#polite euphemisms are so last decade

[pixelkind413]

Today I have discovered that when I forget the correct word for something I will reflexively, and almost spitefully, cobble together an approximation of what I mean from the active worst words I can think of. Denotation purist, connotation rebel.

During a family dinner I forgot "prior engagement" and ended up with "premeditated other things to do" and honestly I feel like I'm keeping this one.

#poetry? #pixelkind talks #philosophy #polite euphemisms are so last decade

[mariacallous]

"I wake up every morning, thinking this may be my last day. I have never lived like this", a young woman in Kyiv told me 10 days ago, when I visited the city. It seemed calm, and life was normal. But this week the missiles came back.

There is no normalcy. War is an all-consuming experience. Every Ukrainian is involved in it in one way or another: Fighting, helping, caring, worrying, crying.

In Kyiv two things became clearer to me: first, most Ukrainians truly see the conflict as a war of survival for their nation. They view it through the lens of Russian repression of Ukrainian nationhood in the 19th century and Stalin's killing of millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor, the mass hunger of the 1930s.

I had read about both, but it was only through conversations in Kyiv that I understood the intensity of this trauma.

It is no surprise that Poles are so overwhelmingly supporting Ukraine. They experienced similar trauma from Russia and Germany. The story is similar for the Baltic states.

The conviction that this is a war of survival makes the discussion of geopolitical analysts sound so wrong.

They ask how much defeat Moscow can take before things become too dangerous. But victory and defeat cannot be precisely balanced out, as if war was some laboratory exercise. For Ukrainians the point of "too dangerous" is long past.

It arrived in 2014, or at least on 24 February this year. Russia has been attacking Ukraine, its people and the nation for eight years. And it has not been shy about it. Every day its Russian TV pundits talk about "so-called Ukraine".

Ukrainians think they can buy themselves some years, or perhaps even decades, of rest if they defeat the Russian army and push it out of their country.

This is a rational assumption that Ukraine's allies need to share, for Ukraine cannot fight without their military and economic support.

Euphemisms

The worst the allies and their public commentators can do is muse endlessly about what a "political deal" could look like. Because a "political deal" is a euphemism for handing over Ukrainian land to Russia.

And "handing over land" is a euphemism too. People live on that land. They would have to live in Russia — brainwashing certain, survival not guaranteed.

The endless talk about a political solution overlooks another problem. Putin has ruled it out. He made a show of "annexing" four Ukrainian regions, declaring them eternally Russian, before saying to Ukraine: "Come and negotiate now" — making these words meaningless.

There may be a moment when the Russian government wants to negotiate for real. The war is going badly for them. Then there may be talks (though probably not with Putin). The Ukrainian government would consider the situation in consultation with its allies.

Possible scenarios may then emerge. But trading territory and people in abstract discussions now is pointless and insulting.

The second thing that became clearer during my time in Kyiv is this: many people in the West would like Ukraine to be a little bit guilty as well, or at least be problematic. They say: Look at those Nazis of the Azov regime! How about corruption? And wouldn't some Ukrainians prefer to live in Russia?

Why are these people obsessed with Ukrainian problems and issues that are irrelevant to the conflict?

A list of serious problems could be drawn up for almost any country in the world. But, in the case of Ukraine, how are these problems related to being brutally assaulted by a neighbour that wants to steal your land and destroy your culture?

They are not. But it is nice to think they are related. It gives psychological relief. If Ukraine would be a little bit guilty as well, would it not all be much easier? We could then dismiss the conflict as some complicated, hard-to-understand historical struggle between two neighbours.

We could feel good and rational saying that Ukraine needs to find some kind of political solution. Trade some land. Let some of the people be taken over by another country (they speak Russian anyway, don't they?). We helped them alright, but now it's enough.

I have worked for more than eight years on Ukraine and have visited many times. Ukraine has problems, but they have not caused this war.

Today it has only one existential problem: Russia.

This is our problem too. The Kremlin follows a path of revisionist aggression for more than a decade. It wants to destroy European peace and democracy along with the international rule-based order.

Democracies are far from perfect. They apply doubles standards and often make bad compromises between what they define as their interests and values.

But Russia is different. Its policy is to systematically help dictators around the world to crush their people. Ukraine is the frontline of a war against all of us.

The best we can do is support Ukraine to bring this awful war to an end as quickly as possible. It is a hard way to go.

Not everybody believes this is the right way to go. This is a legitimate discussion, but it should be an honest one. People who propose "political solutions" need to explain the brutal realities and risks associated with their solutions.

[haggishlyhagging]

One of the most damaging effects of normalising male violence is that we don't recognise it when it is staring us in the face. Terrorism is currently the most spectacular form of violence afflicting Western democracies, yet more often than not it is discussed as though it doesn't even belong in the category of male violence. For all sorts of reasons, people prefer to think that terrorism is solely about ideology, whether it's inspired by an extreme version of religion or the politics of the far right. It has become conventional among sections of the left to blame the terrorist attacks of the last decade on the invasion of Iraq, as though no further explanation for such extreme acts of male violence is needed; the hard right, meanwhile, has utilised terrorism to create fear and suspicion of Muslims, refugees and people from the BAME community generally.

These ideas have become entrenched, so much so primarily for political or humanitarian reasons and they are, for the most part, a world apart from the violent young men who joined the al-Nusra Front or ISIS. The sheer number of sadists who became jihadists before the collapse of ISIS, gloating in videos as they stood next to mangled corpses or held up severed human heads, confirms how successfully modern terrorist organisations have targeted young men who like the idea of rape, torture and murder. As this book has shown, a substantial number of European recruits to ISIS were petty crooks with little interest in religion or politics until they encountered the incendiary propaganda of a terrorist group, and discovered they now had a 'reason' for the violence (often gang-related) that was already part of their lives.

It's clear that many people recoil from the idea that a proportion of men are drawn to violence, that some individuals gravitate towards extremist organisations precisely because they offer the opportunity to avenge past slights and exercise power over total strangers by hurting and killing them. It's a more controversial proposition than it should be, given that the history of earlier generations of terrorists supports it. During the "Troubles' in Northern Ireland, members of paramilitary organisations on both sides became notorious for carrying out ‘punishment beatings’, a euphemism for vicious attacks, often on members of their own communities, which peaked at 326 in 1996 - almost one a day.

-Joan Smith, Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists

#joan smith #male violence #domestic terrorism #terrorism #name the problem

[notasapleasure]

A tale of two Georgias

Note: I wouldn't normally share subscriber-exclusive content from this news site, but I think Shota Kincha's opinions are too important to hide away in an exclusive email this time. If you're so minded, please consider supporting open journalism in the Caucasus anyway and sending some money OCMedia's way.

Highlighting is my own. Of course I support Georgia joining the EU, but absolutely not under conditions that ignore the recent rolling back of democratic freedoms.

---

By Shota Kincha, for OC Media.

On Wednesday, Georgians celebrated a long-awaited recommendation from the European Commission for their nation’s candidacy for EU membership, leaving the country’s candidacy pending just final approval from the heads of EU member states in mid-December. But the Commission’s assessment of the government’s ‘progress’ seemed to be based on wishful thinking, rather than its actions. 

On denying Georgia the status last year, the European Commission outlined 12 ‘priorities’ Georgia would need to address for the decision to be reconsidered — preconditions that largely reflected the spirit of the April 2021 agreement brokered by European Council President Charles Michel between the government and opposition groups.

When the unforeseen possibility for Georgia to formally apply for membership presented itself in early 2022, Georgia’s leadership had already failed on some of the key components of the previous year’s accord. 

Instead of addressing the ‘perception of politicised justice,’ an apparent euphemism for the imprisonment of opposition leaders, most notably Nika Melia in early 2021, the Georgian court imprisoned another prominent government critic, Nika Gvaramia, only five weeks before the European Commission was due to assess Georgia’s readiness for EU membership candidacy.

Instead of the ambitious judicial reform promised in the 2021 Michel deal and mentioned in the EU’s ‘12 priorities’ last year, the ruling Georgian Dream party has continued to shield corrupt judicial officials with a stranglehold on Georgian courts, resulting in more politicised administrative fines and criminal cases against civil activists, political leaders, media managers, or youth with ‘confused orientation’ who risked their freedom to defend Georgia’s pro-Western choice on the streets.

In the run-up to the European Commission’s latest decision on Georgia, the government and security services run by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s goons artificially created an anti-Western parliamentary group, gifted them private channel PosTV, and made violent extremist pro-Russian Alt Info immune to obstruction or challenge. 

If the last five years under Georgian Dream rule had been a steady decline in democratic freedoms, the government’s actions in the months since it applied to join the European Union — including their recent initiatives to clamp down on Georgia’s civil society and constrain protest — far surpassed any and all negative predictions.

But listening to President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, one could have assumed she was discussing an entirely different country. 

Despite Georgia’s government persecuting free media, parroting Russian propaganda against the West, refusing to undertake institutional reforms in a way that included other groups and stakeholders, and satisfying only three of the twelve conditions set last year, the European Commission complimented them with no substantial criticism.

I do not believe the EU should approve Georgian membership candidacy later this year, as the move looks set to validate and entrench the government’s precipitous lurch towards authoritarianism. 

The European Commission’s approach may be based on the belief that denying Georgia candidate status could lead to Georgians becoming disillusioned with the EU and the West. But Georgians have been staunchly pro-Western for decades, perhaps even centuries. 

The real danger to Georgians’ trust in the West comes from the West’s indifference to anti-democratic moves by Georgia’s government, which, if left unchecked, will continue to use state institutions to slowly but steadily shift popular mood and policies towards Russia. 

Even were we to allow that recommending EU candidacy status was a justified decision in Georgia’s best interests, doing so did not obligate the institution’s leaders to legitimise the country’s government in the way they did.

Listening to the widely televised announcement by the European Commission on Wednesday, Georgians could reasonably have concluded that democratic backsliding, state capture by big capital, and a politicised judiciary are consistent with Georgia’s pro-Western aspirations, or that related warnings from local activists and media have been baseless or overblown. 

The announcement could also have created the impression that the ruling party has been delivering on reforms demanded by the EU, a powerful notion less than a year before the country’s next general elections. 

The truth is, however, that in inviting Georgia to join the club while neglecting to call out the government’s shortcomings, the EU is playing a dangerous game, and one it has played before. The EU does not want another Orban, and the South Caucasus definitely does not need another Aliyev.

I may be wrong: perhaps granting Georgia candidate status will still be a wise choice on the EU’s part. But even in its recommendation, the European Commission could have sent a clear message that business as usual would no longer be tolerated. 

What Georgia’s leadership heard instead will become abundantly clear in the coming months. 

#ქართველები მიყვარხართ - ძალიან ძალიან მიყვარხართ. მაგრამ ეს არ არის დრო. #ამ მეთოდში ევროპული კავშირი ვერ გეხმარება ქართულ ოცნებსთან. #ეს იქნებოდეს ჯილდო უსამართლობისთვის #i'm seeing so many celebrations and it fucking breaks my heart #membership. will. not. fix. you. #you have to start that yourselves! #and the eu isn't perfect it needs to take a stricter line with hungary and orban. #they got lucky with poland voting their way out of a hole but that won't happen in hungary so easily - #and if they act like georgian dream have done enough when they have done worse than nothing they will be in a very good position next ge #and don't @ me for saying you need to start the work yourselves. #i have a friend who used to work in politics there and tried to change the election culture #he couldn't even get people to agree to a covenant saying they would refrain from using misgynistic language in campaign season #because people thought it was meaningless and unimportant #well sometimes you have to fucking start somewhere or you get scenes like the misogynistic language used in georgian parliament recently #i know i'm just ranting from very far away and can't possibly understand it all #i'd hoped to visit for the first time last month. but the university called off the planned research trip #because of concerns about the government's repressive legislation and actions #and if the eu grants candidate status for you without demanding actual concrete change then that's just going to carry on worse than ever. #i'm sorry i want to see you join. i believe the eu needs change from the inside too. #but they aren't your saviours riding in to fix things if they don't hold GD accountable #georgia #it's been a depressing few years to be a student of georgian i can't fucking imagine how much more depressing it's been to be there #but you have campaigners who give me hope still. #it's just that this decision by the eu would not give me hope for your future sorry #საქართველო #caucasus #oc media #shota kincha #eu politics

[lucascecil]

Project: Blue Box - The Fearmonger

This is a review with SPOILERS.

◆ Summary

There is a monster controlling election candidate Sherilyn Harper; a monster that only Walter Jacobs can see. Investigating a possible alien threat, the Seventh Doctor and Ace find themselves in the middle of local political intrigue as things become increasingly tense on the streets of London.

◆ Doctor

I have a complicated relationship with the Seventh Doctor. A character with a confusing and aimless start to life who found himself in a unique and very interesting characterization but that also often distances me emotionally from the character. To make matters worse, this same characterization is not always done successfully in the Seventh's stories - an evil that affects any incarnation of the Doctor, yes, but I believe that with McCoy it is more frequent than the others.

A legacy of the last two seasons of the TV series, he is often said to be one of the Doctor's most manipulative lives - always two steps ahead of the other characters. In some stories, this will be the biggest lie you've ever read in your life - a complete farce and a character with a very unique talent for truism and no tact at all. Not here.

Perhaps my favorite thing about The Fearmonger, Seventh has one of his best performances. Distant and mysterious, but in a way that engages rather than alienates. Manipulative, too, and in fact always two steps ahead of everyone else. He has an era marked by anti-establishment stories, but an element always invoked through, in particular, Ace, I really like that he also has dialogues about these themes here.

In a rare moment of dichotomy for the character, he defends words without euphemisms : "Just like wacko, or EuroNazi. But it helps, doesn't it? You're faced with something you fear, so you have to give it a name, don't you? Nothing that makes it sound serious, like evil, just something glib, a catch-phrase, a bit of noise. But the thing I'm looking for doesn't have a name. Not yet."

He and Ace have a wonderful scene during the second part about how time passes, but the world remains the same. "No, mostly they break the butterfly on the wheel of Time. Over the decades, the millions of butterflies, the weather still changes somehow. That’s Time. A million multi-colored pieces of Time." My favorite line of his here is perhaps, however, when he revolts that the local revolutionary group is called the United Front, very generic.

There is also another very good scene of his when he confronts the Fearmonger in the hospital - there is few things that scare him more than Ace being hurt. Not death, much less changing. He is afraid and worries for Ace, which plays with their paternal relationship.

Other favorite scene of mine is at the ending when Seven confronts Sharilyn about her place in what happened, in one more condemnation of that practice of turning fear and intolerance into weapons - and probably giving her anxiety for the next few months. I was left wondering, though, if the Doctor really was the one to judge. This is a life of his that is specially known for using the worst of people in his favor - it's not the same, but still.

◆ Ace

I have a compicated relationship with Ace. A character that are often inconsistent and that unfortunately takes way too much of Seven's life for my liking - but she didn't become so proeminent for nothing. The point we left her and Seven at Survival is irresistible and her relationship with the Doctor so defining for his character that of course she would sequester his ternure.

Fortunately, The Fearmonger is not a story that fuels my fatigue of Ace. We are back to season twenty-six characterization, when this TARDIS team relationship was still shaky, which was what made them so interesting on TV. The right choice for their first adventure on Big Finish - you can feel how excited Sylvester and Alphred are to be back into their characters.

With a life of the Doctor that for me feels so disconected from humanity, the companions are specially important - that, plus Ace's first few years in the TARDIS being basically a coming of age is what makes their relationship so fascinating for me.

I really dislike the militarized side of her character - that one that carry weapons and make some explosions -, but at the same it's bizarre to listen trying to talk her problems through and encouraging non-violent solutions. Ace being "violent" is such a consistent part of her character that in both times I listened to The Fearmonger it took me by surprise. Perhaps that's why I think it's fitting she get a shot when she tries.

But the most important scene for her character may be the last one, that further the already mentined coming of age narrative when she put into words her paranoia and fears abour the Doctor - not only necessary for the story but actually nedeed as a follow up to season twenty-six. Of course the path forwards is still messy - how much they can hurt each other is part integral of Ace and Seven's relationship -, but it's still nice and beautiful to see them talking and settling the problems between them. There is self-deprication in one of Ace's line that tells you how insecure she feels that got into my heart.

◆ Other characters

All the other characters of The Fearmonger have a well-define reason to be in the plot, but none them are such a highlight that I can say they'll stay with me, in memory. My favorites are Paul, a friend of Ace's that is relevant here and expands a little bit her life beyond the Doctor (or, in other words: how her relationship with the Doctor changed her mundane relationships) and Roderick, the guy responsible for the electoral campaign and most of the problems that happens in the story. It's a line from Roderick that better summarize the themes of The Fearmonger: "You can't trust anyone these days."

The politician Sherilyn Harper is interpreted by Jacqueline Pierce, who is always great in all of her roles in Doctor Who. Does my love for Ollistra perhaps influence my opinion on her here? Sure, but she is great nonetheless. Then you have Walter, who is a interesting character for me in the sense that I like his place in the story and what he brings out of Ace, but the guy himself I didn't particularly like.

Radio announcer Mick Thompson is a fun character that I wouldn't mind if became recurring.

◆ Great ideas and memorable quotes

"Two part genius, one part panic" is the best way to describe Seven, ever.

This is a tale about paranoia and a theme that shines through its characters. All the lines of dialogue go slowly building this jigsaw of human interaction that show you who these character truly are at their core and even if they aren't that engaging invidually, as a whole they are interesting. Be it for the strategies for the political campaign, be it for the huge fear that takes control of the characters who were touched by the Fearmonger.

This is a story with a strong political perspective, as is to be exected from Seven and Ace here and there, but it's also a little bit subtle. All the conflict is built around racism and xenophobia, which was relevant in 2000 and is not a little bit less relevant in 2023. Time goes on but the world doesn't change, indeed. The choice of setting this in 2002 aged interestingly. The Fearmonger was released in 2000, two years earlier, so of course there was no way to predict September eleven, but it still fits so much with the racial tensions that followed and the war on terror.

Just an interesting coincidence, sure, but another proof that time goes on and nothing changes. Not that The Fearmonger predicted the future, but its themes are so inevitable of modern societies and human nature that they will never not be relevant.

I don't know, however, if that racial tension is a little bit too subtle. The text is not afraid of tackling it - the Doctor establishes at the beginning the importance of calling things by what they are - but it's still something I am not sure about.

"I’m giving you a chance to impress him. You’ll know what to do. I’ve always hated hospitals." "Too full of sick people, right?" "And doctors who think they know everything."

◆ Sound work

Both the tracks and the sound effects are very simples, giving this domestic feeling to the story and making it all feel more personal. Because of that there is nothing much I want to highlight from the sound work, but it's the right choice to make the narrative feel claustrophobic.

◆ Replay factor

This is something I only talk about for stories I've listened at least once before. This stoy has some twists - and one of them I was coming miles away. About how the Fearmonger works. But the other catched me by surprise. However, both of them are benefited by a relisten because you get to see how it's built in the dialogue.

◆ The Veredict

The Fearmonger is a story with a lot of say about the social politic scenario it was made and that uses of its themes to work perfectly with the regulars and their relationship - that brings them closer by putting the trust Ace and Seven have in each on check. A good start for their ternure in audio.

◆ Nota: ótimo, ★★★★☆

#Seventh Doctor #Project: Blue Box

[electricbluebutterflies]

Jess/Leto + “and then everything just disappears.”

Modern AU (roughly equivalent to late-era) featuring a panic attack similar to how mine work (I hate that I have to put that disclaimer but here we are), PG-ish, and also on ao3.

At least the lapses are infrequent.

That’s what she started to call them once it became enough of an issue to keep track of, one more polite euphemism to keep her life under control, one more personality quirk to compartmentalize and never speak of and-

It’ll be fine in five minutes, Jessica tells herself. It’s always fine in five minutes. It’s not fine now.

She shouldn’t be losing control like this, not at this point in her life, not thirty-four and surrounded by pillars of stability that she has done everything she can to wrap her life around like a vine, not married with a kid and oh god she is in no mood to explain panic attacks to an eleven-year-old right now and she can’t remember what vague explanation they’ve been using lately and-

Her mind and her body do not feel connected right now, but they are both overwhelmed with feeling. Five minutes, if she’s lucky, of the worst combination of sensations she’s ever felt.

Her mind is a blur; this is good, she processes, this is at least not a flashback. Her body is… curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor, and this is bad this is bad this is not how weekday evenings are supposed to go this is not-

When it stops, when she becomes a more normal kind of conscious, she is well aware that her usual plan to just pretend this didn’t happen isn’t going to work out. Dammit.

“I’m alright,” she says, and her voice sounds wrong, sounds detached from her body, too low too-

These incidents happen just often enough that her partner knows how to respond to them, at least there’s that. Knows to get water for her and stay out of reach and-

“It’s over. Really. I’m alright.”

This is, as usual, a total lie.

Jessica has structured her life around an indefinite number of personal rules, and one of the biggest ones is that she does not let other people into her distress unless she’s in absolute crisis mode, a point she’s only reached once or twice and-

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

At least she’s steady enough to turn her head and glare at her husband, at least that feels alright. He knows her rules as much as anyone else ever will, she wants to say, he knows-

“I’m breathing, I’m coherent, I’m not sure how that’s a lie,” she hisses.

He’s quiet for a few moments, the quiet of a man who knows how easily this could go nuclear if he says the wrong thing, and she loves that caution he has sometimes because she doesn’t have that tendency at all, she loves-

“What just happened? Don’t justify, just explain.”

Another rule – she does not explain what happens inside her head. The bad reaction she had the one time she was on meds was a decade ago now, but it was bad enough that she won’t try again, and any information she might give anyone will just worry them, and-

She occasionally puts her husband through hell because her mind doesn’t work, she reminds herself. She might as well break her boundaries enough to tell him why.

“I detach,” she says after what feels like a few moments and time. “It’s just all… too much. For no clear reason. And if I’m lucky, and this time I was, it’s just overwhelming static until I’m back in my body again and then everything just disappears. And it’s always so efficient and-“

“Efficient,” he repeats, and apparently this will be the point of judgement. “Even when you’re-“

“Can you imagine how difficult I’d be if these lasted longer? Would you still-“

He finally gets down on the floor with her, close enough to touch and doesn’t yet, and gives her those eyes that remind her why their fights never last. “I signed up for this, remember?”

“I did a pretty thorough job hiding my damage from you until you’d have to lawyer up to get out of it,” she murmurs.

“I would not describe your night terrors as hiding anything,” he counters, and that’s a few conversations they’ve politely avoided, and-

“You were kind enough never to mention the bruises. I…”

He reaches for her hand and starts tracing little patterns on her skin like he does when he needs stability too, and it frightens her that she can still give him that in this state, and-

“You’ve never been easy. Love isn’t like that.”

They’re not emotional people, Jessica reminds herself. The emotions are there, they’re both just… products of icy families, she thinks might be a tactful way of putting it, and both trying so hard to do better than their pasts, trying to-

“Do I dare ask where our son is right now?” A question she should’ve had minutes ago, and dammit she is not doing this parenting thing well, and-

“Upstairs. I said you weren’t feeling well and needed space.”

Which means probably right around the corner and listening more than he should, Jessica knows what they’ve raised, but-

“Thank you for being what I can’t be.”

Her partner moves closer, slipping an arm around her shoulders and drawing her into him. “I wouldn’t say it’s that simple, but-“

“You take care of him. Of us. And I just-“

“Jess. Don’t. Not while you’re still-“

“Don’t finish that statement, love. Please.”

He does anyways. “Vulnerable. Nothing worse.”

She still hates this fragility she has sometimes, hates that she needs to be comforted and cared for, but-

“We don’t deserve each other.”

Her partner tilts his head and kisses the side of her face. “We really don’t.”

Over, almost. She’ll be able to sleep later and her mind will be safe. It’ll be fine. Eventually.

#ebf writes fic #leto x jessica #queue

[merlinmyrddin]

Hello!

Can you recommend me some very underatted gay movies? (I prefer comdey or happy ones if it's possible)

I recently came to realize i am a 23 man who happens to be gay. I don't know what took me so long.

Hello! I am sorry for the time it took me to answer you, but your ask has been playing constantly in my head now for weeks and I had to go down nostalgia lane film-wise...!

I'm also sorry for how long this answer is, I got carried away!!!

So first of all, I am damn proud if you. I know it sounds like empty words but whether you're 13, 23, or 45, being able to say you have found your inner truth is always something to be proud of! And what took you so long? It didn't. We are living in times where people want you to believe you are meant to have your sexuality and/or gender figured out by 18 when in reality, I know more people doing their coming out in their 20's/30's. Because when it comes to being gay, lesbian, bi, trans and queer : this last decade has seen some major changes. But it's ok for people born late 80's and 90's to come out "just" now. We grew up in a time where homosexuality was still taboo in most places. And when I say taboo, I mean that "homosexual" was barely pronounced, sometimes only whispered. A time where "gay panic" was a legitimate defense in court. (Talking from a Western European point of view here again. Many places in the world, including the USA still consider the murder of an homosexual or transgender victim as a legitimate act. And these last years has proven that there was not only the "gay/trans panic" crippling our streets, but also a "black panic" and more recently, an "Asian panic". Short aparte here : "gay panic" doesnt mean "omg, that person is making me question my identity!?" nor is it a term used when thirsty over an actor/actress when openly gay such as "[actor name] oh wow...*gay panic intensifies*... this term is a serious concept a murderer can use in court as a defense when taking the life of someone from the community. This is the law enabling hate crimes.)

To any younger people reading this right now : gay marriage has been legal in France since 2013, in the UK since 2014 and, allegedly, in the US since 2015. This is recent history. People who are mid-20's are historically closer to the HIV/AIDs crisis than of the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

As such, we are made to believe than coming out in our twenties or thirties is doing a late coming out. No, it's not. We are a generation who suffered through systemic homophobia in our formative teenage years. When we were trying to figure who we were, people were marching in the streets calling us names, and trying to defend the idea we did not deserve basic humans rights. (As a side note, I am not implying that such issues are not currently happening. This is mostly western European centred again as I am, well, European. This is also targeted towards sexuality orientations, excluding any gender talks as this is still currently a very real societal issue for which the fight has only just begun. Double side note : I'm not yet fully caffeinated. But hopefully you get the general idea despite my flagrant lack of eloquence on this fine morning.)

Alright, let's move on to films then!

I searched for a long time for happy / comedic films but then I realised I was definitly not the right person to answer that. On a general basis, I enjoy dramas. That's my thing.

So instead, I thought I would list you the first LGBTQ+ Films I ever watched, hoping they'll find you well.

-Stonewall (1995). Not my favourite film, but as a kid, it was great first jump into lgbtq+ history. Sad note : The director of this film died of AIDS shortly after.

-Another country (1984) Based in the 1930's in a public school. Starring Rupert Everett (who just a few years ago came to direct "The Happy Prince", a great take on Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, casting himself as Wilde, and Colin Morgan as Bosie...fantastic film, highly recommand), and starring Colin Firth. Teenagers discovering themselves, from homosexuality to politics. (The parralele made is quite interesting as both young men are misfits...one for being gay, one for being Marxist.) Great watch, but a heavy one.

-Maurice. (1987) God, I love this film. It explores not only coming to term with your sexuality but also what it means to be homosexual for the people around you and the impact it can have on your life, depending on your social background. Starring James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves, this is an other drama which leaves you feeling almost raw. I always had an affinity for British film because of how...real they feel. Best example would probably be Danny Boyle himself. You know what I mean... you grow attached and you feel for these characters. And Maurice does just that. Memorable quote : I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort. (And you might think : "Oscar Wilde? Again??" And oh boy, yes. Oscar Wilde again. Yes, he is one of the most well known author, mostly because of The Picture of Dorian Gray, but he is also a major part of Queer history. After all, "queer" has been used as a derogatory term for homosexuals for the time...directed at Wilde during his trial for posing as a somdomite. (No typo there.) Being an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort is an other one of the euphemism like "being a friend of Dorothy") And talking about Wilde...

-Wilde (1997). Biopic, Stephen Fry as Oscar, Jude law as Oscar's lover : Bosie. Incredible. Superb film. I can not find words.

-An Englishman in New-York (not the Sting song. Actually yes, kinda the Sting song. Because both the film and the song are about the same man : Quentin Crisp). Biopic. An artist, writer, actor, Quentin Crisp has always bothered. Painting his nails, wearing make up, criticising the royal family. He was a character. John hurt is magnificent as Crisp, who he had already played in 1975 in The Naked Civil Servant, an other great watch.

- A Single Man (2009). With Nicholas Hoult and Colin Firth. This film was a slap in my face. And it has, in my opinion, one of the greatest speech of all time, during a scene in the classroom :

"[...]Let's leave the Jews out of this just for a moment. Let's think of another minority. One that... One that can go unnoticed if it needs to. There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example... Or people with freckles. But a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the fear. If the minority is somehow invisible, then the fear is much greater. That fear is why the minority is persecuted. So, you see there always is a cause. The cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People like us."

-Pride (2014). [TRAILER] Bloody hell, that film. When we talk about lgbtq+ history, we often thing about the pink triangle and the holocaust, Reagan, Stonewall, AIDS and... fucking Maggie. Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady. Again, funny how the past is closer than we think, as I still have friends of mine talking to me about that period in British history that they lived through. The minors strike. The poverty, the crisis of the working class and the HIV crisis. But if you are looking for a film full of hope, from tears to laughter, this is the one. Bread and Roses. Bread, and Roses. And a message, which I believe is the essence of our community to this day : solidarity forever. After all...there is power in a union.

If anybody has other films to add, you are more than welcome to do so.

Love you all xx

#film rec #movie rec #gay film rec #gay movie rec #anon ask #lgbtq+ rights #lgbtq+ history #queer history #pride #a single man #stonewall #an other country #maurice #an english man in new york #oscar wilde #solidarity forever #important #coming out #margaret thatcher #uk #british films #queer movies

[augment-techs]

I DON'T KNOW HOW THE WRITING PROMPT MEME WORKS REALLY

but it's WAYYYY too CUTE to not do. Sooooo how about I toss ya some numbers! ^^

Hand holding: 12 and 10! 33,

Hugs: 2, 18, 27

Hope it isn't too much!!! ^^

Kim was emotionally fluctuating between feeling sorry for Tommy, and trying not to go into shock whenever she walked into a room and found her older, alternate universe, badass-self kissing an older, Coinless General Bulk. Watching them seemed more perfect than she might have dared hope for whatever fate was allotted to the Ranger Slayer. When they'd first dropped into their Command Center and explanations had been given, Alpha had allowed Bulk to lead his Kimberly to the medical bay, and Kim had followed after them in case they got lost. Bulk was incredibly good with the damaged woman that could probably beat him into the ground at any moment. Kimberly hadn't even huffed when he'd offered her a piggy-back ride and then insisted on bandaging up her hand that'd been cut open when she'd gone after Tommy and he'd had to defend himself with Saba. He'd sterilized the wound, wrapped it tight but not without sympathy and hadn't bothered untangling their fingers or letting go when they'd wandered back into the room Zordon occupied so they could all talk and argue and occupy themselves with searching the data banks for ways out and locating their other friends for hours. The kissing was on the extreme end of their affections, though. In the days that followed, Kim didn't see them lock lips as often, as they usually found themselves training or cooking or reading with just one hand, as the other one was invariably found more often holding onto the other; like two magnets that would always find themselves connected if given enough time.  It was, admittedly, adorable as anything she could have imagined, but still a surprise she couldn't help but balk at. Tommy underwent the same amount of shock with the random displays of affection that he often stumbled into with Kim, but he had more pressing issues: when he left to walk into a room with one of the Coinless universe alters, he always had to keep his movements to a minimum, hands far away from his pockets, and eyes to the ground. With the older Trini, Zack, and Bulk, it wasn't so bad; with the Omega Rangers out in space and their history with this smaller Tommy helping them before Drakkon shattered the Morphin Grid, they were more willing to acknowledge that the evil despot and the teen weren't the same. With those Coinless who had never been Rangers--Rocky and Aisha in leather and combat armor with battle scars, had looked very shocked when they'd met their younger selves in Ranger gear, Adam being given the oddest looks from the elders--it was much harder, because they hadn't even spoken to Tommy. And they'd all been dumped through a hole in space and time that the Eltarians and Zedd had caused when Zelya had gotten away from the moon, so everyone was still reeling--especially with them being separated into three groups around Angel Grove. Perhaps they'd make up their minds when the stragglers from Drakkon's universe arrived at the Command Center... * * "He's very strong, and very sure, but he's no Drakkon." "No offense, Skull, but how--" "Could I know that?" The spy--spy, spy, actual double agent who had to relay messages and blend into the background and not die a horrible painful death at the slightest misstep, how the fucking hell--smiled with benevolent pragmatism. Rocky nodded, mouth tightening into a line as Aisha stood her own ground in their questioning. They would have loved not to have come to such an awkward position with having to use Skull to calm down their worries, put them to bed, and smother them to death, but they couldn't find solace and reassurance in Zack and Trini's words and it didn't seem fair to keep putting the kids in defense positions just because they could calm the fuck down. Skull flicked his hand open and made a motion for Tommy to come closer to him, which he did with only a slight hesitation. He wasn't wearing his suit, but Skull had been the only person so far from the other dimension who hadn't looked at him and gone fully rigid, so he had a good sporting chance of not being injured here. When he was only a

step or two from walking directly into Skull, the man offered up his open palm, harmless and dangerous at the same time, and Tommy blinked, unsure and afraid, before deciding it was better to get everything that was going to happen one way or another out of the way. He lifted up his own hand and laid it flat in Skull's. There was dirt under his pointer finger and he only had a single twitch of a moment to be embarrassed before the much bigger fingers circled his wrist and wound around his knuckles, brought his hand upwards, as if he was little more than an infant fresh from a tub, or a sun warmed kitten.  Tommy felt a coil behind his belly bunch up all of his nerves at once when Skull's fingers slotted between his own in a possessive kind of way that sparked familiar-unfamiliar thoughts--those all fading away when the man kept their palms together and brought his head down, breathing out like a gust of a train through a mountain pass, and inhaling at Tommy's wrist. Nose tip to his skin raising all the goosebumps Tommy thought he even had. He's pretty sure his ponytail sparked at the end when he jerked a little back. Which swiftly brought him to absolute internal humiliation that showed across his face like a goddamn Muppet. Just because he'd seen that Skull let the Coinless drink his blood right from his finger and they all ate it in bread and stuff after he'd let a tube from his arm pour into the batter of whatever he made them, didn't necessarily mean the man would bite him. ...He hoped. Then, as if that hadn't been the weirdest thing, Skull lifted his head to grin at him, but didn't let go of his hand as the man addressed Rocky, Aisha, and all the other adults--and Tommy was too confused to ask him to let go, so... there was that, "He doesn't smell like he's rotting from the inside; like he needs to be wearing five layers of Axe Body Spray. And he isn't getting all put-upon and squirrely with me holding onto him. And, if you'll humor me a moment?" He was looking at Tommy directly at the last bit, but didn't let the teen answer before he found himself being wrapped in arms that had way more muscle than Skull had any right to have in any universe holy hell--and Tommy was suddenly in a bear hug, feet off the ground and spun around twice as much as he had ever been even at five years old; three times around and around, before he was planted on the couch like a sack of flour right next to Kim (his Kim, who looked utterly stunned and far too amused). The giggle that left his mouth when he smiled at her smiling at him should not have come into existence, and if he hadn't been red before, he was practically blazing as he brought his hands up to cover his mouth.  Skull's hand patted him on the head as he ducked his head as much as possible at the sounds of snickering and the other adults choking on their own reactions. He definitely felt like a kitten. "See? Totally harmless to us. Now let them take us to the Juice Bar and feed us; I'm hungry and Ernie's alive here to make me that banana-marshmallow smoothie I haven't had in over a decade." * "I...played the right politics." It would have been so fucking nice if Billy would stop asking Skull questions about the past and present the Coinless had to live through. He didn't mean to make the adults with faces he knew and worried over angry or tired, but Adam was getting very, very annoyed with how he always seemed to find the core root of things that made Skull look... All the emotion left Skull's face at that word, every single time. Politics, like a euphemism for something else entirely.  (And it was.) Adam remembered, because he was there when Zack and Trini, Aisha and Bulk, Rocky and the others weren't; inside the fortress Drakkon ran and imbibed in terrorizing whenever he got especially bored. The monster loved to play games with his sentries, with his prisoners, but rarely with his staff, because it took time and effort to train up new ones. But the sentries were his favorite, because they had to prove their loyalty each and every day. Some in

little ways, some in big ways. And Drakkon remembered Skull. Zack and Trini hoped he wouldn't, and Skull, when he was giving help and clues and time that he could to them, made it seem as if he never even crossed Drakkon's mind from being a punk that wore a spiked collar back in high school to becoming one of the higher-functioning members of the red sentries. Oh, being a spy made him so good at pretending nothing was wrong, how to be cool under pressure, how to avoid danger on all sides with one way out or none at all; how to think ahead, think like his opponent, pull facts and plans out of instinct and thin air (because what other choice was there, after all). That was why he was the best; probably why, too, he was revived from death by the universe and multiverse reshaping itself with the Grid's renewal. Politics translated so well to Games in Drakkon's palace. (It was amazing how often the horrible bastard made the sentries fight or fuck each other in his presence; the threat of his being displeased getting them through most of the time, and out the door when he was finished with himself to go vomit or find a shower or smoke so many cigarettes. As far as Adam knew, Skull was one of the very rare few who were made to fight or pleasure Drakkon himself. Skull and Adam and one yellow sentry that died before Kim returned to their world. If Kim was ever made to do as they were, she didn't tell or didn't remember, and Adam was thankful for that. And thankful for Skull. When he fought other sentries, he injured with care to avoid it being permanent or knocked out the other in a show of force that Drakkon appreciated that didn't lead to brain damage but made a good show. When he was made to fuck the others, he carried necessary aids to protect them from hating themselves or leaving much of a trace behind--condoms made from animal skin by Finster-5 he bribed out of the little freak; lubricant so there wouldn't be blood or bruising; an aptitude for pleasing other people as thoroughly and as quickly as he could while being on top and leading them through it with hands calloused but still soft. When he had to use his mouth on Drakkon or submit to the tyrant--often in front of others and while being degraded with his real name being used like words from a djinn or an immortal snake--he did so efficiently and made it seem as though he wasn't being forced at all.  Adam hated Drakkon more than anyone those times he had to be there and watched Skull pull his armor back on and resume his place in line among the other sentries like nothing had happened. He hadn't known him before the world came crashing down, but before he'd traded his loyalty for the hope that his family might survive--what a stupid hope that had been--he'd heard that the man had cried over Billy Cranston's gave for a week after his death and been good.) But this small, wide-eyed Billy Crantson, alive and well and looking at Skull with so much awe and respect that Adam could spot it from a mile away if he was goddamn blind, didn't need to hear that. Did not need the thought in his head like a rotting wound festering with so many white little maggots. So Adam continued sipping his coffee (pumpkin spice; which was so fucking good after years of straight, bitter instant black) and remained in his usual place beside Skull in the daytime, watching him go through the motions in this time out of joint from their own. Gladder still to be in the Juice Bar, watching the teens enjoy themselves, play at their video games, ramble on about tests they had to take in school; watch the Coinless eat their food and drink their smoothies, enjoy watching their young reflections practice gymnastics or martial arts. When Billy excused himself to talk to the Stone Canyon Trio about some notes they'd asked for from Ms. Appleby's class, eyes still sparkling with information given and listening to Skull like he would have listened to him even if he knew everything out of his mouth could have been a lie; nobody saw Adam wrap an arm around Skull's waist and squeeze

him from the side. It was just as well.

#wasn't sure who you wanted it written for since you didn't request specific names or pairings so I just kind of winged it #ask fill #prompt fill #boom! comics power rangers #shattered grid #mmpr #ggpr #eugene skull skullovitch #farkas bulk bulkmeier #kimberley hart #tommy oliver #adam park #rocky desantos #aisha campbell #billy cranston #implied/referenced dubcon #tomberly #world of the coinless #coinless Bulk x ranger slayer Kim

[vanderlindemangofarm]

The Van der Linde Gang - Jobs in a Modern AU

I’ve been really inspired to write about this lately and I’d love to hear your takes! These are the occupations that I think each gang member would have in a modern AU. Some were more challenging than others, but hopefully you guys can see where I’m coming from with each! 

Arthur: Film location scout. His natural eye for photography and framing makes Arthur the perfect member of a pre-production team. His no-bullshit approach to everything means he keeps to deadlines, although he’s known to go wandering off into the wilderness for unknown amounts of time. He enjoys the lone working side of his job and finding exactly the right spots that would make the film come to life. He doesn’t always like the films once they’re finished (in fact he’s often bought cinema tickets and walked out half way through, grumbling that it wasn’t worth the popcorn) but he can’t deny the excited buzz he gets every time he gets hired. In his early years as an assistant he met Bertie Mason, a nervous but talented photography intern. Despite an ill-advised hookup after a week joined at the hip they have remained close friends and still go out on shoots together. 

John: landscape gardener. John? Flowers? Yes, alright, I found it hard to believe too. But look, it’s not about the flowers, even if he does get misty-eyed at the sight of a sunflower in the early morning light. It’s about the challenge, the outdoors, and solving problems. After all the renovations he did to his house and garden (some more successful than others) John found how much satisfaction he got from digging and reshaping and planting. Don’t get me wrong, he’s often without a shirt, even in the colder months, much to the delight of some and the horror of others. He always makes friends with the household pets and is wonderful with the kids, always dropping his task to throw a frisbee around for a bit or cheekily accept an ice cold glass of lemonade from their mothers. Whenever he drives past one of his projects he feels himself glowing with pride - “I did that!”. 

Dutch: philosophy lecturer. As always, late with Starbucks. Will he actually grade your essay? Will it mysteriously disappear? Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it? Sitting precariously on the very edge of his desk, leather jacket hanging off his shoulders and losing his balance every 15 minutes, Dr Van der Linde is nothing short of a wonder. For the love of all that is holy, do not get him started on Kant. Kant has no place here. You want to talk about your precious Kant? Get your butt down to Dr O’Driscoll’s class, he has plenty to say about Kant. Perhaps a little too fond of Socrates. Plato who? Completely illegible handwriting and definitely sleeping with several members of the faculty. But somehow his students always walk away with excellent grades. At the end of each term Dutch takes everyone out to a local bar for drinks, insists on buying tequila which no one really fancies at 11am. Claims to ride a motorcycle called The Count which no one has actually seen. Impossible to hate, and he writes everyone great references for their summer internships. 

Hosea: social worker. In a crisis, there’s no one better to knock on your door. Hosea has seen it all and he’ll see it all again, but that doesn’t stop him from treating every single case he gets with the upmost respect and care. His no-nonsense approach to his work means he gets things done, but he never sacrifices his compassion. He mostly works with teenagers and has a way of being able to connect to each individual without coming across as patronising. He’s been in the field for over two decades and is an invaluable mentor for any newcomers, always willing to share a word or two of advice or be a shoulder to cry on. 

Javier: guitar teacher and music therapist. During his worst years, Javier’s guitar was his lifeline. And he wants to help others find their lifeline, too. He works on a freelance basis, mainly going into mental health hospitals, schools and prisons. He runs workshops focusing on guitar playing, but brings other instruments (mainly percussion) to try too. He’s a gentle teacher, always with a joke in his back pocket for when you need it most. He has nicknames for everyone and remembers everything they’ve ever told him. He’s patient and never lets anyone feel bad for making a mistake. Javier also runs an after-school guitar club at the local middle school alongside playing his own music at gigs whenever he can. No, he doesn’t reply to DMs no matter how thirsty they are. 

Sadie: self-defense instructor. After surviving an attack several years ago, Sadie used her ferocity to get her qualification in self-defense to teach other women how to fight back should they need to. Her husband Jake helps out in her classes, happily allowing himself to be thrown around and slammed onto the mat as many times as required. Her students are terrified of her in the best and nicest way. Sadie also volunteers at a women’s refuge, providing emergency care and taking phone calls. 

Charles: environmental campaign manager. Charles has always been drawn to charities and started doing voluntary work for Greenpeace when he was at university, securing an internship with them in Canada which led to a full time job. Whilst Charles mainly hosts meetings and organises events, he also works closely with elementary schools and runs workshops with outdoor activities, crafts and music. Last week they made bird feeders! It was awesome. He’s also a keen activist and regularly meets up with Javier to go to protests and community events, most recently for BLM. 

Micah: motorcycle mechanic. Micah is massively invested in motorcycle culture and treats his beloved bike better than his own mother, if he still spoke to her. Although he pretends not to care, fixing bikes is his greatest passion and almost looks...happy when he’s doing it? Maybe? He likes knowing more than the people who stop by his shop and makes sure they know it. Occasionally he leaves his number on a scrap of paper inside women’s handbags when they’re not looking but for some reason none of them call. Like it or not, he’s incredibly skilled and will have your motorcycle singing a tune if that’s what you want. Euphemism? Of course not. 

Abigail: nurse. She was so shy when she realised she wanted to pursue nursing - would people laugh at her? Was she too impatient, too nagging, too shrill? Her dyslexia always put her off going into further education and she was always discouraged by her parents. But with lots of encouragement from Hosea (who helped her to fill out her applications and other forms) and her friends, Abigail went to university in her 30′s to get her degree. She graduated top of her class and now works full time in her local hospital, based mostly in the emergency room. From drunken brawlers to tearful children and grumpy old men with lumbago, Abigail has learnt to keep her cool and to have faith in her own ability. 

Molly: holistic therapist and masseuse. It took years to get that bastard of a philosopher out of her head (and out of her bed - damn those happy hour drinks “for old times’ sake”), but she’s finally free. Molly radiates a kindness that few took to the time to see, and she wanted to take strength from her past struggles to help others who may need someone to listen, just as she did. Molly took a bunch of online courses in various holistic therapies, including aromatherapy and massage, as this was something she had always been interested in. She runs a tiny clinic on a quiet street, the rooms filled with sunshine and the scent of geraniums. She also has a quite popular ASMR YouTube channel, Emerald Eyes ASMR, which she shyly admits just reached 500k subscribers. Her most popular video, ‘Irish Girl Helps You Fall Asleep (soft spoken, tapping, mouth sounds)’ just reached over a million hits. 

Kieran: veterinarian specialising in equine care. Much like Abigail, Kieran didn’t like the idea of going back into education. He’d had a rough time of it as a teenager, dropping out of high school early and working a string of menial jobs for the next decade. They paid his rent, but he still felt poor. His favourite job, however, was working at a stable. The horses made him feel calm and he found that he could read them better than most people. He went to the library and read as much as he could about them. From there, he got himself an apprenticeship which paved the way for him to earn his degree in veterinary science. He smiled so hard in his graduation photo his eyes disappeared into his cheeks. He travels all over the local countryside, visiting farms and ranches to care for the horses. His confidence picked up after the first few blunders, and little by little he’s saving up to buy his own ranch one day. 

Lenny: political science student. You know that kid who always looks amazing, even in 9am lectures? Yeah, that’s not Lenny, but he’s sat just behind. See him? Yep, the one rubbing sleep from his eyes as he pushes through the effects of another all-nighter. It’s not due to procrastination, but from perfectionism. He spends hour agonising over references, appendixes and even titles. One time he was so tired he signed his work “Ynnel”. He’s completely in love with his course and relishes every class he takes. Oh, he’s taking Dutch’s ‘History of Western Philosophy’ module by the way. Sitting in the front row, middle seat, directly in front of Dutch, his eyes glinting wickedly. Poor Dutch. Lenny has a counterpoint for absolutely everything and can barely stifle his laughter as Dutch gets more and more flustered. He’s been dating Jenny Kirk, an English Lit student, for the past few months and it’s going well. So well in fact, that he might stop hiding his Doctor Who merchandise every time she comes to his dorm room. 

Tilly: business student. Tilly started university at the same time as Lenny and they still always go to the library together, rolling their eyes at each other over their morning peppermint lattes. Tilly is at the forefront of any and all on-campus activism. Think of Sam from Dear White People - that’s our Tilly. She wears her Ravenclaw scarf all autumn and winter long and posts scathing Instagram stories about the cafeteria food. But she’s powerfully kind and very ambitious, taking on a part time job tutoring kids with dyslexia in their reading and writing. 

Susan: midwife. Think having a baby is scary? Try crossing Nurse Grimshaw. She’s here now, and that baby is coming out of you one way or another. She’ll hold your hand through thick and thin but if you dare say “I can’t do it” one more time she’ll unleash hell. Susan will make sure everyone has a job to do. Partner just standing there like a lemon? Not on her watch. She’s harsh but kind to her trainees and will always offer a cup of coffee and a shoulder to cry on, but there’s a time and place for slacking and it’s not on her labour ward. 

Trelawny: talent agent. Our Josiah is cunning, infuriatingly charismatic and with an eye for the best of the best - what else could he do so effortlessly? He’ll wrangle you a 10 second role as a latrine cleaner in a non-profit film and he’ll still make you feel like the next DiCaprio. You’re a diamond, don’t you know? Of course you could nab Elphaba, we’ll worry about the singing later. How do you feel about cat food commercials? No no, it’s not pornography, it really is cat food this time - he double checked. On top of this, he knows everyone in the business. No, really. He can’t move 3 feet down Broadway without someone booming his name. The tone of said boom depends, of course, but who hasn’t been caught with his bottom out in that director’s wife’s en-suite? 

Sean: outdoor activity centre instructor. You mean you can actually get paid to swim in lakes, ride ziplines through the forest and eat roasted marshmallows?! Sean couldn’t believe his ears. But it was true, and he’s living his best life. He may be on his penultimate warning for unruly behaviour, but he knows he could never really get fired. How could they? Everyone loves him. And to his credit, he’s a fantastic instructor, especially with kids. Everything from canoeing to caving, wild swimming to climbing, Sean has mastered it all and he always makes it fun. No one is allowed to feel left out or silly for not being able to do something. Sean has a way of making everyone feel included, even if you can only make it up the first few rungs of the ladder. Hey, that’s still off the ground! He once knew this feller Bill who cried because a moth flew into his face. You’re doing fine. 

Mary-Beth: librarian and YA author. Sweet Mary-Beth, how could she be anywhere else but surrounded by books? She adores her job at her small, local library and is always looking for ways to make it even better. She often gets tangled up in the stories she reads whilst organising shelves, but it’s quiet enough most days that she’s rarely caught. She loves helping people find their books or recommending her favourites. She also runs the toddler storytime groups and a writing club for older kids. Of course, she’s also writing her own books. The first of her ‘Valentine Mysteries’ books made a modest profit and she’s excited to write more about the adventures of Leslie Dupont. 

Karen: actress. Realising that she had a knack for accents and even after an especially successful high school lead role as Roxy Hart, Karen didn’t really acknowledge her would-be passion for acting for a long time. But she used her talents to get herself and her friends into X-rated films, dive bars and successfully pull off dozens of prank calls. It wasn’t until one of her friends was going to an open-call audition for a short film and wanted someone to go with her that Karen had her epithany. She was cast on the spot, much to the dismay of her friend. Since then, she’s been in a handful of arthouse films, a commercial here and there, and recently enjoyed a short run as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small theatre downtown. Does she want fame and fortune? Honestly, she hasn’t really thought about it. Right now, she’s just enjoying the ride. And the phone numbers left for her at front of house from many admirers. 

Strauss: financial loan adviser. Oh boy, perhaps you saw this one coming. Then again, maybe not. Old Leopold isn’t quite the two-pronged-tongued eldritch horror people often mistake him for. In fact, he actually advises people against loan sharks. He had his fair share of debts y’see and he genuinely doesn’t want anyone else to go through the same thing. He’s not exactly sweet and cuddly, but he might let you have a free pen if you call by his office. I mean, technically they’re not free but...never mind, just take it. 

Bill: plumber. It was purely accidental that Bill bashed his way into his career. No, really. His sink was blocked and after an hour of poking and prodding the pipes he started hitting the poor thing with a spanner out of pure frustration, cursing all the way. To his shock, it worked, and he suddenly had running water again. What shocked him more is that he realised he wanted to know how. So, he bought a book. And he read the book. And one thing led to another, and now he’s the proud owner of Williamson Plumbing Inc. The money is very good, but for Bill that’s not it. You have to understand that for him, it’s the act itself of fixing something that brings Bill immense satisfaction. And Bill isn’t used to knowing more about something - anything - than those around him. For the first time perhaps in his life, he can sit down, solve a problem, and know that he’s done a good job. 

Swanson: AA group leader. After getting completely sober almost a decade ago and staying that way, Orville wanted to give something back to the people who had helped him out so greatly. Becoming a volunteer to help those who were trapped where he was seemed like the only path, and it felt so right. Orville is there in meetings, making coffee, handing out donuts and training new volunteers. If anyone wants to talk about their faith he’s all ears, but he never pushes it as a cure-all in any situation. Orville’s sobriety has also meant that he’s learnt to make the most phenomenal mocktails. 

Pearson: grocery shop manager and cooking teacher. Simon has his small grocery shop on the edge of town which has a wide range of regular customers. But he wanted to do more, so he set up a small class to teach fellow veterans how to cook. His wife helps out, and they grow the ingredients together in their garden and down at the allotment. It’s just an therapeutic for him as it is for his students, as he’s only just realising how much he wants to talk about his time in the navy. 

Uncle: unknown. For the longest time, everyone thought Uncle worked at one of the worst dive bars in town, as whenever they stumbled in for a nightcap he was there, behind the bar, happy as a pig in shit. Turns out that he just started going there one night and no one could get him to leave. And so every evening he’ll appear like a phantom, sit himself in the half-broken chair behind the bar (clearly labelled “not for customer use”), order the cheapest beer on the menu and sit there until midnight. No one can understand how he gets the means to live as he ragingly denies receiving any government handouts despite his lumbago. Claims to be a veteran but hasn’t fought in any wars anyone has heard of. 

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #john marston #dutch van der linde #hosea matthews #sadie adler #javier escuella #charles smith #micah bell #abigail roberts #molly o'shea #kieran duffy #lenny summers #tilly jackson #susan grimshaw #josiah trelawny #sean macguire #mary-beth gaskill #karen jones #leopold strauss #bill williamson #orville swanson #simon pearson #uncle #headcanon #rdr2 modern au #long post

[96thdayofrage]

The mental and physical impacts of solitary confinement have been clear for two centuries. In 1829, Pennsylvania Quakers opened the first prison designed for solitary, hoping to inspire reflection in the inmates. Instead, many went crazy or committed suicide. Thirteen years later, Charles Dickens made his first trip to America, and after seeing it first hand, solitary confinement shocked a writer whose bleak perspective inspired an adjective for intolerable suffering. “He is a man buried alive,” he wrote.

In the century and a half since, multiple international agreements have codified the practice as inhumane. In 2011, Juan Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture — who was himself jailed and tortured by the Argentinean military dictatorship for more than a year in the 1970s — declared that more than 15 days in solitary constitutes torture.

“Solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture,” wrote Jeffrey L. Metzner and Jamie Fellnerin in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, in a paper about the medical ethics of physicians who participate in punitive isolation measures.

According to a report by Citizens for Prison Reform, there are 3,200 people in isolation in Michigan for more than 20 hours a day among the state prison population, like Richard Goddard, who has been in isolation for 47 years; James Miller, who has been segregated from the general population for about 36; and Daniel Henry, for 12. Clarence Henderon, who at 67 had been in isolation has been confined to a wheelchair due to severe arthritis. He allegedly goes months without going outside. “It’s just torture,” says Mario Lee, who goes by the name Akesi and has been incarcerated since 2005, currently serving time at the Ionia Correctional Facility.

Chris Gautz, a spokesperson for the MDOC, denies that the department regularly keeps inmates in solitary confinement for years. (A request for comment on the whereabouts of the individuals in Silenced was forwarded to the state’s FOIA office, and we’ll update if we hear back). “As of February of this year, there was one prisoner who has been in [administrative segregation] for more than one year, but less than two, out of 32,000 prisoners,” Gautz said. But Jessica Sandoval, senior campaign strategist with the national Unlock the Box campaign, says the MDOC fudges those numbers by labeling isolation a variety of technical terms, like Mental Health Unit; Observation; temporary segregation. And Alternative to Segregation (START program).

Akesi, who was recently moved to the START program, says the difference is meaningless. “The program is classified as general population. In reality, it’s administrative [segregation]. The only distinguishing features is that we are required to attend and participate in one hour of group therapy sessions once a week,” he says. “On the other hand, the similarities to seg are many. We are allowed one hour of outdoor recreation five days a week, confined to individual enclosures with concrete floors and enclosed by a steel and wire mesh cage.” He says they’re denied access to any congregate activities including religious services. “We spend between 23 and 24 hours per day in our cells. By no stretch of the imagination can the department of corrections claim that this program is general population or otherwise an alternative to segregation.”

“As social (i.e. human beings) one of the most severe punishments humanly possible that society can mete out to a human is to banish and condemn us to the tombs for the living — or otherwise subject us to extreme social isolation and sensory deprivation,” Akesi wrote in 2020 from the Ionia Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan. “It’s endless torture, psychological and physical.”

“This is the techno jargon that keeps the system opaque. All these euphemisms are for essentially solitary confinement,” Sandoval says. She says anything that forces an inmate to stay in isolation for longer than sleeping hours should be defined as solitary. (Gautz told Rolling Stone he didn’t have that information and forwarded the query to the department’s FOIA office.) The Michigan Department of Corrections counts 835 inmates in administrative, or long-term segregation, and 130 in punitive solitary detention, as a short term punishment. The race breakdown is stark: more than 70 percent of inmates placed in long term solitary are Black.

The prisoners’ descriptions are remarkably consistent: they describe severe mental health problems arising from solitary, from hallucinations to paranoia to suicidal ideation. One inmate reports losing his vision after staring at nothing in the near distance for so long. Another, Williams says, was screaming on the phone; he’d forgotten how to talk at a normal volume.

Williams points out that it’s not just the “worst of the worst” being held in isolation — Hannibal Lecters who would wreak havoc if they weren’t segregated. Inmates can get thrown in the hole for any reason, she says, or no reason at all. She claims it’s entirely based on the whim of the guards. “One man was sent to isolation unit after knocking over a glass of water,” she claims. (Gautz, the MDOC spokesperson, denied that guards put prisoners in solitary without due process or a just reason.)

Williams also notes that many facilities are in rural, almost entirely white towns: in some cases, the prison is the main industry. “You’re taking Black people to extremely isolated places. The town survives off of these Black bodies.”

“The further you go up North… its like some parts of the South in the 50’s and 60’s,” writes inmate Andraus McCloud. “The KKK turned in their robes for MDOC uniforms,” writes inmate Anthony Richardson. “Nobody is watching while they do their hate practices.”

When Danielle Dunn, a real estate broker, spoke to her little brother, 38-year-old Jonathan Lancaster, in February of 2019, he whispered the entire time. “There was a change in his voice. Clearly he was having mental health issues,” she tells Rolling Stone. Lancaster had been thrown in solitary after a scuffle with another inmate, and had become increasingly paranoid. “He was saying there was gas pumped into his cell. That his food was being poisoned. I said, ‘Are you OK? It sounds like you’re cracking up a little bit.” Lancaster got silent, Dunn recalls. “Then he whispered again, ‘They’re going to kill me.’”

Even as Lancaster started losing weight and continued to act erratically — he suffered from a variety of mental illnesses, his sister says, including schizophrenia — his sister alleges that prison staff failed to get Lancaster proper medical treatment. He began to hallucinate, crouch in the fetal position, and refused food and water. The Detroit Free Press reported that he lost 26 percent of his body weight in three weeks, dropping 51 pounds, according to the lawsuit.

“They didn’t even know why he was still in solitary confinement,” Dunn says. She begged staff to give him proper care but claims she was told he was “physically fine.” March 8th, 2019, he was pepper sprayed and put in an observation room, where he didn’t have access to water, according to the lawsuit. On March 11th, they cleared him for a hospital visit. Early that morning, they strapped him into a restraint chair and left him in his cell for several hours. At 12:50 he was found unresponsive and later declared dead. (Lancaster’s family is suing MDOC staff for wrongful death; Gautz declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.)

“My brother was severely tortured,” Dunn says, tearing up. “They beat him. There were bruises all over him. Pepper sprayed, beat, when he was unresponsive. They sat there and they literally watched him suffer and die.” Her mother was put in a mental health hospital. “It’s all but killed my mother. She’s suffering terribly.”

“The cruelty, leaving him to die in his own waste, suffering,” Dunn says, of her brother.

Surviving in solitary can be its own cruelty. Daniel Henry has spent more than a decade in segregation and, he says, he’s been told he’s never getting out. “It’s been a long 12 years in solitary at ICF and I have learned so much about the darker side of human nature and how cruel people can become when there is no real accountability or oversight,” Henry wrote to Willams. “I have also learned a lot about myself. And I’ve met many people in here and out there who have taught me how to sympathize with the next man’s pain and suffering.”

“Other countries do not utilize solitary confinement like we do let alone incarcerate their citizens for such lengthy sentences that virtually remove any hope for a future life outside of the criminal justice system,” Henry added.

He, and others, worry about Richard Goddard, who’s spent almost 50 years in isolation. “The man is the most kind, caring and humble human being I’ve ever met and he clearly presents no threat to either himself or the MDOC any longer,” says Henry. “The appearance is that they want us to suffer as much as possible on top of being confined to a small space for years.”

Williams hopes to turn outrage over conditions into action; the website has a “Take Action” page that lets people share their stories and lobby political leaders, like Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

“I am hoping that public pressure makes the MDOC admit that there’s a huge problem, and actually work toward fixing it,” she tells Rolling Stone.

She wishes elected officials could really see the conditions they perpetuate with their inaction. “I want legislators to visit these prisons in July or August, to step inside of a segregation cell and close the door when it’s over 100 degrees and see how long they last.”

[armeniaitn]

A Tremendous Milestone on the Road to Justice

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/society/a-tremendous-milestone-on-the-road-to-justice-72603-26-04-2021/

A Tremendous Milestone on the Road to Justice

ANCA-WR Chair Nora Hovsepian Esq. speaks at a press conference hosted by Rep. Adam Schiff at Burbank City Hall on April 24

Moments after President Joe Biden recognized the Armenian Genocide on Saturday, Rep. Adam Schiff kicked off an already planned press conference on the steps of Burbank City Hall, to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, but also to gather some of his Congressional colleagues who have supported efforts for U.S. recognition of the crime.

Joining Schiff at the press conference were Representatives Judy Chu (D-Pasadena), Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) and Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), each of whom has played a role in advancing justice for the Armenian Genocide in Congress. They each spoke of the significance of Biden’s recognition as it applied to the current realities in Armenia and Artsakh.

[embedded content]

Also speaking at the press conference were California State Senator Anthony Portantino, State Assemblymember Laura Friedman, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, Burbank Mayor Bob Frutos and Burbank Board of Education member Dr. Armond Aghakhanian among others.

Schiff had invited Nora Hovsepian, the Chair of the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region to address the gathering on behalf of the thousands of Armenian-American activists and community members whose relentless efforts came to fruition with the presidential recognition of the Genocide.

In a moving speech, Hovsepian not only acknowledged the important milestone, but also thanked those who have carried the torch of justice in Congress, especially Adam Schiff, who for more than two decades has been a staunch advocate of Armenian Genocide recognition in Congress and by the president.

Below is the entire text of Hovsepian’s speech at Saturday’s press conference.

Thank you Congressman Schiff for giving me the opportunity on this historic day to represent the voice of the Armenian-American community.

After 106 years of persistent struggle, the Armenian-American community has finally reached a tremendous milestone on the road to justice. Today as we honor the victims of the Armenian Genocide, we also give thanks to all those who helped us reach this point – from our allies and supporters in Congress such as our four amazing representatives here today, to the media which helps educate the public, to our hundreds of thousands of activists and coalition partners who continue to relentlessly pursue a just resolution and accountability for this unpunished Crime Against Humanity.

I think I can speak for virtually every Armenian when I say that it feels like a huge weight has finally been lifted from our shoulders – a heavy burden we have borne all our lives passed down through generations by our grandparents who came to these shores as orphans after losing their entire families while the perpetrator walked away with impunity. For too long, we were silenced by government officials who for political expediency ignored their own history. For too long, we have had to deal with grief, despair, anger, and trauma.

But there have been glimmers of hope along the way. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan uttered the words “Armenian Genocide” during a Holocaust Remembrance Day event. Alas, it did not become official US policy.

Next came recognition by 49 of the 50 US states, many of them calling on the federal government to do the same. Still it did not happen. In 2019, the near-unanimous congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide in both the House and Senate finally altered the course of US policy at least for the legislative branch, for which we are so grateful.

Our most vocal proponents of truth and justice, led by Congressman Adam Schiff, kept the issue alive year after year, confronting Turkish apologists, and calling out each Administration, Republican and Democrat, for allowing Turkey to have a veto over American foreign policy, and for their weakness in letting the Turkish dictator Erdogan and his predecessors bully them into using euphemisms to describe what they always knew was genocide.

That is, until now.

President Joe Biden, who for decades in the Senate was a strong proponent of Armenian Genocide recognition, who as Vice President attended the centennial memorial service for its 1.5 million victims at the National Cathedral, and who pledged last year to support Armenian Genocide recognition like many candidates before him, actually took the bold step of doing the right thing by rejecting Turkey’s gag rule, disengaging the U.S. from Turkey’s ongoing denial campaign, and delivering to us this hard-fought long-awaited victory on the road to justice, as government-wide US recognition has now become complete and unequivocal.

Today the ANCA Western Region has sent an invitation to President Biden to come to Los Angeles to give our community the opportunity to express its profound gratitude to him for being the first and only modern US President to affirm America’s vast historical record on the Armenian Genocide. We hope he will accept our invitation in the near future.

The President’s announcement is even more poignant now, in the wake of the 44-day war unleashed jointly last fall by Turkey and its ally Azerbaijan against Armenia and Artsakh, and it puts the historical record of 1915 into present-day context. You see, Turkey’s genocidal intent toward Armenians has never ended. We hear it in Erdogan’s promise to “finish what [his] grandfathers started.” We hear it in Aliyev’s threats to take all Armenian lands by force. We witness it in their intentional destruction of ancient Armenian churches, cemeteries and monuments. They try even now to rid the area of Armenians and to erase any trace of thousands of years of Armenian heritage.

They commit war crimes, torture prisoners of war, capture civilians, destroy Armenian towns and villages, teach their children to hate, and build dehumanizing trophy parks all with impunity, emboldened by the silence of western leaders and fueled by their ultra-nationalist pan-Turkic aspirations. So it was in 1915, and so it is today.

So beyond the immense symbolic value of US recognition of the Armenian Genocide to set the historical record straight, this recognition finally ends the era of US complicity in Turkey’s denial, safeguards Armenians’ right to exist against ongoing threats of annihilation, promotes the right of Armenia and Artsakh to exist in peace without threat of invasion, sends a message to dictators around the world that their aggression will no longer be met with silence and trepidation, and finally opens the door to truth, accountability and most of all, justice.

On behalf of the ANCA Western Region, its local chapters, volunteers, activists, and the Armenian-American community it represents, I want to express our profound gratitude to Members of Congress Adam Schiff, Judy Chu, Tony Cardenas, Jimmy Gomez and their hundreds of colleagues for the courage you have all shown our community. We are honored to have you represent us, and we are grateful to you all.

Read original article here.

#Armenia #Armenians #Artsakh #Society

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained. By Colin Dickey. New York: Viking, 2020.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: non-fiction

Part of a Series? No

Summary: In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: references to nuclear war, racism, cultural appropriation

Since this book is non-fiction, my review won’t follow my usual format. See my complete thoughts below.

I really enjoyed Dickey’s book, Ghostland, so I was excited to see how the author would take on cryptids, aliens, and other fringe beliefs. This book didn’t disappoint. What I loved about Ghostland was the emphasis on the “whys” - why do people believe in ghosts? Why does the architecture of this house seem off? Why do certain places feel “haunted”? The Unidentified takes up similar questions; Dickey is no so much interested in debunking belief in Bigfoot or claims of government conspiracies (though he does do that, briefly) than he is examining how they came about and why they endured. In that respect, I found this book fascinating. Dickey’s argument that many of these fringe beliefs (as we know them today) have roots in the political and social climate of the 20th century is extremely compelling, and he expertly highlights certain patterns that make fringe beliefs seem less the result of delusional individuals and more a reaction to change.

One thing I appreciated was that Dickey didn’t beat around the bush when it came to identifying racist and appropriative aspects of fringe beliefs. If a description of an extra-terrestrial encounter seemed to reinscribe conservative or white supremacist values, for example, Dickey was quick to point it out. If a cryptid bore resemblance to an Indigenous legend or figure, Dickey would highlight how settler colonialism was partially responsible. Dickey never used euphemisms to water down these observations, and I appreciated his bluntness and refusal to let believers escape criticism.

I do think, however, that many of his points get buried in his overview of history. Don’t get me wrong, I love history, but I think it can obscure the author’s own voice, and at times, it certainly did so in this book. I also think the book could have benefited from some images, though I do realize that so many images of cryptids and UFOs are low quality and difficult to replicate in print.

Nevertheless, The Unidentified is a well-researched, accessible read for anyone wanting to learn about the historical context of the rise in fringe belief systems. I wouldn’t recommend this book to those wanting a collection of stories about certain cryptids, or a through debunking of each and every UFO sighting, but I would recommend this book if you’re interested in 20th century history (especially American history) and cultural phenomena.

#book reviews

[jeanjauthor]

Do you have any tip for recognize what your love language for giving and receiving please ? I have no clue due to being autistic / being from an abusive household / being the eldest daughter ( trained to pick up after others / serve since childhood ) . I don’t know what they are and it’s driving me crazy.

This is an excellent, important question to ask. You recognize that what you’ve been *taught* to do isn’t necessarily *your* love language.  With the background you’ve described, knowing this about yourself is super-important for *reclaiming* yourself.  (Also, I am very proud of you for facing these things.)

Now, I’m no expert, but I have observed a lot over the years, and thought a lot about the Love Languages, too.  So here are my thoughts: 

First, the big Caveat:  Your love language may actually be Acts of Service, but it’ll have been warped by the abusive constraints you grew up under.  This is actually worse than most people would assume--you’ve been forced to give what you would’ve given for free if you’d had a choice, but you didn’t have much of a choice.

Whether or not Acts of Service is your love language in the end...that alone makes it a consent violation.  Emotional consent violations are more insidiously, subtly traumatizing--not necessarily worse, but definitely more difficult to observe, confirm, confront, & recover from.  So finding out that your primary love language has been manipulated and used against you may be...disturbing...to learn.  (If you can afford competent counseling, I strongly recommend it--and yes, don’t hesitate to try different counselors if the first or second or however many don’t feel like a good match.)

It could be something else--with five major categories to choose from, you got four other possibilities.  You may have need to receive love in a different language from AoS, but have been taught (polite euphemism) to give love only in the one way you were demanded most often to express.

You could also have multiple love languages, and that multitude can express itself in different ways with different people. I myself am bilingual, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. I’m lucky in that I was never forced to give AoS, but it makes it a little more difficult at times to know which of the two I need at any given moment, because it’s not always easy to tell.  Plus, there are just some people I will never be comfortable receiving PT from, though AoS is fine.

I even know of one couple who expressed & received love in all 5 categories, and both felt satisfied with each kind, making it difficult to tell if they had a primary...until I asked them how they liked giving & receiving with others. They had actually ended up unconsciously tailoring how they expressed love to specific other people (children, grandchildren) according to that other person’s needs.  Now, I’m not saying this couple is perfect (they’re drama hounds in some ways, and if things are going too smoothly, they’ll stir the pot a bit). They’re just an example of how you can receive in one language (or several) and give in other languages.

With that said, the best way to figure it out is to take the 5 Love Languages tests:  https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/

These are comparative tests, always pairing up two different Love Language ways to express oneself and asking you to pick the one that more suits you.

There are no wrong answers.

As someone who is also on the spectrum colorwheel (I love the analogy a tumblr user came up for describing it!), I want you to know that it is not only okay to be unsure about your answers, but that you can actually get a better idea of your Love Languages by taking the test multiple times, and swapping out the answers you weren’t sure about.  Keep track of your scores, and whenever you run across a quiz that gives you point totals for each category, compare the point totals.

Why? Because not all those bilingual in Love Languages will be equally bilingual 100% of the time (or 50-50, lol).  More importantly, as you become more self-aware of your past habits and work to release yourself from their chains, the more your Love Languages may change.  It is also important to realize that you can become fluent in a language not normally your own, if you are emotionally invested in the person you are expressing that language to, and are aware of how they receive it & react to it--in other words, this is a very real case of “learning to taking pleasure from other people’s happiness.”

Also, as we grow and learn and change (which life makes us do simply by existing & interacting with the world), sometimes our Love Language(s) may shift a bit.  Again, this is perfectly natural and normal.  There are no wrong answers.

One of the ways that our Love Languages can shift is--after trauma and/or abuse--our ability to give & receive love can actually weaken, and even wither.  A lot of that has to do with being protective, defensive, in an emotionally hostile environment.  Some of that, however--as many of us have learned over the last handful of months--may have come about as a result of quarantine isolation. 

For those of us who already have difficulty with social interactions (autism spectrum, ADHD, anxiety, depression, etc), isolation worsens our ability to pick up on social cues, even to the point of having difficulty noticing social cues, which includes noticing LL interactions. And as with physical starvation, love starvation can get us reduced to the point where we no longer notice how hungry we are for loving interactions.

But most importantly, not everyone will have the same dialect, or sub-dialect, of Love Language.  For example, your LL may be Physical Touch, but if those who abused you constantly put a heavy hand on your shoulder, gripping it with bruising strength, being touched on your shoulder will automatically give you a negative reaction by association.

I personally don’t like holding hands. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But I am definitely an elbows-interlocked person, because that feels much more natural to me.  Or if you’re trying to give someone a Gift with that LL, the type of gift you give may or may not make them feel loved.

It’s like the stereotypical joke of the husband giving the wife a new vacuum cleaner for their birthday.  Even if Gifts are her main LL, the gift of a vacuum cleaner comes with a burden of expectations...and if her secondary Love Language is Acts of Service...?  Unless she asked for it as a gift choice (or spoke about getting a new one positively in some way)...that’s really not gonna be a good gift.

(Even then, offering to use it yourself to tidy the house so the burden isn’t 100% on her shoulders is going to be received positively by most folks...unless they have house-cleaning-based OCD, in which case, ask first, and work with them to accommodate what you can, to reduce stress in your partner. Also, some people might genuinely like things like a new vacuum cleaner if they know that the giver is aware their Love Language is Acts of Service, or bilingually AoS and Gifts...but again, if you aren’t completely sure...ask.)

With all of that said and carefully considered, you probably have a long road ahead of you, untangling your past from your present, and untangling your burdensome expectations from your actual desires.  But that’s okay.

Again, there are no wrong answers.

This isn’t a math equation. Your answers do not have to match each time you take a Love Language test.  Not even if you turn around and take it again five minutes after your first run-through.  And don’t hesitate to re-take it once a week or once a month, and ask yourself if your feelings about each question or suggestion has changed.  Just be in the moment, in that moment, and consider your answers in that particular moment.

It may even be helpful to keep a little journal, a .doc file or something, with your thoughts on the questions and answers on a given date.  Write down or otherwise make a note of any questions that seemed particularly important to you, or particularly ambivalent (in which case, write down both suggestions for later review).

Definitely don’t be afraid to go back over your previous results.

There are no wrong answers.

You are a living, growing being, constantly changing as you encounter new thoughts, new ideas, new situations.  When we look at this situation in that light...how could there possibly be any “right answer” without it being solely a “right now” answer?

Again, you have a lot to unpack, a lot to decompress, a lot to escape, a lot to re-explore once you can shed more of the burdens of your past.  These things will take time...which sucks when you want to know now...but that’s alright.  Again, there are no wrong answers, since what you learn today only applies to today.  Come back in a week, re-examine everything, and see how you feel then.

Whatever your Love Language(s) might be, I’m genuinely proud of you for being aware of the impositions of your past, and wanting to know what’s ahead of you for your future.  Just one last thought to consider:  Don’t feel you have to only ever give-and-receive in one specific Love Language, if you discover a particular one.

Bilingualism can help you and an important person in your life bond together that much more, if you know or or at least can guess fairly readily what their own LL might be.  My mother’s LL is Quality Time, and I interconnect with her through Acts of Service by choosing to do things with her, while being mindful to chat with her, joke & laugh with her, etc.  We could do chores together, we could go traveling together...the important thing is that we connect together.  And no, it doesn’t have to be applied to your own mother; your own family relationships are your own, and probably won’t be solved by so simple an answer.

Me, I’m retaking the Singles Quiz from the above linked website right now, because I just realized it’s been over a year since I took it, and I’ve been through a lot, emotionally & mentally, over the last year-plus...and that’s without adding the decade-long year-from-hell that has been 2020 so far.

Remember, you’re a living, growing, and thus potentially ever-changing being.  Sometimes that growth & change is to become more of something.  Sometimes it’s a change away from one thing and more toward another, or more toward a state of neutrality/equilibrium...and again there are no wrong answers.  Sometimes you may need to return to neutral equilibrium, so you can recover from the burdens of your past, regain the room to resume your true shape...and regain the room to figure out what that true inner shape (or Love Language) truly is.

*piles prepackaged hugs by your front door*

You are worthy of love, you are worthy of giving love, and you are most definitely worthy of receiving love.  Ideally in all the ways that satisfy your need to be loved fully.  Good luck with the tests--and I say that solely because you’re going to be ambiguous about some of the choices.  We all feel that way, on certain subjects on certain days.  Remember...

There are no wrong answers.

#hrmm...looks like I've picked up Quality Time as well as the other two #more or less one third each with a smidge in the last two categories

[socialjusticeartshare]

Stephen Miller and those who enabled him must be investigated and prosecuted

At the meeting, Miller accused anyone opposing zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, “Conspiracy” is a 2001 BBC/HBO film addressing the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference in which General Reinhard Heydrich, upon orders of Adolf Hitler, convened a group of fifteen high-ranking German officials to set forth the parameters of what became known as “The Final Solution,” the comprehensive and systematic plan to exterminate all Jews from the continent of Europe. Only one written record of the proceedings at Wannsee, a locality abutting a lakeside in Western Berlin, survived the war, and it is largely from this written summary (prepared from transcripts of the meeting by Adolf Eichmann) that the film is based.

The most chilling aspect of this film is the banal manner in which the subject is discussed, the euphemisms employed (“evacuation” rather than “extermination” being a typical example), the jocular mannerisms of several of the participants and in particular, their susceptibility to the intimidation of Heydrich as well as representatives of the Nazi SS present at the conference, held in a beautiful lakeside villa and catered with liveried servants.

The juxtaposition of fifteen men sitting around an oval-shaped conference table, alternately breaking for refreshments and wine, then returning to discuss the logistical necessities, facts and figures relating to the identification and classification of Jews, the proposed means of transport for their “evacuation” and ultimately the efficiencies of various means of murdering them, is beyond jarring—it’s fairly horrifying. The acting (Heydrich is played by Kenneth Branagh; Wilhelm Stuckart, the author of the Third Reich’s racial laws, is played by Colin Firth, and Adolf Eichmann by Stanley Tucci) is superior and riveting; you forget rather quickly that the entirety of the action revolves around a seemingly dry bureaucratic discussion around a conference table.

But probably the most unnerving thing, chills aside, about the film is the degree to which a group of people can come to a mutual accommodation towards evil, when that evil is presented and explicated as a means to an end that all of them desire.

In the Trump administration we are not, as far as is currently known, dealing with anything anywhere close to the realm of evil that occurred at Wannsee, but as the media fixate obsessively on the aftermath of the 2020 election and the continuing antics of Donald Trump and other Republicans denying the result of that election, certain things done, and certain actions taken by this administration in our name over the past four years, actions which likewise had their genesis in dry, bureaucratic conferences between highly placed American officials, should not be forgotten or allowed to “slip through the cracks.’ Because the evil that they represent—though not on the par with systematic genocide of the Nazis—should be no less unforgivable and intolerable.

In 2018, the current administration held a meeting, doubtlessly around an oblong conference table, in which it was calmly determined to forcibly and permanently separate children, many as young as babies, from their parents after those parents had been stopped following unlawfully crossing– or attempting to cross–over the border into the United States from Mexico.

As reported by NBC News:

WASHINGTON — In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room, where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.

The meeting was held at the instigation of one of Donald Trump’s senior policy advisors, Stephen Miller, who was unquestionably operating to implement the specific policy aims of Donald Trump. Miller’s rabid xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric had by that time (and has still) conferred upon him the unusual distinction of being one of the few members of Trump’s inner circle to have kept his position throughout Trump’s entire tenure.

As the NBC news report explains, the U.S. Justice Department under the orders of Jeff Sessions had already implemented Miller’s preferred “zero tolerance” policy towards prosecuting any undocumented immigrants captured crossing the U.S. border, a radical departure from decades of prior practice covering multiple U.S. administrations. Yet, as Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff of NBC News reported, the forced separation between parents and their young children had not yet been put into place.  According to the report, Miller was “furious at the delay,” and had convened a meeting to emphasize his authority.

Those present at the meeting were Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. According to NBC’s sources,  other participants may have included White House counsel Don McGahn, Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell, and representatives of Vice President Pence’s office.

Nielsen, much like several of the participants at Wannsee nearly eighty years ago, had some issues she wanted to air out concerning the logistics. Specifically, she bemoaned the fact that DHS had insufficient resources to implement the separation process, in which children so taken from their parents would be removed to isolated separate facilities. Hers were practical objections, and she noted that the ability of her agency to ultimately return these essentially kidnapped children to their parents was in doubt. She warned that the process could “get messy,” and could end up in children getting “lost” in a system of holding pens, without any recourse.

These complaints did not find a willing audience in Miller, who not only did not perceive any inherent moral issues with separating children from their parents, but in fact wanted to accelerate and expand the process, so that such separated children would ultimately number in the tens of thousands.

The NBC report gives no doubt as to who was in charge of driving the policy:

At the meeting, Miller accused anyone opposing zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” Miller said, according to the two officials. It was not unusual for Miller to make claims like that, but this time he was adamant that the policy move forward, regardless of arguments about resources and logistics.

Around the same time, the Justice Department was given a similar mandate by Attorney General Sessions, one which was echoed and embellished by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. As reported in October, 2020, by the New York Times:

“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”

Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

Back at the Cabinet meeting, a frustrated and angry Miller accused Nielsen of “stalling” and demanded that all present demonstrate their loyalty to the policy by a show of hands. Incidentally, the participants at Wannsee were also required to voice their assent for “the policy,” which they dutifully affirmed with varying degrees of enthusiasm (this is one of the more gut-churning events in the film).

With the exception of Nielsen, who still clung to her logistical objections, all hands went up.

Spokesmen for both the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services have denied this “vote” actually occurred. NBC stands by its story. DHS and the State Department have referred all inquiries about the meeting to the White House, and the key Cabinet officials involved, Nielsen and Sessions have refused comment.

In other words, they can’t or won’t confirm one simple point—was there, in fact, such a vote?

Thus did our lawfully elected government enter on a course that at this count, has left over 600 children permanently separated from their parents, trapped in holding cells at locations scattered throughout the United States.

As reported by the NBC, that number is even higher than Trump administration officials previously acknowledged.

Lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by the Trump administration before and during its “zero tolerance” policy at the border now believe the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents is 666, higher than they told a federal judge last month, according to an email obtained by NBC News.

Nearly 20 percent, or 129, of those children were under 5 at the time of the separation, according to a source familiar with the data.

The issue of immigration has been the touchstone of this administration’s domestic policy since the days of the 2016 campaign. It has been used as both a weapon, an excuse and a bludgeon against Trump’s political opponents. The evidence clearly indicates that the policy of forcibly separating children from their parents was instituted and ordered by persons at the highest levels of this administration. They are therefore—in theory at the very least—amenable to prosecution, possibly for crimes against humanity.

At the very minimum, immediately upon the inauguration of Joseph Biden as President, the Congress should instigate hearings and the Justice Department should initiate an investigation for potential prosecution and criminal or civil liability of those responsible for this inhumane and abhorrent policy decision and its implementation.

Thank you to all who already support our work since we could not exist without your generosity. If you have not already, please consider supporting us on Patreon to ensure we can continue bringing you the best of independent journalism.

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#procecute #prosecute stephen miller #prosecute enablers #separated children

[starringemiliaclarke]

Press: Emilia Clarke interview: the Game of Thrones star on leaving Westeros behind to tackle the West End

Emilia Clarke interview: the Game of Thrones star on leaving Westeros behind to tackle the West End

Clarke, who now stars in Chekhov’s The Seagull, tells Louis Wise that the HBO fantasy series made her feel like a ‘small cog in a big machine’

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PHOTOSHOOTS & OUTTAKES > 2020 > 2020 The Sunday Times

MAGAZINES > 2020 > 2020 The Sunday Times Culture Magazine – March 15

  The Times: Emilia Clarke says she views herself primarily as a stage actress, which is a little weird when you consider that she has only appeared in one play professionally before, and it was an absolute turkey. Or, as the 33-year-old star of Game of Thrones says, in her jolly British way, it was “terrible, awful, awful! Bad! That was a bad show!” The piece was Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway in 2013, and it’s safe to say Clarke’s Holly Golightly did not enchant. “I’ll never forget, someone said to me after press night the only thing they liked was the cat.”

If Clarke relays this with surprising good humour, this is part temperament, part experience. For one thing, in person she is relentlessly chipper and pukka. Whereas on HBO’s mega-fantasy series Game of Thrones, she grew in stature as Daenerys Targaryen, a still, dignified stateswoman (until that end), in real life she is a goofy motormouth chatterbox, always eager to catch the joke at her expense. And she is no stranger to what we shall politely call “the mixed review”. She has known some drubbings, whether for that Broadway show, or films such as Last Christmas or Terminator Genisys, or indeed the final series of GoT, which — euphemism alert! — didn’t quite turn out the way everybody wanted.

Luckily she never reads reviews. “Because if it’s really, really good, someone will tell you. And if it’s really, really bad — some f***** will tell you.”

We are meeting today, though, at a rehearsal space in south London, because she is chucking herself back into the fray. For only her second stage appearance, Clarke is going straight into the West End, in Chekhov’s The Seagull, and taking on the prestigious role of Nina. If she is nervous, she’s handling it in the usual way, which is to say with huge blasts of good cheer.

Two clichés about meeting starsis that they are a) smaller than you thought, but b) their features are stronger than expected. Both are true of Clarke. She is tiny, proper Kylie-tiny, nicely decked out in a gauzy beige-cream knit, some fashionably frayed jeans and pointy, well-worn white cowboy boots. Yet her eyes and grin look extra big: if she stays still, she’s a dainty doll, but as soon as she moves it’s Looney Tunes. To be clear, she never stays still.

This energy feels helpful, as we have a lot to pack in. After all, Clarke’s past decade has been particularly wild. Not only did she rocket suddenly to fame in GoT (until then, her only screen credit was an episode of Doctors), she also lost her father to cancer in 2016 and, as she revealed in 2019, had suffered a sequence of brain haemorrhages in her early twenties, just as the madness of GoT was kicking off.

In private, she experienced various exhausting surgeries at the same time as becoming one of pop culture’s favourite mascots, scrutinised relentlessly on a moral, artistic and very physical level. She recalls being in hospital recovering from an operation and picking up a newspaper. “I was, like, ‘I’m going to see if I can read it,’” she says. “And I was, like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a review of the show. And, oh God, they are just talking about how fat my arse is.’”(Which is the last review she read.)

All of which brings us to the elephant, or dragon, in the room. Over seven seasons, Daenerys, aka Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, had one hell of an arc, going from weak dynastic pawnto all-conquering queen, a kind of Catherine the Great with sub-Barbarella hair. And then, oops! Daenerys, thrilled at almost achieving her goal of ruling the Seven Kingdoms, lost the plot, turned into a psychotic dead-eyed tyrant, massacring a whole city and essentially going the full Pol Pot. She was then abruptly bumped off by her lover-cum-nephew, Jon Snow, and a worldwide fanbase stopped and went: what?

For Clarke, it had been a hard secret to keep — she had known the ending long in advance. She admits she is still processing it all.

“When the show did end, it was like coming out of a bunker. Everything felt really strange. Then obviously for it to have the backlash it did …” Did she expect it? She slows down, a rare occurrence. “I knew how I felt when I first read it, and I tried, at every turn, not to consider too much what other people might say, but I did always consider what the fans might think — because we did it for them, and they were the ones who made us successful, so … it’s just polite, isn’t it?”

It’s clear Clarke is caught between her close friendship with the series’ creators, David Benioff and DB Weiss, and her deep awareness of what most fans wanted. In fact, she first suggests that it’s the news wot done it.

“I do think that the global temperature, how much horrific news there is consistently, goes a way to explain the enormity of the fans’ outrage,” she argues. “Because people are going, finally, here’s something I can actually see and understand and get some control back over … and then when that turns, and you don’t like what they’ve done …”

Hmm. It’s a nice theory, but with Daenerys we were just denied a happy ending, right? She nods quietly. “Yeah.” So did not getting that also make her sad? She tries to explain that “as an actor” it was actually all “a gift”, but eventually the tornado of diplomacy peters out. “Yeah, I felt for her. I really felt for her. And yeah, was I annoyed that Jon Snow didn’t have to deal with something?” She lets us out an exasperated laugh. “He got away with murder — literally.”

She also eventually agrees with the critique that the final season condensed far too much in far too little time (“We could have spun it out for a little longer”) and that it could simply have had more dialogue. “It was all about the set pieces,” she agrees. “I think the sensational nature of the show was, possibly, given a huge amount of airtime because that’s what makes sense.”

Is she at least happy it ended when it did? “I mean, ‘happy’ is a funny word. It’s a strong word. Again, the show was so big. I was a small cog in a very, very, very big machine …”

What she means, though, is that she actually liked this. The show provided a routine, a family, something to fall back on every year; it also gave her experience. “I very much feel my career is something that’s happened to me, as opposed to the other way around,” she says. But she can see that being a cog has its limits, as doesforever having to cater to fans and, yes, to the press. “Doing a show so many people had opinions about doesn’t serve your creativity on any level.”

All of which explains why she is doing this Seagull with Jamie Lloyd, the director who just landed raves for his Cyrano with James McAvoy. And, yes, although she knows it’s “hilarious”, she somehow does “identify closer with theatre”. This is mostly to do with her dad, who was a theatre engineer; her mother is a vice-president in marketing for a management consultancy firm. Clarke and her brother had an idyllic-sounding childhood in Oxfordshire. Inspired by her father’s job, she always wanted to be an actress, apparently from the age of three. “I think of him whenever I’m walking through the West End,” she says. “My dad is everywhere in the theatre, 100%.”

She says this happily; I get the impression she hasn’t finished grieving, she’s just moved on to a better, celebratory phase. How would he feel about her playing Nina? “I think he would be nervous for me,” she says with a chuckle. It is, she knows, a big role: Nina, the aspiring actress whose dreams of fame are dashed, but who plugs away regardless. “I was never your Nina at drama school, that’s for sure,” says Clarke. “I wasn’t really a favourite [there], at all.”

Instead, she got parts like Jewish grannies, or “a down-and-out, pissed-off, washed-up prostitute”. But did she always want to be Nina or Juliet? “Well, of course I did. Oh my God, yeah. So I’m in no doubt there’s still some of that in me where I’m like: ‘Oh my God, guys, check it out! Finally she got there.’”

Clarke does like to cast herself as an underdog, although, thankfully, she does seem mostly to be aware that she is coming from a place of privilege. By the end of GoT she was reportedly paid $500,000 an episode. Is money a concern any more? “I am careful,” she says. “I’m a lot more careful now than I was.” She has a lovely house in north London with a bar in the garden. She can pick jobs for their artistic content first and foremost (“I want to work with an auteur!”). So yes, she knows she has it good, which is why she waited several years before revealing her brain trauma.

“I didn’t want to turn it into this celebrity sob story. I didn’t want people’s pity or ‘Oh, poor little rich girl, your successful life ain’t good enough?’” She is now happy she did it. “It’s done a huge amount of healing for me, being able to open up about it.” Her health status is “beautiful” now. “I was match-fit six weeks after the second surgery [in 2013],” she clarifies. “But mentally …”

On the other end of the spectrum, her fame has made something else hard: dating. “I am single right now …” She says with a smile. “Dating in this industry is interesting. I have a lot of funny anecdotes, a lot of stuff I can say at a fun dinner.” She was last seen in 2018 with a film director, and before that she was linked to Seth MacFarlane and James Franco. Does she mostly date fellow actors, because that’s how the industry works? “I was, and now I’m not,” she says — more smiles.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve completely sworn off them, but I do think actor relationships that are successful are few and far between, and you have to have a ton of trust.” Now and then her friends tell her to try Raya, the dating app that is supposedly for more exclusive celeb types. When she looks at it, though, “it’s just models. What am I going to do there?”

In short, everything about Clarke’s life is still monumentally weird, but she is doing a good job of pretending it’s not. After the play, she has “any one of nine projects that could go at the end of this year, and I have no idea which one will win”. A lot, she announces, are “dark”. Would she do fantasy again? “I think, if I did, it would be me having a giggle,” she says. I take this to mean her doing a send-up, a kind of Extras take on GoT, but no: “I want to do something absolutely stupid and silly, like, you know, The Avengers or whatever. Something where I got to have a giggle with mates.”

I’ve never thought of the Marvel mega-franchise as a downtime laff with pals, but that’s the level Clarke is operating on. I suppose it’s a pretty good happy ending.

The Seagull, Playhouse, London WC2, until May 30

Press: Emilia Clarke interview: the Game of Thrones star on leaving Westeros behind to tackle the West End was originally published on Enchanting Emilia Clarke | Est 2012

#emilia clarke #game of thrones #game of thrones cast #GOT cast #daenerys targaryen #me before you #terminator

[gwinforth]

I’m so sorry for this. But here’s the first part of “Let Please” (Charkov and Boris), which is interlaced with part two of the thing I had [started here] which morphed into a fix-it fic that actually [follows from this snippet] which is reproduced here, for something like convenience. So it’s a double bill, the first part of “Let Please” and the second part of “Give Me Something I Believe”

notes: only incidental relation to any persons living or dead; same for any kind of documented chronology. Kryukov is not exactly Kryuchkov, the same way that Charkov is not exactly Chebrikov.

2nd note: headcanon-adjacent to @pottedmusic​’s magnificent young [Charkov/Boris fics], but distinct (if you haven’t, do yourself a favor and go read those, definitely more worth your time)

and as for “Give Me Something I Believe” - explicit, Valoris, possible trigger warnings for mental health stuff, go carefully I guess

as always, unbeta’d. all mistakes are mine.

"Let Please” | 1

FEBRUARY, 1987

There sits, in the hills overlooking Moscow and not far from the university, a KGB health center, where the security organs keep themselves in trim fit. It is terra incognita to ministers of the Presidium, excepting a few particular cases, among whom Boris Shcherbina is counted. These special cases occasionally receive a special pass, and arrive for a late afternoon workout and the kind of high-level talk that is easier to hold amid the slapping of hard springy balls. 

Boris could assure you that wasn’t a euphemism. He could describe to you the place. His unimaginative vocabulary was a good fit for how nondescript it was, outside and in: a low building that took in a lot of sun from the north and east sides, wide gray-carpeted hallways that smelled more and more strongly of chlorine the closer you got to the half-Olympic sized swimming pool, and strong soap to mask the ever-present undercurrent of a boys’ locker room stuffed full of sweaty gym kits. Sauna, massage, communications room.

Sometimes, of course, it wasn’t high-level discussion that called him here; where Boris was concerned, it was often the case that Charkov merely wanted to play. He and Boris would change into white shirts and shorts, take one of the neatly boxed squash courts, and volley the ball off the walls and floor, turning the room into something between an old pals’ game and a shooting gallery. Boris usually won. He had reach, Charkov had terrible eyesight and arthritic knees, while preserving a hell of a drive shot. 

Then to the showers. The steam billowed from Charkov’s showerhead and filled the tiled room as he wrenched the tap to boiling and turned red, sponging his exertion away. 

Boris stood under a lukewarm jet and rinsed the sweat off his balls. He coughed again, spat, and watched the pink-tinged mucus slide toward the drain with a frown. Then banished the thought as unhelpful. He doused his hair, the nape of his neck, turned the water off. He glanced at Charkov, focused on soaping himself up, and stepped to the bench at the far end of the room for his towel. He wrapped it around his waist, sat, then flipped it back open to air dry. He rested his heels on the tile and spread his toes to let the air flow between them.

“Just a game today?” Boris asked, voice low enough that it was obscured by the hiss of the pipes.

“Just a game,” Charkov replied. He rinsed off the soap suds, made one last turn under the water, tossed his sponge into the receptacle, and joined Boris on the bench. He sat heavily and began the slow process of toweling off. 

A drenched cat: that was Charkov, with a rivulet of damp, dark chest hair down his sternum, blue veins bulging on the backs of his hands and tops of his feet, and sagging skin under his arms. He was still breathing in deep bursts from their game. His knees were swollen. 

“Good game,” Boris said, then. No need to mention the score. “Always a pleasure.” 

Charkov grunted. The towelling moved on from his chest and shoulders to his legs.

They had played this game for the past three decades, once a month, as clockwork as they could manage. Charkov always knew when he was in town - more and more, now that the containment structure was up, and had survived the winter. Boris wasn’t surprised when he received the bright white clearance card with Charkov’s dark, neat signature. Perhaps he had missed their games, too. 

Not that he gave any sign of it. When Boris arrived, he had received the same nod as always. 

It was a cool welcome for such an old friend. After all, Boris had come up alongside him in the world. Their paths had crossed at sometimes the most impossible, sometimes the most sublime moments. And out of the intercourse of years, Boris had learned - he flattered himself - a few of the man’s tells. The way his body held its tensions, the pauses that meant no and the silences that meant yes, or more often, convince me. A foggy biography that might have been more composed than lived, the only verifiable moments the ones that Boris had witnessed himself. (Which forced Boris to consider the obverse: Charkov inexplicably present, at socially deft moments: at a makeshift reception after his municipal-hall marriage, at his mother’s burial, at the ribbon-cutting of a new pipeline six months ahead of schedule. (The parentheticals multiplied as one suspicion sparked another sparked another - his nephew’s baptism, handing over his brother’s firstborn, watching Charkov’s sure handling of the scrunched, terribly small thing. (Hands dirty under the immaculate nails.) The idea of a family life lurking behind that death mask.))

Flipping the page back over, Boris would be the first to concede that what little he had learned of Charkov could, possibly, maybe, perhaps be a trail of breadcrumbs left in his path, yes, even after this many years. A cipher of a man. His phone calls were more about the time and the place, his letters more about the paper and the ink, the artifact rather than the words. His moods were seldom genuine.

Reading him from a distance was doomed, and trying to read him up close was equally hopeless. The instrument hadn’t been invented yet that could sound Maxim’s mind. 

Today, Charkov seemed content enough. They hadn’t played to eleven points. They called the game in Boris’s favor at five; he was having trouble catching his breath, and Charkov had just missed two returns in a row. Just now, having mopped off his hips, he was rubbing the sorer of his knees, under the pretense that it needed to be extra dry.

There was something honest about getting old together, anyway.

Speaking of inescapable human conditions: “He’s going to have questions,” Boris said.

“Of course he will,” Charkov said, as if the thought were extremely dull. He had reached his toes with the thick towel. “We aren’t going to discuss Legasov. He knows what he needs to do. You know what you need to do.”

And that was final. Boris looked away, and caught the door opening. 

A short man with calves like drumsticks entered, glistening with sweat. His shirt was already balled in his hand. He saw the Deputy Chairman and Charkov, side by side on the bench, and - snorted a laugh. 

Charkov’s head raised to meet the interloper.

“I’ll come back,” the man said, still amused at some private joke. 

The door swung shut behind him. 

“What was that about?” Boris asked. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Charkov said primly, folding his towel.

And he would have liked to leave it at that, but Boris had recognized the man. Kryukov. Tongue firmly up Gorbachev’s asshole, whispering sweet nothings about out-reforming the reformers. Sweet words, sharp knives, politics as she is played. Boris glanced sidelong at Charkov, at his pale, age-softened underbelly, and rose to get dressed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Give Me Something I Believe” | 2

(insert long screed about my very own recognition that this is verging too close to Real Historical Events for comfort, especially when it’s wrapped in something that’s so obviously fannish. my intention was to lay the groundwork for the end of Valery’s journey that we see, in the HBO series, and not comment or speculate on the historical Legasov.)

Ten p.m. A hunched man bundled in three layers, taking his little collection of cigarette butts, oozing apple cores, litter, and an unholy matte of hair, cat and man, to the bins in the alley. 

It was a particular kind of indignity to shed more than your cat. Yesterday evening, the cat had looked at him balefully, shaking a strand of his hair off his paw. 

Now we’re even, Valery had announced. For all the years of fur in his breakfasts and the territorial skirmishes over freshly dry-cleaned trousers. 

The brick was glistening and the recent rain had stirred up a perfume of urine and sick. Valery emptied his bucket into the collection bin, felt his lungs surge at the unexpectedly sharp bouquet that rose with the sudden agitation of matter, and reached for his handkerchief. 

What happened next was almost a parody. It was something that might happen to Stierlitz if Hollywood got their hands on him. He coughed, recognized from the ticklish ache in his chest that this might be the start of a proper fit and not just a few lung-clearing heaves, and closed his eyes. 

Then snapped them open. 

Deliberately, now, even as he hacked, he scanned the brick wall above the bins. He thumbed his glasses back up clumsily, leaving a thumbprint on the right lens. Two white chalk marks - the first one perpendicular, the second with a slant, forward. A finger long, about a knuckle apart, below eye line. The rain had done its best to wash them away but to Valery’s watering eyes, they glowed. 

First: Need to talk. Then the forward slant: Stand by. 

And that peculiarly Boris sign-off, jagging the chalk - and the pen, when they had done this at the work site - in a second stroke, that didn’t quite cover the first. It didn’t mean anything. It was just Boris, making sure Valery would note it, the way he would snarl at Valery to straighten his tie or zip up his fly.

Valery’s lungs had stopped trying to strangle him but he labored the recovery, in case his watchers were feeling like overachievers tonight. He kept his handkerchief wadded to his mouth and glanced around. He listened. Singing - irony in a meandering key - from the next street, cars rumbling, his own strained, whistling breath. No helpful narrator to answer a most basic, but most pressing question - when. How long.

He didn’t expect Boris to loom from the shadows then and there, of course, but the gooseflesh raised on his arms, the back of his neck. Boris had been here. Right where he was standing. How long ago? He hadn’t visited the bins in over a week. But the rain, the weather, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of days. Boris had been here. Perhaps he had seen the light in Valery’s window. Undoubtedly he had seen the car parked across the street. 

Valery’s thoughts were suddenly ringing in his skull, redoubling back on themselves. He could get a message out, surely - now that Boris had broken radio silence, now that he had sent one faint flickering staticky burst across the bombed-out ruins of their lives - it was enough. Valery was full of animation. Energy. Breath. He carefully folded his handkerchief, checked inside his bucket. Opened the bin and shook it in again. His elbow rubbed against the bricks, buffing the chalk into non-recognition, a non-incriminating smudge.

Stand by. What an asshole, Valery thought. No.

* * * 

SIX MONTHS AGO 

He had enjoyed his two weeks in hospital so far, being treated for anemia and a psychological fracture. He didn’t feel fractured… a light sprain, maybe, but it was difficult to sleep, knowing what he knew. Possibly he had over-strained himself, a little. A disastrous meeting at the Institute and - well, here he was. 

There were perks. They always brought him a tablet after the transfusions, and he had stowed up a little war chest: morphine, phenazepam, a nightly sleeping pill, and a small bottle gifted to him for luck. Emancipatory provisions, if and when they were needed. So far, everyone had treated him kindly. So far, no news had come of the reactors. 

And perhaps that’s what had precipitated this entire - anemic attack - this blow-up brought on no doubt by hypoxia of the lobes (the soul, should such a thing exist, was not a candidate for diagnosis, the heart, only insofar as fibrillation might cause manifest a sensation of something not unlike despair) - 

Valery exhaled. He sat with his elbow on the too-high sill, smoking at the open window. He supposed he was grateful they hadn’t diagnosed a case of slow schizophrenia. The rain had stopped; it was a few minutes before eleven in the morning. He had full account of his faculties, which extended to telling the time.

Just a strain. A stress fracture. And now he was being discharged. He was in his suit and tie and trousers, which hadn’t been laundered, so he smelled like the coffee he had spilled on himself and very stale sweat. 

He wondered if Boris had called.

The phone calls with Boris had grown further and further apart. At first, back in Moscow, they kept to the briefing schedule that had given tempo to their days in Pripyat - dawn, noon, dusk, often midnight, around the table, the center of the innermost circle - there was a lot to keep up on, those first couple of weeks home from the front. The containment structure’s progress, clean-up on-going, ne-ver-end-ing, but the return to Moscow had signaled the turning of a corner. 

They had returned to civilization, and so. Faces Valery had never seen on the ground in Pripyat, suddenly sitting among them as equals. Total strangers sending over their own briefs, sneaking a few small coins of their successes, and happy to leave their failures on their own heads. Valery hated them, and hated the way Boris was resigned to them.

Politics steered the paperwork. There would be criminal charges, but before charges could be brought, a full picture of the disaster had to be wrestled into focus from the mosaic of data. Statements, facts, figures had to be compiled, Boris as chair was umpiring five or six competing drafts of the commission’s report (“And mine doesn’t get top bill?” “Who are you, John Wayne?”), and he was still flying out weekly to stare at the containment structure. So it was only natural, Valery supposed, as his own role faded into the larger chorus of technical and legal niceties, that Boris should have less time to sit up with him til midnight, musing quietly as Valery calculated and smoked. Long dinners turned to hurried lunches turned to a quick chat before a meeting, a phone call to discuss a revision, and the weather. Boris didn’t need his expertise as urgently now. But he kept track of his people. He was kind that way. The last call - “Going home for a couple of weeks, to relax; going to read something that isn’t asterisked to hell and back!” - and Valery wishing him well. 

The holiday in Kiev turned into two months, then three. Silence the entire while. Sometimes Valery moved to pick up the phone, or a pen, but the thought of disturbing Boris’s rest - or the thought of receiving no reply - conveniently, one or the other was always on hand to strangle the impulse.

Valery went back to his office, the office politics and knife-smiles of the Kurchatov Institute. He was still loved, he knew, and respected, he knew, but not universally - and he had left his borders undefended. 

That was the backdrop to his slight, small, hardly-worth-mentioning breakdown. The KGB hadn’t kept their side of the bargain, yet. And far from the laurels he was expecting on his homecoming, he was meeting resistance. He was angry about what that signalled. (He was terrified of what that signalled.) And he didn’t have the stamina he once had; hell, even climbing a couple flights of stairs could leave him winded. He felt utterly exposed and at everybody’s mercy.

The door opened behind him, sending a harsh wave of sound through the room as the hinges squealed. His body jumped from the chair.

“Dressed, Comrade Legasov? Time to go.” 

One of the nurses. Valery stubbed out his cigarette and nodded. He patted his pockets down to make sure he had everything, staring at the floor.

Someone helped him into his coat. Valery grabbed his collar back, turned, and saw the nurse still at the door, blank-faced. He looked to his left, at the body next to his. 

The knotted tie sitting just so, the jawline, shoulders spanning his vision - Valery looked up into Boris’s face. Valery stuttered out his name. 

Boris was severe, like a statue of himself. He didn’t smile. He nodded to the door. 

Valery fell in behind him, silently. The nurse didn’t dare follow them. 

The car was waiting out front. And finally, as the car swung out and joined traffic, Valery got the courage to ask: “What are you doing here?”

Boris stared straight ahead. “Taking you home.”

* * * 

The garbage had been mouldering for two weeks. Apparently the cleaning lady had been warned off. If they had searched the flat, though, they didn’t see fit to take out the trash. 

The cat had been allowed to slip out, which caused Valery some distress when the helpful geriatric next door mentioned seeing it - him? - haunting the stairwells. Boris left Valery perched on a chair and did a brief check of his other rooms, opening windows as he went. He assumed the rooms hadn’t been ransacked. It probably always looked like this. The bedding was musty. 

The cat came creeping along the balcony railing as Boris was flapping the bedsheets into the fresh air. 

Boris opened the door into the apartment and stood back. The furry thing leapt off the railing and bolted past him into the flat. 

Valery was holding it against his chest and looking teary when Boris returned with the sheets. Boris decided to ignore this. He dumped the sheets on the bed, returned to the kitchen, and made a clattering show of putting on the kettle and raiding the cupboards. 

Some minutes later they sat at the kitchen table, cups of coffee steaming in front of them. Silence except for Boris’s spoon, with a small helping of sugar, knocking around his cup. Valery picked at a cat hair on his sleeve. 

Boris dropped his spoon heavily. He saw Valery flinch. Valery was expecting fury, but even Boris wasn’t prepared for the rough, uneven huskiness of his voice when he asked, “Was it about the reactors?”

Valery shook his head. “They aren’t fixed.” 

“They will be,” Boris said. 

“We’ve been waiting for months.” Valery touched a drop of coffee that had landed on the formica top.

“Trust me,” Boris said. “For a little longer.”

Valery’s head listed to the side. His eyes swept Boris, then the table, then his hands, then darted to some sound Boris didn’t hear. He nodded, agitated. Nodded again. Boris felt the table jostle as he bounced his leg. 

“Valera -”

“I want to come with you.” Valery’s hand suddenly lunged across the table. “When you fix the reactors, when you re-fit them. Take me with you.” 

His fingers dug on Boris’s knuckles. There was a febrile glint in his eyes, out of the shadow cast  on them by the single bulb. Some of his strange energy flowered through his skin. Boris felt the blaze of Valery’s hand on top of his and thought, careful, Valera, you’re becoming a fanatic. 

The strength of Valery’s stare demanded an answer. He had stopped fidgeting. He was oddly still. “Take me with you,” he repeated.

Boris turned his palm, and captured Valery’s warm hand. “I will.”

And another thought, one that Boris had to dismiss by force, was this: he had sat with men who were cracking up before. They cut one of two ways: loud, or quiet. Hot, or cold. 

* * * 

KIEV 

Boris watched the needle slide into his vein, then followed the rising tide of blood in the vial as it filled. When it was finished, a sleight of hand to yank the needle out and press a cotton ball. He folded his elbow to keep it tucked tight. He had already given them urine, hair, saliva, had his heart and lungs sounded out with stethoscopes and scans, his pulse measured, and his dignity forever reduced. His blood, presumably, would tell them the rest of his mortal secrets. Not today; today he was on his own recognizance, walking alongside and bargaining with the pessimism that had anchored itself to him. It was a beautiful day. As yet, he reminded his gloomy shadow, nothing was certain.

Three doctors packed into one office when Boris arrived for his follow-up appointment. Boris put on his most charming, his most indulgent smile. He didn’t envy them. They were just the messengers. 

“Good news, I hope?” he asked. You’re dead, Boris Yevdokimovich.

They told him it was a case of “wait and see”, out of the goodness of their hearts. It would be a long illness - though they didn’t give him much in the way of comparison. “Long” compared to old age? Compared to stepping on a landmine? 

No mention of radiation, no mention of Chernobyl, which Boris approved of, the small part of him considering history beyond his own.

Boris nodded along as they took it in turns to explain. They kept it very simple. Blood, bones, lungs. He hoped he looked placid. He hoped he looked brave. He couldn’t feel his legs. 

At the end, he thanked them for their service.

* * *

It was past midnight. Neither of them had said a word in hours. (Why don’t you sleep? Counterpoint, why don’t you go home?) Boris was slouched on the settee, hands clasped on his middle, legs stretched out in front of him. His collar was loosened. Valery had changed into pajamas after a bath, a white vest and satin pants, and was curled on the chair, blanket and cat on his lap. 

He stared at Boris. He wasn’t asleep. He was in repose, a quiet and heavy state that Valery had seen him lapse into back at the plant, after a very long day. It wasn’t a thoughtful quiet. It was empty-minded - so Boris claimed. Valery wasn’t so sure.

Valery, for his part, was trying to decide if he was imagining this. The last two weeks were a film reel with half the frames chopped out - thanks to pharmacological nudging and nerves scribbling up and down the agitation scale like a seismograph. Maybe as he taped the reel back together, he was inserting a few wishful scenes. 

The wishful thinking might extend further back than that - all the way back to that morning, when the phone woke him from a dream about a presence. The presence was no one in particular, just a warmth that wasn’t the cat or the radiator, a hand that wasn’t his own. He was starting to enjoy the feeling when the phone rang, and the smell of cat shit fresh in the pan wound into his nose. 

Once they got to the reactor, sleep was nobody’s priority. It was its own world. He must have slept, and he might even have dreamed. He stared at Boris in the flesh, the rise and fall of his chest.

Could he have imagined all that? Boris being with him, letting Valery touch him, hold him, use him, giving himself as a cup of comfort. Boris’s silvered head bent over him, the powerful bunch of his shoulders under his dress shirt, his forearms with their salt and pepper hair holding him down. Wrapped around him. His fingers in Boris’s hair, or those strong fingers in his hair. The shiver started at his scalp in a phantom grasp and rolled down across his shoulders. His cock, quietly stirring in the confines of his pajama pants, rallied. 

Sasha levitated to his feet indignantly. 

Boris opened his eyes at the sound of Sasha landing on the floor. He rolled his head to the side to look at Valery.

Valery felt stricken to the fucking core. He clutched the blanket on his lap a bit tighter. 

A second ticked by. 

Maybe Boris could smell it on him, or maybe he remembered some of those same fantasies. He sat up, stretched his neck, rolled his shoulders. For God’s sake, Valery thought. 

“Will it help you sleep?” Boris asked. 

“Yes.” Valery swallowed. “I’m sorry.” 

Boris nodded seriously. He rose, took a few steps towards him, and held out his hand. Valery let the blanket fall away and shifted himself, jutting absurdly, to the edge of the chair. Boris pulled him to his feet.

* * * 

The change in scenery made conversation possible. (Also, maybe, Valery’s insistent erection, and Boris’s stupid all-encompassing kindness. The way Boris was sitting at the edge of the unmade bed, with his hands around the back of Valery’s legs.) 

“Why did they send you?” Valery asked. He squeezed Boris’s shoulders. 

Boris shook his head. “Nobody sent me. I got back, and heard what happened.” 

(Valery didn’t want to ask what, precisely, had happened. He remembered storming out of the meeting. Then, God knew why, walking back in. After that it was all, graciously, a blur.)

“I lied in Vienna,” Valery said. 

An odd pivot, but Boris followed him, even if he didn’t quite follow. “You told the truth. Responsibly. That’s all you could have done.” Boris caressed the back of his thighs, the tendons right above his knees, and up to cup his ass. He leaned in to press his nose alongside Valery through the silky smoothness of his pants, snugged his pelvis closer with both hands. “I was so proud of you.” 

Valery clasped his hands around the back of Boris’s neck and swayed. Shaking his head again.

Boris looked up at him, smiled comfortingly. He hooked his fingertips in the waistband of his pants and pulled them down his thighs.

He felt the heat coming off of Valery. It beat on his face, and Boris cocked his head to admire him. Heat and that smell that Boris never got tired of. Slightly damp, a little sour, a little savory. (How to explain: the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers was an inveterate dick-sniffer. Note that detail in the starkest typeface, and the most prosaic language.) And while Valery wasn’t a large man, he was gorgeous. 

“Beautiful little Valera,” Boris murmured, staring down at him, and Valery twitched. 

Ah. Boris hid his smile by brushing up the hem of Valery’s vest. He kissed Valery’s lower belly, the crease of his thigh. Blond hair tickled his lips and skin that was soft, pale, pillowy, yielded as he used the edge of his teeth and one incisor to nip at Valery’s hip. 

Boris nosed under him and kissed his balls, too. Furry. Boris ran his tongue up the side, wrapped it around the head like a scarf, sucked the tip into his mouth. Popped it out again. Clenched his fingers in Valery’s cheeks, kneaded, hugged him when Valery shifted on his feet, widened his stance, and rooted himself to the floor. (“Yes. Please.”) Boris pressed a kiss to the shaft, licked it back off, dragged one finger in and out of his mouth, and pressed his face against Valery’s stomach. Relax; he reached around and started working it up inside him. He curled and wormed as he went, taking up space, careful not to hurt. 

Valery’s hands around his neck got tighter to steady himself. Boris felt him rock his hips, circle them just a little, for more of that solid sensation. 

Boris worked gently. No need to catalog how much of his technique was learned through solitary exploration, or how much he had learned from shower room talk, women who did such things for a living, and the occasional shy, stuttery type who burst into a carnal butterfly behind closed doors. Even a honeypot or two - he couldn’t be sure - with a certain impression of antiseptic, more spiritual than physical, that clung to those astonishing strokes of luck. He curled his finger again and rubbed hard against the close-clinging wall.

He was rewarded by a sound, a gorgeous deep one, and the delightfully pink head beading up, a drop or two of pre-cum falling in slow motion.

Boris sat back. Valery always stood lopsided, and yes, it was funny. It was … cute. It made Boris want to -

Well, he could, couldn’t he? He dragged Valera toward him, using the finger inside him and his arm looped around Valery’s legs, and sucked him. Valery’s hand grabbed at his hair to catch himself, and Boris hummed his approval at the helpless thrust that sent Valery skidding over his palate. Slow down. How’s that? 

Valery started sounding like his old self, then: more of this. Less of that. Pants fallen around his ankles, voice clipped as he fed orders and profanity and moans back to Boris’s hands and Boris’s mouth and Boris’s tongue. Then it was only a matter of pressure, of rhythm keyed to every twitch and groan; it was a matter of giving Valery what he wanted. 

Almost perfect. Until Boris twisted his neck to get Valera out of his mouth. Coughed with his lips pressed together, once, twice, hoping Valery wouldn’t notice because Boris’s hand was suddenly squeezing him and stroking upwards, quick and sure like feeding rope, and Valery’s balls were cinching themselves up for their finale. 

 * * * 

He took a staggered step toward Boris, felt the burn of Boris wrenching out of his body; Boris caught him as Valery slumped onto his lap. 

Valery shifted to keep from slipping off Boris’s knee. He pushed Boris back; flat on the mattress, following the pressure of Valery’s hand, and Valery tipped over on top of him. 

Quiet, while Valery’s erection throbbed out slowly. Boris staring at the ceiling, looking dark-eyed and gentle in profile. Valery noticed the splatter on his collar, and smiled to himself. He shifted onto his elbow and looked down at Boris.

“Feeling better?” Boris asked.

“Yes.” Valery was, in fact, feeling like he’d smashed out of something; like he’d been encased, history cooling around him, setting like cement. But now he noticed the orange glow of the lamplight, the softness of the mattress, the lay of Boris’s body next to his. The world was more than empty paper shapes, puppets and strings and the hollow space between atoms. His mind was in it again, in the smells and weights and heat.

Valery got his hand on Boris’s crotch and leaned in to kiss him. 

Boris’s hand met his face to stop him. The edge of his fingers caught his chin, settled against the sag under Valery’s jaw. Valery felt the wide pad of Boris’s thumb trace the cleft of his chin and then press to his lips. Like a kiss, but not. In lieu, Valery supposed. Valery flicked the tip of his tongue against Boris’s rough thumbprint. He grinned.

Boris couldn’t bring himself to smile back; the corner of his mouth tightened, then the expression faded. 

“What’s wrong?” Valery asked.

Boris coughed, down in his chest. His hand fell away from Valery to stifle it. He seemed undecided, measuring Valery up with his mouth pressed shut. 

“Tell me,” Valery insisted. I’m all better, you’ve cured me. I’m not fragile.

Boris’s hand clasped his arm. “They’ve seen enough of the report. They’re going to charge Dyatlov. Fomin and Bryukhanov, too.” His grip tightened, as if to steady Valery.

“What?” Valery’s head craned. “What?” His head tilted more. “The report isn’t - it doesn’t even say -” 

“They’ve seen enough,” Boris interrupted. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, then sat up, shrugging off Valery’s hand. “We’re testifying. Khomyuk. You. Once it’s done, we’ll fix the reactors.” 

Valery stared. 

“Say just what you said in Vienna,” Boris said, as if any of this made sense. “Bad decisions. Operator error.” 

“I still have my notes,” Valery said coldly. The mattress had lost its form, his heart had lost its shape, Boris had lost his substance. They were living in a Charkovian diorama after all.

“That’s all you have to do,” Boris said, and he had the nerve to try to sound reassuring, to cradle Valery’s hand as if being touched meant anything here. “We only have to get through the trial. Then it’s over.”

* * * 

Idiotic choice of words. Valery was on his heels - back in his pants, thankfully, accomplished while Boris was putting on his coat to hide the dribble of cum on his collar; Valery roared at him down the hallway, across the living room. Boris reached the front door, and Valery seemed ready to follow him out to the car Boris hadn’t called. 

Boris refused to have a row in public, and that included the neighbors: so Boris planted himself on the doorstep, finally threw a little of his anger that wasn’t really anger back at Valera, hid behind his size, his position, and took long poisoned rakes from Valery’s harpy-taloned fury. He got the worst of it, because he wouldn’t raise a hand or a word against Valery anymore. Not anymore. He was a fucking rat; it was true, he was Charkov’s bum-boy; guilty, if he had an ounce of courage; but he didn’t: he was dying. 

And don’t come back here, Valery finished. The door slammed, the lock turned.

Boris found himself being eyed by a skinny youth at the end of the hallway, sitting on the carpeted steps. Boris caught a whiff of antiseptic along with the boy’s Belomor. He tossed his head like a bull, huffed and straightened his coat. He plunged down the stairs and out to the street.

* * *

The tremors started in earnest. He smoked, he paced, finally he took a sleeping pill, like an exit hatch from the thoughts that had only one end. He woke with the sun up and thought that the light through the living room curtains looked like stage lighting, and last night had been an awful little melodrama. He was ashamed. He called in to his secretary at the institute: he wouldn’t be coming back to the office yet. The voice on the other end was surprised to hear from him. So he was out, at large again; let his colleagues go into their huddles and make of that what they would. 

And on and on. The trial suddenly loomed. An official summons, interviews the prosecutors, the KGB, and finally with Ulana Khomyuk, better angel of any hero’s nature, black dog to the timid and the coward. 

I’ve already given my life. And nothing to show for it, but a creeping roughness in his lungs and the rewards that Charkov dangled for him, just out of reach. Time to change the tune at the Kurchatov Institute, flip old man Aleksandrov off his chair and put him on next, like changing a record. If he behaved himself. If not, no medals, no money, no...

You haven’t talked to Shcherbina? Ulana asked, skeptically. 

There’s nothing to talk about.

* * * 

Valery clambored down the thin metal steps onto the tarmac. He handed over his briefcase without a word, and followed his escort to the convoy.

Another organelle held the car door for him. He froze when he saw Boris, or rather Boris’s knees, already crammed into the back seat. And then, since there was no choice, he crouched and folded himself into the car. 

Boris had obviously been rehearsing something - fitting. Something polite, something that wouldn’t offend the ears of their two, and well-armed, chauffeurs. Whatever it was, Valery saw it die on his lips. Boris nodded to him, once, and turned away.

Valery turned to look out the window.