objective quality of a media (show/game/anime/etc) has almost zero meaning compared to: what you go in expecting, what you need emotionally in that period of your life, and how you see it through the lens of resonant thematic elements specific to you as an individual.
a slice-of-life series about a bunch of modern witches sharing an apartment together
Even more?
Have it be a bunch of Millennial witches, and have the series open with them getting a new roommate: a fresh-faced, peppy, enthusiastic Millennial-Gen Z cusp baby witch who, like all baby witches, has so many Expectations about others’ magic.
And all of the older, Millennial witches are just So Over that kind of thing, and their new roommate just keeps trying, bless their little heart.
“Are you guys a coven????”
“Nah, we’re actually all solitary practitioners. I mean, we’ll boost each others wards and we’ve got a bunch of apartment crystals that anyone can use, but for the most part, we do our own shit.”
[sees one roommate adding nutmeg and cinnamon to the curry she’s making] “Ooh, what are the correspondences of those??“
“They… taste good?”
“Is this cat someone’s familiar?”
“Actually, he was my brother’s cat and his wife wanted to get rid of him, so I took him in rather than let him go to the shelter.”
Another roommate chimes in with “He’s actually kind of an asshole. Keeps laying down in the middle of my grids and pushing my quartz out of place.”
Peppy fresh-faced roommate comes into the living room where everyone else is on their laptop or phone: “It’s the full moon tonight, witches!! Anyone have any plans?”
There’s a resounding chorus of “Shit, that’s tonight?”, followed by a group “Eh, oh well”, and everyone going back to their devices.
They see a beautiful arrangement of crystals and candles on the coffee table and figure it’s some kind of apartment altar, so they bring all their tools out and try to do some work there, and someone is like “nah dude, it’s just there for the Witchesthetic™”
They’re trying to laugh off the “apartment altar” incident, so when they see another roommate has a shelf with some POP figurines and candles on it, they go “Let me guess, that’s your altar to Thor and Heimdall?”
“Uh… yeah?”
PLOT TWIST
Just when Peppy, Fresh-Faced Roommate is beginning to get discouraged by how decidedly undedicated their roommates appear to be to their crafts, they witness each one casually doing Real Magic over the span of a few weeks.
Directing beams of visible light with a wand. Having an actual conversation with the asshole cat in the garden one morning. Literally having plants grow towards their hand. Levitating small objects towards themselves so they don’t have to get up to grab them. Drawing a quick sigil and having it sear brilliantly against the paper and disappear.
They confront the other roommates about it, and everyone is so baffled because “wait, we told you we were witches, you said you were a witch, is that not how it works for you?”
“Oh shit, I guess we gotta teach you how it works.”
I mean, I don’t want to shame anyone who has said it, thought it, or posted it. I have too. But as a philosophy, as a statement of belief, I hate it. Because it means you’ve given up. We are absolutely NOT fucked.
Things are so bad. This country has taken a turn that I could never have predicted. It is absolutely fascist, nativist, and extremist. It’s every bit as scary as it seems. But we are not fucked.
I read a long-form article on the Russia hacks in the New Yorker not long ago. However much you think that influenced the outcome, it was an instructive piece of journalism. There is very little indication that there was a specific political agenda that was being wished for. The goal was simple: Sow chaos and undermine the faith of Westerners in their own institutions.
This is really important to think about right now.
I have a high regard for Mueller and I think his investigation will have some influence. But don’t wait on him to save us. He can’t. And don’t wait on impeachment. I would support it fervently, but it is nothing to bank on. And especially don’t assume Trump can’t win again. He absolutely can. Our best bet – better, even, than all of our protests and actions – is actually voting.
It’s so square. It’s so old-fashioned. Many of us involved with the hard-left or anarchist scene have been trained to disregard it.
Fucking don’t. NOT NOW, guys. It is the best tool at our disposal. Yeah, you can say that they will sabotage it, reject it, whatever. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” In other words, don’t create troubles before they exist. Anything seems possible to me right now, but it remains the case – despite hacked voting machines and gerrymandering – that there is no known mechanism by which our government can deny massive voter turnout.
Take back the House in November. Then take back the Presidency in 2020. The worst thing we could do is pretend that these are givens. I never, ever, ever thought that this piece of shit could sit in the Oval Office. I was so humbled by my error. Therefore I assume he could take it again – I know he could – unless we accept the threat as real.
When we say, “We’re fucked,” we roll over. We defeat ourselves. We do their job for them. Don’t do that. We are NOT fucked. We are in a fight. It sucks. It’s hard. People are suffering. The earth is suffering. It will get worse.
You know, since everyone loves the Nazi comparisons, there were people during the HEYDAY of the Third Reich who NEVER said, “We’re fucked.” They said, “We’re in a fight.” And you know what’s interesting? Nazi Germany went from the worst regime in the world to a liberal democracy within a lifetime.
Look at Japan. Take the historical view. Stop pretending that the worst of what’s happening now is what is going to always happen. This is what is happening RIGHT NOW. That’s all you know. If you think it’s going to be this way forever, read a book.
Countries slide into fascism for long periods. It happens. Countries also have short-term extremist right-wing governments. Happens in Europe all the time. They get voted out. The threat remains. The threat of fascism will remain in America in a way it never has before. It’s a real movement. But we’re not fucked. Not even close. We can get off the ropes in the mid-terms and knock them out in 2020. But only if we stop saying that we’re fucked, and start seeing this as a fight.
I’m no Pollyanna. Things are so unutterably bad that I walk around in a constant state of nausea and horror. But you have to take the historical view, and you can’t lie down and say we’re doomed, or else they have beaten you.
Again, I don’t want to shame anyone who says, “We’re fucked” as an emotional reaction. I get it, I really do. But if you say that as a historical reality, then you SHOULD be ashamed. We are so far from being fucked. It’s time for that warrior spirit, from everyone.
Our best bet, actually our only realistic bet, is to mobilize the vote. There has always been a silver lining to this situation. I have always hesitated to state it, for fear of sounding like I am not taking the horror seriously. Fuck that; I do. But there has always been the possibility, there remains the possibility, that this is a time when our country faces up to its worst reflection, sees it truly, and breaks the fucking mirror. A time when the last bastion of white power and male supremacy and oligarchy attempts to enact fascism, but the antibodies of the American system and American multi-culturalism kick in to reject it.
Where do you want to stand in that equation? As someone who rolled over because we’ve have had two awful years of shit that much of the world has already experienced many, many, many times over, so you decided that we’re finished and done for? Come on. Look at Europe, look at Africa, look at Asia. Back and forth with this shit, and much worse.
I have your back. Get up. Here’s my hand. Let’s fight.
It can’t become hip to give up. It can’t become hip to say we are fucked. Look at history. People have been so much more fucked than us, and won. If you truly believe we are finished, I’m sorry, but you were the first to fall. Stick a fork in you, turn you over, you’re done. I don’t want to see you do that, if only for the selfish reason that we need you.
Do all the protests, do all the direct action, make all the phone calls, then mobilize in October and November. That’s when we can get off the ropes and start punching again. Take the long view, my sisters and brothers. Don’t let them take you out of the fight.
“I was like a freak within my family,” she says. “My mother’s very quick and everything, but I was always analyzing, a very intense kid, a top-heavy type of deal. My mother always thought it was that Jewish thing. I don’t know where you get that, dear. It must be that Jewish thing. Although there’s no real evidence of it in my father.”
An instinctive knack for wordplay blossomed in her journals and poetry, which she began writing at eleven: “My nose runs / My mind follows.” Or “You took my breath away and now I want it back.” She wrote a poem about movie stars’ children that actress Joan Hackett gave to Andy Warhol, who printed it in Interview. Later, he published a short story she wrote. “I wanted to be Dorothy Parker. I found out she was half Jewish like me, really small, had dark brown eyes, dark brown hair, very verbal. She had that Jewish thing too.” – Foxy, Fast-Talking Carrie Fisher, Cosmopolitan, April 1989
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