I'm Not Going to Compete With a Ghost (The Black Archive #42: The Rings of Akhaten)

Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, kill my enemies!

Will Shaw is an interesting critic. He's not as structurally daring as, say, Elizabeth Sandifer or Sam Keeper, but he, much like Richard Jones or Sam Maleski, has a knack for keeping a reader engaged with the criticism he is writing, even if the reader has no familiarity with the subject and the length is in the six digits in terms of word count. No where is this more apparent than in his recently released entry into The Black Archive: The Rings of Akhaten.

For those unaware, The Black Archive is a series of book length analysis centered around the television series Doctor Who. They are quite good, ranging from deep dives into the history that the episode is exploring to examinations of the racial politics inherent to a story riffing Hammer Horror films, to an overview of all the clever, interesting things an episode is doing. While Shaw's book is very much of the third variety, it's a damn good one for the simple fact that there are a lot of clever, interesting things about the marmite episode.

Perhaps the crown jewel of the book is its opening chapter, wherein Shaw deftly juggles the interrelated deconstructed concepts of New Atheism and Orientalism within the episode. While the latter aspect is certainly without critique (and Shaw is willing to provide it), his analysis highlights the ways in which the episode often subverts and critiques these aspects as well as their history within Doctor Who. And what they show is a tendency for the Doctor to assume he know what the world is, even as it repeatedly surprises him in how wrong he is. It highlights, though not necessarily leads, a path forward. The Rings of Akhaten, much like the companion who stars in it, for all the criticism laid upon it, might just be one of the most important things to happen to Doctor Who, its implications still being explored.

That's not to say that the remaining chapters and appendixes aren't without merit. The follow-up chapter, focusing on the role of Clara in the episode and the concluding chapter about the episode's role within the 50th anniversary year are both delightful. And while the chapter focusing on the flaws within the episode is probably the weakest of the four, it is nonetheless a fascinating read. And, of course, the behind the scenes material provided both by the interview with Farren Blackburn as well as his Director's Statement are quite interesting.

There are certainly flaws within the book. In the ebook edition I read from, some of the footnotes were seemingly not included (one notable one being an entire quote from Neil Cross' adaptation of MR James' Whistle and I'll Come to You without a citation). There are points that are tantalizingly brought up (such as Akhaten being a patriarchal figure or a more in-depth look at the line "I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man") only not to be explored with much depth. Equally, the book assumes a reader more familiar with the New Series than the classic one and as such leaves out several interesting threads such as the history of the Doctor interacting with God like figures, the similarly deconstructive implications of Carnival of Monsters, or Lalla Ward.

But perhaps most galling of all is the lack of discussion of the final confrontation between Clara and the Doctor. While the conclusion of that scene is discussed at length, what led up to it is surprisingly absent. In it, Clara confronts the Doctor with his, shall we say, less than ethical actions. When he tries to justify his actions as being because she reminds him of someone he knew (who died), she rebukes him, saying she's her own person and won't be treated as secondary to someone else. It both establishes Clara as a figure with agency in a story that assumes she's an object and acts as meta commentary given the previous time a beloved companion left (without a gap year full of specials), her successor was coldly received by the fandom and treated somewhat poorly by the show. It feels like a noticeable gap that the implications of this brief conversation (for good and ill [note the focus on Clara not being her echoes and not the Doctor being at her mother's grave]) are absent from Shaw's analysis.

Still, the book (as well as the series it's a part of) is a must read for anyone interested in Doctor Who, quality criticism, and arguments you can make against that guy you know from the internet who won't shut up about how all religions are inherently barbaric. I look forward to whatever Will Shaw has planned for the future. I'm sure it will be something awesome.

🍁

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The Part Where We Talk About Star Wars (Kerblam!)

Commissioned by Friendly Neighborhood Comics, who just asked for “!” and this is what I interpreted that to mean.

Note: In the original article, I conflated Richard Spencer with Milo Yiannopoulos. This has since been rectified.

With thanks to Clara Laherty.

A few months back, I pitched a series of articles on the Eruditorum Press Discord wherein the episodes of Series 11 of Doctor Who would be contrasted with works created the same year (examples include (but don’t have to be) Rosa/BlackkKlansman, Demons of the Punjab/Ghoul, and Resolution/Watchmen (2019)). It was meant to be a multi author project akin to Shelfdust’s analysis of Watchmen or the Outside In book line, and this would be mine. If anyone else would like to write something in this structure, by all means do as thou wilt. And don’t be restricted by my recommendations. If you find a better fit than Demons/Ghoul, do so. Or, for that matter, how I approach Kerblam!

Even though you're fakin' it, nobody's gonna know.

There are many things wrong with Lily Orchard’s Steven Universe is Garbage, and Here’s Why, most of them rather banal. Some range from general misunderstandings of how the animation industry works (assuming the definition of filler used in the video [episodes that aren’t directly tied to the plot of the show and focus on more periphery characters that are used to give Rebecca Sugar {and Rebecca Sugar alone, which is a whole rabbit hole in and of itself} time to rush out animating the next “plot” episode] is correct, 1. Structuring an arc such that you open with three “plot” episodes and then have the “filler” follow after it is a terrible way to structure an arc, 2. The nature of some of the arcs are more character based than plot based, such that the cluster arc wasn’t so much about the cluster, but of Peridot’s development as a character, and 3. In the words of Sam Keeper, “YOU STILL HAVE TO ANIMATE THE FUCKING "FILLER" EPISODES YOU JACKASS”) to mistaking aesthetic disagreements for objective issues (Steven Universe is a first person narrative or, as many a critic of the show has put it, is shackled by the Steven only perspective) to flat out lies (there’s no way in hell the Homeworld Arc doesn’t end with the episode where Steven leaves Homeworld or, for that matter, “Reunited” is by any definition a filler episode). But the most interesting and wrongly discussed is that of Orchard’s 11-minute tangent about why she loves the Sith Campaign of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

It’s certainly easy to see why many would disregard this aspect of Orchard’s critique. It is, after all, a long digression that could have been said in a more succinct manner. Additionally, it’s a tangent that exists near the end of the video and is the sole tangent of its kind. There are points within it where Orchard makes the common mistake many a video essayist makes in repeating information with voiceover/captions and clips rather than using the clips to speak for themselves. And, of course, there’s the fact that she blatantly contradicts her point of the value of the light side Sith (hereon referred to as “The Good Sith”) by having her character flagrantly choose two dark side choices in a row that allow her character to punch and extrajudicially murder a dictator and not showing the light side choice as a contrast. One could easily make the point of the tangent (i.e. Rose Quartz would’ve been a better character if she was a neoliberal) without invoking Star Wars: The Old Republic. But she did, so we have to deal with the implications.

Let’s start with that pithy parenthetical. Though the phrase “neoliberal” has been tossed around a lot to the point of meaninglessness, there is still some value to it. For the purposes of this article, the term neoliberal will refer to one who will work to defend the system of late stage capitalism. In practice, the term is usually applied to those who align with nominally liberal/leftist organizations, but still believe in the benefits of the system, still wish to see it upholded, albeit running more smoothly and with the premises smelling sweet (see: Hillary Clinton). Likewise, the Good Sith sees and exists within the fascist system of the Sith Empire and finds it wanting. There’s too much obsession with blood purity and racial intolerance. The actions of racist Sith are ultimately harming the Empire and its goals because of their desire for power. The problem for the Good Sith is… individual actors within the system.

One might quibble with the use of neoliberal considering the Good Sith uses techniques of violence and coercion to get their way. However, the system of the Sith is ultimately one that, as with all systems of fascism, values action for action’s sake and the Good Sith ultimately believes in the Empire and its imperialistic ambitions, for an individual who grew up in a fascist system would ultimately still be a fascist. To claim otherwise would be to woobify the fascist. There is so much wrong with this sentiment. To start with, woobification is not simply making a fascist have a heel face turn. Rather, it involves showing the fascist as ineffectual in a way that makes them look cute. Furthermore, one could point out how people within the system of the American Slave Trade didn’t keep their slaves when they realized the system was bullshit and self-defeating and worked to fight against it. 

But perhaps the most relevant issue for the purposes of this article is the notion that the problem of the Empire is racism. While racism is ultimately a part of a fascist worldview, it’s not as key a part of the worldview as Orchard would argue. As Umberto Eco wrote in Ur-Fascism, while the Ur-fascist is by default a racist, “the first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.” These intruders do not necessarily have to be people of non-Sith/impure blood. Consider the case of noted fascist Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is a homosexual man who fucks a black guy. Both of those qualities would get Yiannopoulos sent to Auschwitz in the age of the Nazi regime.

However, fascism has a tendency of, how should I put it… moving the goal posts when it’s convenient. As such, an individual such as Yiannopoulos is allowed an acceptance within the fascist system. The same is true of aliens within the Sith, as there’s another invader on the horizon, one that’s on the cusp of being more mainstream: The Jedi. Orchard herself makes the fascist argument against the Jedi quite clear: “When you do encounter Jedi as a Sith character, they’re really fucking snotty to you, even to the point of talking to you like you’re not even really there. The Jedi have gotten comfortable with the idea that they will always win against the Sith because Good will always triumph over Evil. But the Jedi are not the good guys in Star Wars. They never have been. They only beat the Sith so often because the Sith do most of the work for them.” The Jedi are at once powerful and weak, elitist in their view of the Good Sith because they see the system of the Sith as corrupt, inhumane, and incapable of redemption. And so, the Sith must make allies with the alien, those they once deemed “other” so that these others, the Republic and their Jedi allies, will be overthrown and exterminated. Once that is done, as Ian Danskin notes, they will turn on the alien, the homosexual fucking the black man, the new other. The problem isn’t that racism is a bug of the system of fascism that can be stamped out in order to make a stronger, better fascism. The cruelty is part of the point. And, much as neoliberalism tries to stamp out the “bugs” of capitalism to make a kinder, gentler capitalism, that cruelty will always exist within the system.

Let us now turn our gaze to Rose Quartz. Orchard’s video argues, after going through the Sith storyline at length, that Rose Quartz would have been a better character is she was more akin to the Sith, as that would mean Rebecca Sugar would recognize the sheer awfulness of Pink Diamond as a character for a reason that has, frankly, little to do with the tangent about Star Wars. Orchard’s ultimate argument that existing in a system of cruelty must make one cruel is an… interesting one. For starters, there’s a long history of people who grew up in a system of cruelty and fighting back against it without they themselves being cruel. (To give one example, Walter Morrison was a World War II veteran who served in India and, over the course of the war, realized the futility and inherent cruelty of war and opted to become a pacifist war protestor and father of a noted magician.)

Indeed, there is a trope of fictional nobles who see the cruelty of the world and seek to stop it from occurring. Characters such as Robin Hood, Batman, or Doctor Who that, much like Rose Quartz, take on different names in order to combat the cruelty of the system. For unlike the Good Sith who works within the system, they see such actions as folly. Indeed, the story of Rose Quartz explicitly has her try to deal with the issue of their system actively killing people within and beneath it through working within the system as the Good Sith does. (That the system of the Sith is one of backstabbing, betrayal, and chronic treachery is irrelevant to methodology. The system of the Diamonds is not the same as that of the Sith and would thus not produce the same normal.) However, what ultimately happens is that she is turned down with only the token amount of work done. Production will continue, but the Human Zoo will be opened to let a small smattering of humans run free. As such, Rose Quartz rebels against a system she sees as fundamentally broken and incapable of being redeemed.

Of course, this isn’t a perfect rebellion as Rose Quartz isn’t a perfect person. Despite Orchard’s claims to the contrary, Rebecca Sugar (and the subsequent other writers, artists, and creators of Steven Universe) are aware of the flaws the kind of person like Rose Quartz would have. They’re just not flaws that can be valorized in the way Orchard does with the Good Sith. They aren’t bloodthirsty, cruel, manipulative, and willing to do what needs to be done. Rather, the flaws in Rose Quartz lie in her tendency of not seeing people as people. The environment of a system that views individuals, with some exceptions, as disposable is one that does not value empathy. Empathy is the skill of seeing things from other people’s perspectives. This can be hard for people on the autism spectrum like myself, but it is ultimately antithetical to the fascist system. The system hinges on there being a person who deserves to die for no other reason than for their biology and/or their beliefs.

It is at this point that I should deconstruct the obvious rebuke that fascists make and neoliberals perpetuate: the violence perpetrated against fascists is akin to fascists because both seek to silence groups with views that disagree with theirs. The ultimate difference between the two is that one can actually stop being a fascist without dying whereas the fascist views the Jew, the Homosexual, and the Black Man as inherently defective and in need of being destroyed to keep the empire afloat. Anti-fascist action, meanwhile, does not seek to destroy the fascist physically but to take away their power.

Consider Richard Spencer. A good majority of people who are aware of Spencer first learned about him through a video such as this one. Or this one. Or this one. For those of you who didn’t click those links (and don’t know who Richard Spencer is beyond “fascist”), they present a video of Spencer being punched in the face by an anti-fascist. This has led him to go through a downward spiral where the fascists denounced him; not because he had some turn away from the fascist party because he was punched in the face, but rather because the fascist system hinges on being seen as strong. As such, a fascist can be taken down not simply by killing them (for that, ultimately fits into the fascist narrative that they, whoever “they” are, want to kill us), but by doing things that will cause the system that has the security of a Jenga tower to collapse, like throwing milkshakes at politicians or refusing to serve politicians food because they support locking children in cages.

This is, ultimately, the position Steven takes. Unlike his mother, Steven has both grown up in a world where his empathy can flourish and, perhaps more importantly, one that does not view the individual as the ultimate problem of the cruelties of the system. Rather, it is the system itself that is chaining the people. This is explicit within the text of Steven Universe as Pearl notes, “Humans just lead short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they're a part of something bigger. They want to blame all the world's problems on some single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone's control.”

But perhaps what’s most interesting about Steven’s perspective is that he views everyone as capable of being better people. Not that he views himself as the one to bring about such character arcs in people. Typically, he will only make the effort when they have something he needs (such as the ocean, a method to uncorrupt all those hurt by the war, a barn where his friends live, a bag of potato chips) or if he genuinely likes them (Lars, Lapis, Onion). (This is made explicit and responded to within “Steven Universe: The Movie,” a text that will not be discussed further due to not being within Lily Orchard’s circle of reference when making Steven Universe is Garbage and Here’s Why.) Sure, he will try to alleviate suffering in people like Jasper and, to a lesser extent, Kevin. But he doesn’t ever try to make them into better people if it’s clear they’re aren’t willing to try or are a clear and present danger to those he cares about.

What’s typically ignored in critiques of Steven’s methodology is that he does view violence as a tool. (Steven Universeis, after all, a hybrid of slice of life and action/adventure in the vein of Shortpackedor Homestuck.) The thing about Steven’s methodology, however, is that he doesn’t view it as the ultimate solution to all of life’s problems. Furthermore, Steven’s methods are shown to be harmful, even (to some extent) deadly. It’s not easy to fight against the systems of power that control you. You have to constantly check yourself and those you fight alongside from falling into the same behaviors that the systems have you trapped in.

This is the ultimate distinction between Orchard and Sugar: Orchard believes that no matter what you do, you can not escape your upbringing. You will, to some extent, be forever trapped within the worldview of your parents and, no matter your best intentions, you will bring cruelty to the world. Whereas Sugar believes we are capable of checking ourselves, of being better than the people we were when we were younger and better than our parents and the system we live in.

I would like to present a hypothetical situation and how the three characters described would react to it. Imagine, if you will, a world. It is a cruel and unjust world, one of pointless violence and cruelty. One where the workers are treated and tagged like cattle, where the world is constantly surveyed by soulless machines who kill at a moment’s notice. Imagine a girl, a poor girl whose life is so miserable that she never once even received something as small as a parcel. She works day in and day out in a soul-sucking factory with just one dream: to open a package.

One day, that dream comes true. A package comes to her from a source unknown to her. She is so happy that the day has finally come, that she could at long last receive a gift. And when she opens the box… nothing. Not a toy or a book or even hand-me-down socks. There is nothing in the box, but bubble wrap. To say such a prank is cruel and unusual would be an understatement. All her dreams turned to ash in her mouth. All she can do now is play with the bubble wrap. The first bubble she pops causes an explosion that kills her.

The package, it is later discovered, was sent by the system. A boy who was close to the girl wanted to destroy the system and everything it stood for. The boy saw the system as cruel and unjust and in need of a revolution. How, then, would our three characters respond to such a system?

Rose Quartz would most likely see the cruelty and unjustness of the system, but not necessarily those who are suffering—at first. In time, she would see them in pain and anguish like a deer trapped in a bear trap. She would seek to destroy the system through a war. She would recruit those who feel their place in the system is wrong and liberate them. She might not necessarily see them as people, even to the point of falling back into objectification, but she will fight for their beauty, their potential, their freedom. She has “a duty of care,” to use someone else’s words, ones that would fit coming out of Rose’s mouth.

Steven Universe would see those suffering within the system, those who are broken by its cruelty, those who are hurt and are hurting even if it seems like they are in a state of strength, he will try to alleviate that hurt if it means everyone else is hurt. Sometimes, that means punching a robot in the face. Sometimes, that means dismantling the system to build something better. But what’s important, what’s key in understanding Steven Universe (and, indeed, Steven Universe), is that anyone can change if they allow themselves to. “Whatever’s holding you down,” Steven could say but didn’t explicitly, “wherever you are, however hard it seems… How about you and me escape together?”

A Good Sith, one raised within the system, would do none of these things. Ultimately, for all that Orchard claims a Good Sith cares about those downtrodden by the Republic, a Good Sith does not. While the poor parents of the Jedi were ultimately given a better life in exchange for helping the Good Sith, a Good Sith typically does not care for the poor, the downtrodden. A Good Sith does not go to the cages where the slaves are kept and set them free. A Good Sith does not reject the system of the Sith in favor of something less cruel. A Good Sith is a neoliberal within the system of the Sith. And at the end of the day, a Good Sith would respond to such pointless cruelty with, “The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem.”

Run. Run You Clever Little Boy. And Remember Me. (The Clara Trilogy)

Commissioned by Freezing Inferno

Midway writing the original idea for this post, I realized I was approaching it from the wrong angle. Initially, I was going to do a semi sequel to my Faction Paradox/Clara Echo short story “The Eyes of Her Double” that would be structurally akin to the Utena post I wrote a while back, i.e. focusing on three characters from that story in a way that would mirror what happens in the Clara Trilogy (that being Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent). Some of the lines were somewhat good (the opening to the Face the Raven one would’ve been “It’s 2019 and there are concentration camps in America). However, as I went on writing it, I kinda hit a wall in the process. This happens from time to time, so I did what I always do when I hit a wall: procrastinate and go for a walk.

While on my walk, it occurred to me that I didn’t like what I was writing. The direction I was going with the Face the Raven one required an amount of trust the audience needs to give me that I don’t think I built up (the Clara echo of that story would’ve been a bus driver to the camp, but revealed at the end to be taking them to a refugee town that ties into the psychogeograpic/liminal space themes of Face the Raven, but I felt I wasn’t pulling it off as well as I could. Maybe some other day). I had no idea what I was doing with the Heaven Sent one, and Hell Bent ultimately rejected the premise of “stories about Clara echos” to be a Seventh Doctor story that’s also a sequel to the Rose book. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t happy with what I was writing.

And so, I returned to the drawing board. Fortunately one such idea has been mulling around in my head for a while, arguably since Series 7 of Doctor Who. But first, I must talk briefly about one of the major criticism levied against the Clara Trilogy: Clara should not have survived at the end of the story. One of the first times I saw the argument was in a video wherein the person arguing it claimed that the reasons she should have died was because she took risks in order to emulate the Doctor, who knows what they are doing.

Putting aside that the argument is essentially “girl does something that man does but fails because man know what he’s doing“ (the video was made prior to Jodie Whittaker being cast as the Doctor), to say the Doctor know what the hell they’re doing is complete and utter rubbish. The Doctor explicitly has no idea what they are doing. Even the incarnation typically seen as having the most idea of what they’re doing (that being the one played by Sylvester McCoy) is, upon closer examination, only slightly aware of what he’s doing. Note how practically every single one of his clever schemes from Paradise Towers to Gabriel Chase to the Master’s furry phase has inevitably ended with “Oh crap, it looks like I’ll have to improvise after all.” The Doctor doesn’t even know how to turn off the TARDIS’ brakes for crying out loud.

But there’s also an undercurrent of a critique of the Moffat era as a whole that the Clara Trilogy works wonderfully as a counter towards. That being why aren’t there consequences? To understand the question, we must understand what people mean when they say “Consequences.” After all, the consequence of, say, the Doctor being sent to a space station where the space suits are trying to kill the employees has the consequence of the space suits being fought against. Or, to use a more critical example, the Doctor visiting the Kerblam factory ends with the Doctor scolding the people fighting against the system that did nothing wrong and the employeesget two months off with two weeks paid leave . (Somebody please commission me to write about Kerblam. I have an angle that will be weird, but enlightening.)

However, this is not what people mean by consequences. Perhaps the best summation comes from Mr TARDIS, a YouTuber who I once followed until he said that the problem with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was that the Death of Gwen Stacy was enough of Peter’s fault. In a recent tweet thread about the problems of Steven Moffat (which mostly showed that the only people good at pointing out the problems of Steven Moffat are people who generally like his work and Jack Graham), he mentioned that his big issue with the Moffat era was the lack of consequences. Upon elaborating, he said “Clara returning in S9 rendered her and the Doctor's arc in S8 pointless and in S9 she didn't even die and got to live forever and before Capaldi regenerated it turns out he remembered her.Yes, S8 and S9 are consequence free.”

Let us put aside the issue regarding Clara’s return in Series 9 negating Series 8 as that would require a focus on the whole of Clara that I AM NOT PREPAIRED TO WRITE. Rather, his comments on Clara’s survival at the end of the Clara Trilogy highlight the nature of consequences in regards to this critique: they are static, bad things that happen to the main characters. Once they happen, they can never be contradicted by the consequences of other things. Nor can they cascade into other consequences that contradict the initial ones.

That is, after all, the central storytelling structure of the Moffat era: the farcical cascade of consequences from something rather small. Let us use the Clara Trilogy as our example as that is what this post is ostensibly about. The story begins with the relatively small event of a neighborhood kid named Rigsy being framed for a crime he didn’t commit involving an alien. The consequence of this is that Rigsy has a tattoo on his neck that’s counting down to zero. To prevent this, Clara decides to buy some time by taking the tattoo on herself, which has the consequence of her death. Equally, the consequence of the Doctor trying to solve the mystery of Rigsy’s death is that he gets sent to a torture chamber where he dies over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until he escapes into Galifrey, which has the natural consequence most times have of the Doctor entering a corrupt system: the Doctor tears it down. Once the powers that be are removed, the Doctor proceeds to cut Clara out of Face the Raven and into Hell Bent. The consequences of this are time and space being rent asunder, the Doctor’s memories being wiped, and Clara getting her own TARDIS and staring in a book series showrun by Caitlin Smith.

The issue people like Mr TARDIS seem to have is that the consequence of Clara taking the tattoo seems to be undone by the consequence of the Doctor deciding to edit out Clara from Face the Raven. There are two ways to deal with this. The first would be that Clara is probably going to go back to that moment. Though she doesn’t have Amy Pond’s attachment to her memories, Clara still has some level of value of them: “These have been the best years of my life, and they are mine. Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It's mine.” As shown by the character of Me, it is possible for an immortal being to forget their own past. As such, once her memories start to fade beyond recognition, Clara will probably return to the Time Lords to be returned to her moment of death. (That, or do something more interesting, but we’ll get to that later.)

The second issue is that the argument is complete bunk. To put it into real life terms, it’s like saying that because you went to the hospital to get your arm fixed, there were no consequences to the arm breaking in the first place. Some might argue that the time travel aspects of the story negate this, but… look, I’m going to be blunt. The argument of Clara not dying is lame. It’s a lame idea that doesn’t go anywhere beyond “And now, Peter Capaldi’s sad because he had to wipe away Clara’s memories like he did Donna.” This fetishization of static consequences ultimately results in the lamest shit that leads to things like Big Finish doing a story where they kill everyone they can because it’s dark and edgy.

Is it not enough that Clara isn’t on the show anymore? Do we really have to add a female character dying to the mix? And especially one as interesting as Clara. Someone who embraces her vices to make other people’s lives better. A thrill seeking junkie who pushes too far and expects too much. Someone who has a drive that pushes her to become impossible and gradually dislodged from the world. A woman who is never cruel nor cowardly. Who will never give up, and never give in. Whose kindness takes the form of looking for crying children being ignored and making the world a place where the cause of tears has been solved. Who looks at a world with terrible stories and opts to tell better ones. The ending to Clara’s story could never be something as simple and mundane as death or retirement. The consequence of creating a character such as Clara Oswald is that she was inevitably going to steal a TARDIS and run away.

(Since someone is going to ask, no, it does not negate the metaphor. Time travel stories are full of stories about people going back and changing things for the better. That’s literally what Quantum Leap is about. And given that time and space were supposedly being rent asunder when she was out, Clara being returned to her time of death is an inevitability. There’s still her body lying on the street after all. Of course, some other writer could come up with a story wherein a clone of her is put in her place and the tattoo is removed through other means. A lot can happen in a split second after all. The point of the article is that thinking Clara being dead is more interesting than Clara being alive and traveling the universe with her ever growing harem of space bisexuals is a lame way of looking at the story. Plus, you know, The Clara Trilogy is more invested in the relationship between Clara and the Doctor than it is in time travel mechanics.)

Who Were We

In Doctor Who, there’s an episode called “The Snowman.” One of the best scenes of that episode pertains to what is called The One Word Test, wherein one character is asked a series of questions and must answer with only a single word. The purpose of this is because “Truth is singular. Lies are words, words, words.” Of course, just because the answer is merely a single word, doesn’t mean that it is just a single thing as the explanation implies. Take the title, for example. On the surface, it refers to the main threat of the episode, an army of killer snowmen in the three-ball variety. Equally, it refers to The Doctor themselves, who is at that moment closing himself off from the outside world, freezing his heart. (As an aside, there are many a question of importance that require more than a one word answer, including “What is the meaning of life?”, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, and “

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

”.) So then, the purpose of The One Word Test is less about the implications of a word, but of its clarity.

Which brings us quite nicely to different sort of One Word Test found within Mister Miracle #6. Like many things in his life, Orion has simplified this seemingly simple set up even further, removing the possibility of language and restricting it merely to “True” or “False” answers. “Every statement. Is either true or false,” Orion claims. “If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a statement.” There is a clarity in this logic, all things can be bound up in either option A or option B; good and evil; right and wrong; here and there.

But people don’t work like that. As a species, we’re a mixed up bunch of irrational thoughts, barely controlled emotions, and mad ideas. There’s an ambiguity in whether or not, say, someone deserves to die (notably, that’s the only question Scott doesn’t have an answer for. For all Orion’s talk of trying to find Scott’s belief, he misses the moment where Mister Miracle opens up). Indeed, there’s an ambiguity in all people, most of all Scott Free. (As the issue shows, that ambiguity goes down to even Scott’s name, which was never his to begin with. Scott Free is an abused child, a cruel joke about his inability to be free. Mister Miracle is someone else’s name, obsessed with escaping even from life. He thinks if Highfather had just given him a name, he’d be all right. Wouldn’t make a difference in the end, it would have been as much a name as Scott Free. In the end, what makes us “us” is simply the relationships and actions we do in our lives who we’ve touched, knowingly or unknowingly, for better or for worse.)

In many ways, Orion is Darkseid’s heir: both seek clarity in a world of ambiguity. He simplifies complicated feelings as mere hatred. People hurt each other/themselves because of hatred. We trap each other in a cage called life because we utterly despise one another and want to watch as they suffer with us. But people are more complicated than that. We can hurt people out of love, fear, misery, and so much more. And we can also help each other.

Big Barda helps Scott in the end. She’s as much broken by this cruel and twisted place they called Apokolips, “Where Holocaust is a household word.” She has as much ambiguity within her as Scott. But in many ways, she has a way out of all that (indeed her words escape the ever closing circle where Scott’s [and Jack Kirby’s] cannot). Maybe Barda won’t be enough to prevent Scott from killing himself, maybe this is all some wacky scheme of Darkseid’s to break Scott (and I use “wacky” tactically, as one of the less talked about aspects of the comic is how funny it is. Most of this comes from the slightly cartoony way Mitch Gerads draws the characters being hit/eating as well as the absurdity of some moments of mundanity juxtaposed with the colorful costumes). It doesn’t matter though, because she’s there right now, and it makes it hurt less.

“Who were we?
Who were we
when we were
who we were
back then?
Who would we
have become
if we’d done
differently
back then?
No new beginnings…
Some die, some go on
living.”
-Leo Carax and Neil Hannon, Holy Motors

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The Eyes of Her Double: A Faction Paradox Story

"Falling! Yes, I am falling!
And she keeps calling
me back again."

Inevitably, Clara O’Winn found that looking at the ceiling was a terrible way to mute the muffled screams of her double. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t come up with any inventive ideas from the ceiling to distract her (she had long since perfected this method of avoidance and had already created several intriguing story ideas [as well as a few fan fiction prompts] from the patterns the Styrofoam alone). Nor was it because she wasn’t able to ignore the terrible screams her double made. She was a child of the early 21^st century, an era where those who can ignore a terrible situation will and those who can’t die (or get called various obscenities by people obsessed with their status as the most ethical people on the internet). 

Indeed the sounds of the screams reminded Clara of long passionate nights spent under the moonlit fields playing with her girlfriend. These were her favorite nights growing up, as they were away from the stress of the daily grind of both her job and disapproving stepparents. For the most part, they were unbothered by any of the locals, who assumed them to be a bunch of wild animals. Some nights a group of bikers would come to watch, but given Clara was a co-founding member of the gang, they tended to only be there to say hello or participate if Clara allowed it. The games Clara and her girlfriend played ranged from horsey to cops and robbers to pegging.

It wasn’t even the fear of the people in the motel room next door paying enough attention to call the cops that concerned her. Clara had long known this motel to be the go to location for crack, smack, and other such drug dealers to make arrangements with larger entities to practice their trade. Such dealings ranged from “which locations are ok for me to make deals in” to “I need you to be my representative in a drug deal that could end my life if I go” to “PLEASE IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, DON’T KILL MY DAUGHTER” among other mundanities. If the police were to get wind of a kidnapping at that motel, they might find the skeletons hidden in the closets (figuratively and literally), and motel management didn’t need that kind of hassle. They already had to worry about whether or not the drug lords would kill them for knowing too much.

Rather, what distressed Clara was the ways in which her double was not like her, despite being nearly identical. She noticed that her double was roughly an inch taller, had green eyes, blonde hair with pink and purple highlights that was typically pulled into a pony tail but was now unrestrained, and a small, nearly unnoticeable, mole on her left cheek. Her ears, until fairly recently, held little circular earrings that had been passed down, generation to generation, for over a hundred years. The double’s skin was obviously paler than Clara’s, though she did have the soft tan expected of a California resident. Her body didn’t have any scars on it. She was left handed, but didn’t realize it (her hands never worked any harder than a few hours on a keyboard typing papers for her college professor on the implications of time travel on free will). 

In the long run, these differences didn’t really matter, as her fate would still be the same: they would come for her and Clara would get what she deserved.

Clara O’Winn was only 10 years old when she realized she couldn’t die.

It happened on a long car ride. Her mother, Janet, was driving the car while daydreaming about impossible things such as being in a relationship that actually has love in it, not going to prison, or climbing a mountain. Clara’s father, Bob, was oblivious to his wife’s feeling towards him in much the same manner as a dog drinking a cup of coffee is to the roaring fire behind him. Her younger brother, Francis, was at that moment on 8Chan figuring out his sexuality, a move that would lead him to spend years in therapy and inadvertently destroy the career of a prominent presidential nominee. Finally there was Flapjack, the family dog who would die long before anyone else in the car.

As for the car itself, it was not moving. Clara could see that her side of the road was completely jammed while the other side was as free as most things are in a supermarket. Curious about this, as she is wont to be, Clara decided to leave the car. She knew that it was usually unsafe to leave a car on a busy highway, but Clara felt that this was a special circumstance as nearly every other car was beginning to send an emissary to discover the source of the calamity that had befallen them. Besides, Clara knew that she wouldn’t get lost like the last time she abandoned her family, since the road was just a straight line, and her parents were too busy playing at adulthood to notice her leave the car. The only one who did notice was Flapjack, who silently followed her to his death.

At first, Clara felt that this was like one of the adventures she would make up in her grandmother’s garden: mysterious travelers who right wrongs, defeat baddies, and kick some serious ass. She always loved coming up with those stories, but only felt safe telling them to her grandmother while weeding the garden on hot summer’s days. She never dreamed she would ever be one of those characters. Too self involved for those types, she thought, too ordinary, too boring to be a hero. Not even this quest was an adventure of her liking. It was an adventure, sure, but it was just a mundane curiosity that everyone wants in on. A true adventure, Clara believed, would be a solitary experience. She would hold this belief for the remainder of the day.

While walking towards the source of the problem, Clara encountered another young girl, whose name Clara wouldn’t know that day (a fair stance, as Clara knew the power of names). The girl had dull blue eyes, red ravenous hair turned into pigtails, and slightly yellowed teeth. She was roughly 13 years old, but appeared to be much younger. She was barely three inches shorter than Clara, though she held herself much like a wolf cub trying to initiate themselves into a clan they weren’t born into. There was something familiar about this girl, though Clara couldn’t put her finger on it. She claimed her family sent her to solve the problem, but even at her young age Clara knew that was bullshit. Still, the girl seemed nice enough for a kid, so Clara allowed the girl to follow her. The girls talked about the only thing there was to talk about.

“What do you think it is,” asked Clara.

“Deer,” replied the girl.

“Deer? Surely it must be something more interesting than that.”

“Deer are interesting,” argued the companion. Clara was unsure if she hurt her feelings but assumed, as always, that she had. She tried to salvage this relationship with a person whom she would never meet again in her lifetime.

“I mean, ah… surely there must be an explanation that isn’t so… ordinary?”

“Oh yeah, like what?”

“uhh… Aliens?” The girl with blue eyes raised an eyebrow. “I mean, there’s signs everywhere, y’know… Books talking about crop circles and people being abducted and probed and… and… C’mon, you have to wonder, right? What’s out there and all…”

“Not really,” the pigtailed stranger sighed, “there are so many fantastic sights out in the world: tornados that can lift frogs states away; 100 ravens sitting outside, waiting for me to just… open the door so the can scatter; the depths of the ocean that house creatures we have never seen before. I just don’t have time to think about space.” (This would change a month after this young girl’s 24^thbirthday, when the Children of Nyarlethotep would use her in a failed ritual to summon their dark and terrible god from a self imposed exile. In that moment, she saw that space was nature’s dark mirror. Cold and uncaring like a parent who is never there. And yet, there’s a beauty to the vastness blocked off by its needlessly cruel nature.)

At the time, the only retort Clara could offer the girl was a snort and a “whatever” before continuing their journey in silence.

As they traversed the museum of cars, people began to head back to their exhibits, accepting this bizarre occurrence to be an unexplainable event. Perhaps some gave up because of the unending forest that surrounded the road like fingers grasping at the palm of a hand, waiting to crush the insect that flew in its way. Or perhaps they realized that the universe is a much bigger and terrifying place, whose answers will consume those who dare to try to discover them and as such it is best to care for those closest to them, rather than walk to the end of this dark forest road. Or maybe they just didn’t care for walking. A few, however, persisted.

Eventually, even Clara and her stranger decided to call it quits. …More specifically, their mothers found them, grabbed them by the ear, and dragged them back to their respective cars. At some point in the future, the roads freed up, but by then the sun had set. One of the drivers could have sworn he heard a crunching noise as he turned off the highway to stay the night at a motel, but thought nothing of it until the last seconds before his death.

Meanwhile, Clara and her family decided not to stop driving. Normally Janet could drive the whole way, but the incident with the stopped cars got her in a mood that forced her to take a break. So Bob was driving, slowly showing his fellow drivers that he should not be driving, nearly killing several of them without noticing. Clara and Francis, meanwhile, slept in the back seat.

While Francis’ dreams were of a symbolic and sexual nature, Clara’s were far more straightforward. In some cultures, far in the depths of space, in the halls of power and the streets of the powerless, there are tales of what one sees when they die. Some say that there is a bright light that leads you to where you will be judged, be it by a scale or Santa Claus. Others claim there is nothing but the black void seen when one closes one’s eyes, waiting for REM sleep. Few even claim beings “souls” reincarnate into other beings, to keep the karmic balance and save money on developing new character models.

Few stories, however, tell of the Death Dream. The Death Dream is the kind of dream only seen when one dies in their sleep. It tells of the life that one lived as a mash up: events bleeding into each other, creating new narratives. A mother, who died in childbirth, dancing at her daughter’s wedding; a family of old men, born decade’s apart, sharing war stories and the good old days; and other tales that the living can never know. It was in this state that Clara O’Winn died.

Though it wouldn’t be diagnosed until much later, Clara could very well be Patient 0 of a disease lovingly called “The Truth Plague”. So called, as the first symptom is a loss of access to the parts of the brain that allow secrets to be kept. When Clara began exhibiting these symptoms, her mother dismissed it as merely the childish bravado seen when one has their ear pulled. The Truth Plague is fast acting and the survival rates are so astronomically low that there are better odds of surviving completely naked on the dark side of the moon for an hour. Naturally, Clara O’Winn died from the disease.

And then, she woke up.

She wasn’t anywhere new. She was still in her family car, woken up by her parents bickering about the direction they should be heading. Her brother was drooling on her shoulder, somehow still sleeping through the most foul-mouthed conversation their parents had up to that point. The sun beamed down from outside the car, the windows were down so the cool breeze of the midnight hour could engulf the car in its soothing nature.

Surveying the scene, two thoughts popped up into Clara’s mind. The first was that she should be dead. It wasn’t a thought she fully understood at the time. She wasn’t dead, not even in the dream. (Her dream involved watching a low budget 1960’s British science fiction show with her great aunt Harriet and a pair wereseals. They were eating spider legs shaped like French Fries on a table made of wood. It was draped in the flesh of white nationalists, who were still alive and thus the only people in the room not having a good time.) And yet, she should be dead. She felt perfectly healthy, no longer feeling like she had a fever while freezing to death, no need to shout secrets about how Mr. Pick hates her because she caught him kissing one of the janitors without wearing his wedding band. She was completely free of The Truth Plague.

When they were at a rest stop to get some breakfast, Clara asked her mother to take her pulse. Her mother found said pulse and immediately went back to thinking of more adult matters. This did nothing to assuage Clara’s fears. She tried to make sense of it all, but could only come to one conclusion: she was God. She quickly realized her mistake when it didn’t rain ice cream and instead realized there could only be one conclusion: she was finally the protagonist in the stories she loved to make up.

It was as if the universe had given her superpowers to… do what, exactly? Solve crime? Topple empires? Regardless, she knew she couldn’t tell her family about this, not even her beloved grandmother. They would all tell her that she’s too young to do anything. That she shouldn’t aspire to do anything more than what they did. Be realistic. No, instead Clara decided to bide her time before showing the world just who she is.

The second thought that came to her mind was that Flapjack had gone missing, which was a shame, as Clara always believed he was a good boy.

“You haven’t been on a date in how long?” Jane teased with mock horror. They had been college roommates for roughly a year, yet Clara felt as if they were lifelong friends. Though this would not be the case, they were still thick as thieves. And yet, there were secrets they kept from each other. Jane, for example, recently joined a secret organization that offered to pay her entire college tuition and hire her immediately after college in exchange for a small donation of blood. (Jane was unaware that said donation would be used to rewrite her biodata so that she was always a fiercely loyal member of the organization, and would die in their temporal War games. Corporations tend to leave out little details like that.)

Clara, meanwhile, had many secrets kept from those around her. She never told anyone of her immortal status. Clara didn’t mention that Jane’s hair suddenly turned red or that Jane completely forgot that she was a natural blonde. She never spoke of Jane’s eyes drastically improving overnight, negating the need for glasses or, for that matter, the time Clara saw the lifelong vegan eating a cheeseburger as if it were nothing. She didn’t mention the tattoo on Jane’s left butt cheek of a snake eating its own tail, nor that it suddenly changed midway through the semester to something that looked like a snake skull. But then, Clara would have to be aware of such changes for these things to be secrets.

As for the subject of dating, Clara had long given up on the endeavor. It wasn’t that she shared her roommate’s asexuality. Rather, she felt dating to be a waste of time. Fiction had long taught her that living forever meant other people would die around her. (She never liked death, even before seeing her mother whither away in a prison cell, denied food and medical care until she was nothing more than bone draped in the thinnest fabrics of flesh. Clara wasn’t even sure if she would ever stop aging or if she would become a shriveled husk of 20,000, forever aging until the end of time… perhaps even longer.)

However, on occasion, she felt like having a nice old-fashioned one-night stand that meant absolutely nothing, save for some (hopefully) good sex. Usually, Clara used Tinder to find someone, but she recently finished The Telephone Book, and had grown extremely wary of the fascist implications of telephones and decided to stay away from them until absolutely necessary like later that night, when she needed to give out a phone number. She decided the next sensible move would be to ask Jane if she knew anyone willing to go out on a date and hope that whoever it was could be let down easily. Fortunately, Jane had an old friend coming up that weekend. To add to her luck, Jane needed the room to herself to perform a blood ritual as part of her initiation into the organization (Jane told Clara she was studying for a final, a lie Jane thought was true).

“You’ll like her,” Jane assured, “ she’s got a wicked sense of humor, a quick mind, and a hot body… so I’m told. Hell, she even kinda looks like you.” That last part befuddled Clara, as many of people she had sex with tended to respond with… Then again, they had been the kind of people who expect to have sex with a person like free television, so she tended to ignore their remarks. But it was more likely that Jane was exaggerating their similarities.

Regardless, Jane had set the date for a local restaurant that served overpriced steaks and other fancy food, but made up for it with the large fountain in the center that shines an indoor rainbow throughout the restaurant. Jane had said her friend would be recognizable by her dark red dress. Clara opted not to wear her favorite blue dress, solely to spite her alchemist “friends.” Instead, she wore a dark purple suit with a long black tie.

When Clara arrived at the restaurant, she was somewhat surprised to discover that her dining companion did have a resemblance to her. Not by much, Clara mused to herself, I mean, she has longer hair, she doesn’t have a scar on the back of her hand from when I failed to trick my brother into getting me a drink from the gas station, and there seems to be a tattoo on her shoulder… maybe it’s a birthmark. But perhaps the biggest difference Clara found between them was their eyes. It wasn’t as though they were a different color or shape (they were nearly alike in that sense). Rather, it was the implications of their eyes. Deep down, in the realms of the mind hidden from intention, she understood. But instead of dwelling upon the similarities between the two of them, Clara decided to introduce herself to the woman before her.

“Claire Orlando,” she replied.

“Bit of an odd name,” smiled Clara as she read the menu, “don’t you think?”

“Not really, no. I mean… there are loads of people named Claire.”

“That’s not what I-” but before Clara could finish that thought, the waiter arrived to ask them what they wanted to eat. They both ordered the steak, as it was the only good food served at the restaurant. Clara resumed, “I mean, isn’t it a bit odd that we almost have the same name?”

“Not particularly,” Claire said, hoping it would be enough, “I mean, it’s not like we’ve known each other for our whole lives. We literally just met, and you’re from…”

“New York.”

“Right, and I’ve pretty much lived in California my whole life. The odds of it happening to me twice are astronomical, but they do happen.”

“…Twice?” Clara asked with a twinge of melancholy.

“Uhh… I uhhh- why do you even care anyways?” Claire snapped, hoping she wouldn’t have to talk about a rather embarrassing teenage phase.

Clara sighed. “Honestly, I’m just trying to make small talk. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this sort of thing.”

“And what sort of thing is that?” Claire asked, silently thanking the god she prayed to (Sadly, but perhaps fittingly, it was Glycon).

“You know, dating. Going to dinner. Talking about things we have in common… Ah geez, I don’t even know.” Clara began rubbing her eyelids with her thumb and index finger.

“Well… what do you usually do on a Saturday night?”

“Oh, you know… Stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” What Clara did not want to tell Claire was that her Saturday nights were predominately spent working on a series of fan fiction projects. These included one off stories based off minor, non-speaking characters, flash fiction projects about sentient rock ladies, and multiple chapters about BDSM and superheroes. But her magnum opus was a series of “fix-fics” based on Animorphs, which took terrorism, alienation, and other child friendly themes hidden within the subtext and brought them even more to the forefront. She only got up to the 49^thbook in the series before realizing that the spark of creativity that had started her on this path had moved on to bigger and better things (though not profitable things). If she was being honest, she was just doing this series to finish it up. By the time she reached the final book, Clara was almost glad that a group of Russian hackers deleted most of the work she had done for no other reason than a hatred for a specific ship. Fortunately, her meager fanbase was decent enough to not expect her to rewrite all 54 books again and she could move on to better things.  Instead, Clara said, “Watch TV, read a book, do some homework. Normal stuff. What about you?”

“Masturbate.” To say Claire did not want to say that word would be an understatement. There was an extremely awkward pause in their conversation, one long enough for their steaks to arrive. Claire finally broke the silence. “Sorry, I panicked, so I tried to make a joke… It didn’t work.”

“Clearly,” Clara remarked, more focused on her steak than this person she would only have to interact with for another hour or so.

“Look,” Claire pleaded after having her first bite of steak, “I know I screwed up, but we still have to talk about something.”

“Like what, your taste in porn?”

“Sure, if that’s what you want to talk about,” Claire replied, grinning to hide her desperation. Clara nearly spurt out her coke.

“No, no. That’s uh… that’s fine… So, what do you do exactly?” At that moment, Claire was enrolled in an internship program with an organization that sent her to various inner cities throughout the country. She worked as a TA under several high school English as a second language teachers. She planned to travel the world and write a novel about her experiences teaching and what she learned from them. She would never get around to writing it.

“Working on my teaching degree, you?” Clara, meanwhile, was concluding her training as an actress with a local acting company. The director of the troupe claimed to have plans to groom her into being one of the great actresses of the modern age (as he said of all the girls). She played several minor roles in various plays before making her break two years ago as Lady Macbeth in a well received production of Macbeth. Afterwards, she moved on to other roles including Ophelia, The Stepdaughter in Six Characters in Search of an Author, and the lead in an original play about the shooting of Andy Warhol. Currently, she was working on a script for a satirical one-act play about the fairy queen spending a day outside of her kingdom. The lead would be a 10-year-old girl whose mother was locked away in prison for killing her husband in “self-defense.” The play currently ends with the girl running away to fairyland after trapping the fairy queen in a fallen world.

Rather than respond to her companion, Clara felt the urge to puke her guts as if she was the first kill of a horror movie more interested in cheap thrills and gore than in character drama and gore. Indeed, save Clara and Claire, every one of the patrons was puking their guts out. Unbeknownst to them, the sous chef had long been a member of a cult who worshiped a disgraced Roman snake god. They planned to summon the god onto the mortal plane, but lacked a means to do so. That was, until the chef discovered a mystical ritual in a mediocre fantasy novel that required a massive sacrifice to summon the main baddies’ snake god. They didn’t concern themselves with the obvious flaws in their plan and went with it anyways. All told, 51 people were murdered that night. Fortunately, the police were tipped off, so the cult, who believed their ritual to be a failure, could not try again at a later date.

As for Clara and Claire… discovering someone you just met has a similar name to you, a mild resemblance, and also can’t die is a coincidence too large to ignore. There was a long, awkward silence between the two of them as the police put blankets around them to deal with the shock (they were smart enough to claim they were just about to eat when people started puking). Eventually, when the night got quiet and they were alone under the dancing sky, they exchanged phone numbers. Then Clara made an all too familiar suggestion…

When Juliet returned to her room from a long night of studying, the stench had not gone away. But what drew her gaze was the snake puppet in the back pocket of her roommate’s pants, lying carelessly on the couch. Juliet could have sworn she heard it talking, but brushed it off as her overactive imagination trying to distract her from the naked bodies in the middle of the room.

Sooner than they expected, Clara and Claire found themselves renting an apartment together. In a rather forced tone of voice, the landlord informed them that they could have the $10,000/month apartment for free. And while that did seem odd, options were limited due to their lack of an actual job.

Clara suspected their good fortune had something to do with what happened in California last spring break. (Clara wanted to surprise her girlfriend by showing up unannounced to her family home. Claire never talked about her family during their Skype chats, though Clara did occasionally hear grumblings in the background when Claire claimed to be at home. Deep down, in the part of the mind where childish dreams reside, she hoped that they were homophobic. Not because she wanted more people to think she was an abomination against God. Rather, it would mean that she could save her girlfriend and thus finally give her a story where she was the protagonist. But those dreams never arose to the conscious mind, as the rest of Clara’s brain remarked upon the banality of such dreams.

When Clara arrived at the Californian airport, she collided with Charlotte Orman, a janitor who had spent the past 20 years working at the airport. The job was barely enough to keep her house; otherwise her three daughters would be homeless. [What Charlotte would never know is that the only reason she was able to have a house at all was because a real estate mogul wanted to spite a competitor who wished to use the property to build a high rise for rich people who wanted to act like they were starving artists who didn’t have an offshore bank account they could fall back on. As such, the landlord of the trailer park Charlotte lived in would be bribed double whatever the competitor offered {$1,000 as of last Tuesday}. The reasoning behind this “war” is unclear to most historians, but it would have shockwaves across several states.]

Immediately, Clara was apologetic and offered to buy Charlotte something to drink. Charlotte mumbled in agreement. She was more transfixed by the woman before her. Clara looked exactly like Charlotte imagined she could have looked when she was young and wanted to set the world on fire. She had the scruffy long hair Charlotte thought she could pull off if given the chance and the figure of a non-anorexic actress in her prime. Her arm was covered in tattoos Charlotte was always afraid of getting and she had the eyes of the revolutionary that stared back at Charlotte in the mirror, asking what went wrong.

Sadly, the woman she wanted to be would not be proud of who she became, as while they were sharing drinks, Charlotte slipped a roofie into Clara’s. Nobody cared about the kidnapping, save for some lewd remarks about Charlotte’s sexuality that were unfounded in the facts her coworkers had. It wasn’t that Charlotte wanted to do this; she had no hate or jealousy towards Clara. Charlotte just had three kids to care for, and they always took priority to her dreams. 

When Clara awoke, she found herself tied to a table made of stone. It was wet with a red substance typically found on the other side of her skin. Next to her were rows upon rows of women just like her: bound, gagged, and about to die a horrible death. Clara wasn’t worried though. She knew she couldn’t die, no matter what these people did. But then she looked closer at the women around her. Closer than she ever thought she’d need to. In particular, she looked at the woman at the end of the row… the one who was about to be sacrificed. Clara decided her name was “Cassandra,” which coincidentally it was. She saw something familiar in her, like a childhood friend she never had. Cassandra had frizzy hair that was kept in no particular style. She had hands that worked primarily on a farm, but sometime would be used to write about the wonders of nature. Her nose was broken. But what caught Clara’s eyes were Cassandra’s. At first, Clara thought they looked like none she had ever seen in her life. And then, it dawned on her that she had: they were the only eyes she would have to see in her life, no matter what she did. And with that realization, more came to her, flooding her mind with monstrous implications of what made the tables wet. And as she stared into the eyes of her double, they appeared to turn pale with death.

There were only two women in front of Clara. She couldn’t create names for them [they would have been wrong], as she was far too busy trying to escape her predicament. It dawned on her that there were no chains on the table, but she felt like she was being held to it like a child witnessing her mother being strapped to an electric chair.

They came to her, eventually. Their knives were drenched in the blood of countless other people. They were smiling, apologetic beings who wanted only what they thought was best for Clara. They said that she was the child of the great god Nyarlethotep. They talked about a cosmic War between corporate fascism and freedom. The cultists proclaimed humanity is a mere bug in the face of this uncaring War of gods. They claimed their god was the personification of freedom. They said that if they did it right this time, their god would free them from the chain of immortality. They showed Clara a rotting corpse; still alive and shriveled such that a baby could hold it, pleading for the sweet release of death in a long dead language. They asked Clara, with mouths too much like her own, if they could sacrifice her to their god. And Clara said no. They didn’t care of course, they were going to cut her up anyway, but they still had to ask. It was a key to the ritual. The last thing Clara saw was the blade that murdered countless others pierce her flesh.

And then, Clara woke up. She was in the passenger seat of a rental car driven by Claire, drenched in a sweat that covered her tears.

“W… what happened?” Clara asked, still a bit dazed.

“…You got drunk at the airport, and… I picked you up,” Claire replied, hiding all emotion while silently praying this would work.

“I don’t… remember calling you.”

“You were drunk!”

“I don’t… feel hung over.” Clara pulled out her phone. “Claire?”

No response. 

“It says that it’s Wednesday.”

No response.

“I got into the airport on Sunday.” Clara grabbed Claire by the chin, twisting her face to look at her. And Claire looked into the reflected eyes of her girlfriend and realized that there was only one thing she could do: Claire pulled the car over and everything poured out. She told her love that she was kidnapped by a cult called the Children of Nyarlethotep. She told her that she used to be a member back when she was a stupid teenager who didn’t think things through. Who thought that the answers lay with people who were like her in nearly every way. How they were Claire’s only friends growing up, or they told her as such. How she believed them. How she participated. How she felt that if she ever told Clara, that she would hate her and never want to-

Instead, Clara kissed her girlfriend.

In the end, Clara spent the night at Claire’s house. Her parents were rather nice, if a bit too fond of the 60’s for their own good. Claire felt there really wasn’t much to talk about when it came them. She was wrong, as all people are when they say that about a family member. Clara and Claire swore to never join the Children of Nyarlethotep again, a promise that wouldn’t be kept.) Claire, who was more familiar with the Children of Nyarlethotep, dismissed the claim that the cult was funding their apartment, as cult funds tend to go towards far more sensible things like human sacrifices, fixing their “evil lair,” or buying a coffee maker that actually works. (Claire once noticed their landlord talking to someone shaped like a person. She couldn’t make out what they were talking about, just grunts and growls. They appeared to be in the middle of some kind of interpretive dance that kept them extremely close. Claire didn’t think they saw her but she didn’t say any of this to Clara, as that would require remembering the encounter.)

To pass the time as men who sweat like they’re on Baywatchmoved their stuff into the apartment, the lovers decided to come up with names for people who also held an immortal status. They created three base assumptions as rules for their game. First, the people all had to be women as all the people like them were women (this isn’t remotely true as Clark Oswald can attest). Second, they had to have the initials C.O. (Kara Unna). And third, no stupid names like Charity Oregon.

Of the people they had come up with up to that point, only three existed. The first, Carrie Oswin, was a director of an art museum in upper Connecticut. She had four children, all out of the house, and was content with her life, expecting to die within the next couple of years of natural causes. Then there was Carmen O’Winn, a thief primarily working in Europe. She was inspired by a television show she watched as a kid whose title character was a thief with her own agenda and rules. She stole many artifacts over the years, primarily from the rich and powerful. At the time, she was being contracted by a group of men who had never gone outside their own mother’s basement (let alone talk to a woman their age) who wanted her to search the house of an archivist of old 60’s television to see if he had any tapes the BBC Archives could use. No such tapes were found and she barely made it out of there alive. Finally, there was Cassandra Owsley who currently outside of reality.

They spent the hours making up names, each more fake than the last. They took breaks to argue how the tables in the living room should be positioned, which bathroom got which curtains, etc. In the end, they were able to make the apartment their own. Innocuously, Clara asked Claire for a cup of milk, only to realize they forgot to go shopping. They decided it could wait until the morning and decided to take an early rest.

Clara wouldn’t see Claire again for a long time.

Despair brought her into the Children of Nyarlethotep’s tendrils. It wasn’t that she was unaware of other groups that could help her in her time of need. The cult just got to her first.

The cult didn’t want her depressed. That only gets people so far. They wanted her indoctrinated. They converted people like her countless times over the years. Vulnerable people could be taught the right way of existing: Die for Nyarlethotep. Until that day, they needed more sacrifices and those willing to sacrifice. The cult felt she had the tenacity to be one of them as opposed to a mere sacrifice. But first, they had to break her like a stallion. If not, there was always the glue factory.

The depression did most of the work for them. She already felt like she was falling into the abyss. It was her fault Claire was taken. She thought of how Claire would feel without her and fell deeper into the pit. They had to remove the influence of Claire from her heart. If she had even the slightest inkling of love for anyone other than Nyarlethotep, she would desire freedom. The cult never referred to Claire by name, she didn’t deserve one. Claire was “the deceased” or “it.” They didn’t touch her, not physically. They just talked, as people who offer shoulders often tend to do. At first, they just listened to her about how much she loved Claire, how Claire was the only thing anchoring her to life. Then, the cult twisted the stories, gas lighting her memories into claims of abuse. That Claire never loved her, only wanted someone who could be controlled.

It took time for her to accept the truth her friends were telling her. Years, months, hours, they all bled together in the sanctum of the Children of Nyarlethotep. She thought that it was love. She was foolish to believe such trite. She didn’t realize how often they argued, how easily the scars faded (like the one she got last spring break when the deceased stabbed her in the stomach). It hurt to come to terms with this, but her sisters said that’s how healing is.

Time passed. Eventually the cult had to know if she was truly theirs. She had to perform a sacrifice. They provided her a book, telling of the War, of their god, of all the factions and sides and important characters. And then, something happened. Something the cult wasn’t expecting. They thought of everything, save for one small thing they weren’t even aware could ruin everything. It began when she was reading the final pages of the ritual. She was practicing the various sigils required on a dead homeless man, looking back and forth between her work and the design. Suddenly, a wind from nowhere blew the pages away. It whispered like an old, long dead, imaginary friend.

She looked at the book, frustrated that she’d have to flip through the tome again to find where she was. She’d probably forget where she was in the ritual and have to start over (homeless corpses are a tedious item to find). The page the wind turned the book to seemed familiar to her, especially the symbol. It was almost like the skull of a snake but the fangs were too long. There were other teeth within its mouth, smiling curtly at her. The eyes weren’t shaped like snake eyes; they were almost human. And the snout, which was much too large to be a snake’s, had teeth in it as well. She had seen it before, though she couldn’t remember… It was on a butt, she knew that much… a friend’s butt… And the tattoo wasn’t always a mask; it used to be an Ouroboros! The butt belonged to… Jane, whose best friend was-

She didn’t want to say the name of the deceased.

It hurt when she even thought of the deceased.

She remembered what her sisters reminded her of what the deceased did.

A knife stabbed into the abdomen, deep enough to threaten.

She thought of the knife used by the deceased.

How she was so afraid as it pierced her flesh.

It was a familiar knife, like the one in her hand.

Exactly like the one in her hand…

It didn’t come together all at once. Maybe she knew the truth all along, but denied it to let herself do what they call healing. Maybe there were other moments where she almost came to this realization. Maybe she would have broken free even if the wind hadn’t coincidentally turned the page, as if destiny wanted her to see it. But other lives would have been lost, tortured for a futile purpose that she saw all too clearly. Would Claire love her if she did those things? Would she ever love herself? Yes, she momentarily convinced herself. She read through the section of the tome before her, eager to learn and understand what she was fighting, for they had pushed her towards war. Eventually, she would know what to do with this book. But in that moment, holding the knife, she knew what she had to do to be free. One of the cultists walked into view.

“Are you ready?” asked Charity Oregon.

Clara O’Winn smiled.

Clara sat on the cheap motel bed while Charity continued to futilely scream through the duck tape. Clara was looking at her watch. They had less than a minute to arrive. She was aware from the stolen book that they were known for their punctuality, but arriving at the exact minute seemed a bit excessive. But she would soon realize that excessiveness was baked into their nature as a shape began to form.

The travel machine was edited into reality. It looked like something that would not be conspicuous in a motel room, but still distinct enough for the owner to not have to spend five hours debating which TV he used to go home before smashing his face on the glass. The device was championed by a sound akin to a child squeezing a squirrel to death while playing with the blinds. Eventually, a being stepped out of the toilet and into the motel room.

 The being was not human. Sure, if one were looking at the being through the lens of a photograph or moving picture, the being would appear to be human. But there was something off about the way he looked. He certainly looked like a he, but there was an air of ambiguity to the significance of that detail. He looked less like a person and more like the culmination of generations of film studios and focus groups to create a character archetype (the archetype in question being a stuffy dean with the gentle smile of an authoritarian dictator). But perhaps what made him look the least human was his eyes. They were dilated so much, one could almost see a star field shine through his infinite darkness.

Clara had heard of the parties involved in the War, and called the side that would least likely simply take both her and her captive and do what most people with limited imaginations do with their kidnap victims. Sadly no such side existed, but the side of “order, lordship, and sterility” was far more likely to humor her than the other factions would. (The only fortune she had in this whole mess was that he didn’t simply rewrite her timeline so that she’d give herself to him willingly).

Well he said in the voice of an ornery deposed king while impatiently stroking his beard is this the real deal? Clara said nothing, for she knew his side, like all the sides in the War, thought of her as a “Lesser Species” not worthy of humoring bluster. Instead, she simply pulled out the knife she had in her left pocket, and stabbed her captive a few inches away from her heart. It was surprisingly easy to cut around the organ, but it still took a bit of time. 

There, in front of both of them, was Charity’s beating heart. The sight and feeling of this made the young woman pass out. Clara, who was used to the sight of cruelty in the name of uncaring powers, proceeded to rip out the still beating heart and present it to the orderly “gentleman.” The blood that belonged to Charity still flowed through the body, only slightly spurting out of the hole. It didn’t so much create a new organ as simply pretend the heart wasn’t removed.

Interesting sneered the shape of a man with an air of self-congratulation tell me, what do you want for this… intriguing specimen?

Clara felt no need to lie. “I want your time machine so I can travel the universe.” The man shaped being laughed. One doesn’t typically hear members of his side laugh, but it is always unsettling when they do so. It’s not clear why the laugh is unsettling to an average being as, for all intensive purposes, it sounds like a normal laugh, albeit an evil one seen in science fiction movies with lines like “NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!” but the cadence of the laugh was… off. 

When the laughter stopped, he calmly, as if he had never laughed at all, said I must say you are an amusing little thing. The hubris of your species is well documented, and indeed fascinating compared to other Lesser Species, but this really “takes the cake,” as your species is fond of saying Clara. Clara froze. You know, it was quite easy to come across your name. We have several agents in your time zone who were eager to tell us information about you and your cult. Once certain pressures were used, of course.

“It’s not my cult,” Clara demanded.

Frankly the only reason we didn’t simply take you earlier was because you were able to contact us. He paused for effect. At first, we assumed you simply got the information from that book you stole pointing directly at the book, hidden poorly inside a nightstand draw too small for it to fit into but then we noticed that it was years out of date.This mildly stunned Clara, but she didn’t show it. I mean, your book only covers, what, the first 100 years of the War. There is no contact information for our side in that edition. So how were you able to call us?

“It was written on the wind,” Clara smirked as if that meant anything to anyone but her. She fled for the exit, but the man shaped being simply slowed down her perception of time and causally walked in front of her before resuming it to a speed faster that 1^-100,000,000 inches per hour.

Cute he smugly retorted I suppose we’ll get the real answers out of you in the- But before he could finish that sentence, a familiar sound to the being filled the room: the wheezing groaning sound of an organ being played at a packed church in the exact instance the roof fell down. It dawned on the being that if this Lesser Being had the contact information for his side, she might also have the information of other sides. Which is why it came at no surprise that a ship that looked like the skeletal remains of a dragon appeared in the room.

The dragon’s mouth opened revealing another bidder for the captive. Unlike her competitor, she looked distinctly human. Though Clara couldn’t make out any physical features beneath her uniform, there was the distinct air of human cruelty upon her. She didn’t appear to be much older than a college dropout, yet she walked like a scholar. The woman was dressed in a typical Goth attire featuring pants darker than the depths of space, a black jacket covered in pins advertising causes the woman no longer believed in, and a mask made out of the skull from a long dead alien race that still had blood smeared on its teeth. She seemed familiar, but Clara couldn’t put her finger on why.

“Step away from the woman, or else” snarled the woman. The woman was unarmed, though her shadow appeared to be holding some sort of explosive device in its hands.

Come now, Cousin Jane smiled the man shaped being surely we can end things civilly.

Cousin Jane thought about this briefly. “Nah, don’t seem to be any other way. Think I’ll blow you up anyways. Always wondered if your kind bleeds gold.”

Well, clearly there is another way… There are two of them! We can split them up evenly- And as if to piss all over his sunny day, a beam of light smashed through the celling landing softly and directly in the center of the room. Out from it, stepped an ethereal being with the shape of an experienced English actor known for playing loudmouthed kings and Viking gods.

ATTENTION LESSER SPECIES hir whispered in a singsong voice WE HAVE COME TO TAKE CLAIM OF THESE TWO SPECIMENS.

“Bullshit you are,” shouted Cousin Jane. “’Sides, I was here first!”

No you weren’t objected the man shaped being. Regardless, I’m sure we can work things out in a neat and orderly fashion.

“Yeah, you’re just all about “order,” aren’t you? Just the order you want, mmm?”

Is there any other?

YES! OUR ORDER!

Perhaps we can discuss this at another time; right now I have a business transaction to deal with.

“Well, too bad, ‘cause so do we.”

AS DO WE!

W̵̨̕e͘͟͞͡ a͟l̵s͏o̶̸ h̴́͝a̕͢͝v̡e̵̛͡ an̨ ͢a̷̕͡rra̷̛̕n͡ge͞m̸̧͠e̸̛ņ̛t w҉͟ith̴̛̛͢͢ M͏̵̕s͞.̷̧̛̕Ơ͢’͞W̴҉i̵n̸͏n,̸̕A fourth party retorted. They didn’t so much enter the room as rewrite the nature of the universe so they were always in the room. Soon more and more parties showed up for, frankly, a bit of out of date technology that most only wanted because others wanted it. The arguments got so loud, no one noticed Charity Oregon waking up. In the confusion, she found that someone had accidentally cut her binds, placed her heart back into her body, and plastered a bit of skin and bone over it. Wanting simply to go home, Charity fled the scene. Luckily the congregation was so distracted by their petty arguments that she was easily able to escape.

At the very least, they were distracted enough for someone to, say, be able to steal a time machine, learn how to use it, go back in time, convincingly fake a death or two, get married, find a time in the future where people have cured aging, woo a formless being who exists in any point in time she desires, get married again, steal a few phone numbers and contact information, write a few stage plays, and live happily ever after as the universe’s longest working actress. Which, in a bit of coincidence, someone in that room actually did.

…Well, ok, she didn’t actually become the universe’s longest working actress, but that’s only for personal reasons that’ll stay between the three of us.

2/19/17-8/19/18