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seerofmike · 4 years

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i feel like a huge portion of kpop fans are gay fetishists attracted to the idea of quote unquote feminine men and thats why theres so much bullshit

YES okay. okay let me rant for a minute. let me preface this by saying i am NOT a kpop shipper at ALL. this is going to be long so i’ll put it under a’ ‘read more’ because i’ve been holding it in for TWO FUCKING YEARS BABY!

being mlm in boygroup kpop fandom is literally so exhausting. 99% of the people who ship real life human men from boygroups are fetishists and i will tell u why

obviously we all know of a ship in a fandom where the characters' personalities are twisted to fit the heteronormative view of "top" and "bottom" --one character is hypermasculine (top) and the other one is feminine (bottom). there are typical traits associated with both. the ‘top’ is scary or mean or angry or serious while the ‘bottom’ is emotional or bubbly or shy. while this is egregious, at least its fictional characters. their personalities can be simplified or exaggerated and it doesnt cause any real life harm.

im going to define what i think of as a fetishist: a non-mlm person who overly sexualizes gay men/men they think are gay/gay ships, and forces them into heteronormative roles for their own pleasure. its not even limited to cishet women. plenty of non-mlm lgbt people do this too and its like disheartening. so anyways

enter the kpop fandom

i may be incredibly biased here because one of the most affected members [of bts] is my favorite kpop boy, but oh god is the ‘personality change/simplification’ thing AWFUL here. i do not go out of my way to find fanart or see fanfic threads, but being in the bts fandom, u will inevitably see it and i REALLY wish i didnt

so anyways. my favorite boy ever is hoseok. he is sweet and hardworking and very passionate about dance and he can be serious when needed, but ultimately he tries to be very lighthearted and will consistently laugh or make jokes or do something funny when the other members feel uncomfortable or awkward (mostly during english-speaking interviews). he kisses the members on the cheek a lot/hugs them a lot/cuddles them a lot [this is important for later okay]

of course, theres a lot more to him because he is a multi-faceted real life human being, and i don’t know him personally, but that’s a general idea of what he’s like, okay?

SHIPPERS will have you think differently. some video got popular on youtube ""proving"" that hoseok is a sadist (which is just clips of him jokingly playfighting with the younger members), and the video depicts him as secretly mean and serious, and shippers will use that to say "hoseok is a total top!" and then most fanart or imagines or fanfic threads you see are top!hoseok, using this imagined 'hoseok is a sadistic dom' narrative to fuel their fiction, because SOMEONE has to be the top, so they twist him into this hypermasculine mean person (and probably feminize the 'bottom' of their ship but more on that later)

EXCEPT it is not just fiction. this narrative bleeds into REAL LIFE. you have new armys who dont know anything about the shipping scene, and yet somehow the narrative of hoseok being a secretly mean, sadistic person has already made its way into them. in real life, hoseok likes rainbows and wearing nail stickers and putting glitter in his hair. yet people in the fandom will say shit like "hoseok hates femininity" "hoseok would never wear [thing] because he's a dom"

sometimes on twitter you have ppl like me who say uh actually you guys are really weird and this is fetishy and in real life hoseok is very nice and not sadistic at all, you will UNDOUBTEDLY get comments like "omg hoseok isnt cute/nice when will yall learn he’s secretly like [x] and [x]". you could post a video of hoseok with a puppy titled "wow cute" and u will get like 2 clowns in ur comments going 'hoseok isnt CUTE hes a sadist’ . i wish i was joking but i am not. they will do this for EVERY action hoseok does. he cannot blink without people twisting it into a sexual thing

[also, side note: its funny that, since hoseok is one of the least popular members and therefore one of the least shipped members, he is often the odd man out among pairings, and is assigned 'the straight one' by default, and 9 times out of 10 people who assign him 'the straight one' do all this 'dom daddy hoseok' shit.

which just goes to show that this is indeed a matter of heteronormativity.]

so anyways arguably the most popular ship with hoseok is with yoongi, sope. this absolutely happens to other ships probably but im just using them as an example because i see it the most, being a hobi stan

yoongi is very calm and thoughtful and kind and sometimes appears to be cold/having a bad attitude but its just because of the way he speaks, which is very bluntly. again hes a multi faceted real human and i do not know him personally but thats generally what hes like.

god the fandom. treats him SO BAD. so horribly. he's shorter than hoseok. he's shorter than hoseok and people will exaggerate that literal 1 inch height difference so bad and people will turn his whole personality into shy and blushy and In Love With Hoseok, so in love with hoseok that ‘he gets sad’ when hoseok doesn’t kiss him/hug him/or whatever and IT BLEEDS INTO REAL LIFE.

ANY time hoseok or yoongi do ANYTHING together at ALL, people will ALWAYS push the narrative that hoseok, being the mean sadist he is, is 'hurting' yoongi for not returning his undying love or whatever. hoseok did a vlive where he made bracelets for all the members and he considered putting a cat charm on yoongi's but ultimately decided not to because he was having difficulty and oh my GOD sope stans twisted it into 'hoseok HATES yoongi, yoongi would have been so happy, he would have worn that all the time, hoseok isnt affectionate he hates being close with other people after all :(' which is LITERALLY not true because hoseok gives all his homies good night kisses but okay! whatever fits your narrative!

PEOPLE ACTUALLY HATE HOSEOK BECAUSE OF THIS. BECAUSE OF A SHIP. BECAUSE OF THE MANUFACTURED NARRATIVE PUSHED ONTO HIM BY FETISHISTS SO HE COULD FIT INTO THEIR HETERONORMATIVE ‘TOP’ ROLE. not to be all wahh wahh hoseok is one of the least popular members BUT THIS IS LITERALLY A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR.

everyone """headcanons""" hoseok to be a top so they will make him a MEAN HYPERMASCULINE person. everyone """headcanons""" yoongi as a bottom so they will make him a SOFT UWU HYPERFEMININE person. shippers are literally pigeonholing the two of them into fujoshi-esque roles for jack-off material.

anyways this all boils down to: gay fetishists will do anything, ANYTHING, to twist characters or real life fucking people to fit their heteronormative view of top and bottom. top=mean and masculine, bottom=soft and feminine. hoseok is a real life human being. yoongi is a real life human being. they both have real life human personalities, and yet shippers twist their personalities into the opposite to fit their narrative, to the point where nonshippers will genuinely view the two of them as something theyre not.

you have tons of armys that theorize that hoseok's happiness is just a mask he puts on to hide a cruel nature. on twitter. on youtube. in fanart and fanfiction. you have tons of armys that truly believe that, despite literally all the evidence, believe he hates being cute, he hates being happy, he hates the members, and hes secretly a dom daddy fuckboy who wants to bend yoongi over a table. hes a real life human being and fetishists doing their fetish thing has real life consequences.

the same is true for bottom!hoseok stans: they overexaggerate his more cutesy personality traits and he does have a 'feminine' figure i.e. he has a rly small waist but they will overexaggerate that as well and give him huge hips and its disgusting but dom!hoseok is far more frequent with far more devastating consequences so i used that as an example but they’re both bad.

people who """"headcanon"""" [like actually headcanon/firmly believe and not just joking or lighthearted] that members are gay will force these types of roles onto the members. if someone genuinely believes that like, yoongi is gay/bi/whatever, and then try to force this subby soft uwu persona onto him, they have no respect for gay people. they dont. gay people are simply objects for their fantasies. their view of gay people is so one-dimensional and so driven by fetishists’ ideas that its actually disheartening.

and god bitches will deadass be homophobic yet still ship real ass human idols. not just for bts specifically but all boygroup fandoms. sometimes when you search up an idol's name, [idol] gay will be trending--whether it be because of people saying "im gay for him" or whatever, and a LOT of cishet people will try 'clearing' the searches because being gay is bad or something. people normally ‘clear’ the searches if something like [idol fat] or [idol ugly] are trending, which im telling you so you know the context that people only clear the searches when bad things are happening.

[never forget that time 'jungkook gay' was trending and bitches were like "lets clear the searches!" but their pinned tweet said some shit like "sub jungkook x dom jimin coffee shop smut au thread 🌈". bitches also be like i cant be homophobic i ship taekook]

and hoseok and yoongi arent the only ones affected ! we could get into why namjoon and jin (another popular ship) are often assigned 'dad' and 'mom' respectively, or the fact that gay fetishists not only twist members' personalities to fit their ship narrative, but will also force tropes onto them i.e. taehyung/jungkook shippers who will literally demonize jimin and call him a slut or say that he's trying to 'get in the way of' of taekook or 'steal' taehyung/jungkook but thats a whole DIFFERENT rant baby! racism/asian fetishism is also definitely a present factor in all of this but this focus was primarily on gay fetishism and heteronormativity.

oh my god i could also get into the severe transphobia/trans fetishism in this fandom too but this post is already long enough as it is

tl dr: gay fetishists will fetishize real life people and it has actual real life effects and we should ban straight women from shipping mlm

#nobody is going to read this but i just needed to let it out man #fucking hate bts stans #fucking hate kpoppies #fuck u if ur not mlm like actually

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bciwasinlove · 3 years

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Hey! I read your post about the ask Emily got from a ziammie and I wanted to say I completely agree with what you said+I would like to add that I don't get why ziam shippers can't just leave us alone the way we larries leave them alone. Regardless of what the truth about ziam is, spamming larry blogs about ziam is unnecessary and uncalled for. Especially when the person in question has already done their research on the topic and has taken a stance.(also don't feel obligated to answer my ask :D)

Hi thanks for the ask and yeah I completely agree it's even more wtf when these ziams claim larries are being rude and anti like to them [were not] It's legit toxic solo liam stans and zsquad members hating on them not us but everyone hates larries so surprise surprise we are always blamed for everything. This supposive hate from larries includes Emily but these ziams are from twitter not even on tumblr but made a tumblr to send @lovemylarents an anon hate ask to say larries are hypocrites yet again umm what you came to an app to HER acc and constantly drag us into your lane.

I've said this before both here and on twitter but if they were ACTUALLY calling larries hypocrites bc larries are calling them delusional or saying their favs would hate them that would be fine but their not their just trying to shove ziam MPs and proof down larries throats every minute and calling larries who say they don't believe in ziam hypocrites. Even calling larries like @lovemylarents who have been in this fandom for a decade and DID read the MPs or YouTube videos they recommended and still doesn't see it hypocrites.

If they want to go there since they keep calling us hypocrites for not believing in ziam, we will. Their BG proof/reasoning for saying it's a BG is inconsistent with not all ziammies believing the same thing, some of their MPs are legit just comparing ziam to larry going larry did this well so did ziam and half their proof is larry proof/songs going it's also ziam related. Ziammies need larry to be real for ziam to be real larries don't need ziam. Larry had a concrete foundation that makes the house of larry stable ziam only has an unstable house with no concrete foundation bc they just stole extra parts lying around from the larry house to make a ziam house.

I'm tired of it I use to be believe what you want and I really don't care what you believe but when they constantly go LARRIES YOU SEEING THIS OR ARE YOU A HYPOCRITE I'm going to say something. I'm not kidding tho they steal a bunch of larry proof and say it's for ziam [examples: warning selfies for BG, triangle from louis, Home, Alive, RBB&SBB,"this specfic shade" ext.] The triangle necklace fron liam can possible be linked to liam not being straight but there is no link to zayn. For example for larries in the Miss You MV we not only have the triangles but the word styles written meaning it's Louis saying I'm not straight AND I'm with Harry. Or another one we have not only Louis triangle tattoo [permanent unlike a necklace] BUT also Harry tweeting the same week Louis got the tattoo "you can tell a man by his ankles." Which once again is proof Louis might not be straight AND proof of Harry being his lover.

Funny tho all this hate to @lovemylarents started when she debunked their popular most stable proof to link the bears to ziam on twitter. The proof is the Ziam Levine Stylinson sticker on the bear one night which turned out was/is a tumblr fans url and they gave the sticker with their utl on it to a tech person who found it funny and put it on the bear during the concert but it was only on once so it had nothing to do with the boys. Emily like all veteran stans debunk/make it known when well used proof is fake [example: 2013 larry marriage theory] it's what they do and the sticker had STYLINSON on it so wouldn't Emily want it to be real?

They claim these things especially the bears have always been linked to Ziam to or that Ziam has been as big as Larry since the beginning but any old time veteran fan I talk to [plus from my own knowledge of being a 9 year fan] ziam wasn't really gaining traction until late 2014/early 2015 and any major 2015 bears MPs ziam is not mentioned. For me the thing that pisses me off the most is when they say "larrys closeting didn't worked and ziams did thats why less believe in ziam over larry."

IF LARRYS CLOSETING DIDN'T WORK YOU WOULDN'T HAVE SOME LOCALS SAYING THEY WON'T JOIN THE FANDOM BC THEY THINK LOUIS IS HOMOPHOBIC OR GP THINKING HARRY IS A QUEERBAITING WOMANIZER! This phrase invalidates everything larry has been put through I hate it so much. And @lovemylarents made a good point if they believe larry and ziam are genuinely real this phrase makes it seem like ziam didn't fight hard to show the fans the truth of what they are being put through the way larry did.

This response is getting long haha sorry but my last statement is Emily like other veteran larries don't believe in ziam they have been here since the beginning and Emily along with myself and the rest of our GC have looked at ziam info and don't see it so PLEASE stop calling us hypocrites all the time for not believing in it.

#cup of cats ask #larries are larries not ziams #larries arent hypocrites #twitter ziammies #emilys ziam anon hate asks

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weirdponytail · 4 years

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MIC!Arya and the Infamous Tarnag Temple Argument in IC Canon (AKA Modern Inheritance’s Take on Trauma, Religion, and Arya F***ing Apologizing)

Everyone gives Canon!Arya shit for the scene in the books where she gives Gannel shit in his own temple for having religion. I agree that it’s a bad moment for her character. I also feel it comes out of left field for Arya’s character up to that point but I’ll get smacked from here to the core mantle boundary for that by some of the fandom. I digress. This is very much not about my feelings on the canon version.

Let’s move on to how it might go for my Modern Inheritance!Arya and my version of events.

A lot of what I write about in MIC is trauma related. Arya’s one of the easiest characters for me to write for in that regard for obvious reasons, and because I’ve shaped my mental picture of her over the years so she’s the one I have the most practice with. Please note that usually when I go to bat for Arya I tend to get my MIC version of her muddled in with canon, so I apologize for any sharp words, brow beating, etc. Anyway...what was I talking about? OH RIGHT, TRAUMA AND THAT WHOLE TARNAG THING.

So just to further stress, this is Modern Inheritance/MIC right now.

Arya’s coming off from a hell of a time. You don’t exactly process deaths of loved ones very well while being tortured, and while she’s juggling all that plus two near death experiences that occurred probably within a week of each other, Eragon nearly dying and his back spasms, the guy that tortured her and killed her best friend and her mate is dead but she didn’t get to have a swing at him, mentally preparing to face her queen/mother, the ‘a whole clan now wants to murder Saphira and Eragon’ situation, civil unrest in the city they’re in, just Brom being Brom, physical stresses from the whole *waves hands at previous paragraph*, she’s suddenly reminded that hey...the dwarves and humans have something that elves don’t.

What’s that? Religion. And what usually comes with a religion?

The concept of an afterlife. The general idea that when someone dies they have not really left. The comfort that if you pray, meditate, visit a grave, do something special to you/your faith then you can make a connection to your lost loved ones and friends. The promise that even though they’ve left this world, they’re still looking out for you. And one day you’ll see them again. The separation is only brief.

And damn. Right then, that hurts for Arya. It’s like being kicked while you’re down.

TMI and on but off topic: My mother died when I was 12. She had a progressive neural disease which pretty much destroyed her mentally and physically over the course of a year or so. During that year, there were a bunch of ‘spiritual’ people coming over. Not mainstream religion types, but still.

I hated them with a passion. I hated them, the stuff they said about any type of afterlife or spirituality, prayer, the idea that the dead were not all gone, I fucking HATED that bumper sticker that says ‘if anything can go well, it will’ because ho BOY did that say something for the shit I was seeing and going through at the time.

I had been agnostic bordering on atheist before but this was the nail in it for me. After mom finally died I was a real sourpuss/snarky little shit whenever religion came up. I insulted every religion any time it came up. I shut down anything having to do with my mom ‘watching over me’ or ‘being with me/us in spirit.’

It took me years to understand it. I was angry because I couldn’t bring myself to believe that after all the shit I saw, the pain my dad went through, that I went through, and the whole year of watching a bright, loving, intelligent woman that was my whole world turn to a fully paralyzed drooling mess with mood swings and no voice besides a pained moan...that there was any sort of god or spiritual energy or other bullshit out there. Because then why would it happen? And why to her? People say that ‘well if there is a god then why does war/famine/assault/torture/disease/etc. happen?’ but when it happens to you, and you were already teetering on the edge of ‘does it or does it not, maybe there is something out there…’ it’s like being smacked in the face with a shovel.

I’ve got nothing against religion now, as long as it isn’t toxic or manipulative, etc. But I can see where Arya would be coming from.

Because deep down, Arya sees what the dwarves have. This comfort in thinking that the dead aren’t all gone, and that all it takes is reaching out to them to share thoughts and feelings, and that you’ll see them again.

And she wants that too. She wants it so badly. She envies their ability to think that way, to simply have faith in what they cannot see. She wants to talk to Fäolin and Glenwing (who is still alive in MIC but at this point she doesn’t know that) again, she wants to tell them that she misses them and that Eragon and Saphira exist and their deaths weren’t for nothing and tell them all the things unsaid...but no matter how much she wants to, she can’t get past everything thats happened in the past 6+ months and her own cultural beliefs.

It hurts. She can’t think of anything else to say past the hurt and so she lashes out like I did. She doesn’t understand why really, but knows that religion and afterlives and all of it just make her...angry. Because what else could that cold rock in her chest be?

In MIC, Arya is not as stubborn when it comes to atheism or other cultures. Before the ambush, she frequently asked questions about the dwarvish religion, not exactly realizing that her questions could be considered more of ‘you dare question the faith’ than ‘so wait what if this happens? Do you still get to go to the afterlife? But what about when you feel a mind die? Where does it go?’ innocent type questions that come from curiosity. She still has the feeling that the money donated to religions could go to better places, but also realizes that sometimes the religions actually send said donations TO those places/the needy, and that structures/art/etc that were built long ago do kinda need upkeep. So instead of being a dick about it, when the dwarves at the temple bluntly tell her ‘would you shut up and leave already we don’t want to answer your questions’ she adds a cheeky ‘sure I’ll go as long as you donate to the Varden’s current fundraiser’ and goes on her way when they agree to donate.

But Arya still blatantly crosses a line by confronting Gannel rather sharply about her newfound feelings on religion while Eragon is there. She’s been following them as Eragon’s bodyguard (why the HELL did canon!Arya leave Eragon alone, even in a temple full of warrior monks, wheN A WHOLE CLAN WAS TRYING TO KILL HIM?!) and she doesn’t even realize that she’s said anything until Eragon looks back at her like ‘ooooh nooooooOO ARYA WHAT THE HELL?! WAS THAT?!’ and she sees that the back of Gannel’s head is turning purple with rage.

Eragon manages to extricate himself from it all and meet up with Saphira, and after a rather...heated...uh…”discussion,” Gannel finally flames that while Arya’s questions before pushed the limit, this was beyond unacceptable and asks what the fuck is wrong with her. Arya just storms out.

Arya comes back to the temple later that night, asks for Gannel, and pretty much kneels down and puts her forehead on the floor in front of him (MIC elves do this only when they realize they REALLY fucked up and use this stance as an open way of saying that they fucked up, apologize, and will accept the consequences) with a sincere apology for her earlier conduct. Honestly, her ear is still red from where Brom had twisted it when he caught wind of what she had done, but she’s not apologizing just because of that.

She wants to learn how to pray.

Not to a god or spirit, but how to talk to the ones she’s lost. The idea of religion giving a false sense of hope still hurts and angers her...but she’s realized that maybe there’s a reason why it can bring comfort.

Gannel awkwardly explains that a way to get started is to simply speak aloud, as if talking to someone that isn’t there. When he realizes Arya isn’t pulling his leg or going to go off on him again, he decides to give her the ‘how to talk to dead people’ primer course over some mead and does his best to keep the more hard religion stuff out of it. As a priest/monk, he’s used to consoling people who have lost family and loved ones. He can pick up the signs easily enough...when the person isn’t ready to punch a hole in his fancy history wall.

As she leaves, Arya apologizes again.

And prods Gannel to donate to the Varden’s current fundraiser.

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faiththefox · 5 years

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Vincent fluff

Yea so I got bored and wanted to write something cute that makes me happy. Im better at writing in first or third person so second person was a challenge from me so this story is going to be alot better~! Im using my Oc Tori Alexandra Rose (yea I know her name is long!) Hope you guys enjoy~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I signs as I walk around Ambrose bored out of my mind. A group of tourist had started camping near by so Vincent and Bo were busy catching them so I wasn’t allowed back in the House of Wax until they were done. I couldn’t help but worry for both of them... well more for Vincent then Bo. I sit down at a bench in the middle of the park looking out at all the statues Vincent created and couldn’t help the love sick sigh that escaped my throat. I’m so surprised they didn’t kill me and turn me into a statue but.. Vincent saved my life.

*flashback~*

I was scared trying to get away with my backpack almost falling off as I ran from the man with the wax mask. After I turned a corner I felt my bag getting just a tiny bit lighter making me turn my head quickly to look. My sketchbook had fallen out of my bag! I turn all the way around just in time to see the man stop to pick it up while I stood there embarrassed. The warn-out cover had very faded stickers from the different fandom I had been in when I first got it... so I didn’t let many people see it or the drawings . I know I should have tried to get away but that sketchbook was there for the hardest times in my life... I would never imagine leaving it behind. I slowly started walking closer to the man as he started to flip through it (which made me want to scream at him to drop it out of embarrassment but I didn’t want to die so..). He turned to look at me before waving me over to a bench without saying a word. We sat down together as he flipped through it and found on pointing to it.

“You want me to explain it?” I ask wondering if I had guess what he wanted. He started rapidly nodding his head. I would see from the one eye that showed through the mask that he was excited. “Oh thats a drawing of my persona Faith the Fox... she is like a Japanese fox demon” I start explaining shyly not really sure why I wasn’t grabbing the book and running. My brain screamed at me to just go and save myself but... my heart said to stay so I did. When the asshole guy came and found us just talk (well me talk as Vincent didn’t like talking at the time) he just got really mad. It came to the agreement that I could stay with them in Ambrose as long as I don’t get in the way. All because of Vincent...

*Flashback over~*

I still have that only sketchbook but Bo got me a few new ones that I share with Vincent. I place my face in my hands hoping it would stop the blush from crossing my features. I had one sketchbook that I would hide from all three of them (as Lester like to look at our art as well) because it was filled with drawings of Vincent... some of just him... some of us together... and only one of our wedding. I got so rapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t even hear Bo yelling my name till I felt a hand grab my shoulder. “HEY! I’ve been calling you for hours! what the hell Tori!” Bo yelled glaring at me making me glare right back. WE always butt heads over everything but the worry in his eyes made my glare soften. “Vincent is hurt and I need you to patch him up. I have to go into town to get more supplies so get your ass back to the house.” He says bluntly making my eyes widen before I full on sprint back to our shared house. I slammed the door open as quickly as I could and rushing upstairs to Vincent’s room. There he was laying on the bed with just a few cuts on his arms. I sigh in relief before grabbing the med-kit off of the shelf (We have one in every room just in case..). Vincent looked at me as I got everything out to patch up his cuts. “Bo made me think you were dying... I was so scared that you would die because I was distracted” I mutter to him as I dab on some rubbing alcohol on the cuts (He had his shirt off when I entered the room and I've seen him shirtless before so I wasn’t to embarrassed).

When I finally finished rapping his wounds Vincent grabbed me and hugged me close surprising. Vincent’s voice rang softly in my ear “Thank you for worrying” this made my face turn red as I stutter out “W-Well of course...! You saved my life...! I care so much about you..” Vincent pulls back and looks down before he reaches up to his wax mask. My eyes widen as I had never see Vincent without his mask... did he really trust me that much? He moves his hair over the right side of his face but It didn’t matter to me as I reached out placing my hand on his cheek. His blue eye staring me before it flutters shut as he leans into my hand making my face turn blood red. “Vincent...” I say softly before I lean in a kiss him on the cheek chickening out on kissing his lips. His eye flutters open with a sad look as he pulls away. “S-sorry..” I say softly before he kisses me catching me by surprise.

My heart was beating so fast as we pulled away. “Vincent I love you so much... ok?” I say the last part a little nervously. He smiled and says softly “I love you too my artistic angel” making my face feel like it was on fire.

I couldn’t believe this day.. Its been the best day of my life. Vincent hugs me and we start cuddling as we wait for Bo get home.

#vincent sinclair #house of wax #vincent is a cutie #i love him so much

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elle-eedee · 7 years

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Once you get this it would be cool if you posted ten facts about yourself and then passed this along to your ten favourite followers!! :D

THIS IS SO SWEET!!!!!! UR AN ANGEL,,,, (if it wasnt counterproductive to do so id definitely send this back to u bc ur in my top ten too!!)

1. i have like 20+ fanfic wips on my google docs account right now, and i think all but 4 of them are related to star wars??? (2 of them are sw aus of other fandoms, the rest are just good ol’ sw fics,,,, the 4 non-sw wips are spongebob, be more chill, and kingsman respectively)

2. theres glitter on my face rn

3. i have a perfectly mapped out fantasy for if i ever get the opportunity to meet mr lawrence. it involves me giving him a sticker sheet of original drawings of plankton and then asking him to sign a copy of weird al’s the food album, and possibly asking why the pacing in mighty magiswords was Like That

4. theres a similar plan for nick blaemire. dhskfd why am i Like This

5. i just ate an entire pint of gelato in an effort to be petty. my stomach hurts a lil and ill be up for hours but it was worth it

6. ive never Not seen a shark character in a cartoon and gone “thats me”. sorry folks every shark is me

7. im one of those people who whines about never having enough books and then acquires books and never reads em…. librarians hate me and so does my wallet

8. im putting together a care package for my bf right now!! not as we speak, but yknow, recently. it has a bunch of sentimental garbage im very excited about

9. the number one way to know if ill appreciate a ship (or, at least, its aesthetic) is if it contains at least 1 non-human partner n at least 1 robot partner,,,, theyre all Good and spacey as hell (which i obviously appreciate)

10. i! love! my! mutuals!!!

#creativec0pep0d #asks #long post

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depressionis-blank-blog · 5 years

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. . . .

Boredom.

It is the start of bad habits and unnecessary irritation.

We all have been there. Some are good in coping. Some go antsy...

So here are a list of things I suggest to do when you are bored.

I'll slowly remember and post bits by bits on what I can type in. Atleast these posts will keep you in.

SO HERE IS MY LIST

When it's really silent and preferrably dark (or some lights on what you fancy), you blast or listen to music that hits you on you👌😤 just right. Alaina Castillo has a really nice voice. In my opinion, her covers and those compilations where she sings you to sleep are so good. It calms me.

Challenge yourself. Have a fun game with yourself! Annnnd yesss... I know it sounds lonely but hear me out. This doesn't really appeal as a group activity. An example: you have this really favourite pastries you buy in the mall. Then you think to yourself: heyyyy i probably can make these myself! So you google some recipes and try it. Or when you read some news and you feel inspired of that news so you try and challenge yourself. For example playing an instrument or sport. OFCOURSE. In life, not all people will be too happy with your choices but if you think it can make you happy and there is no harm done so why dont you do it secretly 😀 once you feel comfortable of coming out you can do so. Also i dont advertise anything illegal. Pls

Eating. Ok. Cliche. Get over it. Ooohhh so you are teaching us to be gluttons o m g. Like isn't stress eating like baaad?? What I meant was to look at it in a another perspective. Go order food you have never tried and want to try. That's one. Like a new flavor. (but we heard this one a lot of timess) then go find your favorite food in different stores and compare them. Then try to rank them. Or another idea! Order every item on the menu differently till you order everything in the menu. Dont order all at once. Seriously DONT waste food. But slowly eat away to the top and find your favourites. Reminder: dont be an asshole if you dont like the food. It happens ya knowww. Not all are accustomed to ur tongue ur majesty lolol

Do the dumbest reasonable shit you can think of. Idk. For laughs. It's fun when you think of it right. Don't inspire yourself with weird youtubers clickbait titles. What i mean is something like ordering your burger but order it with out the patty. Or find the saddest movies knowing its spoilers and try not to cry. (ok that seems to go in the challenge category). Learn how to swim backwards. Eat the milo powder. Well i meant being silly is ok. Dont worry about it. Just dont be dangerous.

Sub to pewdiepie

(ok jk but please check him out. T series should not win pls. UwU)

Decorate your room. I was thinking of having a water for the floor's wallpaper so everytime i wake up I'll freak out why my bed is in water. (dont force if your scared) my bro also put up a huge sticker of a ghost from scooby doo and it scared my nieces. Now it's like a funny story of how everyone was atleast once scared of it. You could make your room look classy or really weird. All will be possible with creativity. Money shouldn't be an issue. A well thought room will sum up your personality and be ur special space.

Write letters! Address them to people you want to lay your thoughts on. It is your choice if you choose to send it or keep it like a diary. With the dates on it and hide them in a box so that in a few years those letters be really precious. Orrrrr if it is hate messages i prefer you to shout it off. Honestly negative thoughts are better to be expressed than well up to a huge thunder cloud. But not to be brought around as a grudge and as a irritable excuse. Writing to yourself in a few years and replying again so that in another few years that version of yourself will reply so that it will continue for on so long. It's nice to ask your future self some questions and in that future you get to answer seems so enlightening. I did this as a joke and i read my old self burning who I am now. Weird but funny.

Memes

Ok imma leave this here.

Imma suggest other stuff some other time.

Go ask me anonymously if u need someone to talk to

Feel free to fill in :depression is _______

Also i recommend to read this blog from oldest to latest. Coz i know from time I will update myself to a better version for this blog hopefully.

ALSO I WILL BE CERTAINLY BE GRATEFUL IF U ASK ME OPINON ON THINGS LAIK FANDOMS, LITERATURE, ANYTHING REALLY

I will write an essay back.

Thats all for now

May sunshine reach your face.

Ye this alaina she sounds super cool

By means of sound yeh her voice a s m r

She really cool please be nice to her

She doing some blogs now i hope it entertains u 😊😊

#tips #boredom #haha

0 notes

vitalmindandbody · 7 years

Text

White man pathology: within the fandom of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

Stephen Marche goes on a superhighway expedition and enters the fray at back-to-back Iowa conventions and gets a view of US politics from the perspective of his whiteness

The perimeter

You find your whiteness properly at the American perimeter. Most of the time being white is an absence of troubles. The police dont disturb you so you dont notice the police not riling you. You get the job so you dont notice not getting it. Your children are not confused with crooks. I live in downtown Toronto, in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most open metropolis in “the worlds”, where multiculturalism is the dominant civic importance and the inert virtue of endurance is the most prominent endowment of the British territory, so if you squint you are able to profess the ancient categories are scattering into a cloud of enlightenment and intermarriage.

Not at the border.

My sons Guyanese-Canadian teacher and the Muslim Milton scholar I went to high school with and the Sikh writer I squabble about Harold Innis with and my Ishmaeli accountant, we can all be good little Torontonians of the middle class, avoiding the differences we have been trained to respect. But in a auto in the carbon monoxide-infused queue waiting to enter Detroit, their beings diverge drastically from mine.

I am lily-white. They are not. They are susceptible. I am not.

Heres the thing: I like the guards at the American margin. Theyre always friendly with me, decent, even pleasant firm. At the booth in between the never-was of Windsor and the has-been of Detroit, the man I happened to draw had a gruff belly and the mysterious air of intentional inscrutability, like a troll under a connection in a fairy tale.

Where are you pate? he asked.

Burlington, Iowa.

Why would anyone ever choose to go to Burlington, Iowa? he requested philosophically.

Im going to see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Then, because it did seem to require an explanation: Theyre handing rallies within got a couple of dates of each other.

Why would anyone ever choose to go hear Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?

I didnt argue, because it was the border, but I could have said that the police chief of Birmingham estimated that 30,000 beings evidenced up in Alabama to see Donald Trump in August and that in Dallas, he had replenished the American Airlines Center, and that his equivalent, Bernie Sanders, has generated equally unprecedented quantities enormously more than Barack Obama outlined at comparable instants in the 2008 campaign.

Im strange, I said instead.

At this detail he asked me to roll down my opening. But it was all fine. Like I replied, Im white.

As I drove through the suburbs of the spoils of Detroit, across the I-9 4, one of the ugliest freeways in the United States, the old-fashioned familiar lightness fluttered to my mettle. I enjoy America. America is not my mother. Canada is my mother. But America is an unbelievably splendid, amazingly sugared rich maid who lives next door and believe that there is falling apart. I cannot help myself from loving it.

For people who love to dwell in contradictions, the US is the greatest country in “the worlds”: the country of the free is built around bondage, the member states of law and order where everyone is entitled to a gun, a region of unimpeded advance where they cling to backwardness out of sheer stubbornness. And into this glorious morass, a new inconsistency has recently announced itself: The white people, the privileged Americans, the ones who had the least to fear from the powers that be, the ones with the most wonderful directions to brighter futures, the ones who are by every metric one of “the worlds largest” lucky groups in the history of “the worlds”, has begun to croaking off in stunning numbers.

The Case and Deaton report, Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21 st Century, describes an ever increasing death rate for middle-aged American lily-whites comparable to lives lost in the US Aids epidemic. This spike in mortality is unique to white Americans not find work amongst other ethnic groups in the United States or any other white population in the developed world, a mysterious blight of despair.

In one style, it was easy to account for all this white American fatality medication and alcohol poisoning, suicide, and chronic liver illness and cirrhosis according to the report. It was not so easy be held accountable for the accounting. Why were middle-aged white-hot Americans boozing and medication and shooting themselves to death? The explanations on offer were pre-prepared, fully plugged into confirmation bias: “its been” their own economies or it was demography or “its been” godlessness or it was belief or it was the outage of their own families or it was the persistence of antique qualities or it was the lack of social programs or it was the dependence on social programs.

Case and Deaton call it an epidemic of hurting. Fine. What does that signify?

On the I-9 4, you do find yourself questioning: what the fuck is wrong with these beings? I symbolize, aside from the speedy slump of the middle class certainly. And the rise of precarious run and the fact that the basic way of life requires so much sedation that nearly a quarter of all Americans are on psychiatric drugs, and somewhere between 26.4 and 36 million Americans mistreat opioids every day. Oh yes, and the mass shootings. There was more than one mass hitting a period. And the grey terrorists targeting black churches again. And the regularly exhausted videos evidencing the police assassinating black people. And the police in question never being indicted, let alone being sent to jail.

And you know what Americans were worried about while all this shit was raining down on them? While all this insanity was wounding their beloved country? You know what their number one perturb was, according to referendum after poll after referendum?

Muslims. Muslims, if you can believe it.

The American fantasy is dead but Im going to make it stronger!

My body is white and it is male. It is six hoof towering and weighs 190 lbs. It is 39 years old and it has had to start flowing. It has had to start weighing calories. There is a tingle in the joint of my right thigh, so I try not to think about my torso. The tingling emanates and moves. I know my person is going to kill me.

A man who horror suffering already sustain what he fears, as Montaigne mentioned. Thats one on why males expire very young than dames six years younger on average in America. Ninety-two percent of men say they wait at least a few dates to see if they feel better before they go to a medical doctor, but I know what they mean by a few days. They represent a few more dates that forms sense. It is hard to have a male and lily-white torso and to conceive of its weakness. In the same sigh, my mas cannot accompanying itself to believe it is the personification of power, although it was undoubtedly is in any rational accountancy of social status. It feels like a mere body. It experiences mortal.

Ive never been to a residence as white-hot as Iowa. Thats the honest truth. Picture: Darren McCollester/ Getty Images

Ive never been to a place as white-hot as Iowa. Thats the honest truth. Whenever I go to America its New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or Florida. In Burlington, at Jerrys Main Lunch, the signature dish is the red-hot mess, eggs and bacon cooked right into the hash chocolate-browns. The carbohydrate shakers all have white crackers in them, to prevent clumping a classic bit of common-sense American know-how. The hot mess is yummy. Why dont they construct these everywhere? Why isnt there a series of Jerrys Main Lunches providing hot mess all across the midwest?

The answer is in the rest of the town: everything thats going to leave have so far been left Burlington. The beautiful brick houses downtown are mainly vacant. The most interesting street is the road out of town.

The Memorial Arena, on the banks of the Mississippi, filled up early. Trump wasnt communicating until 6pm but by 4.45 the parking situation was gruesome. Outside the building, the hawkers who follow Trump on the road, occurrence to contest, sold T-shirts and buttons, three for $10. We shall overcomb. Cats for Trump, the time is Meow. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Inside, every fanny had been taken and the storey filled soon with a standing room only bunch. Burlington is 10% pitch-black. The rallying was 99.99% white.

The people who attend political rallies in America are a specific genre of humanity, like the ones who stand outside in lines for nightclubs. They know where theyre supposed to go and how theyre supposed to behave when they got to get. They have gear.

An elderly dame sat beside me wearing a sequined stars-and-stripes-hat she clearly takes out for precisely these parties. Yall from Illinois? she questioned. Im not but I can extend. She goes to all the rallyings, she justified. Shes been a Republican her whole life, an active Republican, an Iowa Republican. For 30 years, shes been in crowds like this one. She plans to go, one time in their own lives, to the national gathering. Like going to see the Stones. When the organizers delivered around mitt signeds speaking The Silent Majority, she grabbed a dozen so she could overtake them around to others.

Cheerful helpful maidens were half the crowd. Furious and absurd followers were the other. They wore T-shirts with whole paragraph written on them: I am a United States Armed Veteran. I formerly took a SOLEMN OATH to represent the CONSTITUTION against ALL enemies, foreign and Domestic. Be advised No one has ever allayed me of my functions under this Expletive!

There were cars in the parking lot slathered with bumper stickers. We the peoples of the territories are 100% FED UP! So if firearms kills people, I guess pencils miss incantation statements[ sic ], automobiles drive drink and spoonfuls see beings fat. Im straight, republican, Christian, and I own a handgun. Is there anything else I can do to piss you off? A picture of Obama with Does this ass stir my gondola look big? The Republican mode for 2016 is furious aphoristic feeling. Behind slapstick, nonsensical storm: America is the greatest country in the world but America is falling apart, government is the problem which is why authority must solve it.

This was a Trump production so naturally there was a VIP section. A door guarded by bald, unsmiling mortals, the bouncers who stand forever as the bored sentinels of indifferent fame. A swinging door at the side of the stage received and gave the best-looking parties, the ones with the buffed neutrality of political professionals, the women whose faces have been tautened to a perma mope, the men who get their whisker slash before every event.

The woman beside me Stars n Stripes Hat was wearing a pewter elephant pendant. A young girl in a shining orange dress passed out of the VIP entrance wearing an elephant pendant encrusted with diamonds. Elephant chandeliers were a theme, I noticed, and elephant pins and elephant sounds and elephant T-shirts. They came in all different rate objects and in all different styles: round elephants suggestive of French cartoons from the 1960 s, and strange pseudo-sexual shimmies, and with 1920 s straw boater hats conducting processions. There was one kind of elephant you couldnt meet. An elephant that actually looked like an elephant. A realistic elephant might serve as a memento to the hundred elephants killed for their bone every day. A naturalistic elephant would be inherently environmentalist. The elephants must all be fabulous.

Like any good show, there was a warm-up behave. In reality, there are two three if you count the recitation of the assurance of devotion. The first was Tana Goertz, an Iowa woman who had been runner-up on the third season of The Apprentice. What a good-looking army, she pandered. She attested for Trump as a woman( He enjoys girls !) and as someone who had returned to Iowa( How could you live in New York City if you didnt desire parties ?). She promoted the idea which is at the core of every last event that Trump does, that simple contact with the man draws boom. When youre in the Trump train youre going places! She marched off to polite Iowan applause. The mob are more likely to, all things considered, instead have listened to the Elton John music playing on the speakers instead, but at the least she made international efforts.

A more standard promotion follower followed. Sam Clovis hosts a conservative radio substantiate and is a tea-party activist who has operated and lost a bunch of Iowa Republican postures. He precisely started right in with it. Trump was one of the greatest servicemen to ever tread the look of this earth, a good front the crowd could have tittered but instead they saluted, thus proving that “theyre not” paying attention or would immerse anything. Clovis compared Trumps recent speeches to Reagans A Time for Choosing at the Goldwater convention in 1964, which must have been, to his way of thinking regardless, roughly like equating it to the Sermon on the Mount.

Clovis knew what the crowd had come to hear and he gave it to them. America and Americans will be first again! A collective shriek shook the Burlington Memorial Arena. They so badly wanted to be first again. First in what was unclear but emphatically first.

After the thunder croaked, the crowd was ready for Trump. But, showmanship. Trump let the tension build; the indignant absurd men as well as the joyou, helpful ladies called. Trump! Trump! Trump! I could just suspect the amusement the softened din of his chanted appoint, from backstage, must have been bringing “the mens”.

When he ultimately took the stage, the crowd surged; their phones surged. It was an debauchery of phones. The humanities behind Trump examined the crowd with their phones. The cameras in the back were recording everyone preserving each other. Trump was the only party not hampering a screen, the absence that raised hunger. He started roaring, as everybody in the crowd stopped to check the footage they had assembled.

Trump started out with the time he knew would appear on the report the next morning Joe Biden had put out of the hasten and Trump approved of his decision because Biden never had a chance and Trump wanted to face Hillary. The mainstream media adroitly handled, Trump embarked his disquisition on the subject dearest to his mettle: his own success.

The Burlington rally labelled the 100 th period he had contribute the canvas. He spoke the polls, canvas after canvas. He paused only to ask the crowd how enormous the polls were. Beating Hillary nationwide do you desire that? The audience approved of his approval numbers. And so he moved on to the more qualitative aspects of his greatness. His adversaries precisely werent wins. I pronounce from the intelligence but I likewise pronounce from the heart, he spoke, rambling like a rich know-it-all uncle Im producing back the jobs from China! with brief digressions into self-pity: Macys was very disloyal to me. They dont sell my ties anymore.

He described, in twists periodically frank and self-deluded, the greatnes of his own capability for political manipulation. He talked to the people “hes been” spinning about how cleverly he was rotating them. So he affirmed Im a good Christian and that if he became chairperson were going to be remarking merry Christmas, but then he couldnt stop himself from recognise the cleverness of his Christian electioneering: I stepped onto a stagecoach with a bible, everybody likes me better. Trump introduced meta to Burlington, Iowa. And he did not disavow the crowd that preference of personality they wanted. What would he say to Caroline Kennedy, the ambassador to Japan? Youre fired! Youre fired!

A few spectators started to move out to beat trafficking in human beings and Trump shouted about the silent majority and about how he says what nobody else dares to suppose and about how he will end free trade and how Mexicans are car thieves( big shriek) and how he craves a piece of the action from the Keystone pipeline and how hes going to help womens health and how America used to be emulated. The American Dream is dead but Im going to make it bigger and stronger! he hollered. At this moment he appeared to me the route every fame I have met in the flesh does, like a living idolatrou idol awaiting sacrifice, a puff-faced Baal. Were going to acquire so much better, he predicted before leaving the stage to Twisted Sisters Were Not Disappearing to Take It.

Trump followers at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. Photograph: Scott Morgan/ Reuters

I remained to watch Trump work the line. Up open, in person, the fuzz is still much intricate than it appears on screen. Its building is tripartite, great significance polyvalent. First and foremost, there is the comb-over, although it can be called a comb-over simply in the sense that the mall in Dubai with a ski mound inside it can be called a structure. It is hair as state-of-the-art engineering stunt, with the diaphanous quality of a cloak out of Norse legend or some supernatural near-weightless metal are set out in an advanced German laboratory. It swims over the skull, an deed of disregard not only against aging and loss but against duration and seat, against reality.

Behind the technological presentation of the comb-over, as counterpoint, the back is as conventional and old-fashioned as a haircut is also possible. Its a classic ducktail. Its such a classic that I have just been construed it in movies set in the 1950 s. Not movies from the 1950 s I should be clear, but movies from the 1970 s about the 1950 s. In between the comb-over and the ducktail, between the two follicular cavities representing the modernistic and the atavistic, the fantastical and the wistful, there is a third tranche. Even in person you have to look closely to catch sight of it. It projection, somewhat but only slightly. It is the real the members of the fuzz, the human role, the actual mane. It is the hinge of Donald Trump.

As Trumps campaign for the Republican nomination has unfolded, in all its unlikeliness, he has shaken handwritings with hundreds of thousands of Americans, and posed with numerous thousands for hundreds of thousands of selfies. And among those many thousands , not one has reached up to mess up his whisker. Though he regularly raises up the physical figures of his antagonist , nothing of the other campaigners even mention the fact that he seems foolish. Trumps hair is an act of defiant social pre-emption: announce me a phony. I dare you. I fucking dare you.

A few hardcore followers lingered on the fringes, just like at a concerted effort. Everybody else had floated into the parking lot and the cities middle of Burlington was soon returned to its emptiness. A Trump show is good value for the money, specially since its free. They dont even ask for donations.

The thought from Fun City

The morning after the rally, it has become clear that Iowa may be the bramble in Trumps path. A gossip over an wayward tweet has cloudburst.

He accuses the offense on a young intern. But the eight-point rise of Carson must be galling. Trump possesses the weakness of anyone who lives by the strength of their results. Ensues go. When the results are down , where are you? Who are you? Trump is in the business of acquiring. Does Trump losing even subsist?

I had a daytime between Trump and Sanders, and all I had to read was a pdf of Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between the World and Me, which I had agreed to look at for a book of the month team. After another hot mess at Jerrys Main Lunch, and a run to blaze it off, I invested a era at the Motel 8 in Burlington reading, while across the street, the Winegard factory, manufacturing satellite dishes 24 hours a day, thudded like a center without syncopation. Did you know you can buy a six carry of brew and a bottle of bourbon for precisely a little over 20 bucks in Iowa? What a big country.

The title of Between the World and Me comes from a Richard Wright poem called White Man, Listen ! and it was never going to get much whiter or more male than me in the Motel 8 sipping bourbon and brew, on my iPhone, with the Jays and Royals spotlights flickering in the background and the thud of the satellite dish factory in the background.

The urgency of the book, the vitality of the historic resource at play, rose like brandishes into crests of temper tumbling over their own force. It was all of a piece. And it all made extremely relentless sense. Between the World and Me is one of those notebooks that possess the strong certainty of a natural phenomenon as if it accrued out of the ether that surrounds us, a crystalline organisation of the scandalize that defines the moment. To criticize is beside the point. Its only there.

To me, the key section in Between the World and Me, originates after Coates has been on television justifying to the multitude the frantic consequences of yet another police assassination of a pitch-black son.

I came out of the studio and strolled for a while. It was a calm December day. Class, feeling themselves lily-white, were out on the street. Infants, invoked to be lily-white, were wrap in strollers. And I was happy for these parties, much as I was heartbreaking for the emcee and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope. I realized so why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my mas, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most sumptuous reverie. I have seen that dreaming all my life. It is perfect homes with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, blocking associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but preferences like strawberry shortcake.

Right then, speaking that aisle, I knew that white people were going to cherish this volume. What white people implore more, they require it, they require it to live is an alibi from their whiteness, an flee from the unfairnes of their existence. There are numerous alibis available depending on how much idiocy you can tolerate. You can say to yourself or to others that black people are stupid and lazy; you can say that you dont experience pigment; you can call your uncle a prejudiced so everybody knows youre not; you can share the latest critique of brutality on Twitter with the word THIS; and now you can tell a pal that she certainly has to read Between the World and Me.

Because that Dream of Whiteness, the dream of treehouses and rookie scouts that smells like peppermint and can still smell the strawberry shortcake, is a perfect alibi. Who lives that dreaming? Somebody else are now living it but not me , not anyone I know , no one I could see in Burlington. Thats a dream that belongs to somebody else. Always to somebody else.

It certainly didnt belong to the Winegard factory workers who were drifting to their autoes at the end of their change. The whiteness of my macrocosm was my iPhone and the vapours of bourbon and beer, and video games from last-place night and the tingling in my thigh. The tickling in my thigh was my mas the reality I cant look at because Im too afraid of my fatality.

To me, best available doubt ever asked about race in America has always been the one that James Baldwin questioned, when an interviewer wanted to know if he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of America. What white people have to do is is an attempt catch out in their own centers why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, he enunciated. If you invented him, you, the white people devised him, then youve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. The obsession of eggheads over issues of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr active or passive resistance was moot; the pressing question was why white people were blowing up churches filled with children.

Whiteness is a spiritual aberration, obviously by the return ye shall know the tree. And on the question of lily-white pathology, what good reactions has America induced since Baldwin would like to request that topic in 1963? And now that white-hot pathology has returned to waste away its legion, unexamined and strange, a golem.

In the evening, I finished the book and didnt want to think about my white-hot and male mas anymore, or the tickling in my thigh.

Across from my hotel, the Fun City complex contained an resemblance midway, a bowling alley, got a couple of bars, a replication diner and, tucked in between a inn and a spa, the Catfish Bend Casino. The poker chamber is dingy but serviceable. A game started at six. I wanted to play. I wanted to find out how much enjoyable can you have in a home called Fun City.

The youngest person at the table, Curved Baseball Hat, changed beans and corn. A male with an furious mustache led the conversation, a three-day whisker beside him contributing an occasional digression. The rest of us sat cooking softly in the juices of our addictions, like in any casino. Everybody at the table knew everybody else, except for me and a black welder in municipality for a specialist job. It was happy hour in Fun City, and brew was a dollar. Everybody told a mess of them. And I seemed just how luck it is to be in America, despite politics, despite everything. Cheap beer and frank beings and an honestly flowed activity in a clean chamber. Even compared to Canada, the unthinking prosperity of the place is dazzling.

Three Day Beard had appreciated Trump the night before, and Angry Mustache asked his opinion.

I think he could acquire, Three Day Beard suggested carefully, “as if its” a review, as if it were all you could allege of him, that he might have a chance to take the conference of presidents, for what it was worth.

Dont matter, told Angry Mustache. No content “whos got” in, Washington simply devastates them.

He might be different because he doesnt necessity the money.

Angry Mustache paraphrased a statistic, which I subsequently check and will prove to be bullshit, that all congressmen become millionaires by the time theyve been in power for a year. Everybody agrees with Trumps central advantage is that he comes pre-corrupted.

Its not even the money, Three Day Beard said. They get there. They all have these schemes and intentions. They cant do anything. Three Day Beard nearly pitied the legislators.

Its all interrupted, included Angry Mustache as a kind of dedicated, the style youd position any historic detail, like Germany lost the second world war or Frances Farmer was once a star.

The view of American politics in Fun City is snug despair. It is despair not just at who happens to be in influence but at whoever could ever be in power. It is despair not simply that the system is busted but that any organisation, imaginable in the present iteration of the United States, would turn out to be just as ruined. The choice is a alternative between frailty and dures. The reply was not change but a shrug.

Curved Baseball Hat, the person who originates corn and beans and who had fragile discovers of clay in the lanulae of his fingernails, requested information about an old gamble hall that used to be in municipality, and the recollections of the style Burlington used to be flowed constructs that had been knocked down, dames that were once beautiful and were now dead, riches made and vanished.

Eventually the pitch-black participate, who has said almost nothing except his calls and folds and develops, busted out.

Did you see that guys fingers? Angry Mustache expects when he had left. He gestured an inch past his centre paw. We were all, it was made very clear, in a chamber of grey humanities. You know what they say. My friend worked in the prison and he mentions its all true-blue. I guess thats why they say formerly you go black.

The residual of us nodded or smiled or said nothing, searching down at the cards. Now that we had all shown how white we were, it was a friendlier room. We knew that none of us would object to the misery of the others. What if the responses to Baldwins question is as banal as it appeared to be in Fun City? What if it white people draw the nigger to prepare themselves a little less lonely?

And I said nothing. I offered no fighting, though the line between “the mens” in Fun City and the cop killing a black brat in the appearance was not difficult to tracing. Here was my alibi that evening: I am Canadian. Which means I am a snoop from nowhere. Or perhaps I am a coward or something in between a coward and agent from nowhere. Its a reasonably threadbare alibi regardless. Whose isnt?

Conversation strayed back to Trump. It was more respectful.

I can see Trump, articulated Angry Mustache. Hes not the worst that Ive heard anyway.

Im starting to like that physician, Three Day Beard lends as an afterthought.

That doctor, Ben Carson, proposes a flat levy of 10% that would placed the US government, reckoning conservatively, in a$ 3tn-deficit. He believes that Joseph built the pyramids to store cereal, and he believes that Hitler never would have risen to influence if the German people were armed, and that Obamacare is worse than bondage, and that Americans are living in a Gestapo age.

I said that he hoped that Coates had some crazy programme, some utopian fiction for communards in Georgia, or the return to one motherland or another, but he only wants the end of white supremacy. He precisely requires white people in America to grow up, to yield their inhumane sense of illogical supremacy. I cannot imagine why they are able to. Its merriment to suck and to play placards and to dream what Donald Trump would say to the Mexican president the day after he was elected, or whether Ben Carson would prepare the flat tariff at 10 or 12%. The eventual alibi is stupidity it lies closest to innocence but if you cant cope stupidity, craziness does nearly as well.

I aim , nothing of its happens now anyway, right? Whoever gets elected, its just going to be stalemate and outrage anyway, right? Did I mention that beer payment one dollar? A single, lonely buck.

Ellen Degeneres, eat your heart out!

The Bernie Sanders rally in Davenport was the exact antonym of the Donald Trump rally in Burlington and yet precisely the same in every detail. Make America Great Again was replaced by Feel the Bern. Hawkers sold bolts, three for $10. They read Bernie Sanders is my feeling animal and Cats for Bernie and I subscribed Bernie Sanders before it was cool. Davenport, at least near the Adler Theater, “re the same” Brooklyn-outside-Brooklyn that has quelled every corner of the world that is not a strip mall. The tattoo creators of Davenport do not go hungry. The cornfed hipsters at the Sanders rally look like they have probably attended “states parties ” at which person played a bongo. They may even have attended a literary learning.

Bernie Sanders at a town hall session in Ottumwa, Iowa. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/ AP

There were hype servicemen as with Trump, more, although in this case the latter are twentyish women in glasses bellowing Feel the Bern! and Were Going to Improve a Change! Individual with a camera from NBC expected the working group who has brought their precocious juveniles because they want them to be engaged in the political process Can I get you guys to look like youre excited about Bernie? They carefully targeted their glass on the floor, out of see, to oblige.

The same specter of angry white people recurs Saunderss rally, the same appreciation of longing for a country that was, the two countries that has been taken away. The Bernie crowd made homemade signs instead of fabricated ones, because I guess theyre organic. They brandished them only the same. They were going to a display. They wanted to be a good audience.

The fundamental difference between the Trump and Sanders army was that the Sanderss crowd has more coin, the natural significance of the American incongruity system: rich white people can afford to think about socialism, the poorest of the poor can only rendered their rage.

Sanderss opening act was a congressional wannabe, Gary Kroeger. He hadnt been on The Apprentice but on Saturday Night Live, a forgettable lesser performer from the largest date between 1982 and 1985. He started off, naturally, with a half-assed gag: the fresh patchouli in the air is great. The sign language translator offered a mild smile to expres it was a laugh. Then, after a brief foray into left-wingery, calling America a social democracy also known as a republic, Kroeger took a big selfie with the crowd behind him: Ellen Degeneres, eat your heart out! he wailed. Everyones phones rose up to take pictures of themselves in a illustration mimicking a photo from the Oscars: such was American socialism in the year 2015.

A few desultory ensembles followed, performing an mixture of leftwing anthems from various historical leftwing pushes. They harmonized on The Auld Triangle, a prison ballad that was covered on Inside Llewelyn Davis. The vocalist from Alice in Chains( recollect them ?) did an electrical version of I Wont Back Down. An old The Clash song, Jail Clang Doors, was sung by the subject of the first verse, Wayne Kramer. And it was all, so obviously, a nostalgia number, the self-indulgence for a longing of a season when music inspired politics, when activism owned an artistic look, and vice versa.

Eventually Bernie strayed out. The phones disappeared up. The phones went down. Enough is enough, he wailed, leaving blank what theres “ve had enough” of. And then he talked about how he wanted to end the war on drugs and campaign investment improve and government that isnt for plutocrats, and how they were going to build a revolution( such an embarrassing term to listen expressed out loud ), and America was going to be a social democracy, by the people of the people.

Sanderss exasperation was the principal fact to be communicated, more than any political material. Trump was about winning again. Sanders was about having lost. The vagueness of American politics is what amazed the outsider. Its all about sensations and God and bullshit. Sanders actually emitted the following sentence out loud: What were saying is when millions of people are working together to rehabilitate both governments we can do astonishing situations. Nothing asks what he made. None asked for numbers. They applauded. Better to take it in the intent in which its thrown, like a Catskills resort comedian.

Sanders prompted me of a line from Seinfeld, perhaps because Larry Davids SNL parody was only a few days old. The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. When Ben and Jerry make a Bernie Sanders ice cream, I hope its chili and ginger: the delicious hot smell of nasal-passage clearing outrage.

Sanderss speech was much shorter than Trumps. There had already been the music, I guess. I had the impression, as with Trump, that I had traveled many hundreds of miles to look at a mortals mane. Bernie Sanderss hair is as much a statement as Trumps. It consider this to be the “hairs-breadth” of a tenured professor whose wife has stopped nagging him to get a haircut because the nagging doesnt handiwork. You couldnt muss Sanders hair. The ill is just as much an aesthetic as the comb-over. I symbolize it ever searches the same. Somebody is cutting it to sink that course over the ears.

The view from Tampico

As despair has suddenly spread like a fantastic mist over the white people of America, as the white people die off in their extraordinary quantities, the commenters are astonished, a little bit, but they have no plan of action. No policy proposals aim at reforming the lives of white people.

How could they? If you believe the Case and Deaton report, white people are victims of their own advantage literally. Their cherished claim to own guns, and the enormous increased number of the ownership of weaponry, means that their suicide strives are more effective. They have more access to opioids because doctors are more likely to trust white people with them. They have the money to draw themselves lonely and booze.

I recollect reading a piece from buzzer robs formerly, the kind that circulates on Facebook because it chimes somewhat unique in its predictable virtue. The first act of violence that patriarchy requests of males, she wrote, is not savagery toward dames. Instead patriarchy requisitions of all males that they involve is psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional specific areas of themselves.

Her compassion is admirable, glorious even, but also inaccurate. No one is more psychological than a piece-of-shit white man. They are sentimentality personified. How else can so many be moved to violence over the absence of a Christmas tree on a Starbucks cup?

That dream, that white reverie that smells like peppermint and penchants like strawberry shortcake, comes with a cost of shit. If you take shit, if you eat shit, if you live through the shit, if you live the stupid wars and the meaningless errands, you should be sure of who you are and what you deserve. And “if youre not” sure and you have not received what you deserved, why did you take and eat and subsist all that shit?

Un-harvested corn stands south of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Image: Nati Harnik/ AP

In the aftermath of that spate, the choice, I belief, is either to be proud to be grey, which is a word of lunacy, or to fantasize a post-racial cosmopolis, which is a kind of make-believe, or to be ashamed. So much easier to forget those choices, or to shelve endlessly the choosing, or to debate the difficulties of preferring infinitely, because grey male flesh is not under mortal threat, as the chassis of pitch-black men or the flesh of the status of women. Our organizations are safe. Our torsoes are the threat.

In medieval empires, the territory involved the existence of a doubled figure, one for the real world and one for the symbolic. There was the flawed and mortal person of the king, which sobbed and shat and screwed and died, and then there was the Body of the King, sacred, pure, indestructible.

Race generates us all double mass, double consciousness in WEB Du Boiss phrase, whatever you want to call having to live mortally through the judgement of others. The brand-new grey distortion, the sickness at heart, the pathology, may simply be the arrival of the awareness of two bodies: the dizziness and nausea that arrive with the onset of doubled eyesight.

Because they have to be like everybody else, their mettles are breaking in half.

The morning after the Sanders rally, I noted enough forte to look in the reflect at my grey and male organization, to probe its mortal and symbolic quality. At the angle of my groin, where it had been tingling, a dark-brown patch spilled like spoiled milk down my scalp. A wide-cut chocolate-brown spot determined like post-climate change Florida in the angle of my thigh. Instant, I knew I would die. And the next minute I started driving back to Toronto, to my bride and children, body of my flesh.

Bernie Sanders wants a revolution to overthrow casino capitalism but the problem, or maybe only the first trouble, is that the American beings enjoy casinoes. They cant construct them fast enough. On the road from Iowa, I transferred at least a dozen, a dozen Fun Cities of various types of shapes and sizings, enduring various gossips about Trump and Sanders. The highways of Illinois are a unique vision of the workings of human rights hope a roughly boundless mart for addiction and its dry. Strip clubs or fried chicken or gambling or faith or rehab or cancer treatment. The I-9 4 communicated right to the unwounded mas the promise of handled carbohydrate and pussy, or saving from them.

There was one other entertainment on the route dwelling: Ronald Reagans birthplace in Tampico. The glamour of the landscape around those towns, for some reason, has never been properly glamorize. There are no tourist buss to these fields, as there are to the ocean or the mountains, but the landscape is every bit as sublime. Reagans childhood extended in the loin of the Continent, the splendid hinge between the industrial core of the Great Lakes and the agricultural heartland. The historical recognition of his presidential tombstones has been consumed by fantasies of small town life but it is a landscape of whitewashed houses against the undulating emptiness, a country roiling with nightmares. You can depict Reagan as a boy in these fields, fantasy of movies and America vast screens on which he had been able to activity himself. The superhighway moves like a flow of praying through an ancient dream.

The ancient nightmares are still so vivid here. In the United States, 240 -year-old writings can be recited by soul by people who cannot be described as trained. Documents written by men who owned slaves are spoken of as if we are able to solve the problems of today and tomorrow and any imaginable future no matter how remote.

Thomas Jefferson was held that the Constitution should expire after 19 times, so that the dead would not have ascendancy over the living. That fate seems to have arrived. The Americans are in constant disputes with haunts and their the talks with dead beings are most powerful, most relentless, at precisely the points where they are most ludicrous. They nation defiantly that all men are created equal when any casual observer of life knows they arent. They claim that men and women should be judged by the content of their reference, when nobody can know the content of anothers character. These dreamings, these inabilities, are the absolute and real organization of their nation. And the reveries are so entrancing that its ambiguous whether the problem is that the Americans think you are, or that they dont. Its supremely childish, either way.

Back in Toronto, my bride took a look at the chocolate-brown spot on my groin and mailed me to a doctor, and medical doctors told me it was a rash from leading too much, and I had been given the greatest gift anyone can hope for, in this time and this lieu. I had been forgiven, for a while, for my body.