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crooked-wasteland · 5 months

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An SA Survivor's Reading of Stolitz

I don't believe that creators should be confined to telling one type of story. The beauty of fiction is to explore worlds, emotions and scenarios that are by definition unreal. It gives a safe space to interact with extremes that we would never necessarily wish to experience in our real lives with the ultimate safeword of no longer engaging with the material.

That being said, as creators, there is an ethical awareness that must be maintained in order to tell stories of things like trauma and abuse. Being alone in a cabin in the woods with a killer, that scenario is not a pervasive subculture in our society. Whereas cases of child abuse, sexual and domestic abuse are not only real, but common. And the complexities of psychological damage that perseveres long after the traumatic events are necessary aspects to telling these stories.

If you are not consciously aware and attentive to the lasting impact these events have, you run up against the horrific possibility of retraumatizing an individual unprepared for the callous invalidation of their experience.

No one should ever be shamed for engaging with media that depicts trauma they themselves may have experienced. For many, engaging in the fiction of it is a way of processing and validating their experience. Frankly saying, if you wish to write about trauma at all, you should be writing for that audience in specific. Otherwise you are simply exploiting the horrors that real people live through and struggle with every day for some cheap drama at the risk of triggering someone whose story you are inadvertently telling.

And much like most therapy speak, the term Triggered has become appropriated and misused to the point of losing all meaning in the lexicon. According to the University of North Carolina, "A trigger is a stimulus that elicits a reaction. In the context of mental illness, "trigger" is often used to mean something that brings on or worsens symptoms. This often happens to people with a history of trauma or who are recovering from mental illness, self-harm, addiction, and/or eating disorders."

The university breaks down the types of triggers as well and gives examples as to what those subcategories mean. I highly recommend that even if you are not the sort to follow up on references, I do recommend going over the article. It offers coping suggestions as well for those who are at risk of becoming triggered and helps refocus the sense of control back to the individual.

With that said, this is where I came across the inspiration for this essay. I completely removed all information for this user because the last thing someone needs when expressing how the misappropriation of abuse triggers them is how it is their fault for being triggered. These are the original tweets this response was in reference to.

As such, I feel the empathetic need to write this essay as a sympathetic reading to this person and others who have experienced SA who find that Stolitz resonates in an undesirable and even harmful way. I think this person deserves to feel seen.

To make the argument that the relationship between Stolas and Blitz isn't fundamentally abusive requires an author-intent reading of the series. It necessitates massive leaps to fill in gaping plot holes that never clarify the story Medrano is intending to tell. This is plainly just a reading of the series as is with all the context that has been physically, actually, shown in the series and that alone.

Throughout the series, Blitz is depicted as emotionally volatile and unpredictable with low self-esteem and crippling loneliness. He is constantly hounding his employees through sexual harassment from a sense of envy over their loving relationship, and infantalizes his twenty-two year old adopted daughter through an abusive dynamic where she ranges from rude to outrightly cruel while he consistently sacrifices any personal boundaries and self-respect.

The relationship between Loona and Blitz in specific feels like a masochistic self-hatred on Blitz's part where he allows himself to be used and abused by a parasitic family member to feel wanted, showing a pure desperation to be desired by someone in any way. Loona is verbally and physically abusive to her adopted father, using terms of endearment like "Dad" as a tactic to control Blitz's behavior, rewarding him when he does something for her benefit and taking it away when she deems him embarrassing or unwanted.

Blitz's tie to Stolas in the main story comes when he is called in a vulnerable time. Hiding from Martha who is hunting him down, he explicitly tells Stolas that now is not a good time to call. Stolas, who has a visual of Blitz's situation, ignores all of it. He is unconcerned about the danger Blitz is in, instead viewing Blitz solely as a sexual object as he offers the trade of the book for sex.

Stolas is more keenly aware of Blitz's situation than even Blitz is aware of. He not only is told that the current moment is not a good time, and Blitz's tense tone portrays a sense of anxiety, but he can physically see Blitz. It exists entirely within reason that he chose this specific moment to call while he knew Blitz was in a difficult position, using the tension to leverage a quick response that would get Stolas his way without needing to intimidate Blitz himself. Using the threat of a third party to pressure compliance from Blitz.

Come Loo Loo Land, the interactions between Blitz and Stolas are simply outright hostile. Blitz actively does not want to have a sexual encounter with Stolas and is even so untrusting of the Goetia that he is repeatedly asserting the boundary that he is not at all interested in sex, which Stolas explicitly mocks by being openly sexually suggestive to him. Everything Stolas has to say to Blitz is steeped in objectified sexuality as Blitz asserts his person, dehumanizing him to the point that Blitz is first and foremost an object of gratification. Even to the point of neglecting and humiliating his daughter, Stolas uses the excuse of spending time with her as a means of leering on Blitz.

In this episode we see Blitz has a history of being overlooked and unappreciated. His act in Loo Loo Land went nowhere and we see the first hints of his failed performance career. Over the course of the series, this hint towards a crippling lack of self esteem masked by an extroverted exterior is reinforced.

In Harvest Moon, Blitz is genuinely flustered when given recognition by Striker. He is quick to devalue his relationship with Stolas because there genuinely isn't a relationship at this point.

After having gone missing for two episodes, Stolas returns, being slightly less sexual and slightly more affectionate. It is a sudden recharacterization, but it is only for this scene. The rest of the episode once again shows how Stolas values Blitz physically in a sexualized manner and claims Blitz through the use of a pet name he repeatedly requests not to be called. In the opening scene, Blitz vocalizes that he "doesn't mind" their arrangement for the book, which could be taken at face value in regards to the first season. He does have the option to reject the agreement at any time and return the book in the context of this episode. It's why, despite still being an abuse of power dynamics overall, the relationship itself doesn't tip over into abuse. Blitz has the same amount of autonomy as Stolas at this time, before the context of season two, he has just as much power to end the agreement.

With the addition of The Circus, this retroactively is a situation of placating one's abuser. Blitz assuring Stolas that he doesn't mind the sex would be a way of asserting Stolas' complete control over the relationship and that Blitz isn't necessarily threatening the status quo by his question.

They don't actually know anything about each other, they aren't friends and don't spend time together outside of their forced meetings. Blitz doesn't know anything about Stolas and questioning the need Stolas has for his book could very well be read as a means of interrogating the agreement as a whole and figuring out why this was the arrangement.

(The argument that Blitz had any opportunity to negotiate things comes from an audience bias. It is probably the dumbest thing I have ever seen put into writing. Blitz doesn't know that he has any leverage in the relationship at all. He doesn't actually know Stolas has any feelings for him. That's kind of the whole point of the hot and cold romance slant that Medrano is trying to replicate.)

This is because the book is not the reason the relationship exists.

Blitz does not instigate sexual conduct, Stolas does by leading Blitz into a private room and locking them both inside with the impression Blitz would have sex with him. Blitz has no choice in the location or the isolation. He was caught trying to illegally break into the home for the explicit purpose of stealing the book. He was caught and is effectively at Stolas' mercy in every sense of the word. Not only is he still alive due to Stolas' whimsy, but if he tries to escape now after being shown this grace he could risk having the guards hunt him down and the second time will most likely not be so kind.

He literally does not know Stolas. They met for a day as a playdate and Blitz spent the whole time manipulating Stolas into facilitating his own robbery. There is no trust between them, there isn't even a relationship. While the doe-eyed pink vignette animated around Blitz shows that Stolas has an attraction to him, Blitz is entirely in the dark about this. Stolas' behavior is merely unpredictable and precarious from his position and limited knowledge.

(Just a side note, the argument that because someone decides to do something must mean they are not afraid is just asinine. Generally speaking, most people who commit crimes are in a state of fight or flight, it is more akin to gambling your actual life. Its a rewards and risks assessment, not a case of being sociopathically unafraid.)

It isn't until Stolas dramatically announces his desire for sex that Blitz realizes he has something that can be used to distract the Prince while he steals the book. And that's the issue with the argument that Blitz is the one willingly escalating the situation: it's not sincere. Throughout the entire sequence, Blitz isn't once sincerely interested in Stolas. He leans into the pretense to gain control of the situation, of which, might I remind you, he has had zero control over up to this point. Not only is he not interested in Stolas, but this is a bid for control from the position of helplessness. This way he is not relying on Stolas' unpredictable behavior, he is reclaiming power in the dynamic by playing into Stolas' desire.

("But Stolas says nevermind and Blitz keeps going!!"

Yeah, because he needs to maintain control of the situation. This is what power dynamics actually look like; there is a two-way push and pull. The only way he has any power is through the lens of sexuality. He needs to keep Stolas interested in him to keep his position. But throughout the scene, he is explicitly depicted as being put off by Stolas. In fact the entire reason he ties Stolas up is because he was becoming too into the act. He is shown to not be sensually performing bondage, he is trying to remove a problem.

And side-side note, I know I said I wouldn't lean into Medrano's intention or explicit dictation on how she demands her show be interpreted, but she was the one who said that The Circus and Loo Loo Land are connected in the timeline and Blitz's hostility in Loo Loo Land reads far more like a man who feels used and taken advantage of. So even the argument that Blitz was an enthusiastic participant is disproven by Medrano's own metacommentary and character interactions.)

And ultimately, it all boils down to that last moment scene. Between willingly having sex with Stolas when he is tied up or the book, Blitz makes for the door to leave. He doesn’t willingly engage in sex with Stolas. Either you can read the scene as a form of pity sex, which in the context of Medrano’s timeline and Loo Loo Land, shows Blitz was not enamored with the encounter or you have to read this as being manipulatively pressured into it. There is no way to argue Blitz has any leverage in the situation and no grounds to argue that it was mutually enjoyed.

That doesn’t even start to cover the fact that all the way to Ozzie’s, Blitz is repulsed by Stolas. When calling, he openly shows that this is something he would rather not be doing. He doesn’t have feelings for Stolas and despite just using the man who is using him, just having to deal with Stolas is distressing for him.

This is not an equal or fair relationship dynamic. It is not a mutual relationship. This is a relationship of self-preservation and coercion. And the fact is, it could have worked with very small changes to The Circus. Having the dynamic be actually mutual would have been a great start, but just properly addressing the actual dynamic and having Stolas take ownership of what he's done, and validating the fact that coercion is sexual abuse. Because out of all the sweeping changes, retcons and inconsistencies, the one aspect that has persevered throughout the show is just how trapped Blitz feels.

In Truth Seekers, Blitz’s hallucination is contradictory in its attempt to be visceral, and that is not inherently a problem. Trying to be abstract, it is normal for people to experience contradictory emotions over something. It makes sense in that way, but it needs reinforcement in the expanded narrative to tell it's story. As such I am just going to give my reading on the sequence based on my narrative and state it as fact.

The clown costume shows that Blitz sees himself as a joke, feeding into his low self-worth that no matter what he does, he is always the clown being laughed at. The murky wasteland is a reflection of his life. Devoid of anything bright or good, it is populated by dead trees and the ground is a quicksand like sludge, showing how he devours the good and extinguishes it in his own life. He kills his own happiness. Moxxie exists as a critical voice Blitz hears, telling him how stupid and awful he is to everyone around him. Blitz rejects his own self-criticism, reaffirming his self destructive victim mentality that appears when faced with the consequences of his own actions.

It's when the characters of Fizzarolli, Verosika and Striker appear that Blitz gives his regrets, insecurities and resentments voice, poorly impersonating the voices of those who saw the real him. Striker mocking Blitz’s need for companionship, how he lies to himself constantly and presents himself as independent and assured when really he sees himself as needy and pathetic.

Fizzarolli adds to it, pointing out Blitz’s failures to make it on his own, however this portion of the series should probably be considered non-canon as the newest episodes established that Fizzarolli and Blitz have not had any contact with each other since the accident. The more important line Fizzarolli says “You're going to die alone”, have been written out of the show. There would have been no time or place for Fizz to have ever spoken this to Blitz.

Then there is Verosika, who brings up Blitz’s self destructive tendencies, showing Blitz’s own abusive behaviors towards characters like Moxxie. It also suggests an explanation to why Blitz tolerates Loona, because her constant rejection of him contradicts his reactionary need to push others away, as well as feeds his self-flagillation.

It is when he endeavors to flee the reflections of the worst parts of himself that he runs into Stolas. Perched atop a pristine staircase of gold, being fanned by two silhouettes of Blitz. This shows the power imbalance in every way. Blitz doesn't even walk up the stairs, but crawls. Himself just a faceless accessory to Stolas’ desires, but everything he has intrinsically tied to the power Stolas' exerts over him. This is shown explicitly by the chains around his hands and neck, Stolas' reeling him in as he bears a grimace of reluctance. It is the most explicit representation of being trapped between two bad decisions. Either he is just the joke, the failure, the asshole, the stupid piece of shit, or he is the pet, the object, the toy. Stolas mentioning Blitz being "afraid to love" is less a suggestion that Blitz has any feelings for Stolas, but instead his psyche convincing himself that the relationship is not so exploitive. That he is not being dehumanized and abused, but on some messed up level he is being wanted and desired, which is better than the wastes below.

Maybe one could say that Blitz is being elevated out of his situation for how the feathers removed the costume and sludge, essentially wiping him clean of his worst self, providing a sense of safety. But he only has this opportunity because of Stolas, and it isn't free as shown by the feathers also becoming the chains binding him. Because at the end of the day, Stolas isn't the prize at the end of the climb to self actualization, the stairs belonged to him in the first place. To escape the horror-filled wasteland below, Blitz has to play by the rules of the owner of the stairs.

And ultimately, that isn't a story that is off-limits.

The Stolas apologist argument is why the depiction of this dynamic is triggering and harmful, not the fact that it exists in the media. Just owning the scenario and having Stolas acknowledge that he has sexually abused Blitz would have gone a long way. Instead, Medrano and the fandom have insistently represented this victim-blaming interpretation where Blitz is responsible for his own abuse. And that will never be okay. This goes all the way back to my "Not All Victims are Survivors" post. Blitz is the victim in this and his bad behaviour and own abusive actions directly correspond to the fact that he is a victim with a victim mindset. He actively lives in the middle of his abuse and has formed maladaptive strategies through manipulation, harassment, verbal abuse, and self harm. These do not remove his victim status. There is no such thing as a "Perfect Victim". And he should not have to be any sort of way in order to have that experience validated. And the issue that is at the heart of this show is that the narrative and the fanbase require a victim to be framed as delicate and hapless to circumstance with a soft and gentle personality to be a victim. To come out of abuse aggressive and harsh with sharp edges is framed as being less valid. But this outcome is normal and it's a difficult battle to work on oneself to feel safe again. It's absolutely a story worth telling.

But you first have to be interested in telling a story.

#helluva boss critique #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #vivziepop critical #spindlehorse critical #spindlehorse criticism #vivziepop criticism #tw self destructive behavior #tw sexulization #tw sa

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lacetulle · 2 years

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What was your favorite met gala gown?

This is a tough question and my answer is going to be a long one. Mostly because this was the second part of a two-parter exhibition. In America: A Lexicon of Fashion was the exhibit in September last year, and that particular gala seemed very boring. There wasn't a specific theme other than Americana, so it was underwhelming since it encompassed such a broad amount of time. So when they announced that this gala had a 'Gilded Glamour' theme, I was thrilled that they were trying to hone in on a specific time period. Unfortunately, they announced it not even a month ago. The amount of time that goes into planning these looks spans well beyond a month, so while I think the theme was grossly ignored, the theme announcement came way too late for designers and celebrities.

Also, fashion designers are who truly get the invites to the gala. Vogue does invite a handful of celebrities and they get to work with whatever designer they want, but when we see a crowd of celebrities with Moschino or Louis Vuitton or Prabal Gurung...the designers choose what the celebrity wears. So unless you're at a certain level of star power, sometimes you just get to show up and look out of place (I'm looking at you, Michael Kors and LV girls) because the designer gets to choose. With that said, here is my favorite. And some honorable mentions.

Blake Lively is my winner. I loved the homage to the Statue of Liberty and its patina effect. I actually didn't really like it when I first saw her on the carpet...the metallic bow gave me more of an '80s vibe. But after her reveal and the bow unfurled...I loved it. The tiara, the gloves, the designs on the dress. I loved it all and seemed like a love note to New York City. Blake is one of the ones who gets to envision an idea and talk to a designer and make it come to life. She really did have a big hand in designing this with Versace and you can tell by the amount of pride she had when breaking the dress elements down. And bonus points: the Statue of Liberty arrived in 1885, right in the middle of the gilded age time period.

Billie Eilish is my runner up. She took the theme to heart. I love that she asked Gucci to use upcycled materials. I don't have anything else to add because she's the only one who literally went with the theme and I applaud her.

Chloe Grace Moretz in Louis Vuitton. Even though I didn't like the LV girls as a whole, Chloe is the exception for me. I loved the nod to men's fashion in the gilded age and I wished more men actually went this route.

Rosalía in Givenchy. The glasses annoyed me. But I do love the dress. The nod to gigot sleeves are probably what make the look for me.

I also really loved Carey Mulligan's Schiaparelli dress. I think she flew under the radar because while the dress might be safe, I do love the nod to gilded equaling gold and gilded aged fashion. And while I'm surprised at how tame it is, considering Schiaparelli's looks can be way out there, I think it was a lovely mixture of gilded age fashion in a modern look.

And finally, the Cinderella story of the night: Genesis Suero wearing Lucia Rodriguez. Flawless. The dress fit the theme. And like so many people who stopped reading the theme after the word 'gilded' and just said, GOLD EVERYTHING...Genesis had a 2-for-1. A gorgeous golden gilded age dress.

I had high hopes for this gala and the theme, since historical shows are so popular right now. And I was even willing to overlook people disregarding the era of the theme and thinking it just meant they had to be dripping in gold. But I could not believe the amount of people who thought this theme included the roaring '20s or the golden age of Hollywood. Once again, the best Met Gala by far, was 2018's Heavenly Bodies, and I'm disappointed that more people didn't show up with high neck, bustles, gloves, and lace.

Thanks for asking! Sorry this turned into a novel. I guess I'm very passionate about the Met Gala.

#met gala #best dressed #met gala 2022 #ask me anything

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haveyouseenthishorrormovie · 3 months

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before this goes any further, I want it on the record that you all asked for this.

my first and most petty point: Midnight Mass gets basic details about Catholicism wrong, such that even I (not a Catholic) twigged them. The big one is that Catholics DON'T HAVE MIDNIGHT MASS FOR EASTER - it's a Christmas thing - but since the priest holding the mass is also a vampire, I can accept that he's going off-book. I have a harder time with them holding a PICNIC for ASH WEDNESDAY, aka THE DAY LENT STARTS, aka the day everyone starts fasting and are therefore not snacking on a potluck. It's a minor thing, and normally I wouldn't pick at it, but since this show ostensibly revolves around Catholic doctrine, it bears mentioning.

on a writing level, not one single character in this show talks like a human being. or acts like one. I couldn't give you any information about who these characters are as people, because they're not people, they're mouthpieces for Flanagan to impart his ideas to the audience. He is both deeply in love with his own writing and entirely unconvinced that his audience is smart enough to Get It, so he has his actors turn to the audience and lay it all out. Not only is this bad writing on a character level, it brings all plot and tension to a screeching halt whenever it happens. The most unintentionally hilarious instance of this has to be when Annabeth Gish comes to the sheriff to tell him that the church is being run by a vampire and her mother is aging in reverse, and his response is to start rambling about where he was on 9/11. Like. Nothing about this makes sense, and also why should we care when it has fuckall to do with the story?

(as regards the sheriff character: I, a white Quaker, am not the person to critique this show's handling of Islam. But I will say that Flanagan doesn't seem to have a clear idea what he wants to communicate: the overarching plot is antitheistic, in a very r/atheism sort of way ("WHAT IF THE SACRAMENT WAS VAMPIRE BLOOD" ooh wow didja cut yourself on that edge there, buddy) but Flanagan has no idea how to balance that with the precepts of any religion that isn't Christianity while also maintaining his broadly liberal bona fides, so it all sits very uneasily next to the church plot. I'm not advocating for the show to go full Christopher Hitchens, but I am saying that if Flanagan wants to posit that faith is a mass delusion and a net detriment to any community formed around it . . . he needs to either focus only on Christian characters or be willing to engage with how other religions function in society, because as is, the storyline with the sheriff and his son just peters out into nothing.)

but the thing that made me angriest - that took me from "this is so boring and pretentious and badly written" to "oh FUCK this guy and the horse he rode in on -" was the titular midnight mass. It is very overtly inspired by the Jonestown massacre, which a lot of horror media does, but what it fails to account for is that the members of the People's Temple did not voluntarily kill themselves. I know "drink the kool-aid" has entered the popular lexicon as shorthand for "blindly following a leader," but extensive testimony from Jonestown survivors - not to mention the death tape, which is available online if you really want to ruin your day - all confirms that the people who died that day were forced to drink poison at gunpoint, after years of brutal abuse from Jones and his inner circle. And even after all of that, people fought back. And not outsiders - people who had been in the Temple for years and wholeheartedly believed in the mission that had lead them to Guyana in the first place. (Christine Miller was a fucking hero and she deserves to be remembered for it.) Jonestown was not lemmings going off a cliff, and any serious take on the story would involve reckoning with that - that these people believed in a higher power and also believed that they had a right to live despite what Jones told them. But that would contradict Flanagan's point of "religion is dumb, WAKE UP SHEEPLE," so instead he borrows the iconography of a truly horrific tragedy and disrespects the victims by implicitly representing them as dumb, brainwashed cult members who eagerly toss back poison because they think sky daddy wants them to. He has so little respect for the subjects he's portraying, and the real people whose deaths he is copying for shock value, that he doesn't care about the inner lives of anyone whose beliefs might demonstrate that faith is more nuanced than his screed would have you believe.

There are good horror properties out there that are critical of religion and society - The Medium, which we posted about a few days ago, is one. The Witch is another. So is The Sudbury Devil. Hell, you could go back to the sixties with Witchfinder General. Religion - especially socially dominant religions like Christianity in the west - can and should be critiqued. But Midnight Mass is too sloppily written to be a critique of anything besides, accidentally, how far Mike Flanagan's head is shoved up his ass.

Anyway, that's why mod L doesn't like Midnight Mass. I did warn you.

#not a poll #mod L #ask the mods

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 month

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By: Pamels Paresky

Published: Mar 12, 2024

When Israelis speak about Oct. 7, they frequently say “there are no words.” But one word they consistently use is “shattered.”

Israeli psychologists have been treating severe trauma, complex trauma and collective trauma. The word “trauma,” however, fails to convey the scale, the savagery or the sadism of events that day. The term does not encompass the complex mix of disorientation, anguish, emotional overload and the experience of utter brokenness after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

There is no word for the shock felt by Jews around the world when Israel was suddenly and without warning attacked by thousands of rockets targeting civilians from the north to the south and from the river to the sea. There is no word to describe what it is like to be a Jew kidnapped by terrorists indoctrinated since early childhood to believe that murdering Jews is rewarded in the afterlife. Or to know that the people you love are in the hands of terrorists who delight in rape, torture and slaughter; who enjoy forcing parents and children to watch as they inflict horrors on loved ones.

There is no word to convey the terrifying ordeal suffered by survivors of the attempted genocide that Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7. There is no word that communicates the panic, betrayal, horror and distress of those who hid for hours waiting for help to come, reading WhatsApp messages about terrorists inside their neighbors’ houses. Hearing terrorists break into their own homes. Hearing the screams of injured and dying friends and relatives. Hearing sounds of gunfire and exploding RPGs punctuated by ecstatic shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” All the while knowing they were being hunted.

Everyone in Israel is just one or two degrees of separation from someone who was murdered, injured or kidnapped on Oct. 7. And everyone knows someone who sped to the rescue that day, many of whom never returned.

There is no word to describe the grief of a country still holding its breath while more than a hundred hostages remain in Gaza, and while hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many in their teens and early 20s, go to battle. Some returning badly injured. Some returning to be buried.

Israel, which in the 20th century absorbed hundreds of thousands of displaced Holocaust survivors as well as nearly 900,000 Jewish refugees fleeing antisemitism and violence in neighboring Arab countries, is now temporarily housing about 200,000 displaced Israelis — refugees in their own country — some in hotels and even dormitories.

This includes not only those evacuated from areas near the Gaza border, but also from the north, as confrontations with terrorists in Lebanon escalate. Many displaced families are unsure how long it will take before they can return home. Some refugees from the south have already returned. Some don’t have homes to return to. Some don’t know if they want to return.

There is no word in the psychological lexicon for what happened on Oct. 7 or the new world in which Israelis now live. But “shattered” comes closer than “trauma.”

A Shattered Paradigm

Jews are the only indigenous people who lived in one region for thousands of years, and then, when the majority were dispersed across the globe to be a tiny minority wherever they lived, managed to retain the same religion, rituals, language and attachment to their ancient land for 2,000 years — even as they believed themselves to be full members of their new host countries.

But Jews have also been unable to spend even one century without being ethnically cleansed, violently persecuted or massacred somewhere — whether in the Diaspora or the land of Israel. And since the newest iteration of Jewish control of the land in 1948, Israelis have existed under a threat to which there has been no real solution.

During the Second Intifada, roughly 1,000 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists. There were stabbings, shootings, suicide bombings and beginning in 2001, mortar and rocket attacks launched from Gaza. In response, Israel increased security. Terrorists from the Palestinian Territories became less able to penetrate Israel’s borders and the number of injuries and deaths decreased. And of course, from the time they are little, Israeli children are aware that they will be required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

One of the most surprising things I learned during my time in Israel is that for decades, new parents have believed — or at least hoped hard enough to almost believe — that by the time their children are old enough to serve, defending the country from terrorism will no longer be necessary.

Gaza: “Land For Peace”

Gaza was home to Jews for over 2,000 years, beginning in at least the second century BCE and ending in 1929, when Arabs in the region once known as Judea killed more than 65 Jews in Hebron and around 135 Jews in Gaza. These pogroms came after a decade of similar antisemitic violence in the British Mandate of Palestine. A British commission referred to the pogroms as “racial animosity on the part of the Arabs.”

In part to protect Jews and in part to appease the forebears of the Arabs who in the 1960s would come to be called Palestinians, British colonial forces expelled the Jews from Hebron and Gaza, and restricted Jewish immigration to the region.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, Jews returned to live in Gaza. In 2005, in the hope of securing both peace and international goodwill, the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew its forces from Gaza and forcibly removed the 9,000-plus Jews who lived there, as well as disinterring those buried in Gaza.

Referencing the long history of Jewish expulsions by colonial forces and antisemitic governments, Gazan Jews’ protest slogan was “Jews don’t expel Jews.” The IDF physically carried many of them out of their homes and across the newly designated border.

Hours after the finalization of the historic 2005 withdrawal, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired rockets at Israeli civilians. In 2007, the year Hamas took over as Gaza’s government and murdered its political rivals, terrorists in Gaza launched more than 2,800 rockets and mortars at Israel. By then, the staunch international support for demolishing Gaza’s terrorist infrastructure, which Sharon expected would last a decade, had already evaporated.

Instead, between then and Oct. 7, with backing from Iran along with appropriated international aid controlled by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (which has been revealed to be both a terrorist-training system and an internationally funded source of income for Hamas terrorists and supporters), Hamas significantly expanded its terrorist capabilities and vastly increased its stockpile of weapons.

Without the international support necessary to destroy Gaza’s terrorist capabilities, in order to keep Israelis safe, Israel had to rely on defensive strategies. Israelis’ famous technological ingenuity resulted in an increasingly sophisticated rocket-alert system that now includes smartphone apps, and the “Iron Dome,” a highly advanced technological system that intercepts terrorists’ rockets, neutralizing the vast majority that don’t fall within Gaza.

Nonetheless, bomb shelters are still necessary. They appeared across Israel’s roadways as well as in Israeli homes and businesses. The fortified room in a home is called a “mamad,” an acronym for “merkhav mugan dirati” which means “apartment protected space.” The door to a mamad doesn’t lock. If a home is damaged, first responders need to be able to open it in order to extract the people inside.

Life in Israel, and especially the otef (the Gaza envelope), can be hard for those outside of Israel to truly grasp. Imagine needing constant protection from terrorist rocket attacks, and trying to prevent your children from developing anxiety, panic disorders and PTSD. Israel’s creative solution was to turn children’s bedrooms into bomb shelters. In newer homes, when rocket attacks happen at night, instead of awakening children to take them to a shelter, Israeli parents calmly visit their children’s bedrooms until the danger has passed. Sometimes children don’t even wake up.

This all had the effect of transforming something life-threatening into something more like a nuisance. On Jan. 29, I experienced this myself when air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and my cell phone app blasted a “critical alert.” Hamas rockets aimed at the city came close enough that from the bomb shelter, I could hear them exploding when Iron Dome missiles destroyed them in the air.

In a tacit contract between Israeli citizens and their government, Israelis have come to tolerate a certain level of antisemitic terrorist violence as the price of Jewish self-determination in the historical, biblical, and continuous homeland of the Jews. In return, Israeli homes — or at least, the mamads — were thought to be as safe as if covered by an iron dome.

On Oct. 7, that contract was shattered.

The Kibbutzim

Early in the morning, Hamas began their barbaric rampage. Thousands of rockets were launched from Gaza at civilian targets across the country, and Israelis took refuge in their mamads as they always do.

They soon understood that it was not a “normal” rocket attack — the alerts didn’t stop when they usually do. But they could not have imagined that at that moment, thousands of terrorists were breaking through the border wall and invading their country, intending to murder, rape, dismember and kidnap as many Israelis as possible. Or that terrorists knew exactly where to find them. Or that their “safe rooms” would become death traps.

Entire families were gunned down in their children’s bedrooms. Or they died from smoke inhalation. Or they were burned alive when terrorists set fire to their homes. In many cases, terrorists shot their victims through mamad doors as Israelis tried desperately to hold them shut.

That is how 18-year-old Maayan Idan was murdered in front of her family as her father, Tsachi, held the door closed. Terrorists livestreamed the family’s ordeal on Facebook as Maayan’s parents and young siblings tried to process what was happening.

Tsachi was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz and is still a hostage in Gaza. At Maayan’s funeral, her mother, Gali, described being “shattered into pieces.”

Sixty-nine-year-old Itzik Elgarat was shot in the hand through his mamad’s door. He called his brother, Danny, who thought the handle had somehow injured Itzik and told him how to create a tourniquet. Just before the call was disconnected, Itzik became hysterical. “Danny! This is the end!” he said. “This is the end!”

Not understanding what “end” it could be, Danny called a relative who lived in the same kibbutz, asking him to check on Itzik. His relative told him the kibbutz had been overtaken by terrorists. As one of the few residents with a weapon handy, he had killed two terrorists in his own home. Danny then opened his phone tracking app and watched as Itzik’s phone entered Gaza.

Danny’s sister lived in the same kibbutz. She spent seven hours holding her door handle in the closed position, saving the lives of the two grandchildren who were with her. Terrorists kidnapped her ex-husband, Alex Dancyg, a 76-year-old world-renowned scholar of the Holocaust and Polish Jewish history, and the son and brother of Holocaust survivors. He has trained Israel’s Auschwitz guides for over 30 years, and is a beloved fixture at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial museum of the Holocaust.

According to released hostage Nili Margalit, for at least the first 50 days, Hamas held her and Dancyg and others from Nir Oz, most of them elderly, deep in a tunnel.l. To keep their minds active, they took turns giving talks about their areas of expertise. When Dancyg lectured about the Holocaust, the others asked him to speak about something else.

Margalit, Dancyg and Elgarat were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 46 residents were murdered. By the time the IDF arrived, the terrorists were gone and had kidnapped approximately 80 people — about a third of all the hostages. About one quarter of their close-knit community was either kidnapped or murdered.

Thirty people from Nir Oz are still held hostage in Gaza, including Dancyg and his brother-in-law Elgarat. Also kidnapped were Elgarat’s next-door neighbors: Four-year-old Ariel Bibas, his 9-month-old brother, Kfir (who, if alive, spent his first birthday as a hostage), their mother, Shiri, and father, Yarden, who was taken separately after trying to protect his family. Images (shot by a Palestinian “civilian” who works as a photographer for the Associated Press) show Yarden being kidnapped on a motorcycle, blood gushing from his head; a terrorist with a hammer in one hand, holding Yarden by the throat. Hamas streamed the kidnapping of Shiri and her boys, all of them wrapped in a blanket. A screenshot of the terrified mother and her red-headed babies has become an iconic image of the Oct. 7 kidnappings.

About 100 residents of the larger Kibbutz Be’eri were also murdered that day, and about 30 kidnapped — together, 10% of that community. Among the kidnapped were Emily Hand, who spent her ninth birthday as a hostage. She was at a sleepover with her friend, Hila Rotem, when terrorists invaded the kibbutz.

After her release, Emily revealed that in Gaza, she, Hila and Hila’s mother, Raya, had been held not in tunnels, but in homes. For at least part of the time, she was with Be’eri resident Yossi Sharabi whose brother, Eli, was also taken hostage. Yossi’s wife and three daughters survived the massacre, but terrorists killed Yossi in Gaza, where Eli remains a hostage. Eli’s wife and two daughters were murdered. Yossi and Eli’s brother, Sharon, says his family is “shattered.”

The Nova Festival

Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on motorized paragliders swarmed the Nova “peace rave” at a campground near Kibbutz Re’im. (Re’im means “friends.”) With assault weapons, grenades and RPGs, terrorists mowed down hundreds of partygoers who fled on foot and by car, many of which were incinerated. Of between 3,000 and 4,000 attendees, 364 were murdered and many more were injured. Forty from the festival were reportedly taken hostage.

Ayala Avraham and her husband, Ilan, although in their 50s, were regulars at trance music festivals, dancing together every weekend. Ilan frantically drove Ayala and a friend away from the Nova grounds while terrorists shot at them, hitting the car. The three made it to Moshav Yakhini, a small community near Sderot, where they hid in a standalone bomb shelter behind a security gate.

When Ilan realized terrorists were approaching, he gave Ayala the car keys, hugged and kissed her, and said “You will be okay.” Then he stood outside the shelter to distract the approaching terrorists, hoping they would not look inside. Several terrorists grabbed Ilan and absconded with him.

Other terrorists soon discovered the women, but left only one to guard them. The women broke free from their captor, who shot at them, wounding Ayala’s friend as they ran to hide behind her car. They were not well hidden. If he had come after them, they would have had no chance. But for whatever reason, he ran back toward the other terrorists. The women were soon rescued by the IDF.

For three weeks, Ilan, who wore dreadlocks, was thought to be missing. Eventually, his unusual hairstyle allowed him to be identified — terrorists had completely mutilated his face. It was later revealed that he had refused his captors’ demands to knock on doors and tell people in Hebrew that it was safe to come out of their homes.

Meanwhile, near the festival grounds, in tiny roadside bomb shelters, each built to accommodate 10, dozens of terrified festival-goers huddled together as terrorists sprayed them with gunfire and threw in grenades. In one shelter, a 22-year-old unarmed off-duty soldier, Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapira, caught seven grenades and threw them back out. The eighth grenade killed him.

Some survivors of the blast were kidnapped, including Aner’s close friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American whose left arm was blown off below the elbow. His fate is unknown. In the shelters and elsewhere, many young people survived the massacre by hiding under the bodies of their friends and others.

As of this writing, 144 of those kidnapped have been released or rescued and 134 are still held hostage in Gaza. Reports indicate that as many as 50 of those in Gaza may now be dead.

Sexual Violence

Survivors who witnessed gang-rapes describe terrorists mutilating women before murdering them. In at least one account, a terrorist shot a woman in the head, killing her while still raping her. Hamas later denied the rapes, but manuals recovered from Hamas terrorists included a list of Hebrew phrases for communicating with Israelis — including “take your pants off.” And when interrogated, terrorists admitted to the raping of even dead bodies, saying that despite religious prohibitions on mistreating or killing women and children, Hamas leaders instructed them to murder entire families and permitted them to perpetrate rape.

In testimony delivered at the United Nations headquarters in New York, first-responders and those tasked with handling women’s dead bodies reported that many of the murdered were found partially naked; some with broken pelvises, some with grotesque injuries to their genitals. The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel recently issued a report revealing that terrorists inserted nails, grenades and knives in Israeli women’s vaginas. The report detailed evidence that the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7 was intentional, “systematic, targeted sexual abuse.”

Meanwhile, many women’s organizations around the world have remained silent. Those that eventually condemned Hamas did so only many weeks later. Some have even denied the sexual violence. The director of the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre signed an open letter that referred to Hamas terrorists as “Palestinian resistance,” called Israel “terrorist,” claimed that false reports about the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing were accurate, and asserted that testimony about Hamas rapes amounted to no more than “unverified accusations.”

Such appalling hypocrisy notwithstanding, a recent United Nations report noted a pattern among the murdered — mostly women — who were found naked, at least from the waist down, with their hands tied. This and other evidence, along with witness testimony, provides what the report called “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the Oct. 7 attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape.”

Regarding hostages, the report is equally unsettling. “The mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The team also has “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”

Antisemitism and Shattered Illusions

If Jews in the Diaspora thought the events of Oct. 7 would turn the tide against anti-Zionist antisemitism, it took only one day to disabuse them. On Oct. 8, while Israel was still collecting bodies and eliminating terrorists within its own borders, more than 30 student groups at Harvard issued a joint statement declaring that “the Israel regime” was “entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.” Across the country, identical posters advertising a “Day of Resistance” appeared, prominently displaying an image of a terrorist flying a motorized paraglider.

Despite such dispositive evidence to the contrary, on March 1, a New York Times news article (not an opinion piece) reported that this campus movement “began as general protests against continuing Israeli retaliation” (emphasis added).

Even as the depth of Hamas depravity and brutality is revealed, students, faculty and other illiberal activists continue to assert that what happened on Oct. 7 was not terrorism — it was “resistance.” And resistance, they insist, is justified “by any means necessary.” Hamas is an Arabic acronym for Islamic “Resistance” Movement.

A favorite campus chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a Hamas slogan — a call to annihilate the Jewish state, which is bordered by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Some demonstrators prefer the Arabic version, which is more explicit: “From water to water, Palestine is Arab.”

By “Palestine,” they mean Israel.

Some protesters may not understand which river or what sea. But other slogans are less ambiguous: It’s difficult to see how “Globalize the intifada” and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution” are calls for peace rather than for violent attacks on Jews everywhere. If all that weren’t enough, many of the increasingly disruptive and even violent demonstrations in the United States incorporate the word “flood,” reflecting the name Hamas gave their Oct. 7 sadistic orgy of atrocities: Operation Al Aqsa Flood.

In a particularly cruel example of global anti-Zionist antisemitism, when posters of kidnapped Israelis appeared, they were quickly vandalized or torn down. At Harvard, a photo of baby Kfir was defaced with the words “evidence please” and “head still on.” On a picture of 4-year-old Ariel, graffiti read “google dancing Israelis,” a reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. And many of the faces of other kidnapped Israelis were obscured with red paint on a multi-part display.

After more than 150 days, anti-Israel rallies have continued on- and off-campuses across America. As hostages languish in tunnels and in the homes of terrorist-captors (some of whom, like an UNRWA employee and a physician, have been referred to in the media as “civilians”), many demonstrations include calls for a one-sided Israeli “ceasefire” with no calls for Hamas to surrender — nor even release the hostages.

The Oakland, CA City Council even voted down a condemnation of Hamas when passing a ceasefire resolution. Oakland residents argued that “the notion that this was a massacre of Jews is a fabricated narrative,” “Israel murdered their own people on Oct. 7,” and “Hamas isn’t a terrorist organization.” One went as far as to say, “I support the right of Palestinians to resist occupation including through Hamas.”

In other words: It didn’t happen. But if it happened, the Jews did it. And anyway, they deserved it.

Meanwhile, video footage taken from a camera in Rafah on Oct. 7 was released in February, showing Shiri Bibas and her two young boys with six terrorists in civilian clothing. On Feb. 12, the IDF pulled off a spectacular rescue of two hostages held in a private home in Rafah. Days later, students at Columbia University held an “all eyes on Rafah” rally. The demonstration was not to celebrate the daring commando rescue. Nor was it to demand the release of other hostages held in Rafah.

It was organized by two anti-Israel campus groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, to protest “Israel’s recent attacks on the city of Rafah.” The groups instructed members to obscure their faces with masks “for security.” During the rally, someone broke the glass in a door to the library.

Shattered Hopes for Peace

Though well aware of Hamas’ murderous intentions, many who lived near the border believed there was a bright line between Palestinian civilians and their violently oppressive, terrorist government. Residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz like survivor Irit Lahav, and of Kibbutz Be’eri, like Vivian Silver, who was one of the founders of the organization “Women Wage Peace,” devoted time to driving Palestinians from the Gaza border to hospitals in Israel, where they received the same, high-quality medical care available to Israelis. For over a month, Silver was thought to be among the kidnapped, since no body was found in her house. Eventually, however, her remains, found in the debris of her badly burned home, were identified using techniques borrowed from archeology.

In recent years, Hamas developed a penchant for using kites and balloons to launch Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices into Israel, often killing wildlife and damaging agriculture. Some airborne packages carried brightly colored toys in order to appeal to children, and if all went as planned, blow them up as they reached for the toys. In spite of this, every year, members of the kibbutzim near the border would fly kites bearing messages of peace, signaling their hopes for the future to their neighbors across the border.

Saturday, Oct. 7 was supposed to be that day.

For the last 15 years, the “Kites for Freedom” celebration in Kibbutz Kfar Aza was organized by Aviv Kutz. On Oct. 7, Aviv, his wife and their three children were slaughtered by terrorists.

Margalit, a pediatric nurse who worked primarily with Arab-speaking patients at Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, had planned to fly kites for peace that day. Instead, she was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and spent 54 days as a hostage. Her father was murdered at Nir Oz and his body taken to Gaza.

For 12 hours, in the same kibbutz, Natali Yohanan and her family hid in their mamad, listening as Palestinian “civilians,” including a woman, rummaged through their belongings, and when they tired of trying to get the family out of the mamad, heated and ate the food Natali had left on the stove, and even switched Netflix to Arabic to watch some shows before finally leaving with their booty. Once the family emerged, they found that the looters had stolen everything from electronics, to Natali’s jewelry and makeup, to the family’s clothing — even Natali’s underwear.

In the aftermath of the massacres, residents of several kibbutzim were shattered to learn that Palestinians they had employed created maps of their communities for the terrorists, detailing the locations of their armories, the names of the residents, and even which homes belonged to members of security teams — the first to be murdered.

“Are these the people I wanted to help? These are people who want peace?” Irit Lahav now asks herself. She was equally astonished that after murdering her neighbors, terrorists took their dead bodies into Gaza — and sometimes only their heads. “What kind of human being would want to take somebody’s head …?”

After the beheading of 19-year-old soldier Adir Tahar was recorded on video, a terrorist in Gaza tried to sell Adir’s head for $10,000. The boy’s father was finally able to complete his son’s burial after the IDF found the head in a duffel bag — in an ice cream store freezer in Gaza.

A poll by The Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research found that more than 50% of Palestinians in Gaza and 85% in the West Bank support the Oct. 7 attacks. Most claim to not have seen videos of the atrocities and say they do not believe they happened.

Still, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, pays a monthly stipend to terrorists who slaughter Jews, and the pay scale is based on how many Israelis they murder. According to news reports, the PA recently added 661 of the Oct. 7 terrorists to the payroll, increasing last year’s $161,000,000 payments for murdering Israelis by $16,000,000.

These “pay for slay” incentives are enshrined in Palestinian law.

“This is outrageous,” Adele Raemer, who survived the massacre at Kibbutz Nirim, told the Jewish News Syndicate. “We teach our children coexistence while our neighbors make a living off our deaths.”

There are many stories of heroic Arab Israelis who saved lives that day—including four who spent hours rescuing dozens of people on their way to save a cousin, and Youssef Ziadna, a bus driver who drove straight into the massacre to help, rescuing 30 Jews, many of them wounded, even as he was constantly under fire. After news of his courage and selflessness went viral on social media, he received a death threat from someone who claimed to be from Gaza. “You saved 30 Jews’ lives,” the man said, adding, “Don’t worry, we’ll get to you.” Ziadna’s cousin was murdered, and four other family members were kidnapped. Only the two teenage family members were released.

I’ve heard stories of Palestinians with work permits who immediately went to authorities on October 7 when they realized what was happening. But it is currently unknown how many of the roughly 150,000 Palestinians who legally worked in Israel (including 18,000 from Gaza) participated in the attacks or aided terrorists. It is also unclear how many would participate in or aid future attacks if given the opportunity.

Those permits have been suspended indefinitely.

Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The New York Times, “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders.”

Hamas abhors the democratic and Jewish values that allow equal rights for all regardless of sex, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation … etc. Their intention, which is shared by other Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, is to conquer the West and establish a global caliphate. Israel is just the beginning.

Israeli Anti-fragility

The red anemones, which have come to symbolize Israel’s south, are now in bloom. Seeing them after everything that happened is hard, Vered Libstein of Kibbutz Kfar Aza told The Times of Israel. Almost 20 years ago, she and her husband, Ofir, founded the annual festival known as Darom Adom (Red South). Annually, more than 400,000 visitors would come to see the red blossoms, celebrate nature and enjoy the many family-friendly events.

On Oct. 7, Ofir was among the 62 residents murdered at Kfar Aza. Their 19-year-old son was also murdered, as were Vered’s mother and nephew — who jumped on a grenade, saving his fiancée’s life. Nineteen from their kibbutz were taken hostage. “Life is stronger than everything,” Vered insists, with typical Israeli resilience, adding, “We’ll need to find the strength to renew ourselves as well.”

Whether observant or secular, conservative or progressive, soldier or survivor, one thing I hear is a fierce determination not to let terrorists rob Israelis of more than what’s already been taken. “It’s the first and last time I’m ever leaving,” the owner of a shawarma spot near the Gaza border told American journalist Nancy Rommelmann. He and his wife have returned and reopened their store. “I won’t let Hamas win” he says.

Still, the country’s economy has been significantly disrupted. Not only are more than 150,000 Palestinian employees no longer working in Israel, until recently, more than 350,000 reservists across all business sectors were serving in the IDF instead of going to work as usual. (Now the number is roughly 130,000.) At the same time, tourism, which had only been back in business for less than two years since COVID, has nearly ground to a halt.

To make matters worse, many of Israel’s farms are in areas that have been evacuated. The kibbutzim that terrorists attacked provided close to 60% of Israel’s produce, and operated dairy farms, hen houses, and cattle ranches.

Many of the kibbutzim employed people from Thailand. At Kibbutz Nir Oz alone, 11 Thai employees were murdered, five were kidnapped, and only two have been released. But farm workers from Thailand are beginning to return. And there is a fairly steady stream of mostly (but not entirely) Jewish volunteers from other countries coming to Israel to pick avocados and citrus fruits, package food and undertake various other tasks disrupted by the war. Some visitors are here to console grieving friends and family. Others are here to participate in solidarity missions.

Still others, such as investors in OurCrowd, an Israeli startup investing platform, come looking for opportunities to donate or invest. The shekel has already rebounded to pre-war levels, and if history is any guide, now is the time to invest in Israel. Between 2008 and 2021, in the aftermath of each Hamas attack and IDF response, the Israeli stock market quickly not only rebounded, but surpassed pre-conflict levels. That may be why OurCrowd was able to raise and commit the financing for its Israel Resilience Fund in record time. It may also be why international investors have been investing in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange — including billionaire Bill Ackman and his wife, Neri Oxman. But perhaps most emblematic of Israel’s anti-fragility: When everything was shattering and reservists were called to serve, 150% of the number summoned reported for duty. And despite the political fractures of 2023, this war’s young soldiers are proving to be Israel’s new “Greatest Generation.”

Meanwhile, the ethically illiterate and morally corrupt have joined forces to accuse Israel of genocide, an obscene blood libel designed to delegitimize Israel’s war to defeat an internationally designated terrorist organization — one that attempted an actual genocide of Jews on Oct. 7.

This type of Holocaust inversion, a central feature of contemporary antisemitism, codes empowered and self-determined Jews as “Zionists,” and casts Zionists as Nazis. This is how, on the day after Hamas circulated a video claiming to have murdered seven of the hostages, film director Jonathan Glazer, who says he is a Jew, can use an Oscars acceptance speech for “The Zone of Interest,” a movie about the Holocaust, to claim that the “occupation” has “hijacked the Holocaust” and that this “occupation” — rather than sadistic, genocidal terrorism — is to blame for “conflict” and by extension, for “the ongoing attack in Gaza” and even for the suffering of “the victims of October 7 in Israel.”

In other words: Whatever happened to Jews is their own damn fault.

Only in an upside-down world can a man who made a movie about the dehumanization and genocide of Jews make a speech dehumanizing both the victims of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and Jews now risking their lives to ensure that the latest attempted genocide fails. In this inversion, the lesson of the Holocaust is not the imperative to clearly identify and marginalize those who disseminate and act on hate. And it is not the moral obligation to stand against evil. It is a moral indictment of Jews, whose stubborn refusal to be annihilated and creative ability to overcome even genocide only serve to increase the believability of conspiracy theories that paint the Jew — and the Jew among the nations — as the powerful villain.

The truth is much simpler. Throughout history, as a small minority group, when Jews in the Diaspora were violently attacked, they fled. With an army of Israelis, however, Jews have been able to fight back. Israel’s Special Envoy on Combating Antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, told an assembly at the United Nations that people outside of Israel still make the mistake of thinking Israel exists because the Holocaust happened. The truth, she says, is precisely the reverse: The Holocaust happened because Israel did not exist. With global antisemitism at record levels, Jews around the world are awakening to this reality.

Naomi Petel survived the massacre at Kibbutz Nahal Oz with her husband and their three young children because a terrorist’s bullet jammed the lock on her front door, making it inoperable, and looters in the other half of her duplex caused a flood, preventing the house from burning when terrorists tried to set it on fire. Even after their ordeal, she told me, there’s nowhere else she wants to live. Israel’s south is her home. Her family, along with most of their displaced kibbutz, are temporarily living in the north. They don’t know how long it will take before they can go back home. She and her husband now have red anemone tattoos.

On the “Walk-Ins Welcome” podcast, she told writer Bridget Phetasy, “What Jews have done throughout history is be kicked out, try to make it again in a different place … contribute as much as you can to society, and [hope that] maybe they’ll like us enough that they don’t try to kill us.” Over and over. Again and again.

“This time,” she said, “we’re not going anywhere.”

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xmissrogersx · 1 month

Text

“Shit, i love this skirt” | Joel Miller

tags: Post-Outbreak. Fluff. +18. Period issues.

a note from pris: i write this during my period, and all i want to say is I NEED A JOEL IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW.

my writing is entirely my own. Any adaptation and/or copy is forbidden.

i hope you are enjoying my stories! U help me a lot if you give me a ♡! All the love.

priscila’ masterlist

-Do you have the same one but in another color?

“Count to 10, Paris" I said softly, otherwise I'm going to kill the stupid girl in front of me. One, two, three...

-It's a blanket they picked up on patrol, not a pair of Manolo Blahnik.

-What's that? -said the one next to her. You're kidding me, they must be in their 40's and have no idea what i just told them.

-Are you going to take it or not? -they looked at each other, causing me to take a breath and pick up my mental count and avoid exploding.

-Are you sure there isn't another color?

I could swear my eye twitched the moment I got up from my chair, which caused the others in the room to turn their gazes towards me.

-Hey…why don't we go outside, okay? -Maria approached me and pulled me out, preventing something worse from breaking out.

-Sorry, but i couldn't stand those two assholes anymore —I explained, putting my hand on my belly as I suddenly felt a cramp, making it obvious what was happening to me. I hated it when my period came. She put my hand on my lower back for support.

-Why didn't you tell me and stay home? I know it sucks when it happens, honey.

I nodded slightly, not ignoring the truth, although deep down I wanted to keep my job at Jackson.

-Does Joel know?

-No, no. I didn't want to worry him, he had the patrol with Tommy and if I told him he'd probably chain me to the bed and not let me out.

-As if you don't like it when he do that —she said, raising her eyebrow, provoking a laugh from both of them.

-Don't make me laugh, I feel like I'm going to fall over.

-Speaking of Rome —she nodded his head at the entrance.

Getting off his horse and cleaning his shotgun, he was wearing a T-shirt that clung to his body due to the heat of the incipient summer that was already approaching, along with pants that molded his strong legs. Even if they had shouted that they were attacking us this damn moment, I couldn't take my eyes off him.

-All mine...—Maria laughed softly when she saw my expression.

-You're so horny, girl —walking over to the Millers, but not before approaching Joel, who quickly raised his gaze to me. He walked away from them, and in big strides was already lifting me up in his arms.

-Joel...

-Why didn't you tell me, baby? —He locked his beautiful brown eyes in mine.

-I love you... very, very much —I smiled innocently.

-That's not going to work,pretty girl.

-I'm sorry, daddy —I whispered the latter in his ear and kissed his lobe, getting a growl from him and a little giggle from me.

We walked through the front door, where he deposited me on the living room couch and then kissed my forehead and went upstairs to prepare the bathtub, since the book I had read and under Mary's advice, the hot water helped the cramps in my belly.

Just for one second imagine for a minute this man with glasses on reading a manual about the female period. When I thought Joel couldn't be more attentive and gentle, I caught him in that situation.

-Hi, Paris —Ellie walk inside and set his backpack aside.

-Hi,cutie, how was school?

-I hate fractions, seriously, why the fuck do I want to know how to divide a cake, I just split it and that's it.

-First of all, language. Second, it's important that you know it, even if you don't believe it, it's useful for everyday life.

-Like what? -He frowned and I opened my mouth to answer, but no word could come out of my lexicon.

-You're right, they're not good for shit —I answered with a laugh from her.-Well, I'm going upstairs…

-¡Paris, your skirt! -she suddenly exclaimed. I turned my head to literally see the fabric covering my ass with a small red stain.

-¡La puta madre! ¡Shit, i love this skirt! it's my favorite, i was going to wear this for your presentation.

-We can wash it, Maria must have something or some weird substance to fix it.

My eyes glazed over at how worried she was about me. Just like her father. I wrapped my arms around her body, to which she reacted in kind. On the outside many times Ellie appeared to be a tough and somewhat coarse girl, but it was only because of the constant struggle she had gone through for the longest and shortest part of her life. She's just a kid.

-I know how bad it is when it happens to you, and you don't deserve it —she said with her face in my chest, her voice distressed.

-Relax, I'm fine —I whispered, stroking her hair —I couldn't be better, I have my family and that's all I need.

-Being a woman sucks, I wish I was half as brave as you —she looked up at me, to which I laughed to hug her tighter as I quickly denied.

-I don't agree, ¿you know why? Because we are intelligent, fearful, brave. You faced unimaginable things, Ellie, and every time you came out of it, you got stronger.

-She’s right.

We both turned around when we heard him. He walked towards us and wrapped us in his arms to lift us off the ground laughing in unison.

-Let go of me, I have to go, old man —she pulled out of his grip to run away.

-So...we have about, what, ¿2 hours for Ellie's play? —I frowned uncomprehendingly, to which he once again pulled me back to my feet —I brought chocolate almonds, just the way you like it.

Damn crazy hormones. Tears began to fall down my cheeks as if a waterfall was flowing down my face. He tried to calm me down but I put my hand on his lips, silencing him.

-Joel, please, you don't want to take me like that after you see me from behind —I said embarrased.

-You have nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart. Actually, I like the way you looked at me when I came in from the raid —I opened my mouth wide.-You made me feel attractive —he said softly, to which I immediately brought our lips together.

God, I'd been holding back since this morning, points for holding back.

-Joel Miller, did you ever look in the mirror? —I stroked his mustache and beard.-Because I can assure you that Jackson's women do.

-I don't care, darlin'. The only one who can bring me to my knees is you. And I should also say that I've seen you get looks from more than one idiot at the bar.

I sighed and kissed his cheek. We went into the bedroom, and he put me down on the bed to bend down and start taking off my shoes.

-You're mine —he said kissing my thigh as he began to undress me, making me hold my breath. He wanted to etch into my skin that I belonged to him, now and always.

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ctrl-alt-cel · 1 year

Text

when i was 13 i wrote an essay explaining the rationale of puppyshipping to some guy in a skype chatroom. found the essay again. wanted to rewrite it. without further ado:

HERE’S HOW PUPPYSHIPPING CAN STILL WIN: THE SEQUEL: 2 PUPPY 2 SHIPPING (4.3k words)

⠀

kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship stands at an awkwardly undefinable place in canon: they're not on good terms, but they're not enemies either. they know each other too well to be called passing acquaintances, but kaiba hardly acknowledges jounouchi as a duelist, let alone a potential rival. at best? they're mutual nuisances.

or, that's how jounouchi and kaiba choose to define it. both of them would love if their dynamic were that simple, nothing more than a back-and-forth of petty insults—but that’s not the truth. and they'll dance around the truth for five whole seasons, purposefully downplaying why they’re so obsessed with provoking each other whenever they’re in the same place.

they're foils.

—but the term "foils" is so dulled within fandom lexicon now that it can mean literally anything from two guys who just disagree with each other sometimes, so i'll sharpen this further. jounouchi and kaiba see their counterpart less as an individual person but more a representation of who they could have become if they had respectively, in their eyes, never learned the lessons they needed to. they project their own ideals onto the other and come away thinking they already know how the other operates, and the fun thing is, even when working from conjecture, their assumptions of one another happen to hit far closer to home than they have any right to.

so really, they can't leave each other alone because they can't stop seeing their failures reflected back at them. the other is a defective version of themselves that they need to correct because they can't stand constantly acknowledging who they used to be, so they try to bend the other to be more like their own image—an "i can fix him (by dragging him down to my level)".

⠀

jounouchi and kaiba’s parallels run down to their origins, both set up against abysmal family situations they have no choice but to make the best of. seto and mokuba are orphaned at a young age until seto gets them adopted, while katsuya is separated from his sister and stuck with a deadbeat father who can't carry his own weight. trapped in an environment where nobody expects anything worthwhile from him, katsuya joins a gang and lives out a self-admittedly miserable existence before befriending yugi, while seto is in a battlefield of his own, faced with protecting mokuba while enduring against the nightmare that is gozaburo kaiba’s parenting.

what they do to survive those conditions determines the outlooks they carry for the rest of their lives: jounouchi learns that losing is inescapable and the best you can do is learn how to cope with it, whereas kaiba learns that losing is something you must protect yourself from because there's only so much you can afford to lose.

jounouchi is positioned as the underdog, fighting tooth-and-nail for every victory he can manage, while kaiba has power in excess and holds to the belief that it’s all he really needs. one would argue that they have the perspective the other lacks—they argue that they have the perspective the other lacks. but in my opinion? it doesn't actually matter. what interests me is how they treat each other as a result.

⠀

side: seto kaiba

kaiba degrades jounouchi a lot. like, to an uncomfortable extent. you know that one post that’s like “why does bullying exist? why are you mad that i’m ugly?” why is kaiba so mad over the fact that jounouchi loses so much?

it’s projection. he’s just holding jounouchi to the same standard he holds himself to. you need to be powerful if you want to play the same games as kaiba, and seeing jounouchi so openly lean on his friends, ask for help, and have the audacity to lose sets kaiba off because he’s not playing the way he’s supposed to. kaiba rubs jounouchi's losses in his face because he believes that's what loss is supposed to look like, and that it’s jounouchi’s fault for not understanding that yet. kaiba is trying to teach him. to kaiba, this degradation might as well be an act of generosity.

while kaiba stayed true to his own ambitions, seizing kaibacorp from gozaburo and turning it into a children's entertainment company, he beat gozaburo at his own game not by inventing new rules but by playing it better than his adoptive father ever could. and as impressive as that is, it’s not sustainable. gozaburo kills himself when faced with his own defeat, and kaiba internalizes this lesson: that all losses are final, and it’s better to die than adapt to the consequences of a defeat. gozaburo’s death was a suicide, but in the context of their game, kaiba might as well have killed him regardless.

he mirrors this when he threatens to kill himself in duelist kingdom, his heightened emotions catastrophizing losing the duel to immediately equal failing mokuba and coming to the conclusion that if he loses mokuba he’d rather be dead. being someone so fervently self-reliant, any alternate solution, a possibility that he can lose here and still find a different way to rescue mokuba never crosses his mind. and, look, this isn’t his fault. this is the only way of living he’s ever been taught. he’s never learned how to cope in the event of failure because he’s never had the luxury to fail to begin with.

he's burned and rebuilt himself over and over again to survive in the world he operates in, and that’s why jounouchi pisses kaiba off so personally. jounouchi loses so much and so messily, and kaiba tries to show him that if he doesn’t start reinventing himself from the broken pieces of his defeats until all that’s left of him are jagged edges the same way he has, he’s never going to win. but jounouchi…does win. and keeps winning. and even when he does lose, it’s as if he creates new victories for himself, like there’s still value to playing a game with someone when you don’t win it—power of friendship bullshit and whatever. jounouchi is still here, a competitor that kaiba can no longer write off as much as he desperately wants to. (and, yeah, it is pretty ironic how jounouchi will jump through a million hoops to get kaiba to look at him, but he doesn't realize that he doesn't need to do anything to keep kaiba’s attention, only continue being himself.)

jounouchi refuses to compromise who he is and still manages to get far when in kaiba’s mind, that shouldn’t be possible; he’s supposed to be punished the way kaiba was. jounouchi is proof that you can take a devastating blow and move on from it, that even when you do fuck up spectacularly, there’s still something worthwhile in starting again tomorrow.

so kaiba constantly needs to prove that he’s better than jounouchi, that jounouchi isn’t even worth his time in order to justify his worldview. because if kaiba isn’t right, then he'll have no choice but to confront the fact that the war is over. that his circumstances aren’t instant life or death anymore and that even though he’s freed himself from gozaburo’s influence, there’s still further growth as a person he could stand to undergo, now divorced from the harsh conditions of his upbringing. jounouchi is a testament to how it’s possible to make peace and move on from the past without constantly bleeding for closure, that maybe, kaiba’s headlong quest to get the last word on his rivalry with yami yugi may not actually be as fulfilling as he thinks.

but admitting that you might need to change the way you live feels like a defeat in and of itself—it’s infuriating to hear that after everything you’ve had to learn, the way you live now isn’t good enough. that surviving insurmountable trauma doesn’t inherently make you better or more worthy than other people—it just traumatizes you, and is something you must heal from. so, instead of reflecting on these revelations, it’s so much easier for kaiba to tell himself that jounouchi is only ever graceful when he’s dead.

⠀

side: katsuya jounouchi

jounouchi is very stuck on this idea that he needs to be useful. his dad is an alcoholic with a gambling addiction and he believes it's not only his duty to pay his father's debts, but to be the household's sole source of income. his sister needs eye surgery and he believes it's his responsibility as an older brother not only to pay for it, but to act as her primary emotional support to get the surgery and throughout her recovery process. haga throws yugi's exodia into the ocean and jounouchi blames himself for not stopping it. jounouchi gets mind-controlled by malik and blames himself for causing his friends anguish from it. mai literally gets jounounchi’s soul stolen and he apologizes to her for messing up and making her sad. it's habitual, jounouchi doesn't know how to stop taking on the burdens of other people.

if you live with the mentality that you’re inevitably going to fail for long enough, you’ll come away with the belief that caring about your own wellbeing isn’t worth the effort. it depends on how pessimistic you want to read it, if it’s just his love language or jounouchi compensating for the damning act of being himself, but jounouchi quantifies his worth by how much he provides for other people. he’s always jumping in the line of fire for the sake of others because if you constantly undervalue your own wellbeing, you always have less to lose. as the underdog, he may not be as overtly powerful as kaiba or yugi, but he can still give himself away, and he’s convinced himself that it’s what he’s supposed to do. jounouchi is still new to this whole friendship thing. after a lifetime of supporting himself by himself, he doesn't know when he's allowed to ask for help yet—he’s supposed to be the help, dammit.

a key distinction between jounouchi and kaiba’s upbringings is that while kaiba’s biological parents died in an accident, jounouchi’s parents are still alive and they choose not to be responsible for him. jounouchi is conditioned to fend for himself by himself because having a parental figure actually present in his life isn’t a luxury he gets to have. to jounouchi, there has to be a reason why his mother only takes shizuka and never goes back for him in the six years he’s left with his father, and he rationalizes this with his notions of masculinity: he’s a strong man who can handle it. jounouchi is not delicate, he can endure it. men are responsible for their own circumstances. kaiba is hyperindependent out of a mixture of spite, paranoia, and self-defense. jounouchi is hyperindependent because he believes he deserves it. it’s the reason why he believes he’ll finally have a good relationship with his father if he just wins enough money to pay off his gambling debts—jounouchi can fix everything if only he were man enough to, and he can get people to stay if he demonstrates himself useful enough.

so death doesn’t carry nearly as much weight to jounouchi as it does to kaiba. in kaiba’s eyes, death is the punishment for failure, but to jounouchi, death is just the natural consequence for the kind of life he leads. he can't stop himself from fighting for the people he loves until he’s spent everything and forced to stop (read: dies), so during the several times jounouchi is confronted with his own death, he meets it with a solemn acceptance. like, yeah, it sucks, but he doesn’t regret the actions he took to end up here—he’d do it all over again, frankly. it’s better to die than not give everything he can, and at least he was able to give his life in service to someone else. it’s not necessarily good to die, but it doesn’t matter as much if he does.

so where kaiba is afraid of losing, jounouchi is afraid of outliving his usefulness (and being abandoned as a result), and kaiba disrupts jounouchi’s worldview specifically because he puts his ideology on the defensive. to jounouchi, kaiba’s presence never demands a question of “what can you do for me?” (nothing, kaiba doesn’t want jounouchi to do anything for him, and frankly, he’d be insulted if jounouchi even tried) but “what makes you worthy of standing on the same level as me?”, and jounouchi can’t sacrificial lamb get set on fire die a billion times into getting kaiba into seeing it his way (rather, that would only prove him right: kaiba would love nothing more than for jounouchi to lose the ability to fight and finally align with his preconceived notions of how the world works), and he can’t argue that his value is in how much he provides for others because that’s a non-answer. kaiba doesn’t care.

kaiba’s presence forces jounouchi into a position of self-reflection: jounouchi works so hard to preserve the friendships he’s created, but who is he—what does he value about himself in the absence of it? jounouchi needs to acknowledge something inherently valuable about himself if he wants to counter kaiba in any meaningful way, and it’s not like he doesn’t have valuable qualities either: he’s tenacious, he’s resourceful, he’s a quick learner—it takes intelligence to rank as high as he does in tournaments, but he undervalues all of it. these traits are all to be expected, they don’t actually count as extraordinary when it’s him. they’re only remarkable when they’re being applied to something greater. jounouchi believes he has the potential to become strong (and valuable by extension), only with the stipulation that he’s never actually there yet. he focuses too much on his inadequacies, constantly pontificating on how he needs to become a “true duelist”, but by the way he speaks about the title, the only way to be a true duelist is be named yugi muto, i guess.

so it’s very jounouchi-esque for him to miss this point with near deliberate precision and try to make himself useful to kaiba anyway. while kaiba is bent on seeing jounouchi fail to prove that his cynicism is superior to jounouchi’s altruism, the inverse is that jounouchi sees his old self in kaiba and he’s dying to teach kaiba a lesson. during battle for bronze, jounouchi states that they used to be the same, people who only relied on themselves and thought they’d be fine living like that. the argument jounouchi makes is that living that way is fucking miserable. he calls kaiba out: you’re supposed to be having fun. why are you playing duel monsters if you’re not having fun? he’s trying to show kaiba that he can be useful and teach kaiba things if kaiba would just let him, but for reasons mentioned in both of their sections, kaiba isn’t interested in being taught anything.

while less malicious in display, it's important to note that jounouchi’s method of trying to teach kaiba doesn't make him the better person here. jounouchi isn’t coming from a place of understanding when he lectures kaiba, he’s coming from a place of misdirected self-flagellation. and from kaiba's perspective, jounouchi is just dispensing unwarranted advice for the sake of his own ego. the most egregious example is when jounouchi picks a fight with kaiba in duelist kingdom, demanding they duel when kaiba is clearly not in the mood, busy with more pressing matters like, i don’t know, trying to rescue his abducted brother? so, okay, maybe a little bit inconsiderate on jounouchi’s part.

they're two ideological extremes: kaiba lashes out at the world while jounouchi gives himself to it, and jounouchi will keep barging in on kaiba with his life lessons because it’s the only way he wants to engage with kaiba’s arguments otherwise. jounouchi interprets kaiba’s rejection of his ideals as the equivalent of the stubbornness jounouchi had before befriending yugi, and he uses it as a reason to keep pushing, not understanding that while he may have found the most honorable path for himself, you can imagine how constantly burning yourself for others isn’t very…appealing. or sustainable. and that maybe it’s something you need to work on, actually.

⠀

conclusion: how i WIN

what’s fun about jounouchi and kaiba is how wrong they are. they genuinely can't live the way the other demands them to, their respective environments won’t allow it. if jounouchi chased victory with the same cutthroat relentlessness as kaiba, he probably never would have left his gang. or, at least, he’d lose the selfless devotion and consideration he has for others, traits that helped him build his support system, and he never would have found the friendships he values in his life—his willingness to change and start again was how he was able to befriend yugi to begin with. (and if you wanted to get really extreme with hypotheticals, his self-destructive tendencies could have grown so severe in the absence of a support system that he probably would wind up getting himself killed somewhere. lol.) inversely, if kaiba granted himself the freedom to worry less about the outcome as long as he enjoyed himself, he’d put mokuba’s safety at constant risk. kaiba’s guarded nature isn’t without reason, there are powerful corporate executives who would love to see him fail, and there are very real consequences if kaiba slips up for even a second and gives his opposition any leeway. the way they live works for them because it’s theirs. it’s not so much that either of their lifestyles are in dire need of correction, but that the other represents the possibility that they could be living better.

and this is fantastic because it means that, despite what they think, neither of them are in the “wrong” and must learn to change their idiot ways or that the solution is to strong-arm each other into some kind of compromise. it’s a battle of perceived weakness. they need to, naturally and individually, accept that the traits they’ve always deemed immature and beneath them can be just as vital for survival, even when it’s not necessarily their own.

jounouchi and kaiba are essentially the most extreme example of two people who want what’s best for each other (gone wrong!) and puppyshipping is appealing because them getting together requires that they stop punishing themselves for who they used to be. they expect too much out of themselves and then inflict those demands onto each other, but if they’re not wrong for the ways they’ve overcome the circumstances they were left in, then it’s equally true that the ideals they abandoned to survive weren’t inherently naïve just because they weren’t given the space to utilize them. sometimes life will push you to your limits in the hope that you fail, and there’s no deeper meaning to it. it’s not life’s way of teaching you a necessary lesson to make you stronger or a test to see if you deserve to live, or that it’s your fault when it breaks you. sometimes there’s no great meaning to suffering. things happen, and you will adjust to it in order to live. when kaiba and jounouchi believe they know each other as much as they know themselves, pairing them is the hope that they’ll respect themselves enough to respect each other, that they’ll one day be able to embrace the parts of themselves they’re the most ashamed of.

(or, you know, for the alternative crowd, they most definitely can make each other worse.)

for two men who claim to be so self-assured in their own lifestyles, jounouchi and kaiba are fascinating because there’s so many layers of denial at play: the denial that they see anything in each other, denial that there may be aspects of the other that they’ve come to envy, denial that they even care, and it's so tempting to imagine if all of it was forced open. jounouchi and kaiba choose to maintain this delicate equilibrium where they never actually confront anything because the idea of admitting vulnerability viscerally disgusts them, and it begs what would happen if the balance irrevocably tipped for once. watching them is like watching a pencil teetering on the edge of a desk, always this close to some kind of breakthrough. i won’t even lie to you puppyshipping pisses me off half the time because i just want to shake them around until something metaphorically breaks.

kaiba and jounouchi never let each other become complacent in their pasts: whenever their personal tragedies and childhoods are brought up in the context of one another, it’s never because they are being vindicated for continuing to dwell in them, but because they are being contested on how much the mindsets they’ve carried over from their pasts should be allowed to determine their futures.

returning to canon, kaijou operates through the language of competition. jounouchi tries to prove himself as a competitor so remarkable that kaiba can no longer deny him, while kaiba already knows he’s remarkable, and that is precisely why acknowledging it pisses him off so much. so they’ll play their game: jounouchi will provoke kaiba into fighting him because he enjoys going up against challenging opponents in the hopes of becoming stronger, whereas kaiba keeps trying to set up situations where jounouchi will lose to the point of letting him die because he wants so badly to believe that losing does equal death and jounouchi’s existence is the most inconvenient counterargument of all. and obviously, jounouchi keeps not dying. and it's endlessly infuriating—almost slapstick at this point, that much to kaiba's frustration, no matter what he does, he can never make jounouchi submit for very long.

jounouchi and kaiba spur each other on to a ridiculous extent: kaiba enjoys pushing jounouchi past the breaking point, whereas jounouchi enjoys getting pushed to his limits to test his own capabilities. whether that’s necessarily a good thing though is…well…hmm. anyways.

their dynamic is the type of messiness only two prideful high schoolers can get up to. maybe it’s just kaiba's repression and jounouchi's recklessness, but there is a fascination with each other that they’re incapable of leaving alone. there’s intimacy in knowing someone so well and fearing that fact, but kaiba and jounouchi never respond to this fear by avoiding it—they’re engaging with it time and time again. they infuriate each other with a passion that never sits still. kaiba and jounouchi seek a validation from their counterpart while simultaneously denying each other from it, and it’s mean, but invigoratingly so.

at some point, it’s not even about wanting validation anymore, but point-blank wanting its keeper by any capacity: wanting a visible reaction to their effort as proof of reciprocation, proof that says “i’ve finally affected you just as much as you affect me.” because kaiba and jounouchi want to leave a mark on each other, they want their counterpart to fully understand how much they’ve affected them, and they want to witness that reaction themselves. it’s no longer this big, nebulous ideological debate with a reflection: the pull between them is made both physical and personal. so, like, not to go the trite route of arguing that two men who can’t stand each other were ~secretly attracted to each other this whole time~, but how else are you supposed to word this?

in some hypothetical universe where they do come together, even the ways they love manage to compliment each other in its own clumsy way. seto kaiba never does anything in moderation: if he hates something he will destroy it, if he loves something he will possess it, and if he is obsessed with something, he will single-mindedly pursue it at the expense of everything else. his repression manifests itself in a passion so pressurized it’s all-consuming against everything it comes to contact with. inversely, katsuya jounouchi loves freely and transparently: showing affection comes as naturally as breathing to him. he embodies the belief that love is not only about the grand gestures, but the day-to-day acts of warmth and casual acknowledgments that it's there. a man who wants to be wanted by someone so badly it aches paired with someone who makes no reservations as to what he's committed to, capable of a love so overwhelmingly insatiable that it is neither fickle nor delicate, and a man who finds the act of trusting others with his affection so unthinkably humiliating that he’s convinced himself it’s something beneath him paired with someone who makes it look infuriatingly easy. they are going to invent a new language to love each other with. i believe in them. i would not write two separate essays titled “here’s how puppyshipping can still win” if i did not believe in them.

ultimately, it feels cheap to build kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship off what life lessons they could "teach" each other reformation-style when they already have a legitimate dynamic in play. they can be good for each other, or they can tear into each other in ways they’d never expect to be capable of. there’s something exhilarating in knowing there’s someone who has that kind of power and wanting to keep them within your reach, a buzzing excitement in knowing someone who can not only withstand you at your worst, but fight back at you with twice as much vigor. sure, there’s potential for growth here, but that’s because there’s potential for literally anything.

kaiba and jounouchi inspire reinvention and self-determination from each other at the best of times and enable each other’s most self-destructive tendencies at their worst. so i think. puppyshipping is the most fun. when you ship them the same way you leave a fork in the microwave to watch it explode. the end.

TL;DR: me x the guy who keeps breaking my worldview and forces me to reevaluate myself every time i see him which i hate so much that i just want him to DIE

#puppyshipping #violetshipping #seto kaiba #joey wheeler #ship analysis #character study #not intended to convince anyone of anything this was a silly project to do on the side for MEEE #also i genuinely dont think any of the points i make are new #in my quest to be as holistic as possible and read every puppyshipping-adjacent meta analysis i could get my hands on #defense essays. criticism. livejournal blogposts #ive found several times that every point i make has already been made before in some kaijou 200k longfic posted in like 2011 #so if this essay is for ANYONE who isnt me.#its for the kaijou fic authors who have put in the work. god's strongest soldiers etc etc #actually. might reblog with an actual afterword citing my favorite ygo analysis i read in prep for this lol #i allude to a few of them in certain sections but i think youd have to be REALLY chronically online to notice #(coughing)#anyways special thanks to the friends who kindly beta read a document titled 'YAOI THESIS FINAL.docx'#fer + voski + cherry + sully + eric + cleo + gabby + chris + clover + vio #dear god i have inflicted this essay onto so many people #i love you.#you have enabled me and now we're all paying the price #yugioh

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mishasminion360 · 11 months

Text

Safe In My Arms

Ezra x fem!reader

Warnings: Language; light angst; feelings of insecurity; body dysmorphia; brief allusions to smut; hurt/comfort; fluff.

Summary: Ezra harbors a secret hatred for his absent arm, but his feelings come to a head when his newly acquired handicap fails to do the one task he vowed never to fail in: keep you safe from harm.

A/N: I’m back (but not necessarily better than ever). Sorry I’ve been MIA, folks. Between work and the stresses of daily life burnout hit hard and kicked all my creativity to the curb. But the summer has brought some much needed quiet and a little bit of recovery time, so I am slowly getting my groove back. I’ve got tons of new ideas, so let’s see how many I can get through before life gets in the way yet again 😊

A clean but savage scar. Puckered and pale flesh. A ghostly pain that haunts the vestiges of his dominant upper extremity; a banshee’s sorrowful wail that echoes throughout what remains of his blood and marrow.

He both admires and loathes the ruins of his appendage. Like the crumbling facades of lost civilizations and landmarks it is the brittle leftovers of something once great. At the time his right arm had seemed a necessary and middling sacrifice compared to his life, but away from the immediate threats of the toxic moon it’s become a piteous sight.

Ezra’s hands were his livelihood; his greatest strength. Without one where does that leave the other? In the quietest parts of his mind the darkest thoughts linger. Notions of weakness, inadequacy, and incompetency. He can no longer dig, he can no longer write, he can no longer please you with his touch.

Ah, you. You. You fault him nothing. You do not mourn his loss nor the resulting shortcomings. You do not look upon him with disdain or condolence. The initial sight of his drastically altered form prompted immediate shock, but the emotion fled your features as quickly as it had occupied them.

“Most of you came back to me. All the best parts of you returned,” you’d assured him. “You’re alive, you’re home, and that’s what matters.”

If you’re content then he will find a way to be as well. This new normal will take time; surely he will learn to adjust. Until then he will smile when he catches you looking. He will lie until it becomes truth.

***

Ezra is an artist in many ways. Any time he opens his mouth he paints you a picture with his words. He weaves sentences into daily conversation composed of words that most would never even think to utter, let alone heard of. He is a poet without even trying.

But he is a shitty actor.

You don’t miss the self-deprecating looks that ghost across his visage; the disgruntled mutterings of inwardly directed criticisms far below the standards of his lexicon. He hates what he’s become, though he hasn’t changed a bit. Not truly. An arm is nothing compared to a heart, to a soul.

He won’t let you see him cursing himself, so you don’t let him see that you’ve seen. When and if he’s ready to talk then you’ll be ready to listen. And until that moment comes you will carry on doing what you do best: loving him.

And nothing says “love” like baked goods.

You’d hypnotized him with your sweets when you’d first met; lured him to love like a witch with a house made of candy.

You’d just managed to fatten him up a little before he’d left for his excursion on the Green Moon. He’d lost that healthy weight and then some living off of rations and Kevva knows what else after being marooned. You had both been so dizzied by the overwhelming cocktail of surprise, relief, and bliss that had come with his sudden return that you hadn’t had a chance to celebrate him properly. Well, better late than never.

***

He pads into the kitchen just in time to see you pushing one of the rickety chairs from the dining table up to the cupboards and mounting it with a soft grunt of mild exertion. His heart seizes when the wood creaks.

“And just what are you doing up there, my supernova?”

Without granting him your full attention you respond. “I’m going to bake you a cake.”

“That is quite a precarious position in which one would craft a culinary delight, is it not?”

“I have to gather the ingredients first, wise guy.”

You lift yourself onto the tips of your toes and the chair wobbles to and fro.

“Nova, let me assist you,” he insists hastily. “Whatever you require from above I shall retrieve.”

“Nonsense,” you scoff. “I managed just fine while you were gone and I’ll manage now.”

He’s glad, for only a second, that your back is to him. You won’t see how deeply those words had cut him. But the effects of the unintentional slight are fleeting; any and all offense is cast aside when your toes curl over the edge of the chair and the motion proves to be disastrous.

The wobbling of the chair’s four unsteady legs reverberates up into your own extremities. The bag of flour you’d sought only now in hand, your body pitches to the right, and you have only a second to exhale a startled gasp before you are stumbling over the edge of the seat.

Ezra dives for you, hellbent on breaking your fall. His body sails toward yours as if pulled by a gravitational force. He reaches for you. He reaches for you with an arm that does not exist.

You drop through the space where there should have been a solid barricade of flesh and bone and strike the linoleum with a muffled thud. Your head bounces off the floor synchronously with the doomed bag of flour, which splits upon impact and showers the room in a white haze. Your cranium, by the grace of Kevva, remains intact.

“Ooooouch.” Somewhere in the middle your groan evolves into a laugh. “Well, now I feel stupid.”

And he feels….

“Supernova….are you alright?” First his upper extremities prove useless, now his lower ones are failing him as well. His legs nearly buckle as he kneels at your side to assess you for injury.

“I’ll survive,” you assure him. “The only thing wounded is my pride.”

He helps you up to the best of his ability before striding with purpose to the utility closet to fetch a broom. Wordlessly, he gets to work cleaning up the sea of loose powder flooding the kitchen floor. The silence that fills the room is as awkward as his movements. He’s struggling with the simple task that much is obvious, but he seems determined. The veins in the graceful slope of his neck pulse with effort.

“Ezra, let me—“

“I’ve got it, nova.”

“I made this mess with my foolishness, so I’ll clean it.”

“You just took a serious tumble, love. I can weather a simple snowstorm.”

“Ez, I don’t mind. Why don’t you—?”

“Dammit all! Don’t placate me like I’m some kind of invalid,” he shouts. He never raises his voice, speaks in harsh tones, or uses course language. Such things are beneath his beautifully woven vocabulary. “I may not be able to do much these days but I can manage a simple sweeping!”

You remain stoic in the wake of his outburst; any kind word you could dare to breathe may be horribly misconstrued. Instead you watch impassively has he continues his fumbling efforts, the mess never lessening, until finally he hurls the broom to the floor, the wooden handle colliding with a thunderclap.

He pounds his fist upon the countertop as his body vibrates with an anger you’ve never seen. Your lungs surrender the air they’d been harboring only when he at last sags under the weight of a heavy sigh.

“Forgive me, supernova. I did not mean to address you so barbarously.” Ezra’s voice rattles inside of his chest like a songbird dashing itself against the bars of its gilded cage.

“I know,” you answer gently.

“I just find myself….confounded by this new and unwanted deformity. I feel….beyond inadequate. I can no longer work efficiently to provide for us. I can not complete the most meager of household tasks.”

That delicate sparrow trembles within the clutch of his ribs. He’s white knuckling the edge of the sink.

“I can not protect you in this fragile and ruined state. I can not….I can not even hold you properly.”

You don’t need words to tell him just how wrong he is. With a commanding but gentle hand upon his shoulder you turn him to face you, taking his solitary arm and wrapping it snugly around your waist before melting into the wall of his chest.

“This works pretty well.”

You feel the huff of his breath against your hair as his chin meets the crook of your neck. His lips brush a bump on the back of your head that you hadn’t even realized was there until his kiss bruises the flesh.

“You would still have me this way, Nova?”

“Ezra, you are more than a pair of arms or legs or a body. All the most important parts of you came back to me.”

You press a kiss to his sternum, relishing the the quickening thump of one of those “most important parts” as it buzzes through your lips, each beat a gentle reminder that he is alive and home.

“So long as your beautiful spirit remains unchanged and unmarred, then you’ve lost nothing you can’t truly be without. The rest is just a bonus.”

A one-armed embrace proves more than enough. Ezra holds you just as close as he’d ever managed with two. Closer yet. He cradles you with more than just extremities.

“You are the only thing I can not bear to lose, nova. The one truly precious thing.”

“And you will never lose me,” you vow. “So long as you never lose yourself, you’ll never lose me.”

“I think, my love,” he whispers, “you got that backwards.”

@grimeylady @rav3n-pascal22 @mamacitapascal @insomniamama1 @pedrosbisch @emmaispunk @lv7867 @reonlouw @hawaiianmelodies @pascalsky @pascalpanic @heythere-mel @healingstardust @delorena @pedropasxal @caesaryoulater @fangirling-alert @fromthedeskoftheraven @axshadows @dragon-scales88 @spacepastel-blog @spideysimpossiblegirl @pbeatriz-blog @hauntedmama @mswarriorbabe80 @horton-hears-a-honk @wild-at-heart-kept-in-cage @a-trial-run-on-paper @oonajaeadira @foli-vora @dhadiirah @felicisimor @practicalghost @luz-introvertida @amneris21 @hb8301 @tanzthompson @littlemisspascal @dobbyjen @supernaturalgirl20 @alexxavicry @harriedandharassed @trickstersp8 @neganwifey25-blog @twistedboxy @emiemiemiii @energeticspookyshark @thevoiceinyourheadx @pedr0swh0r3 @anamiad00msday

#pedro pascal #ezra #prospect #angst #ezra and reader

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year

Text

North To The Future [Chapter 11: I Will Buy You A New Life]

The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, discussions of sex, sexual content, violence, this chapter has something you’ve been waiting for. 😏💚 (And some things you have definitely not been waiting for.)

Word count: 5.5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @hinata7346 @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @bearwithegg @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart @heliosscribbles @elsolario

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

No one knows what to say to you: not Heather when you return to the Jeep with Sunfyre in tow, not your parents when you walk into the hushed house littered with glass bottles and wayward appetizer crumbs. Sunfyre immediately begins assisting with the cleanup effort, sniffing around the couch and under the dining room table, licking up the delicacies he finds there. Your parents look at the golden retriever, look at you, look at each other.

“Um…I’ll drive Heather home,” your mom offers. She finishes the Earl Grey tea she’d been sipping, sets the cup in the kitchen sink, and grabs her keys. They depart into the night together, Heather giving you one last long, sympathetic glance. But still, she doesn’t know what to say. You haven’t told her what you found in Aegon’s apartment, but all the same she can read the horror of it on your face. And perhaps that is more truthful than mere words anyway, unbound by the restrictions of jagged consonants and the curves of vowels, lexicons, syntax, ink.

In the silence, in the sunless dawn of the new millennium, your dad studies you, red dress and mascara-stained face and shoulders limp. He asks tentatively, like stepping through a minefield: “How long will Sunfyre be staying with us?”

“Forever.”

“Okay.” He nods, understanding. He doesn’t need to know the details. Addiction wears many faces—masks it peels off and discards until it finds the flavor you like best, the one that can knot itself around your throat—but its soul is always the same, grave-cold and grasping. “I’m sorry about Aegon. I’m sorry that you had to find out what this feels like.”

“He’s leaving. It’s over.”

Your dad smiles, profoundly sad, dreadfully patient. “I’ve heard that before.”

You’re so heartbroken and ashamed that you can’t meet his eyes. Jessie died twenty years ago, and now it’s all come back around again. He must feel like he’s seeing ghosts.

Your dad sits down at the dining room table, sighing deeply, rubbing his forehead with his thumbs. And he’s not talking about Aegon anymore. “I’ll never stop living in that man’s shadow. I know it. Your mother knows it. It’s not something we’ve ever discussed, but it’s there. And I can’t even resent her for it, because she would forget him if she could. I fully believe that. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me and the life we’ve built together. But it does mean there’s a part of her that will always be somewhere else. In another room, in another time. And I wonder sometimes…if there is an afterlife, if there is a cosmic Round Two where we all meet up someplace with harps and angels and cities made of clouds…who she will be standing with.”

The terror is overwhelming. Does it never end? This pain, this longing, this irrational hope? You wonder if there’s any cure for what you’re feeling. You wonder if your dad was ever some tedious, try-hard jock that your mom avoided at bars and parties.

“I know it hurts,” your dad says. “I know it hurts like hell. But I think it’s better if you can end things sooner rather than later. Because I imagine that once you start loving someone like that”—someone brilliant, someone broken—“it’s very difficult to stop.”

It’s too late, you know. You smooth the bloodlike satin of your dress, trying not to start sobbing again. It’s too fucking late.

“Jesse used to do things like that.” Remarkably, there is still anger in your dad’s voice: rusty, treacherous, decades-old anger. “He would make plans and make promises, and then your mother would be sitting there waiting with a suitcase and he’d act like it never happened. I don’t know if he really forgot or if he had to pretend he did because he’d blown all the money. And then of course he’d apologize and promise to make it up to her, buy her flowers, pour her tea. He was always saying they’d go to London together. They never did. They never got out of Alaska.”

The tea, you think, dismayed. The Earl Grey tea. Just like Aegon’s hot chocolate. It’s like looking at yourself in a mirror. It’s enough to drive someone insane. “I need to go to bed now,” you say, your words weak and splintering.

“Okay. Okay, ladybug.” He looks sorry, like he knows he’s said too much. He gets up to hug you goodnight. He’s immense and warm and strong, yet careful, yet benign, yet so palpably ordinary.

Why can’t I fall in love with someone like you, Dad? Why can’t I be happy here?

He helps you put out food and water for Sunfyre, and when you volunteer to gather up some of the trash in the living room he adamantly refuses. You climb the staircase in the high heels you hardly ever wear, your skull flooded with unwelcome reminders. Aegon was supposed to be here with me. In my house, in my room, in my bed. Now he’s nowhere. And he’ll never touch me again.

In your bedroom mirror, you stare at your reflection. You can’t explain it, but you don’t look like yourself. The red woman in the silvery glass is not self-possessed or pragmatic or wise. She is a frayed thread, and she is desperately, irrevocably sad. You step out of your heels. You unzip the back of your dress. And before you take it all the way off—Aegon was supposed to do that part—you tear the magazine cutout of the Mustang convertible flying down the Pacific Coast Highway off the mirror. You rip it in half over and over again until it is a flurry of unidentifiable scraps on the floor. You think of how you have never acted selfishly, never acted irresponsibly. You think of how far that dedication has gotten you. Not far enough. Nowhere near far enough.

You are trembling with exhaustion and fury. Your eyes hurt, your ankles hurt, you hurt in places so deep you can’t name them. You think of all the things about Aegon you were willing to overlook and how vanishingly little he could give you in return. You want him here, and because he’s made that impossible you want revenge; you want him to feel as viciously, nauseatingly betrayed as you do. You want to do something he could never forgive. You want to knock his memory out of you like the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

She’s hoping in time that her memories will fade.

You see it in a sudden, scarlet vision: how enraged Aegon was when he thought you had slept with Trent, how he tensed up every time Trent touched you, how he didn’t want you to be alone with him. You see how Trent has been throwing himself at you—like a skydiver out of an airplane—in a way that is somehow both frightening and shamelessly pitiful. You had once told Aegon that Trent didn’t want you dead. I know, Aegon had replied. He wants you to be his wife.

You pick up the phone on your nightstand, and then you pause. Can I do this? Can I really?

You couldn’t yesterday, and you probably won’t be able to tomorrow. But right now…

You dial the number for Trent’s apartment across town. He answers on the second ring. “Sup?”

“Hi, it’s me. Are you busy?”

“Hey!” There’s a boisterous grin in his voice. “Nah, not at all. You need something? Are your parents rearranging the living room furniture again?”

“I don’t need anything, but I’d like something.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

“What you’ve been waiting for.”

Stilted, silent seconds tick by as he puzzles it out. “For real?” He’s ecstatic, yet circumspect.

“For real.”

“Why? I mean, I’m not complaining, maybe I shouldn’t be asking questions, maybe I should just be sprinting for my truck, but I’m…uh…you changed your mind?”

“It’s not a marriage proposal, Trent,” you tell him. “It’s not a date. I just want to start out 2000 the right way.” Without Aegon. Without any threads still connecting me to him.

“Hell, I’ll take that,” he says, chuckling.

“You have to come here though. It has to be at my house.” Where your parents are just a few rooms away. Where Trent will have to be the best possible version of himself.

If he was really the Ice Fisher, why would he have saved Aegon from the channel? Why would he have been so unabashed about his anger, his strength, his size 12 boots? This killer is quiet, strategic, invisible. That’s the only way he’s managed to murder five people without getting caught. Perhaps Trent really does lack the requisite subtlety…the requisite intellect, to be perfectly blunt about it. But then who else could it be? Who the fuck could it be?

“Totally. On my way now.” Trent hangs up.

When he arrives, your parents are still downstairs cleaning up after the New Year’s Eve party. They greet him warmly and (seemingly) without much surprise. He flips his hair and offers to lift the couch so they can get the bottles that have rolled underneath. They gratefully accept. Small talk and festive merriment are exchanged, and you marvel at how seamlessly Trent blends into this family, into this house, into Juneau; he was made for Alaska. It’s in his strapping muscles and lumbering bones. It’s in his claustrophobically small mind. And then you lead him upstairs.

You don’t waste any time talking. Already you’re losing your nerve, already you have a voice surfacing in the choppy waves of your mind like a drowning man: You don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do this, you know you don’t want to do this. You tug off Trent’s blazer, button-up shirt, and khakis and shoo him onto the bed. Then you take off everything that you’d put on for Aegon, back when the Alaska Standard Time Zone was still living in the dark dwindling hours of 1999.

You’re in control the whole time because you don’t trust Trent to be. You don’t want him to be. You don’t even want to think about him. It feels like nothing. There’s no moment to get lost in, because it’s not a moment at all. It’s just logistical adjustments and premeditated reactions and flesh, heavy, crushing, bumping, artless flesh. Your thoughts are far from this room, drastically far. You hope Aegon drives by in the morning and spots Trent’s truck in the driveway, or he hears about it, or he reads it in the straightforward, chiseled lines of Trent’s face next time he sees him. You hope it digs its razored claws into him and never lets go. You hope it fucking destroys him.

As soon as it’s over you get into the shower and scrub off every remnant of what you’ve done. You regret it immediately. Aegon shattered any chance the two of you had and you ended it, so you don’t know why this feels so much like infidelity; perhaps because the reality of it is less like betraying Aegon and more like betraying yourself. In the foggy bathroom mirror, you notice that Trent left a darkening violet bruise on the side of your neck. You don’t even remember him doing it. You were so far away from him: miles away, years away, in the ambiguous future, in the lurking past. You can’t stand the thought of sleeping next to Trent. You suggest he claims the living room couch instead, complete with fresh sheets and several spare pillows. He gamely agrees.

You are optimistic that Trent will be long gone by the time you wake up. But when you venture downstairs at just before noon on New Year’s Day, you find him in the kitchen making breakfast with your parents, flipping pancakes and turning bacon and whistling along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers song that spills from your dad’s record player: not Scar Tissue this time, but Otherside.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Monday, January 10th when the green Nova skates into the vet clinic parking lot and slides to a slippery rest across three different spaces. As the engine dies, the song that was blaring is cut short: I Will Buy You A New Life by Everclear. Aegon steps out under the fading midday sun, almost falls on the ice, traverses slowly and cautiously towards the entrance.

“Oh no, not him!” Jennifer laments. You rush back into the exam room and slam the door.

You haven’t seen Aegon since New Year’s Eve, but you knew he hadn’t left Juneau. You’ve spied the Nova parked outside his apartment building, and Heather has run into him around town: the Foodland, the Gas ‘N Go, Ursa Minor. And then there are the phone calls. He left fifteen messages before your dad picked up and politely asked him to stop calling. Then he started putting notes in the moose-shaped mailbox.

You can hear Jennifer telling Aegon to leave. She must not be very persuasive. He bursts through the exam room door and closes it behind him. He’s wearing all black—parka, turtleneck sweater, jeans, combat boots—and his white-blond hair slicked back from his face. It gives the impression that he has no distractions, no secrets. You are suddenly acutely aware of your own, your skin crawling everywhere Trent touched you. The bruise on your neck has vanished, but the memory of it is still trapped there, heavy and scorching like shame.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” you say coldly.

“Then you should have picked up the phone.” Aegon throws it down on the metal exam table: not a thick, neatly-sealed envelope but a lump of mismatched crumpled cash—ones, fives, tens, twenties—knotted together with several rubber bands.

“What is that?”

“It’s your half of the money for the San Diego trip.”

“How—?”

“I picked up every shift I could and I sold the necklace.”

“You sold it? Permanently? It’s gone?”

“It’s gone,” he agrees. He looks good. He looks more than good: the shadows under his eyes are almost nonexistent, his skin is bright and healthy, he’s even standing taller. He moves so he’s not blocking the door, so you have an escape if you want it. You don’t leave. You wish you wanted to, but you don’t. You just don’t. “It doesn’t matter. It was the last thing I had from home, it was time for me to let go of it anyway. That was my insurance policy for anytime I needed quick cash…I’ve probably pawned it fifty times in the past six years. But this was important.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you say. “I told you I wanted you to leave Juneau and I meant it.”

He searches your face, his eyes blue and clear and wide. “You didn’t mean it.”

“I did,” you insist, lying.

“Look, I’m…” He presses a palm to his chest. He glances down at your right arm, then comes back to your face. “I am so, so sorry that you had to see me that way. I’m sorry for what happened. But it’s not going to happen again.”

“I don’t believe you. And I’m not interested in making plans and sacrificing so they can be a reality and then waiting around to see if you ever show up.”

“I’ll show up,” he swears. His gaze flicks down to your arm again.

“What are you looking at?”

He doesn’t reach for your forearm. Instead, he points to his own. “I remember grabbing your arm, but I don’t know how rough I was.”

“Oh. No, it’s fine. You didn’t hurt me. I don’t think it even left a mark.”

He exhales, relieved. “Good.”

There is a lull that is quiet and still but not awkward. You can hear the clock ticking on the wall, miserably prophetic. The way I feel about him hasn’t changed, you realize with disbelief. I still want him in a way that is helpless, all-consuming. I still love him.

“What happened was a mistake,” Aegon says, slowly and with great effort. “But it wasn’t random.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“This isn’t going to make any sense to you, it’s going to sound insane. But I don’t like New Year’s Eve.”

“Well I don’t like having a heroin addict boyfriend.”

“I’m not a heroin addict.” His voice is sharp and forceful, but not cruel. “It was a momentary relapse, I detoxed on my couch, I’m fine now.”

“Why don’t you like New Year’s Eve?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

You scoff bitterly. “More lies?”

“Not lies,” Aegon says. “Secrets. I haven’t lied to you.”

“Yes, you have. You said you’d be there.”

He shows you the palms of his hands, empty. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I want this,” Aegon says determinedly. “I’m not ready to give up on this. I want you back.”

“Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you just jet off to some new city and resume sleeping your way through the eligible bachelorettes of the world and then maybe I could try to move on, maybe I could—”

“Because you ruined me!” he shouts. “Because I used to be that guy who didn’t care, I used to be able to be content with meaningless replaceable flings and now I’m this idiot who doesn’t even see other women. I tried to replace you. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even invite a girl to come home with me, it was all too goddamn sad. I’ve been with one other person since I met you, and that’s Kimmie, and it’s been over for weeks, and you knew about it the entire time, and that was nothing like it is with you. I don’t want anyone else. I’ve forgotten how to want anyone else. I don’t know how you managed that. I don’t understand what kind of black magic you have swimming around in your blood, but whatever it is worked on me. I’m hooked, baby. I’m fucking hooked. I’ll do whatever you want to make this work, just name it. Please just name it. I’m giving you the money back to show you that I’m sorry and that I know I messed up. But I still want to go to San Diego with you. Hell, I’d go anywhere with you. I’d go to Omaha fucking Nebraska if that was the place you’d dreamed of, the place you hung pictures of on your bedroom mirror. I want you back.”

You don’t have to say that you want him too. Aegon can read it on your face, can see the fight bleeding out of you like the sea at low tide. He’s going to find out about Trent, you think with ice-cold dread. Sooner or later, he’s going to find out and he’s going to lose his goddamn mind. Since he left your house on New Year’s Day, you’ve avoided Trent. What Heather said must have made quite the impression, because he hasn’t tried to pressure you into inviting him over again; he has given you a wide berth of space, passing waves and smiles but no demands. Still, he has this glow. He thinks that night was a stepping stone to something more. He thinks he’s got a real shot now, and he’s basking in the gilded potential of it. I made such a mistake. It feels like everything I do now is a mistake.

“And besides, even if I was willing to go, I can’t leave yet,” Aegon says. In explanation, he looks to the flier on the wall, the one with the shadowy red-eyed specter in a trench coat. Report suspicious activity immediately! Beware of strangers! Help keep Juneau safe! The sixth and seventh victims were pulled out of Crystal Lake three days ago: a couple this time, newly engaged, mid-thirties, snatched while they were hiking in the Tongass National Forest. No one died while Aegon was in the hospital, you think randomly, vaguely. Is that a coincidence? Or is that a clue?

“Aegon, how could you possibly protect me from the Ice Fisher when you’re passed out drunk at night? Or when you’re working on a boat out in the channel, or when you’re singing rock songs at Ursa Minor? You can’t follow me around all the time. And honestly, I think if the killer really wanted me, he could probably get rid of you too.”

“If I leave and I find out later that something happened to you…that maybe, somehow, things might not have gone that way if I’d stayed, that the dominoes could have fallen in a different pattern…I’ll feel responsible. And I’d never recover from that.”

His tattoo flashes in your mind like high-beams: I’m a killer. It’s a strange thing to get inked just above your heart, even if it is a Johnny Cash lyric. It’s a little too dark. It’s a little too real. “Okay,” you hear yourself tell Aegon. “You can stay, I guess.”

“Great. Also, I need my dog back.”

“He’s happy where he is.”

“I don’t doubt that. But he’s mine, and I need him.” And when you hesitate, he adds: “If you’re so worried about Sunfyre, I would encourage you to stop by any time you’d like to check on him. And me too, obviously.” He takes his keyring out of his pocket and slips off the spare key for his apartment. Then he holds it out to you, a sliver of gold in his palm. You consider the key for a long time before you take it.

“Fine. I’ll bring him over in a few days if you’re still sober. Well…your version of sober.”

“Deal,” Aegon says. “You haven’t been at Ursa Minor recently.”

“Yes. Because I didn’t want to see you.”

Aegon shrugs, his hands in the pockets of the black parka you gave him. “Maybe you’ve changed your mind about that. Maybe you’ll show up tonight. I hope you will.”

You can’t decide how to reply. Aegon leaves while you’re still mulling it over, a vast silence stretching out between you like the void between stars.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your parents don’t want you driving alone at night. They convince you to carpool with Heather, a prospect which elates her. “You’re finally leaving the house?!” she exclaims when you call, the vibrations of her voice shrill in the phone receiver. “You’re finally going to be kind of fun again?! Hold on, hold on. I’m just sending a quick mental thank you to sweet baby Jesus. And Buddha, and Allah, and Brahma, and Thor.”

“Odin’s the king of the Norse gods.”

“Bitch,” Heather says gleefully, and hangs up.

When her Chevy Suburban rolls into Ursa Minor’s parking lot—the night indigo and starless, the ochre streetlights dim—Heather kills the engine and opens the driver-side door. Frigid wind gusts into the cabin. She glances back, realizes you haven’t even unbuckled your seatbelt, and pulls her door shut again.

“What?” she asks.

You look at her, miserable and mortified. “I made a mistake.”

“Yeah, you wore that ugly fucking grandma sweater instead of something hot.”

“No, Heather,” you whisper, tears brimming in your eyes. “I really made a mistake.”

She is concerned, mystified. “What did you do?”

“I slept with Trent.”

“You what?” She blinks. “You what?!”

“I called him after the New Year’s Eve party.” You speak quickly, like tearing a bandage from a weeping, still-inflamed wound. “I was upset and I wasn’t thinking clearly and I asked him to come over. It was horrible. He doesn’t seem to know it was horrible, but it was for me. I mean, he wasn’t aggressive or anything, he didn’t do anything wrong, he just…he wasn’t who I really wanted.”

“He wasn’t Aegon,” Heather says quietly.

“Right.” You swipe away the tears that escape down your cheeks. “And now Aegon’s going to find out. I know he is. At first I wanted him to because I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to hurt him as badly as possible. But I don’t feel that way anymore. And I can’t take it back. Trent thinks I like him and Aegon is going to hate me and I’m…I’m just…” You break down sobbing, covering your face with your hands. “I’m just so fucking stupid. My entire life I had meticulous plans and I checked every box and now I’m this fragile, illogical, aimless, stupid loser who can’t manage to hold on to anything she wants. I can’t fix myself and I can’t fix anyone else either.”

“So you fucked up,” Heather says casually. She’s not really casual, but she’s doing a good job of making it seem like she is. “So you slept with the wrong person or said the wrong thing or made a wrong choice, or two wrong choices, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand. Who hasn’t fucked up? I have, Joyce has, Kimmie definitely has. So what? It’s not like you killed somebody. You learned from it. You’ll be a better person in the future. Regret is a useless, poisonous emotion. It’s something evolution should have bred out of us eons ago. You don’t have to carry this weight around forever. You can let yourself bury it.”

Under the dim, yellowish streetlight luminescence like a sepia photograph, you give her a weak smile. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I love you.” And then you add, so she knows you’re okay: “Bitch.”

Heather laughs. “Let’s go get you drunk. Bitch.”

You hurry together to the front door, braced in hats and parkas against the wind. Inside, it is odd to see Ursa Minor stripped of all its Christmas decorations. The multicolored lights have been taken down, the ornaments removed from the taxidermy deer heads. From Dale’s stereo soars Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One. You hear Heather’s boots squeal on the hardwood floor as she stops dead, and then you see him too: jet black suit, spidery limbs, long silvery hair that is not unruly or tangled but pin-straight. He’s sitting at the bar with his back to you. The fingers of his right hand—elegant, willowy, uncalloused—are closed around a frosty Caipirinha.

“Oh my god,” Heather breathes. “There’s two of them. The Greek boys.”

If Aegon knows he’s been found, he’ll leave. And only now can you feel the true, unmitigated devastation of it. Had you really told him to leave Juneau just ten days ago? Had that really been you? No no no no no no. He can’t leave. He can’t leave.

“Don’t talk to him,” you order Heather in a whisper, then bolt to the usual booth. Kimmie, Brad, Joyce, and Rob are already there, eyes startled and darting from you to the stranger at the bar. “Kimmie, do you still remember Aegon’s phone number?”

“Huh? Yeah, um, I think so.”

“Here.” You root around in your purse for loose change and press several quarters into her palm. “Take this. Find a payphone outside. Call him and tell him not to come to Ursa Minor tonight.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t understand, but she’s obedient. Brad goes with her. When they open the front door, the stranger at the bar glances over to make sure no one new has arrived. That Aegon hasn’t. Because this is exactly where he’d be.

Another wave of horror crashes through you. He knows Aegon so well. We’re in such fucking trouble here.

As Dale finishes serving locals at the other end of the bar and returns to his section, the stranger begins asking him something. You have to shut it down; you have to stop Dale from telling the stranger that Aegon lives in an apartment building just down the street. You can see it from Ursa Minor’s parking lot. It’s a distance that could be closed in ten minutes.

You go to the bar and sit immediately beside the stranger. Dale—seemingly relieved—excuses himself, but not before raising his eyebrows at you. Crazy world, right ladybug? that look says. He sets an apple Bacardi Breezer on the counter and is gone. The stranger turns to you, and your jaw falls open before you can stop yourself; the gasp hisses free.

The stranger smiles, like he’s caught you in a lie. The right side of his face is pristine: angular, regal, beautiful in a way that is gem-rare. The left is bisected by a scar, gnarled and old. His left eye is gone. The scraps of his lids are ragged. In the useless, gutted socket is a gleaming sapphire stone, like what the ocean looks like in the pictures you’ve seen of California. “You must know my brother.”

I have to distract him. I have to get rid of him. “Oh yeah. Totally. He talked about you and Helaena all the time.”

The stranger’s lips curl into a sly smile. “Even he forgets about Daeron.”

Aegon, Helaena, Daeron…and at least one more sibling. This one. The determined one, the capable one. You don’t know what to say; you give him a vague smirk in return. The bells on the door jingle as Kimmie and Brad scurry back inside, cold wind chasing them and clawing at their hair. Kimmie shakes her head at you. No luck, she means. Aegon didn’t answer. Probably because he’s already on his way here. The stranger notices this exchange. He notices just about everything. And there’s no way for you to tell Kimmie or Heather what you need from them without him knowing. To stop Aegon from coming here. To stop him from being caught.

The stranger offers you his hand. “Aemond Targaryen,” he introduces himself. “Targaryen Enterprises.” His voice is unlike anything you’ve ever heard: low but soft, effortlessly dignified, beckoning you to lean in closer. Aside from the shade of his hair, he is very little like Aegon. He is tall and precise, every movement purposeful. Aegon slouches and flops and makes dramatic, unrestrained gestures; this man is a sculpture of marble and blue. This man is a work of art.

You shake his hand—cool and smooth—and tell him your name. “But Aegon always called me Appletini.”

“Appletini? Like the drink?”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, that sounds like him.” His eye sweeps over you. What he asks next doesn’t sound like a question at all. It sounds like a command. “Where is he.”

“Gone,” you say, perhaps too quickly. “He left last week. He’s in Chicago now. You’re a little too late.”

Again, Aemond smiles. He sips his Caipirinha. “Hm.”

The front door opens. You and Aemond both whirl towards the clanging metal bells. Aegon shuffles inside; he’s beaming, he’s humming brightly. He drags his boots on the doormat, kicking off most of the snow. And then he looks up. His face goes entirely blank; his eyes are mindless and panicked like a trapped animal’s, iron jaws snapping shut with such force they crack bone. A second passes, two, three. Then Aegon spins around and sprints out of the bar.

“Aegon!” you shout.

Aemond knocks his Caipirinha off the counter as he leaps to his feet and races after him; glass and lime slices spew across the floor. You follow Aemond as closely as you can, running out into the frigid darkness, your boots slipping on ice and crunching through mounds of snow. Aegon makes it a hundred yards up the street before his brother catches him. Aemond grabs the hood of Aegon’s parka, yanks him backwards, slams him face-first into a green Dodge Ram that is parked on the shoulder. Blood gushes from Aegon’s nose and splatters against the truck’s icy window. His lower lip is split; his eyes will blacken. He struggles futilely.

“Let me go—!”

“Six years!” Aemond seethes, pinning Aegon to the truck by his throat. “Six Christmases, six birthdays, six Januarys since you left and not a single phone call, no letters, no postcards, no emails, nothing, and who had to be there to comfort our mother? Who had to be there trying to convince her that you weren’t an unclaimed body on a slab in a morgue somewhere?!”

“You’re all better off without me,” Aegon moans, his skin stained red. Aemond smashes his face against the truck again.

“Stop it!” you shriek.

“You don’t get to leave,” Aemond growls at his brother. “You don’t get to abandon your responsibilities.”

“I won’t go back,” Aegon wheezes. “You can break every bone I’ve got, but I won’t go back. If you kill me, you can take me home in a box, I guess. But that’s the only way I’m going.”

Aemond shoves him away, disgusted. His brother sinks down into the snow, groaning, feeling his face with trembling hands to assess the damage. “I saved you,” Aemond says with cold, black fury. “I saved your life and you’re just throwing it away.”

“She doesn’t know,” Aegon rasps, his voice choked with blood. “Let me tell her. It should be me. Please don’t say anything. Please let me be the one to tell her.”

Now Aemond turns to you, as if suddenly remembering you’re there. His remaining eye narrows. He is deeply, genuinely perplexed; you’re a brand new species, you’re a comet that hasn’t clipped by Earth in a millennium. He says to Aegon, still looking at you: “Your type must have changed.”

“No, my type is still groupies and strippers,” Aegon replies, and spits a mouthful of blood into the snow. “I just fell in love with this girl.”

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