no war in ba sing se 💚

He always said it was for the sake of the banks—to make bigger deposits without raising suspicion, but Viper knew it was really because the old man would rather die than be associated with bad food. He would have set up shop in the private lounge of Kwong's Cuisine if they'd let him. 

Viper shook his head as he shouldered past the line of people waiting to be seated by the hostess. Two in the afternoon on a tui damned Wednesday and the line was still stretching out the door. 

"We're moving," he announced to the group of lieutenants playing cards and day drinking at a table in the lounge. "Someplace low key. Make it happen by the end of the month." 

He didn't wait to see their reactions before finishing the walk up to Zolt's office. No, his office. The old man had left willingly after Amon took his bending, but Viper liked to think he would have forced the matter if it had come to that. 

He looked through the platinum lock box Zolt had given him the combination to, reading up on all the secrets and side deals that had kept the Triple Threats on top for well over two decades. He took his first two meetings as boss—one with the accountant, one with their guy on the RCPD—before finding himself utterly in need of a distraction. 

He picked up the phone at the edge of the desk before dialing a familiar number. 

“Status report,” she said in a commanding tone. “Are the shipments in the bay?”

“Jargala, it’s me.”

She sucked her teeth. “I should have never given you my direct line,” she said. “What do you want?”

Viper chuckled. “I can’t call just to talk to you?” 

“I’d greatly prefer it if you wouldn’t.”  

“Come over, then,” he said. “My new office could use breaking in.”

Jargala scoffed. “You’re inviting a rival boss into your headquarters just so we can fuck on your desk?”

Viper started clearing the documents off said desk in anticipation. “And on the couch and against the wall and—” 

“It’s a work day.” 

“I’ll do that thing with my tongue that you like.” There was a pause on the line and Viper knew he had her.

“I’m not staying long.” 

“See you in twenty, sweetheart.” 

She took an hour to get there, likely out of spite, and pinned him with a look of derision when Ping and Miki escorted her up to his office. 

“You want the lieutenants in here for this meeting, boss?” Miki asked from the doorway. 

“No. I want absolute privacy,” Viper told her. “Don’t so much as knock on this door for the next two hours, even if the place is on fire.” 

“Two hours?” Jargala repeated, one eyebrow raised and arms crossed over her chest. 

“Better make it three,” Viper said and then waved a hand, dismissing his people. 

“This is nice,” she said, taking a seat at the edge of the desk once the door closed. “Too nice. Zolt must’ve been fucking Chief Beifong herself to keep the cops from raiding this place.” 

“Who are you telling?” he asked, deciding not to run his mouth this time. “It’s too risky. I’ll have my people out of here in no time, though.” 

“Down to some dungeon in the Dragon Flats, I’m sure.” She took a moment to inspect her manicure. “Boring.”

“Then come here and let me entertain you,” he said, taking her hand pulling her down onto his lap. 

Jargala rolled her eyes and let her hips rock against him. “You’re intolerable,” she murmured against his lips as they descended on hers. 

“And you’re irresistible,” he said close to her ear, while his hand skated up her inner thigh. “Where does that leave us?”

MAY YOU NEVER LOSE YOUR HYPERFIXATION

After all, if you want to buy absolutely nothing - if you want to create a way to live separate from society - you cannot do it like Thoreau; even Thoreau wasn’t doing it like Thoreau; you have to create an separate society, a self-sufficient community, and live in that.

And interestingly Seymour put his finger on “why communes fail.”

In his experience, which was deep and broad, experiments in self-sufficient communities/communes virtually always failed. And not because the idealistic fools weren’t capable of growing crops, or chopping wood, or whatever. It isn’t even the founders were stupid or ignorant or inexperienced, or because self-sufficiency only attracts dramatic personalities. No, the communities he observed consistently failed because they had no ability to resolve conflict. Every group of people will have to come to a tricky decision, resolve a sticky situation, have an awkward conversation or even just get along with unideal situations. They didn’t fall apart because a sheep fell in a ditch; anyone can get a sheep out of a ditch; they fell apart over the arguments about ideology, ditches, sheep and blame. It was always some issue of conflict or communication that broke these well-meaning, well-intentioned, well-educated people apart.

Step back from that and think: people frequently try to live outside capitalism even in this modern world, people frequently try to live in the most environmentally-friendly way, people frequently try to envision an alternative to a hostile state, even in this world where it is difficult or impossible to do so. For every utopia you might picture, people (being people) will have already made a decent attempt at building and living it, in the hope of showing it or even giving it to you. And those utopias aren’t here at the moment for you to have, because it’s terrifically difficult to make communities out of nothing. And that’s largely because it’s very hard to have communication skills about anything at all, let alone something that gets you mad.

All the mommy bloggers, all the brosephs, all the every single customer or client or other person you have dealt with who you wanted to fucking strangle, or at least wanted to be allowed one of those amazing moments of Put Down that viral reddit posts are made of, every single frustrating as fuck human: they will be part of your post-capitalist utopia.

They will not wake up, the morning of the revolution, and suddenly become different people. Your choices will be to line them all up against a wall and shoot them . . . .or figure out how to live with them in your community. (And multiple revolutions in the past hundred years have tried that whole "line them up and shoot them" thing, tried it REAL HARD, and it didn't work out great for them either.)

The more de-industrial, de-urbanized, de-impersonal, whatever, your ideal society is? The more it will involve having to work, and work well, and work effectively and without interpersonal violence (physical or social) against people who irritate the fuck out of you.

And no, we never really had any Neat Trick to make that easier in the past. What we most often had was survival pressure so intense that the threat of being ostracized (or having the group turn on you) was enough to force resolutions that nobody was really happy with, or that left an unspoken wound to fester for generations, or to offer up a scapegoat to vent the community's violence on and then pretend to move on, or . . . .

Etc.