We, all the Creche kids, had known what was going on since before dawn. Lem, who was the littlest of us and still doing her Following, was sweet on Kressle, the Teller’s apprentice, no matter that she was at least ten years his junior. So when tried to sneak into the woods before first light, he had a tiny pig-tailed shadow. That meant the rest of us got shaken away ten wheels later to hear all about it. Over the next twenty-wheel, we took turns slipping out past the sentries, who were still squatting around the outskirts of camp even though we hadn’t seen a Silver Bone in three days, to go check on Kressle. Each body had to see for themselves that Lem wasn’t yanking their reins. A Crecheling is always certain and all that.

We needn’t have worried. When I went out, I saw what everybody else said they had seen too. Lanky Kressle cussing and worrying about with Matron Makot’s hacksaw. Of course, we had suspected all along but this confirmed it. The apprentices always got stuck with the jobs their masters didn’t want to do and, even though it was the biggest part of the ritual, not one body ever wanted to make the Needle Torches. A couple of the younger of us, Lem included, had never been to a ritual but they knew about them and knew there was only one reason why someone would be making Needle Torches. And, even though we were all Creche, they started getting excited.

Hiding a gang of half-trained, sparking kids was impossible so it wasn’t long after we knew that the adults knew that we knew. With the spokes already spinning, they gave up all pretense of secrecy and at about noon, Kressle dragged his bundle of saplings into the center of camp, flopped down on a stump in the center of camp next a bucket of pitch and began his grueling work, swearing and throwing hex bags at any of us who got close. Well, the ones he saw get close.

Who could have stayed away? Even I, who had seen two rituals before, wasn’t immune to the buzz of energy that started with the youngest of us then spread to the Overfolk kid a few twentywheels later and kept going up from there. Even the adults were smiling at each other and exchanging inscrutable looks. Master Poplos figured out early on that we would be useless today, so he let us have the day off from whatever we were supposed to be learning in our Firmament. But it him that gave Kressle all the hex bags, so it wasn’t like Poplos had actually given up on teaching us anything today.

Anyways, the older kids, me indluded, didn’t stop at just watching Kressle work. No, we had a bet going on who could take the most branches from his pile. Poplos caught us pretty quick though so nobody won anything more than a swat and a promise of extra chores tomorrow. Despite our meddling, Kressle was done preparing the pile before sunset. Half of the grown-ups had disappeared into the woods tenwheel ago and this time we older kids stopped the little ones from following them. Now they reappeared, dressed head to toe in the brightly colored cloaks of the ritual with nary a patch of flesh showing. Some of the little ones shrieked in delight or terror or something and I think a peep might have escaped me too as they filtered back into camp and grabbed one of the finished torches to take to a place in the camp. Whenever everybody had a spot and a torch, I didn’t know who was who but I counted the bodies, some unspoken command must have gone out because, with what sounded like one voice, they all invoked at once and the torches about the camp sprang into blazing light.

The flash was nearly blinding in the gathering dark, or would have been if we hadn’t been prepared for it, and I caught myself thinking that it was a good thing we were three days out from any Silver Bones because so much magic would have drawn them down like flies to rotting meat. While all the Overfolk kids were still blinking around, we saw Yemtz, Kressle’s mast, the Teller, unfold his spindly limbs from one of the wagons and move, quickly for a man his age, to the center of camp. To anyone who had been caught by the flash of light, it would look like he appeared out of thin air. ‘Course he could have actually done it with magic, but something were about tradition and no one had known how to move something that big when this one started. From the collective gasps that went up from the Overfolk, it seemed like some people were still impressed by it.

Yemtz raised his hands for silence. When all was quiet save for the buzz of insects, he began “No one knows how long there was the darkness. In those days, no one knew anything. Sky was black as pitch and what lived on the land were small, dumb things that crawled in the gloom.

No one knows how long the gods had been travelling for either, or how many planes they walked across before they came to this one. They aren’t in the habit of sharing such things with the likes of mortals.

No one knows when the beginning was. It doesn’t matter. Thing started going when Feteikam, may we ever keep it guessing, chewed its way through the darkness. Now Feteikam filled the whole it’d made with light so that it could see what kind of plane it had come across and made the sun. Feteikam had to see because its purpose it to know and to catalog all that is across the great expanse of all that can. It set to work right away, spinning the worlds around the hole it made so it could look at all of them from all sides in the light it had made.

Then Zhotgef, may we never let it finish, chew its way through after its sibling. Zhotgief hated what it saw on this plane, as it had hated everything it had seen before, so it filled its hole with nothing and left it to suck up all the light and life that there was. When Feteikam turned its gaze away, there was Zhotgief to take back what its sibling had given and return things to stillness.

In this the siblings found balance and peace as that which was destroyed would not change and Feteikam could have knowledge while Zhotgief could have ignorance.

But there was a third sibling, Eikorot, who did not want this balance or this peace. It had grown tired of its sibling’s patterns, the dull planes which they surveyed then destroyed. It was bored. And a bored trickster god is a dangerous thing. Eikorot had been planning his prank since the true beginning and it was here, on this plane, that it pulled it.

Eikorot created life and laughed at its siblings’ confusion. Life always changed. It could not be cataloged, Feteikam would have to keep the planets spinning forever if it was to see all of it. And to stop Zhotgief from devouring them, Eikorot gave them fire that they might make their own light to fill the hungry darkness.

One by one, Eikorot made the peoples of the world and with each attempt its skill grew. And when it felt as if it had mastered the art of making life, Eikorot made us, its favored people. But you see it played a trick on us too because that is its nature. Eikorot made us best, yes, but it also made us last and all the other lands had been given out and we had no home. Eikorot made us slight and quick and few so that we could not take others lands by force. Eikorot made us in its own image, as much as that which is not alive could. It made us tricksters, just like itself, forced to survive by relaying on our wits and our families.

This burden is the gift of the gods upon us. Thus we hate them. And are grateful.”

Emerging from the Age of Smoking Dust came two great civilizations. One, whose name has been lost to history, sought to reclaim the glories of the fallen civilization and the other, the Empire of New Morgan, feared the mistakes of the past would once more lead to ruin. The New Morganites were led by a brilliant empress, born Sorenthai Mo’horgane. As a youth, Sorenthai discovered gunpowder and invented primitive firearms, tools which she used to conquer what is now known as Sotheslund before the age of fifteen. In reaction to reports that magic was once again being practiced in the north, Sorenthai designed and constructed a floating bridge so that her armies could cross the Sea of Brass and invade the other civilization which was budding there. Equipped with superior weaponry, military experience and dogmatic hatred, the New Morganites all but exterminated their foes, driving the refuges to the far north and south-east. Now in possession of the relatively fertile lands of Nomenslund, the New Morganite population exploded. A mass exodus from the deserts of Sotheslund occurred and the capitol of the New Morgan Empire shifted from the sunbaked mountains of Sorenthai’s childhood to the green shores of the Bay of Steam. Relatively unopposed in their new lands, the Morganites grew into a populous and sprawling empire with tendrils reaching into all corners of the Three Continents area.

Even after Sorenthai’s reign, the Mo’horgani Dynasty continued to be innovative and capable leaders. They made great leaps in technology including medicine, weaponry and transportation. Unfortunately, the Mo’horgani Dynasty’s legacy is not solely one of intellectual prowess and technological progress. Slavery, aggressive colonization and fear-mongering characterized the middle and late years of the Dynasty more than anything else. The great churning wheels of their industry were greased by the blood, sweat and tears of captured peoples from distant lands and gladiatorial combat was the primary entertainment of the nation’s gentry. Having subdued all foes at home, the Morganites took their wars overseas. Although they were among the first civilizations to recover, by the time they entered into their colonial periods, other cultures had begun to emerge on other continents. However, superior technology, larger forces and better training meant that few of these nascent unions could fight the Morganites and soon their empire had seats on every continent known to them and collected fortunes in tithe and tribute from around the world.

The call for endless progress which drove the Morganites meant the dual need for endless enemies and the Morganites had a historical antithesis that they could be assured to fight forever but never defeat: magic. Their national roots as a reaction to the devastation caused by the magical follies of the Proto-Cassandrites generated a dogmatic hatred and fear for the arcane and esoteric. Although magic on an empire building scale had become a thing of the past, the traditions in opposition to it remained. For the Morganites, witchcraft was comparable to treason and both carried a similarly harsh and final sentence. It is due in large part to the actions of the Morganites that magic on the surface was nearly eradicated. Many of the wars fought by the Empire were billed as crusades to halt the spread of witchcraft.

Under the aggressive, innovative leadership of the Mo’horgani Dynasty, the Empire experienced its largest amount of growth both territorially and technologically. However, the rule of the Morgans was not to last forever. For 312 years, they endured from their genesis with the first Empress Sorenthai to the last Emperor Kalem III. It is said that for each Morgan ruler, there was a new war. They were born and forged in conflict. And the dynasty ended the same way. In its day, the Empire was unquestionably the strongest military power of the surface world. Unsurprisingly, the Morganites considered themselves inherently superior to other people and the Mo’horani Dynasty itself took this ideology a step further, placing their status above that of their own people as well. Towards the latter days of the Empire, inbreeding within the royal line became rampant and devastating. In the last hundred years of their reign, the Mo’horgani began to exhibit unstable tendency. In their last fifty years, the Three Kalems Reign, this instability devolved into outright insanity as each successive child-emperor was madder than the last. The corruption of the throne became too much for the people to bear and a faction of the nobility which dubbed itself the Council of Martyrs successfully orchestrated a coup against the Mo’horgani Dynasty. The Council, backed by the First Mechanized Cohort, the first successful military use of exo-suits, used their political connections to infiltrate the Royal Estate and end the Mo’horgani line in a single night of slaughter.

Officially at least. Well known historical figures, most notably Frelleise Lepsidir who led the Industrialists during the Daylight Wars and believed herself to be the literal reincarnation of Sorenthai Mo’horgane and Joqo Tzene, council elect of the House of Bone and Silver, have often claimed blood ties to the Mo’horgani Dynasty. In the Successor States of Central Nomeslund, those who seem touch by both genius and madness are often said to be the Blood of Old Morgan, a designation which marks them with both fear and respect.

Many abuses that mankind has perpetrated upon itself over the course of history have been justified under the banner of Social Darwinism. I already had something of an idea about this before attending this class and was rather surprised to find that the definition of Social Darwinist I encountered here different from my previous understanding. I had believed it to be the concept that Europeans were more highly evolved than other “races” and thus had the duty to spread themselves, their culture, their technology, their government, their genetics all across the face of the world so as to better it. It was linked with Rudyard Kipling’s charming little ditties. I was very happy to decry this notion as not only morally dubious but scientifically laughable.

It was rather concerning to me to be present with a different model. From this class I gathered that a newer perception of Social Darwinism is simply the application of the theory of natural selection to cultural arenas. And that it was being attacked with the same ferocity as the blatant racism, stodgy apologist justification and backwards thinking as before made me feel profoundly uncomfortable.

Because I think that not only can the ideas of natural selection be applied to society, but I think that they should. I think that it is the fundamental building block of a functioning free capitalist society, which I have been led to believe is the best society. In my view, culture or society is a sort of ecosystem, a microcosm of the global where each unit of humanity is like a unique species in competition with all others. Although some rhetoric might define different phenotypes of units of humanity, the true unit of humanity is a single human. For me, the ideal society is one in which each human is allowed to prove themselves to be fit or not on their own merits and as little else as possible.

Like all aspiring dictators, I have a plan to bring this paradise about. It starts out simple, with a core concept that I am quite fond of: the abolishing of inheritance. We do not live in a functioning, free, capitalist society and it is because of the generational compounding of both power and powerlessness. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You’ve got to have money to make money. There are those who have who did not earn, did nothing but sit back and collect on what they feel is owed them based on who contributed to their genetic material. I do not feel this should be encouraged. Money and power should come from innovation, drive and excellence alone. In my ideal community, all property returns to the state after an individual’s death. Material goods are auctioned off and financial means are confiscated.

Problems immediately arise from this measure. What if a parent gifts things their children while they are still living? This is, of course, illegal and careful records will be kept of who acquires what so that recollection may proceed smoothly. Another plus to this method is that it creates jobs. Other, more Lowry-esque, solutions to the issue of progeny include taking all children from their parents and having them raised either by surrogates or in orphanages. Although these have their upsides, the put a damper on one of the key human drives, to provide for one’s children, and I believe would ultimately be destructive. Doubtless, there would be large orphanages for children whose parents expire before they reach majority but they should not, ideally, be someone’s first stop.

Through these practices, the nurturing parental urge should shift in the majority to provide the tools for the child to achieve themselves rather than simply granting with them the fruits of one’s own success. Furthermore, for those whose lives appreciably depreciate after being separated from the possessions of their parents, it is my hope that they should yearn to recapture at least the same level of comfort and strive for achievement in their own lives.

From the confiscation and resale of property, the government should acquire a surplus of funds. These funds will be channeled back into the community in the form, primarily of scholarships and grants. These funds will be allocated on a basis of merit, determined by testing and observers within classrooms and other public spaces. Corruption of these observers should be punishable by death. The lynchpin of this society’s moral integrity is that those who can best use resources are those to whom resources are given. If this is compromised and those who judge merit could be bought or sold then there is nothing redeemable within this concept and it is fit only for dystopian science fiction.

Other than the function of collecting and reallocating funds, the role of the government should be limited peacekeeping and national defense. Ideally, these duties could be taken up by private companies for the most part however, in the instance of rogue elements, it will always be necessary to have a governmental military presence.

I see this society as, strange though it may seem, the epitome of equality. To riff off the quintessential quotation, “All men are created equal.” I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. In each person there is theoretically equal potential. However, I see this concept being abused ceaselessly in our society due to the simple misunderstanding that being equal at creation should ensure consistent equality. It is grossly fallacious to assume that equal opportunity should equate to equal results. Furthermore, I believe that it is the duty of none but the individual, and that individual alone, to determine the results which are the fruit of their opportunity. In its essence, my ideal community is simply an attempt to create equal opportunity in the belief that those who make the most of what they are given are those that should be given further opportunity to have more.

I also believe that, if I was ever given the opportunity to run my ideal community in real, non-idealized life, I would immediately run it into the ground.

Old movie are different. Heck, everything old is different. That’s kind of an unavoidable fact. Cultures change, people change (or stay the same depending on who you ask) and technology changes. In the modern era, or at least the past couple hundreds of years, the most important of those three kinds of changes has been the technology. Things get more complicated at an exponent rate. The primary function of technology has historically been to provide a reduction in either time or labor. The time aspect means that people have more freedom and the labor aspect means that some people have nothing to do at all. To do in the traditional sense of subsistence farming. Unshackled from these necessities, they are free to make themselves useful by developing more technology.

All of this lofty conceptual work is often difficult to associate with real world examples. This theory does nothing to help contextualize things that are happening in this very moment. Still these are the sort of things that come to mind when considering the Grand Illusion. It occupies the space of being a sort of double period piece. It is an older film, considered quintessential of its time, which itself tries to reflect a period only a few years before but culturally and technologically very distinct.

What strikes me first about the Grand Illusion is the subject matter. It is billed as a war movie, but growing up my concept of war movies involves, frankly, more war. Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down and even Rambo are what come to mind immediately. These movies are bloodbaths, especially when compared to the Grand Illusion in which the scene which is the hallmark of the modern WWI movie, the dogfight, occurs off screen and is treated without pomp or circumstance.

Part of me thinks that the culprit is technology. The means to recreate such scenes in a realistic way simply did not exist in that era. The development of CGI has made the impossible a routine spectacle on the silver screen. There are other pieces of technical inaccuracies which stand out in the Grand Illusions more charged scenes. The guns fired are categorically and completely without recoil, for instance, and no attempt at fake blood is made when de Boeldieu is shot. The first of these is exceptionally easy to fudge while the second presents only a little more challenge. And yet they were not done.

Rather than the prime mover for the film’s style being a lack of the capability to perform such cinematic feats, it then seems to be a more conscious, intentional choice on the part of those responsible for film and is then a matter of culture. Indeed, the themes tackled in the Grand Illusion are not the same as, or even similar to, those depicted in major, modern, mainstream movies. Perhaps these things were not shown or attempted because the poor facsimile would be immediately recognized as just that and cheapen the movie. If the intent of the movie was, as I believe it to be, an honest, perhaps honest-ish, portrayal of the experience of war then such things would break the audience’s immersion and empathy and were discarded.

This honesty is not absent from modern works, yet it honestly tells a different story. Saving Private Ryan is often hailed as an uncompromising attempt to depict the horrors of war, fully loaded with a shocking script and top of the line special effects. It plays on the emotions of audience, just as the Grand Illusion does but emotions much different. Is it because they depict different wars? Is the narrative of WWII so different from its predecessor? Was it our ability to create these images that changed us? If the technology had been available Renoir, would his masterpiece have been laced with thrilling explosions? To me it seems more likely that it is the culture that has shifted. Watching films like Ryan now, I cannot help but look at the special effects creating the images of war flashing on the screen before me and think of them as illusions.

Every day it seems, someone else becomes gluten-free. It’s the new scapegoat of the era. Every magazine and health guru has their own spin on what exactly this little miscreant does to those who unthinkingly ingest this malignant menace.

Are you overweight? Don’t eat gluten. Feeling tired? Stop with all the gluten gluten. Wrinkles got you down? We both know it’s all that gluten you’re eating. Want to live another ten years. Easy. Eliminate the gluten from your diet.

It seems like we can blame everything dietary on that little… whatever it is and feel justified about it. Gluten-free options are popping up on menus across the nation. Products that never had any in the first place slap a gluten-free sticker on their packaging and see the sales rise by 3%. It’s a capitalist miracle. Or maybe its scare tactics. Or maybe it’s a big made up farce constructed by the Free Masons or the reptilians or whoever to drive the wheat farmers out of business.

But hopefully none of this comes across as a complaint of any sort. In fact, I’m thankful that I live in the era where awareness of gluten is becoming more and more prevalent. Like many people, I am gluten-free. Although, and in this I feel in the minority, I am not so by choice. I have a genetic condition that does not allow me to ingest the titular binding agent without rather unpleasant consequences to myself. If I had lived in the past generation, with virtually no awareness of what was the issue with me, I might have been far worse off.

In fact, there is simply no might about it. I know that I would have because, since Celiac Disease is a genetic condition, and therefore inherited, my mother suffered through that very situation herself and she is still profoundly affected by it to this day. The particular strain of the disease that we are infected, although that is far from the right term, with causes intense drowsiness, loss of focus and internal organ damage (although that one might have just been made up to keep an undisciplined young man away from the baguettes). For my mother, whenever she would eat she would become immensely tired to the point of non-functionality. Without knowing the specific agent responsible she came to associate all food with a loss of agency and avoided eating whenever possible.

As might be expected, this has not fostered in her a loving relationship with the fine art of cuisine, and I, of course, say this in the most loving possible manner. I have come to understand that no one cooks at home in my absence. Even as a child, when my brother and I were away for extended periods of time, my mother reported that she subsisted solely on avocado and microwaved chicken patties for months on end.

Once, I regarded this prospect with guilt and horror. Guilt in that it was a touchstone for how much I imagined the absence of her children affected her, perfect little angels that we were and horror at the sheer blandness of the meal. I once liked to think of myself as something of an aspiring chef and my moral outrage was grounded in this aspect of my identity. There was a white plastic trash bin that I would don before the mirror and pretend that it was a chef’s hat. To me, this monotony was the most serious of offenses.

Around the time I started high school, my mother got herself tested and discovered she was gluten intolerant. For my brother and me things didn’t change much. When my mother cooked, she made two meals one with gluten for us and one without for her. When I cooked, I made whatever I pleased without a second thought. This didn’t last long. Around Christmas of my freshman year of high school I found myself getting tired after dinner and going immediately to bed. For the first couple of days, I thought nothing of it. And even as the condition persisted and I connected the dots, I refused to accept the most likely explanation. I was resistant at first when my mother offered to make more of the gluten-free portion one night but eventually I caved in. And, of course, I felt better. But with that came the knowledge that I was diseased. That, on the most basic, protein-to-protein level, there was something off-center about my being.

And that kinda took the wind out of my sails on the whole cooking deal. Even though I had long since stopped wearing a waste bin, that moment was what really felt like the end. But looking back, I think I may have gained more than I lost. There is weight to all those magazines and gurus, I’m in far better shape than I have a right to be given my eating and exercise habits and I always have an excuse to leave places early. And the biggest plus perhaps, is that I’ve gained perspective. When I think about avocados and microwave chicken patties, now I feel something more akin to awe or comradery. There is something tenacious and resourceful about finding something that works and sticking with it no matter how distasteful it might seem, or in this case taste. And the unwavering dedication to such a regime is something that I struggle with to this day.

I feel jealous or maybe envious of people who are gluten-free by choice. Not only in that they can quit or cheat whenever they want but that they will never suffer the consequences for a slip of willpower. But then I remember that I too am gluten-free by choice, in a sense. There is no one forcing me to pander to my genetic coding. Sure, I never asked for this condition, but no one asks to be born at all yet we keep forcing it on one another. And, since I intend to be a father someday and potentially sire off-normal children, it is only fitting that I live through the challenges, such as they are, that I might some day pass on to them.