#that one paragraph literally belongs in a museum

[hornime]

mutually assured destruction | kyoutani kentarou x gn!reader

he pushed your cheeks in with his fingers, effectively quieting your protests. “be quiet,” he spat, “and take what i give you. or nothing at all.”

warnings: 18+, fwb!kyoutani, hate sex, degradation, orgasm denial, fighting for dominance (idek if that’s a thing but it should be), both you and kyo are BRATTY AS HELL, some choking, spitting, CHAIN BITING, kinda toxic ?? but like mutually so it cancels out cus pemdas ???

w/c: 1.7k (i got carried away but kyoutani is just so sexy)

a/n: the way i came up with this title while studying for apush and then kyoutani flooded my mind and suddenly the catalysts of the cold war no longer mattered to me anymore.

you and kyoutani were not a good mix, not by a long shot. simply being in the same room was a disaster waiting to happen; he was a bundle of tnt and you were a lit match. for all that you hated each other, though, both of you needed the other for something: a fuck that would never disappoint.

the sex, just like your relationship, was explosive. it was heart-stopping, ab-clenching, vision-blinding, breath-stealing, hardcore-as-fuck sex. neither of you could get enough of it nor wane yourself off it. you were addicted.

it made you hate him even more.

[11:05 PM] kyo-kyo: come over

you cringed at the contact name. you must’ve changed it after the last time you hooked up, all stupid and cock-drunk. you quickly retyped his contact info before responding to his message.

[11:05 PM] you: why

[11:05 PM] kyoutani: are you an idiot? you know why

[11:05 PM] you: ik i just wanna hear u say it

[11:05 PM] you: say that ur soooooo horny that you just haddddd to text me

[11:06 PM] kyoutani: no. fuck you.

[11:06 PM] you: fine. im not coming over then.

you both knew that was a lie.

[11:08 PM] you: have fun taking care of urself.

[11:08 PM] you: needy bitch.

[11:08 PM] kyoutani: watch it. i wasnt this mean when you were begging me to fuck you last week.

you sighed. that was a moment of weakness.

[11:08 PM] kyoutani: whatd you say last time? something along the lines of “ill do whatever you want just come fuck me”?

[11:11 PM] kyoutani: *attachment: one (1) screenshot*

[11:11 PM] kyoutani: ohh it was “ill do whatever you want PLEASE just come fuck me”

[11:12 PM] kyoutani: youre so much nicer to be around when you use your manners

definitely a moment of weakness.

[11:12 PM] you: fuck off i get it. im coming

[11:12 PM] kyoutani: doors unlocked

the moment you nudged your way into his apartment, he was on you, hands gripping tightly at the flesh of your hips and teeth nibbling at your bottom lip.

“get off,” you groaned, pushing him away. as you peeled off your jacket, you glanced down at his pants and looked back up at his face with an amused expression. “are you hard already?”

he met your eyes with a gaze of lust—and was that desperation?—before turning to walk towards his bedroom, expecting you to follow. “no.”

“yes you are,” you teased. “you really needed me, didn’t you? you’re absolutely pathe—”

before you could finish, kyoutani grabbed your wrist before practically dragging you to his bed. he pushed you onto the mattress and, with his hands on your waist, maneuvered your body up until your head rested between his two pillows. “stop fucking talking. your voice is annoying.”

“at least i can keep it in my pants,” you retorted. “you’re just embarrassingly horny.”

“you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.” that shut you up.

he crept towards you until the gold chain around his neck dangled tantalizingly in your face. in an instant, you were kissing, aggressively melding your lips together in a mess of teeth and tongue. kyoutani’s hands clumsily reached for your bottoms, briefly breaking the kiss to unbutton your pants and yank them, along with your underwear, off your legs. he then did the same to himself, giving his leather belt a thoughtful once-over before glancing back at your face. he was clearly deliberating about something in his head, though you were completely clueless as to what, but he ultimately threw the belt to the side alongside his jeans with a shrug of his shoulders. maybe next time, he thought.

meanwhile, you’d taken off your shirt and were tugging at the hem at kyoutani’s. he seized your forearm, “stop being so impatient,” he chastised, before pulling the cloth over his head and letting it drop to the floor.

breathless, you both marveled in the glory of the other’s naked body. kyoutani, a lot more eager than you—though he’d rather die than admit that—closed the distance between you, leaning down to suck on your tongue. when he separated from you, his eyes cloudy and cheeks flushed, you spit in your palm, maintaining eye contact while feeling blindly for his cock.

he hissed, briefly shutting his eyes, as your fingers closed around his shaft, leisurely stroking up and down. 

“where’s the lube?”

“in the,“ his voice became strained as your thumb swirled his pre-cum around the tip, “the bo-bottom drawer. i’ll,” he groaned. “i’ll get it.”

you released his cock as he leaned over, opening the drawer and pulling out the bottle. he dribbled some of the liquid on the pads of his fingers and brought them closer to your hole. you tensed, eyes squeezing in anticipation as you prepared for the intrusion.

nothing happened.

in confusion, you opened your eyelids only to be met with the mildly-entertained expression of the man above you. “so hasty,” he tsked. his fingertips circled your fluttering hole but did nothing more.

“stop teasing,” you pleaded.

he slowly inched his fingers in, groaning as he watched your walls stretch to accommodate him. for a few minutes, he did nothing but push in and out and scissor his fingers, making you wider and wider.

“put it in.”

your words were met with little resistance—he wanted this as much as you did, if not more—and he repositioned himself, aligning his cock with your hole, now stretched and slick with lube. he moved his hips in, moaning lightly as he bottomed out.

“f-fuck,” he mumbled. “you’re so tight.”

“just move.”

he obliged, thrusting in and out, faster and faster, until you both were crying out in pleasure, scrumptiously close to your orgasms.

“i’m gonna cum soon,” you babbled. “don’t s-stop.”

“oh, are you now?”

you nodded mindlessly, brain hazy and unable to register the sinister undertone of his question.

“y-yeah. i’m so close. so. close—fuck i’m gon-”

kyoutani suddenly halted his movements, eyes blazing as he looked down at you.

“wha-why’d you stop?” you couldn’t help but whine. “i was so close.”

“are you seriously asking me that? why i stopped?” he taunted. “who’s the one that called me a ‘needy bitch’? huh?”

shit. if you’d known that he was going to use your jabs against you like this, you never would’ve made them. hindsight is a bitch.

“i didn’t mean it, kyo,” you pleaded, innocently using the cute nickname. “you know that. so why don’t you just give me what i wan-”

he pushed your cheeks in with his fingers, effectively quieting your protests. “be quiet,” he spat, “and take what i give you. or nothing at all.”

he thought for a moment. “and call me ken.”

he resumed his thrusts, significantly more erratic than before, and you couldn’t help but call out his name: ken, k-ken, fuck ken, more. 

however, you’d sobered up from your denied release, and a wicked plan was beginning to formulate in your head. kyoutani, actually ken, now, was losing his composure even faster than you were—he’d denied himself an orgasm for the sake of punishing you, after all. you could tell that his dominance was crumbling—his shaking forearms and barely concealed moans had not gone unnoticed—and now was a good a time as ever for revenge. 

and his chain, his stupid, fucking, gold chain, was getting on your nerves, clashing with your face every time his hips met yours. fed up and driven by vengeance, you clasped your teeth around the glimmering necklace, catching him off-guard.

he looked down at you, curiosity shining through his lustful gaze. “what’re yo-”

you quickly jerked your head to the side, yanking him off balance and making him land on his side. in an instant, you’d forced him onto his back and straddled his muscular thighs, a triumphant look visible on your face. 

“how’d you even d-” ken choked on his words as you slammed back down on him again, taking him impossibly deeper. his hands scrambled to grip the bedsheets, “shit.”

“for the record,” you panted in between heavy breaths, rocking your hips, “i called you a needy bitch because you are a needy bitch.”

“shut up. no i’m no-”

your hand closed around his neck, preventing him from continuing. “yes you are,” you insisted, “and you’ll take whatever i give you.”

he shook his head out of your grasp, gasping for air. “i fucking hate you.”

“open your mouth,” you ordered. he glared at you defiantly. “open,” you purposefully clenched, tightening your hold on his cock, “up.”

at the sudden change in pressure, he couldn’t help but throw his head back and moan, allowing you to harshly grab his chin and let your salvia drip off your lips onto his awaiting tongue.

“swallow,” you demanded.

overwhelmed by the undeniable pleasure coursing through his veins, he did so without complaint. why does it taste good, he sighed internally. now i’m gonna want more.

just a few thrusts later, you both reached your orgasms, moaning far too loud in a room of walls that were far too thin. the intensity made your muscles turn to jelly and you collapsed onto ken’s chiseled chest, your bodies both trembling.

“‘m tired,” you mumbled into his collarbone.

“yeah me too,” he snapped. “you’re fucking exhausting to be around. i don’t know why i do it.”

“i do,” you teased, raising your head, “‘cus you’re a needy bi-”

he mashed your cheek back into his shoulder. “don’t finish that.” you weren’t sure if the fuzziness in your mind was clouding your judgement, but you swore you could hear the hint of a snicker in his voice.

gradually shaking the exertion out of your limbs, you picked up your clothes and got dressed, walking out ken’s front door with a middle-finger throw over your shoulder.

“i hope i never have to see you again!” he called out behind you.

as you headed back to your apartment, your phone buzzed with a text:

[02:01 AM] ken: i have a team dinner on tues and its gonna be annoying and ill probably be frustrated as hell

[02:01 AM] ken: so

you hesitated before responding.

[02:01 AM] you: i can be there around 10

[02:02 AM] ken: cool. sounds good

you couldn’t help the corners of your mouth from turning up. you were happy—in a sick, perverted, sex-crazed kind of way—but happy all the same.

tuesday couldn’t come soon enough. you were going to absolutely destroy each other.

© property of hornime 2021. do not plagiarize any of my writing and do not repost/copy my writing onto any other sites.

#the chain biting was such a sexy brain move on my part #like how did i even think of that #that one paragraph literally belongs in a museum #spreading my gold chain kyoutani agenda #kinky.inky #haikyuu smut #haikyuu! smut #kyoutani x reader #kyotani kentaro x reader #maddog #maddog x reader #tw.hate sex #tw.degradation #tw.toxic #tw.choking #tw.spit #kyoutani

[dizzydancingdreamer]

Steve Rogers, The Man On Fire

Hey y'all, as Pride month draws to a close I would like to post this fic. It's been in my drafts for a month and I finally today found the motivation to finish it. This is special to me for many reasons, one of which being that I'm proudly a part of this community. Some of the anger written in is my own. I think a lot of people will resonate with it. I really hope you all enjoy this and happy Pride Month <3

This was based loosely off a headcannon and once I re-find it I will credit!

Synopsis: Steve is freshly thawed, queer, and pissed | A.k.a. Steve's experience in 21st Century America

Characters: Steve Rogers, Mentions of Bucky Barnes, (loosely a Stucky fic but Steve thinks he's dead here)

Warnings: Angst but not bad, Steve Rogers being volatile and chaotic (we love), poorly written accents (I literally read this with an accent in my head), literally a 2k monologue

Word count: 5.1k

Steve Rogers came out of the ice angry.

No— not angry— Steve Rogers came out of the ice fuckin’ furious.

He came out of the ice with his hands curled into two fists, with his jaw clenched so hard his teeth were liable to snap, and with a bone to pick with every damn reporter and historian and too loud opinion on this side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

He came out simmering— no, erupting— like the serum in his blood couldn’t keep his body from hibernation all those years ago but it sure as hell won’t keep him from setting the entirety of New York on fire now. He’ll burn it all down if he has to and rebuild it the way he remembers it— the way Bucky would have remembered it— and at the end of it all no one— not the bigots or deniers or the homophobes that seem to be the only thing that came with him from the forties— will be able to say that Captain America can’t love whoever he wants.

No one will be able to say that Steve Rogers didn’t love James “Bucky” “the man I’ve loved since twelve years old” Barnes with everything he had and then some.

No one.

So he starts with the museums in Washington— because sure it isn’t New York but where else would a relic like himself belong more?

He still has hope when he enters the building. They didn’t make them like this when he was a kid— they had science fairs in the town hall and culture fairs in the backstreets near the docks but never anything this grand. No tall marble pillars or enough stairs to make him wonder if he would have been able to climb to the top when he was half the size he is now. It’s strange. It’s kind of wonderful. Yeah, the Smithsonian museums make Steve Rogers feel small for the first time in a very long time and that gives him hope.

That hope doesn’t last long, though, because soon he’s wandering through the halls, following the signs that say Captain America: The First Avenger— what the hell is an Avenger? Is that what they’re calling soldiers these days? Now he feels small and old.

Turning the corner is like landing on another planet, one devoted entirely to him. His picture is everywhere he looks, his name is in lights, even his damn uniform has been replicated and presented on a little stage and he hates it. The rage is back, sparking at his fingers— he’s a match and lucky for everyone this building is made of stone because if it wasn’t he’s sure it would be reduced to nothing but ash by now.

It only worsens as he begins reading through the plaques and the paragraphs flashing across screens on the walls— he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that. The more he reads, though, the more he wonders if the stone is really, truly safe from the fire in his blood. He doesn’t think it is.

He surely isn’t at least— he feels like he’s going to explode. This isn’t him— none of this is him. War hero. Martyr. Golden boy. He has to stop reading that plaque— clearly no one did their research. Clearly no one dug up his medical files— or his police records. Brawls at the pub, disorderly conduct behind Mr. De Luca’s sandwich shop, public nudity at the beach that one time— thank you Bucky for the best night of his god damn life. Golden boy— ha.

Golden nobody with the black eye and broken hand is more like it.

For a moment he thinks he’s fine— he thinks it can’t get worse than this. Then he gets to the early life section and for an even longer moment his tongue tastes like gunpowder.

Steven Grant Rogers grew up in the streets of Brooklyn alongside his friend James Buchanan Barnes—

He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence— not when they already got the most important part wrong. Friend. Friend? No, no, no. No! There are a million words in the english language that Steve could use to describe Bucky and ‘friend’ will never be the first one.

How about best friend?

How about partner in crime?

How about soulmate who loved Steve so much that every night for the past forty-eight days since he woke up in an era that Bucky doesn’t exist in he’s cried himself to sleep with the same cherry cola taste of his ‘friend’ on his tongue.

It’s the final straw— Steve loses it.

“Anyone got a marker?”

The museum is quiet before he speaks but when his voice— steadily rising and taking on that New York headiness that his troops used to jazz him about— cuts through the exhibit— his fuckin’ exhibit— it’s silent. It’s dead, almost as dead as Buck— Nobody dares move a muscle as he rips his ball cap off his head and throws it at the statue of himself. Everyone knows who he is— everyone is going to know who he is so help him god.

“I said—” he tries again— “does anyone have a marker?”

It takes a moment for the people around him to pick their jaws up off the floor and he allows them that moment with a smug grin starting to tug on the corners of his lips. Finally— they’re starting to get it.

He’s not a hero; he’s a supernova of every scrawny, queer kid who’s ever gotten beaten to a pulp for kissing who they want.

Maybe then it’s fitting that the marker— when it’s finally produced and placed in his waiting palm— comes from a teenage girl with a shaved head and a blue, pink, and purple denim jacket and a busted lip. She doesn’t say much— only a mumbled here you go— but her eyes say everything that her words don’t. Give em’ hell, Cap. For the first time since waking up he flashes a genuine grin back— yeah, this one’s for you kid.

Steve wastes no time uncapping the sharpie— he’ll look that one up later— and scratching out the error. The blasphemy to his unholy name. It takes him a little longer to decide what to write in its place. There are a million words, sure, but somehow none of them feel right at this moment. None of them are enough. That’s something he’ll have to come to terms with later, though— how much nothing feels like enough anymore without Bucky.

Finally Steve settles on a word and he scribbles it as neatly as he can given the fact that he hasn’t had to write anything in eighty years. When he takes a step back, feeling alive for the first time since waking up, he beckons over the girl with the shaved head and points to the place where he’s taken it upon himself to correct history.

“Hey kid, why don’t you go ahead and read that outloud for everyone here.”

He allows another moment— this time because she deserves the time it takes for her eyes to light up and the smile to stretch across her bruised mouth.

Steve laughs— a rusted, croaky laugh; another first in forever— when her head whips around, facing him as she loudly proclaims: “It says boyfriend. Steve Rogers grew up in the streets of Brooklyn alongside his boyfriend Bucky Barnes!”

“Damn right I did—” he mutters to the kid before taking a step towards the crowd of gaping mouths. “Did you all hear that? Don’t worry if ya’ didn’t— I’ll say it one more time. Boyfriend. Bucky was my boyfriend and if he was here today he would be my husband. If any of you have a problem with that then feel free to take it up with me. I took on half of Brooklyn for that man and I’ll do it again.”

When no one says anything Steve nods, turning to hand the girl back her marker and to thank her— he may be angry but he hasn’t lost all his manners— but when he looks at her she doesn’t look back. Instead she takes the same step forward that he had, one of her hands balled into a tiny, shaking fist at her side and the other wrapped around a cell phone that’s pointed towards the crowd. He doesn’t understand the mechanics but he thinks she’s recording.

“You hear that?” She parrots the super soldier with a wavering but fierce voice. “Captain America likes men! And none of you can deny it!”

This time it’s his mouth that drops, watching as she shakily turns the camera off and spins back around. Before Steve can say anything, though, she’s talking again, this time hastier, and he can’t help but think that she sounds so much like him. All flushed and scrawny and pissed.

“I’m sorry, I’ll delete the recording if you want but, I jus’ know these bigots are gonna’ try and cover everything up and that would be a fuckin’ shame. I don’t know if you know how many kids need to hear this. I did— and I think they should too. Only if you want, of course.”

He doesn’t answer right away— he can’t. It’s like looking at himself at fifteen. Suddenly he’s back again, his feet hanging in the water as his boyfriend paces behind him, asking if he’s ready to have him look at his knuckles yet. He didn’t get that many good punches in— the scrapes are mostly from the pavement— but Buck always worries too much so it doesn’t matter. The protective idiot.

Steve shakes his head, blinking away the sunset lingering behind his eyes. “Bucky woulda’ loved you, kid.”

The next time he loses it— the next time he turns into more flame than man— is after he saves the city he’s been trying to burn down for three months.

It isn’t long after that day in the museum when Nick Fury decides it would be best for everyone if Steve goes back into the field. Of course, no one really asks him what he wants— they pretty much just shove a new suit into his hands and tell him to get training, Captain— but what else is new?

No one really comments on his outburst besides that either. Can you really call it an outburst when you’re just trying to reclaim the parts of you that have been stolen? Sure, the press gets a hold of the story and, true to what the kid had said, tries to twist it into something more digestible, but no one actually addresses it up with Steve. Apparently when someone saves the world as good as he does no one cares that they kiss men.

Or that they don’t wanna’ to actually save the world anymore.

See, in those three months— between the training and training and even more training that Steve Rogers begrudgingly obliges— he has time to catch up on the world. More importantly, he has time to catch up on what the world thinks of him. He scours a plethora of documentaries, scholarly essays, and whole books of information about his time as Captain America. Well— his time as Captain America when it mattered. In all his scouring he learns one thing: everything written about him is wrong.

It’s all so fuckin’ wrong.

Just why the hell would he want to save a world so bent on destroying who he is?

The Smithsonian exhibition was nothing compared to what’s been written in the eighty years he spent in the ice. Better yet, nothing compared to what hasn’t been written about him. They’ve taken an eraser to every part of his life that doesn’t fit with the golden image that they constructed for him. A.k.a. every part that matters. His relationship, his past, every little thing that made him supposedly perfect for the role he was given. Gone. Erskine told him he was a good man— apparently he was the only one who thought so.

Apparently being a good man isn’t good enough.

They only wanted the perfect soldier. Yeah, well, they had one and they fucked him over too. Don’t even get him started on what they did to Bucky— Steve doesn’t want to think about what Winnifred— Winnie for short— Barnes would do if she saw the history books erasing her baby’s Jewish roots. Or his relationship. It wouldn’t be pretty, that’s for damn sure. If ever there was someone more protective than Bucky it would have been his mother. Not that there’s a damn note about her in anything either though.

Maybe that’s the final straw that does him in this time— watching the place that Mrs. Barnes loved more than almost anything else in the world crumble, while also knowing that the world no longer gives a shit about the two people she loved more.

“Mr. Rogers, this is where you grew up, is it not? Is there anything you would like to say about what took place here in your home city today?”

Maybe he pretends not to hear the last part— maybe he really does only hear up until where the reporter asks him if there is anything he wants to say. He’s been around quite his fair share of explosions; it would make sense that his hearing is a little off. Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore, though.

Scratch that— he definitely doesn’t care anymore.

And why the fuck should he? He does have something to say and propriety be damned he’s going to say it.

Steve stares into the crowd of faceless reporters and flashing cameras with a scowl on his grimey face. Around him stand the other Avengers— his ‘team’. The last time he had a team the historians screwed up the history for every single member. Dugan, Morita, Falsworth, Jones, Dernier, Sawyer, Juniper, Pinkerton. Barnes. All of them were brave men with families and sacrifices and all of them were treated like jokes by ‘reporters’ just like the ones in front of him now. He really doubts there’s a difference between old and new journalism.

The only difference is that now he’s here and this time he’s not going to let them write anything but the damn truth.

“It is—” Steve muses, brushing the sweaty hair from his forehead— “I’m surprised you know that though.”

The reporter cocks his head, clearly confused, and it makes the super soldier’s blood boil. “Come again, sir?”

“I said I’m surprised you know where I was born, kid.” This time when he says the word— kid— it’s derogatory. “Ya’ know, considering how you all seem to know nothing about me otherwise.”

Steve almost smiles at the way the crowd tenses. He actually would if it weren’t for the white hot rage coursing through his veins, mingling with the last of the adrenaline leftover in his system. It gives him an extra kick— not that he needs it. Even when he was just a runt from the wrong side of the tracks he needed nothing more than an offhand comment to raise his fists. Fighting to Steve Rogers has always been intoxicating— the aftershocks of winning the battle just makes it more thrilling now.

Who knew, right?

“Sir I asked—” The reporter sputters and Steve simply holds a hand up, silencing him before he can start again.

“Yeah I know what you asked, alright. You want me to talk about the battle here in New York today and how I am more than happy to have risked my life to save it. But I can’t do that, kid. Because I didn’t save it for you. I didn’t save it for any of you.”

Steve feels his team tense— maybe were it any other time he would stop talking. He would just leave it, let the issue go, because Bucky would tell him too. They aren’t worth it, bruiser, he would say, they aren’t worth your blood. Maybe he would listen to his boyfriend because usually he was right. Bucky was always right. So yeah, maybe he would list—

Who is he kidding; he knows he wouldn’t.

Not then and certainly not now— not when Bucky isn’t here to defend himself against everything Steve has been reading about. That’s exactly why he doesn’t stop talking. Someone has to defend him and who better of a person than him? So, yeah, he keeps going, even when he hears footsteps behind him.

“You wanna’ know who I did save it for? James Barnes, that’s who I saved it for! You see, just around that corner there is a bookstore. Rickley Books. That was my boyfriend's favourite bookstore. You know, the man who gave his life to stop a train in Austria from reaching the enemies? Yeah that was him. That train was filled with supplies. Had it reached their headquarters, who knows if we’d be standing here today. If there would be a New York at all. Not that you would know that. But who cares about that dead sergeant from the 107th, right? There’s plenty just like him.”

Steve shrugs nonchalantly— a move he picked up from the very man he’s speaking about— but he spits his words at the reporters with enough venom to cancel out any peace that the action brings. That’s his own move.

He keeps going. “You know who else I saved it for? His mother. Yeah, his mother Winnie Barnes. Wonderful lady. She used to run a soup kitchen a couple blocks from here. Kept the rift raft like myself from going hungry most nights— I was a brawler, you know.”

A couple of reporters in the crowd laugh at that and Steve flinches, his vision tinting red as he cranes his neck, seeking them out.

“Oh you think that’s funny, do you? You think I’m joking? I’m not. You ever been backed into a corner, son? Had people hurl slurs at you that I can’t even repeat today? Ever been beaten up for loving your best friend? No, I bet you haven’t. You weren’t a queer kid in the thirties. That’s hard— that’s borderline impossible actually. I only made it because of people like Winnie Barnes. That woman was a saint but nobody talks about her either.”

Steve has to take a deep breath, clearing the rasp in his voice that rises as he dwells on the woman he called his second mother for so long. She wasn’t just a saint, she was an angel. He can’t cry here though, not now. Not even as his throat begins to tighten.

“Winnie was the type of lady who didn’t let anyone walk over the little people. She used to sit me down and say Stevie you gotta’ fight for what you want because ain’t nobody gonna’ give it to you. She told me that I shouldn’t have to but that there were going to be people who would try to tear me down just for being me. And she was right— just like her son— because that was the era, you know? But now, here in the twenty-first century, you’re all still trying to tear us down.”

A hand lands on his shoulder, small fingers tugging at where his suit has begun to tear. Natasha Romanoff. He meets her gaze quickly, neck craning to stare down the red head, and in the few seconds their eyes meet it’s like Bucky is next to him. Somehow the blue in her irises catches the falling sun just like his used to. Steve can hear the gruff of his voice in the depths of his mind. Back down, bruiser. The sentiment is echoed across Nat’s face.

Steve shakes her hand off him, turning back to the reporters— don’t they know that he can’t?

“You all say you care about me, huh? That I’m a hero? You know nothing about me— you don’t want to. Before I was a soldier I was a kid. A queer kid. I said that already but let me repeat it. Queer. Did you write that down? None of you certainly did before. That’s how I know that you don’t care— because in an age where being queer is infinitely more accepted you still don’t bother to write it down.”

He pauses for another breath, shutting his eyes against the blinking red lights of the cameras. They’re like little demons, always watching his every move. Recording. Everything’s always recorded these days. Will he ever be used to that? Bucky was the technology guy, not him. Not then and not now.

When Steve picks up again— eyes open and shoulders freshly straight— it’s on a new note— a clear note.

“You don’t care about me— you certainly don’t care about the real heroes of the war because if you did you wouldn’t erase our history. Do you know how much it would have meant to Bucky to see our relationship accepted? The man who died for you? How much it would’ve meant to his mother? You can’t just pick which of our stories and our sacrifices are worthy and which aren't.”

He hasn’t spoken this much since he’s woken up, not all at once at least. Maybe he should have, though— maybe if he had then he wouldn’t feel like ripping the heads off everyone in front of him right now. Call it fight or flight. Call it revenge. Hell, call it whatever you’d like because it doesn’t really matter. Either way he feels like a kid again— again— backed into a corner behind the deli with his fists up and his teeth bared.

He feels feral again.

“So now you just want me to save the world like I did— like Bucky did— all those years ago— or maybe jus’ New York— as if that’s any better— and you don’t even bother to write a proper article about me? Hell, I never even asked for an article, let alone a whole exhibit! I’m just a soldier— and before that I was just a kid. If there’s never another article written about me I’ll be grateful. But now that I’m here, standing in front of you, I’ll say this—”

Just as Steve’s voice is cresting into a shout that would no doubt be heard regardless of whether or not the microphones were in front of him, Natasha tries one more time, her fingers slipping between his.

Her voice is a dull buzz compared to his, only reaching his ears by sheer will. “C’mon Stevie— we gotta’ go now.”

Like before he’s stunned but this time instead of seeing Buck— instead of hearing him in his head— he hears Winnie.

You fought good, honey. You fought good for us. You can rest now.

It’s jarring and it’s not lost on him the handful of awkward seconds that it takes for him to respond. That’s just the effect Winnie had on people though— still has, apparently. Steve shakes his head— I know, mama. But I gotta’ finish this fight.

“No, Nat— I’ve got to say this.” Steve mumbles— voice just beginning to waver despite how hard he clenches his jaw— before sneering at the crowd one last time.

“If I ever read an article from any of you that discredits Bucky Barnes, our relationship, or myself just know that I’ll come for you. I’ll come for this city. Don’t you ever forget who I saved it for. James Barnes, Winnie Barnes, and every queer kid who’s ever felt erased because of people like you. The bigots in the forties couldn’t stop me. The Nazis couldn’t stop me. Not even the Atlantic Ocean could stop me. So don’t think for a second that any of you could either. Have a good day.”

With that Captain America turns, marching off the impromptu stage and beginning the trek back to his apartment. He doesn’t bother looking at his team as he passes them— he can imagine their stunned faces well enough on his own. No doubt he’ll be getting another assignment from Fury soon enough to make up for this ‘outburst’ too. Still, he feels a little bit better. There’s an ache in his shoulder, and one under his ribs too, but he still smiles as he passes Rickman and Sons Books. That must mean something good.

The last time Steve Rogers burns he doesn’t burn the way he’s expecting to— he doesn’t vandalize his own name or blow up at a reporter. No, the third time— the final time— that Steve Rogers burns it’s with nostalgia— and with a damn good cup of coffee in his hand.

“I had no idea this place was even here.” The girl across from Steve muses, tiny hands shifting the steaming cup back and forth.

Her name is Ellie, he learned that back at the museum after asking for a copy of the video she took. He barely knew how to use his phone back then, let alone his email— hell, both still confuse him more often than not— but she had been patient. A little awestruck and a little riled up too but he took it in stride— easily. It’s not hard being nice to the spitting image of him.

“I’m glad I’m good for something other than making the news.” Steve chuckles and this time he means it— there’s no malice or ill intent, only humor. “O’Malley’s ‘s been here longer than I have. Looked a little different then—” he takes a moment to let his eyes wander the old coffee shop and it’s new appliances— a moment to feel his age catch up to him— “but I guess I did too.”

Ellie’s laughter joins in there and it’s strange— strange that he hasn’t laughed with another person in seven, almost eight, months; strange that her laughs sound so much like Bucky’s when they were younger; strange that Bucky isn’t here to hear. Here to laugh, too. Because he would have.

He would have called Steve an old man, would have wrapped his arm around his shoulders, would have asked— no, demanded— that Ellie try the plum cobbler. They always made the best cobbler. Bucky always had the best laugh. All grit and breath and him. Steve feels warm just thinking about it.

“Well thanks for letting me in on the secret, I’ll make sure to guard it carefully.” She even has Bucky’s warm sarcasm.

Maybe it’s not so much like looking in a mirror as it is looking at what he wishes he and his boyfriend could have been back then.

“And thanks for letting me interview you—” Ellie continues, setting the cup down but not before nodding at it, her eyes wide— “wow. You weren’t kidding about the joe, huh? Anyway— thanks for scheduling this. I know you’re probably super busy— and that there are more well established people you could have gone to.”

Steve sets his own mug down too— if he hadn’t there’s a possibility it would be more puddle than porcelain. “Well established means nothin’, kid. Not when you don’t have heart. They’re parasites, all of ‘em. The press couldn’t care less about me.”

Ellie nods, lifting the lid of her laptop. It’s a little bit dented and slathered in stickers, not quite the newest model— he would know, he has the newest one and it’s still sitting in his apartment in the box. Yet another testament to how little the people around him truly know him.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, can I get you a side of classism with that commercialism?”

Now she sounds like Winnie too.

“Say, has anyone ever told you that you’re funny?”

She shrugs, tilting her head, a lopsided grin glued to her face. “Once or twice— I never know if they mean it or if they just want me to shut up. I never do so I guess we’ll never know.”

Steve sputters out another laugh because; “I guess we’re the same then— never give them a moment, kid. That’s the best advice I can give you.” He pauses— again— he supposes it’s going to be a day of pausing— he supposes it’s about time he pauses— before adding, “Bucky would’ve scolded me for saying that.”

Ellie’s fingers, swift and deft over the machine— Steve hadn’t even seen her begin to type— pause too as her smile softens. “What would he have said instead?”

Her question shouldn’t catch off guard— this is why he asked her to meet him; to finally, properly write his story— their story. Still he pauses— Steve’s empty hands feel hot, his shoulders warm; bare— what would he have said? It doesn’t take long to hear his boyfriend’s voice, not there but somehow loud in his ear all the same.

Just relax— they aren’t worth it. It’s too nice out to care about anything but the water— are you coming in or not? Summer doesn’t last forever, you know?

It’s impossible but Steve can feel the sun on his back and on his ears again, like he’s there— like he’s back, sixteen and on fire. Those were the days where everything made him cold. The days where his skin burned no matter the season but especially in August which was when the ocean was warm enough to swim in. It never stopped him from joining Buck— nothing could have stopped him. His cheeks warm, too, at the thought.

Steve blinks, his own smile— perhaps a little lopsided in it’s own right— shaping over his mouth. “He would have told you to relax— and to try the plum cobbler. It’s fantastic.”

With another giggle— and a reiterated comment— has anyone ever told you you’re funny, Steve?— they fall into a conversation, just a kid and a relic, about life. It’s not an easy conversation— but then again those kinds never are. It’s real, though, and unedited. Unfiltered. Just the way Erskine and Winnie and Bucky would have liked it— the only way Steve wants it. It’s not perfect but, hell, Steve has never been perfect.

He’s never wanted to be.

Maybe Steve doesn’t know everything his boyfriend would say— and maybe he’d be lying if he said he doesn’t blow up once or twice after today— but he can confidently say that he gave Brooklyn a run for her money— twice— and lived to tell the tale. He can say then when it mattered, he burned. That he still burns. That he will until he doesn’t— until he’s extinguished.

But, hey, though Summer doesn’t last forever, not even the Atlantic could extinguish the flame that is Steve Rogers.

That’s what he writes— in Sharpie— on the card he writes to Ellie— the one attached to the computer he knows he’ll never use.

#Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #Stucky #steve x bucky #Queer!steve rogers #Queer!Steve #Queer!Bucky #Queer!Bucky Barnes #Captain America #pride month #Steve angst #steve fluff #Marvel cinematic universe #Mcu #mcu fic #steve fic

[ljw-art]

not to be controversial... but

the fact that such a substantial amount of Japanese poeple deny their government’s historical discrimination against Chinese and Korean citizens, their use of “comfort women”, and even participation in (or rather, its initiation of) the Nanjing massacre/genocide is deeply concerning

i bring it up for having read this article and seen coverage on NHK News

the gist of it is that an artists work was pulled from an exhibition for referencing, even in such a gentle and unnassuming depiction, a comfort girl (or ‘ainfu’) — aka, a woman during wartimes (often Korean or Chinese, for Japanese troops) who was taken (mostly against their will) as sex workers / sex slaves by soldiers during wartime (not only by Japanese troops; this was a practice used by cultures across the world for thousands of years, of course. Women being treated and objectified through history as “comforting” sex objects is by no means exclusive to Japan)

right-wing politics and imperialist attitudes in Japan are something that have really fascinated me over the past few years, as a subject matter — while studying animation in college i even focused on it in my presentation on post-WW2 effects on Japanese media and the extremeties of politics on each side

and this? this is not encouraging. Not one bit.

i’m at least happy to report that it seems as though Japan is seemingly leaning towards the centre-right scale of politics at the moment as far as its general public goes. The general public seems open and gentle towards foreigners, even those who belong to cultures they have historically been hostile towards, or who have been hostile towards the Japanese...

but i have to take note of those opinions that are discriminatory

in my literal first five hours in Tokyo, in the early hours of last wednesday, i went out to get some food after my long trip from Scotland

and i met a man (his name was Tanaka), a relatively well-practiced English speaker, who was asking what drew me to Japan. I cited its historical significance, my curiosity over the isolation of its culture, so on and so on. Then he asked me what places in Japan i would like to see most of all. I stated my usuals — Tokyo was one of the last places i intended to stay, i’m just here for the Tokyo Game Show. The places i would really love to visit for the richness of their cultures and their histories and landscapes, are Osaka, Fukoaka, and (above all else) Kyoto...

then i mentioned Hokkaido...

“Hokkaido? Why Hokkaido?”

“not only is the island beautiful, but the culture of the Ainu people is incredibly humbling,” i say, “their traditions are deeply immersed in a certain type of respect for nature and coexistence.” This is something i relate to, with my religious practices, as a history lover and pantheist. “I would love to have some insight into how they live in the modern age, in a rapidly evolving Japan”

now to the best of my ability im gonna quote this... as accurately as i can remember, Tanaka goes on to tell me; 

“You do not want to meet Ainu. They are like savages in American cowboy movies, and they are very dirty. You should stay in Tokyo. People here are clean, and we are more proud to be Japanese.”

now that outlook didnt impact me IMMENSELY, since i’m so foreign to this culture, to these politics, to this social climate, even with my past research... But it did stick with me and it made me think a LOT, considering the fact that i know how disheartening, unsettling, and even frightening it feels to be outcast and labelled as “savage” and “dirty” and “unpatriotic”, as a left-leaning, mixed-race Scotswoman with a Diné (Navajo) native-american name

now going back to that article?

there are Japanese who are so deeply in denial of the historic war crimes committed by their troops between WW1 and WW2, that there is a minority who are even willing to send death threats to artists for simply acknowledging the existence of the victims of these crimes

*** One of the faxes it received read, “I will bring a gasoline container to the museum,” which drew associations with the recent deadly arson attack on a Kyoto Animation Co. studio, according to Omura.

( i would also like to briefly acknowledge my deepest regrets and support for Kyoto Animation’s studios; Hearing about the fire that day was devestating — and if it was devestating for me, i cannot begin to imagine how the friends and families of the victims must be suffering from the aftermath )

if this paragraph doesn’t speak VOLUMES about the state of right-wing extremism in Japan, i really, truly do not know what could. Yet somehow, the world is... unsettlingly quiet, in its acknowledgment of Japan’s political climate.

That silence is directly affecting the basic rights of Japanese artists, the depiction and integrity of Japanese history, and by proxy, the freedom of speech of artists reflecting on the history of Japan and its relative cultures, and its neighbouring countries

this breed of nationalism, whether originating in Japan or anywhere else... it has to be recognised, and approached with caution

that’s all i got tonight, folks...

#tw_slavery / #tw_rape / #tw_sexual assault / #tw_genocide

#NHK world #nhkworld #tokyo 2019 #political art #history #historical art #commentary #japan

[mimansa1]

Revival Agents - Melancholy Aficionado ( MimAnsa & Cherokey Remix )

Revival Agents - Melancholy Aficionado ( Original Mix ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_eB8... buy: https://www.beatport.com/track/melanc... https://www.instagram.com/i_revival_a... https://www.facebook.com/revivalagents06 https://soundcloud.com/user-848986085 https://www.instagram.com/tarascherokey/ video & music by MimAnsa https://www.instagram.com/andreymimansa/ https://www.facebook.com/andrey.mimansa https://audiojungle.net/user/mimansa/... https://www.pond5.com/ru/artist/miman...

FROM WAR TO MUSIC ! "Revival Agents“ is a new music phenomena of DJs and musicians founded by  “DJ Don Sky” in Cote d'Azur (France), former soldier with a spirit of  musician who enrolled for French Legion and after returning from war conflict zones realized he should make love, music and not war. What’s up brothers and sisters! If you are reading this you are certain to be given some of our thoughts on the insights and experiences we had , converted into our music. Well today ,the track “Aficionado” by “Revival Agents “is on current agenda . Let’s take a look at the lyrics, first : It’s raining with sorrow I gravitate to contamplate Melancholy , sadness, reflection Aficionado And the strain between the fleetness and eternity Is what we’ve got In the museum of reality Alchemy from pain  to beauty Poetry and melody Is just another remedy Let’s start off with the beginning: It’s raining with sorrow I gravitate to contamplate Melancholy , sadness, reflection Aficionado . It is about every artist being extremely sensitive over tribulations and distress which happens in everyone’s life, however, artists reflect on sadness and get that weird inspiration from it. Basically, they are inclined to gravitate to it, embrace it to express it through music. Artists worship pain without resisting. It can be called melancholy aficionado , sadness fans... We get nourishment off it to bring out the deepest feelings to contemplate and compose tunes and write poetry. Next part is refrain: And the strain between the fleetness and eternity Is what we’ve got In the museum of reality This is what delivers the message on reality, namely, we are stuck between Heaven and Earth , two main elements pulling us apart, by each simultaneously ! Life is short, limited by time in regards to our body,even though our soul belongs to eternity, and we all sense it deep within. Thus, we are victimized by the phenomenon! The strain between the two parts is hard , tough and merciless.... And let’s view our life as museum, for we all observe one another, being exhibits ourselves. As for the final paragraph: Alchemy from pain  to beauty Poetry and melody Is just another remedy It’s just literally about turning pain into beauty which speaks itself of the process we call alchemy. And poetry and melody are the means to get over pain which we find as remedy .....

#melancholy #aficionado #electronic music #Revival Music #revivalagents #revival agents #Agents #cherokey #Mimansa music #MimAnsa sound

[tgon]

Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Tale of the Mogul Monster | Review

Title: Are You Afraid of the Dark? #22 – The Tale of the Mogul Monster

Author: David Cody Weiss and Bobbi J.G. Weiss

Cover Artist: Broeck Steadman

INTRODUCTION

Direct your attention to the cover of this book. How could you go wrong with peak-nineties artwork like that? We must be dealing with Mitchell Goosen levels of cool, right?

No. This book is one big Mitchell Goose-egg. And I'm not joking when I say: Mogul Monster almost killed this blog when I tried to review it last year.

I don't even think most people are aware that Are You Afraid of the Dark? had a book series. It would seem there's a good reason for that.

STORY REVIEW

The prose in this book is horrible. Bordering on unreadable. Snowbordering.

Everything was black on white. No, that wasn't right. Everything was white but there was no light to see by.

Those are the first sentences of the first chapter.

Neon chaos exploded the blackness when gravity finally caught him.

Still not even past the first page of this story.

Dmitri Flintoff has been a trust fund kid since his parents died, and he likes using his wealth to take himself and his friends snowboarding. This leads to Dmitri and his butler squabbling about trust management for multiple pages. You see, this book conflates trust funds with literally anything a child would find interesting. We're dealing with a book that belongs in the hallowed halls of Children's Media Based Around Trusts, seated alongside Horse Sense and probably nothing else.

Dmitri idolizes Brushy Kelly, a "famous" snowboarder who went missing on Mount Tempest. If only Kelly were still alive but no way could that happen because he must be dead because everyone says so.

Dmitri visits a museum near Mount Tempest where he is scared by a stationary Bigfoot statue. For some inexplicable reason, this causes him to ⁠remember how lonely he secretly feels. When his friends laugh at him for being scared by a statue, he worries they've somehow discovered his secret. A topic handled with all the elegance of an avalanche. Dmitri then presses a button and listens to the history of Bigfoot, which goes on for one-and-a-half pages. No dialogue. Just italicized text pontificating about Bigfoot. For one-and-a-half pages. By this point, I was fully convinced I'd accidentally started reading The Tale of the So Dull Monster.

The friends go "shredding." The book spends 200 words describing what a mogul is. A firm hump of snow. Here I was thinking the real Mogul Monster was greed. Since this book goes ninety pages without a single monster, I assumed there must be a metaphor or allegory or some other attempt at lampshading our disappointment. The Tale of the Mogul Monster at the End of This Book.

The descriptions of snowboarding feel like waterboarding, and the fourth chapter is a Johnny Tsunami of a dose. Dmitri's friends scare him with a fake Bigfoot foot, but Dmitri scares them by threatening to make them pay for their own dinners. The Tale of the Dutch Monster. Chapter five involves Dmitri and his friends gearing up to conquer Tempest Ridge, the toughest slope on the mountain. This chapter also includes an entire paragraph describing a fictitious brand of helicopter. Seventy-three words. I counted them because I'm so interested.

Despite its very really truly impressive specs, the helicopter doesn't take the boys all the way up the mountain. They have to hike through a forbidden area. Midway through, Dmitri decides the weather conditions aren't quite right, so they start to head back. ಠ_ಠ The group gets knocked a ways down the mountain by an avalanche. And somehow it's still boring. One of the friends, Jake, leaves without hesitation, a meta-allusion to what the audience wants to do by this point in the book. Dmitri is stranded with one friend, Rahm, who has an injured left arhm.

The boys fall into a cave, and they're surprised to find stone tools and Brushy Kelly's signature board. It's almost as if Kelly is still alive but that can't be right because he's dead because everyone says so. Jake returns to see the accident, a meta-allusion to me. Jake becomes very indignant when Dmitri won't tell him which way the road is because Jake wants to abandon Dmitri. So Jake teaches Dmitri a lesson by abandoning him. You follow?

That night, Dmitri escapes the cave, hoping to bring back help for Rahm and probably also figure out where the shadows on the cave wall come from. While traversing the mountain, Dmitri finds Brushy Kelly, who has been pulling an Elvis and hiding from the public. Color me surprised! Although, the famous snowboarder is very hairy. One might even say bushy. If only I could think of a pun to go here.

Now prepare yourself. Brushy Kelly calls on his Sasquatch friend to save Rahm. Apparently, Sasquatches are real, and they can communicate using "hand jive."

Hand jive. Not sign language. Hand jive.

The Squatch makes a magical potion and uses it to heal Rahm. This is something that happens in the book. It's like experiencing the Dyatlov Pass incident. Kelly teaches Dmitri how to love himself, and I don't care one bit because I'm far too distracted by previous events. The chapter ends with Dmitri snowboarding alongside Sasquatch. If this book had just been chapter nine, it might've been a beautiful thing. The book blithers for another two chapters, but who cares.

GLOSSARY OF VERY HIP LINGO

The following is some of the advanced shredder lingo from this book along with definitions. Only rad kids allowed beyond this point:

Rad shredder: Good snowboarder.

Board rats: A slur against rad shredders.

"He gave me jive:" "He talked back."

"Lame ski bums:" "How do you do, fellow kids?"

A stupe: Stupid.

Knuckle-grabber: Is this a typo?

Jungle cammies in mottled tans and greens: What?

Hand jive: Hand jive.

THE VERDICT

Seasonal Affective Disappointment

BEST QUOTE

Chalk up another prejudice against snowboarders, Dmitri thought.

Shredders, rise up!

#are you afraid of the dark #nickelodeon #90s #nostalgia #review #horror #books #PazReviews

[doodlebuggity]

Testimony of a surgeon working in Bergamo, in the heart of Italy's coronavirus outbreak.

“There are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.”

Daniele Macchini works in Humanitas Gavazzeni Hospital, Bergamo in Italy. This is a directly translated account of his experience there. It was written on March 7th, 2020. Italy has since gone into lockdown.

“In one of the non-stop e-mails that I receive from my hospital administration on a more than daily basis, there was a paragraph on "how to be responsible on social media", with some recommendations that we all can agree on. After thinking for a long time if and what to write about what's happening here, I felt that silence was not responsible. I will therefore try to convey to lay-people, those who are more distant from our reality, what we are experiencing in Bergamo during these Covid-19 pandemic days. I understand the need not to panic, but when the message of the danger of what is happening is not out, and I still see people ignoring the recommendations and people who gather together complaining that they cannot go to the gym or play soccer tournaments, I shiver. I also understand the economic damage and I am also worried about that. After this epidemic, it will be hard to start over.

Still, beside the fact that we are also devastating our national health system from an economic point of view, I want to point out that the public health damage that is going to invest the country is more important and I find it nothing short of "chilling" that new quarantine areas requested by the Region has not yet been established for the municipalities of Alzano Lombardo and Nembro (I would like to clarify that this is purely personal opinion). I myself looked with some amazement at the reorganization of the entire hospital in the previous week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly "emptied", elective activities interrupted, intensive care unit freed to create as many beds as possible. Containers arriving in front of the emergency room to create diversified routes and avoid infections. All this rapid transformation brought in the hallways of the hospital an atmosphere of surreal silence and emptiness that we did not understand, waiting for a war that had yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would never come with such ferocity (I open a parenthesis: all this was done in the shadows, and without publicity, while several newspapers had the courage to say that private health care was not doing anything).

I still remember my night shift a week ago spent without any rest, waiting for a call from the microbiology department. I was waiting for the results of a swab taken from the first suspect case in our hospital, thinking about what consequences it would have for us and the hospital. If I think about it, my agitation for one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I have seen what is happening. Well, the situation is now nothing short of dramatic. No other words come to mind. The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night. One after the other, these unfortunate people come to the emergency room. They have far from the complications of a flu.

Let's stop saying it's a bad flu. In my two years working in Bergamo, I have learned that the people here do not come to the emergency room for no reason. They did well this time too. They followed all the recommendations given: a week or ten days at home with a fever without going out to prevent contagion, but now they can't take it anymore. They don't breathe enough, they need oxygen. Drug therapies for this virus are few.

The course mainly depends on our organism. We can only support it when it can't take it anymore. It is mainly hoped that our body will eradicate the virus on its own, let's face it. Antiviral therapies are experimental on this virus and we learn its behavior day after day. Staying at home until the symptoms worsen does not change the prognosis of the disease. Now, however, that need for beds in all its drama has arrived. One after another, the departments that had been emptied are filling up at an impressive rate. The display boards with the names of the sicks, of different colors depending on the department they belong to, are now all red and instead of the surgical procedure, there is the diagnosis, which is always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.

Now, tell me which flu virus causes such a rapid tragedy?

Because that's the difference (now I get a little technical): in classical flu, besides that it infects much less population over several months, cases are complicated less frequently: only when the virus has destroyed the protective barriers of our airways and as such it allows bacteria (which normally resident in the upper airways) to invade the bronchi and lungs, causing a more serious disease. Covid 19 causes a banal flu in many young people, but in many elderly people (and not only) a real SARS because it invades the alveoli of the lungs directly, and it infects them making them unable to perform their function. The resulting respiratory failure is often serious and after a few days of hospitalization, the simple oxygen that can be administered in a ward may not be enough. Sorry, but to me, as a doctor, it's not reassuring that the most serious are mainly elderly people with other pathologies. The elderly population is the most represented in our country and it is difficult to find someone who, above 65 years of age, does not take at least a pill for high blood pressure or diabetes.

I can also assure you that when you see young people who end up intubated in the ICU, pronated or worse, in ECMO (a machine for the worst cases, which extracts the blood, re-oxygenates it and returns it to the body, waiting for the lungs to hopefully heal), all this confidence for your young age goes away.

And while there are still people on social media who boast of not being afraid by ignoring the recommendations, protesting that their normal lifestyle habits have "temporarily" halted, an epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.

The cases multiply, up to a rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the emergency room. A quick meeting to learn how the to use to emergency room EHR and a few minutes later I'm already downstairs, next to the warriors on the war front. The screen of the PC with the chief complaint is always the same: fever and respiratory difficulty, fever and cough, respiratory insufficiency etc ... Exams, radiology always with the same sentence: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All need to be hospitalized. Some already need to be intubated, and go to the ICU. For others, however, it is too late. ICU is full.

And when ICUs are full, more are created. Each ventilator is like gold: those in the operating rooms that have now suspended their non-urgent activity are used and the OR become a an ICU that did not exist before. I found it amazing, or at least I can speak for Humanitas Gavazzeni (where I work), how it was possible to put in place in such a short time a deployment and a reorganization of resources so finely designed to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude. And every reorganization of beds, wards, staff, work shifts and tasks is constantly reviewed day after day to try to give everything and even more. Those wards that previously looked like ghosts are now saturated, ready to try to give their best for the sick, but exhausted. The staff is exhausted. I saw fatigue on faces that didn't know what it was despite the already grueling workloads they had. I have seen people still stop beyond the times they used to stop already, for overtime that was now habitual. I saw solidarity from all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask "what can I do for you now?" or "leave that admission to me, i will take care of it." Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny.

There are no more shifts, no more schedules.

Social life is suspended for us. I have been separated for a few months, and I assure you that I have always done my best to constantly see my son even on the day after a night shift, without sleeping and postponing sleep until when I am without him, but for almost 2 weeks I have voluntarily not seen neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them and in turn infecting an elderly grandmother or relatives with other health problems. I'm happy with some photos of my son that I look at between tears and a few video calls. So you should be patient too, you can't go to the theater, museums or gym. Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could exterminate. It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us, try to leave the house only to indispensable things. Do not go en masse to make stocks in supermarkets: it is the worst thing because you concentrate and the risk of contacts with infected people who do not know they are infected. You can go there without a rush. Maybe if you have a normal mask (even those that are used to do certain manual work), put it on. Don't look for ffp2 or ffp3. Those should serve us and we are beginning to struggle to find them. By now we have had to optimize their use only in certain circumstances, as the WHO recently recommended in view of their almost ubiquitous running low. Oh yes, thanks to the shortage of certain protection devices, many colleagues and I are certainly exposed despite all the other means of protection we have. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. Some infected colleagues also have infected relatives and some of their family members are already struggling between life and death. We are where your fears could make you stay away. Try to make sure you stay away.

Tell your family members who are elderly or with other illnesses to stay indoors. Bring him the groceries please. We have no alternative. It's our job. Indeed what I do these days is not really the job I'm used to, but I do it anyway and I will like it as long as it responds to the same principles: try to make some sick people feel better and heal, or even just alleviate the suffering and the pain to those who unfortunately cannot heal. I don't spend a lot of words about the people who define us heroes these days and who until yesterday were ready to insult and report us. Both will return to insult and report as soon as everything is over. People forget everything quickly. And we're not even heroes these days. It's our job. We risked something bad every day before: when we put our hands in a belly full of someone's blood we don't even know if they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we do it even though we know they have HIV or hepatitis C; when we stick ourselves during an operation on a patient with HIV and take the drugs that make us vomit all day long for a month. When we read with anguish the results of the blood tests after an accidental needlestick, hoping not to be infected. We simply earn our living with something that gives us emotions. It doesn't matter if they are beautiful or ugly, we just take them home. In the end we only try to make ourselves useful for everyone. Now try to do it too, though: with our actions we influence the life and death of a few dozen people. You with yours, many more. Please share and share the message. We need to spread the word to prevent what is happening here from happening all over Italy.”

His original Facebook post.

Italian newspaper (Corriere della Sera, edizione di Bergamo) transcript.

#coronavirus #covid19 #italy #covid-19 #Daniele Macchini #i cried the first time i read through this #same way i cried when i read the account of the chinese girl who lost her mother to covid19 and then her father was put in quarantine and #then her brother #we forget there are real people attached to this

[revival-agents2021]

What’s up brothers and sisters!

If you are reading this you are certain to be given some of our thoughts on the insights and experiences we had , converted into our music.

Well today ,the track “Aficionado” by “Revival Agents “is on current agenda .

Let’s take a look at the lyrics, first :

It’s raining with sorrow

I gravitate to contamplate

Melancholy , sadness, reflection Aficionado

And the strain between the fleetness and eternity

Is what we’ve got In the museum of reality

Alchemy from pain to beauty

Poetry and melody

Is just another remedy

Let’s start off with the beginning:

It’s raining with sorrow

I gravitate to contamplate

Melancholy , sadness, reflection Aficionado .

It is about every artist being extremely sensitive over tribulations and distress which happens in everyone’s life, however, artists reflect on sadness and get that weird inspiration from it. Basically, they are inclined to gravitate to it, embrace it to express it through music. Artists worship pain without resisting. It can be called melancholy aficionado , sadness fans... We get nourishment off it to bring out the deepest feelings to contemplate and compose tunes and write poetry.

Next part is refrain:

And the strain between the fleetness and eternity

Is what we’ve got In the museum of reality

This is what delivers the message on reality, namely, we are stuck between Heaven and Earth , two main elements pulling us apart, by each simultaneously !

Life is short, limited by time in regards to our body,even though our soul belongs to eternity, and we all sense it deep within. Thus, we are victimized by the phenomenon! The strain between the two parts is hard , tough and merciless....

And let’s view our life as museum, for we all observe one another, being exhibits ourselves.

As for the final paragraph:

Alchemy from pain to beauty

Poetry and melody

Is just another remedy

It’s just literally about turning pain into beauty which speaks itself of the process we call alchemy.

And poetry and melody are the means to get over pain which we find as remedy .....

Now, in order to finalize the above mentioned explanation, take a listen to the track on a whole new level of awareness right here:

#cherokey #revivalagents #philosophy #electronic #poetry #lyrics #music #music philosophy #explanation #housemusic #melanchaholic #melancholy #aficionado #awareness #spirituality #high vibrations

[humansizedplanet]

first semester.

In the last few days and weeks, I’ve laid witness to a flood of joyous “end-of-first-semester”-type posts on Instagram, Facebook and otherwise. Slides and galleries of shiny, beautiful humans — at parties and museums, in dorm rooms and at galas, some sober and some definitely not — have dominated my feed (and I am sure yours too, for my collegiate peers). So lucky to be here, the captions read. The end to an amazing semester. Whirlwind. Can’t believe it’s over.

From rooftops and in darkness, they shout, implicitly: look at my people! Look at how fun! Look at how deeply I am in love, and look how much I have done!

And I cannot doubt the veracity of these narratives. Rather, I congratulate them. I am sure the photos, or at least I hope so, are captures of moments of joy. They are emblems of what makes college an extraordinary experience for some. In fact, many of us — probably including myself — have experienced one of the best times of our lives this semester in college, whether it be our first or one of our last. In college, joy escapes few who permit themselves to feel it, and who have the circumstances to do so. Joy has acutely rested in the palms of the dominant majority as new experiences, bodies, feelings, and opportunities have bubbled excitedly to the surface. It is normal to live a collegiate life enshrouded by a happy ambiance, momentarily (or, for some, permanently) immune — or perhaps just deflective towards — negativity and anxious stress. I mean, when your school has just won its first NCAA men’s soccer College Cup in institutional history, how can you not stoke the flickering fire in your stomach, the warmth of a newfound pride radiating through every part of your body? When you dance to good music at strange parties, surrounded by those who you have claimed your own, how might you stop the spread of smile? When your professor grants you a good mark or says something kind to you in office hours, what rationale is there to suppress the kick of joy at your belly?

Beyond the scope of sports teams and compliments, my own joy has been immense throughout the last four months. From pieces for the Georgetown Voice + Independent to poetry slams, I’ve found spaces to write and create and share so much of my heart. In class and through conversation, I’ve learned previously unheard narratives and the contours of faces lost to the sands of history. I’ve let dance seep into my bones at concerts and political realism indoctrinate my foreign policy takes in seminars. I’ve tried strange foods and strange music; I’ve sang in stairwells at unholy hours. Most importantly, I’ve tied new knots in an ever-expanding safety net of human beings I love and trust, and these bows are ones made by some of the most considerate, intelligent, talented, and visionary people I’ve had the chance to meet. These are relationships that welcome challenge and fear no depth of dialogue; these are individuals who are happy to free dive into the muddy waters if it means emerging with a new clarity about the world above the surface afterwards. These are people who pivot to the sun without forgetting the shadow that leaks behind, who radiate light but shy, not, from sheer darkness. And God, I am so lucky.

I, too, then, have so much to post about: so much has been good to me.

Yet I cannot help but feel a bit of guilt at the subtractive artifice that comes with presentations of this first semester on social media. Those joyful posts I’ve encountered — and my own paragraph, immediately above — imagine a neon world, full of brightness and joy and success and humor. Indeed, social media is a preservationist tool: they tell us what you put on the Internet is out there forever, and I believe it. It makes sense to plaster joy on our feeds because it memorializes times and people that make us happy. Why not seal them in amber, parade them around like trinkets? Certainly, it’s better to celebrate what is joyful rather than what is tragic. I myself curate meticulously: my Instagram is filled with the flash of teeth, and it makes me happy to share with the world the moments of joy that I feel profoundly.

But in doing so, we lose the messy, real edges. We erase unshapely life. The neon world ends up neglecting the hours that are not so glorious, and preaches delusional narrative to the consuming masses that all is to be filled with joy. Perhaps social media is not meant to be very realistic, but I have spent so many hours in its vestiges that I refuse to accept that this must be its only formulation. I write this post not to critique social media or launch into yet another explanation of how social media changes our psychology and has toxic aftereffects. As (mostly) conscious consumers, we are all aware of this truth. I am sure many of you have gone on your own social media cleanses, have identified how it propagates challenges with self-esteem and forms artificial, at-times untenable expectations.

So I come to you, instead, with an admittance of (at least some of) the messier edges of my own college experience. Yes, it has been defined so loudly by joy: I feel lucky every day to be at Georgetown and to be surrounded by such magic. But for every night of spontaneity and fun and happiness and catharsis there has also been one of struggle. For one, college is also about confronting loneliness, and normalizing social singularity. I ate many meals alone this semester, many more than I would like to admit. Sometimes as a result of schedule, sometimes as a result of intention (“needing space”), and other times simply because I was too shy to ask someone to dinner, I found myself often in the dining hall amidst a pulsating, socialized universe. And though I had always been so comfortable with loneliness — as the only child of immigrant parents, this reality is unavoidable — I found the collegiate breed of it to be particularly corrosive. What am I doing wrong? I wondered. Am I not good enough?

And it is this question of “good enough” that defines so many of the darker narratives of the collegiate experience. So much of college — at least at Georgetown — is this process of trying out for things; applications for clubs and fellowships and grants build a mountain of attempts to try to throw yourself into things. This story is, I think, particularly familiar to the first-year student: we are told, before even stepping foot on campus, that there is some family here for you. Most of the time, there is — and so it makes sense to continue this narrative. But the result is that freshmen blindly throw themselves at things, and so much emotional gravity is placed on acceptance into these spaces. Rejection, eventually, becomes a quiet but familiar face for so many. Rationalizing with it yields no comfort; ultimately, there is only the necessity of accepting that you are not meant to be certain places at certain times, and the search continues. You convince yourself that you are good enough…for something. Hopefully. And I searched. Even when I was lucky enough to have been given entrypoints, I was still confronted with this persistent question: is this it? Am I here?

When asked about my support system — my place on campus, more specifically — by old friends, former teachers, even fellow freshmen on campus, I came up with a routine answer: still working on it. I am still working on it. This is no hyperbolic dramatization: I think the cycle is still spinning in my laundry machine. The engineer of that machine never gifted me a timer, however, so I see no end to this process. I know it must come, at some point, but when? How will I even know?

This sense of perpetuity — this continuous question of finding where exactly I belong — has been accompanied by a strange reorientation of social place. Beyond mere loneliness, I found myself often struggling to parse through the literal thousands of students I was surrounded by. How do I find my people? Who do I even like? What do I even like? What the hell am I even doing? I struggled with my gut instincts about individuals because in the past I have been proven, again and again, so profoundly wrong. First impressions rarely reveal the elemental nature of relationships. So on a college campus where the only real tool towards beginning to feel social place is capitalizing on first impressions, what do you even do?

Even those that I found myself gravitated to — things were not always pretty. Nor will they be. People fight. Misunderstandings happen. Even beyond conflict, I found myself time and time again having to help friends confront new challenges in their personal lives. Lots of hands held. Lots of hugs given. Many hours of sitting in the quiet. Presence matters. And it’s hard, often, to be as present as you need to be.

There was a reckoning with the past, too. There were catch-up calls with old high school friends where I felt, suddenly, like a foreigner peering into their local lives, startled by how much of their worlds were no longer landscapes I could even begin to understand. I struggled to figure out who to message when I got off the plane at Thanksgiving because I didn’t know who liked me enough to spend their precious hours with me during those short days. There were text message discussions with my former high school teachers where I felt alien, too mature and yet not enough to exist, still, in their worlds. And along the lines of all of this was a quiet fear that I had done it all in high school, and that I had left so much for so little.

You may have noticed the excess of rhetorical questions that have colonized the last few paragraphs of this piece. I think it’s clear that I’m still in a state of inquiry. And I accept it joyously, because that state of inquiry had historically always led to better results for me in both lab reports and in general life things. Just know that as I have questioned and answered and questioned again, there have been valleys as much as there have been peaks.

If you’re a first-year student reading this and haven’t had the best few months of your life, I hear you. I love you. Your story is valid. There were many nights where I felt like I was the only one going through stuff, even though I knew there definitely were so many others feeling the same way. There were many sad moments in private library rooms where I chewed on gummy candy and contemplated why I was where I was. In shower stalls, mindlessly letting water cascade, wondering if my day was going to be any good. If you’re a first-year student reading this and have experienced nothing but utmost joy, props. I hope, dearly, that it lasts. If you’re yet to enter college, I hope reading this demolishes any pressure you have come next fall to make your freshman year perfect. It might not be. And that’s okay. And if you’re one of the lucky people that is years older, I hope this post related experiences and validated emotions you may have felt so many years ago.

When I look back on the last four months, I refuse the rose-colored glasses. Not everything has been easy. But in seeing my first semester realistically, with all its mess, I find such value and such room for optimism for the next one. I’m incredibly excited. Sunlight feels good now, don’t it? So many kisses. x

[megadarkbouquettidalwavethings]

I Will Die in This Beautiful Place

Whenever I think of those alternate realities, those theories of time where new dimensions split open every time you choose between hot or cold coffee, I feel like hurtling myself into the sun. It’s just too big, there’s too much, and I begin to feel shackled by the “shoulds.” Which decisions might, or might not, make me the person I’m supposed to be? And, sometimes when you order cold brew they give you yesterday’s coffee on ice, and it’s like: Great, why can’t I be in the dimension where I have drinkable coffee?

There’s something so freeing about abandoning it all, or maybe just the urge to. The way in elementary school my paintings just ended up being a puddle of gray, and the art teacher would sit down with me and ask, “What were you going for? What happened?” And I would stare down at my gray puddle, unable to explain what happened.

East VillageCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

In the vast mythology of New York, it’s the place you go to become who you always wanted to be. You move here and everything finally happens for you in the way where you feel like you’re struggling, but then you eventually get it together enough to look back at it with enough material for a humble-yet-thoughtful memoir that includes a passage about the way there used to be neighborhoods, before the city became a strip mall. And the people back home who never understood you still don’t understand you, and their lives are so nice looking. Good for them.

Maybe it’s the obnoxious way I was, you know [lowers shades], born here. Or maybe it’s because my former co-workers, annoyed and fed up, eventually renamed our group text to “True New Yorkers,” where they began composing paragraph-long fictional texts from the perspective of a rat-battling landlord named Sal who couldn’t find a ride to Fairway. It seems like being from here is the most obnoxious thing I could have done, but also it’s probably that I can’t walk down Second Avenue without mentioning my first kiss, when I sneaked into Lit Lounge at 14.

Central ParkCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Bed shopping at Ikea.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

John’s Deli in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

When there was a pipe bomb explosion a few blocks from my apartment last year, a friend in the Bay Area checked up on me before I knew that anything had happened. He texted, “hey, you ok?” And from bed I replied, “Yeah, do I not seem it? Am I being too sad online again?”

There is something humbling about someone conflating the response to an explosion at Port Authority and the fear that people know you’re vulnerable. He said that he couldn’t have imagined a “more New York response than, ‘yeah don’t I seem ok?’” He also said he constantly misses New York and thinks he’ll come back, because no one out there would have posted that meme of a bunch of rats eating a birthday cake captioned, “brunch with my girls.”

Another friend who left New York missed it because “there was the sense that we were all in it together.” That sentiment turns on a dime, though, when transplants reminisce about how “back home” people don’t need an excuse to say hi to you.

At the Women’s March in January.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

I have to remind myself that the default is community. That intense or potent solitude is abnormal and even perverse. When I worked in an office, I’d often go home on Friday and return Monday without having spoken to another person. Like other quests for the bottom, I began to fetishize how unhealthy that isolation was to the point of asceticism. Maybe it’s that I’ve always been single when I’ve lived in the city. All my relationships were in college or on brief stints away. Maybe, for me, the community I’ve always known and my ability to really “share my life” with another person are mutually exclusive.

Union SquareCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Times SquareCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Stealing a kiss at the Museum of Natural History.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Central Park SouthCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

There was a time when I yearned to live in Los Angeles — obviously a sign I was deeply unwell — and before that, a list of smaller cities I’d idealized. In high school, I thought I hated it here, or I did hate it here. (Is there a difference?) But: Have you ever looked a rent-controlled apartment in the eye and told it, “No”?

In Manhattan’s diamond district.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Everyone used to say that if you grew up in New York, you’re destined to die in New York. There is always something pulling you back during those brief stints elsewhere: the energy, the pacing of time, family, the golden handcuffs of a good deal on an apartment. Or the way the older Upper West Side women would tap me on the shoulder and kindly tell me I had “a run in my stockings,” when they were so worn and tattered they more resembled those webs when they’ve given spiders LSD. Or the way I will say hello to familiar faces in the neighborhood for years without knowing their name, occupation or anything else besides the casual conversation of which gym they belong to and what they think of the weather.

Mathew Gruber prepares for his 94th birthday celebration with his grandchildren.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Times SquareCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Central ParkCreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

The casual anonymity is another facet, the adjacent face of the diamond of intimacy, the way small talk and cute sayings on mugs of coffee are joyously cynical, like how standard it is for spouses to joke about hating each other, or for parents to mockingly roll their eyes about their kids.

The permission to be fed up with each other is the highest mark, to me, of intimacy and trust. A casual elevator conversation that includes an eye roll, a complaint, shared grievances. Keeping satisfaction, the good things, close to the chest. Why should we commiserate so often about gratitude? Are we bragging? There is a togetherness in the low-grade annoyances, the permission to share that fleeting intolerance, the striving for something better, the simultaneous ungratefulness and optimism of, “Eh, could be better.”

At the bus stop.CreditDaniel Arnold for The New York Times

Daniel Arnold is a photographer in New York. Darcie Wilder is a writer in New York. Her novel, “literally show me a healthy person,” was published by Tyrant Books in 2017.

DANIEL ARNOLD, DARCIE WILDER and EVE LYONS

The post I Will Die in This Beautiful Place appeared first on dailygate.

[thanksforthefush-blog]

How to spend 48 hours in NYC

TLDR: Linda, Zoe and Linda's sister head off to NYC. Gets very stressed over ordering bagels. Eats New York pizza that tastes the same as pizza everywhere else. We take photos on the Met Steps, living out all our Gossip Girl dreams. Gets insanely drunk off bottomless margaritas at brunch and pass out at Central Park - Zoe misses out on all bus tickets and ends up paying a small fortune to get home. We see Penn Badgley at dinner, basically the same as having dinner with him.

Zoe had been asking me pretty much the moment we got to America to go to New York. I was in the midst of trying to figure out my life, finding a job, working out the meaning of my existence etc so I kept putting it off. The moment Phu landed in America, I immediately decided NYC was a great idea even though Zoe had been spent the last 2 months trying to convince me to go. So off to NYC we went. In very atypical Linda fashion, I had decided not to plan everything to a T and allowed a little spontaneity in our trip (didn't even create a spreadsheet for it which is insane).

This meant that we were all up at 3am on the day we were heading to NYC, trying to book accommodation and being so tired that booking accommodation that was $400 a night or bussing back to Philly (2.5 hour drive) at the end of the night and then bussing back to NYC the next morning (as it would be cheaper than getting a hotel room) all seemed like great ideas. The weekend we chose to go to NYC happened to be weekend of the Pride Parade and so all the hotels, AirBnBs and any decently priced accommodation had been sold out for weeks. We were lucky enough to find a last minute deal for a hotel in the Financial District which turned out to be absolutely perfect and well-priced.

Our bus to New York was at 7am and we were all operating on about 3 hours of sleep. After dropping our luggage off at the hotel, we decided to give the classic New York bagel a go. This happened to be the most stressful experience of my life. There are like 15 different types of bagels, 6 different cream cheeses and endless combinations of bagel fillings and just people shouting everywhere. While in line, I tried asking the person behind me how to order a bagel because my only experience with ordering a bagel was back home at Best Ugly Bagel where you order a 'White Rabbit' and you know exactly what is in it. They told me they didn't know either and next thing I know, I was at the front counter nervously asking for a pastrami bagel (followed by 'WHAT TYPE OF BAGEL? EVERYTHING? GARLIC? SESAME? TOASTED?) with cream cheese (followed by 'PLAIN? JALAPENO? RED PEPPER? SCALLION?) and further strings of things being shouted at me and the guy behind the counter being clearly exasperated by me so I just accepted my fate and just paid for whatever I had ordered and high-tailed it out of there.

As I later found out, NYC has no time for people like me and the way you're supposed to order a bagel is more like 'Pastrami on an everything bagel, garlic cream cheese, red peppers, pickles. Do not toast'. It was only 10am in the morning, I was sleep deprived and was so stressed out about ordering a bagel and people shouting at me. Like everything else in America, the portion sizes were huge and Phu and I were so salty about the fact that we had ordered two separate bagels because they were bloody expensive when one would have fed us both, a small family and perhaps a small nation too. I realise that I just wrote two lengthy paragraphs about this bagel incident but this event was deeply profound and affected me emotionally.

Pastrami bagel on unknown type of bagel, unknown type of cream cheese, unknown condiments

We hit the classic iconic spots on the first day - the Ground Zero 9/11 memorial, the High Line, the magical New York Public Library, Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and finished off the night at the top of the picturesque Empire State Building. Exploring New York was a unique experience - you're going to places for the first time that feel familiar because you've seen it in countless movies and shows. It's both new and familiar at the same time.

One of my favorite destinations on our first day was the New York Public Library. It is so insanely beautiful and I was in pure bliss just walking through its marble hallways. Though a concrete jungle, New York has all these little pockets of beautiful greenery such as the High Line which is a 2.3km elevated stretch of green nestled in between the existing infrastructure of New York City.

The Rose Main Reading Home in the New York Public Library

A post shared by Linda & Zoe (@thanksforthefush) on Jun 24, 2017 at 3:09pm PDT

Times Square was just as I imagined – crowds of people, street performers, food vendors and giant billboards. People try to give you high fives and hugs to which I’m just like ‘No thanks’ because I don’t like random people touching me. Being in the midst of tourist central, we decided that our trip to New York would not be complete without having a slice of authentic quality NY pizza and so we walked a couple blocks to find ourselves a slice of classic NY pizza. We have Sal’s and Tommy Millions back at home, and every time I tell people that I love eating pizza from there, you always get those people who are like ‘Oh but like have you had a pizza from NYC before, like that is authentic NY pizza’ and I’m just going to put it out there and say that they taste pretty much the same so for people back home, you’re not missing out on anything. With a sample size of n=1 for NY pizza, I can make the assumption that pizza is pizza and is always delicious.

New York pizza which incidentally tastes the same as pizza in New Zealand

Last stop for Day 1 was the Empire State Building. We were deciding between Top of the Rock at the Rockerfeller Center but TripAdvisor recommended the ESB for viewing the NY skyline at night and who are we to dispute trusty TripAdvisor. It was like $34 to go up which is pretty pricey so if you don't care about seeing the skyline or you're on a budget, I would say just skip it and look at Instagram photos of it instead cause it's basically the same thing (I took the liberty of providing said Instagram shots below for you).

If you do decide to go up and plan on going at a popular time, which is when the sun is about to set, I would recommend purchasing tickets online as they have a separate line for those who have already purchased tickets. We hadn't and had waited about 40-50 minutes in line to get up and these were like the Disney lines where you think you've finally made it to the start of the line and then you get there and it turns out there is just more line. We made it just in time to see the sunset and it was pretty fucking beautiful.

A post shared by Linda & Zoe (@thanksforthefush) on Jun 24, 2017 at 8:27pm PDT

A post shared by Linda & Zoe (@thanksforthefush) on Jun 24, 2017 at 8:30pm PDT

The next day, Zoe and I got to live out our Gossip Girl dreams. Here is a candid shot of us on the steps of The Met for any GG fans out there xoxo. We actually did visit The Met, also insanely beautiful like much of the architecture in New York but we were all pretty knackered from the day before and saw half of the museum before we were all museum-ed out.

A post shared by Linda & Zoe (@thanksforthefush) on Jun 25, 2017 at 7:42am PDT

We found this cute lil Mexican brunch spot on the edge of Central Park and Harlem that did bottomless margaritas for $12.95. Zoe and I must have had at least 7 margaritas each, getting absolute value out of our bottomless brunch at $1.85 a margarita. I managed to talk Zoe out of getting black out drunk at 3pm on a Sunday, something I would usually encourage if it were not for our plans to go Central Park where children would be present and would probably not appreciate our drunken antics in broad daylight. We ended up passing out at Central Park anyways post margaritas and could have literally been robbed of all our belongings and we probably would have not noticed. Zoe was supposed to buy a bus ticket home to DC but because we got too drunk and had a cheeky little snooze, all the bus tickets ended up selling out and Zoe ended up spending ~$150 for a train ticket ride home as opposed to a $25 bus ticket. 

Goes to the famous Central Park only to nap through it anyways - classic Linda and Zoe

We headed out to Brooklyn for dinner and Penn Badgley who plays Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl had been dining at the table next to us - a perfect way to end our weekend in NYC with a cheeky celebrity spotting even though it's just Dan because I would have lost my absolute shit if it had been Chuck.

New York was just as expensive and packed as I expected. It is a city that I loved visiting, and reaffirmed my decision not to move there. While I could definitely see its appeal to others, it's not quite the right city for me. Rent is exorbitant (like honestly, one months rent in NY is enough to pay for 3 months of my rent in Philly) and it's just too populated for my own liking. Having 3 people on our trip helped keep the cost of rideshares and accommodation down, and so if planning  a trip, I would recommend going with a couple of friends.

Though I loved exploring the city and seeing all these iconic landmarks I had come to associate with New York, it lacked a novel feel to it as I had seen all these places before in the movies and shows that I've watched. In saying that, Zoe and I will definitely be back as there are so many things left to do that we couldn't possibly fit into one weekend but I'm glad that at the end of my time there, I can go back home to Philly.

A breakdown of costs for our trip to New York:

Item

Per person

Return bus trip from Philly 20 Hotel 81.67 Rideshares 22.87 Food 66.73 Empire State Building 34 The Met 25

Total

$250.27

Of course, Zoe had the additional cost of her train ticket back to DC. If we had gotten a Metro card and rode the subway everywhere, we probably would have saved money in terms of how much we spent on transport but we also just couldn’t be bothered. If we had booked our accommodation earlier, we probably could have found a much cheaper place to stay. Similarly for food, you could spend much less over a weekend by living off $1 slice pizzas and then dealing with the effects of high cholesterol and heart disease later. Similarly for the attractions, you could save $59 and just go to the multitude of free attractions New York has to offer (Ground Zero, the High Line, New York Public Library, Times Square, Grand Central Station and Central Park were all free).

So until next time, xoxo Gossip Girl.

#bagels #brooklyn #central park #empire state building #exploring #gossip girl #grand central terminal #ground zero #high line #margaritas #met museum #new york #new york city #new york public library #nyc #penn badgley #pizza #the met #times square