, a drunk, a scoundrel, a villain, an addict, a down-and-out, a fuck up. More likely it was because of his deep political intuition and understanding. For him, the politics of class warfare was never about worthiness; it was never about what the working class deserve at the end of a hard day’s work, but instead its crucible was the hatred of the social conditions that pummelled people, silenced them, boxed them in, boxed them up, oppressed them, made them suffer. This politics was uncompromising because it understood that any compromise was a failure: there is no weekend that redeems the week, no pension that makes good on the life wrecked by the conformity and unfreedom of work.

I like to think of Sean as the thing that terrified those Tories most, as one of those beautiful creatures who so absolutely threatened them that they had to transfigure him into a phantom. His poetry too was one with this politics in this. Every line is written in solidarity with the shirking class, a class whose underground history crawls and stretches backwards, a perpetual dance, an unending squall, as anonymous as it is enormous. If Sean was a skiver he was also always hard at work, undertaking an immense labour of compression, in order to make that history heard. And this furious labour was quick and angular, because it always came with some sense that history was, already, ending. As a singular voice that resisted the ruse, his writing is one of the most important political efforts of our time.

o scroungers, o gasoline there’s a home for you here there’s a room for your things me, I like pills / o hell.

*** Since hearing of Sean’s death I have been thinking a lot about what I learnt from him. Learning is maybe a strange way to look at it. Because Sean’s poetry was not really so complicated. He stated unambiguous truths that we all knew and understood. Just like Brecht’s dictum in praise of communism: “It’s reasonable, and everyone understands it, it’s easy […] it is the simplicity, that’s hard to achieve.” This was the plane on which we met. All of us, Sean’s friends, comrades, loves, beloveds, others we did not know who all were invited, all in this common place where we know how simple these truths are, even if none of us were able to express them with such concision as Sean – even if we were all somehow less rehearsed, less prepared, less audacious. And suddenly I know it was a common place he made, wretched and hilarious.

*** So communism is simple. But running beneath all of Sean’s work was an unassuming argument, from which I have learned so much. Although argument was not his mode – his poems were always doing something, accusing but never prosecuting – an argument is there, even if it was exposed as a thesis in its own right. It is something so simple, easy, and so obvious that it barely seems worth saying. Sean’s poems made an argument for the enduring power of French symbolism – for a power that surged through history in the spirit of that movement. No surprise for a poet who rewrote Baudelaire and Rimbaud. But constantly a surprise to a world that thought that mode already dead, a world no longer animated by the literary symbol, nor transfixed by the resurrection any such symbols could herald. His writing followed the traces of this hyperhistory that wrapped around the world and back, from the high culture of decolonial revolutionism back in to cosmopolitan centre where bourgeois savages feast greedily on expropriated wares; into the dark sociality of the prison, and out again into every antisocial moment that we call “society”; sometimes making the earth small within a frozen cosmos ringing out noise as signal to nobody and everyone; sometimes bringing the whole cosmos in crystalline shape (sometimes perfect, sometimes fractured) as the sharpest interruption within the world - every poem charting a history stretched taut between uprisings and revolts. He knew the rites of symbols, the continuing practices with which their political power could be leveraged.

Sean was one of the few untimely symbolists of our time. His poems are full of these things: bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc - never quite concepts, never quite images, never quite objects, but pieces of the world to be taken up and arranged, half exploded, into accusations; treasured as partial and made for us to take as our own, a heritage of our own destruction, at once ready at hand, and scattered to the peripheries on a map of the universe, persistently spiralling, in points, back to the centre, some no place.

But if Sean was a symbolist, if he was attentive to its fugitive history, a slick and secret tradition of the oppressed, then this was also a symbolism without any luxuriant illusion. It is a symbolism in which all knowingness has been supplanted with fury and its movements. Sean’s poems are spleen without ideal. They have nothing of the pointed, almost screaming, eternal sarcasm of Baudelaire when he ever again finds the body of his beautiful muse as white and lifeless cold marble, utterly indifferent to the desirous gaze. There is no such muse, no callous petrified grimace, half terrified half laughing, ancient enough to unseat Hellenism itself - although there is beauty still but it exists otherwise, amid a crowd, darkened and lively. When I think of Sean’s monumental work I imagine an enormous bas-relief of black polished marble jutting out from some monstrously disproportioned body, angled between buildings. This great slab flashing black in the white noise of the city. This great slab as populous as the world. Flashing black and seen with the upturned gaze. There is no oppression without this terrified vision that sees in ever new sharpness the oppressor.

When you go to sleep, my gloomy beauty, below a black marble monument, when from alcove and manor you are reduced to damp vault and hollow grave; when the stone—pressing on your timorous chest and sides already lulled by a charmed indifference—halts your heart from beating, from willing, your feet from their bold adventuring, when the tomb, confidant to my infinite dream (since the tomb understands the poet always), through those long nights in which slumber is banished, will say to you: "What does it profit you, imperfect courtisan, not to have known what the dead weep for?" —And the worm will gnaw at your hide like remorse.

*** I haven’t explained what I learnt. I ask the question, What does it mean to find the late nineteenth century stillborn into the twenty-first? Why should these febrile years, from 1848 to the Commune have been so important? What was Sean leveraging when he recast our world with this moment of literary and political history? And what was he leveraging it against? I have a sense that what was important to Sean was a sense of mixedness. There were those who would read these years, after the defeat of revolution, as a dreadful winter of the world. There were those who saw only society in decline. “Jeremiads are the fashion”, Blanqui would say while counselling civil war. And then there were those for whom arcades first provided an extravagant ecstacy of distraction and glitz. These were the years of monstrocity, from Maldoror to Das Kapital. These years of the great machines that chewed up humans and spat out their remains across the city, of great humans who chewed up machines and made language anew. These years in which the fury of defeat burnt hot. These years of illumination. These years where gruesome metallic grinding and factory fire met the dandy. Few eras have been so mixed, so utterly undecided. No era so perfect to carve out the truly Dickensian physiognomy of Iain Duncan Smith. This was neither the stage of tragedy nor comedy, but of frivolous wickedness and hilarious turpitude. The world made into a barb, and no-one quite knowing who is caught on it. The great progress. The great stupidity. Street life. The symbol belonging to this undecided realm.

Marx was famously dismissive of that “social scum” the Lumpenproletariat, who he described at the beginning of this period as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.” Marx saw in these figures, in their Bonapartist, reactionary form, a bourgeois consciousness ripped from its class interest and thus nourished by purest political ideology. But if he could excoriate the drunkenness of beggars, Marx failed to appreciate its complement: the intoxication of sobriety of the working classes, the stupefaction in methodism, their imagined glory in progress. Wine, as the beggars already knew, was the only salve to the social anaesthetic of worthiness and the idiotic faith in work.

If Sean were here I’d want to talk to him about this learning in relation to a fragment by Benjamin, which he wrote as he thought about the world of Baudelaire; this world of mixedness of the city constructed and exploded, and the people within it subject to the same motion:

During the Baroque, a formerly incidental component of allegory, the emblem, undergoes extravagant development. If, for the materialist historian, the medieval origin of allegory still needs elucidation, Marx himself furnishes a clue for understanding its Baroque form. He writes in Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1922), vol. 1, p. 344: "The collective machine ... becomes more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole becomes a continuous one — that is, the less the raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase to its last; in other words, the more its passage from one phase to another is effected not only by the hand of man but by the machinery itself. In manufacture, the isolation of each detail process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of labor, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is, on the contrary, imperative." Here may be found the key to the Baroque procedure whereby meanings are conferred on the set of fragments, on the pieces into which not so much the whole as the process of its production has disintegrated. Baroque emblems may be conceived as half finished products which, from the phases of a production process, have been converted into monuments to the process of destruction. During the Thirty Years' War, which, now at one point and now at another, immobilized production, the "interruption" that, according to Marx, characterizes each particular stage of this labor process could be protracted almost indefinitely. But the real triumph of the Baroque emblematic, the chief exhibit of which becomes the death's head, is the integration of man himself into the operation. The death's head of Baroque allegory is a half-finished product of the history of salvation, that process interrupted — so far as this is given him to realize — by Satan.

I won’t pretend to know all of what Benjamin means here but I have some idea. And those last sentences terrify me. Modernity begins with a war that is a strike, one that repeats through history. And the shape of this strike, this war, this repetition, is the shape of detritus of production interrupted. We shift perspective and the machine is revealed as other than it was once imagined: it is not some factory churning out commodities, but a world theatre of soteriology. An exchange takes place: the half-finished product for the half-destroyed body. Although what is created (albeit as a “monument to the process of destruction”) is some monstrous combination of the two. One and the same seen with two different perspectives, and the two perspectives separated by the distance between the promise that production will be interrupted, in rhythmic repetition, and the force of the machine that completes the product, kills the body into it, sealing death perfectly within the commodity, as its catastrophe. This distance, a tropic on the edge of the end of the world, is Hell.

This is a lot. But maybe it gets close to what I learnt. That all those bombs, mouths, wires, bones, birds, walls, suns, etc were for Sean the emblemata of our political times. These are the monsters, half-finished, half-human, half-machine, the bird interrupting itself with a scream a silent as the cosmos once seemed. I don’t know if they are to be taken up as weapons in the battle for salvation, or as mere co-ordinates on the map of hell. But they are certainly potent, and set here in commitment to redemption, for the work of raising the dead. Sean’s writing was always ready for this task, in constant preparation, and in constant interruption. Its angles quickly pacing between the two.

This has become theologically ornate. But perhaps something of the point is clear: that in the symbolic realm of Sean’s language are staked the great theological and materialist battles of our age. He had to deep dig into our time for that, furrow and dig so deep that he found the nineteenth century still there, crawling everywhere, right up to us. And all of this was set, furiously, against a more everyday view that production has all but disappeared from sight: society fully administered slips across screens with nothing but a sense of speed and gloss. His poetry decries, digs into, a laminated world with which we are supposed to play but in which we are never supposed to participate, never mind to get drunk, see the truth, raise the dead, even now as they slip away ever further through the mediatized glare.

*** Are we not surrounded by those who cast spells? Sorcery is the fashion, if only for the blighted, the meek, the poor, the oppressed. And it would be easy to mistake what Sean was writing for just another piece of subaltern superstition; promising mighty power for as long as it remains utterly powerless and otherworldly. But this is not right. Seans symbols are not just any old sign, or signal, or sigil. They are not arcana, but materials taken to hand out of the dereliction of the present. They are certainly magic, just as Sean was certainly a seer. But this is a materialist magic, a fury, a joy. They are not drawn from some other mystical world, but from this one. And his magic was to suspend them between this world and the next, between law made in the mouths of a class who hated him, and justice. He saw more deeply than most of us dare, and invited us along. Invited everyone along, including the dead who will rise, even if we have to dig and dig and drag them out of the ground and through the streets, to show the world what streets are really for. Here in this common place, between buildings, together. This is the place of magic, for riots, for burning cars; here a wall, there a blazing comet. Let his poetry dance on, and we will dance on too.

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