Dear Yule Goat letter
[Folks on my f-list who don't do the fanfiction thing: This post is for the Yuletide fic exchange. You may remorselessly scroll past.]
Dear writer person!
There are two reasons I didn't give you prompts in my sign-up. The first one is the whole OPTIONAL DETAILS ARE OPTIONAL - I am serious about this. But the second, and truer, is the sort you may already have guessed: I didn't have time to write some worthy prompts or reasoning in the sign-up phase! If you as a writer prefer to have prompts or if you just like having food for thought, please do peruse the below. I don't want you to feel bound by those at all, however. I really will be thrilled with any offering in these rare fandoms - gen, shippy, slashy, character study, missing scene, epic set of haikus equalling the 1000-word Yuletide minimum length, whatever you feel like bringing to the table.
Themes/events I especially like: Identity and self-fashioning. The intersections and differences between wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Character-building, world-building, environment shaping character. Nature and nurture, nature vs. nurture, defying nature and/or upbringing.
(On that last, as Le Guin has Estraven write in The Left Hand of Darkness:
To oppose something is to maintain it.
They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.)
Themes/events that squick me right out, and never you mind that Mishnory business:
Animal cruelty or animal death onscreen. Abuse of any kind without canon precedent (i.e., if there's an abusive relationship in the canon, by all means explore it, but adding your own for spice is likely to result in a dish I find unpalatable). Noncanonical character death. "Original characters" with improbable abilities who change the face of canon. Characters acting noncanonically for the sake of advancing a plot.
Now, on to the fandom requests!
Fandom (1): Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Characters (0 - 4): Charles Kinbote, Vseslav Botkin
Optional details:
No optional details per se, but here are my thoughts:
There are a few things about Pale Fire that especially tickle my fancy. In no particular order:
1) Kinbote's droll pomposity, not to say solipsism. He had me at "There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings", which is to say, from page one.
2) The multiplicity of voices. Brian Boyd's piece "Shade and Shape in Pale Fire" is readable in its entirety online, and speaks to this at length. (I don't espouse any particular view on the internal "authorship" of Pale Fire the poem and its accompanying commentary - It's more interesting to me that there is such space for interpretation, than to plump for a specific one of those interpretations - so whatever you like best works fine for me.)
2a) WTF? IS ZEMBLA EVEN REAL? Is Charles I real? Is Kinbote really Botkin? Who the heck is Botkin anyway (bonus question, if you've also read Pnin: why is Kinbote glad that Botkin doesn't have to answer to Pnin, in the hierarchy of Wordsmith U. departmental structure)? I ended up not including Odon / Donald O'Donnell in my character requests, but if you want to go this route, it'd be interesting to me to see how Odon and other Zemblan characters (Disa, Fleur de Fyler, whoever) figure into Botkin's life. Like, are they real? Are they people Botkin knew, around whom he's constructed elaborate fictions?
Fandom (2): Engineer Trilogy - K.J. Parker
Characters (0 - 4): Miel Ducas, Juifrez Stratiotes' wife
Optional details:
Again, optional is optional. So here's the thing:
1) Miel Ducas is adorable. The passage in Devices and Desires where he pretty much won my readerly heart:
There was a big marble pillar in the middle cloister of the Ducas house, on which were inscribed the various public offices held by members of the family over the past two and a half centuries. His father had four inches, narrowly beating his grandfather (three and two thirds). As a boy, when Father had been away from home so often, he'd sat on the neatly trimmed grass and stared up at the pillar, wondering what the unfamiliar words meant: six times elected Excubitor of the Chamber. Was that a good thing to be? What did an Excubitor do? Was Dad never at home because he was away somewhere Excubiting? For years he'd played secret, violent games in which he'd been Orphanotrophus Ducas, Grand Excubitor, fighting two dragons simultaneously or facing down a hundred Cure Hardy armed only with a garden rake. Six months ago, when Heleret Phocas had died and Orsea had given him his old job, he'd not been able to keep from bursting out laughing when he heard what the job title was. (No dragons so far, and no Cure Hardy; the Excubitor of the Chamber, Grand or just plain ordinary, was nominally in charge of the castle laundry.) Now he already had two inches of his own on the pillar; gradually, day by day and step by painful step, he was turning into somebody else.
2. Juifrez Stratiotes' wife is one of the most practical people in this book, given that she's one of the only ones who actually DOES WHAT SHE REALIZES IS THE OPTIMAL CHOICE. In so doing, she saves Miel's life, incidentally. Not that he was her first pick or anything (which is also kind of awesome.)
3. I'm pretty sure she's the most admirable and likeable female character in the whole damn series. And therefore it pleases me that, going by the prewar rulebook of Eremian social structure (at least according to Mahaud's musings on how these things are supposed to work), JS's wife comes out unexpectedly on top, without trying or caring to try for such a thing. She gets the most eligible bachelor in all Eremia, AND she gets to be Duchess. And yet she never gets a name in the story. She never even gets a name in Miel's POV chapters.
So, you know. I would love to read more with her in it. I would love to read her doing some awesome things other than padding Miel's helmet. I would love to see Miel appreciating her.
Not that the helmet-padding scene doesn't show awesomeness. From The Escapement:
She frowned at the inside of the helmet, then pulled the plaited straw out and twisted it a little tighter. "Not so long ago you were killing men for their boots," she said.
"Yes." He nodded, staring straight ahead. "In comparison, that was practically honourable. We needed to kill to stay alive. There's far worse things in the world than honest predators."
"So," she said. "Don't go. We can go back to hunting soldiers for a living. Better still, you could get the duke to make you an ambassador or something: Eremian diplomatic representative to some country they haven't discovered yet. Then we could stay home all day and not do anything."
"I could," he replied.
"But you won't."
"No."
"Well, there you are, then." She stood up and held the helmet out. "All done," she said. "Try it on, see if it fits better now."
He tried it. Still a little too big. "That's fine," he said.
"No it isn't. Give it here."
She sat down again and pulled the straw out. He looked at her but couldn't see her face.
"Fine," he said. "So what do you think I should do?"
"Not up to me." Her hair, usually stretched tightly back and stabbed with a comb, was coming loose, like stuffing from a frayed cushion. "I'm not even your wife. And that doesn't really change things so much, does it? I mean, the Ducas must have left little souvenirs right the way across Eremia."
He scowled. He could tell her it wasn't true, but she'd choose not to believe him. "I don't suppose the apple wants to fall from the tree," he said. "But it has no choice."
"Bullshit." She looked up at him and smiled; a bleak, angry smile that hit hard and deep. "You're going because you want to. You're an aristocrat, all your noble ancestors fought in every war there's ever been, so you're going. Simple as that."
He nodded. "That's right," he said. "Like I said. No choice."
She sighed. "Well," she said, "at least when you get bashed on the head, your helmet shouldn't fall off. Don't suppose any of those blue-blooded suitable cows you ought to have married would've known how to line a helmet."
"Quite true." He took it from her and settled it on his head. Perfect fit. "Don't worry about me," he said. "I'll be back soon enough. I've made arrangements -"
"Of course you have." A different smile this time. "You're the slave of duty, you told me so yourself. The farrier's finished, look. Give me twelve quarters and I'll go and pay him for you."
See, here's the thing. In this series, which is all about love, each of the main characters gets the man/woman/object she or he deserves. Orsea gets death (which is freedom from responsibility). Veatriz and Valens get each other but with the bloom of happily-ever-after taken right off. Daurenja gets to become one with his beloved cannon. Ziani gets the soulless union with Ariessa that his obsessive and destructive love deserves. And Miel - gets this practical woman of no special lineage and her looks spoiled by war.She's unambiguously the best of the lot, and they've lived through hell together, and he can't possibly put her on a pedestal, which is probably why his narrative doesn't go all swoony over her. And he gets to feel resigned and dutiful, which is what he does best.
Just as she's won the game of Eremian life (gets the man, gets to be Duchess), he's won the game of the Engineer Trilogy (gets an actual functional marriage). The new Ducal couple really does get to live happily ever after, insofar as such a condition can exist in the Parkerverse.
AND THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS.
While the announcement was being read out, Duke Miel married some woman nobody had ever heard of, in a perfunctory ceremony conducted by a clerk, promoted to the rank of chief registrar of Eremia for the occasion. The few people who witnessed the ceremony said afterwards that they found the whole business too bizarre to understand. The bride was neither young nor beautiful; in fact, her face was quite hideous because of a scar and a broken nose and jaw that hadn't been properly set. As for her rank and birth, she was nobody at all, the widow of some provincial squire. Afterwards there was no reception, no speeches, no scattering of coins or conspicuous donations of food to the poor (true, there weren't any poor to be found, unless you counted soldiers and camp followers, but it was the look of the thing), and the happy couple walked away unescorted, not even holding hands. It was unworthy of the Ducas, they said, and an insult to the Eremian people, who deserved a little pageantry and splendour to raise their morale after the misery of the war and the occupation.
Hee.
So yeah. Tell me more about this woman and this relationship. I'll be eternally grateful. If you want to give her a name, that'll be awesome too, especially if it fits in with the Parkerverse linguistic trends. I mean, some of those names suck (Framea? what?), but there do seem to be some rules. Or maybe Miel has some kind of nickname for her. I don't even know.
Fandom (3): Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Characters (0 - 4): Ariane Emory II, Jordan Warrick
Optional details:
Again, optional optional optional, and write anything you want!
My thoughts, things that interest me about these characters in conjunction with one another:
Haha Jordan Warrick is MADE OF ANGST in Regenesis. Almost anything he could want is handed to him, practically on a silver platter, but he just can't be happy. And why is that? OK, for plot reasons Ari needs an antagonist (so much so that she's willing to have a Giraud recreated, and contemplates a Denys for him), but this is a fairly character-driven series. Jordan has Issues.
First off, he can't look at Ari II without seeing Ari I, and addresses her often enough as though she were really Ari I. Which, actually, is a compliment to the entire psychogenesis project, whose whole rationale for existence was to recreate Ari-as-Ari, to replicate her completely and not simply to create a being with the same genetic material. In treating Ari II as Ari I, he's refusing to accept the equivocation that the rest of Reseune seems to accept: oh, she's Ari I in the ways that matter, legally and scientifically and workwise, but she's not Ari I in any of the bad ways? doesn't have any of the bad behaviors that Ari I didn't care to suppress in herself? Riiiight, says Jordan. And while the reader is just as irritated as Justin with all of Jordan's bullheadedness - because the reader, of course, gets to see inside Ari II's head; because the reader knows that Justin isn't prostituting himself to Ari II, and the reader knows that Ari II really is the "good kid" she hates being called - doesn't Jordan have reasons for the fear and distrust he persists in holding?
And in a way, isn't he almost kind of right?
He wants to get rid of Reseune, or at least its stranglehold on politics and tech. Considering the kinds of shenanigans Reseune pulls, and its centrality to Union, he may not be wrong. He's highly suspicious of Ari's relationship to his son, and come on, they may not be sleeping together but Justin has been led - groomed, even - to accept a role as intellectual and political partner to Ari II. That's what Ari I really needed anyway; sexual satisfaction could be had from her willing and devoted azi, but there are intellectual needs that can only be met by a CIT partner (or an azi like Grant or pre-Farpoint Ollie, with a degree of psychological autonomy and a predisposition to question that we don't see in Catlin and Florian, the kind of element that Jane Strassen pinpoints back in Cyteen when she refuses Ollie his azi tapes: "You're too much a CIT. I need you to be. Do you understand what I'm saying?")
So. By the end of Regenesis, Ari II and Jordan have worked together. They've reached, perhaps, a fragile detente. And Jordan's son is firmly in a position in political power, which surely has an effect on Jordan (anxious-making as well as anxiety-soothing? The man has got to be jealous, if nothing else).
How do they keep going? Does Ari II learn anything interesting from Jordan, now that he's cooperating to some extent? Does she learn anything in her work? Does she learn anything about Ari I? Get an alternative perspective on things she's only read about in Ari I's notes and recordings? Does Jordan ever get less angsty? Is there a Reseune equivalent of Morrissey for him to listen to?
Or, you know, just go with something completely different. Maybe Ari and Justin finally end up together romantically, and Jordan has a cow. Maybe Jordan overthrows the government, and Ari has to quash him. Maybe they just sit around and have drinks. *g*
Dear writer person!
There are two reasons I didn't give you prompts in my sign-up. The first one is the whole OPTIONAL DETAILS ARE OPTIONAL - I am serious about this. But the second, and truer, is the sort you may already have guessed: I didn't have time to write some worthy prompts or reasoning in the sign-up phase! If you as a writer prefer to have prompts or if you just like having food for thought, please do peruse the below. I don't want you to feel bound by those at all, however. I really will be thrilled with any offering in these rare fandoms - gen, shippy, slashy, character study, missing scene, epic set of haikus equalling the 1000-word Yuletide minimum length, whatever you feel like bringing to the table.
Themes/events I especially like: Identity and self-fashioning. The intersections and differences between wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Character-building, world-building, environment shaping character. Nature and nurture, nature vs. nurture, defying nature and/or upbringing.
(On that last, as Le Guin has Estraven write in The Left Hand of Darkness:
To oppose something is to maintain it.
They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.)
Themes/events that squick me right out, and never you mind that Mishnory business:
Animal cruelty or animal death onscreen. Abuse of any kind without canon precedent (i.e., if there's an abusive relationship in the canon, by all means explore it, but adding your own for spice is likely to result in a dish I find unpalatable). Noncanonical character death. "Original characters" with improbable abilities who change the face of canon. Characters acting noncanonically for the sake of advancing a plot.
Now, on to the fandom requests!
Fandom (1): Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Characters (0 - 4): Charles Kinbote, Vseslav Botkin
Optional details:
No optional details per se, but here are my thoughts:
There are a few things about Pale Fire that especially tickle my fancy. In no particular order:
1) Kinbote's droll pomposity, not to say solipsism. He had me at "There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings", which is to say, from page one.
2) The multiplicity of voices. Brian Boyd's piece "Shade and Shape in Pale Fire" is readable in its entirety online, and speaks to this at length. (I don't espouse any particular view on the internal "authorship" of Pale Fire the poem and its accompanying commentary - It's more interesting to me that there is such space for interpretation, than to plump for a specific one of those interpretations - so whatever you like best works fine for me.)
2a) WTF? IS ZEMBLA EVEN REAL? Is Charles I real? Is Kinbote really Botkin? Who the heck is Botkin anyway (bonus question, if you've also read Pnin: why is Kinbote glad that Botkin doesn't have to answer to Pnin, in the hierarchy of Wordsmith U. departmental structure)? I ended up not including Odon / Donald O'Donnell in my character requests, but if you want to go this route, it'd be interesting to me to see how Odon and other Zemblan characters (Disa, Fleur de Fyler, whoever) figure into Botkin's life. Like, are they real? Are they people Botkin knew, around whom he's constructed elaborate fictions?
Fandom (2): Engineer Trilogy - K.J. Parker
Characters (0 - 4): Miel Ducas, Juifrez Stratiotes' wife
Optional details:
Again, optional is optional. So here's the thing:
1) Miel Ducas is adorable. The passage in Devices and Desires where he pretty much won my readerly heart:
There was a big marble pillar in the middle cloister of the Ducas house, on which were inscribed the various public offices held by members of the family over the past two and a half centuries. His father had four inches, narrowly beating his grandfather (three and two thirds). As a boy, when Father had been away from home so often, he'd sat on the neatly trimmed grass and stared up at the pillar, wondering what the unfamiliar words meant: six times elected Excubitor of the Chamber. Was that a good thing to be? What did an Excubitor do? Was Dad never at home because he was away somewhere Excubiting? For years he'd played secret, violent games in which he'd been Orphanotrophus Ducas, Grand Excubitor, fighting two dragons simultaneously or facing down a hundred Cure Hardy armed only with a garden rake. Six months ago, when Heleret Phocas had died and Orsea had given him his old job, he'd not been able to keep from bursting out laughing when he heard what the job title was. (No dragons so far, and no Cure Hardy; the Excubitor of the Chamber, Grand or just plain ordinary, was nominally in charge of the castle laundry.) Now he already had two inches of his own on the pillar; gradually, day by day and step by painful step, he was turning into somebody else.
2. Juifrez Stratiotes' wife is one of the most practical people in this book, given that she's one of the only ones who actually DOES WHAT SHE REALIZES IS THE OPTIMAL CHOICE. In so doing, she saves Miel's life, incidentally. Not that he was her first pick or anything (which is also kind of awesome.)
3. I'm pretty sure she's the most admirable and likeable female character in the whole damn series. And therefore it pleases me that, going by the prewar rulebook of Eremian social structure (at least according to Mahaud's musings on how these things are supposed to work), JS's wife comes out unexpectedly on top, without trying or caring to try for such a thing. She gets the most eligible bachelor in all Eremia, AND she gets to be Duchess. And yet she never gets a name in the story. She never even gets a name in Miel's POV chapters.
So, you know. I would love to read more with her in it. I would love to read her doing some awesome things other than padding Miel's helmet. I would love to see Miel appreciating her.
Not that the helmet-padding scene doesn't show awesomeness. From The Escapement:
She frowned at the inside of the helmet, then pulled the plaited straw out and twisted it a little tighter. "Not so long ago you were killing men for their boots," she said.
"Yes." He nodded, staring straight ahead. "In comparison, that was practically honourable. We needed to kill to stay alive. There's far worse things in the world than honest predators."
"So," she said. "Don't go. We can go back to hunting soldiers for a living. Better still, you could get the duke to make you an ambassador or something: Eremian diplomatic representative to some country they haven't discovered yet. Then we could stay home all day and not do anything."
"I could," he replied.
"But you won't."
"No."
"Well, there you are, then." She stood up and held the helmet out. "All done," she said. "Try it on, see if it fits better now."
He tried it. Still a little too big. "That's fine," he said.
"No it isn't. Give it here."
She sat down again and pulled the straw out. He looked at her but couldn't see her face.
"Fine," he said. "So what do you think I should do?"
"Not up to me." Her hair, usually stretched tightly back and stabbed with a comb, was coming loose, like stuffing from a frayed cushion. "I'm not even your wife. And that doesn't really change things so much, does it? I mean, the Ducas must have left little souvenirs right the way across Eremia."
He scowled. He could tell her it wasn't true, but she'd choose not to believe him. "I don't suppose the apple wants to fall from the tree," he said. "But it has no choice."
"Bullshit." She looked up at him and smiled; a bleak, angry smile that hit hard and deep. "You're going because you want to. You're an aristocrat, all your noble ancestors fought in every war there's ever been, so you're going. Simple as that."
He nodded. "That's right," he said. "Like I said. No choice."
She sighed. "Well," she said, "at least when you get bashed on the head, your helmet shouldn't fall off. Don't suppose any of those blue-blooded suitable cows you ought to have married would've known how to line a helmet."
"Quite true." He took it from her and settled it on his head. Perfect fit. "Don't worry about me," he said. "I'll be back soon enough. I've made arrangements -"
"Of course you have." A different smile this time. "You're the slave of duty, you told me so yourself. The farrier's finished, look. Give me twelve quarters and I'll go and pay him for you."
See, here's the thing. In this series, which is all about love, each of the main characters gets the man/woman/object she or he deserves. Orsea gets death (which is freedom from responsibility). Veatriz and Valens get each other but with the bloom of happily-ever-after taken right off. Daurenja gets to become one with his beloved cannon. Ziani gets the soulless union with Ariessa that his obsessive and destructive love deserves. And Miel - gets this practical woman of no special lineage and her looks spoiled by war.She's unambiguously the best of the lot, and they've lived through hell together, and he can't possibly put her on a pedestal, which is probably why his narrative doesn't go all swoony over her. And he gets to feel resigned and dutiful, which is what he does best.
Just as she's won the game of Eremian life (gets the man, gets to be Duchess), he's won the game of the Engineer Trilogy (gets an actual functional marriage). The new Ducal couple really does get to live happily ever after, insofar as such a condition can exist in the Parkerverse.
AND THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS.
While the announcement was being read out, Duke Miel married some woman nobody had ever heard of, in a perfunctory ceremony conducted by a clerk, promoted to the rank of chief registrar of Eremia for the occasion. The few people who witnessed the ceremony said afterwards that they found the whole business too bizarre to understand. The bride was neither young nor beautiful; in fact, her face was quite hideous because of a scar and a broken nose and jaw that hadn't been properly set. As for her rank and birth, she was nobody at all, the widow of some provincial squire. Afterwards there was no reception, no speeches, no scattering of coins or conspicuous donations of food to the poor (true, there weren't any poor to be found, unless you counted soldiers and camp followers, but it was the look of the thing), and the happy couple walked away unescorted, not even holding hands. It was unworthy of the Ducas, they said, and an insult to the Eremian people, who deserved a little pageantry and splendour to raise their morale after the misery of the war and the occupation.
Hee.
So yeah. Tell me more about this woman and this relationship. I'll be eternally grateful. If you want to give her a name, that'll be awesome too, especially if it fits in with the Parkerverse linguistic trends. I mean, some of those names suck (Framea? what?), but there do seem to be some rules. Or maybe Miel has some kind of nickname for her. I don't even know.
Fandom (3): Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Characters (0 - 4): Ariane Emory II, Jordan Warrick
Optional details:
Again, optional optional optional, and write anything you want!
My thoughts, things that interest me about these characters in conjunction with one another:
Haha Jordan Warrick is MADE OF ANGST in Regenesis. Almost anything he could want is handed to him, practically on a silver platter, but he just can't be happy. And why is that? OK, for plot reasons Ari needs an antagonist (so much so that she's willing to have a Giraud recreated, and contemplates a Denys for him), but this is a fairly character-driven series. Jordan has Issues.
First off, he can't look at Ari II without seeing Ari I, and addresses her often enough as though she were really Ari I. Which, actually, is a compliment to the entire psychogenesis project, whose whole rationale for existence was to recreate Ari-as-Ari, to replicate her completely and not simply to create a being with the same genetic material. In treating Ari II as Ari I, he's refusing to accept the equivocation that the rest of Reseune seems to accept: oh, she's Ari I in the ways that matter, legally and scientifically and workwise, but she's not Ari I in any of the bad ways? doesn't have any of the bad behaviors that Ari I didn't care to suppress in herself? Riiiight, says Jordan. And while the reader is just as irritated as Justin with all of Jordan's bullheadedness - because the reader, of course, gets to see inside Ari II's head; because the reader knows that Justin isn't prostituting himself to Ari II, and the reader knows that Ari II really is the "good kid" she hates being called - doesn't Jordan have reasons for the fear and distrust he persists in holding?
And in a way, isn't he almost kind of right?
He wants to get rid of Reseune, or at least its stranglehold on politics and tech. Considering the kinds of shenanigans Reseune pulls, and its centrality to Union, he may not be wrong. He's highly suspicious of Ari's relationship to his son, and come on, they may not be sleeping together but Justin has been led - groomed, even - to accept a role as intellectual and political partner to Ari II. That's what Ari I really needed anyway; sexual satisfaction could be had from her willing and devoted azi, but there are intellectual needs that can only be met by a CIT partner (or an azi like Grant or pre-Farpoint Ollie, with a degree of psychological autonomy and a predisposition to question that we don't see in Catlin and Florian, the kind of element that Jane Strassen pinpoints back in Cyteen when she refuses Ollie his azi tapes: "You're too much a CIT. I need you to be. Do you understand what I'm saying?")
So. By the end of Regenesis, Ari II and Jordan have worked together. They've reached, perhaps, a fragile detente. And Jordan's son is firmly in a position in political power, which surely has an effect on Jordan (anxious-making as well as anxiety-soothing? The man has got to be jealous, if nothing else).
How do they keep going? Does Ari II learn anything interesting from Jordan, now that he's cooperating to some extent? Does she learn anything in her work? Does she learn anything about Ari I? Get an alternative perspective on things she's only read about in Ari I's notes and recordings? Does Jordan ever get less angsty? Is there a Reseune equivalent of Morrissey for him to listen to?
Or, you know, just go with something completely different. Maybe Ari and Justin finally end up together romantically, and Jordan has a cow. Maybe Jordan overthrows the government, and Ari has to quash him. Maybe they just sit around and have drinks. *g*