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yoonpobs · 3 years

Note

Omg requests are open AAAHHH

may i request an oblivious oc and tsundere yoongi who likes holding oc's hands and idk like maybe oc thinks it's bc his hands are cold and his friends make fun of him and oc only realizes yoongi likes her when they spill his secret

as a yoongi stan, this is my guilty pleasure and this absolutely KILLED ME ily for asking this 🤣and double update today???? who am I?????

hope you enjoy this v fluffy and v yoongi piece <3

pairing: tsundere!yoongi x oblivious&clumsy!oc

genre: FLUFFFFFFFFFFFFF

warnings: lots of squealing into ur pillow moments. taehyung, jimin & jin being the saviours tbh

words: 3, 136

Yoongi is staring at you like you spilt milk over his favourite pair of sneakers and you have no idea what to make of it.

“Uh …” You drag, blinking up at him with wide eyes when all he does is level you with a blank stare.

You can hear the distinct chatter of your friends in the background, likely already having their go skating around the rink. They always left you and Yoongi alone, for whatever reason it may be. But you weren’t complaining, you wanted to give him your gift in private!

But when Yoongi only stares at the mass of knit in your palms as you hold it out to him, you can only feel your ears flush an embarrassing shade of red at the subtle gesture of rejection.

Yoongi was by no means a malicious person, but he was very clear-cut. He was straightforward and it was definitely one of his qualities that you admired the most about him. His ability to mitigate any situation, or look at things objectively was something that you struggled with for the most part of your life. Which is why some people would mistake him for cold or uncaring, but you knew better.

“Do you … do you not like it?” You ask meekly, eyes darting everywhere but his as they continue to stare you down.

Yoongi doesn’t say a word. Instead, he grabs your hands with his larger palm where your gift lays and observes it, scrutinises it as if he’s there to pick apart any stray strand of yarn. His hand, despite his exterior, is soft and gentle when he holds you; and your brain short-circuits for a good five seconds when he traces a thumb over your knuckles.

“It’s cute.” He shrugs.

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion. Your eyes dart down to your hands and somehow you find them in a familiar position. His fingers intertwined with yours and his palm engulfing yours entirely.

“T-Then why don’t you—” You try to pull away, making an effort to dangle your hand-woven mittens in front of him in hopes of attracting his appeal towards it.

But he doesn’t even bat an eye, just sighs and squeezes your hand tighter.

“I’m holding your hand.” He says pointedly, shooting you a serious stare.

You stutter for a response, and despite the chill in the air you hope he can allude to the redness of your cheeks a result of the wind that blows past you and not the flustered state you find yourself in when he tugs your body closer to his.

You suppose you found a bad spot to give him the mittens because you nearly stumble into his chest at how wobbly you are on skates. You planned his gift for weeks, fully aware that your group of friends was intending on coming to ice-skate.

“I’m really bad at ice-skating. I’ll just slow you down.” You huff with a frown, still attempting to tug your hand away.

Yoongi rolls his eyes, “I literally don’t care.”

You gape at his bluntness and scowl when he only offers you a lazy smirk. His hand is still tightly wrapped around your own, and you sigh, knowing that it was hopeless to fight against Yoongi when he was far stronger than you were.

“I can skate with Tae or something, he and I are pretty much—“

“No.” Yoongi blinks.

You splutter, “E-Excuse—?”

He snatches the mittens from your other hand and shoves them into his pocket. The action is so quick that you can barely register the way Yoongi is tugging your forehead as you flounder on your feet, already feeling unstable at the way the ice is set on making you fall.

But Yoongi is there like he always is, and he rests a gentle palm on your waist and shoots you a rare and soft smile that makes your heart weak.

“I’ll teach you.” He says it like it’s obvious, “Just hold my hand.”

“Yoongi, I really don’t think—” You weakly protest when he pulls you closer until you’re nestled comfortably by his side, his face set forward as he blatantly ignores you.

“Stop being so stubborn and hold on tight.” He scolds, squeezing your hand when he feels your fingers loosen its grip.

You pout, your other hand patting your cheek in hopes of easing the burning of your cheeks.

Lest to say, you are horrid at ice-skating and you wished you stayed home.

Your two left feet was probably the least interesting thing about you, yet it was the one thing that left a lasting impression on the people you’ve met. Whether it be because you tripped up a flight of stairs as you rushed to your next lecture, or if you accidentally torpedoed into a bush while you were attempting to penny

“How are you even real?” He huffs, fingers intertwined tightly with your own. You’re grateful he has a lethal grip on you because you don’t think you’re ready to be doused in ice, even if it was at your own accord.

“I’m sorry!” You whine, hand still clasped with his.

Yoongi doesn’t let go, even if you’re stable on your feet. He never does. He only holds your hand tighter, grumbling something about your clumsiness as he uses his spare hand to adjust the strap of his bag over his shoulders. When he shoots you a look, you feel very much like a scolded child as you pout up at his narrowed eyes.

“What would you do if I wasn’t holding your hand, huh?” He laments, eyes rolling while he tugs you towards the direction of your friends who have somehow all gathered at the corner of the rink.

You stare at your feet, tittering to keep up with his long strides as he keeps the hold on your hand firm.

“Look, I don’t ask to be swept away—!” You retort petulantly, but Yoongi completely ignores you as he squeezes your hand in response, right as he stops in front of your friends.

You’re still sulking when Yoongi doesn’t let go, shooting you a look that has you pursing your lips shut.

“Lovely for the two of you to join us,” Jimin snorts.

Yoongi doesn’t say anything, but you miss the lethal glare he shoots at your mutual friend.

“I’m sorry that my skating skills can’t keep up with you,” You huff.

You see Jin’s eyes dart down to your intertwined hands, before looking up; a knowing smirk on his face that you can’t decipher.

“Seems like Yoongi has it all settled.” He snickers, nudging Jimin by the side.

You can feel Yoongi roll his eyes next to you, even if you pout at Jin’s words.

“At this rate, I think you’re basically joined by the hands,” Jimin says smugly.

You blink.

“She’ll fall,” Yoongi says blankly.

“Look, I said I’d skate with Tae but he’s so adamant!” You cry.

Yoongi shoots you a dry glare, before briefly releasing your hand. You splutter for a second, surprised at the sudden coldness that engulfs your grip and the emptiness that you feel when he no longer has his fingers intertwined with your own.

“What—?” You furrow your brows but Yoongi pats you on the hand to ease your confusion.

“I’m getting you hot chocolate. Your hands are freezing.” He murmurs, and to prove his point; he grabs your fingers and rubs soothing circles on your knuckles to provide you with any warmth he could.

If your hands weren’t warm, then your cheeks definitely were. You couldn’t hold eye contact with Yoongi because he was staring at you so intently that you may have been the one to melt into a puddle on the ice.

“But the mittens—!” You call, but he’s already skating away to the confectionary stand where they sell hot chocolate.

You sigh, dejected as you frown. Did he really hate the mittens that much?

“You are so stupid.” Jin gawks at you with a shake of his head.

You turn your head so fast that you nearly fall over, but Jimin’s grip on your wrist prevents you from doing so.

“And clumsy, God, no wonder hyung won’t let you go.” He scolds.

You frown, “Hey! What the hell is up with the slander?” You whine.

Taehyung stumbles into the conversation, quite literally almost smashing his body against the divider but he manages to balance himself by gripping the hell out of Jin’s shoulders.

“You deserve it,” He sticks his tongue out as you gape at him.

“What?! Why?” You hiss, “You literally just entered the conversation!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes, “And I’ve had to see you and hyung doddle around each other for ages so spare me the fucking brain cells because clearly, you need it more than I do.”

“What—?” You splutter.

“You are literally the densest person on this planet.” Jin blinks.

“What are you guys even talking about?” You cry.

Jimin shoots you a dry look, willing the God’s above to give you a semblance of rationality or logic to put two and two together.

“The hand-holding? The constant going out of his way to do things for you? The fact that you’re the only person he’ll ever smile at even if you do the dumbest shit ever?” Taehyung exasperates.

You blink.

“It’s winter and his fingers get really cold—!”

Jin groans, tugging at his hair in frustration.

“No, you idiot! Yoongi literally doesn’t get cold. He’s the human equivalent of a furnace! He literally doesn’t give a shit if he freezes to death. The only reason why he ever holds your hand is that he wants to!” He yells, grabbing you by the shoulder as he shakes your body while you stare up at him with wide eyes.

Does that mean—?

“He hates the mittens?” You cry, face crumbling.

You see Taehyung, Jimin and Jin’s face fall as they all share a look of disbelief.

“I’m sorry but I have no way to defend you.” Jimin blinks.

“I just wanted to do something nice for him! He’s always taking care of me and I thought knitting him a pair of mittens would help with the cold …” You mumble, eyes darting down to your feet as your voice trails off into a whisper.

“Okay, I know I promised hyung I wouldn’t say anything until she figured it out herself but I can’t take it anymore.” Taehyung seethes to the other boys.

Your eyes dart up, furrowing in confusion as Jimin and Jin’s eyes widen at Taehyung’s statement.

“Figured what—?”

“Dude, Yoongi is going to kill you,” Jin warns.

Taehyung scoffs, “Like I give a shit. I’m losing brain cells listening to her speak so this is an act of self-preservation. He’s going to thank me and so are you.”

“What are you—?” You huff.

“Yoongi likes you!” He exasperates, throwing his hands into his air.

The silence is overwhelming, as the four of you simply blink at each other. Your brain is processing his words, but it doesn’t really make sense. You’re confused as you attempt to deduce the meaning behind it until you come to a conclusion—

You look over at Jimin, “Are the two of you—?”

Jimin wants to scream.

“No, oh my God! Yoongi likes you! You!” He shakes you so hard that your head spins, “He likes you so much it’s disgusting and cute so you better do something about it and not accustom us to this torture anymore, okay?!”

Before you can say anything else, you feel a gentle hand on your shoulder. You blink up, and you see Yoongi offering you a cup of hot chocolate, eyeing the rest of the boys weirdly as they stand there with tightened expressions.

“Here you go,” He says softly, helping you blow onto the steaming cup before gently placing it into your hand.

It warms you up immediately, and you only then managed to piece together what Taehyung and Jimin just told you. The realisation dawns upon you as a scandalised expression makes its way onto your face. Yoongi raises an eyebrow, observing the odd behaviour of the four of you as the three boys ignore his pointed gaze.

“L-Let’s go take a seat,” You stutter, pushing on his chest with your free hand as you attempt to skate away from the wandering eyes. The pressure was too much.

“Hey, hold on, you’ll fall.” He gently chides, doing what comes as second nature to him as he grabs your other hand, giving you a squeeze of reassurance.

As the two of you skate away, you miss the sighs that leave the three boys’ lips.

“So, is there a reason why you tried to skate away like you were an Olympian?” Yoongi asks when the two of you managed to settle down in a small bench outside of the rink, tucked a decent distance away.

You look down at your palms, squeezing around the hot chocolate as you pay attention to the steam that escapes the surface.

The words from Jimin was essentially still haunting you, and you wondered if this was some sick joke of his to get back at you for mixing up his toothpaste with his shampoo a few months back. You sulk because this was a really mean joke and your feelings were about to get really hurt if he was lying to you.

“Hey,” Yoongi murmurs, hand reaching out to tilt your chin up to look at him. His stare is so intense that you find yourself cowering away, cheeks red and embarrassed. “Look at me.”

You can’t.

“I-I … there’s nothing wrong!” You squeak, eyes travelling and landing on different people that wasn’t Yoongi. Anyone that wouldn’t cause your insides to melt with just his gaze alone.

Yoongi purses his lips in disapproval, sighing before he sets his hot chocolate by the table next to the bench and turns to face you. You knew that you had no place to run, especially when Yoongi essentially traps you with his eyes, observing your every move.

“You’re shaking.” He points out.

And only then do you realise that you were shaking, and your hands were basically vibrating with the hot chocolate. You cursed at yourself, and the cold.

“I-I’m cold.” You chatter.

Yoongi frowns, reaching out his hand to immediately grab your own to warm them up. But when you spot his hands, you squeak, immediately retracting them as if he was about to bite them off.

You realise how it looks, and you notice the slight drop in Yoongi’s expression when you reacted the way you did.

“Are you—?” He begins to ask, slow and tentative.

“Not my hands!” You blurt out.

Yoongi pauses for a second before he relaxes his posture and raises a brow at you in questioning.

“Okay …?” He drags, “Where are you cold? Do you need my jacket?” He asks.

You curse at yourself because you didn’t know how to get yourself out of this situation. Especially now that Yoongi was patiently waiting for your response. Your thighs were essentially brushed up against each other, and his body was leaned over ever so slightly that you catch every strand of eyelashes on his eyes.

You were so weak.

“N-No, I … you can keep your jacket.” You stutter, shaking your head as you pat his puffer down when he goes to shrug it off.

Yoongi’s frown deepens, “Well, can you tell me where so I can help—?”

“My lips!” You declare, voice high pitched and loud enough that it attracts a few stares from bystanders.

Yoongi just stares at you, and you’re mortified when you realise what you said, but you can’t seem to stop now that you’ve already dug a hole for yourself.

“My … lips … they’re ... cold,” You clear your throat, blinking up at him with a false sense of determination in hopes of shielding the way your face is undoubtedly on fire right now.

“Your lips … are cold?” He articulates each world tentatively as he observes your face for any reaction.

You nod.

“Yeah. Cold.” You say.

Oh my God, shut up!

Before you can even run away, and it’s as if Yoongi expects you to flee, he pins your hands down with his own and draws closer to your face so quickly that you can barely even catch his next move.

And kisses you.

Smack on the lips.

He pulls away too fast for your liking, and you’re gaping at him like a fish out of the water when you realise what he did.

“You—” You croak, pointing a finger at him.

But Yoongi leans in once more, pressing a firmer kiss to your lips, one that sends your brain into overdrive as you feel yourself melt into his hold. If you were cold, you definitely weren’t anymore. Not when Yoongi is pressed against you like a warm lover by the fireplace.

He pulls away first, again, and you notice the tip of his ears turning red before he offers you that charming smile of his.

“Took you long enough,” He sighs, reaching out to cradle your jaw in his palm. And only then do you realise that Jimin was right, his hand is warm.

“W-What?”

He rolls his eyes fondly, ignoring the way you stare up at him with confused and wide eyes; likely still absorbing what just happened.

“Just hold my hand,” He tuts, reaching in between the both of you to intertwine your fingers together once more as he rests your combined hands on his lap.

“Does this mean …?” You ask shyly, head ducking away from his eyes.

He smiles at you, and you notice that it’s the same look he’s always had whenever he speaks to you.

He brings the back of your hand to his lips and presses a gentle peck to it, causing heat to rise to your cheeks all over again.

“You warm now, cutie?” He murmurs.

You melt, “Oh my God! Don’t—just—I’m literally going to die!” You whine, shoving your face into his puffer as you scream at his suaveness.

He chuckles, low and deep as he unlocks your hands to wrap an arm around your body, tugging you closer until you’re practically glued to his hip like a koala.

“Don’t die on me now,” He sighs, “Just got you to myself.”

“I hate you so much.” Your complaint is muffled into his puffer, but you can feel his grin on the top of your forehead when he presses a warm kiss to it.

“That’s disappointing. I like you very much,” He returns.

You blush, but you don’t push him away when he laughs into your hair, the sound making you melt further into his arms.

You liked him, too.

#YOOOONGI #so cute #help me #tsundere yoongi #oblivious oc #yoongi fluff #yoongi drabble #yoongi scenario #bts fanfic #suga imagine #bts x reader #bts imagine #bts fluff #yoongi

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quixoticanarchy · 3 years

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hi i read your post about jared diamond, and unlike you, i don't have any strong opinions about gun germs and steel, likely bc i don't have much background knowledge abt the topic. do you have any recommendations for someone who want to read more on the subject?

Yes absolutely - this is a very scathing takedown of Diamond’s scholarship and the assumptions it’s riding on; this picks apart his arguments and their eurocentrism; this explains how he’s both wrong and dangerously misleading. If you’d like recommendations on critical geography and environmental determinism in general, I can also collect some.

(crossing my fingers the links work. If not, google the authors - Correia, Blaut, Sluyter - and “environmental determinism” “Jared Diamond” etc, and hopefully their work will show up?)

The long and short of it is: geography is important - place matters. I love geography and thinking about how societies interact with the physical world, and how people and place mutually shape one another. BUT environmental determinism - treating geography/the environment as this overarching external force ultimately responsible for how people act and societies develop - is both oversimplified to the point of just being wrong, and also allows for a clever mental sleight of hand in which the social and ideological dimensions of a given society matter less than their physical geographic conditions. In Diamond’s case, his explanation of why European colonialism occurred (rather than the rest of the world colonizing Europe) attributes it to the geographic factors that put Europe in a position to have the material capacity to build their empires and subjugate most of the planet - but overlooks the extremely relevant roles of ideology within European expansionist societies, as if mere geographic happenstance allowed for (or even fated) present-day power relations.

The implications are sobering - it removes much of the responsibility for colonialism, doesn’t it, if Europe was simply acting in accordance with various geographic opportunities and pressures? It suggests that the people within the colonizer and colonized societies were largely irrelevant, as if any society in their respective conditions might have acted the same. It adds a dangerous inevitability to historical attempts to trace the trajectory of colonial and “development” relations, or to imagine a decolonized future, and although Diamond is trying to avoid reproducing race-science explanations of history, his shifting the responsibility into the hands of impartial physical forces and coincidences inadvertently naturalizes the relations of exploitation and violence between colonizing and colonized peoples.

Diamond didn’t invent environmental determinism by any means - it’s a very old tradition within geography, which as a discipline has a long history as an accomplice to imperialism - but he gave it new life and critical acclaim (think about why a book like Guns, Germs, and Steel would be so appealing... so comforting... to an audience eager for a scapegoat for atrocities that would require no change or culpability on their part). So I think it’s irresponsible, intellectually lazy, and frankly dangerous to keep uncritically treating him like a legitimate scholar, given the factual, logical, and sociocultural gaping holes in his arguments.

#train-dreams-fists #jared diamond #boy im in a mood today i guess #thank you for asking i love to rant #environmental determinism #geography things #imperialism #skravler

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officialjakotsu · 4 years

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Fun with Fallacies!!

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE WE START. THIS IS MY OFFICIAL REBUTTAL. THIS POST IS FOR FUN BUT THE REBUTTAL IS THE ONE I WANT THE DISCUSSION TO BE ABOUT. LETS GO MY DUDES.

So, many of you who are hip with the officialinuyasha discourse probably know about this post. Now I wanted to pick it apart at the time but the coward blocked me. I have also posted my official rebuttal, but lets have a little fun too, and count the amount of logical fallacies.

Firstly, for those of you who don’t know what a fallacy is, it’s a type of argument that is either illegitimate or lacks relevance to what is actually being argued. For example, if I argue that chocolate ice cream is bad, and you say I’m wrong and people shouldn’t trust me because I once burned down a bank and made off with $20,000 USD (theoretically, of course uwu I would never do that). That’s a fallacy because it doesn’t argue my point, it just makes me look bad. Fallacies weaken your overall argument because even if your point is correct, it is not one that should be made in this context. So leave your fallacies out. Anyway, I’m here today to list off the fallacies in Mr. Takahashi’s post and explain why his argument is, frankly, bullshit in this regard and why it did not make me feel roasted in any way. Not even a little scalded. Ice cream is spicier than his takes.

Fallacy 1: continuum fallacy. “‘American’ consists of every race. So saying that doesn’t mean much. I’m physically Caucasian.” The anon had very clearly implied he was a white American which everyone else seemed to understand. He was nitpicking and attacked the imprecision of the wording, which was irrelevant as everyone else understood the meaning.

Fallacy 2: Red herring. “I heard there is a chance... and Blackfoot.” Your race does not matter in this argument if it is not Japanese.

Fallacy 3/4: red herring. “Why does my race matter when I cosplay....you can cosplay any character” this argument has nothing to do with my original point. I was not talking about cosplaying and my beliefs of who can cosplay what are irrelevant (but I believe you can cosplay whatever as long as you don’t wear something of cultural significance (I.e cultural tattoos) or change your features to look like a different race). This was also a subtle attempt to poison the well to imply I don’t think “black, short, big, or trans” people should cosplay characters outside what they physically resemble. (Also dude I’m short and trans)

Fallacy 5/6/7/8/9: false authority, appeal to authority, false attribution, faulty generalization, and red herring. “My wife is Persian.... that are eastern have no problems with us.” Japanese people living in Japan are not who you should speak to on this matter as they do not face cultural appropriation and people who are friends with you also do not prove that most Japanese people are supportive of you (I am including diaspora). Your wife being Persian and a Shinto priestess has no bearing on my point either.

Fallacy 10: false equivalence. Kyle Killian is not the name of a character. I googled it.

Fallacy 11: poisoning the well. It wasn’t a doxxing attempt but you sure want it to be (however I am sorry for posting what could’ve been where you live. At the time I was thinking it didn’t matter as much because it’s a bigger city. I do take full responsibility and have made sure to not post more like this.)

Fallacy 12/13/14/15/16/17: poisoning the well, appeal to motive, false equivalence, appeal to spite, judgmental language, and tone policing. “You do seem hateful... fictional characters”. None of these are good arguments and none of them even actually apply to me. It also assumes I am likely cisgender and that I “spread hate etc”. These are clear attacks on my person and motives and my anger rather than an argument.

Fallacy 18/19/20/21/22/23: poisoning the well, false authority, appeal to authority, false attribution, faulty generalization, circumstantial ad hominem, courtiers reply. “I doubt you are a part.... “American only means white”. Again, assumptions are made about me. There is also, again, the same exact things I mentioned from these fallacies before. Also my circumstances do not prevent me from calling you out.

Fallacy 24/25/26/27: again. False authority, appeal to authority, false attribution, faulty generalization. This is for the video section. I don’t need to explain this again. Listen to diaspora.

Fallacy 28: false equivalence. “My friend Malay.... say she’s “whitefacing” not too?” This isn’t the same situation, as foreign folk use English names to make life easier for English speakers. Also English =/= white. Asian diaspora also often have asian names. Krystal Jung, who was born in California and is Korean, has the Korean name Jung Sooyeon. This just isn’t the same situation and this does not belong in the conversation.

Fallacy 29/30/31/32: false equivalence, appeal to authority, false authority, false attribution. “Just like when SJWs.... LOVE SPEEDY GONZALES.” A more accurate example would be Mexicans speaking about something like the bastardization of Día De Los Muertos among those who don’t celebrate it. Something with more cultural significance. Also Mexicans have no standing in who can use Japanese names.

Fallacy 33/34/35: appeal to authority, false authority, and false attribution. Your family is one family and does not speak for all of Mexico. Also this argument still doesn’t belong here.

Fallacy 36: appeal to emotion, red herring, special pleading, and I would also argue an etymological fallacy though not in the usual sense. “Before you judge.... Yasha means “to live”.” Cute story but it has no relevance as we all know you named yourself Inuyasha specifically because of the show, as seen by your last name, and your wife’s name having been changed to Kagome. It also has no relevance because, again, you changed your name to a Japanese name on purpose and we all know this.

Also, a couple bonuses! Kettle logic (using multiple, inconsistent arguments to defend a position), faulty generalization (accident; an exception to a generalization is ignored. I realized how many this fit but I don’t want to go back and recount everything AGAIN), appeal to pity (this whole thing), ipse dixit (you consistently imply you’re an expert because of everyone you know or whatever), and straw man fallacy (you broadened my argument to something it wasn’t and then argued that instead).

That leaves us at a grand total of..... 41 fallacies!!!!

Congrats Mr. Takahashi, that’s gotta be a record!

#officialinuyasha

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zeldafanlegends · 4 years

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Author’s Favorite Scenes: Excerpt from The Legacy of Myriad Book Two - Rise of Power: Chapter 2 - Matters of the Heart

After Link and Zelda's victory at the Temple of Fire, Myriad sends them to Lake Hylia to unleash the power held within the Temple of Water, though the temple may be the least of their concerns when Ganondorf begins retaliating against Hyrule itself. With no other place to go, the people turn to a revolt forming to fight his tyranny, and it's here that Zelda learns an unexpected truth concerning Link's past. Meanwhile, Link discovers the truth behind another long kept secret when his path to defend Hyrule leads to a confrontation with the King of Evil himself.

Full Story Available on:

ff.net

Ao3

--- --- ---

"We don't need a sword for that. Just give me your dagger.”

Looking down at her hip, Zelda took the weapon and handed it over despite her uncertainty over his request. “You can't learn swordplay with a dagger, Link.”

“No, but you can find the right tools using it. Just stay right here."

Confused, Zelda watched as he disappeared into the nearby trees. Sounds of shuffling followed, redoubling her bewilderment. What's he doing?

Waiting patiently, he finally seemed to find what he was looking for when the word, “There,” came from the trees followed by his return with a medium thick branch in his hand.

Bringing it toward her while cutting the leaves from its sides, Zelda smiled brightly—he was making a wooden sword for practice.

Removing the blanket from her shoulders, she tossed it into the tent and walked over to wait until he was done shaving the thick branch down to size, then handed the dagger back to her. Returning it to her belt, she looked back up as Link moved beside her and took her hand, placing it on the bottom of the limb followed by putting her other beneath it.

"I carved a notch so you can see where the guard is,” he pointed out. “Have you ever used a sword before at all?"

“Impa showed me some basics, such as the proper stances."

Parting her legs to show him that she was telling the truth, he watched with an approving nod, then moved behind her. Looking back, Zelda watched as he took her arm and moved it so that it was bent just slightly inward.

"Keep your elbows bent but close to your side," he explained. “That way it's harder for opponents to hit you, and you can lash out more easily.”

Stepping back again, he asked, “What else did Impa show you?"

Zelda replied by turning the limb in a circle using one hand, and did it fairly quickly. "I've only practiced doing that much. I used my left too, just to make sure both of them were capable."

Nodding, Link commenced with showing her some basic swipes followed by making her perform them a few times, and she caught on rather quickly. A patient learner, she was easy to work with, giving the impression that she'd be at a basic level of swordplay in no time at all. Everything he showed her, she took in with interest and adapted, making him feel as if he were doing a good job teaching—a relieving thought.

The worry of becoming too distracted by something such as her beauty to keep his focus was prevalent. But though he wasn't oblivious to her feminine appeal, it didn't take his mind off of what they were doing as much as he'd expected—with a little effort, that was.

Whenever they got closer, he kept his gaze away from her face and helped her along without fault.

In the reverse, Zelda couldn't help but appreciate his method of instruction and how easy he made everything seem. If she made a mistake, he showed her exactly what she'd done and explained the reasons why it was wrong without becoming impatient. Furthermore, he never teased her, leaving her much more comfortable learning.

Still, she did find herself blushing every time he put his arms around her to correct her position.

Thankfully, he didn't seem to notice the pink staining her cheeks, too busy providing instruction by cracking little jokes like so if a cucco flew at you, what would you do?

Such comments had her laughing too much to immediately continue, and after spending an hour working on methods of using the blade, Link announced his intentions of showing her some basic footwork.

Eager to learn, Zelda followed his instruction to the best of her ability, but found this part of her impromptu training more difficult for a simple reason—the damp ground. The recent rains left the terrain slick with mud, though she didn't complain if only because fighters didn't get to choose their setting.

So she tried to be as careful as possible, but that didn't stop her right foot from sliding abruptly after making a turn.

"Whoa … are you alright?" Link asked.

Smiling, Zelda nodded and immediately corrected herself, then attempted the same move again and succeeded.

Seeing this, Link commended her and continued providing instructions on pivoting through example, leading her as carefully as possible. Just as before, she picked up on the movements easily, though neither of them noticed a small rock in her path, and at her next turn, her boot came down right on top of it.

Gasping as she lost her balance on the uneven surface, she stumbled backwards.

Instinctively, Link reached out, thankfully close enough to grab her waist and use her momentum to swing her around. Sadly, the wet ground didn't help him keep his footing, causing his own downward tumble as he held Zelda close and used his body to cushion her fall.

Once they landed, both fought to catch their breath, and Zelda swiftly lifted her head to stare down at him in surprise, then rolled aside and turned her gaze to spy the rock nearby that caused their mishap.

Grumbling at the sight of it, she mused, “Maybe we should take a break. There's no sense risking injury over training me to use a sword.”

While Link had no qualms with continuing their practice, he could agree the risk of injury didn't seem worth it. But before he could agree, she suddenly started snickering and regarded him with mirth in her violet blue eyes.

"The look on your face."

Confused, he shook his head. "What about it?"

"You looked so concerned when I stumbled,” she explained, then covered her mouth contritely with an apology, even as a few more snickers escaped. "I'm sorry, I'm not picking at you, honestly! I can't help it though."

Sitting up with her, Link smiled at the sound of her mirth, finding it much more enjoyable than the frowns and tears she'd shed the previous day after saving those girls.

Still, he excused, “I thought you'd hurt yourself, and besides, you would've gotten mad if I'd let you fall."

Zelda gave him an incredulous look, shaking her head as she tried not to grin while exclaiming, "I would not!"

"Sure, say that now," he teased.

"You're impossible," she returned, playfully shoving his arm with a few snickers before looking herself over with a regretful sigh. Their clothing was getting damp because of the rain-soaked ground, prompting her to state, “We should get up before we catch a cold."

Turning to get her leg under herself as he pushed himself forward with the same intentions, the simultaneous movements brought them closer together—so close their noses nearly brushed. Instantly, they stopped moving as their gazes locked, forgetting their intentions of getting off the wet ground completely right along with the rest of the world.

As if a magic spell was cast, some force held them motionless, as well as speechless in a barrage of erupting emotion, and neither knew how to react.

Link's breath left him in a rush, and with another inhale, he caught her scent, that floral aroma that always seemed so familiar. Every time he caught it, it felt like going home again, comforting and incredibly alluring. At the thought, his gaze dipped to her lips, his battle to ignore his attraction fading as he slowly moved forward until the tips of their noses met.

Still, despite the strength of his desire, he stopped, unwilling to go any further until he knew she wasn't feeling uncomfortable. All the while, the logical side of his mind hoped she'd pull away, he just couldn't remember why.

Not when this felt so … right.

But she didn't move—and when her eyes slowly closed, his breath hitched, heart racing at a pace that was matched only by Zelda's own frantic pulse.

Is he … going to kiss me? Her head swam at the thought, the world spinning as he'd leaned in closer, and she shut her eyes against the dizzying sensation. Each emotion that rose in response was more intense than the last, rattling her, and yet she knew deep down she was ready for this, wanted to lean up and take it despite the heat in her cheeks.

Yet she was frozen in place, fearing a single movement would cause everything to stop, and it would simply never happen.

But their lips were only a breath apart, the warmth of his—

"It is you!"

As if a wall had come down between them, Link and Zelda jolted apart at the excited voice coming from nearby and instantly looked in that direction. In turn, the purple glowing orb of light that was Nissa sailed over them, coming around at an arc, her wings chiming excitedly.

"Mira, Link! I'm so happy to see you both!"

"Nissa?" Zelda drew out, still dizzy, though the fog of what just happened was quickly fading. The thought turned her cheeks an even brighter red, and when Link stood next to her, she looked up to see him offering his hand while clearing his throat—and something deep inside was screaming over their interrupted moment.

Still, she reached up and slipped her fingers into his, keeping her gaze away from his face the entire while if only to prevent him from seeing the embarrassment in her eyes.

"Yes!" Nissa responded, completely oblivious to their would-be kiss as the Hylians stood before her. She simply went on, "I thought I heard someone talking and laughing, so I came to see what was going on."

Smiling as the fairy flew in to hug her neck, Zelda reached up to pat Nissa's head with her fingertip.

"What are you doing out here," Link asked, striving to keep the irritation out of his voice—and it wasn't caused by Nissa's arrival.

Instead, he felt guilty for giving into his urge to kiss Zelda, for taking advantage of a situation without even stopping to ask how she felt first. The notion of it made Nissa's interruption feel welcome—in a way.

Still, he did want to know what Zelda was thinking at that moment, and whether she was uncomfortable at all.

Yet he had to push the thoughts away when Nissa responded, "Oh! I left Kakariko to travel home and tell my people more about what I'd learned from Impa. Then I used the Fairy Pools to travel to a fairy cave near here, and I was just leaving it when I heard you two."

Lifting into the air again, the fairy zipped back and forth between them as if looking them over before adding, "Link, you look so handsome! Oh! And you have the Master Sword!”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Link drew out, "Yeah, we've been through a lot since the last time we saw you."

"I'll say! Well … oh! I should take you to the cave! The fairy maiden there can help you both! They told me they would be happy to aid the two of you."

Hearing this, Zelda looked at Link for the first time since they'd almost kissed, inquiring as casually as she could, "Would you like to go there?"

"Why not?" he returned just as casually, asking Nissa, "How far is it?"

"Not too far! You won't even need your horses! Come on!"

As the fairy zipped away, they turned to follow, both unaware of the other's appreciation for her presence preventing an awkward situation after their interrupted kiss. After all, trying to explain away their actions would be difficult, and Nissa's arrival gave them time to consider things before making the attempt.

Yet, as they walked, Zelda could feel her heart skipping a beat every time she replayed the scene in her head, and found herself disappointed, not to mention confused. Was she a bad person for wanting to kiss her childhood friend so badly?

Perhaps not—after all, he was the one leaning toward her, so maybe he wanted it just as much as she had.

The realization that Link might harbor the same types of feelings had her blushing the entire way to the fairy cave. Or … was she just being a silly, infatuated girl? She had no experience to draw on where it concerned matters of the heart, and for all she knew, Link had simply been swept up in a random moment, considered her attractive enough to capitalize, but didn't truly feel anything deeper for her.

The notion brought to mind the way the women in Roshala had waved at him, even whistled as if he was the most attractive man to ever ride through town. But they didn't know the half of it. He was not only handsome, but also noble, kind, and compassionate.

Any girl would desire a man such as that, meaning Link could have his pick if he put his mind to it—and so many options didn't really bode well where she was concerned.

So no, the fact that he'd nearly kissed her wasn't an indication of harboring affection in a romantic sense.

That aside, her own feelings could be confused. She'd watched him fight like mad to protect her, and he always found ways to ease her sorrows. Such acts could easily lead to feelings of infatuation, but didn't necessarily indicate a true affinity.

Or that's what she told herself for the sake of her sanity.

Besides, the last thing she needed was to be so distracted from their goals, and he needed a doting woman about as much as he needed a flock of cuccos chasing him.

So she made up her mind, and came to a solid conclusion. If the topic of their interrupted kiss came up again, she'd simply tell him she hadn't been sure of his intentions and hope it sounded feasible enough to be believable.

As for the conclusion? Matters of the heart were definitely complicated.

--- --- ---

Full Story Available on:

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Ao3

#Legend of Zelda #Legacy of Myriad #Zelink #Link #Zelda #Princess Zelda #Fan Fiction

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coppoladelrey · 6 years

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Heartless - Part 2

Summary: Bucky was deeply in love with Natasha, but she leaves him for another guy, and he doesn’t know that. After a few weeks in his room, he goes buy a coffee, and he meets you, the opposite of Natasha. He decides to date you, to prove Natasha that he moved on, what will happen when you find out?

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: sad Bucky, and Natasha being horrible.

Tagging: @float-autumn-leave, @sebsunshinestan, @superflashallen, @learisa, @buffy-morgendorffer-01, @ly--canthrope, @joannie95, @wtfholland, @nikolett3, @buckyisthatyou, @atomicfandombomb, @akamaiden.

Heartless Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Bucky Barnes was depressed, the whole team knew it, including Natasha, but she was the only one that didn't care about the emotional health of Bucky. Steve tried to drag him out of his bedroom, but Bucky refused, the only thing that Bucky was doing outside of his bedroom was gym in the middle of night, so that he could sleep. The whole team tried to do their part, Wanda baked cookies for him, but the super soldier didn't eat them, Steve tried to talk to him about the 40’s, but it turned out to be a monologue, rather than a conversation. Even Tony tried to get him out, with the excuse of building him a new arm, but Bucky was adamant, he wouldn’t leave his room, not even for a mission.

The situation went on for three weeks, and Tony couldn’t take it anymore, so he called Natasha. She was the only one that could take Bucky out of his state, and that’s what Tony wanted, he needed Bucky for missions, at the same time he didn't want to bring more pain for Bucky, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.

The Black Widow entered the lab, Tony was working in a new prosthetic arm for Bucky, he just needed the former Winter Soldier to try it on, but his attempts of alluring Bucky to his lab, miserably failed.

“What do you need me for, Tony?” Natasha asked, she knew why Tony called her in his lab, but she would rather pretend to be innocent, of course, Tony could see right through her act.

“You know why, go talk to him. You broke the guy, at least try to fix him.” Tony came back to work, Natasha raised an eyebrow at him, but she was wise, and decided not to speak.

Tony Stark could read Natasha Romanoff like a child’s book, he knew that the former spy was manipulative, had no regard for others peoples feelings, and pretended to be an innocent girl on everybody’s eyes, Natasha had no idea how Tony was so successful on reading her, she was a former spy, highly trained, but the billionaire saw her façade, he never spoke anything against her, Natasha was far too valuable for the team to let her personal life interfere.

Natasha took a deep breath, and knock on Bucky’s door. She didn't want to go there, she didn't want to see Bucky, she was happy with Clint, but she was terrified of Tony, he could easily expose her, the secret affair with Clint, how she manipulates all of the team to do everything she wants.

She knocked again, no response.

“Bucky is me.” She announces, and Natasha can hear Bucky moving around the room, he opened the door, the smile on his face, was filled with hope and happiness, to her it was the most pathetic thing, Bucky was still deeply in love with her, that was the first time he smiled since she left. Natasha knew that, but that didn't move her.

“Nat, I missed you so much, baby.” He hugged her, but she didn't hug him back, she wanted to get this over with, as soon as possible. Natasha gently pushes Bucky away, the simple action, hurts Bucky even more, she didn't want him back, the super soldier keeps thinking that he’s not good enough for the woman of his dreams.

“James, you need to get out of this room, the team is worried.” The team. Not her, she couldn’t care less about Bucky, but for him, the woman being in his door is enough evidence that she cares, and still loves him.

“I will, for you, baby.” Bucky smiles, and Natasha fights the urge of rolling her eyes. She has no idea the exact moment when everything that Bucky does irritates her to no end.

“You should go out, meet new people, maybe go on a date.” She suggests, and Bucky shook his head, quickly.

“You’re the only one I want.” He replies, he held hope in his eyes, that maybe his fallen angel will take him back to her warm embrace, but he doesn’t know that his fallen angel is heartless.

“We need this time apart, I need to find myself, maybe you can find someone worthy of your love, James.” Specialists would argue if the woman is a high functioning sociopath, but Natasha has feelings, but she choose not to use them on certain people, and the super soldier in front of her is the primary person that she chooses not to use her feelings, for her he’s just a guy that would take her back, no matter what she does.

“You’re that person, you’re the only one I want.”

“James, get out of this room. Go meet new people and enjoy life.” Bucky watches the woman he loves walk away, her hips swaying, he wanted nothing more to have her in his arms again.

In that moment Bucky decided to do what Natasha suggested him, he came to the conclusion that it was the only way to get her back, was to pretend that he wasn’t heartbroken anymore, that him and her could co-exist in the same team without being a couple.

In the next weeks Bucky was apparently the same again, he was going on missions, talking and laughing with the team on movies nights, he didn't try to talk to Natasha, he was giving her the space she needed. But the former assassin was hoping that the Black Widow would miss him, that she would finally realize that he is the man that she wants and need, in her life.

The winter was almost over, but Bucky didn't got out of the Tower, he prefered the comfort the Tower provided him, despite acting like nothing happened, Bucky was still heartbroken because of Natasha, he cried himself to sleep every night. For everyone in the team, Bucky was himself again, but he was hurting because of the breakup, he was incredibly good at hiding his feelings, even from Steve.

One afternoon everyone was at the living room, watching a random movie, and Bucky wanted a coffee, but there wasn’t any at the kitchen, so he decided to go on a coffee shop, something he hasn’t done in months. So he gathered all the courage he had and went to the coffee shop near the Tower.

Bucky opened the door, the smell of coffee and loud conversations filled his senses, and it was extremely soothing to Bucky, he thought that he should’ve done that a long time ago, for the first time he wasn’t thinking about his former lover, he was taking in the small coffee shop, the art on the walls, people on their cell phones, people working, typing on the notebooks, modern day technology was appealing to Bucky, and he rejoiced from the fact that everything was very accessible.

He went to the barista, who gave him a warm smile.

“A black coffee, please.” He informed her, and typed his order.

“Name?” She asked politely.

“James.” He replied, the barista nodded and put his name on the cup.

Bucky sat on a chair, he was patiently waiting for his coffee, he wasn’t anxious about anything, Bucky wasn’t thinking about Natasha, about his broken heart, his mind was wondering on anything in particular, just the coffee that he was waiting.

“James.” A barista screamed, Bucky sat up and went to the balcony to pick up his coffee.

“Y/N.” That same barista screamed, and you ran and picked your drink.

Bucky didn't saw you, and bumped into you, almost spilling hot coffee on you, but luckily he didn't.

“Easy there.” You laughed, and Bucky looked at you.

You were like the spring that was coming after that harsh winter, you represented hope, freshness, everything in your smile, you were kind hearted, everything about you were like spring, fresh and positive.

“Okay.” Bucky was still looking at you, he was in awestruck, he never met someone like you.

“I’m Y/N.” You stretched your hand for him to shake it, Bucky shakes your hand, hesitatingly. He was scared of what he was feeling, the super soldier was still in love with Natasha, but you brought an entire foreign feeling to him, a sense of peace, which was confusing to him, since Natasha was the one that brought that kind of feelings.

“I’m Bucky.” He replies, Bucky had a grin on his face, he was hypnotized by you.

“Yeah, I know. You’re an Avenger, you’re kinda famous.” Again with your smile, he thought. It was inexplicably warm, and peaceful, it was like you had no worries in your life, it was like God put you on earth to shine his dark and broken heart.

“Well, yeah, I guess that’s true.” Bucky Barnes was flustered, he was blushing, and you couldn’t believe how adorable he looked.

“Anyway, I gotta go.” You informed, you were late for work, and you couldn’t be more annoyed, you wanted to spend time with the Avenger.

That’s when Natasha’s words came to his mind, that he should meet new people, he came up with an idea. He wanted to show Natasha that he was moving on, that he could find someone that loves him too. In his logic, if he dated you, Bucky could show Natasha that he was desirable, and that way she would want to be with him again. But for that to happen, he needed to play with your feelings, Bucky reasoned with himself that playing with your feelings, a complete stranger, was a small price to pay, in exchange for the love of his life back in his loving arms.

“Y/N, would you like to go on a date with me?” You smiled again, and that foreign feeling inside of Bucky came back.

He felt something for you, that was unquestionable, but whatever fling he felt for you, trumps the burning love, passion and desire he has for Natasha.

“Straightforward, huh?” You laughed. “I like that, I’ll give you my number, we can go on a date.” You wrote your number on a napkin, you gave it to him, and you left the coffee shop.

Bucky was staring at the napkin for at least ten minutes, you were a good person, you were positive, you had no trace of evil inside you. But for him to have Natasha back, he needed to use you, he just needed to make sure that you never find out the truth behind his motives.

#marvel imagine #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x you #bucky barnes angst #bucky angst #buckynat #marvel

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kineticallyanywhere · 5 years

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Ok I don’t have anything on Lina yet, but Wash I got somethin for. I know u were keen on aspect parallels but what about… class parallels!! Wash would be a wonderful Mage of Blood. As we both like Dahni, check out her blood description- it’s perfect for wash! And Mage- Wash is loyal to a fault and fixates on connections and responsibilities. He gets taken advantage of and pushes around in PFL, and then switches when he feels the stronger bond created by Epsilon-

2: In which, after the bonds he thought he had shattered around him, he completely fixated on and considered his primary responsibility. And he takes up responsibilities with the rvbs very fast- and he gets the freedom and fun that he’d always kinda longed for in PFL But was denied! He suffers from being taken advantage of and jerked around with connections, never finding a stable bond, until the rvbs provide him the trust and strength he needs in the new session

3: I’m like the Pepe Silvia meme puzzling out classpect stuff rn thanks for listening; more to come4: Looking on it more and more I feel like Tucker would make a fantastic knight of space- the description of it in the tags you linked me to fit really, really well with Tucker, or at least how I perceive him, especially after Church’s death. He slowly grows to drop his facade and become genuinely confident in himself instead of overcompensating; I’m ignoring his season 16 writing, it felt strange to me. But anyway5: Lina makes a great Knight of Mind I think? At first I dismissed it bc I thought PFL had an abundance of mind, but then I realized I was wrong- it was completely chaotic and illogical, nothing made sense about it. Lina fits Knight of Mind really well, if you slightly alter mind’s application. She was constantly refining her abilities, she was obsessive, but always thought she wasn’t enough- wasn’t smart, logical, emotionless enough, and she put up a front she’s still working to drop in s17

all of this is delicious okay one at a time

a quick contextualization of my thoughts: not to lean to heavily on a single (fan) source, but I really do lean on [this post] a lot when organizing my thoughts for classpects. I love the way it explains each class and aspect in the context of character arcs, which is the angle I typically look by when picking apart characters and what makes them tick overall. so, I’m gonna quote that post A Lot. so:

(this got long!)

Wash: honestly I’m not the most familiar with the mage class, but “realize your own talents and don’t get caught up in self deprecation” mashed with “don’t be apathetic, but don’t be too overly sensitive either” and suddenly I cannot possibly conceive of a counter argument. I’d say by the s17 equivalent of this hypothetical hs au, he’s in the back half of that development track. mage: PFL put him in that “worst of the squad” mindset, despite some evidence of being the most empathetic and enduring light-heart there, which is far from a useless skill). When he gets with the Reds and Blues, he gets to embrace those big sappy speeches about friendship and growth and being there for people and it really really works for him. blood: “don’t be apathetic”: every moment of “what about my behavior made you think I expected to survive” to answering “you can’t just kill everyone” with “why not?” || and then “don’t be too overly sensitive either”: The Screech and his propensity to hold grudges for literal years at a time. But he’s grown so much! Caboose let him have Feelings and Donut talked him down from a grudge (Franklin Delano Donut deserves a freakin commendation for that one btw)Tucker: I gotta think a bit more, but parts of mind still appeal to me for Tucker. back on that post, and bolding the part that catches me: “don’t think of yourself higher or lower than others due to your intelligence; inform others so everyone can understand.” He seems to have this internal flip flop over the series about what he wants – to be average or to be the cool guy, or to not care or to be in charge. Knights in general have that internal vs external presentation conflict, so whatever aspect we’re not really in danger of losing that, but… breath maybe? (”learn to be assertive, not aggressive or passive”) He tends to kinda go with the flow of things. “Fight these Reds now, go on the Alien Quest now, find the Director now, do what Wash says now, fight this war now” and on and on and on until you hit s15 and he kinda snaps, ready to just freakin murder Temple until Carolina stops him (from taking the same path Wash did but that’s a different meta about parallel character arcs). And then (how I see it) he spooked himself and tried to fall back into being That Guy in s16, who wasn’t even enthused to kill a weird cow beast and could just cruse along through the bs nightmare of his life by cracking bad jokes and living ridiculously. but he’s not that person anymore so the attempt comes off as… well, like that. this weird blend of still kinda used to being in charge but still unwilling to face up to what he does wrong because it hurts too much to look at and there are other weird things he could be doing if he literally takes two steps in any direction. Or at least that’s how I parse it.

Carolina: The whole things just feels spot on. I'd considered it in partial for Tucker up there, but "don’t think of yourself higher or lower than others due to your intelligence; inform others so everyone can understand" is just. spot on. literally a whole thing in season 10 was that the others didn't trust her because she wouldn't tell anyone what was happening. Also all the things you said.

OKAY THAT THING I SAID BEFORE ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CAROLINA AND TUCKER i SEE? (besides armor color) They're knights. They're both knights. They do That Knight Thing that “please be yourself” thing-- just. yeah. that.

#Anonymous #me talking #this turned into a meta #rvb #homestuck #rvbhs #meta #aus #ask ka

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adambstingus · 5 years

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Welcome to the land that no country wants | Jack Shenker

The long read: In 2014, an American dad claimed a tiny parcel of African land to make his daughter a princess. But Jack Shenker had got there first and learned that states and borders are volatile and delicate things

Bir Tawil is the last truly unclaimed land on earth: a tiny sliver of Africa ruled by no state, inhabited by no permanent residents and governed by no laws. To get there, you have two choices.

The first is to fly to the Sudanese capital Khartoum, charter a jeep, and follow the Shendi road hundreds of miles up to Abu Hamed, a settlement that dates back to the ancient kingdom of Kush. Today it serves as the regions final permanent human outpost before the vast Nubian desert, twice the size of mainland Britain and almost completely barren, begins unfolding to the north.

There are some artisanal gold miners in the desert, conjuring specks of hope out of the ground, a few armed gangs, which often prey upon the prospectors, and a small number of military units who carry out patrols in the area and attempt, with limited success, to keep the peace. You need to drive past all of them, out to the point where the occasional scattered shrub or palm tree has long since disappeared and given way to a seemingly endless, flat horizon of sand and rock out to the point where there are no longer any landmarks by which to measure the passing of your journey.

Out here, dry winds often blow in from the Arabian peninsula, whipping up sheets of dust that plunge visibility down to near-zero. After a day like this, then a night, and then another day, you will finally cross into Bir Tawil, an 800-square-mile cartographical oddity nestled within the border that separates Egypt and Sudan. Both nations have renounced any claim to it, and no other government has any jurisdiction over it.

The second option is to approach from Egypt, setting off from the countrys southernmost city of Aswan, down through the arid expanse that lies between Lake Nasser to the west and the Red Sea to the east. Much of it has been declared a restricted zone by the Egyptian army, and no one can get near the border without first obtaining their permission.

In June 2014, a 38-year-old farmer from Virginia named Jeremiah Heaton did exactly that. After obtaining the necessary paperwork from the Egyptian military authorities, he started out on a treacherous 14-hour expedition through remote canyons and jagged mountains, eventually wending his way into the no mans land of Bir Tawil and triumphantly planting a flag.

Heatons six-year-old daughter, Emily, had once asked her father if she could ever be a real princess; after discovering the existence of Bir Tawil on the internet, his birthday present to her that year was to trek there and turn her wish into a reality. So be it proclaimed, Heaton wrote on his Facebook page, that Bir Tawil shall be forever known as the Kingdom of North Sudan. The Kingdom is established as a sovereign monarchy with myself as the head of state; with Emily becoming an actual princess.

Heatons social media posts were picked up by a local paper in Virginia, the Bristol Herald-Courier, and quickly became the stuff of feel-good clickbait around the world. CNN, Time, Newsweek and hundreds of other global media outlets pounced on the story. Heaton responded by launching a global crowdfunding appeal aimed at securing $250,000 in an effort at getting his new state up and running.

Heaton knew his actions would provoke awe, mirth and confusion, and that many would question his sanity. But what he was not prepared for was an angry backlash by observers who regarded him not as a devoted father or a heroic pioneer but rather as a 21st-century imperialist. After all, the portrayal of land as unclaimed or undeveloped was central to centuries of ruthless conquest. The same callous, dehumanising logic that has been used to legitimise European colonialism not just in Africa but in the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere is on full display here, noted one commentator. Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff? asked another.

Any new idea thats this big and bold always meets with some sort of ridicule, or is questioned in terms of its legitimacy, Heaton told me last year over the telephone. In his version of the story, Heatons conquest of Bir Tawil was not about colonialism, but rather familial love and ambitious dreams: apart from making Emily royalty, he hopes to turn his newly founded nation which lies within one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet and contains no fixed population, no coastline, no surface water and no arable soil into a cutting-edge agriculture and technology research hub that will ultimately benefit all humanity.

After all, Heaton reasoned, no country wanted this forgotten corner of the world, and no individual before him had ever laid claim to it. What harm was to be caused by some wellintentioned, starry-eyed eccentric completing such a challenge, and why should it not be him?

Jeremiah Heaton makes his claim to Bir Tawil in 2014. Photograph: Facebook

There were two problems with Heatons argument. First, territories and borders can be delicate and volatile things, and tampering with them is rarely without unforeseen consequences. As Heaton learned from the public response to his self-declared kingdom, there is no neutral or harmless way to claim a state, no matter how far away from anywhere else it appears to be. Second, Heaton was not the first well-intentioned, starry-eyed eccentric to travel all the way to Bir Tawil and plant a flag. Someone else got there first, and that someone was me.

Like all great adventure stories, this one began with lukewarm beer and the internet. It was the summer of 2010, and the days in Cairo where I was living and working as a journalist were long and hot. My friend Omars balcony provided a shaded refuge filled with wicker chairs and reliably stable wireless broadband. It was up there, midway through a muggy evenings web pottering, that we first encountered Bir Tawil.

Omar was an Egyptian-British filmmaker armed with a battery of finely tuned Werner Herzog impressions and a crisp black beard that I was secretly quite jealous of. The pair of us knew nothing beyond a single fact, gleaned from a blog devoted to arcane maps: barely 500 miles away from where we sat, there apparently existed a patch of land over which no country on earth asserted any sovereignty. Within five minutes I had booked the flights. Omar opened two more beers.

Places beyond the scope of everyday authority have always fired the imagination. They appear to offer us an escape when all you can see of somewhere is its outlines, it is easy to start fantasising about the void within. No mans lands are our El Dorados, says Noam Leshem, a Durham University geographer who recently travelled 6,000 miles through a series of so-called dead spaces, from the former frontlines of the Balkans war to the UN buffer zone in Cyprus, along with his colleague Alasdair Pinkerton of Royal Holloway. The pair intended to conclude their journey at Bir Tawil, but never made it. There is something alluring about a place beyond the control of the state, Leshem adds, and also something highly deceptive. In reality, nowhere is unplugged from the complex political and historical dynamics of the world around it, and as Omar and I were to discover no visitors can hope to short-circuit them.

Six months later, in January 2011, we touched down at Khartoum International airport with a pair of sleeping bags, five energy bars, and an embarrassingly small stock of knowledge about our final destination. To an extent, the ignorance was deliberate. For one thing, we planned to shoot a film about our travels, and Omar had persuaded me the secret to good film-making was to begin work utterly unprepared. Omar according to Omar was a cinematic auteur; the kind of maverick who could breeze into a desolate wasteland with no vehicle, no route, and no contacts and produce an award-winning documentary from the mayhem. One does not lumber an auteur, he explained, with printed itineraries, booked accommodation or emergency phone numbers. Mindful of my own aspirations to auteurism, this reasoning struck me as convincing.

There was something else, too, that made us refrain from proper planning. As the date of our departure for Sudan drew closer, Omar and I had taken to discussing our plans for Bir Tawil in increasingly grandiose terms. Deep down, I think, we both knew that the notion of claiming the territory and harnessing it for some grand ideological cause was preposterous. But what if it wasnt? What if our own little tabula rasa could be the start of something bigger, transforming a forgotten relic of colonial map-making into a progressive force that would defeat contemporary injustices across the world?

The mechanics of how this might actually work remained a little hazy. Yet just occasionally, at more contemplative junctures, it did occur to us that in the process of planting a flag in Bir Tawil as part of some ill-defined critique of arbitrary borders and imperial violence, there was a risk we could appear to the untrained eye very similar to the imperialists who had perpetrated such violence in the first place. It was a resemblance we were keen to avoid. Undertaking this journey in a state of deep ignorance, we told ourselves, would help mitigate against pomposity. Without any basic knowledge, we would be forced to travel as humble innocents, relying solely on guidance from the communities we passed through.

As the two of us cleared customs, we broke into smiles and congratulated each other. The auteurs had landed, and what is more they had Important Things To Say about borders and states and sovereignty and empires. We set off in search of some local currency, and warmed to our theme. By the time we found an ATM, we were referring to Bir Tawil as so much more than a conceptual exposition. Under our benevolent stewardship, we assured each other, it could surely become some sort of launchpad for radical new ideas, a haven for subversives all over the planet.

It was at that point that the auteurs realised their bank cards did not work in Sudan, and that there were no international money transfer services they could use to wire themselves some cash.

This setback represented the first consequence of our failure to do any preparatory research. The nagging sense that our maverick approach to reaching Bir Tawil may not have been the wisest way forward gained momentum with consequence number two, which was that to solve the money problem we had to persuade a friend of a friend of a friend of an Egyptian business acquaintance to do an illicit currency trade for us on the outskirts of Khartoum. Consequence number three namely that, given our lack of knowledge about where we could and could not legally film in the capital, after a few days we inadvertently attracted the attention of an undercover state security agent while carrying around $2,000 worth of used Sudanese banknotes in an old rucksack, and were arrested transformed suspicion into certainty.

The route to Bir Tawil

On the date Omar and I were incarcerated, millions of citizens in South Sudan were heading to the polls to decide between continued unity with the north or secession and a new, independent state of their own. We sat silently in a nondescript office block just off Gamaa Avenue the citys main diplomatic thoroughfare while a group of men in black suits and dark sunglasses scrolled through files on Omars video camera. Armed soldiers, unsmiling, stood guard at the door. Through the rooms single window, open but barred, the sound of nearby traffic could be heard. The images on the screen depicted me and Omar gadding about town on the days following our arrival; me and Omar unfurling huge rolls of yellowing paper at the governments survey department; me and Omar scrawling indecipherable patterns on sheets of paper in an effort to design the new Bir Tawili flag; me and Omar squabbling over fabric colours at the Omdurman market where we had gone to stitch together the aforementioned flag. With each new picture, a man who appeared to be the senior officer raised his eyes to meet ours, shook his head, and sighed.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I pointed out to Omar how apposite it was that at the very moment in which votes were being cast in the south, possibly redrawing the regions borders for ever, we had been placed under lock and key in a military intelligence unit almost a thousand miles to the north for attempting to do the same. Omar, concerned about the fate of both his camera and the contents of the rucksack, declined to respond. I predicted that in the not too distant future, when we had made it to Bir Tawil, we would look back on this moment and laugh. Omar glared.

In the end, our captivity lasted under an hour. The senior officer concluded, perceptively, that, whatever we were attempting to do, we were far too incompetent to do it properly, or to cause too much trouble along the way. Upon our release, we set about obtaining a jeep that could take us to Bir Tawil. Every reputable travel agent we approached turned us down point-blank, citing the prevalence of bandit attacks in the desert. Thankfully, we were able to locate a disreputable travel agent, a large man with a taste for loud polo shirts who went by the name of Obai. Obai was actually not a travel agent at all, but rather a big-game hunter with a lucrative sideline in ambiguously licensed pick-up trucks. In exchange for most of our used banknotes, he offered to provide us with a jeep, a satellite phone, two tanks of water, and his nephew Gedo, who happened to be looking for work as a driver. In the absence of any alternative offers, we gratefully accepted.

Unlike Obai, who was a font of swashbuckling anecdotes and improbable tales of derring-do, Gedo turned out to be a more taciturn soul. He was a civil engineer who had previously done construction work on the colossal Merowe dam in northern Sudan, Africas largest hydropower project. On the day of our departure, he turned up wearing a baseball cap with Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics emblazoned across the front, and carrying a loaded gun. As we waved goodbye to Obai and began weaving our way through the capitals rush hour traffic, Omar and I set about explaining to Gedo the intricacies of our plan to transform Bir Tawil into an open-source state that would disrupt existing patterns of global power and privilege no mean feat, given that we didnt understand any of the intricacies ourselves. Gedo responded to this as he responded to everything: with a sage nod and a deliberate stroke of his stubble.

Im here to protect you, he told us solemnly, as we swung north on to the highway and left Khartoum behind us. Also, Ive never been on a holiday before, and this one sounds fun.

Bir Tawils unusual status wedged between the borders of two countries and yet claimed by neither is a byproduct of colonial machinations in north-east Africa, during an era of British control over Egypt and Egyptian influence on Sudan.

In 1899, government representatives from London and Cairo the latter nominally independent, but in reality the servants of a British protectorate put pen to paper on an agreement which established the shared dominion of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The treaty specified that, following 18 years of intense fighting between Egyptian and British forces on the one side and Mahdist rebels in Sudan on the other, Sudan would now become a British colony in all but name. Its northern border with Egypt was to run along the 22nd parallel, cutting a straight line through the Nubian desert right out to the ocean.

Three years later, however, another document was drawn up by the British. This one noted that a mountain named Bartazuga, just south of the 22nd parallel, was home to the nomadic Ababda tribe, which was considered to have stronger links with Egypt than Sudan. The document stipulated that henceforth this area should be administered by Egypt. Meanwhile, a much-larger triangle of land north of the 22nd parallel, named Halaib, abutting the Red Sea, was assigned to the Beja people who are largely based in Sudan for grazing, and thus now came under Sudans jurisdiction. And that was that, for the next few decades at least. World wars came and went, regimes rose and fell, and those imaginary lines in the sand gathered dust in bureaucratic archives, of little concern to anyone on the ground.

Disputes only started in earnest when Sudan finally achieved independence in 1956. The new postcolonial government in Khartoum immediately declared that its national borders matched the tweaked boundaries stipulated in the second proclamation, making the Halaib triangle Sudanese. Egypt demurred, insisting that the latter document was concerned only with areas of temporary administrative jurisdiction and that sovereignty had been established in the earlier treaty. Under this logic, the real border stayed straight and the Halaib triangle remained Egyptian.

By the early 1990s, when a Canadian oil firm signalled its intention to begin exploration in Halaib and the prospect of substantial mineral wealth being found in the region gained momentum, the disagreement was no longer academic. Egypt sent military forces to reclaim Halaib from Sudan, and despite fierce protests from Khartoum which still considers Halaib to be Sudanese and even tried to organise voting there during the 2010 Sudanese general election it has remained under Cairos control ever since.

Our world is littered with contested borders. The geographers Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen refer to the dashed lines on atlases as the scars of history. Compared with other divisions between countries that seem so solid and timeless when scored on a map, these squiggles enclaves, misshapen lumps and odd protrusions are a reminder of how messy and malleable the process of drawing up borders has always been.

What makes this particular border conflict unique, though, is not the tussle over the Halaib triangle itself, but rather the impact it has had on the smaller patch of land just south of the 22nd parallel around Bartazuga mountain, the area known as Bir Tawil.

Egypt and Sudans rival claims on Halaib both rest on documents that appear to assign responsibility for Bir Tawil to the other country. As a result, neither wants to assert any sovereignty over Bir Tawil, for to do so would be to renounce their rights to the larger and more lucrative territory. On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese maps, it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius nobodys land and there is nothing else quite like it on the planet.

Omar and I were not, it must be acknowledged, the first to discover this anomaly. If the internet is to be believed, Bir Tawil has in fact been claimed many times over by keyboard emperors whose virtual principalities and warring microstates exist only online. The Kingdom of the State of Bir Tawil boasts a national anthem by the late British jazz musician Acker Bilk. The Emirate of Bir Tawil traces its claim over the territory to, among other sources, the Quran, the British monarchy, the 1933 Montevideo Convention and the 1856 US Guano Islands Act. There is a Grand Dukedom of Bir Tawil, an Empire of Bir Tawil, a United Arab Republic of Bir Tawil and a United Lunar Emirate of Bir Tawil. The last of these has a homepage featuring a citizen application form, several self-help mantras, and stock photos of people doing yoga in a park.

From our rarefied vantage point at the back of Obais Toyota Hilux, it was easy to look down with disdain upon these cyber-squatting chancers. None of them had ever actually set foot in Bir Tawil, rendering their claims to sovereignty worthless. Few had truly grappled with Bir Tawils complex backstory, or of the bloodshed it was built upon (tens of thousands of Sudanese fighters and civilians died as a result of the Egyptian and British military assaults that ended in the establishment of Sudans northern borders and thus, ultimately, the creation of Bir Tawil). Granted, Omar and I knew little of the backstory either, but at least we had actually got to Sudan and were making, by our own estimation, a decent fist of finding out. We ate our energy bars, listened attentively to tales of Gedos love life, and scanned the road for clues. The first arrived nearly 200 miles north-east of Khartoum, about a third of the way up towards Bir Tawil, when we came across a city of iron and fire oozing kerosene into the desert. This was Atbara: home of Sudans railway system, and the engine room of its modern-day creation story.

Until very recently, the long history of Sudan has not been one of a single country or people: many different tribes, religions and political factions have competed for power and resources, across territories and borders that bear no relation to those marking out the states limits today. A lack of rigid, recognisable boundaries was used to help justify Europes violent scramble to occupy and annex land throughout Africa in the 19th century. Often, the first step taken by western colonisers was to map and border the territory they were seizing. Charting of land was usually a prelude to military invasion and resource extraction; during the British conquest of Sudan, Atbara was crucial to both.

Sudans contemporary railway system began life as a battering ram for the British to attack Khartoum. Trains carried not only weapons and troops but everyday provisions too, specified by Winston Churchill as the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda water, and cigarettes which enable the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort. Atbara was the site where key rail lines intersected, and its importance grew rapidly after Londons grip on Sudan had been formalised in the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian treaty.

Everything that mattered, from cotton to gum, came through here, as did all the rolling stock needed to move and export it, Mohamed Ederes, a local railway storekeeper, told us. He walked us through his warehouse, down corridors stacked high with box after box of metal train parts and past giant leather-bound catalogues stuffed with handwritten notes. From here, he declared proudly, you reached the world.

Atbaras colonial origins are still etched into its modern-day layout. One half of the town, originally the preserve of expatriates, is low-rise and leafy; on the other side of the tracks, where native workers were made to live, accommodation is denser and taller. But just as Atbara was a vehicle for colonialism, so too was it the place in which a distinct sense of Sudanese nationhood began to develop.

As Sudans economy grew in the early 20th century, so did the railway industry, bringing thousands of migrant workers from disparate social and ethnic groups to the city. By the second world war, Atbara was famous not only for its carriage depots and loading sidings, but also for the nationalist literature and labour militancy of those who worked within them. Poets as well as workers leaders emerged out of the nascent trade union movement in the late 1940s, which held devastating strikes and helped shake the foundations of British rule. The same train lines that had once borne Churchills sausages and soda water were now deployed to deliver workers solidarity packages all over the country, during industrial action that ultimately brought the colonial economy to a halt. Within a decade, Sudan secured independence.

The next morning, as we drove on, Gedo grew quieter and the signs of human habitation became sparser. At Karima, a small town 150 miles further north, we came across a fleet of abandoned Nile steamers stranded on the river bank; below stairs there were metal plaques bearing the name of shipwrights from Portsmouth, Southampton and Glasgow, each companys handiwork now succumbing slowly to the elements. We clambered through cobwebbed cabins and across rotting sun decks, and then decided to scale the nearby Jebel Barkal Holy Mountain in Arabic where eagles tracked us warily from the sky. Omar maintained a running commentary on our progress, delivered as a flawless Herzog parody, and it proved so painful for all in earshot that the eagles began to dive-bomb us. We set off running, taking refuge among the mountains scattered ruins.

Jebel Barkal was once believed to be the home of Amun, king of gods and god of wind. Fragments of Amuns temple are still visible at the base of the cliffs. Over the past few millennia, Jebel Barkal has been the outermost limit of Egypts Pharaonic kingdoms, the centre of an autonomous Nubian region, and a vassal province of an empire headquartered thousands of miles away in Constantinople. In the modern era of defined borders and seemingly stable nation states, Bir Tawil seems an impossible anomaly. But standing over the jagged crevices of Jebel Barkal, looking out across a region that had been passed between so many different rulers, and formed part of so many different arrangements of power over land, our endpoint started to feel more familiar.

Abandoned Nile steamers stranded on the river bank at Karima. Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton

The following evening we camped at Abu Hamed, on the very edge of the desert. Beyond the ramshackle cafeterias that have sprung up to serve the artisanal gold-mining community sending shisha smoke and the noise of Egyptian soap operas spiralling up into the night Omar and I saw the outlines of large agricultural reclamation projects, silhouetted in the distance against a starry sky. Since 2008, when global food prices spiked, there has been a boom in what critics call land-grabbing: international investors and sovereign wealth funds snapping up leases on massive tracts of African territory in order to intensify the production of crops for export, and bringing such territory under the control of European, Asian and Gulf nations in the process. Arable land was the first to be targeted, but increasingly desert areas are also being fenced off and sold. Near Abu Hamed, Saudi Arabian companies have been greening the sand blanketing it in soil and water in an effort to make it fertile with worrying consequences for both the environment and local communities, some of whom have long asserted customary rights over the area.

It was not so long ago that the prophets of globalisation proclaimed the impending decline of the nation-state and the rise of a borderless world one modelled on the frictionless transactions of international finance, which pay no heed to state boundaries.

A resurgent populist nationalism and the refugee crisis that has stoked its flames has exposed such claims as premature, and investors depend more than ever on national governments to open up new terrains for speculation and accumulation, and to discipline citizens who dare to stand in the way. But there is no doubt that we now live in a world where the power of capital has profoundly disrupted old ideas about political authority inside national boundaries. All over the planet, the institutions that impact our lives most directly banks, buses, hospitals, schools, farms can now be sold off to the highest bidder and governed by the whims of a transnational financial elite. Where national borders once enclosed populations capable of practising collective sovereignty over their own resources, in the 21st century they look more and more like containers for an inventory of private assets, each waiting to be spliced, diced and traded around the world.

It was at Abu Hamed, while lying awake at night in a sleeping bag, nestled into a shallow depression in the sand, that I realised the closer we were getting to our destination, the more I understood what was so beguiling about it. Now that Bir Tawil was in sight, it had started to appear less like an aberration and more like a question: is there anything natural about how borders and power function in the world today?

In the end, there was no fanfare. On a hazy Tuesday afternoon, 40 hours since we left the road at Abu Hamed, 13 days since we touched down in Khartoum, and six months since the dotted lines of Bir Tawil first appeared before our eyes, Omar gave a shout from the back of the jeep. I checked our GPS coordinates on the satellite phone, and cross-referenced them with the map. Gedo, on being informed that we were now in Bir Tawil and outside of any countrys dominion, promptly took out his gun and fired off a volley of shots. We traipsed up a small hillock and wedged our somewhat forlorn flag into the rocks a yellow desert fox, set against a black circle and bordered by triangles of green and red then sat and gazed out at the horizon, tracing the rise and fall of distant mountains and following the curves of sunken valleys as they criss-crossed each other like veins through the sand. The sky and the ground both looked massive, and unending, and the warm stones around us crumbled in our hands. After a couple of hours, Gedo said that it was getting late, so we climbed back into the jeep and began the long journey home.

Well before our journey had ever begun, we had hoped albeit not particularly fervently that we could do something with it, something that mattered; that by striking out for a place this nebulous we could find a shortcut to social justice, two days drive from the nearest tap or telephone. In 800 square miles of desert, we thought that we could exploit the outlines of the bordered world in order to subvert it.

Jeremiah Heaton, beyond the kingdom for a princess schmaltz and the forthcoming Disney adaptation (he has sold film rights to his story for an undisclosed fee) seems albeit from an almost diametrically opposite philosophical outlook to be convinced of something similar. For him, the fantasy is a libertarian one, offering freedom not from the iniquities of capitalism but from the government interference that inhibits it. Just as we did, he wants to take advantage of a quirk in the system to defy it. When I spoke to Heaton, he told me with genuine enthusiasm that his country (not yet recognised by any other state or international body) would offer the worlds great innovators a place to develop their products unencumbered by taxes and regulation, a place where private enterprise faces no socially prescribed borders of its own. Big companies, he assured me, were scrambling to join his vision.

Jack Shenkers makeshift flag planted in Bir Tawil Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton

You would be surprised at the outreach that has occurred from the corporate level to me directly, Heaton insisted during our conversation. Its not been an issue of me having to go out and sell myself on this idea. A lot of these large corporations, they see market opportunities in what Im doing. He painted a picture of Bir Tawil one day playing host to daring scientific research, ground-breaking food-production facilities and alternative banking systems that work for the benefit of customers rather than CEOs. I asked him if he understood why some people found his plans, and the assumptions they rested on, highly dubious.

Theres that saying: if you were king for a day, what would you do differently? he replied. Think about that question yourself and apply it to your own country. Thats what Im doing, but on a much bigger scale. This is not colonialism; Im an individual, not a country, I havent taken land that belongs to any other country, and Im not extracting resources other than sunshine and sand. I am just one human being, trying to improve the condition of other human beings. I have the purest intentions in the world to make this planet a better place, and to try and criticise that just because Im a white person sitting on land in the middle of the Nubian desert He trailed off, and was silent for a moment. Well, he concluded, its really juvenile.

But if, by some miracle, Heaton ever did gain global recognition as the legitimate leader of an independent Bir Tawili state, would his pitch to corporations base yourself here to avoid paying taxes and escape the manacles of democratic oversight actually do anything to improve the condition of other human beings? Part of the allure of unclaimed spaces is their radical potential to offer a blank canvas but as Omar and I belatedly realised, nothing, and nowhere, starts from scratch. Any utopia founded on the basis of a concept terra nullius that has wreaked immense historical destruction, is built on rotten foundations.

In truth, no place is a dead zone, stopped in time and ripe for private capture least of all Bir Tawil, which translates as long well in Arabic and was clearly the site of considerable human activity in the past. Although it lacks any permanent dwellings today, this section of desert is still used by members of the Ababda and Bisharin tribes who carry goods, graze crops and make camp within the sands. (Not the least of our failures was that we did not manage to speak to any of the peoples who had passed through Bir Tawil before we arrived.) Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims but Bir Tawil is not any more a no mans land than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies andthe Britishgovernment that supported them to justify the appropriation of territory from indigenous people. I cannot admit that wandering tribes have a right to keep other and superior races out of large tracts, exclaimed the British commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, at the time, merely because they have acquired the habit of straggling over far more land than they can utilise.

Bir Tawil is no terra nullius. But no mans lands or at least ambiguous spaces, where boundaries take odd turns and sovereignty gets scrambled are real and exist among us every day. Some endure at airports, and inside immigration detention centres, and in the pockets of economic deprivation where states have abandoned any responsibility for their citizens. Others no mans lands are carried around by refugees who are yet to be granted asylum, regardless of where they may be having fled failed states or countries which would deny them the rights of citizenship, they occupy a world of legal confusion at best, and outright exclusion at worst.

Perhaps that is why, as we switched off the camera and left Bir Tawil behind us, Omar and I felt a little let down. Or perhaps we shared a sense of anticlimax because we were faintly aware of something rumbling back home in Cairo, where millions of people were about to launch an epic fight against political and economic exclusion not by withdrawing to a no mans land but by confronting state authority head-on, in the streets. A week after our return to Egypt, the country erupted in revolution.

Borders are fluid things; they help define our identities, and yet so often we use our identities to push up against borders and redraw them. For now the boundaries that divide nation states remain, but their purpose is changing and the relationship they have to our own lives, and our own rights, is growing increasingly unstable. If Bir Tawil the preeminent ambiguous space is anything to those who live far from it, it is perhaps a reminder that no particular configuration of power and governance is immutable. As we drove silently, and semi-contentedly, back past the gold-foragers, and the ramshackle cafeteria, and the heavy machinery of the Saudi farm installations Gedo at the wheel, Omar asleep and me staring out at nothing I grasped what I had failed to grasp on that lazy night of beer drinking on Omars balcony. The last truly unclaimed land on earth is really an injunction: not for us to seek out the mythical territory where we can hide from the things that anger us, but to channel that anger instead towards reclaiming territory we already call our own.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/welcome-to-the-land-that-no-country-wants-jack-shenker/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184057060162

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krasnaya-ledi · 7 years

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Rhetorical Analysis: “What You Eat is Your Business”

(I was quite proud of this homework assignment, so I’m posting it on tumblr.)

If one should ever desire to read an article charged with narrow-minded ideas about the injustices inflicted by government regulations and rules, this would be that exact paper. While its author, Radley Balko, clearly has experience writing and researching sources and events in order to back and support his own ideas, he has a reoccurring tendency to never address counterarguments or even refute them. Instead, he riles the reader to his side by painting whatever position stands in opposition to his own as some oppressing evil. To his own credit however, even if his conclusions and comparisons seem a bit far stretched when bluntly stated, for the most part, his build up to them remains simple to follow, allowing the reader to, at the very least, understand why he has arrived at such conclusions, even if the reader doesn’t fully buy into them.

The ultimate idea that Balko supports is basic enough to be stated simply as the notion that it is not the place of the government or governing officials to try to control the wide spread epidemic that is obesity. However, he breaks it down into specific key points and positions that both explain why and also reveal his own personal beliefs on the matter. For starters, Balko is very clearly against the idea of socialized medicine and health care, and states as much almost verbatim in various forms throughout his essay. Just as well, he equates obesity and personal health in general to being purely about personal choice and responsibility. Therefore, in that light, the government should have no right to interfere with the personal choices of the individuals. He then claims that regulation makes the “food companies responsible for the bad habits of unhealthy consumers” (par. 6). In that light, he also then believes that the current fashion that the government has adopted is not only “the wrong way to fight obesity” (par. 3), but that the optimal way to fight obesity is to “remove obesity from the realm of public health” (par. 8). He even goes as far to state that certain laws that socialize health care are “a huge entitlement … which effectively removes any financial incentive for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.” (par. 4). Ultimately, his issue seemed to be with the notion that government mandates should inconvenience or financially burden anyone other than the sole person who has health problems.

A significant portion of Balko’s support for his claims stems from him name-dropping particular politicians, the activists, and the platforms that they have either supported or pioneered themselves. He then proceeds to use their own articles or statements against them, then provides his own, one-sided analysis of the error of their ways without adding outside support for his own claims. In this exact form, he references an ABC News special where journalist Peter Jennings investigated the leading causes of obesity in Americans in a segment titled “How To Get Fat Without Really Trying.” Without giving any details of what was actually contained in, or said in the special, Balko summarizes the whole of it as an attempt to “relieve viewers of responsibility for their own condition … with an impassioned plea for government intervention to fight obesity” (par. 7). He uses this same tactic when addressing a rather long piece that Hillary Clinton wrote for the New York Times that apparently claimed a demand “for yet more federal control of health care” (par 4). He never once even gave a word to the reasons contained in that article, or allowed a moment to step up to the challenge and refute whatever reasons could be contained therein; he simply summarized the entire work into a mere sentence to paint whatever logic or reasoning that could have been stated there as irrelevant and just plain wrong. Balko uses this device as a standard method for using outside references as supposed evidence to support his claim. However, this approach seems to only weaken the validity of his argument, since he fails to provide any actual solid support for his own reasoning since he only makes vague analyses of his sources and then uses his own analysis to tear them down in merely a sentence or two.

However, he does present his own logical conclusions quite well. Almost every single claim he offers, or stance he takes, he is able to logically explain a support for that idea on his own merit. He does this mainly by using if/then statements that oversimplify the problem into black-and-white scenarios, excellently crafted so that it nearly goes undetected. However, almost every paragraph in the article can be simplified and reworded to fit this mold. For example, Balko offers a hypothetical situation when talking about personal responsibility stating that “If the government is paying for my anti-cholesterol medication,” then “what incentive is there for me to put down the cheeseburger?” (par. 5) This pattern of using if/then statements and hypothetical situations reverberates throughout the whole of the essay as his own way of trying to present his claims in seemingly logical ways. However, this does allow for hefty fallacies to creep into his own words as he places his assumptions. His largest fallacy that he doesn’t address or qualify is his notion that good health or obesity are purely the results of good choices. This does not allow any room for diseases, syndromes, or genetic factors that present things such as obesity or generally poor health as symptoms. This rather egregious oversight on Balko’s part puts a severe dent in his claim that obesity should not be the responsibility of the government or public health.

With such a fallacy and a rather clear avoidance of daring to address opposing views, readers who carefully analyze this paper and his claims are quick to start to discredit his claims. Despite his seemingly impressive credentials, Balko’s only real appeal to instill a sense of credibility to his words lies in his strategic choice of name dropping. Despite using what can only be loosely described as sources due to his poor utilization of their contents, the fact that he does include names of authority or familiarity and their works, allows him to appear to be well researched and read on the topic. Particularly, he name drops famous food companies such as McDonald’s, Safeway, and Kroger, giving off the appearance that he is not only well read, but in touch with the common man. These very illusions are shallow and fall apart with further study.

A rather critical mistake he makes when trying to establish a reason to believe, let a lone listen to him is when he creates almost an air of contradiction. Throughout the article, his views on minimizing governmental influence in healthcare and his distinct choice of aligning the Democratic political party with socialized medicine – something he is explicitly against – he creates the implication that he aligns himself with more conservative, or Republican ideals. While this easily can earn him some credibility with those who identify themselves to a similar political affiliation, he makes a near fatal error. Balko claims “It’s difficult to think of anything more private and of less public concern than what we choose to put into our bodies” (par. 8). While this does support his individual claims of the right of choice and personal responsibility, it aligns as a far more Democratic ideology that what goes with our bodies and what goes into them is an individual choice – such as with the topics of women’s reproductive rights and health and illicit drug use. Ultimately, that statement, when tied to his pointed attempts to place obesity under the personal choice and responsibility category discredit him from being able to fully win over any credibility via political party alliance.

To his credit, upon first read, Balko quiet effectively rallies the reader to his side with what feels like a near war cry against the evil that is in allowing the “government between you and your waistline” (par. 1). He continuously attaches words with distinctly negative connotations to the opposing side, leaving the reader bitter towards and soured against the idea of having the government regulate and control any part of the food industry and subsequently, our right to choose to be fat. He refers to regulation a manipulation or intervention (par 3), and even refers to socialized health care as a “huge entitlement that requires some people to pay for other people’s medicine” (par. 4). Put into that light, it automatically pits the reader against the idea of government mandates, for who wants to be manipulated or be forced to pay for someone else’s health care? Similarly, he paints the idea that anyone who buys into “a society where everyone is responsible for everyone else’s well-being is a society more apt to accept government restrictions” lacks intellectual distinction and is merely a brainless follower, poisoning the metaphorical well. This not only creates a subliminal insult to the intelligence of those who have an opinion contrary to Balko’s but picks at the reader’s sense of pride and fear so that they then either deem themselves more wise by siding with him, or that to side against them would equate them to being seen as dumb.

He continues to blatantly refer to those who stand in favor of government regulation as “a growing army of nutritionist activists and food industry foes” (par. 7). Ouch. For those undecided about the topic, this then implants the idea that to side with the opposition to his platform would make them some sort of loathsome member that only follows because of a shared mob mentality. Balko continues to perpetuate this rather skewed view in almost every other sentence, giving the article overall a rather bitter and angry tone that rallies the casual reader to Balko’s side much like hate-filled speech full of propaganda.

Balko throughout the piece continues to come across as a man trying to write a research paper, but in reality, almost the entirety of the article, reads like an opinion piece. Balko continuously fails to provide hard evidence to any of the claims he makes, relying solely on his purposefully skewed diction and appeals to faux relatability to attempt to sway his reader into rallying against having the government regulate our right to be fat. For such a polarized and unresolved topic, the lack of real insight this provides is ultimately disappointing.

Works Cited

Balko, Radley. (2004). What You Eat Is Your Business. Cato.org. Cato Institute.

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mayviolet · 4 years

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How Long Should I Wait To Try And Get My Ex Back Staggering Tricks

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Songs About Wanting Your Ex Back 2019

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How Can I Attract My Ex Back With The Law Of Attraction

#How Long Should I Wait To Try And Get My Ex Back Staggering Tricks #How To Get Ex Girlfriend Back Psy

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itsworn · 7 years

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Circle Track Magazine – How it all Began

The following are recollections provided by this magazine’s first Editor, C.J. Baker. From them, you will get a sense for how Circle Track came into being and set a course not far removed from where it continues today.

Baker and I have been friends for decades. I have been pleased to work with him and also observe his efforts and dedication to create an initial success with a magazine that largely pursued in-depth technical perspectives in a sport for which he had an intense passion: circle-track racing. Keep in mind that when he did so, there was no Internet, no social media, and very few personal computers or cellphones. Aside from radio and television, automotive enthusiasts and racers obtained their technical information from magazines. In this particular instance, Circle Track (by design) was intended to be that technical voice in the motorsports community. Moreover, with that challenge came the serious responsibility to be technically correct. Typically, if you read something in a magazine, you presumed it was accurate. In and of itself, that was a fairly weighty responsibility.

We want to emphasize that Baker wasn’t just the Editor. He accepted the challenge offered him (in what was then Petersen Publishing Company) that necessitated his dedication and drew from his experience to withstand most all the problems involved in a start-up effort. In this particular case, that included issues pertaining to advertising, magazine circulation, staffing, and costs, all apart from the delicate balance of creating the proper editorial content. He either had to do or oversee all of these elements while under the watchful eye of management. In retrospect, he performed extremely well, as the magazine anchored itself and prospered as noted in the annals of automotive journalism.

We hope you appreciate and enjoy this piece of motorsports history. Given all circumstances that prevailed at the time, it will never happen again.

Jim McFarland: Take us back to that time in the evolution of Petersen Publishing Company when the seeds were planted about the possibility of a “roundy-round” magazine. There were obviously obstacles, but as I recall, it was also a period of internal corporate growth.

C.J. Baker: Actually, PPC (Petersen Publishing Company) was in an expansion mode. ‘Pete’ (Bob Petersen) was looking for new markets for special-interest publications. The Specialty Book Division, being run by Lee Kelley, was a perfect venue to test such new markets. Lee conceived the notion of testing the audience potential for a publication dedicated to roundy round type racing. Such testing was primarily to determine the potential readership, not advertising potential, although advertisers were polled about their potential support, as well. Members of the Specialty Book staff who had automotive or racing familiarity were assigned to create a one-shot publication entitled Circle Track, which hit the newsstand during the first half of 1982. Although the editorial content of that one-shot wasn’t well focused, the magazine sold very well. In fact, it sold so well that the decision was made to immediately launch Circle Track as a monthly magazine.

JM: I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but a decision of that magnitude, given all the elements that necessitated the introduction of an all-new magazine and the coordination of those factors into a successful launch, was of particular significance.

CB: Well, it turned out to be very fortuitous. After people read the one-shot and feedback came in, the reviews couldn’t be accurately defined as glowing. But it was too late. The die had been cast to green-light Circle Track, although prior discussions about frequency had been to begin as a quarterly, progress to a bi-monthly and then, maybe, to a monthly. That all changed. In hindsight and in my opinion and to that point in time, Pete wasn’t too concerned about whether new launches were successful or not, and CT wasn’t the only new launch. I think his thinking was that if a new title succeeded, that was great, and he had a new profit center. But if it did not, he had a tax write-off during those prosperous years for PPC.

JM: OK. So now it was, for the most part, well beyond assembling plans for creating a monthly editorial package that not only including staffing, but in particular, finding an editor who could begin getting the cart back behind the horse.

CB: That brings us back to Lee Kelley. Lee’s concern was how to staff the publication and find an editor to develop an editorial concept and format. The search didn’t take very long. Prior to running the Specialty Book Division, Lee had been the editor of Hot Rod and knew of my love for roundy-round racing. He also knew after 10 years at Hot Rod that I was bored, even though I was functioning as HRM’s executive editor and Detroit’s editorial liaison. He also knew I had been a continual advocate of more roundy-round racing in Hot Rod, even though the magazine’s covering of roundy-round racing had almost always failed to produce any spikes in either newsstand sales or advertising revenue. So Lee and Pete made me a simple proposition: Stay at HRM or here’s your chance to pursue your interest in roundy-round racing as the editor of Circle Track. However, there was one clearly expressed stipulation. Make CT a success, and you’ll be on an upward path at PPC. But, if I failed, I was gone.

JM: Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Plus, having known them both for quite a number of years, I know they meant what they said, either way.

CB: I agree. So, I took the challenge. Lee charged me with the responsibility for determining the editorial direction and hiring writing staff. However, the Specialty Book Division would provide a production staff. So on June l, l982, Circle Track was assigned its own suite of offices in the 8490 Sunset Boulevard PPC building with a deadline to have the first monthly issue on the newsstand for October 1982. And to my everlasting gratitude, Lee provided me some of the best people he had in the Specialty Book Division.

JM: You know C.J., to a lesser degree, I can relate to the pressure you immediately came under. I had similar feelings the day I was informed I was the new editor at HRM. Other than to those who have experienced it, the weight that fell onto you at that point in your career is beyond description.

CB: Well, let me tell you, this was pretty heady stuff for a country boy from rural Illinois, even though I had been well seasoned at Hot Rod. Now Lee had given me a free hand, simply asking that I keep him apprised. So, at that point, CT was literally off to the races.

JM: Were there any related items that played into this launch worth mentioning here?

CB: Yes. I had indicated earlier that Hot Rod had not explored, to any great extent, roundy-round content and its appeal to the readership. But there was one exception. That exception was an occasional tech article contributed by legendary NASCAR and Indy car builder, Smokey Yunick. In truth, it was you, Jim, who arranged for me to meet and interview Smokey while I was at Hot Rod. An incredible professional and personal relationship with Smokey ensued. He was my technical teacher and mentor, my frequent advisor on all things automotive and, most importantly, my very good friend. In fact, I consulted with him before accepting the CT challenge. His response was simple: ‘I think you can do it, and probably be damn good at it. And if you think you can do it, take the job.’ And, of course, I immediately contracted Smokey to do a monthly question-and-answer column in CT.

At first, he didn’t want to do it. He’d previously done a Q&A column for Popular Science magazine, and he didn’t particularly enjoy it because most questions came from novices, seeking advice on daily transportation. Smokey thought of himself as a racer, and everything that term might include. I convinced him to do a racing Q&A column by telling him I didn’t want him to just provide answers to reader’s questions but to explain the logic, science, and physics behind his answers. Essentially, he was teaching CT readers ‘how to fish,’ rather than just ‘giving them a fish.’ That got him. He was on board. I also told him I’d let him be as ‘colorful’ as I possibly could and that I would personally edit his work, not a staffer. So I can truthfully say Smokey’s contributions to CT, and to me personally, greatly boosted CT’s success during the 18 years that I ran it.

JM: That’s not the whole story, C.J. as you and I both know. For that point in time within the monthly magazine publishing business, other factors aside from editorial content and advertising revenue drove the success or failure of the effort. We need to fill in some blanks here. Let’s return to that period right after the magazine launched, and you began to dig your heels into the tasks ahead.

CB: Well, there were some issues I hadn’t fully anticipated. Aside from periodic situations internal to the company with which Circle Track had to deal, there was an attempt by NASCAR to assert some control over the editorial with oversight of content. That, of course, wasn’t an option as far as I was concerned. Editorial objectiveness was essential. That did not please NASCAR.

I also revised the editorial focus and balance shortly after the initial launch. At first, I concluded (while sitting on the pit wall at the Daytona International Speedway for the 1982 Firecracker 400) that CT should appeal to both race fans and racers. I made the decision thinking there were a helluva lot more folks in the stands (this was while watching the pre-race filling of the stands) than there were people in the pits and garage area. So that’s how we launched CT. With personally hand-picked staff and freelance writers that could address racing from a historical perspective, while providing personality features, as well as great technical content that was usually based on first-hand experience and success. That approach worked pretty good in terms of acceptance of CT. In the first year, it became the best-selling racing magazine in America. In terms of audience, that was fine, too. But as a business, CT needed more advertising revenue and that was a challenge. The last thing the readers wanted was more commercials in the middle of the show, so to speak. So I made a change. One that changed everything.

JM: You know, C.J., there’s a side to the publishing business, or at least it manifested itself a bit differently back then than now. You may want to share the thoughts you had about all the various aspects of the magazine regarding the overall scope of your responsibilities and the pressures that came with that load.

CB: Actually, there was a side to the job that may not have been apparent to those outside the staff and PPC management. The magazine wasn’t just about being a service to its readers. When you peel away the great pictures, great articles, and informative teaching, the cold hard fact is a magazine is a business that has to make money to survive. Let me put that more into perspective.

Although launched by Lee Kelley, before the first issue hit the newsstands, Harry Hibler (the publisher of Hot Rod) was also given publisher’s responsibility for CT, and I no longer reported to Lee. In those days at PPC, the publisher was responsible for the financial success of magazines under their control. Harry had a full plate with HRM and within a year, I was named associate publisher for CT. Not long after that, I was named publisher as well as editor. Doing both jobs required long hours, but wearing both hats eliminated a lot of arguments between the editor and publisher. In other words, some of my priorities had to be re-adjusted. No longer was I being judged just by CT’s circulation numbers, but also by the advertising revenue CT generated.

At about the same time all of this was happening politically in PPC, Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines were backing away from technical content in favor of car features, event coverage, and general-interest editorial. They opened the technical content door just a crack, and I decided to kick it open. I announced to the automotive advertising community that CT was going to become the most technically oriented magazine in the PPC automotive stable. Further, that CT wasn’t just going to increase the number of pages devoted to technical articles, but the level of those articles would largely be graduate-level tech instead of the entry-level tech of HRM and Car Craft. I did this without prior approval of higher management, and to my surprise, my announcement was met with no opposition. At least until CT began to be a thorn in HRM’s foot.

It was a great solution. Suddenly, advertisers of racing parts and services, high-performance automotive parts, and others were clamoring to buy space in CT because it was going directly to the racers who bought their products. The ads featured products and services for roundy-round racers. The ads, too, were the stuff the readers wanted to know about, and the more pages of advertising CT carried, the more pages of actual editorial it was allowed to run. The magazine got thicker and circulation didn’t drop. The spectator readership was getting same-day coverage on TV, so they weren’t looking for that in CT, but racers were eager for real technical knowledge, which wasn’t time sensitive.”

JM: Looking back, it appears you did more than succeed, at least in terms of the internal impact of what you were doing on other PPC automotive magazines. From experience, I know for a time HRM was indirectly in competition with Motor Trend (another PPC automotive title), particularly in the area of new-vehicle road tests. But we had different audiences. In your case, the HRM readership included a segment of those looking for solid technical material, so the success you had initiated had to have been bleeding into HRM space.

CB: Actually, it turned out that way. As a direct result, PPC management began to place some constraints on CT, especially in the areas of circulation promotion, and editorial budget. Of course, it wasn’t long after that when Pete sold the company (for the first time), and the company then experienced yet another sell-off. I had simply become a well-compensated senior employee, and the way of the world was embracing the 24 Syndrome by the practice of hiring new employees who were 24 years old, who would work for 24 hours a day, were paid $24K a year and were likely to burn out in 24 months. I departed in 2000.

JM: I know you realize now all these events, culminating when they did, turned out to be pretty much a blessing for you. The emergence of the internet, and along with the arrival of the social-media craze, had a visible impact on the publishing community as you and I had known it to be.

CB: For many magazines, because of these changes, all this signaled the end of the golden age for the publishing landscape as it had evolved. This was especially true in terms of advertising revenue. I was extremely lucky to have had 28 great years in the business. I was also blessed to have had incredibly talented and dedicated people on the staff, in the ad sales department and as freelance contributors to Circle Track. I certainly didn’t do it alone. And if I had the chance to do it all over again, there is almost nothing that I would do differently in terms of editorial direction and focus.

I had incredible support from Bob Petersen and company president Fred Waingrow. But, being wiser today, I would have asked for a commitment to circulation promotion of the new magazine when I accepted the Circle Track challenge. And, of course, my greatest thanks goes to Lee Kelley who had faith in me and gave me the opportunity. To all of the readers and advertisers who supported CT and who helped and encouraged me, I will always be grateful. Man, it was one helluva ride!

The post Circle Track Magazine – How it all Began appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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