#anyways people need to examine why non white people being included in a work of fantasy makes them angry

[aragornsrockcollection]

Isn’t it funny that you never see anyone throwing a hissy fit over the inclusion of flora not native to Medieval Europe in Tolkien or other fantasy works.

Tomatoes, tobacco, POTATOES, tea and sugar, are all perfectly acceptable and normal for Tolkien to have included in Middle earth, but depict a single character with brown skin, and suddenly it’s not realistic, and WHAT ABOUT OUR HERITAGE.

Forget that we don’t analyze the heritage of white actors playing these rolls to make sure they’re from the proper culture to represent Tolkien’s extremely English story. Has a single person ever complained that Frodo and Sam were played by Americans when Hobbiton is CLEARLY based on rural England?

According to some, Hobbits can grow food and other crops that were only introduced into Europe through the violence of imperialism, but to have the hobbits look like the people who originally grew those crops is sacrilegious.

Medieval Europe, which wasn’t as homogenous as people think anyways, is only ever trotted out to justify hating the inclusion of black and brown characters.

If Sam can wax poetic about potatoes, he can look like came from Peru, like potatoes did.

And if that idea bothers you, maybe examine why.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #lotr #jirt #silm #jrr tolkien #I’m still not about rings of power but that’s because of every other choice they made #also why not take advantage of increasingly evil Numenor’s colonization of Umbar #a canon reality of the second age that saw relations turn from cultural exchange to domination #that is including diverse narratives and one of Tolkien’s opinions that aged great was his anti-imperialism #the condescending way he argued against it didn’t age as gracefully #but you can’t have everything #anyways people need to examine why non white people being included in a work of fantasy makes them angry #I mean we all know why

[presumenothing]

we’re doing it to ourselves (or so the saying goes)

(AO3)

Jiang Cheng swears up a storm and a half when he shoves open the investigation room door the next morning to find someone already there.

The red ribbon hanging long down Wei Wuxian’s back blends in so seamlessly with the red thread strung all over the murderboard that it takes slamming his hand against the wall switch to shatter the sudden imagination of his brother’s photo up there with the rest of the clues, just another person they’d failed to save from this case.

Wei Wuxian gives a hiss of half-startled annoyance, blinking from the abrupt brightness, but it frankly serves him right for standing in the dark like a burglar with only the corridor emergency lights filtering in. Had he even been able to see anything? Even demonic cultivation doesn’t give you night vision, last he checked. “Good damn morning to you too, Jiang Cheng.”

“I’m not even going to ask how you got in here,” he replies, because at least half of what he knows about breaking into places he’d learned after Wei Wuxian taught himself how to one boring rainy day in high school. “Tell me all this has nothing to do with you.”

He doesn’t specify what this is, because there’s no need to. Wei Wuxian hasn’t moved from his frozen stance in front of the board of clues, crimson lines running between the serial murders like a bloody taunt, a web Jiang Cheng has stared at long enough over the past week that the afterimage feels burned into his eyelids.

There’s nothing of Wei Wuxian’s usual brash overconfidence in the answering shake of his head. “No. I meant it when I said I’d never go vigilante again, Jiang Cheng. And I haven’t. I’ll swear it again on anything you ask.”

In a different time, Wei Wuxian would already have sworn up and down that the heavens should strike him down right then if he’d lied, but maybe that’s exactly the problem – he had already been struck down once, in almost every way that mattered, and worst of all is how it makes Jiang Cheng more inclined to believe him now.

It’s still not quite enough, though. “Swear it on Jin Ling’s life.”

He doesn’t need to see Wei Wuxian’s expression to know he’s not happy about that. Which doesn’t matter, because neither of them are; the space Jin Ling occupies among them has been almost sacred especially after they’d nearly lost Yanli-jie, but it’s also exactly why Jiang Cheng is asking him to swear on this. He can’t accept anything less.

Wei Wuxian has to know that, too, because he doesn’t argue, only says, “I swear on Jin Ling’s life that I don’t have any direct involvement with this case.”

Jiang Cheng raises an eyebrow and pointedly does not look relieved. “‘Direct’?”

“Duh.” Wei Wuxian gestures, wide and too-careless, at the grotesque web on the wall. “You’ve got a copycat killer, and a surprisingly thorough one at that. I’d be surprised if the original Yiling Patriarch isn’t tied to this somehow.”

“Careful, they might not be able to see your ego from space,” Jiang Cheng bites right back, even though he’s been thinking the same for probably about as long as Lan Wangji has, for all that they hadn’t acknowledged it aloud until the day before yesterday. “How the hell did you even find out about this?”

“Wen Qing did most of the autopsies, didn’t she?” Wei Wuxian answers, pretty much as he’d been expecting. “And before you think about going to yell at her, she didn’t actually reveal any case details to me, just that you and Lan Zhan were investigating something that I might be interested in. Also that she might snap and add one or both of you to the body count if she has to mediate even one more argument between you two.”

How Wei Wuxian’s presence could possibly do anything except exacerbate that, Jiang Cheng has no idea, but it’s not like he can afford to alienate the best medical examiner they have across all the districts. (And he doesn’t want to, either; Wen Qing’s clear expertise had single-handedly silenced all of the brass who’d had issues with hiring a Wen, but there’s never any telling what might get them started up again.)

Still. “I wouldn’t call that mediating,” Jiang Cheng mutters.

Wei Wuxian laughs, because he still doesn’t have even half an ounce of self-preservation, even against someone who could and would immobilise people with just three well-placed needles. “Speaking of which, how much longer are you gonna lurk there, Lan Zhan? I thought the Gusu bureau had a rule against eavesdropping and all.”

Jiang Cheng gets a crick in his neck from how fast he turns, and sure enough – there’s Lan Wangji stepping out of shadows that had hidden him far too well for someone in so much white. (Even after having no choice but to work this case together with him Jiang Cheng still has absolutely no fucking idea how Lan Wangji keeps his clothes spotless even at crime scenes; he’s starting to suspect it’s some kind of cultivation-related trick designed specifically for this purpose.)

“Eavesdropping would require neither of you to be aware of my presence,” he says, like that isn’t just some bit of pedantry, and inclines his head. “Wei Ying. Jiang Wanyin.”

And that’s definitely intentional, putting his name last like Jiang Cheng cares what order Lan Wangji addresses people in. Which he really, really doesn’t, especially not before inhaling at least half the thermos of coffee that always resides in his backpack in avoidance of the acidic slop from the pantry machine.

Wei Wuxian smiles at Lan Wangji, because of course he does, but it’s strangely gratifying to note that he hasn’t put any effort in making it look convincing at all. “Well, Lan Zhan – do I need to swear my innocence in this case to you too?”

“Unnecessary. I believe you,” Lan Wangji says, bearing regal like he’s some monarch issuing a decree, and Jiang Cheng snorts. How easy for him to say that when Wei Wuxian hadn’t cost his bureau and family almost everything they’d been.

It doesn’t make the back of his throat taste any less bitter when Wei Wuxian’s expression warms a little at that, but at this point Jiang Cheng doesn’t think anything ever will. “Enough chitchat,” he snaps. “The paperwork?”

Lan Wangji retrieves a folder from his briefcase and slides it over to the centre of the table wordlessly, while Jiang Cheng crosses his arms and scowls at Wei Wuxian until it sinks through his stupidly thick skull that the paperwork is for him.

The answering groan, at least, is entirely sincere. “What the hell is that for? You know I hate paperwork, Jiang Cheng, I didn’t quit over it but I very well could have.”

Yes, he’s very aware of that, seeing as their weekly paperwork grudge-match marathons from before everything had gone to hell had been held in his office. “Just read and sign the damn thing, Wei Wuxian, it’s the only bloody reason I haven’t already arrested you for breaking into bureau offices ten minutes ago.”

And that has to be enough for Wei Wuxian to already know, because bureau policy hasn’t changed that much in the years since his defection except to get more annoyingly onerous, but still he looks surprised at the contents of the contract. “A civilian consultant?”

“You have a skillset that could be invaluable to resolving this case. It would be highly remiss not to bring you on board.” Lan Wangji still looks perfectly neutral, as far as Jiang Cheng can tell, but that’s more sarcasm-free words in a row than he’s ever heard from him since the start of this investigation. Possibly since their first acquaintance with each other.

“I wouldn’t call ‘being the prime suspect’ a skillset, exactly,” Wei Wuxian mutters, which is something Jiang Cheng can definitely agree with at least. Though the only reason this is possible at all is because there’d never been an official conviction in the original Yiling case, for a whole chaos of reasons including the public uproar in support of whoever had taken down Wen Ruohan and his cronies for good, and because they already had reasonable evidence to suggest Wei Wuxian’s non-involvement in this spate of murders.

The non-suspect in question is still flicking his way through the clauses of the contract, which Jiang Cheng would feel insulted by except he’d also gone through each and every one just as closely, taken his concerns to Yanli-jie who’d taken them to Jin Zixuan until they could be sure this arrangement wouldn’t jeopardise Wei Wuxian in any way.

He reaches the last page, and from the skip of his gaze Jiang Cheng knows instinctively what Wei Wuxian has to be looking at – the grid of signatures starting with his own and Lan Wangji’s as primary investigators of the case, dated clearly to two days before this conversation had even occurred, followed by Lan Xichen’s confirmation both as Lan Wangji’s superior and because Jiang Cheng can’t very well second his own recommendation even as the Yunmeng bureau chief, and finally a space for Wei Wuxian’s chickenscratch initials.

(It’s frankly mystifying, why someone who can draw talismans that flow like the finest art has never bothered with a more elegant signature, but it’s not a mystery Jiang Cheng cares to solve. Better that than the unmistakable signatures the Yiling Patriarch had left at his scenes, at any rate; even he has had nightmares about that.)

Jiang Cheng tosses him a pen, anything to break the sudden silence, and Wei Wuxian catches it without looking but of course doesn’t get right to signing, because that would be sensible. “What is this for, then? There are easier ways to keep an eye on me. Cheaper, too.”

“The forensic evidence is scant, and the culprit has done something to keep the victims’ souls beyond my ability to communicate with,” Lan Wangji answers without further prompting, which is probably more information than they should be giving out to a not-yet-contracted civilian but Jiang Cheng’s not the one with a stick up his ass about protocol in this room and anyway Wei Wuxian had already broken in here. “An alternative method might help.”

“Last I checked, no one likes the alternative when it means resurrecting th– ah,” Wei Wuxian cuts himself off with a flick of his gaze between them, and has the gall to look amused. “So the old coots are desperate enough by now that anything goes?”

“Not anything,” Jiang Cheng grates out, just to be clear. Wei Wuxian hadn’t been wrong; the investigation methods favoured by each bureau differ even just among the four major ones, but the dislike of the way Wei Wuxian had done things since somehow escaping being taken hostage by Wen Chao had been almost universal.

(There’d been a brief period when it seemed like things might work out after all, when Wei Wuxian had demonstrated how undeniably efficient demonic cultivation could be in comparison to their regular methods – even the Gusu musical techniques couldn’t beat speaking to the victim in the flesh, as it were. But then everything had gone to hell in a massive speeding handbasket and Wei Wuxian had been most of the one who’d sent it there.

Possibly Jiang Cheng is being monumentally idiotic in not assuming this time will turn out exactly the same way, but annoyingly enough Wei Wuxian is also correct in that they need this case solved, or everything might just go to chaos anyway.)

“I’m pretty much the definition of anything, I think,” Wei Wuxian retorts, which Jiang Cheng ignores like the obvious nonsense it is. “Don’t blame me if you lot regret this.”

“Pretty sure it’s already too late for that,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, swiping the thermos out from where he’d set his backpack down.

Lan Wangji can deal with filing that paperwork, if he’s just going to stand there in stoic satisfaction. Jiang Cheng needs his damn coffee.

#mdzs #mdzs fic #fanfiction #mine #long post #once again i blatantly plagiarise richard siken for a fic title #yes this was supposed to be the sort-of-pushing daisies au but things happened #/elaborate and unbothered shrug emoji

[hutchhitched]

And training has begun. Our favorite duo is impressing the gamemakers and learning to tie knots. How very non-domestic of them. Here are thoughts and musings on Chapter 7 for @everlarkedalways​ THG reread.

 Currently, I’m reading a book called Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. The general thesis of the book is that white evangelicalism is obsessed with patriarchy and masculinity and celebrates that rather than emphasizing the gentler, more peaceful teachings of Jesus Christ. (While I have some issues with the larger historical study, I don’t particularly disagree with her thesis. Her book is the most gendered studies of American evangelical Christianity I’ve read in a long, long time.) A friend from work invited me to an online discussion group about the book with some friends of hers and the topic of gender roles played prominently in our conversation. Mostly, I kept thinking about portrayals of Katniss and Peeta and how those have sparked debates and arguments over Peeta’s masculinity or lack thereof.

 Peeta is strong, but he’s an artist, a painter, and a baker. He’s gentle and compassionate and kind, and he’s in love with Katniss. He’s been emotionally and physically abused by his mother, and he knows brute strength can’t help him win the game because Katniss will die if he tries. He makes a decision to protect her, but to do it behind the scenes. He can’t puff up his chest and kill the people who want her dead, so he does it by sacrificing himself for her long before they’re in the area. As such, many critics of the series (more so the movies than the books, I believe), including the actors themselves, often referred to Peeta as the damsel in distress who has to be saved by Katniss.

 There is a fundamental lack of critical examination in those interpretations of Peeta’s character. He is the epitome of non-toxic masculinity, but there is a rejection of that by society. Remember the Gillette commercial a few years ago that showed men being kind and gentle? Remember the backlash from it? Society is obsessed with strength and violence, and looks down on men who aren’t hypermasculine and/or show what are considered “feminine” qualities. In other words, Peeta has been emasculated.

 In the book itself, Peeta’s mother emasculates him by brow-beating him into submission and running her family with an iron fist. Mrs. Mellark is a strong woman, and in this context, that’s not a good thing. She’s overbearing and a “witch,” according to Katniss. She’s taken power away from her husband, evidenced by him not buying squirrels from Katniss unless Mrs. Mellark is absent. She’s also taken Peeta’s self-esteem and self-worth away by abusing him and telling him she thinks Katniss is a survivor, implicating that Peeta is not.

 Historically, masculinity has played a significant role in the development of the United States. White masculinity was codified in a series of laws in colonial Virginia in the seventeenth century, and southern masculinity was glorified and adulated during the antebellum period and beyond. Non-white men were emasculated in order to highlight the power of white men. Some examples:

Traditional gender roles in European societies centered on men providing for the family by owning land, farming, running an estate and so on while women’s roles were to work within the home. Rich men hunted for leisure (think fox hunting in packs, hunting quail, that kind of thing). Traditional gender roles for many Native American groups included women farming and gathering, while men hunted. Europeans believed Native American men were lazy because they played all the time (went out in hunting parties), while the women worked the fields. As a result, Native American men were emasculated and had their power stripped by European colonizers.

Africans who were enslaved were not allowed to legally marry under the system of slavery. Despite that, slave owners encouraged their slaves to “marry” (lived together as man and wife without the legal protections that entailed) because enslaved men who were married tended to be better workers due to fear that their wives and/or children would be punished if they rebelled or misbehaved. They had no control over their own families because enslaved peoples could be sold at any time at the whim of their owners (fathers sold away from wives and children or vice versa). In addition, white men often raped female slaves in order to a) terrorize the enslaved and b) impregnate the women who would give birth to more slaves. In addition, matrilineal succession was codified in a series of laws that ensured the offspring of an enslaved woman would follow the mother, not the father. That allowed white men to enslave their own offspring without consequence, and it emasculated male slaves in numerous ways. For example, enslaved men were not allowed to protect their spouses from being raped; enslaved men were not able to pass on their family names due to matrilineal succession; and enslaved men frequently had “wives” with children from another male. Each of those methods took power away from black men and put it in the hands of whites.

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon asked for permission to raise a militia to fight a group of Native Americans who he believed had attacked his land. The governor refused permission, so Bacon did it anyway. He mustered yeomen farmers (poor white landowners), indentured servants (often Irish or poorer English contract workers), and slaves (African men). With this group, he challenged the wealthy white men in colonial Virginia.

What does all this mean? Peeta is a male with characteristics that are typically viewed as feminine (point 1), who is forced against his will to perform/work for the wealthy and privileged (point 3), and is unable to protect the woman he loves from harm (point 2). In other words, Peeta has been emasculated by Panem’s government and society.

 Please don’t read this as me saying Peeta is not masculine. I personally don’t hold to this idea that men have to engage in toxic masculinity in order to be male. My personal preference is a man who is compassionate and caring and nurturing. What I’m saying is I understand why people can read Peeta as weak, even if I don’t happen to agree that his characteristics are effeminate.

 Collins presents Katniss as a scared, angry, determined girl who engages in activities that aren’t necessarily feminine. Hunting and killing game, trading, and so on are very different activities than most of the women in Panem. She is, figuratively, bringing home the bacon and the primary breadwinner (ha!) for her family. Her role as a strong and independent and working against traditional gender roles is celebrated while Peeta’s are criticized. I find that fascinating. It’s kind of like it seems normal for women to dress in pants and t-shirts, but Harry Styles can’t wear a dress without causing an uproar. Oh, the double standard.

 I won’t get into how the movies and press marketed Katniss as a badass warrior. Let’s just say it pisses me off and absolutely misses the point of the books in my opinion.

 One last point since I’m headlong into gender theory here. Katniss and Peeta work as a team, equal partners as they negotiate their way through training. Collins seems to be a proponent of men and women carrying equal loads in relationships, and I’m here for it. Peeta doesn’t look down on Katniss as someone who needs to be protected (although he wants to protect her in any way he can), and Katniss doesn’t allow Peeta to make all the decisions for them. They work together, and it’s a beautiful thing. They have no idea the effect they have…on me when they do that. It’s my life’s goal to find someone who wants to be with me because I’m capable and not someone to be rescued. Katniss can rescue her own damn self, and I’m here for it.

 Okay, I’m behind again, but I’ll get there. If you’ve read all this, thank you for your consideration!

#thgagain #the hunger games #the hunger games meta #i did not proofread #my apologies for any mistakes and typos #i'll fix them at some point

[gringolet]

that italian?

okay okay okay i think it happened long enough ago that i can dish about the drama. she changed her url and im not including it anyway so its fine.

prepare for a fuckin. essay in responss to a TWO WORD ask but anyay

so once upon time there was an italian who hated children and loved reylo. she also hung out in the arthuriana tag and got a bunch of asks about it. so one day some poor anon comes in and asks if she has any trans headcanons for arthurian characters, and she, instead of being a normal person and saying like, no, she goes off about how trans characters in fanfic is forced representation and she cant talk about trans people bc surgery is triggering for her.

found this in the archives lol. so i rbd politely explaining that while it was fine to not have trans hcs, her justifications for it were a little offensive.

hey i dont want to start discourse or anything but i see ur asks in the tag a lot and i wanted to politely address this. firstly obviously no one is under any obligation to hc things, and headcanons and fandom is not activism. if you’d just said “no, not really” it would b fine. i mean, cringe of u, but fine. but u make a couple of points here i want to look at a bit critically. then there is “I don’t like when headcanons are pushed up as ~representation, especially when… Ehm, it’s just fandom stuff?” i dont want to misinterpret you or put words in your mouth, but the implication that theres no need for trans rep in fandom and dismissal of that is a very cis take. My initial read of your intention there was a complaint of ‘why should something like fandom spaces, which are for fun and not serious, be filled with non fun serious (bad) trans stuff that i have to see when im trying to enjoy myself.’ now that could be incorrect, you were a bit vague here. if that is what you meant, i think you maybe should examine why you feel that way. if it isnt, im unclear on what exactly youre trying to say here. the idea that trans hcs are performative wokeness and “representation” in fandom is completely ignoring the actual trans people making and wanting them. there is so vanishingly little representation of trans people in actual media and even less thats good, and i think implying trans hcs are being pushed on people and fandom for, ~representation (a world of meaning in the ~ i shant speculate on) is very dismissive and ignorant of that fact. honestly the main thing im troubled by is the idea that trans bodies are inherently disgusting and triggering, which is an incredibly harmful and hurtful idea, and since you yourself acknowledge that trans people and hcs dont predicate surgery i question why you bring it up, except as a justification for disconfort rooted in unexamined prejudice. im not accusing you of being a terf or anything, i dont believe you meant harm by this or have bad intentions, and im definitely not saying anyone has to hc anything. it was the uncomfronted insidiousness of your justification that concerned me. this is not a personal attack at all, you just have a lot of influence in this fandom space and i wanted to make you aware of some of the surely accidentally harmful things ur saying.

so she flips out and rbs that yelling at me and cursing me out in italian (she moved blogs so i dont have her whole response just bits)

basically she completely derailed the original topic and accused me of calling her a horrible person for her triggers? which i never did and would never do, and then tried to make it a wierd anti v proshipper thing

third: I never said there’s no need of trans hcs in fandoms, BUT I’ve noticed that there’s a tendency of condemning people on the basis of what they ship / the dynamics they write. ( like the infinite discourse about how ‘I ship only mlm enemies to lovers because f/m enemies to lovers are Inherently Bad and Abusive - something I personally heard on Twitter sigh ), so I feel the need to say it. blame the current fandom climate.

and were like wow, this lady is unhinged, so we look around her blog and find a. a lot of stuff like saying its racist to not like incest?? and that italians arent white?? also shes a swerf?? and kind of deniel italian colonialsm? and reblogs from a bunch of out and out terfs} there was more but this isnt a callout post lol.

valentine lanzelet made a post about this crazy italian we found and she flipped out on him (this is one of several cursey italian tag rants)

roughly means: GO SHIT YOURSELF (italian alternative to go fuck you), RACIST TERF IS YOUR GRANDMOTHER IN A WHEELBARROW (italian saying which does not translate well) AND WHAT HAS ITALIAN COLONIALISM TO DO WITH THIS YOU UGLY SHIT, and anyways lancelot sucks

(translated by claudio beheaded)

anyway so then. and this is when it gets unhinged. she goes on this server me and a lot of my mutuals n friends r in, camelot, and starts complaining about me.

(in red is the server admin, who was lovely) i asked her to move this convo to dms if she must bc it was rude to bring drama into the server, and she refused, and started insisting that she was being bullied and just wanted to be left alone, so i was like okay lets all block each other and move on, and she refused, continuing to defend everything she was being criticized for

they also said claudio was making them look bad by translating their rants which like... queen if that made them look bad they were already a bad look.

so she keeps pinging people and replying to shit despite everyone else at this point begging her to just drop it and call it a stalemate

imagine this but around n around for like an hour. also she repeatedly got me and valentine confused it was super funny. also she claimed it was an invasion of her privacy for valentine to go on her public blog and look at the things she openly said and rbd there

so the server got put in slow mode and she KEPT GOING even though everyone was just begging her to stop and not even responding

as u can see, around this point we just started spamming her with emoji reactions. she announced she was leaving then went back to arguing a full three times before finally dipping from the server

then she continued complaining about us and calling us puriteens in her tags (trying to make it a proshipper v anti thing i guess lol?)

for literally months before finally remaking. also in that time she got in an argument about how the crusades were fine actually. italianphobia works hard but she works harder i guess

anyway i prolly left out a lot but thats the italian saga

#cw discourse #i guess? #conflict anyway #if any involved have funny things to add go ahead

[goalspear56]

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She claimed that in people who do not tan well the skin is unlikely to generate even more melanin in feedback to hormonal agent medicines which it is not a sun block.

They thought that a reliable way to decrease skin cancer prices in people would be to create the body's natural pigmentary system to secure tan before UV exposure.

This might seem like good suggestions but when you consider that most of individuals who want to use nasal tanning sprays are likely to be fair skinned, this might put them at higher risk.

I truly wanted to attempt these as I have no pigmant in my skin yet was fretted about the insurance claims about exactly how ill girls aloud managed using them. you do it like you inject insulin, right into your stubborn belly, bottom, legs or arms. There are no national numbers for Melanotan 2 usage or steroids, fat burning medicines or any other picture enhancing drug. Personnel at CRI's needle exchange say the percentage of non-illegal drug addict might be much higher due to the fact that it remains unidentified whether needles gathered are shared with various other individuals also. Self-injecting likewise highlights other issues about needle security problems.

Several Of The 'barbie' Medicine Side

MellowTan is a respected as well as reputable online distributor being experts in providing the finest quality Melanotan 2 items directly to customers within the UK. At the heart of MellowTan is our expert and pleasant client service.

Why is Melanotan illegal?

Melanotan is illegal in the UK because it has not been tested for safety, quality or effectiveness and no one knows what the possible side effects are or how serious they could be. melanotan offers a buy Melanotan Italy Italy (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) tests medical products in the UK.

No myofibrolysis was observed although a number of ghost cores showed up. For very long term storage also chillier temperatures are preferable, down to -112 Fahrenheit (-80 Celsius). Efforts have actually been made to hyperglycosylate therapeutic proteins to improve pharmacokinetic habits. Adhere to the initial Multi Collagen Healthy protein if you are seeking an item with four active ingredients and also no flavorings or sweeteners. Coronavirus" Sending out people over the age of 80 to Birmingham is entirely inappropriate." Player ratingsMan United are leading of the Premier League in January for the first time given that 2013 and right here are just how the players ranked at Grass Moor.

I once reviewed a woman that only consumed carrots and she transformed orange. If the all-natural colours in food can alter your skin colour safely (she wasn't weak). then you wouldn't believe it would certainly be that difficult to transform it right into a concentrated tablet type. There is also problem that Melanotan 2 could really enhance the risk of skin cancer as well, although presently there is no hard proof to sustain this.

I kinda like the association of gruelling hermit-like handling versus bubbling-in-the-club soundtrack, and also making use of devices on the web that no self-respecting video artist would possibly consider is always my jam. 2 women from Salford that had utilized Melanotan and also consequently noticed skin changes saw skin doctors. One found a mole on her foot had raised in dimension and darkened in a matter or weeks, while the various other stated moles on her back had actually darkened rapidly. Melanotan, an unlicensed medication generally referred to as the 'tan jab', could suggest that skin cancer cells goes unnoticed or is incorrectly identified. Reichert, Future directions for peptide therapeutics growth, Medicine exploration today, 2013, 18, 807-- 817 CrossRefCASPubMed. Peptide treatment is typically considered risk-free and also can be utilized to produce really targeted results. In their duty as a vital link in between doctor and also clients, pharmacists should identify that people may not constantly be completely honest regarding the representatives they use.

Yet https://aus.melanotan.eu/ is that these are phony products that have not yet been effectively checked. We don't know whether they are secure or unsafe, effective or pointless. A new report recommends that they might even bring about changes in a person's moles. Aliquot the item after reconstitution to stay clear of repeated freezing/thawing cycles. Reconstituted protein can be saved at 4 ° C for a restricted period of time. The lyophilized protein stays secure till the expiration day when saved at -20 ° C.

The web site is still running and also also using a complimentary 10mg phial of melanotan II when you get 50mg for ₤ 109 plus postage and also packing. Wales on Sunday purchased a 10mg phial of faster-acting melanotan II online for ₤ 32. It was provided in an ordinary brown envelope with no instructions regarding how to use it or perhaps what the glass phial contained. Our examination disclosed exactly how very easy it is to get melanotan regardless of the Medicines and also Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority informing 18 companies to quit marketing melanotan online.

' Lots of negative effects have been linked with melanotan including problems with changing moles or blemishes, causing misdiagnosis of cancer or unneeded operations, troubles with the eyes, blood, tummy and heart. Melanin acts as the body's natural security from the sun, and skin obtains darker when more of it is present.

There is the threat of blood-borne conditions such as hepatitis as well as HIV. One national health and wellness and social care charity, the Crime Decreases Campaigns told Channel 4 News that virtually fifty percent of customers at its needle exchanges in England as well as Wales are injecting image-enhancing drugs, not narcotics like heroine. At Stockton CRI, on Teesside, personnel have noticed a sharp increase in the use of Melanotan 2 over the last 2 years. Dr Patrick Bowler, a Harley Street skin specialist, informed Network 4 News that vanity is effective force, which indicates even individuals worried of needle conquer their anxieties.

Numerous web sites supplying the medicine offer NO CAUTIONS of its major threats-- with some asserting it has favorable results, consisting of weight-loss. Consult your General Practitioner as well as tell them if you think you have had an unfavorable response to Melanotan, if you may have utilized a shared needle, or if you have re-used needles. All medicines that are made use of in the UK need to be accredited by a federal government firm called the Medicines and also Health care products Regulatory Company. The MHRA guarantees that all medications are effective and also risk-free sufficient for use prior to granting them a licence for usage. A synthetic hormonal agent infused to "cover up tans" is unlawful and also must not be utilized, cautioned The Independent today. Extensive coverage has actually been provided to the news that Melanotan, infused under the skin to encourage the skin to darken, has never been security evaluated by any type of Western government medical care firm. Dr Rachel Haywood, the team leader of cancer research study at PLETHORA, claimed that melanin is complicated and can be both protective and also possibly damaging depending upon the kind, amount as well as distribution in the skin.

" It's illegal to use and to market it in the UK, yet people can quickly get these injections online. Melanotan, which can additionally be taken via a nasal spray, is unlawful to use and also market in the UK as it has actually not been removed by the Federal government's Medicines as well as Health care items Regulatory Firm. Vendors on ebay.com sell a 10mg package for around ₤ 29 which promises a "good warm skin tan".

" Curt is a body building contractor and his close friends used the injections to tan prior to competitors. I took suggestions from them as well as got vials of Melanotan 2 online. SALES educating director Sam Barton, 27, had hallucinations and infections from tan medicines-- yet still went back to utilizing them.

#melanotan eu #melanotan europe #melanotan products #melanotan for sale

[theculturedmarxist]

The Trump administration’s cynical announcement of a set of fraudulent “guidelines” that will serve to legitimize a rapid reopening of businesses and a forced return to work, in unsafe conditions, brings to an end any public pretense of a systematic and coordinated effort within the United States to prioritize health and to protect human life in combatting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The premature return to work that the Trump administration is orchestrating will lead to countless thousands of deaths, which could be prevented if a rigorous program of social distancing, supported by a massive program of testing and contact tracing, were implemented and sustained during the coming critical months.

There is absolutely no significant factual evidence, let alone scientific analysis, that can be cited to justify Trump’s announcement. Leading epidemiologists have already publicly challenged the validity of the statistical model being used by the White House. Referring to projections by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, epidemiologist Ruth Etzioni of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center told the medical journal STAT: “That the IHME model keeps changing is evidence of its lack of reliability as a predictive tool. That it is being used for policy decisions and its results interpreted wrongly is a travesty unfolding before our eyes.”

The pandemic is exacting a horrifying toll in human life. During the 24 hours that preceded Trump’s announcement, the COVID-19 coronavirus claimed 4,591 lives in the US. This number was more than a 75 percent increase over the 2,569 deaths during the previous 24-hour period. Over the past three days, the nationwide death toll has risen from 26,000 to over 36,000.

It is widely recognized that the official figure substantially undercounts the total number of deaths. The discoveries of bodies of elderly patients in two different nursing homes are only the most frightful examples of the gap between the official and real death toll. At this point, there is no reliable tally of people dying outside of hospitals, either of an undiagnosed COVID-19 infection or of causes related to the pandemic.

This is a global pandemic. There are, as of this writing, 2,216,000 cases and 151,000 deaths. These statistics are no more reliable than those provided for the United States. The previously reported figures are already being revised upward.

Trump’s blatant ignorance and gangster-like persona imparted to the announcement of the guidelines the sociopathic and generally putrescent atmosphere that pervades all his public appearances. But his policies are not simply those of an individual. The criminal form in which the policies are presented is determined by the economic and social interests of the class Trump serves.

For the financial-corporate oligarchy, the pandemic has been viewed, above all else, as an economic crisis. Its principal concern, from the start, was not the potential loss of life but the destabilization of the financial markets, the disruption of the process of profit extraction, and, of course, a substantial decline in the personal wealth of the members of the oligarchy.

While in February and March, the Trump administration publicly downplayed the seriousness of the crisis, officials at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve worked in close consultation with the major banks to structure and implement a multi-trillion-dollar bailout that would dwarf that which followed the financial collapse of 2008.

During the first three weeks of March, the news was dominated by the mounting international and national impact of the pandemic on public health. Public attention was focused on the drama of the cruise ships, the deaths in Italy and the initial reports of infection in Washington state. The urgent need to implement quarantines and shut down non-essential businesses was, despite Trump, widely acknowledged.

On March 19, the “CARES Act” was introduced in the Senate. The rapid passage of the bailout of the entire financial industry was taken for granted. Indeed, corporate executives, kept well informed by their political servants in Congress, took advantage of the plunge on Wall Street to buy back billions in company shares in anticipation of the massive rally that would follow the final passage of the CARES Act.

As soon as the CARES Act was introduced, the focus of the media began to shift toward an aggressive campaign for a return to work. There could be no delay. The massive increase in fictitious capital—more than $2 trillion in digitally created debt—was to be added to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet within less than a month. Additional trillions of dollars of debt will be added in the coming months. This represents, in the final analysis, claims on real value that must be satisfied through the exploitation of the labor power of the working class. The greater the debt incurred by the state-sanctioned creation of fictitious capital, the more urgent the demand for a rapid end to restraints on the process of profit extraction.

Thus, on March 22, even as the CARES Act was making its way toward passage, Thomas Friedman, the leading columnist of the New York Times, initiated the campaign for a return to work: “What the hell are we doing to ourselves? To our economy? To our next generation?” he shouted. “Is this cure—even for a short while—worse than the disease?”

The latter sentence provided the slogan for a campaign that became increasingly insistent in the weeks that followed. Arguments against excessive concern for the protection of human life became more and more brazen. Evading an examination of the socio-economic interests that had prevented an effective response to the pandemic, the Times began extolling the benefits of human suffering. “As much as we might wish, none of us can avoid suffering,” opined columnist Emily Esfahani Smith on April 7. “That’s why it’s important to learn to suffer as well.”

On April 11, the Times dished up further musings on the benefits of suffering and death. Ross Douthat, in a column titled “The Pandemic and the Will of God,” invited readers to consider “how suffering fits into a providential plan.” Another essay, by Simon Critchley of the New School in New York City, proclaimed that “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die.” Pretentiously invoking the authority of Descartes, Boethius, More, Gramsci, Heidegger, Pascal, T.S. Eliot, Montaigne, Cicero, Dafoe, Camus, Kierkegaard and even Boccaccio—all within the confines of one newspaper column—this academic blowhard summed up the wisdom of the ages by advising his readers, “Facing death can be a key to our liberation and survival.”

The brutal practical agenda underlying these rather ethereal ruminations on suffering and death found blunt expression in the text of a round-table video conference organized by the Times. Participants included Zeke Emanuel, who is notorious for arguing that physicians should not seek to prolong life beyond the age of 75, and Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton, whose advocacy of euthanasia for debilitated infants led to protests upon his appointment to the university post 20 years ago. The Times is entirely familiar with Singer’s views, as it wrote extensively two decades ago on the controversy generated by his arrival at Princeton.

The text of the video conference discussion was posted in the on-line edition of the New York Times Magazine on April 10, under the title “Restarting America Means People Will Die. So When Do We Do It? Five thinkers weigh moral choices in a crisis.”

In its introduction to the text, the Times asserted that it will become necessary to accept that there is a “trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy.” While in the short term the two goals may be aligned, in “the longer run, though, it’s important to acknowledge that a trade-off will emerge—and become more urgent in the coming months, as the economy slides deeper into recession.”

In its analysis of the “trade off,” the Times proceeds from the unquestioned premise that economic interests can only be those of the capitalist class. The profit system, private ownership of the productive forces and vast personal wealth are unalterable and eternal. Therefore, the “trade off” requires, inevitably, the sacrifice of human life, specifically, the lives of working people.

Singer declared that it is impossible to provide an “assistance package for all those people” for a year or 18 months. “That’s where we’ll get into saying, Yes, people will die if we open up, but the consequences of not opening up are so severe that maybe we’ve got to do it anyway.”

It goes without saying that none of the Times’ panelists called attention to the fact that Congress had just injected several trillion dollars into the coffers of the banks and corporations to save executives and shareholders. Nor was it noted that there are approximately 250 billionaires in the United States, who have a collective net worth of close to $9 trillion dollars. If this wealth were expropriated and distributed evenly among the 100 million poorest households in the United States, it would provide each household with a monthly income of $5,000 for 18 months!

Of course, the expropriation of this gargantuan sum of privately held wealth—which is entirely legitimate and necessary in the context of a massive social crisis—is not an option which the Times and its panelists are even prepared to consider as a theoretical possibility. But they are willing to accept the deaths of countless thousands as a matter of practical, i.e., capitalist necessity.

The subordination of life to the profit system is not confined to the United States. It is being proclaimed as a universal principle by the ruling elites in Europe. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung, the main voice of the Swiss ruling class, posted an article yesterday, that asks:

Do you want to live forever? This was the question Frederick the Great asked his soldiers at the Battle of Kolin in 1757, when they gave way to the enemy. One is inclined to ask the same question again in view of the disputable relationship between the corona sick and deceased on the one hand and the population as a whole and those suffering from common diseases on the other.

Some things here seem to be—literally—crazy. But also the collateral damage of disease with its wanton acceptance of the destruction of the economy provokes the whole question. Anyone who wants to put it drastically could say: We choose economic suicide to prevent individual elderly people from passing away a few years earlier than would be expected under normal circumstances.

The advocacy of a policy that accepts, and even advocates the culling of the aged and weak finds its most explicitly fascistic expression in a lengthy essay published on April 13 in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Titled “We need to talk about dying,” it is written by Bernard Gill, a sociologist who has been associated with the Green Party.

In a sweeping assault on the development of science, Gill denounces the “heroic narrative” that celebrated the great nineteenth century scientists Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch “as heroes who made microbes visible, manageable and therefore controllable.” Gill protests:

In this story of creation, the microbes are aliens, which threaten us and therefore hold us down with power are best exterminated. “Our” lives against “their” lives—scientific knowledge and well-organized defensive struggle until the final victory of hygiene, which promises eternal life in a germ-free environment.

But this is a violation of nature. “Our life,” Gill declares, “is not conceivable without death.” But those who seek “to contain the infection with all means, also fights dying with all means.”

Gill advocates an acceptance of the natural spread of the pandemic—based on the program of “herd immunity”—which views “dying as a natural process that is individually painful for those involved, but from a distance makes room for new life.” With this approach, Gill argues, “we come to terms with the microbes in the knowledge that our life without death is unthinkable. We console ourselves with the prospect of new life.”

These are arguments with which Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who committed suicide 75 years ago this month in his Berlin bunker, would have readily agreed.

Deeply reactionary and inhuman ideas are wafting about Germany. But there, no less than in the United States, they arise not from the sick psychology of individuals, but from the needs of the capitalist system.

The same publication, Der Spiegel, that provides a forum for Gill, warns that the German auto industry cannot endure a prolonged shutdown.

The longer the corona crisis lasts, the louder industry calls will grow for politicians to finally name a date for the easing of the shutdowns in order to provide companies with some planning security…

The automotive industry in particular is facing a trial of strength for which there is no historical precedent. In order to prevent a collapse, companies need to get their shuttered factories opened again this spring.

Involved as well are critical issues of global competitiveness. Der Spiegel continues:

There are also geostrategic interests. Executives at companies in Europe want to strengthen the European market in order to establish it as a counterweight to the United States and China as economic powers...

This is all the more true given that China, where the coronavirus originated, appears to be emerging from the crisis faster than the rest of the world.

The COVID-19 coronavirus confronts mankind with not only a scientific-medical problem, but also a political and social challenge. The response of the ruling classes to the coronavirus pandemic reveals that its interests are incompatible with human progress and the very survival of mankind.

In its failure to prepare for the pandemic, its chaotic and disorganized response to the coronavirus once the outbreak began, its subordination of every social need to its own economic interests, its nationally-grounded sabotage of all possibility of a unified global response to the disease, and its open justification of the reactionary and neo-fascistic program of social euthanasia, the ruling class is demonstrating the necessity of socialism.

For humanity to survive, the subordination of society to the money mad capitalist elites must be ended.

David North

#covid_19 #covid virus #covid19 #covidー19 #coronavirus #virus corona vũ hán #coronavid19 #corona virus #corona virüsü #trump #trump administration #economics #the rona #rona #capitalism #late stage capitalism #fascism #neo-fascism #pandemic #pandémie #pandemi virus corona

[violetsmoak]

Pieces of April [17/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Author’s Note: Daily check-in to see how you're holding up under social distancing, and a reminder that in addition to washing your hands and stay inside, don't snack too much, drink at least 8 cups of water and take a shower! You'd be surprised how easy it is to stop doing a lot of the basics when you're in isolation for a while! Hang in there, people!

First Chapter

________________________________________________________________

Six o’clock is an ungodly hour in the morning to be awake and Jason honestly doesn’t know how people do it. The hours between four and eleven in the morning are the only time he has a chance to rest, and now that’s been co-opted by the squawking creature in his arms.

He can’t imagine how the non-vigilante population finds it any easier.

And then there’s Tim.

Who voluntarily gets up at this time every morning to go play Wayne Poster Child™ after a night of knocking heads in the city.

There was a reason Bruce never let Jason patrol on a school night, and it wasn’t just because of the potential for unexplained bruises, and yet here’s little Timmy, off to run a multibillion-dollar company while existing on coffee grounds and stubbornness.

And the dumbass keeps offering to give up more sleep to take care of Jason’s kid.

How has he not fallen off a building yet?

Luisa’s gluttonous grunting brings Jason’s thoughts back to the present. She’s finally started to attack her bottles with gusto, as if it’s finally occurred to her that, “Hey, weird rubber thing in my mouth equals food”.

Jason’s grateful for that, too; not that he’s going to admit he was starting to worry there was something wrong with her.

It’s not that he’s trying to be heartless or anything, but there’s a fine line between being concerned and getting attached. And there is a mess of reasons why he can’t afford to do that. If Tim’s dopey insistence to help out is any indication, he’s already starting down that dangerous road.

Eventually, Luisa releases the nipple, and Jason maneuvers her around to burp her, only to hear a tiny, gurgling cough, which is then followed by warm wetness spilling down his shoulder—at the exact moment that Tim walks into the kitchen.

“Looks like she has a complaint about the chef,” he remarks, mouth twisted into a smirk.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason mutters, holding the now vomit-covered baby as far out in front of him as he can do while keeping her head steady. He tries not to grimace at the stain spreading across his back; he’s probably been covered with worse, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

“That’s why you’re supposed to put a towel over your shoulder.”

“I know!” Jason snaps. “I forgot.”

Tim holds his hands out for the baby. “Go change.”

“I need to clean her up first.”

“You’re not sitting on my sofa covered in puke.”

“Who says I was going to sit on your sofa?” Jason challenges, even though that's exactly where he was going. He’s sort of co-opted that whole area into the downstairs changing station.

The sour-sweet smell of vomit makes the decision for him, however, and he passes Luisa over to Tim, who’s already got a washcloth in hand to dab at the mess. While Jason heads upstairs, he brings her over to that same makeshift changing station and starts to undo her soiled onesie.

The last thing Jason hears as he closes the door to his room is, “Ugh, he was right. That doesn’t look human.”

Jason snorts, glad he’s not the only one that has to suffer through mysterious bodily fluids.

He considers the merits of showering now, weighing the need to be clean versus the probability of ending up dirty again anyway in an hour or so and then decides to just wipe himself down with a wet cloth before putting on a new shirt.

Digging around in the duffel bag, he accidentally knocks down the jacket he threw haphazardly on the loveseat. The inner pocket gapes, allowing several items to fall out, including the Red Hood plush toy and the sonogram from Isabel’s fridge.

He grabbed them both on a whim before leaving the apartment, but he can’t quite recall the logic or reasoning behind that. Isabel’s email and its implications had taken up most of his brainpower at that point. The trained detective part of Jason tells him he wanted evidence, but he’s not entirely sure of evidence of what.

He picks the items up now, frowning at their existence, and then abruptly shoves them both into one of the dresser drawers.

It’s too early for soul-searching.

When he comes back downstairs, it’s to Tim just wrestling a grump baby into a white onesie. Even standing at the foot of the stairs, Jason notices that it contrasts very obviously with Luisa’s skin.

“I was right,” he says, “she’s definitely turning yellow.”

Luisa cracks an eye open at the sudden sound of his voice, and beyond the startling blue iris, he notes that her sclera is also off-color. “Look, even the whites of her eyes are going yellow.”

Tim studies her, and nods. “Yeah, she is a little jaundiced.”

“So do we take her to the doctor for this, or what? I mean, does she have yellow fever or something?”

“Yellow fever has an incubation period of three to six days,” Tim replies. “Since she hasn’t been alive that long and hasn’t had a chance to be exposed to anything like that, I doubt that’s what it is.”

Jason gives him a look. “How the hell do you know this shit?”

“An eco-fascist cell tried to contaminate Gotham’s water supply with a strain of it last year.”

“It’s always the water supply with these people,” Jason mumbles. “You’d think the city would invest in better security down there. Batman’s not always going to be there to stop it.”

“Batgirl, actually,” Tim replies. “Singlehandedly. Steph was very proud.”

“I’m sure.” Jason frowns again at the vaguely yellow baby, telling himself that if Tim isn’t worried, he shouldn’t be. Still, “You know, while we have her here, we should maybe wash off some of that white stuff."

“What? No. Did you forget? ‘Wet baby equals slippery baby’? Those were your words.”

“There are other ways to take a bath, moron,” Jason retorts, examining the bulge above Luisa’s umbilical cord stump. He thinks he remembers Dr. Kerry saying it would fall off in a week or so, but to be honest, most of the night they picked her up from the hospital is a blur to him.

“Well, I’ll leave you to that then, because I have to get going,” Tim says, heading upstairs to transform himself from half-asleep slob to Timothy Drake-Wayne.

Jason tries not to balk at that; part of him was hoping Tim would offer to do that chore.

Bathing is different from feeding. With blankets around the kid, he doesn’t have to worry so much about bruising her skin by just touching her. And yes, he knows that babies don’t bruise that easily, but he’s so used to ruining everything he touches that this seems like a valid concern to him.

In the end, he just takes his time, not giving her a real bath from the tiny tub still packed up in the pile of baby things, but an approximation of the wipe down he gave himself earlier. Careful to keep her covered except to expose whatever arm or leg needs wiping off, he slides a cloth gently against her skin, noting she’s still got that weird white residue on her.

She makes squeaking grunts of complaint at the alien feeling, but it must not feel too bad because she doesn’t erupt into crying. He takes that has a win.

“Now that Her Highness has had her morning toilette,” Jason grouses as he nestles the lump of baby into her carrier.

Once Tim leaves, Jason spends the day at home much like he did the day before, scouring the apartment for anything readable that isn’t a gaming guide, taking apart his gear and putting it back together and grabbing quick naps between feedings and changings. It’s entirely possible he may be losing his mind, because how did his life become this?

I didn’t even stay this still when I was a kid. Is this what life is like for eighteen years when you have a kid?

There has to be more to the parenting gig than this.

Frustrated, he turns the television on, surfing the channels and wondering why there’s nothing worth watching on any of the thousand channels Tim has access to. Eventually, he lands on a local news channel which he keeps on just to have something making noise in the overly silent house.

He’s barely synthesizing the information until a special report comes on, the shaky camera capturing a car speeding through Crime Alley, windows rolled down to allow a gun to open fire.

“…only the latest in a series of violent incidents that have occurred just outside of the Bowery this week,” the woman on the screen is saying. “Officials believe these may be retaliation for the recent raiding of three businesses in the Bowery with connections to the Maroni crime family…”

“Then officials are stupid because anyone gunning for Maroni wouldn’t be takin' it out on him in Crime Alley,” Jason mutters. Especially since everyone in Gotham’s underworld knows the penalty for going anywhere near Hood territory.

“…just the latest in the continuing unrest in the neighborhood. Local police are still asking for information regarding the disappearance of teenagers LaRynn Davies and Carlton King, last seen leaving the schoolyard of PS 181. This has been Maria Amardosa, Gotham News—”

Jason jabs at the remote, switching the television off.

It doesn’t surprise him that crime’s up; April and May are when the weather starts to warm up, which means a lot of enterprising criminal organizations open back up for business. Even when he was Robin, Jason used to make a point of more heavily patrolling his neighborhood in the spring to discourage that sort of thing.

And now, it’s going on a week, and he hasn’t been out once. It’s bad enough having to leave matters when he’s out of town or off-planet, but in those cases, he can’t do anything about it.

“But now, I’m right freakin’ here, and sittin’ on my ass.”

Which is why when Tim gets home from work that night and gratefully accepts the stir-fry Jason whipped up more out of boredom than actual hunger, he decides to broach the subject.

“I’m goin' out to patrol tonight,” he informs him, half-defiant. “If I don’t put in an appearance along my usual route, people are gonna start gettin' ideas.”

More than they already are.

He expects protests or warnings, but to his surprise, Tim swallows a mouthful of rice and nods. “I’ll watch the baby while you’re out.”

All reasonable like, the way he’s been since he picked me up at the bar.

Jason tries not to feel like he’s being handled, and goes on in a guarded tone, “This isn’t me tryin' to dump her off on you and run. I’m not that big of an ass.”

“Debatable. But noted. It’s not a problem.”

“Are you sure? Because if you don’t want to, tell me.”

Tim fixes him with an exasperated look. “You’re really not used to people just…genuinely wanting to help you, are you?”

“Not generally, no,” Jason replies, folding his arms across his chest. “Especially not people that I’ve tried to kill.”

“Twice.”

“Twice.”

“Though I did knee you in the balls that one time,” Tim reminds him, shoveling another bite into his mouth.

Jason winces. “Yeah, I remember. Not sure that’s enough to put us on equal playin' field though."

“Also, do you remember last year when you thought you had a bedbug infestation, and even when you switched safehouses, you couldn’t get rid of them?”

The question is asked with an innocence that wouldn’t fool even the most naïve person in the world, and Jason growls. “Okay, I take it back. You do owe me. At least I would have made your death quick. Bedbugs are just…” He shudders. “Evil.”

“There’s a reason Ra’s al Ghul wants me to work for him,” Tim agrees cheerfully.

“I’m suddenly re-evaluating the wisdom of leaving you with a small child.”

“I’m serious, though, it’s no problem to watch her.” Tim makes a waving gesture. “Go. Break up a few bar fights, knock around whatever pimps deserve it, whatever. Just…don’t kill anyone.”

“I ain’t askin’ permission here, Drake.”

“I know that. Doesn’t mean you don’t need the reminder.”

“If you’re so worried I’m gonna snap, maybe you should be tryin’ to keep me home.”

“That would be pretty stupid. And possibly suicidal on my part. You haven’t been out on the streets for a week, and you’ve been cooped up in here since Isa came home.” He ignores Jason’s glare at the nickname. “You need some kind of outlet, and this is the best one I can think of for you.”

It’s the most laissez-faire response he’s ever gotten from a Bat when it comes to Red Hood’s involvement in the Gotham nightlife—or rather, his frequent interruptions of it. Even Barbara—who he knows understands the logic of his crusade, even as she vehemently decries it—has never been like this.

Barring the whole ‘don’t kill anyone’ spiel, that was almost encouraging.

And a far cry from the kid that accused him of taking the easy path of crimefighting when they first met years ago.

Jason realizes then that he’s had a very specific image of Tim Drake in his head all this time. Living in close quarters with him is showing him that he really doesn’t know him at all.

Now is that just me…or is the rest of the family just as clueless when it comes to the baby bird here?

He must be giving Tim a funny look, because the kid says, “What?”

“Nothing,” Jason replies. “Just wondering what Bat Daddy would think about your pro-Red Hood stance.”

Tim winces, an expression of deep revulsion on his face. “Please. Never, ever refer to Bruce or any other guy I know as ‘daddy’. Ever again.”

Jason raises an eyebrow—that’s the first time he’s elicited that reaction—but rather than ask about it, he instead returns to his room to grab his clothes.

The Nest isn’t like the Cave, where Batman keeps extra gear for everyone stowed away (even for the Red Hood, he learned shortly after the mission to bring Damian’s body back from Apokolips), which means Jason’s going to need to stop at one of his caches after leaving to get his helmet and some of the bulkier pieces of armor he didn’t have with him.

Kitted out in everything except the eponymous red hood, Jason pauses in front of the secret entrance to Red Robin’s base.

Sitting on the couch with Luisa, Tim is just hanging up the phone. “I made an appointment for her to see Leslie next Tuesday. It’s the earliest she could fit us in since I couldn’t tell her the exact details.”

“Yeah, probably something to explain in person,” Jason agrees. He jerks his thumb at the door. “I’m leavin' now. Last chance to back out.”

“It’s not going to kill me to be responsible for an infant for a few hours,” Tim deadpans. “I mean, you’ve done it all week, so it should be easy.”

“Famous last words, Replacement. Just remember—Safiya’s number’s in your phone. Use it if you get overwhelmed.”

Tim rolls his eyes at his own words being flung at him. “You’re hilarious.”

“I know,” Jason grins.

“Get out of here.”

“Gone—also, stealing one of your bikes.”

“Just make sure to fill up the tank when you’re done!” Tim calls after him before the door shuts and locks away the domestic part of Jason’s life for the evening.

The short trip from Tim’s place to Jason’s nearest safehouse passes in a blur, and before he knows it he’s safely behind the visor of his helmet and back on the streets.

There’s nothing quite like Gotham at night, and even after a lifetime living here, he’s not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not.

The rooftops are familiar steppingstones beneath his feet, as he tucks and rolls upon landing, only to propel himself back to his feet and do it again upon reaching the next roof. The rhythm of it all is easy, second nature even, and one he missed in the days where he’s been cooped up.

The last time he was out of commission for so many consecutive days was when he caught the winter flu, and even then he dragged his carcass out of bed just to loom in the dark as a warning to anyone who might try something. It’s a trick Bruce used to pull, when needed to make an appearance as Batman but was hacking up half a lung.

Tim was right about one thing: being able to throw himself into a fight is cathartic. His mind closes off every other thought beyond the here and now, and for the first time in a week, he feels like himself.

He busts up two bodega robberies, stops a carjacking and when a john tries to drag one of the girls working the corner into his car, Jason takes supreme joy in slamming the bastard’s hand in his car door. He checks in with several of his sources, some of whom have names for him of whatever moron has decided to ignore the rules of the Hood this week.

It’s a few hours worth of running about before he finally feels clear again, and by the time he starts winding down his patrol, there’s a deep but familiar exhaustion curling in his muscles that he only ever feels after a good workout. It makes his thoughts feel clearer and more capable of tackling his personal problems once more.

Using the interface in his helmet, he runs a search for the addresses of every Jonathan Sutter in Gotham, then uses the program he piggybacks off the Batcave server to attach the names to any of them that have been treated for Joker toxin in the past year.

There are two and considering one of them is about sixty years old and works as a greeter at Walmart, it’s a safe bet which one he’s looking for. He makes a stop out of his usual route to check up on the guy.

Isabel’s ex lives in the nicer part of Otisburg, about two blocks from an elementary school and a playground.  His home is a decently maintained two-story walk-up, with one of the newer Volkswagen models in the driveway. From what Safiya told him, Sutter does decently financially, and according to the photo in his dossier, he’s got a kind of refined Tony Stark looking going on.

Though that means about jack squat when it comes to whether the guy should be around kids.

If he were Batman, Jason would break in and loom over the guy’s bed until he woke up, but since Sutter’s less likely to be receptive if he’s pissing himself in fear, Jason decides he’ll return by daylight.

He just wanted to scope out where the guy lived, anyhow.

Whether due to his own exhaustion catching up with him, or the nagging feeling at the back of his mind wanting to make sure Tim’s place is still standing, he returns to where he parked the borrowed bike and heads back to the Nest earlier than he normally would.

He’s not even surprised to see the family insomniac still awake, although for once he’s not poring over case files. There’s a game paused on the flatscreen, and Tim is in the process of carefully hefting the baby in his arms up and down, a frown on his face.

Like every Bat, he gives no indication he even noticed he’s no longer alone.

“What’s up?” Jason asks as he rubs a towel through his sweaty hair; he left the bulky bits of his gear in the Nest.

“I think she feels lighter than she did when we brought her here,” Tim replies, a perplexed expression on his face. “Do you think she’s not getting enough food?”

“Not possible with the amount we feed her.”

“Yeah…” Tim shakes his head, then meets Jason’s gaze. “So, did you strike fear into the hearts of every gangbanger in the Alley?”

“You joke, but I take that as a personal challenge.”

“Please don’t.” Tim stands up, holding the baby with more confidence than Jason thinks he’s ever imagined and wanders over. “She slept most of the time you were away.”

“Of course she did,” Jason mutters with a scowl. The baby seems to behave for Tim a lot more than she does for him.

“That’s pretty impressive since she already spends about three-quarters of the day asleep.”

“Wish she would sleep at night, or at least let me.”

“It’s not like we’re not used to being up at all hours.”

“Yeah, but we’re also used to passing out for actual sleep when we get home. I think she thinks sunrise is a signal to work up a f-fuh--,” Jason’s complaint is interrupted by a yawn, and he shakes his head. “Fuss. And on that note…”

“Go. Shower,” Tim says. “I can put her down before I turn in.”

Jason nods at that, putting a foot on the stairs before something occurs to him and he glances back.

“Hey, Tim…”

“Yeah?”

“…Thanks.”

Tim appears caught off-guard, and then an actual grin breaks over his face. “Careful, Jay, you’re starting to sound downright friendly.”

“It’s the sleep deprivation,” Jason replies, “Don’t read into it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”  

⁂⁂⁂

Your feedback matters! I want to know what you think of my story, so feel free to leave kudos, a comment or as many of these emojis as you want and let me know how you feel!

❤️️ = I love this story! 😳 = this was hot! 💐 = thank you for sharing this 🍵 = tea spilled 🍬 = so sweet and fluffy! 🚔 = you’re under arrest! the writing’s too good! 😲 = I NEED THE NEXT CHAPTER 😢 = you got me right in the feels 🤯mind blown 🤬god damn cliffhanger 😫 whyyyyyyy?!?!?

Next Chapter

#jaytim #timjay #babyfic #kidfic #slow build #slow burn #jason todd #tim drake #cabin fever #work life balance of a vigilante #baby isa #adulting

[flusteredmountainman]

On the insidious hypocrisy of transmedicalism and colonial conditioning

I’m going to slap down a fairly long post about how transmedicalism is Fucking Bullshit today because I’ve been trying to pin down some of my thoughts and feelings for a wee while about it and I finally feel like I’m ready to articulate it.

CWs for use of the word h*mosexual (censored bc i have friends made uncomfortable by that word who ID as gay), conversion therapy, transmedicalism, colonialism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, trauma, violence mention, classism, ableism.

First off: truscum ideology makes no sense. Transmeds will preach and scream about how being trans* has nothing to do with biology; that gender is a psychological thing (which it is) but then will go on to say that if you don’t experience severe dysphoria you aren’t trans. This literally makes No Sense because if being trans has nothing to do with your biology and your physical attributes, then why should every trans person be forced to physically change their biology to fit binarist ideas of how bodies should look in relation to gender to prove themselves?

The base ideology is hypocritical at best and boot-licking/transphobic/cisnormative at worst: the idea that you have to experience (x) amount of trauma and discomfort to be trans only feeds into the cis narractive that trans people are traumatised, disturbed, othered individuals who have something “wrong” with them or that they’re “degenerate” - this conflation of being trans as being a mental illness is literally a rhetoric used by cishets dating back decades in psychology circles to treat being gay/trans/what-have-you as a sickness that can be cured. People used to be diagnosed as h*mosexual to justify putting them through conversion therapy to cure them of what was perceived as moral degeneracy. The same can be said for being trans. By pushing this rhetoric transmeds are admitting that they agree that being trans is Abnormal - that no one could ever want to be trans or be happy being trans because it’s so far removed from everything polite society considers “normal”. To support these ideas is to incite violence against your trans brothers, sisters, and siblings: it is disgusting and ignorant and smacks of internalised transphobia.

Not only that but transmedicalism as an ideology is also inherently racist! Truscum are uplifting binarism as a structure that was introduced into many societies by colonial powers that systematically erased native and indigenous identities that have always existed - by saying that these identities as well as non-binary identities (for which terms were created in response to debunking the idea that you can only be one gender or another in specifically western contexts) aren’t valid you are literally acting as a tool of colonialism. You are contributing to the cultural destruction and ongoing colonisation of indigenous cultures and identities. By supporting these ideas you are inherently saying that you support white supremacist structures of power and oppression founded not only upon race but also gender, ability, class and oppression of LGBT+ people. You are playing into white supremacy and you are actively inciting racist and pro-colonialist violence towards trans and gender diverse people of colour. 

It’s also no coincidence that it’s classist: as I mentioned before. The idea that you have to transition to be trans hinges upon the assumption that there is equal  opportunity and access for every person to transition: which many people don’t for many reasons including that it’s expensive, in my country only one surgeon can perform surgeries at all (literally inaccessible), many people can’t afford to take time off work, many people have various disabilities or illnesses that literally mean they cannot transition if they may want to: all this not even considering that some people may not want to physically transition. When we consider that combined with the institutional oppression people face for their race that means many, many people of colour are living in poverty due to their families being trapped in the poverty cycle and intergenerational trauma from colonialism, it’s no coincidence that the people impacted by this bullshit ideology the most are trans* people of colour! Plus disabled trans* people and disabled trans* people of colour! It’s disgustingly ableist, racist and classist and just reveals how these people don’t give a single shit about any trans* person who isn’t white and ablebodied.

There is already so much prejudice and oppression that trans and gender diverse people face in our society already it just doesn’t make any sense for transmeds to play the oppression olympics. Your experiences are not universal! Just because you experience extreme dysphoria doesn’t mean that people who don’t are not valid in their identity. Gender euphoria is equally important and besides gender as a construct is a fucked up concept anyway, so why are y’all sucking up so hard to the Cissies TM! Please get over yourself and examine why the hell you feel the need to pull other trans people down with you: you are a deeply sick, sad individual if you see someone else being proud of who they are and feel the need to knock them down a peg just because you’re in pain, and you aren’t above being a transphobe just because you’re trans!

All this to say that if you proudly self-ID as a transmed/truscum you can literally choke and die and you will never in any way be welcome on my blog! Same to Terfs y’all can fuck off too.

Cis people do Not add to this or I will Come for you I do Not want to hear your opnions on this: nothing you say can meaningfully contribute to this conversation so please just reblog to amplify trans* voices. 

#transphobia #racism #ableism #opinion #transmed #homophobia #it speaks #long post

[csykora]

Generally, do we take Oshie coming back out at the end of the game (or any similar sitch of an athlete returning to the ice after a potentially injury-causing incident) as a good sign (presumably he passed a concussion test so even if he does somehow have one, it's probably not as serious as it could be), a bad sign (there's a good chance he's playing through something that will be/could be made worse by playing through it), or just like a neutral "who knows" non-sign?

It’s a neutral sign about Oshie’s wellbeing, because being cleared to return to play simply isn’t the same as that.

I think it’s a rough sign about us.

Oshie went through the League’s concussion protocol.  The League has pulled out certain symptoms (subjective information that has to be reported by the patient) and signs (objective information that can be seen by the healthcare provider) which it holds to be the most reliable clues. If a player shows some combination of these, they’re sent off the ice to be tested:

Symptoms:

Headache

Dizziness

Balance or coordination difficulties

Nausea

Amnesia for the circumstances surrounding the injury (i.e., retrograde/anterograde amnesia)

Cognitive slowness

Light/sound sensitivity

Disorientation

Visual disturbance

Tinnitus

Sign “Lying Motionless on the Ice”: A Player lies motionless on the ice or falls to the ice in an unprotected manner (i.e., without stretching out his hands or arms to lessen or minimize his fall).

Sign “Motor Incoordination/Balance Problems”: A Player staggers, struggles to get up or skate properly, appears to lose his balance, trips or falls, or stumbles while getting up, trying to get up, or skating.

Sign “Blank or Vacant Look”: A player has a blank or vacant look.

If you also thought, “But wouldn’t TJ always qualify?” you’re a bit of a dick, but you’re not wrong

Sign “Slow to Get Up” or “Clutches his Head”: A player is slow to get up or clutches his head (including any part of his face) 2 following any of these mechanisms of injury:

a blow to the Player’s head or upper torso from another player’s shoulder;

the Player’s head makes secondary contact with the ice; or,

the Player is punched in the head (including any part of his face) by an ungloved fist during a fight

Exceptions: If a player is Slow to Get Up or Clutches his Head following a mechanism of injury other than the three listed above, removal from play is not mandatory and Club medical staff shall exercise their medical judgment as to whether to remove the Player for an acute evaluation.

That last bit means that the NHL has done some math and determined that those three impacts cause most concussions. They’ve found that fewer concussions come from ‘head makes secondary contact with the boards’ than from ‘contact with the ice’, so they say a player who hit the ice needs to be tested and a player who hit the boards doesn’t. He can still be sent for testing, but the call falls to the trainer, and that’s a problem because we can’t diagnose a concussion by looking at you.

Does Oshie have a concussion? I don’t know. Not ‘I don’t know I’m only friendly bone witch’ like I say when I think somebody sprained their wrist but don’t want to get in trouble, I mean I cannot tell you shit. I cannot see concussions. I can see those signs that often appear with a concussion, but seeing them does not mean my patient for sure has a concussion. If I don’t see them, it doesn’t mean he does not.

We have to assess the damn patient.

The NHL uses it’s own version of the Standardized/Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT3).

The SCAT3 combines aspects of several concussion tools…into eight components designed to assess concussion symptoms, cognition, and neurological signs. Each of the eight components is scored and recorded The test consists of the Glasgow Coma Scale  [you conscious?], Maddocks score [are you aware you’re a hockey player?], symptom evaluation, cognitive evaluation using SAC [can you solve my puzzles?], neck examination, balance examination, coordination examination, and a follow-up of the SAC delayed recall task.

The SCAT3 is not meant to replace comprehensive neuropsychological testing. It should not be used as a stand-alone method to diagnose concussion, measure recovery, or make decisions about an athlete’s readiness to return to competition after a concussion.”

What you need to know from that is that the SAC is a timed paper-and-pencil quiz that takes 5 to 10 minutes. It’s a pretty reliable indicator. You do it twice in the SCAT. 

When the SCAT was introduced Dr. Ruben Echemendia, chair of the NHL’s Concussion Working Group, denied that players have to be in the quiet room for a minimum of 15 minutes. “The 15 minutes that has been talked about in the media is a fallacy….It really is the amount of time that’s necessary to conduct a thorough evaluation.” x That’s interesting.

Oshie left the ice with 16 and a half minutes left in the 3rd. He returned with 3 and a bit to go. It is physically impossible that he completed just one of the eight parts of the NHL’s own tool properly.

Using just one tool may give you almost 50% error, compared to 80-100% accuracy when you use the SCAT and other tools to get a more complete picture. Reasonable medical care for concussions does exist, this just…isn’t it.

I’m not saying a word about the medical staff. I’m saying that this system means being cleared to play has as much to do with your concussion status as a coin flip. 

Kariya shows character in Game 6

Jun 8, 2003

Sherry Skalko

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Paul Kariya wasn’t going to stay down.

It was Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals and there was more work to do.

At 6:26 of the second period Saturday night with the Mighty Ducks leading the Devils 3-1, Kariya joined the list of players who have fallen victim to a Scott Stevens check. An instant after dishing the puck off to his left before the Devils’ blueline, Kariya, with his head down, turned to his right – full-speed, face-first into the white No. 4 on the New Jersey captain’s shoulder.

Kariya fell to the ice and lay motionless. The capacity crowd that he had whipped into a frenzy with two assists in the first period fell silent.

…

So at the most crucial of moments, with his young Mighty Ducks facing elimination in the playoffs for the first time, Kariya got up. And less than four minutes later, he made a surprising return. 

Later in the period, it was Kariya who provided the nicest lift of all by beating Martin Brodeur high glove side with a slapshot off the left wing at 17:15.

“He was able to come back, and that really inspired every player in our room,” Ducks veteran winger Steve Thomas said.

“I was impressed with that,” coach Mike Babcock said. “It was impressive for him. When you’re stretched and people are calling you out, you get a chance to respond. When you respond, that’s the best feeling. That’s why they pay you the money.”

They pay him the money because they know what other people don’t.

“That’s just a sign of leadership, right there, to come back after that and score that goal,” Rucchin said. “I expect the same from him in Game 7.”

Because Paul Kariya won’t stay down.

Paul Kariya can’t remember that goal. 

He had anterograde amnesia: like we talked about with Kempný this season, his brain couldn’t record any new information. His muscle memory was out there, and it did okay without the rest of him, because you truly don’t need judgement or personality to be a hockey player. 

Seeing TJ return to the ice last night and score was the nightmare scenario. It’s what we can’t seem to get away from. We keep cheering when they go back on the ice. We keep saying see? He’s okay! 

And that’s pretty damn awkward fifteen years later. 

I don’t think Oshie has a concussion. I don’t know! We don’t. We cheered anyway.

I’ve been trying to get this, reading posts praising what Oshie did. Because I know you all want him to be well. And you want him to get a victory. We want the story to end with the good guy safe and sound and still good at hockey. It feels right. 

But a player being well and being good at hockey are not the same thing. Sometimes wanting him to be well means acknowledging that he can’t do this right now, because doing this is hurting him.

Dessy, A. M., Yuk, F. J., Maniya, A. Y., Gometz, A., Rasouli, J. J., Lovell, M. R., & Choudhri, T. F. (2017). Review of Assessment Scales for Diagnosing and Monitoring Sports-related Concussion. Cureus, 9(12), e1922.  

Resch JE, Brown CN, Schmidt J, et alThe sensitivity and specificity of clinical measures of sport concussion: three tests are better than oneBMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine 2016

[happy-bellamy]

My unapologetic review of The Darkest Minds movie!  Sorry it’s so long (Spoilers, obviously)

This is probably the most difficult review I’ve done yet... That reason being that I LOVED the books, they are still one of my favorite series to this day.  However, I saw the movie on Sunday night, and I can’t not post a review of it.  So, I’m sorry Darkest Minds fans, myself included, because we aren’t getting a sequel.  They did not do a good job.

Let me rephrase what I just said, because I have two opinions on this movie.  Whenever there is a book to movie adaptation of something I’ve read, I take my roommate with me to watch, because he offers a “non-reader” standpoint. 

So, as we were leaving the theater, I was on cloud 9.  He was sitting in the car next to me, being very quiet. I knew he didn’t like it and was afraid to say anything so he didn’t hurt my feelings, but I got him to budge and tell me his problems.  So that is why I like the movie, and I hate it.

I like it because this movie was made for me.  I hate it because...this movie was made for me.  The Darkest Minds fans love it because it is so accurate to the books! Is it, though?

The first half hour or so are so insanely accurate that I thought my head was going to explode.  Actually, as far as what we are seeing, the physical scenes, the entire movie was wildly accurate.  But it’s when we start to pay attention to what is actually happening that it starts falling apart. 

So Ruby is in a camp, it’s basically a concentration camp, and she’s hiding as a green.  Okay, but how did that happen?  Well, the doctor that examined her found out that she was an orange, and then Ruby made him change the test.  Yeah...but why is he able to do that?  Why does the computer allow him to manually change the results?  Does the machine sometimes not work? That’s the biggest ex-machina I’ve ever seen! Moving forward, she’s at this camp to be “reformed.”  Clancy was reformed, so she can be too!  Yeah, but 1 kid was reformed, are you telling me that parents across the US actually believe this? Millions of kids in camp, yet 1 was healed.  Wow, what a miracle! Take my kid!

The next problem is the camps themselves.  There was a specific line of narration or something that said “There is no economy.”  That line ruined the movie.  There’s no economy?  How is anything functioning?  The skip tracers, how are the bounties that they collect paid for?  How are the guards paid?  Where does the money that keeps these camps running come from?  If there’s no economy, how does the government pay for all of these camps, the guards, doctors, skip tracers, etc? Speaking of the camps, how are any of them still functioning?  You’re telling me that blues, who can move and control anything, are just...walking around?  Yellows are not restrained?  Blues are not restrained?  As if, those kids outnumber you 100 to 1, the camps would be taken over in a day.  Even in Caledonia, all it took was 1 blue to break the fence, then they are all home free! You’re telling me that it took years for someone to go, “Guys, we should break the fence!” The security is dumb enough to let the kids walk around unrestrained?  There’s no way in hell that any of those camps would have lasted more than a year. 

Also, what are other countries doing right now?  Since there is NO ECONOMY! If the US collapsed, the rest of the world is coming down with us, considering that we have 1/4 of the world’s GDP.  Yeah, no, the world is screwed if America just suddenly decided to shut down. 

But okay, okay, let’s say it doesn’t.  Let’s say by some miracle, the rest of the world is fine.  They would still send resources?  And by resources, I mean people, of course.  They would want to help.  What happens when they come to help, realize that the camps are holding kids against their will and are torturing them?  The UN would immediately step in and stop every single camp.  I’m pretty sure it took the US 3 years to learn about Nazi concentration camps, and that was before the internet!  All it takes is one kid, guard, parent, etc. to find out and post something online, then it would be viral, and the world would be in uproar!  No way these camps last SIX YEARS!

Also this bothered me in the books too.  Why are the guards mean?  Like all of them?  They torture and beat these kids regularly.  Whether they’re scared or not, there is no way every single guard would be totally okay with beating kids, powers or no.  They’re still human, unless they only hire sociopaths to be PSF’s?

Okay, so I have more to say about the lack of world building, but y’all get my point.  Thanks for the socks scene Fox, but that ain’t gonna cut it.  I. Need. Exposition.  We. Want. Exposition!

Now let’s talk about the things they added in that were not in the books. 

Ruby not being white, who cares? Amandla stole the show.  Chubs being green?  Fits his personality better anyways.  The eye color thing?  It’s kind of dumb, because I’m pretty sure that the colors originally came from the defcon color severity system, which is the exact same way as it is in the movies (green meaning good, orange meaning bad).  So were the colors named after the defcon system, or the eyes?  If it was the eyes, then the defcon system just magically matched up perfectly?  I guess...

Anyways, I don’t really care about those changes.. I care about those two scenes, you know the two, that they added in that is just absolute garbage. 

The first scene being when Ruby goes back home after escaping the camps.  It goes exactly how everyone expected, being that Ruby can’t go home because her parents don’t remember her.  Why did they make that scene?  What purpose did that serve?  We knew exactly what was going to happen.  What did SHE think would happen?  Did she forget what she did? Of course she didn’t! That scene was stupid and should not have been a part of the movie. 

The second scene being that...thing at the end with football field and all the kids with paint or whatever.  I talked about this with @itsgalaxy29 and we had similar opinions. What the HELL was that? Those are the kids from East River, I think? Well no, there were not that many kids in East River.  So they were the Children’s League kids? So, movie, you’re telling me that they took kids from their duties, their missions, to go into a football field, not say a word, put paint on their hands and foreheads, and just...stand there? No, I can’t think about that scene for than one more minute without wanting to laugh. 

Next, let’s talk about pacing.  The movie went FAST!  The run-time with credits is 1hr 45min, why did they rush everything then?  That movie could have been amazing if they spent time world building, taken out the dumb scenes, and had the main actors actually learn stuff about each other.  A 2hr 30min movie is pretty common these days, so it’s not like they thought that it was too long.  I did not shed a single tear when Ruby took Liam’s memories.  Why?  Because I didn’t really care about them as a couple yet.  In the books they spend, like, months together!  The movie took place in.... a few weeks?  Sorry Liam, you don’t love Ruby yet.  Actually, you barely know Ruby.  We get no information about Zu and Chubs at all.  Chubs’s only purpose being to say kinda funny jokes, I guess.  Zu is there to lead her to the van and then literally becomes pointless the rest of the movie. The main cast, other than Ruby, gets no exposition whatsoever, and by the end of the movie we are supposed to care about what happens to them, yet we don’t.  Why should we?  We don’t even know Chubs’s last name! 

And finally, because I have already made this review freakishly long: Clancy.  The worst character by far.  In the books he is a troubled bad guy.  He has some semblance of good in him, yet he doesn’t do the right thing.  He’s basically Magneto.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the books, it isn’t Clancy’s fault that the camp gets compromised.  In the movie, Clancy has no reason to be the bad guy.  He was tortured by the government and his father for years, and once they ‘cure’ him....he helps them? The movie wants me to believe that Clancy is helping those who tortured him for years.  No.  He is a villain just so the movie has a villain.  We are given no reason for him to be the bad guy.  Why would he compromise his own camp?  What the hell was that harvest thing?  Is this his first ‘harvest,’ or does he do this often?  If he has done it before, how is he able to restart the camp?  Do new kids show up to just Clancy by himself...and stay?  That’s not suspicious at all!  And okay this made me so mad, but Chubs wanted to leave because...they made him work.  Chubs, of course you have to work!  Nothing would get done if the kids didn’t have jobs!  You can’t just sit around all day and do nothing!  The camp couldn’t physically function!

The problem with this movie is that it shows you the ‘what’ and not the ‘why.’ Fans love this movie so much because they get to see their characters doing what they did in the books.  People that haven’t read the books need an explanation as to what is happening and why!  That’s why the reviews are so bad.  They are lost.  They are left wondering what was happening in the last scene, and by then the movie has moved on to the next.  A good movie needs exposition, as to which this movie offers slim to none.  I originally liked the movie so much because I got see Liam, Ruby, Chubs, and Zu doing shenanigans.  My roommate had so many questions as to what was happening that he couldn’t like it.  That’s why the movie was made for me, someone who has read the book.  I don’t need the exposition, I know it already.  That doesn’t make it a good movie. They need to accommodate it to people that haven’t read the book. Otherwise 90% of their audience will be lost, which is what happened.

The book is amazing, if you want to watch the movie, read the book first so you aren’t lost.  I give the movie 2 stars, because a part of me still loves it because I did get to see my faves on the big screen. Thanks to @itsgalaxy29 and @kyrahchey for being willing to talk to me about it! If y’all wanna yell at me or share similar opinions, feel free to do so in the comments below. I love a good debate. pce. 

#the darkest minds #the darkest legacy #the darkest minds movie #the darkest minds spoilers #alex bracken #alexandra bracken #tdm movie #rubiam #the darkest minds review

[buildarocketboys]

Books read in 2018

It's been a pretty good year for reading for me, and I actually kept a list of all the books I read, so I thought I'd make a list and write a mini review about each one. I've read 22 (and a half) books this year in full - this doesn't include any that I just started, or have read bits of.

1. When The Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

Magical realism + gay and trans characters! Pretty great although I wouldn't necessarily read it again. Mostly read in lunchtimes at work.

2-4. LOTR trilogy by J R R Tolkien (started somewhere between 17 and 29 March) (first book finished 4 April) (finished 30 May)

Dates on this one as I spent most of the first half of the year reading the Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring was almost certainly my favourite, got a bit bored towards end of Two Towers/start of Return of the King, and the long descriptions and battles (and long descriptions OF battles) are something I generally prefer to do without. But they're really good books with a lot of cool (and gay!) stuff in them, and though the films don't include everything from them, they're pretty damn good adaptations. (I only wish the films had kept Beregond).

5. The Inescapable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

By the author of Aristotle and Dante, I actually can't remember much of this book, I remember it being pretty good though. It may have made me cry?

6. Cloudbusting by Malorie Blackman (REREAD)

Easily the shortest book here, this book used to make me cry. It's a simple story told through different types of poetry, but it's so beautifully done. Didn't make me cry this time sadly, but still good. Read it sitting by the river taking a break from working on a job application.

7. Nation by Terry Pratchett (REREAD)

I reread this pretty much every year (I found myself a few weeks back wanting to reread it again) and it's brilliant every time, enough said. Think this is the only Pratchett novel I've read this year, which is a shame. Thoroughly recommend it though, even though it's not part of Discworld.

8. And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Bought this from a stall in Bristol, at the time it was the only one of his I hadn't read. It was one of those novels I just ploughed through, really quickly. Really good, really sad (and a gay character where you least expected it).

9. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Borrowed this from my girlfriend after having seen the musical in May. The book is...really weird, but really good. A lot more of an obvious dystopia than the musical is, right from the get go pretty much and Elphaba is an icon - grumpy, traumatised, irritable, angry, hopeful, guilty, revolutionary. I love her. Oh, and her and Glinda are still really gay.

10. Harry and the Wrinklies by Alan Temperley (REREAD)

Now we come to the books I reread in August when I had some time off work. Harry gets orphaned and is sent to live with his elderly relatives and their elderly friends (hence the title). Little does he know, they're all ex-cons and pretty much modern day Robin Hoods. Also, badass. Still a great book, even if it's technically for kids. I need to reread the sequels sometime.

11. Maximum Ride by James Patterson (REREAD)

Edgy as fuck but I still kind of love it. Ngl the younger kids and Iggy are a lot more fun than Max and Fang though.

12. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (REREAD)

This one I reread every couple of years or so. One of my favourites, the way the non-chronological (by design and necessity) plots works so well, in both building and retaining suspense, the prose is beautiful (if a little pretentious at times), the characters are...mostly kind of dicks, but in a real, multifaceted kind of way. I kind of love all the references to various books/authors/bands, even if it is kind of pretentious. I discovered Rilke through this book. Jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

13. Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Read this a little while after seeing the film. Obviously they changed a fair amount, but I love them both. Really easy to read in about a day.

14. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Read this on the same weekend as Simon. Loved it a LOT. I relate to both Leah and Abby a whole lot and it just felt so real to the experience of being a (bi) teenage girl. Wish there'd been a bit more to the ending maybe? But maybe that's just me being greedy. Still trying to persuade @judasisgayriot to read it. This might well be my book of the year.

15. Vox by Christina Dalcher

After I finished Leah on the Offbeat I was looking for something else to read. Picked this up in Waterstones because it sounded like an interesting concept for a dystopia (women are only allowed to say 100 words a day - if they say more, they get electrocuted by a bracelet attached to their wrist). The main character is white, straight and middle class, so that's definitely the majority of the experience we get to see, but there is some examination of being gay and/or a poc in this dystopian culture. Overall an interesting examination on how language can be used as a weapon, and to control people. A Handmaid's Tale with a difference and (spoiler!) a happy ending.

16. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

I didn't get/read this one at the same time as Leah and Simon because I was put off by how het it sounded, lol. The main character is straight (afaik) but it's still a pretty great book and she's pretty relatable.

17. My Mum Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson

Tracy Beaker all grown up! As told through the eyes of her (much quieter and less troublesome) daughter. Pretty great and interesting to see Tracy all grown up but still very much Tracy. Lots of drama and Justine Littlewood ruining everything as usual. Complete with an implausible happy ending (but it's great anyway, and tbh we all need those sometimes). Also, Cam is a #confirmed lesbian.

18. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (REREAD)

I'm not sure how many times I've reread The Book Thief now, but it must have been at least ten. I reread it at least every year but often it's been more than that. Still amazing, obviously, but I dunno, I didn't feel as into it this time? I didn't cry (for the first time ever!) while reading it, although that might have been because I read it at work. Mostly I was reading it to prepare for Zusak's new book, which I got for Christmas.

19. Holes by Louis Sachar (REREAD)

First time I've reread this since high school, and it's still brilliant. 'Nuff said.

20. The Bi-ble: An Anthology of Personal Narratives and Essays about Bisexuality edited by Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond

Bought this from Gay's The Word when I was in London back in May, only got round to reading it in December. Some really good stuff in here, I related hard to a lot of it (and not so much to other parts). Recommended reading for anyone who's bi or wants to understand more about bisexuality.

21. Call of the Wild by Guy Grieve

I picked this up on a whim from my pile of unread books because I wanted something to read before I got new books for Christmas. (Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I only finished it on Boxing Day). Really interesting, I'm so fascinated by life in very cold, harsh, unforgiving places (only partly because of the wolves) and this was a really interesting true story of how a guy (called Guy) from Scotland manages to build his own cabin and live out in the wild of the Alaskan Interior through the Winter.

22. Combat Magicks by Steve Cole

A Doctor Who novel (the first of three I got for Christmas!) and the last book I read in its entirety in 2018. At the site of a battle between the Romans and the Huns (which is why I chose it first, sounded really cool), so-called "witches" manipulate everything both sides do. Surprise! They're aliens. The Doctor calls Yaz her bestie a lot and it's adorable. Ryan gets a girlfriend who stans the Doctor (she's basically part of Roman Torchwood and she's awesome). Graham has a bath with a witch (well, nearly).

Currently reading:

Eat Up! by Ruby Tandoh

I'm about half way through this, so it doesn't quite count as a book I read in 2018, but I thought I should include it. Anti-diet culture, embracing food for what it is, everything it is, while examining the different things (gender, race, class) that affect our relationship with food.

#books #bookblr #Read in 2018 #long post

[wily-one24]

I hope there's not a question limit per ask lol... Paint it Black: 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 14 and 15 (or as many of those as you feel like answering lol)

Okay, two things.

A. Of *course* there’s no ask limit. I am an attention whore and will talk all day if you encourage me. Ask away!!

B. WTF tumblr? When I reposted that, it was a paragraph basically saying “ask about my fic!”, but now there are NUMBERED QUESTIONS? What? Where was the second half of that post when I came across it in my dash? 

ANSWERS

3. What’s your favourite line of narration?

Oh geez. How the hell am I going to answer that? I have favourite lines per chapter, I have favourite lines per scene! Each part I’m reading at any given moment happens to be my favourite. Every time I reread it, I find something new... and... maybe I suck for saying this... but I think “you’re a fucking genius”, then I get all sad, because I think that was probably one of the last great things I’ll write. I’ve been going downhill ever since... but anyways, to seriously answer your question, I’ll give a few examples... 

 - That face off scene between Regina and Snow, where Snow claims her father was a good man and Regina answers “To you!”, the entire scene is charged and emotional and brings up so much shit between them that was never explored in canon. 

- The flashback of Emma’s tenth birthday (technically collectively, all of the flashbacks, really. They’re angsty as fuck, but so formative in their characterisation that sometimes I forget they’re not actually canon). I have this habit of tearing Emma down to her bare bones and then trying to build her up again. I actually do this with most of my main female characters, and I do apologise for that Buffy, Kaylee, Veronica, Emma, and Alex. You all deserve so much better than me. 

- The scene where Regina is alone in the castle and revisits the old chamber of Leopold’s. It’s hard to read but that is some weird little cathartic release right there. There is some great imagery that I don’t think many people allow Regina when it comes to her healing. Everybody tends to go the “being married to Leopold was a BAD THING” route, without ever really exploring the day to day soul destroying aspect of it. The reality of being the King’s prisoner wife. But giving her the ability and strength to revisit it, so she can finally acknowledge to herself how damaging it was, to close herself off from it both literally and figuratively, and then to be self aware enough to compare that situation to the one she has Emma in. That is empowerment. 

- The parallel scenes of Emma and Henry at the start and the end of the fic. The first being when Henry is so adamant to rescue Emma and curse everyone again just to take them back... and the last where you can see how much indoctrinated he is into the fairy tale land, how much he is drifting from “our world” being the real one, to the fairy tale land being his reality, and how his morality has shifted... but then... he also brings it back by getting vulnerable and shows his concern not just for Emma but for Regina... which also shows great advancement from the child like black/white morality of good vs evil he begins with to an acceptance of a more adult grey-area morality, his willingness to examine the facts and the truth to make up his mind. 

All the minor characters... Nancy (sweet, voiced Nancy), and Miss Edith (poor Miss Edith), Rachel, all the little characters that had such minor parts, but had such great effects in the lives of our main characters. 

Oooh, writing Rumple was fun. I got to write him as nobody really does. As that creepy reptilian imp from the first few flashbacks in S1. Before they really woobified him. The hysteric giggling, maniacal creature who smelled the air and exuded pure malice. It was really enjoyable writing him like that. 

Well, this went terribly off topic... anyway, yes, flashback scenes and confrontation scenes, be they between Snow and Regina, Emma and Regina, Regina and Maleficent, Emma and Snow, Emma and Henry... it’s in emotion that the true power of the fic lives. 

4. What’s your favourite line of dialogue?

oh, this is harder than the first. It would take me ages to reread this fic (and now I most likely am, thanks) to really go through it and cherry pick my favourites. But, if a line has happened to truly hit home and resonate with you as a reader, it most likely did the same for me. I remember quite a few times writing this fic, thinking “holy fuck!” and knowing, just knowing, that it was definitely the line to write. 

5. What part was the hardest to write?

The first two chapters. Up until the pivotal moment where Regina heals Emma, those were difficult to write and definitely difficult to read. I’ve had many readers tell me they were about to give up, bc it was too much torture porn to enjoy, but that moment specifically was a turning point for them because it built up the trust that I could and would reign Regina in beyond the point of no forgiveness or return. 

11. What do you like best about this fic?

I liked writing it. 

It took me to some pretty intense places. Fic writing, for me, has always been a form of therapy. I work through to some pretty intense fucking emotions through the angst of it all. Like, no, I have never been magically transported to a fairy tale land, collared, enslaved, and held against my will for the sake of my family and community’s lives... but if you look deeper in my life at the time, I had just been through a pretty horrific pregnancy that nearly killed me, my spouse and I separated, and I was left ill, recovering, and a single mother of a toddler and infant. I felt like I was being ripped apart from all angles, forced into a live of servitude for the betterment of everyone around me at the cost of myself. Even, though, like Emma, I didn’t blame them, it was still a period of mourning and loss.

I didn’t realise it at the time. This revelation happened years later when rereading the fic and trying to see where all the emotions had been coming from. It happens a lot with some of my more intense, dramatic, and (strangely enough) most popular fics. I don’t always see the correlation to my life at the time, but if I look back I can generally trace the rationality behind what my muse was trying to work through. 

12. What do you like least about this fic?

The polarisation. The controversy. That fucking chapter fucking four. I still cannot reread that chapter without having to take a step back and breathe. That scene has some good imagery, but even now sometimes I just skip it. It’s not worth the shakes or unease or... ugh, just thinking about it upsets me. 

I made a mistake in the tagging and I learned from it, but holy fuck was I attacked at the time and used as a sacrifical cow to the radfems. It was, honestly, surprising to me. Not only the reaction, but the harshness of it, all the accusation and personal attacks aimed at me.  

I mean, I knew the fic was always going to be confronting to some. It dealt with some pretty hard issues and subject matter. I had warned for all the violence and non/dub con. But... I didn’t expect or prepare for the backlash in including a male, even if the male used was... just used... and never actually amounted to anything more than a tool for Regina to control/bind/further entrench Emma to her own will in one scene. 

I, very naively, went into it thinking “surprise!”, and that an almost canon past pairing that was heavily explored in the actual show would not be controversial in the least. More fool me, I suppose. I definitely went back to re-tag it, I apologised. I am not sure what else I could have done, but to this day this fic is held up as an example of queer baiting and everything wrong with false lesbianism. And it is definitely used as an example by biphobic people as to why bisexual women cannot be trusted as we’re all “really straight women at heart”.

To be fair, I never explicitly labelled the fic as “lesbian”. I begin all my fics (no matter how AU or ‘out there’) from a canon stand point. Meaning, everything that happened in the show up to that point counts. Which includes every prior relationship both Emma and Regina had been in up to the Season One finale. Which, surprise, were with men!! 

14. Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I don’t know if there’s anything they should ‘learn’, but I definitely hope readers realise that this is in NO WAY AN EXAMPLE OF A HEALTHY BDSM RELATIONSHIP. It is not meant to be a guide, a ‘how to’, or a ‘goal’. This is an incredibly fucked up way for two already fucked up characters, to find some kind of semblance of existence in a world/s stacked up against them from the very start. I didn’t think I needed to state that out loud, but apparently I had to. Many times.  

If not that... then definitely I hope perhaps some of the writing made people think about the characters more in depth, or differently, that it gave the reader a new way of thinking about the show and the storylines/characters in it.  

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?

Tagging. Tagging fucking matters. Tag properly. Like, just do it. 

In all seriousness, though... I think I learned a lot about my own trauma. 

I also think my writing developed throughout the fic. There is a definite shift from the first two chapters... you can definitely see where it became less of a short one off smutty fic set up and more of an in depth angsty character exploration of the soul kinda thing. 

I learned about set up and development and bringing in stray bits of plot development later in the story to tie up loose ends.  

#hope this satisfies #jacqui writes fic #paint it black fic #PIB fic #rowark

[magicianmew]

Low magic, gender, ceremagi, a big clusterfuck pie...

So this is something that has been gnawing away at me for damn near the entirety of the time I've been firmly planted in my practice, but especially since the whole this-is-douchecanoe thing went down (they're not worth my tag).

A few days ago I reblogged this post, which talks about how this-isn't-sparta is clearly coming from an occultist background, and seems to be embodying all of the sexist, ableist, elitist, and dogmatic crap that we've come to know and love from a particular and unfortunately vocal segment of that community.

But then this happened.

These practices within themselves are very male-centric. They seem more left brain than right. More confrontational than accepting.

Wait, what?

Now, I am not trying to call anyone out at all here. I ain't mad. I just wanna unpack this a little bit and actually look at it. 'K? I’m only using this because it's a convenient and ready-to-hand example, but the mindset is absolutely everywhere in the magical world.

Why do we as a community view low magic as being an inherently a "feminine" and "illogical" branch of magic? Why do we view it as something that is yielding and disorganized and void of the sort of study that can go into ceremonial magic? Even the people who practice it seem to accept this stereotype, even as they're surrounded by books and attempting some extremely punishing hedge work for the 34928057498th time.

I actually don't know. Because none of that is remotely true, in my experience of practicing primarily low magic.

Also note: I continue to refer to it as "low" for the same reason I continue to self-identify as "witch." In both cases, it's a practice usually associated with the underclass, which is an important part of the history of these practices. And I don't want to erase that. It keeps me humble. Anyway...

Let's talk about low magic. Folk magic. Po' people magic. Community magic.

Obviously there are thousands of different varieties of low magic -- several just for every culture in any given era. But they share a few broad things in common.

Firstly, they have an absolutely vast knowledge base. In order to effectively work most historical or true traditional forms of low magic, you need to have a working knowledge of botany, geology, history, cooking, distillation, the food web, migrational patterns, astronomy...

Learning how to perform the full body of work of most low magical traditions literally requires a full interdisciplinary education, fam. They involve a shit-ton of left-brain thinking, knowledge acquisition, and logical work. I have learned more about science from my practice than I did from my formal education, ok?

Even if you try to whatabout modern, novel forms of low magic, it still stays true. A tech witch, for example, might require a damn near photographic knowledge of the grid of their city and a couple of different coding languages, in addition to several of the disciplines above.

Let's keep something in mind, here. Low craft is the mother of modern medicine. The magician and the healer were the same person throughout most of history, and if you look back on what few ancient low magic books exist, you will find medicinal concepts that we still use to this day.

Low craft is, and has always been, a deeply research- and knowledge-based way of working. It couldn't possibly have given birth to something as expansive and world-changing as medicine if it weren't.

What is different about low magic compared to ceremonial, and I think where this concept of it being "less disciplined" comes from, is that low magic is performatively flexible. Because it is a craft developed and used by people with unpredictable access to materials, time, or places, it is meant to be adapted to a non-ideal situation pretty much on the fly. That is exactly why it has such a vast body of knowledge behind it: because the more you know, the more ready you are to do the work you need no matter what situation you might find yourself in.

Ceremonial magic is, well, what it says on the box: ceremonial. And because the experience of watching a ceremonial working seems much more procedural than watching a low magic working, people have somehow concluded the low magic involves less knowledge. That is not remotely true. The knowledge just comes in at a different point in the process, i.e. how they even got to the point of doing a working at all, when they had nothing but a spoon, two pennies, and a waxing moon at their disposal.

Hell, low magicians even adapt ceremonial magic. Hoodoo workers know all about the Seals of Solomon, and they make them work beautifully even without the usual prescribed ceremony.

Now let's talk a little bit about these... gender ideas. This is a whole complicated ball of icky, slippery worms.

There's two concepts going on here:

That ceremonial magic is "male."

That "male-ness" is confrontational and intolerant.

Ok. *rubs temples*

It is undeniable that ceremonial magic is dominated by men, and it always has been.

But that does not mean that low magic is "a woman's practice." That is not even remotely true, and it never has been.

Low magic has historically been communal. In many places, it still is even now. Practitioners have always been both male and female. Sometimes they held different titles, sometimes they didn't. Usually, deference was simply determined by age and length of time practicing, not gender or anything else.

As a matter of fact, magical practice was one of the few places where we continued to see relative gender equality even after patriarchy began to take over many societies in the world. Magic continued to be a practice of merit and communal assistance, not something where your gender decided your competence or your station in the magical community.

From Britain's cunning folk to black root doctors, both African and diasporic, both men and women have always been magic workers in low practice, and there is little to no evidence of them disrespecting each other, or assuming one's magic is inferior to the other's because of their gender alone. There is no black man who ever wanted to cross a root working woman, I guarantee you!

Ok. So now let's tackle this "male-ness is confrontational and intolerant" thing.

No. Toxic masculinity is confrontational and intolerant.

So then why do we see that particular problem more often in ceremonial magic, which has always been a male-dominated practice?

Because ceremonial magic is not just male-dominated. More specifically, it is dominated by white, Western, higher-class men, who are also usually straight and virtually always cisgender. Let's just get that right, here.

This isn't a problem with "male-ness." It is a problem with the people at the very top of the kyriarchal totem pole, and it's the same problem we always see with this group of people, whether we're talking about Congress or gentrification. It's no different.

Ceremonial magic has historically been the property of powerful, wealthy men who were part of the ruling class. From popes to aristocrats, the development of ceremonial magic has grown directly from that power system.

"Male-ness" does not dictate one's personality. "Male-ness" does not inherently make one intolerant of other people. Unexamined, unchecked privilege is what does that. "Male-ness" means nothing other than the state of occupying a male-identified gender and/or body.

The strong and persistent community of men that has always been present in low magic alongside their female counterparts is no less male. And we shouldn't degrade the potential and decency of men who work at these things by assigning them a personality without even examining it for truth first.

We also really need to stop defining everything feminine as yielding, weak, or illogical -- the implicit opposite of the strong, dominating, and procedural "male" practice. It doesn't lift up women to define their work and their encyclopedic knowledge as being somehow lesser or weaker like that.

I know that, most of the time, people don't mean it like this because it's just beaten into our heads to think of female-ness this way, to the point where all of us will, at some point, just parrot it back without even thinking about it (me included), but it's a back-handed defense at best. We need to acknowledge the power, knowledge, and work of the magic women do. We need to get better at examining those assumptions within ourselves that their work isn't as good.

Just as a general concept, we need to stop trying to shoe-horn the gender binary and its tired stereotypes into the way we see ourselves as magic workers, and the way we see our magic. That’s as true in low magic as in ceremonial.

And finally...

I can pretty much hear all the ceremonial magicians who are mad as fuck at me right now and ready to bang away at their keyboards about how they're female or disabled or queer or whatever.

Ok, stop for a second.

I know.

'K?

I know that. I know there are lots of you coming from less privileged backgrounds, struggling for the spoons to do your work, etc.

And I really hope you're going to use that to take back ceremonial magic from that ugly history, and turn it into something that's for everyone and works equally for the magical empowerment of all people.

You can totally do that, now that we have this here thing called the internet. And I follow several people who partake in problematic practices with the specific intent of re-envisioning them as something better. Great. Wonderful. Please do that.

But in order to do that, you have to recognize the roots of where it came from. You can't tackle these problems by pretending they don't exist, just like you can't be an ally to black people without acknowledging the problems of whiteness.

It's not personal. It's a fact of both the historical and present-day climate of that community.

We need to acknowledge that people like this-are-donut are pretty common in that community. And in order to make it a better space for you, it's to your benefit to fight back against that degradation of other people just as much as we do in the low magic community. I mean, let's be real, those people don't respect you any more than they respect me. What do you gain out of defending them? Nothing. If you won't do it for any other reason, do it for you.

To those of you already cleaning house, thank you.

To those of you who are gonna say my community has problems too, yes, I know. Name me one time ever that I've denied that or not come out against it whenever I see it, from racist crafters to Nazis in paganism. So please just... don't. Today we're talking about ceremagi's laundry. I talk about mine plenty, ok?

So anyway.

TL;DR If you're a low magician of any sort, your knowledge is just as deep and hard-won as that of any ceremonial magician. Stop accepting the premise at face value that it is somehow a lesser practice.

We also need to stop associating low magic as being "for women." Low magic has a rich history of gender inclusion, and in some societies even LGBT inclusion. Men have shown themselves perfectly capable of working peaceably with us. There is no reason they can't in ceremonial magic just as they have in low magic.

In the spirit of the holiday, let's try to keep this productive. I've really tried my best, here.

Happy Ostara for my pagans buds, and Happy Easter for my Christian witches. Have a good'un.

#whoops i made a discourse #germ sticks her foot in it again #witchblur #witchcraft #magical community

[wotzup]

Hanged

This is a original story I wrote. I kinda contains references to depression and suicide and if you can be triggered by it I will advise you to stay away from it. Anyway you can give your feedback on it(if you want). I hope you all like it :)

Stars. Blinking beacons for the ones astray in the vast sea. Shining brighter and brighter as the night goes on before the sun rises bringing a palette of color to the once dark and mysterious sky. But there are some days even the brightest may fail to shine. Clouds, blocking their rays to guide other, only to make them fall into the pit of nothingness.

Some people lose their sight in things in life at some point in their life. They wonder, "What's the point in even continuing when you're marching to you gravestone anyway?", there is an answer to this that these people fail to see. They become blind and make haste decisions. Life is a treasure even if death is going to sweep you away.

"Hey whatcha doing in there?"

"Oh just writing."

"What is it about?"

"You'll find out soon enough.", she laughed. This had been the umpteenth time she had locked herself in that month. She had not let anyone enter the room after school, by saying excuses like she was writing something or planning. For what now, no one knew. Not even him, her closest friend. He wanted to know. Every time he'd ask her she'd run away saying a dismissive reply sighing almost depressed. She'd distance herself from the rest which worried him greatly. It was peculiar and it only fueled his wanting to know what was going on.

"Hey, you out there?" she knocked on the door. He crawled to the door replying to her question. "Let's say I was a ghost, how would you react to that?", it was a weird question for one person to ask. Sure one may or may not ask this to another at one point in life but he never expected it to be now. "Umm... why are you asking this?"

"I'm just curious that's all."

"Well then, I'd first be terrified,", she giggled, "then I'd ask you how it happened and try to help you."

"I see. Thanks."

"So why did you ask me this?" the answer he received was silence. He shrugged, moving back making himself comfy as he leaned back onto the walls of the corridors as he waited for her to finish her work. He wasn't ready to leave her alone. Even if she did lock him out, like his current position, he was ready to do anything in his power to help her. Like now, to give her company as they walked home completing their long day at school.

Finally after what seemed like ages(and boy it was), she heard the door click. He snapped up from the ground, watching the door swing open revealing her all ready to go home for the day, with a bright smile. "Let's go home." she said, walking a few paces towards him. He got up from the ground, wiping off the non-existent dust from his pants, picked up his bag and together were making their ways to their houses. As they exited the school's building he could see the sun setting, just like any other day. The sky sprayed with a bright orange with hues of blue and purple making a beautiful mixture in the sky that complemented the white fluffy clouds that danced in the sky. Yup, it was getting late.

He had an urge to ask her. Though he felt as if he was nagging her, he felt it was only right if she were to tell her problems aloud. Maybe he could help her, just like she did like when she stopped him from committing a mistake that would have broke the many people that cared about him. It was one of his lowest days but from then she had become his model, guiding him to safety like a star does to a sailor man trying to find his way back home in the arms of family and comfort. He wanted to be that star for her boat. Yes, he was desperate but equally worried.

"Hey," she broke that uneasy silence that lingered between the two. She was looking at the ground as she said, "Can you meet me by the ghost house at midnight?", her tone was almost pleading. He thought, for a moment. Maybe this was his chance to help her! "Sure." He might need to formulate an escape plan before leaving his house as he knew very well his parent would not allow him so late at night and especially not to the ghost house.

The ghost house, as everyone called it though it was a mansion, was obviously haunted. There were rumors that a young girl's spirit still lingered there and hung there victims to death but there was a catch. There was no proof., None of the missing bodies were found except for the bloody noose that was usually thrown outside the house anytime someone died there. No one knew how the girl had died. It was a mystery along with the peculiar disappearances of the corpses of the ones missing.

As he promised he came to the ghost house at midnight, well a minute late but it was fine as he could see her walking down the secluded road, a black cloak that kept her well hidden in the moonless night, wrapped around her pale delicate structure. "Have you been waiting for long?" she asked once she reached a closer distance. "Nah."

"Let's go."

Never had he been so scared in his life. He had only had the guts to pass by the gates of the house, and that to because of a dare. He gulped as he inched behind her, who was skipping in happiness, or it seemed to be like that. "W-why do you seem so happy?"

"Don't tell me your a scaredy cat?" she smirked as she played around with the lock, trying to click it open with a hairpin pulled out from her hair.

"Bingo." she shoved the door out of the way, bending forward stretching out her hand, asking him to enter first. "Thanks..." he grumbled as he trudged into the house. Boy, was the boys something he'd never seen in his life.

On the inside it looked more of a palace than a mansion, with a high ceiling from which hung a humongous chandelier, not shining as bright as it should if there were inhabitants in the house. He saw something flickering within the chandelier before it busted into a fury of light. Now the chandelier was glowing dimly just enough to see. He turned off his flashlight looking around frightened. But there was something off. Why on earth were the candles lit? It didn't make sense. But then again he was in the ghost house where nothing made sense. Suddenly the door shut behind them with a bang. Looking at each other in shock they ran to the door trying to pry it open but it was a futile attempt.

"No this can't be happening." his voice shook, breathing heavily. It was like one of those scenes in those horror movies he used to watch. "Don't worry it will open for us... in sometime. Hopefully."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"Meanwhile," she scanned the dimly lit room.

"Ooh this room seems cool!" he heard her yell from behind. He shushed her saying, "Let's say the ghost comes."

"We'll fight it of course. People who came here always came here alone but we are not alone. We have each other." she gave him a pat on the back. "Let's go to that room." she zoomed away dragging him behind her, forcibly. He mentally groaned. Today they were going to die.

She pushed open the large lavishly decorated door of the room, whose creaking resonated from the walls of the building. The room was dark with nothing to be seen making home feel worse than what he felt before, except for those places that were right in front by the door before fading into darkness. Judging by its looks, it was a dining room like those in palaces but he couldn't see any table. He wanted to go home. If only she would listen to him.

She ran inside, making him have no other choice but follow just like before. He took a few steps inside and the door shut behind once again. It was pitch black. He took a shaky breath. "Where are you-" he screamed in terror as he felt a rough tight grip on his neck pulling him upwards. The grip was almost choking him as it dragged him. He wanted to tell for help but he couldn't speak. He was struggling against it but it was of no use. He had no clue where she went either. Suddenly his upward ascent had ended and he was standing on a platform of some sort yet he was immobilized. There was no chance of escape.

The lights of the room were turned on, blinding him for a second before he stared at the sight he saw. She was a ghost. A pale spirit that seemed very angry. 'That can't be her...'

"How do you like my house?" she hummed smiling innocently. "Seems nice right? Seems lavish and beautiful. Something that a normal person would dream to live in if it weren't cursed."

"W-what do you mean by cursed?" he felt the need for answers. He couldn't believe what was going on. Was this all just a dream? All he could do was hope.

"The family that lived here had been cursed to be ghost forever. They found a loophole though, if they were to lure a person into their trap the ghost would go to heaven or hell, depending on how they were meanwhile the person who was lured becomes the ghost." She explained. He couldn't accept this. Was he just a pawn in her game to release herself from this world? Did he only mean that much to her?

"They needed to get close to the person to so do the switch. You were at an emotionally low state when I met you. So perfect, like a fitting the final piece of the puzzle, completing it." she gave a deep laugh examining her fingernails, "So I choose you. It took me sometime to fix my trap. That time I locked myself in the room it was for the final stages of the plan, including a suicide note. I forged your handwriting if you wanted to know. Thanks for your help, really. I can finally get out of here."

"Why?" he gave a out a choked sob, looking at her betrayed. "When I was lured here I wasn't like you. I wanted to live. I was just naive to understand I was being played. If I had another chance I would love to live my life to the fullest unlike you who was ready to just throw it away as if it was trash." she growled. "Thanks for the birthday present."

With a snap of her fingers the platform gave way making him hang. Immediately his hands flew to the rope trying to take it off, flailing around. His throat constricted, blocking his breathing passage. He was choking to death as the rough rope seemed to grow tighter on his neck. The lights of the world seemed to dim as the pain he felt on his neck seemed to increase. All of a sudden a bright light shone in front of him.

The world had seemed to stop for a second and before he knew it he was standing in front of his corpse with her nowhere to be seen.

#original story #ghosts #haunted houses #betrayal #life #death #and to an extent #depression #suicide