12:52 <VoxPVoxD> The UMBC library is a big, modern building, the way university libraries tend to be, and Stewart comes out here at least once a week for the Climate Justice Reading Group, where he nods along and contributes little to the discussion, but walks away fat on these teens' fear of the future. It was coming out of the library that Stewart met Melanie in earnest for the first time, and he's found 12:52 <VoxPVoxD> her here again, reading something impenetrable in a quiet corner of the reading rooms alone. "Hey," he whispers, sitting down. 12:54 <banana> Ah, but it's not meant to be impenetrable today. Melanie smiles a lot more than she used to, including now. "Heyyy Ste-wart. Do you want to be, like, a guinea pig? For an argument?" 12:55 <banana> She's shuffling papers, most printed but with a few handwritten addenda from today. 12:56 <VoxPVoxD> It's nice seeing Melanie in a good mood. Stewart seems focused, more than he used to, including now. He sets down his laptop bag and folds his hands on the table. "Absolutely." 12:57 <banana> "Okay." She's definitely a bit nervous about this, since it's very hard to tell whether these things make sense without a reader - ha! "Okay, this isn't finished, it's an outline to be expanded. I have to give you a tiny bit of context but it mainly stands alone.." She shuffles papers more, pulling out one to go on top of the main pile. 13:00 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart waits patiently, his mind sliding off the ongoing problem of the huntsman to give Melanie his undivided attention. 13:00 <banana> Let's hope he doesn't regret it. 13:00 <banana> Melanie begins with that minimal context.. since Stewart knows nothing about her work it would be useless to launch into the actual new argument to start. Okay.. 13:01 <banana> "...having situated the alien in society, we understand that his distinguishing characteristic is not an inability to contribute. The alien's *presence* is illegitimate, an identity constructed collaboratively between the alien himself and the meme-masters of the society he invades; the classic examples are those alienated by societal changes or requirements, refusing to accept its premises, 13:01 <banana> as well as those aliens who try to enter into a closed society without a dominant integrative meme." 13:03 <banana> Melanie's voice changes, dropping the cadence of recitation as she puts the page down. "So that's just background, my view of the concept of the alien in the context of.. okay let's not preempt." 13:03 <banana> "Remember, this is an outline, the barest sketch. I'd really like you to know what you think, though." 13:03 <banana> She picks up the papers again and begins to read, voice steadying. 13:03 <banana> "The Alienee is different to the Alien. She is not disallowed from entering society, but forcibly removed from sociability while still physically present. Disabled people, felons and survivors of abuse are not alienated by a process of rejection; they have become inimical, dangerous to society by virtue of the statement they make about it. 13:03 <banana> What is the alienee's relationship to contribution? An alien's work may be socially necessary while paradoxically forbidden. An alienee is in a worse position, dependent on society but not aligned with its productive interests. 13:03 <banana> A liberal view of the alienee would see her as a victim with special needs - incapable of contributing but to be supported out of common humanity. 13:04 <banana> This is deceptive. To survive, an alienee must hide from or *change* the world. Society owes her nothing, for she is its enemy, but if she accepts its support - its framing - then she remains in stasis, incapable of success on the terms to which she has been forced." 13:04 <banana> Now she's looking at him expectantly. It's unclear, to Melanie also, what she's expecting. 13:07 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart... mostly follows this. He thinks. "So if I understand you right, you're saying that people who've fallen through the cracks of society are only cared for as long as they stay where they fell?" 13:09 <banana> "That's part of it." Melanie shuffles papers again nervously; she's responding now, not reading. "Actually what I'm trying to do is introduce this concept, I want to come up with a rigorous treatment of those.. crack-fallers, fit them into an expanded sociology that's more than just 'marginalised group'.." 13:09 <banana> "That's part of it." Melanie shuffles papers again nervously; she's responding now, not reading. "Actually what I'm trying to do is introduce this concept, I want to come up with a rigorous treatment of those.. crack-fallers, fit them into an expanded sociology that's more than just 'marginalised group'.." 13:09 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Something that might include us." 13:11 <banana> "Yeah and like, take into account that we actually have power, not just exclusion. I want to explore that and see who's really in the most danger, hopefully nobody but I freaking doubt it, get to grips with.. how you theoretically fit normal people and us-people into the same mindset." 13:12 <banana> "But I wanna develop an ontological category here, not talk about concrete Evil Faeries. That would cause problems." 13:12 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So like, to arrive at a notion of society that integrates kinds of power specific to victimhood, or, or survivorship, you need a model of victimhood that you can attach that power to without changing the underlying..." He gestures vaguely. 13:13 <banana> (Vague gesture) "is pretty much it. I'll have to work my way up to" (far more elaborate gesture). 13:14 <banana> "Some of this stuff is actually important? For mainstream social functioning? Think about how, like, the vampires deal with local authority. What effects does that have if they're everywhere?" 13:16 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The question is, is a police officer who's corrupt becasuse of magic mind-controlling blood a different, uh, qualia than a police officer who's just taking bribes from a mobster or whatever." 13:17 <VoxPVoxD> "Like to what extent does a vampire subvert rather than reproduce conventional social relations." 13:18 <banana> Melanie writes that down. "That's right, that's right. If you look at it from the perspective of a society that can't perceive these things directly - they can't see survivors, don't listen to their voices. Also some of us are literally invisible, with invisiblity magic. Anyway- what kind of mistakes are being made?" 13:18 <banana> "Failures of understanding which might be hurting everyone needlessly. Or not. I don't know, yet." 13:20 <banana> Maybe it's only hurting the people whose blood a vampire takes or the bouncers a huntsman throws through a door? 13:21 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I've actually been thinking about stuff like this recently. Like, you met Lister, right? At the party. Le petit prince." 13:23 <banana> Melanie: "Oh, yeah. He was 'profoundly sad', which is probably true but might also be like.. the camoflague you get on a poisonous frog. 13:25 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart winces. "I don't think he's faking it. I did some research on him. He goes back to the court of Louis XIV. That's like, late 17th early 18th century. He's been 13 for over 300 years." 13:27 <banana> Melanie: "And has, therefore, survived for 300 years?" 13:28 <banana> "There are at least two ways to do that but being really genuinely dangerous, like having your own sorrow be a weapon, that's got to be one." 13:28 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods. "300 years of full subjective life, too. Lauren told me vampires go to sleep sometimes - to pass the time, I guess - but she doesn't think Lister ever has." 13:28 <banana> "I'm not saying I want the guy to be sad." 13:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Came to Baltimore about 30 years ago, claimed power, cut all ties with the bigger regional courts, and just... killed every comer, for years, until the comers stopped coming." 13:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Now he plays video games all night." 13:30 <banana> It sure would be awful if that happened to you. Getting made into a monster and then having to live that way for about three hundred years. This is slightly worrying, though: "So 'prince' is a vampire term like the freehold courts use? Or he was an actual prince in France?" 13:31 <banana> "I assumed Lister was dangerous, but not.. kill other vampires for thirty years dangerous. I hope I wasn't tactless." 13:31 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "A matter of some historical dispute! He tends to deny it, but some sources say he has a claim to the French throne. But no he is, formally, Prince of the Court of Baltimore, as opposed to King-in-Court of the Freehold of Baltimore. It makes me feel better about the feudalism stuff to know other people do it too, so we're not just, you know, aping the Keepers." 13:33 <VoxPVoxD> "But Lister avoids all the actual work he can, so there's a Primacy and Regent under him who sort of, run the city, vampirically." 13:33 <banana> Melanie: "Do you know any vampires who're more happy to talk about themselves?" 13:34 <banana> "I'm really looking for like.. the kind of person who just finds themselves endlessly fascinating, specifically the tough times they've had and all the ways they've been hard done by. Alienees willing to express it." 13:35 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I think they're like us, you know? They're unified by this... this thing that they have now, this thing they don't have anymore, but how it touches them and how they take it is so wildly variant... some of us love to talk about ourselves but will still have exposed nerves if you touch the wrong topic or speak the wrong way. Some of us don't like to talk about ourselves at all 13:35 <VoxPVoxD> until the moment comes when we can't help ourselves." 13:36 <VoxPVoxD> "I will say that I met a couple of vampires - one is the Sheriff of Baltimore, the other is some kind of protector or enforcer called Father Jesse - who are, if not *eager* to talk about themselves, much more sanguine about it." 13:36 <VoxPVoxD> "...so to speak." 13:40 <banana> Melanie: "Ha ha. All these titles seem like deflections to me, including ours.. what do they mean?" 13:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They're, you know... pegs for holes. All the wizards have them. Willworkers, sorry. That's what Lister calls them. But their names are like, Jesuit and Pardon and Fireman and Union and Singular and Society." 13:41 <banana> "Regent is like, in charge obviously, Sheriff has to be a law-keeper, vampire law.. Father as in some kind of horrid brood-master?" 13:41 <banana> "Christ." 13:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart points. "Yeah, it's the second one." 13:42 <banana> Melanie: "I like 'Pardon' though. Ambiguous meaning and it's almost an actual name." 13:42 <VoxPVoxD> "Christ I mean. He's a Father father. With a collar and Latin chanting and cursing at God." 13:42 <banana> "Ohhhh!" 13:43 <banana> "That would be... interesting. I don't remember a lot about that stuff, but it's still there. Like as an ingrained part of culture rather than actual beliefs per se. Hard to maintain any beliefs." 13:44 <banana> "On some level I'd like to know what a vampire thinks of God." Melanie scribbles something meaningless. The fact that they even think about this stuff.. 13:45 <VoxPVoxD> "But you know, you see -- like with us and Loyalists. There's sad vampires, and avoidant vampires, and cranky vampires, like with us. But just like there's the Proctor or the Oxford Lad or whoever, they have the guy who just rides into town and starts eating people until he has to be put down like an animal. They have some kind of Nazi mad scientist who they just let *have* the Johns Hopkins 13:45 <VoxPVoxD> campuses. And the werewolves have their Hook Hand Lodge, murderers and cannibals out in the woods. And the wizards have Society." 13:45 <VoxPVoxD> "Who is worse than all of those." 13:47 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Father Jesse doesn't believe in God, but in that way where it's obvious he really wants to and God is sort of the ultimate shitty disappointing dad. His song is Dear God, by XTC, which is exactly that energy." 13:48 <VoxPVoxD> "Jesuit seems to come at the whole God thing from a completely different angle. He sees himself as prosecuting a war for dominion of Heaven." 13:48 <VoxPVoxD> "Jesuit the wizrd." 13:48 <VoxPVoxD> "Willworker." 13:48 <banana> Melanie's taking notes in earnest. Stewart knows way more about these sects and beings than she expected, but.. something stood out. 13:48 <banana> She looks around; there's nobody near, and these chairs are comfy. They don't assume things about your bones. 13:48 <banana> "Do you want to tell me about Society?" 13:49 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart sucks in a breath. "No. But I don't want to keep him a secret either." 13:49 <VoxPVoxD> "So:" 13:49 <banana> On another level what stood out was 'nazi mad scientist' but, you know. Important stuff first. 13:51 <VoxPVoxD> "So like I said, Jesuit sees himself as fighting a war for Heaven, for, I don't know, the soul of humanity. On the side of, like, spiritual liberation. I don't know, their philosophy is way over my head. I'd love to hear what you made of Jesuit or one of the other true believers." 13:51 <VoxPVoxD> "Now of course, the inevitable corrollary is that there will be people who take... the opposite view. The view that Heaven must remain sealed, that people must remain, you know I'm sure they wouldn't say subjugated, but orderly." 13:51 <banana> "I would very much like to talk to one, maybe over the phone." 13:52 <banana> "Maybe radio transmission from Mars?" 13:52 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I know where they work, I've got a pass to go up there whenever I want pretty much, and I could bring guests." 13:52 <VoxPVoxD> "Which is the exact opposite of everything you said. But it's an option." 13:53 <banana> Melanie: "I'll check whether my stipend does field trips with hazard pay. What's it worth to 'keep Heaven sealed'?" 13:53 <banana> "To them, I mean." 13:53 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Worth enough to try and torture a couple of harmless changelings on a pizza date." 13:56 <banana> Melanie watches Stewart talk. He's like a prototype - he's her friend, but he's also an example of a human being experiencing emotions. Things worth caring about. She wants to understand. 13:57 <banana> "What's been happening to you two? Are you safe now? Can we.. what happened?" 13:58 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It's fine now. So like, you remember back when we went to the Hob Market, and you came up empty looking for a weapon? I got this -- it's a digitized version of a magical tome. The Book of Things Strange and Wondrous, it's called." 13:59 <VoxPVoxD> "Basically a magical repository of knowledge, an inorganic oracle." 14:01 <banana> Melanie: "Isn't that also a weapon?" 14:01 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah. I'm coming to understand that now." 14:02 <VoxPVoxD> "Anyway, the bad willworkers, their equivalent of Loyalists - loyal to the world-as-it-is, to humanity-as-it-is, to... well, to society. Society was who they sent. He might be their leader." 14:03 <VoxPVoxD> "He traps us, starts gruesomely killing this random bystander to intimidate us - he gave her cancer. He does this to play a game with us. With me. The point of the game is to show me that he can hurt me in so many more ways than I can hurt him. That even hurting him hurts me. He had this sort of, malicious sphinx-like riddle game and he kept trying to take a taser to Lauren. Called her not 14:03 <VoxPVoxD> even a person anymore." 14:04 <VoxPVoxD> "Society is brutal, selfish, misogynistic, both actively cruel and indifferent to cruelty, and above all just, hugely wastefully inefficient." 14:05 <banana> That's fucking awful. "That's awful." Melanie does not write that line down, though she wants to. 14:05 <banana> "Cancer. Is there.. are the willworkers as powerful as they think they are? Are they really that kind of a threat?" 14:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "It was like a Keeper was in the room. It was that kind of feeling." 14:09 <banana> Just the idea is making Melanie panic. "But they're not. They're human, right? So that's worse, but- there must be ways to-" She could plan out ways to fight back, to defend yourself, ask for details of the man-monster's powers. What's the point? The problem is what's already happened. 14:09 <banana> "I'm so glad you came through it." 14:10 <banana> "Did you give up the book?" 14:10 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah. It's a shitty way for it to happen, but being there with Lauren, feeling the way I did, doing what I did to try to help her... it was kind of how I realized I loved her." 14:10 <VoxPVoxD> He looks down. "Anyway." 14:13 <banana> Melanie: "That's extra sappy. You're an extra sap." 14:15 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Heh. Yeah. It's gross. I love it. Anyway... there's these sort of layered, overlapping experiences between different groups of the, uh, supernaturally estranged. And these penumbras of shared experience that say a vampire and a changeling might have, or a changeling and a willworker, or a vampire and a werewolf. And these layers sort of... jostle, right, like tectonic plates." 14:15 <VoxPVoxD> "Like, uh, what's that witch expression?" 14:16 <banana> "There are witches?" 14:16 <VoxPVoxD> "I mean regular witches. Mortal occultists, stuff historians publicly acknowledge. Crowley and so forth." 14:17 <VoxPVoxD> "The phrase I was thinking of was 'as above, so below'." 14:18 <banana> Melanie: "Only if what you get above is earthquakes." 14:19 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I mean... there is a war on in Heaven, allegedly. Not out of the realm of possibility." 14:19 <VoxPVoxD> "Alienated as we alienees are, we're still within and subject to society. And so society reproduces itself in us, and we reflect society back at itself." Stewart doesn't know the word 'dialectic'. "So what I've been thinking is that we see our place in society represented in how we relate to each other." 14:20 <banana> Melanie: "It better not be that difficult to find one." 14:21 <banana> She makes an ehhhh noise. "You've been learning a lot, right? About all the powers and personages. That's going to be a thing?" 14:21 <VoxPVoxD> "A thing?" 14:21 <banana> "For you, a- a role or activity." 14:22 <banana> "Like, you're making friends everywhere and finding these common points. I wanna keep picking your brains about those, but more importantly it sounds like some sort of incipient liason..ing." 14:23 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah. It's sort of, I don't know. The Autumn Court has friends on all the other sides. Those are important relationships politically and materially, but they also contextualize *so much*. It really helps me think about like... our bullshit." 14:23 <VoxPVoxD> "The Autumn Court calls it becoming a Lord Sage of the Unknown Reaches." 14:24 <banana> Melanie leans back. She steeples her fingers, which is really gnarly. 14:24 <banana> "Why... do they call it that." 14:26 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I don't know. I honestly don't. Maybe the Wyrd inflects our language, which colors our self-concepts inside and out. It permeates, too -- you know the Young Street almost put my fetch through a window without thinking twice, but he still hunkers down in a fortress called, literally, Swordhome. That's like the name a level 9 fighter picks for their stronghold." 14:27 <banana> Melanie: "Maybe. Maybe somebody just lost a bet." 14:27 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I mean... we all lost a bet. That's why we're here." 14:27 <banana> "Maybe they're winning it? See if you can get away with calling yourself the Lord Reaching Sage. Make it fifty years without anyone objecting and I'll buy the next round." 14:28 <VoxPVoxD> "Oh, I certainly can't *yet*. Now, if I can introduce you to Santander, our current Lord Sage. That man *earns* it." 14:29 <banana> "Yeah, I'd like to meet him at some point. The occult is.. oddly inapplicable to philosophy, I'm finding, but it's definitely a perspective." 14:29 <banana> "Um, why did the Street try to kill your fetch?" 14:30 <banana> "Like obviously he didn't know, or it wouldn't be trying..." this may be impolite. 14:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "My fetch is a firefighter. Fetches can see through our Masks, so he thought the Street was on fire. In like a bad way." 14:30 <VoxPVoxD> "And yeah, fetches don't look like anything but regular people to us." 14:32 <banana> "Ahaha! Oh man, yeah, you can't fight that fire!" 14:33 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You know he's a lot more charismatic than I was expecting. The Street, I mean. By reputation I was picturing a guy who just gets mad at everything and can't turn it off." 14:34 <banana> Melanie: "He gets mad at the right things. Injustice, faerie monsters. There's just.. a lot of both." 14:34 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "That's it! That's exactly the thing!" 14:34 <VoxPVoxD> "The, like. I don't know. The unified theory." 14:35 <VoxPVoxD> "Have you ever read Lovecraft?" 14:35 <banana> "It's an element. Wyrd-touched entities make themselves into metaphor deliberately.. I'm surprised I haven't found anyone writing about this stuff yet. There's an obscure screenplay floating around, but no nonfiction treatments." 14:35 <banana> "Not that I know!" 14:36 <banana> Sounds like a romance novelist, and Melanie thinks she read a few of those back in the day, but if so they weren't memorable. 14:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Okay so, basically HP Lovecraft was a weird, prissy racist, who wrote a lot of really imaginative and enduring horror fiction. I wonder if he's still alive, like Poe is. Anyway, one of his most famous stories is called 'The Call of Cthulhu', and it opens like this." 14:37 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart recites from memory: 14:37 <VoxPVoxD> "'The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing-together of dissociated knowledge will open 14:37 <VoxPVoxD> up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.'" 14:39 <VoxPVoxD> He's silent for a moment after finishing. Then: "And like, that's-- that's the thing." 14:39 <banana> Melanie: "That's well-written. It's evocative, but it's bullshit, right?" 14:39 <VoxPVoxD> "Yes and no. It's bullshit that it's good. But it's true that it's true." 14:40 <VoxPVoxD> "You have to understand mercy as an enforced, dominating peace. The conditional withdrawal of violence." 14:40 <VoxPVoxD> "A you-are-safe-unless." 14:40 <banana> "Nope. Ignorance isn't a mercy. It's a literary equivalent of the caveman meme about playing gods." 14:41 <VoxPVoxD> "Mercy isn't good, it's just a promise by the powerful not to hurt the vulnerable anymore." 14:41 <VoxPVoxD> "It says nothing about the value of who is powerful, or who is vulnerable." 14:41 <banana> Melanie: "The kind of fight that we avoid through lack of knowledge - whether it's inner struggle or a conflict you can't help but fight if you know it's there to be fought - those things fester somewhere. It only lets individuals shelter under a- a wound in society." 14:41 <VoxPVoxD> "Right! Exactly." 14:41 <banana> "Right?" 14:41 <VoxPVoxD> "That wound is what we inhabit. This is the relation we enforce and reflect." 14:42 <banana> "It's only a starting point." 14:42 <VoxPVoxD> "What society does to us... what society says about itself by doing this to us... is inhibit that correlation. As a means of keeping the peace. Of enforcing space and distance. And, yeah, in some quarters, it's absolutely seen as a mercy." 14:43 <VoxPVoxD> "But all it really does is deny us unity. It's a way to keep us from reckoning with -- to keep everyone from reckoning with -- the sheer, the fucking, the awful depth and diversity of the things that can be taken from us." 14:43 <VoxPVoxD> His voice has grown thick with emotion. Stewart hisses, tears in the corner of his eyes: "He was thirteen years old." 14:44 <banana> Melanie's sitting up and in fact waving her arms a bit. "I don't think we're disagreeing, it's just.. if you lose everything. If you fail utterly and it turns out every thing you did was totally worthless, misguided, harmful." 14:44 <banana> "You can go on from that." 14:45 <VoxPVoxD> "You can. But the inhibition is self-reinforcing. Self-perpetuating. And it peels some of its victims away to feed it directly." 14:45 <banana> "You don't have to but you can, and the sheer human will to continue can turn into.. anything. Wonderful things." 14:45 <VoxPVoxD> "So there's this need to perpetually go on." 14:45 <VoxPVoxD> "To begin again and again and again." 14:45 <VoxPVoxD> He hits the table with each "again". 14:45 <banana> "Yes. Sure." 14:45 <banana> "It sucks, I know. You can still do it though." 14:46 <VoxPVoxD> "You know, it's not impossible. You're right, we can do amazing things. We can help people. We can heal, we can find love." 14:46 <VoxPVoxD> "But that's... that's the force that we're pushing against to do it." 14:46 <VoxPVoxD> "That struggle, I think, is definitive." 14:46 <banana> "You mean definitional." 14:46 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart smiles. "You're right." 14:46 <VoxPVoxD> He dries his eyes. 14:46 <VoxPVoxD> "You're right." 14:49 <banana> Melanie isright. "Hey, um. The next time the peeled ones, the inhibited ones.. when you're in danger again we'll be there again. When Lauren's in trouble you'll be there." 14:49 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart reaches out to pat Melanie's hand. "I know." 14:49 <banana> "Sometimes the trouble is just going to be.. profound sorrow. I know. When there's something to fight though I am going to help with that, and I'm going to get really good at it." 14:51 <VoxPVoxD> "I know you will. You're already good at it." 14:51 <VoxPVoxD> "Nowhere to go but up." 14:51 <VoxPVoxD> "I'm really glad you're my friend." 14:51 <banana> "That's what I want to write about. The things we can do, since it's not like we're gonna stop." 14:52 <banana> Aghjb. 14:52 <banana> Melanie doesn't know what to say to that.