heretic bird | птичка еретичка

The early 2020s (like 2020 to mid 2022 maybe?) with it's rise of aesthetics were criticized for being shallow, but you know what? I think it's even worse now. There are not even aesthetics now, just trends.

I mean subcultures are still alive - kinda - but there's a difference. When aesthetics became the big thing people started to engage in bright self-expression ON MASS, and, while many were trend-hopping, many genuinely found new interests, hobbies, developed personal styles, became interested in new ideas; and the "normie" mass didn't immediately jump on every new cottagecore/goblincore/dark academia/whatever girlie. Now? Now it's a different thing.

A subculture is often political. It comes with a set of beliefs, life choices etc. It's a system, and when you want to take a part of it - you take it all. And it makes it difficult to try. Aesthetics were easier in this way. While often coming with a set of ideas and, I think it's important to note, not being only visual - they included books, music, some themes to explore in your art - they were not systemic. You could embody the dark academia lifestyle, studying classics, reading ancient poets and debating the ideas of elitism and eurocentrism; but you could just dress classy and take pretty pictures as well. It wasn't hated. So a lot of people tried, decided if they like a thing or not and left - or dived deeper. With subcultures people are often afraid to try or feel pressed to be a certain type of person (politically or personality-vise) while trying, which they are not, although they may like the music or the visuals.

Now what we have outside of subcultures is just trends (or styles, which isn't much better). Trend is an item or a pattern, and a style is just a set of trends. It's PURELY visual. No ideas attached. No music, no books, movies, no anything. So trend-hopping can't lead you to finding something that is deeply resonating with you. You just buy, wear for a time, and toss it out. With an aesthetic at least something could stay with you. I don't wear any clothing from my 2020 indie kid era, but I still listen to music I found and still do the crafts I started doing then. But tell me, would someone find music or start a craft because they bought a labubu?

Also, subcultures are easier to hate because of their systemic quality. If a person doesn't like one aspect of it - they got a reason. The same thing goes for stereotypes - it's easier to form a stereotype if you have a type at least. So a boho-dressing kid gets associated with the worst hippie stereotypes and called names for being smelly, homeless and a narc, while being none of these. And so does a punk-ish dressed one. And it doesn't even matter if they consider themselves a part of a subculture or not, it's all in a prejudiced outsiders perspective. A prejudiced outsider doesn't see an unusual style like a style anymore - they see a walking stereotype once again, as it was some decades ago.

But the prevalence of aesthetics crushed this situation for a brief moment. It felt like people just liked different things and didn't hate each other immediately on sight for made-up reasons. There still were prejudiced outsiders, but there was a way out from their crowd for people that are not that deep in their shit.

Dang, am I rumbling for too long? Anyway, that's the thought: we should bring back aesthetics.

> Your name is Rodion Pusso. You're a normal guy, just like everyone else, only with this stupid last name.

> When you was a kid you dreamed of adventure. You read tons of books about brave explorers of faraway floors and daring hrushchenauts, but something surely turned wrong - you've grown up and got just an average job. Just like everyone else.

> A pack of white concentrate that you get every shift for mindlessly tossing papers gives you just the right amount of energy to go to work the next shift and toss papers again. Nothing more.

> The time is going, cycle after cycle. Work. Barely illuminated corridor with barely working sirens on the wall, your cell, boredom, heavy sleep. Corridor. Work. Corridor. Cell. Corridor. Work. Cycle after cycle.

> You are just so horribly tired. You are so tired, that every time when you toil to your cell, handing a portion of concentrate in its damp paper wrapping, you freeze for a moment near the doorless, old and abandoned elevator shaft.

> A smell of rot and some strange flows of warm air rise from the bottom. A thick darkness swirls down there. You feel like if you only make a step you can merge with it, break a circle that you are stuck in.

> Shift comes after shift. You stand looking in the shaft longer every time now.

> Finally after one of the shifts you just can't go away from it. You step forward, the shaft is right in front of you. You immediately feel some warm air coming up, smell rusty metal, grease and decay. The concentrate fells down to your feet. You close your eyes, but you still only see the darkness below waiting for you. You stand like this for a long time. And then you decide to step forward again.

> Someone's heavy hand pushes you aside. Your head bumps into concrete.

> Shouting wildly: «Oof, almost!» some old bearded one-eyed dude in striped vest takes your place. He quickly pulls down his pants and starts to empty his bladder to the swirling pitch black void. When the old man finally ends his business he notices you and compassionately hands you a big opened bottle of some cloudy brownish and obviously alcoholic liquid.

> That's how you first met Amphipod Christophorovich Cruisinshtern, the most glorious and eminent elevator captain in the entire Gigahrusch.

> Over a bottle of sugar hogweed moonshine he tells you about artery elevators. Multi-storey, loaded with provision and weapons they go hundreds of thousands of floors up and down the shafts to the uncharted blocks. Elevators set off for concentrate spices that are only made in faraway verdurous blocks from red mold, for sugar hogweed and gelatin powder, for OR-15 armature and full compositions of writings of R. U. Dalenin.

> With sparkles in his only eye Amphipod Christophorovich tells you about the violent captain Concretebeard and treasures full of rare concentrate hidden under lonely rubber plants on desert floors, about the ghost elevator and the hunt of the Great White Arahna.

> You're fascinated by these tails. When you hear that captain's elevator will set off tomorrow you instantly - not even bringing a resignation letter to your work - ask him to put you on board. That's how your career as an elevator sailor begins.

> Shift after you already working with the crew, loading the elevator. The captain's cargo artery elevator takes the space of sixteen floors completely in the shaft, and you are filling it now with saltet concentrate boxes, water barrels and, of course, with pieces of premium M350 concrete for Alexy Petrovich.

> Alexey Petrovich is a captain's pet concreater, so he is the second most important crewmate. There's also a partisan sailor Betonyak, first rank midshipman Stenka Mrazin (got his nickname for his habit of throwing daughters of Chernobojnik chiefs down the elevator shafts) and another 50 people. The elevator is loaded, and you are setting off. Down. Into the unknown.

> The elevator goes down, grinding, for three days in a row now. You have so much work you can't even rest for a second: to scrub the floor, to stop Alexy Petrovich from getting ground up by the engine gears, to help the gunners to service the elevator's board short guns, to stop Alexy Petrovich from swallowing a smoldering shag butt after eating quite an amount of gunpowder, to polish someone's award grappling rakes and to stop Alexy Petrovich from closing in on himself or in a short circuit.

> Time passes. You get used to elevator's rolling floor, to samosbor growling outside and constant cable screeching. You receive more and more complicated tasks, you visit strange, completely alien blocks, fight Chernobojniks and the Clean Ones side by side with the crew, you risk your life trading rakes for red mold with the verdurous blocks. You spend your free time training Alexy Petrovich or walking around the blocks so far from home. Now, in the verdurous block you lay beside a girl you just met, looking at rotshrooms glowing on the ceiling and realise that you are finally happy.

> Three cycles passed. Your name is Rodion Pusso, you're a major elevator midshipman. Roaming the Gigahrusch you've seen things other people wouldn't believe: attack elevators on fire off the shoulder of 00-RI-0N block, you watched gravimillstones glitter in the darkness of T. A. Annhauser plant, and even if all those moments will be lost in time like flash in the fog of samosbor, you truly have known this life.

> You're can't be called poor now - you have your own private cabin on the elevator, special nutrition in a galley and a generous stamp salary.

> Stopping Alexy Petrovich from inglorious death between engine gears once again you carry resentfully gurgling concreater away from the mechanism, thinking about how after maybe two cycles more you will be ready to buy a cargo elevator of your own. Old and already used, but only yours.

> You will not.

> Middleshift; the glass suddenly falls. Everything else falls too, because the elevator is unexpectedly reached by samosbor. Why didn't any of the detectors work? The officer won't answer anyway, he's melting alive in his cabin.

> The smell of raw meat heats hard as hammer, you take off to close all hermets, but it's too late.The samosbor is so powerful that the elevator starts to rumple like a tin can.

> Terrifying punches hurl you to the corner of the engine room. Your face is covered in blood. One of the sailors lies near you with his skull crushed. You hear cries of pain and fear, and then a desperate banging on the barrier - the hermet below sprung a leak. The light turns off. The samosbor is raging. The metal around you groans and creaks. Alexy Petrovich whines in the corner. The engine is getting slower.

> The elevator is dying, but it doesn't give up. Walls are still holding on. Wincing in pain you force yourself to stand up and step to the engine, with your trembling hands you throw briquettes of nitrometanol into its furnace. The engine works on it's last legs afterburning. You hear Amphipod Christophorovich Cruisinstern growling up there. With the last of his strength he keeps driving the elevator down. He hopes that the walls endurance is enough to get out.

> It is not.

> Something hits the lower hermet. Then the upper one. Hits are going out of everywhere. It seems like thousands of hands are trying to break the elevator. Your ears start to bleed. The room's hermet bends in and you feel the smell of raw meat. A horrible hit crushes the elevator, rips it off the cable. You go down with the choir of million voices.

> You open your eyes painfully: your face is covered in dried blood. It's dark and silent around. The elevator is swaying calmly, stuck in arahna webs. Alexy Petrovich is still whining somewhere in the corner. Everything around you is crumpled and twisted, but the main hermet is bended enough to try to slip outside. You pick up Alexy Petrovich and calm him down somehow, crawling out to the corridor.

> There's no people here, but the light is still coming down from the ceiling. All hermets on the floor are locked down, but you can't hear a single sound behind them. You pull one and it opens a concreted cell. All cells are concreted here. The floor is uninhabited and you can only hear the sucking sound of concreaters munching somewhere. You walk around the empty corridors and your voice echoes reflecting off the blank walls. All stairs from the floor are concreted too.

> You shake your head nervously: what a situation.

> Rodion Pusso is stuck on a desert floor.

> No food, no water, no way to hide from samosbor.

> And scrub your hawse with an elevator stopper if you wont figure out how to survive here.