#there’s something so horribly fundamentally awful about having to live in a body that just doesn’t work for you

[deadwardianpoltergeist]

HELP I WAS WATCHING MARKIPLIER EDITS GIGGLING N SHIT, THEN STARTED CRYING BECAUSE I GOT A RANDOM HIT OF GENDER ENVY AND WHEN I TOOK A BREAK AND STARTED PLAYING MUSIC THIS SONG STARTED PLAYING IM.

#there’s something so horribly fundamentally awful about having to live in a body that just doesn’t work for you #and a traitorous mind that never lets you live and be happy in what you are #like I’m a pretty joyful guy #but I just. #damn #transmasc #trans

[headspace-hotel]

Okay, I’m going to talk about Heavy Shit now so. Maybe just scroll past if y’all don’t want to deal with mental illness thoughts

i had Anxiety Attack today and it was specifically because I was ignoring my own distress and now I’m thinking about that and I’m thinking about last year and

I keep trying to…point to physical symptoms or responses I had during mid to late 2020 that provide proof that I was in extreme distress. which is challenging because I’ve had severe anxiety for most of my life and have learned to suppress those responses. And I feel like I’m exaggerating or making it up when I do find like….SOMETHING that would make an outside observer go, “wow, that’s bad.”

I can say that I went through periods where being exposed to triggers would make me feel so unsafe I would wrap up in blankets and sweat because I couldn’t stand having my body feel exposed. I was having nightmares about those things constantly. I’d start feeling such intense rage I couldn’t cope with it. That sounds bad. That’s probably bad.

But—and I read a lot on the subject, like, academically, because surely this had been understood by someone—pain is an ultimately completely subjective experience. Do you realize how terrifying that is? It is impossible for me to prove I am in pain.

Maybe I shouldn’t have to prove anything. Maybe I should be believed.

I can say that it was hard to want to be alive. It seemed possible, to me, that this was the baseline level of fear and torture I would have to undergo to live in this world, that the world was just that fundamentally terrifying and cruel. Fundamentally horrible. I don’t know how to describe how scared I was, constantly, and I have spent way too much of my life convinced I was dying. It was worse, it was just…exhausting, damning psychological suffering.

And I started to feel like I was losing my mind, because I couldn’t find anything that seemed to say, you deserve to feel safer than this.

What’s the line between a phobia and trauma? A “rational” and “irrational” fear? Social sanction, for one thing.

Another nasty truth about how we see things.

I thought maybe it would be easier to be dead than to live in a world that seemed inevitably poised to hurt me in unbearable ways, but that was just my subjective experience. Maybe everyone felt this way. I wanted to deserve to feel safe. I wanted to deserve to feel safe. I wanted to deserve to feel safe, but there was some discomfort that Everyone Has To Deal With, and if I couldn’t the problem was me.

Being in that kind of distress and being unable to find real reassurance from the world that it wasn’t supposed to be this way was…I don’t know. Maybe not the worst experience of my life, but definitely competitive for that position. It was beyond horrible. I doubt there’s a worse feeling in hell.

I feel like I have to prove it, i feel like it has to be one of the things that is Bad Enough. I WISHED something awful would happen to me. For a while I thought about horrible shit happening to me and felt like if it happened all I would feel was catharsis.

I don’t know where I’m going with this but that was genuinely probably the worst period of my life and I don’t have proof or a “good enough” reason but. It was. It was.

#anxiety #fear #phobias #trauma #idk #mental illness #personal #this is…not exactly about the pandemic #that wasn’t The Thing anyway

[thelittlepalmtree]

I think one of the things I hate about the abortion conversation is That it is so clear that the pro life people do not understand the female experience at all. Like I am a lesbian asexual who asexual who does not go outside I am in no danger of an unwanted pregnancy barring barring something really traumatic happening to me. I also happened to live in a blue state. I also happen to know many people who have been pregnant and work in education so I know a lot about writing children I know a lot of people who have kids. I'm with kids all day teenagers arguably the worst kids. And pregnancy has always been AA huge part of my life. The concept of pregnancy the idea of it coming into my life I have honestly thought about pregnancy and what part it might play in my life and the lives of everyone I knew since I was a child.

To have a body capable of becoming pregnant is a unique experience to a certain sect of humanity. And if you find out later in life that your body is not capable of being pregnant or if you make choices that take that capability away Or if something happens it still doesn't change the fact that if you are someone who is asigned female at birth you are very likely to spend a lot of your time thinking about pregnancy. That is going to be your experience. And it's kind of a common trope for women who are going through their 1st pregnancy to say nobody tells you. Nobody tells you that you're going to grow hair and weird places. Nobody tells you that you're going to be exhausted all the time. Nobody tells you you are going to get more pimples. Because for each woman pregnancy is a unique experience and so there are inevitably going to be surprises. But that being said somebody is gonna tell you and it's the pregnant woman herself. Everyone that I have known during pregnancy has talked to me about the experience of pregnancy so much that while I don't think I know what it is I definitely know that I don't want it.

Every mother I've ever talked to every time we ever talk about pregnancy there's a ton of people who make online content specifically about pregnancy, Like the experience of pregnancy is often very difficult for most people. My best friend had what would mostly be considered a great pregnancy and still had a really rough time. And of course for some people that process is worth it. Just like for some people donating an organ or Going to medical school or volunteering your time at a soup kitchen is a process worth their effort. But you wouldn't force someone to do any of those things which in some cases Are a far smaller struggle than pregnancy and having a child.

I feel like pregnancy is always discussed as a minor in convenience. But it truly isn't. It is a major burden on your life and I can't even find the words to describe it. Is the idea that I would be forced to have a pregnancy against my will as someone who has chone who has chosen not to get pregnant is probably like the worst thing I can think of happening to me. Is the absolute violation of my body Being forced to have a pregnancy is just impossible for me to think of. It's also really hard for me to describe but I feel like most people who have been assigned female at birth understand this concept. And if you happen to be a transman who's capable of being pregnant I can't even imagine the level of trauma it would be to be forced to carry a pregnancy.

And the lack of empathy for that huge violation whole is huge violation horrible violation of a person's body is so awful to me. Like I can debate someone about anything but this is really hard for me to debate because I just always feel like the person I'm talking to does not understand what they are saying. There is a fundamental thing that I understand because of my experience that I cannot communicate to someone else that just ends up falling flat between us.

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: the Shadowlands

This is my “fixing stories” for WoW’s latest expansion, Shadowlands. Due to overwhelming popular demand, by which I mean @shieldfoss and @bhikshu I’ll go into why this is dumb and how they could have done something instead of choosing to do nothing.

I will work under similar constraints to my Heart of the Swarm rework. I magically became Creative Director of WoW just for Shadowlands, so I cannot alter any of the plot of BFA or Legion or anything that came before. The concept art is done and asset creation is proceeding and I can’t change the overall structure or aesthetics of anything, just how the story is implemented. 

Minute one, what you need to do to make this expansion work is sit down and figure out what it’s About. Now, a MMO expansion doesn’t really need a driving central theme, though it can help, and it’s allowed to be “a bunch of stuff that happened” because it needs random-ass side plot bullshit going on. But the tagline is “Brave the Beyond”, this is the AFTERLIFE, this is where we go when we die and the world of the soul -- we need to be dealing with things bigger than us, bigger than the concept of us. Fundamental and About something because they are mythic incarnations of what kind of life you can live and what kind of world exists. 

We’ll still have an About in the traditional sense though. It doesn’t have to unify everything, but it’s good to have a bit of a through-line to define the main conflict. And also, there’s a certain point where characters need to stop saying “The Jailer… speaks true…” and fucking tell us what he says and WoW passed it long ago. Our About is a central question about the Jailer, and the broader notion of Hell represented by the Maw: “Is it possible for someone to do something so horrific that they deserve infinite punishment?”

And it’s funny, you know, you see JJ Abrams talk about the “mystery box”, and when he explains it, it makes perfect sense: a mystery that is central to the story but is never answered because it represents infinite possibility until it is revealed. And told in that way, that makes sense, that can be very good! Except Abrams never does that, he always ends up having to reveal the contents of the mystery box which by his own logic can never end in anything but disappointment. So I can’t say we will have a mystery box, but we will have a central mystery that we know will never be answered: what did the Jailer do to deserve the Maw? All we know is it is incomprehensibly horrible. Like our mortal minds would literally be unable to process it, even trying to understand it would harm us. So this isn’t “nah he’s bad trust us” we need characters who DO know to really, really sell it. Emotional reactions of anger and revulsion and helplessness, and absolutely nobody whether opposed or allied with the Jailer can deny his evil or say it wasn’t that bad. When you ask Devos about it, Devos shudders in fear and disgust, but says it doesn’t matter. If the question was “how bad was the Jailer’s crime” then we’d need to know what it is; if the question is “is it possible to have ANY crime bad enough to warrant his punishment” then we don’t.

Minute two, you need to know how the Shadowlands works. Because they made it just another continent and that doesn’t make any sense at all. What kind of candy-ass warrior afterlife gives you one life and then your soul is destroyed? How does it make sense for characters to call you “mortal” when they die just as hard and in fact you are superior because you haven’t used your extra life yet? Fuck how are necromancers a thing in Maldraxxus, if your soul is obliterated when you die in the Shadowlands WHAT ARE THEY CALLING BACK?

So none of that bullshit. You don’t die in the Shadowlands, at least not without a lot of work. Souls are anima, and the tide of dead souls flowing into the realms of the Shadowlands is a flow of anima, because everything is anima. Anima is the force of significance and permanence.  Anima is what makes up shadow and substance, things and ideas. Anima is the weight of being About something, anything. You don’t die in the Shadowlands by having your body stabbed to death. You will continue to exist, slightly weaker. You die in the Shadowlands when there is nothing left to the concept of “you”. When you are utterly forgotten and what you are is “nothing”. This is how we get those Unraveling Soul Fragments in Torghast: they are souls tortured so much there is no longer a self there, just a concept of misery. That’s extremely, extremely evil. Is it possible to commit a crime so heinous it deserves infinite punishment? If not, is there a crime so awful that it would be unimaginable to inflict it even on its perpetrator?

We also have three major antagonists we need to know.

One of them is Sire Denathrius, who is just fucking perfect the way he is, we love you Denny.

One of them is Sylvanas Windrunner. Sylvanas needs to stay in character: an absolutely remorseless piece of shit with no sense of right and wrong but who does productive things because they benefit her and who is extremely cunning to know how to work an angle to her ends. She’s too smart to get lied to by the Jailer and she’s too smart to go Full Evil but not only is anything less than that completely fair game, she doesn’t get why you have a problem with it. She has allied with the Jailer because there is one thing she absolutely wants to do and only she can do and she can only do with the Jailer: she wants to break him out because in doing so the hold of the Maw is shattered and now anyone can escape. The Maw stops being a prison once the Jailer escapes. And she wants that because she knows she’s got a one-way express ticket to the Maw when she finally runs out of extra lives. She knows she is a selfish, terrible, murderous, monstrous person. Does that warrant infinite punishment? In her heart she is convinced it does, so she’d prefer to make the question irrelevant before she has to find out. She is sympathetic to the pain she is inflicting on others, because it is like the pain she has felt. But she won’t stop. She knew she endured it, so you can take one for the team.

The Jailer is super super super super evil. If we remake him to be obviously in pain and lashing out in fear, he won’t WORK. He needs to be ominous and menacing and say “your soul is mine” and that kind of shit. We will be able to generate sympathy for Sylvanas, we shouldn’t try to do it to the Jailer. He is the victim of the ultimate injustice, but also perpetrator of the ultimate atrocity. He’s not sorry at all. The fact that he has raised a philosophical question about the nature of punishment is just a nice side effect of him saying things to people to get what he wants, which is to break out and inflict tyranny and suffering. Sylvanas is not tricked by him into thinking he only wants freedom, she has a plan that has his true motives in mind. What dimension do we give him so he won’t be flat while still being completely one-dimensionally evil? He resents you. He doesn’t lash out and scream his emotions and say it’s not fair that you have what he was denied freedom. But he resents you. A little ribbon of resentment threaded through his speech to you. He’s subtly insulted by the fact you exist. He doesn’t merely relish your suffering, he relishes your failure, your realization of weakness. He doesn’t pull an Azmodan and say “okay well NOW this trap is inescapable despite you escaping the last twenty!”, he knows you’re probably going to break free of things and escape. But he doesn’t care that this trap didn’t catch you, catching you would just be a bonus. He cares that he hurt you and made you feel inferior and the inevitable doom encroaches just a bit more on you. That is the source of his sinister satisfaction and confidence. He doesn’t announce an ambush and say “now you will never escape and your soul is mine,” he announces it by saying how weak and stupid you are to fall for it.

His victory is inevitable because Death is inevitable. He doesn’t care what temporary victories you earn; he doesn’t bother trying to convince you they are only a setback. He’s going to have you eventually and you’re going to suffer on the way. What a fucking dick.

#fixing stories #my fiction #World of Warcraft #wow

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 127 Thoughts

“Let us speak for 46 pages about how we still don’t actually have any real plan, we’re just all very against genocide (except Magath and Yelena) and very upset and feel like we should be doing something.”

The characters are sort of doing my job for me this month.

Maybe this whole post should just be illicit screencaps from Crunchyroll with me providing links and saying, ‘and here’s the panel that makes the point I whined about in this post here.’

That would probably provide more entertainment than whatever I’m about to come up with.

-sees the amount of swearing in the first section-

Hm.

First off, fuck Magath.

Like no, I’m sorry. This is not about what happened 2000 years ago. You know what it’s about? It’s about Marley sending in child soldiers to assault and rob a land that had caused literally no problems for 100 years. It’s about Marley doing this despite being aware of its own history, being that their personal hero collaborated with the First King of Paradis to make Marley’s independence possible.

You want to talk about history, Magath?

Jean isn’t the one who sounds like a child.

Jean is reacting to actual pain that he has experienced in his lifetime thanks to Magath’s very intentional military strategies.

Magath is blaming Jean and everyone else on the island for being born.

That is not equivalent.

That is not remotely equivalent, and while Eren is being a fucking bastard about it, Jean’s right. Eren has the power, means, and will to do all of this because of what Magath and Marley did to Paradis.

Magath doesn’t recognize Eldians as people.

The Eldian Empire was bad.

No one except Floch is disputing that. That is how you know that it is bad.

Marley, as well as the rest of the world, has been free from the Eldian Empire for over a hundred years, and in that time, all they have done is take every horrible thing about the Eldian Empire and exploit it for their own gains.

Magath doesn’t get to be angry that he lives off the backs of abused, brainwashed children that he treats like crap.

Years ago, the Eldian Empire was the worst terror in the world.

A year ago, it was Marley.

Now, it happens to be Eren.

And you know, I’ve been actively against pretty much everything Eren’s done. His plan, if he has one, has mostly managed to make everyone angry and get a lot of people killed who weren’t even involved in the beginning. He gets his head blown off close enough to his brother that he doesn’t die. That’s how the beginning stages of him committing genocide goes. He betrays his friends, makes his besties from childhood feel like crap, and honestly has just been a dick to pretty much everyone.

But at least Eren’s indiscriminate murder has the decency to actually be indiscriminate.

Marley takes children it despises and turns them into their willing slaves for the promise of a better life they have no intent of dispensing. They take these children, and full of hatred for the very ability, demand that they shorten their lifespan and murder people to prove that they’re a “good Eldian” who deserves to live.

Marley is why people can stomach rooting for Eren.

Because Marley is such an abomination that it almost feels worth it to destroy the world if it means Marley’s gone too.

Hell, I’m with Hange. There’s not an avenue where I accept genocide as a way to deal with any of this.

But if someone wanted to burn Magath alive, and we spent a dozen pages gloriously detailing his flesh curling off his bones, it would make me happy.

That’s a more dignified death than he’s given any of the children he’s forced into Marley’s wars.

He does not have the fucking moral high ground.

He's the one Jean should have punched. There is not a single person around that campfire that he has not damaged deeply, and noticing that Gabi is a little girl and he cares when she is in pain does not magically remove that.

Fuck Marley. Fuck Magath.

Grow the fuck up and stop viewing genocide as an acceptable response, you fucking halfwit child. You are the individual who saw four children off on their solitary mission to murder thousands of people. Two of them are dead. Two of them are deeply traumatized, with one of them wishing he had died.

But oh yes, Magath. You’re the victim, here.

Because you baited one angry idiot with the power of a god into destroying part of a city you didn’t give a damn about.

Truly, your justice is a thing to aspire to.

Perhaps Eren taking notes is the real reason we’re here.

Motherfucking fuck I hate Marley. I hate that Eren’s put any of these characters in the position where they have to put up with this shit for the sake of civility. I don’t have a problem with the Warriors. I don’t have a problem with the Survey Corps. I don’t have a problem with the kidlets. Hi Onyankopon, sorry about your life. Yelena has many problems, but she’s also attractive, so I don’t mind as much.

Magath, though.

Pieck, just eat him. Everyone’s too depressed to really throw down over it at this point, and the two small ones are so deeply traumatized that one more body really isn’t going to make much of a dent.

Jean’s clearly the star of this chapter, and a good deal of that comes from the potent hopelessness hovering over him like a rain cloud.

He can point to how bad everyone is at talking things out like it’s the key to the entire mystery, but the long list of problems Jean offers at the beginning of the chapter are still present. Unless they have a way to talk to every person in the world out of their (at this point, rather justified) fear and anger, Paradis and Eldians around the world are very much screwed.

Paradis has forever been running out of time against the hatred the rest of the world has for them.

They do have to fight against what Eren’s doing, and talking instead of blowing each other’s heads off is a good start, but it’s a good start thousands of years after the worst possible one.

And the last time they tried to talk to Eren, Armin punched him, and that was the most productive thing to come out of it.

Jean being the everyman who recognizes the heart of an average person because he is one has been a great tool. It’s still great, here. He wants to close his ears to all of this. He wants, desperately, to run away, because there is no good solution that doesn’t end in death.

When he joins the Survey Corps, they at least have Eren as a brand of hope. They can believe that years of the same tactics and bodies piling up won’t end the same way.

Joining this squad is all about stopping Eren, and despite having figured out their next course of action, no one has yet to provide a real idea.

Genocide is wrong, so you stand up and try to stop it.

That’s the only plan they have.

The Scouts from Paradis don’t even have the promise of saving the people they love if they stop Eren. Annie, Pieck, Gabi, Reiner, Falco... they have a home. The world might forget to hate them. They might get to go home and have a life after this.

The people sitting on the other side of the fire are fucking screwed. They’re fighting entirely for their principles.

...Also Yelena is here.

I do like Yelena.

She’s not the worst, because this manga has too many horrible people in it, but she’s delightfully terrible. I especially like how the fact that she’s actually from Marley hardly gives her any pause.

I do so like Yelena.

It’s a beautiful sentiment.

After all, everyone’s drunk on something.

If you can just save the world, what does the rest matter? What do the crimes that kept you awake at night mean, when you’ve accomplished something so miraculous? All the good deeds cleanse the rottenness, and maybe then the world rights itself and you can breathe again.

...Hey wait, where’s Reiner’s reaction shot to finding out Gabi killed Sasha?

...Did he even know Sasha was dead?

But I guess we’re doing Marco angst.

Wow. Marco angst in 2020.

I think my favorite thing about this chapter (outside of the fact that Mikasa still hates Annie and it makes me giggly because wow Mikasa) is that Annie does absolutely nothing while Jean’s beating the crap out of Reiner.

My less favorite thing is I’ve stopped enjoying Reiner getting the crap beaten out of him. It’s been done, and... really the kid just needs to have not been born into this particular life. Watching Jean beat him bloody is. not cathartic. It’s really just awful.

Annie dodging with her food is glorious, though.

Because while Jean beating up Reiner over Marco is sad and kind of miserable, Annie watching someone beat up Reiner after the years she spent putting up with Reiner and Bertolt brings it back to almost funny.

Until you look at Reiner’s face and go back to feeling bad.

-turns page back to Annie getting out of the way-

Much better.

Truly, I love Annie.

Her forgiveness status is interesting, though. I think besides Marco, she enjoyed more of the kills she’s responsible for than anyone feels a need to dig up.

She’s also been more alone than most of the others in the wagons, and essentially spent four years imprisoned for her crimes.

I’m not surprised she asked, because she’s Annie, but I’m a bit surprised we don’t have an answer yet. Probably too close to the end of the chapter to open up that can of worms.

If it makes everyone feel better, I think we know for a fact that Mikasa will never forgive Annie for anything, even if it only displays itself as petty brandishing of weapons every time they make eye contact.

It’s not even a ship thing.

I just love that Annie is the one person Mikasa can’t stand. They’ve been in one chapter together and Mikasa’s already pulling out swords. These two shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near each other. It’s perfection.

Then we get to plot complications that really don’t register as complications because like. Yeah, you guys need something to do while you figure out what the hell you’re doing.

Because you don’t actually have a real plan, just so we’re clear.

Killing Eren would result in all those Wall Titans operating under their own power.

That is not fundamentally less destructive.

Killing Eren has a nice ring to it, but much like talking to Eren, it does not solve any of the other problems looming ahead.

So you enjoy your little subplot with Floch!

It’s one of the last times your combined competence will have any meaning.

-looks over at Kiyomi-

Honest question, but why are you alive if Floch dislikes you enough to hold you hostage? If Eren’s gonna kill everyone, shouldn’t Floch be following suit and just do his Floch thing of murdering every slight inconvenience?

We’re in the boring stages of the finale right now.

No clear plan for either side to contend with. No real progress in any direction because the tiny squabbles are just a delaying tactic for the massive squabble that no one has an answer to. None of any of this chapter really matters except for clearing the air.

Which is not a useless investment, it’s just not very exciting.

At this point, no excitement is allowed, because there’s that One Huge Thing, and the entire story hinges on it. Maybe someone will die on the way to dealing with it, but that’s all the drama we’re going to get until we find out enough about the plot to have a future worth rooting for.

Right now, there is no good outcome for the people we’ve watched fight for 127 chapters.

Pulling a story along with that weight is hard, and I can feel my brain turning itself off until we’re back to a point where the story is permitted to address the stegosaurus in the room.

One more month.

Again.

Until something happens and we all regret everything.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 127 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post #fuck marley

[guccifloralsuits]

hi we were talking about books yesterday and i was wondering if you have any good fiction recommendations? 😇😇😇

Yes, I have so many! I broke them down into relative categories, so there’s a little mix of everything. Please read the actual synopsis before diving in though, as some have major trigger warnings.

Books considered “classics”

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: a book which I come back to in hard times of my life. There’s something so…necessary about this story. Prose style was great. I would rec this book to every person I know.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virgina Woolf: I read this when my life seemed to be changing faster than I could keep up. Beautifully written. Came at a time when I needed it.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: written as a prequel to Jane Eyre and a modernist masterpiece honestly. THE original meditation on the ideal of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: you’ve probably heard this name from the adaptation. Let me tell you. This book deserves all of its acclaim. I think I’m gonna re-read soon.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austin: this is super mainstream for The Literary Circles but it’s for good reason, this book is just? Fun? An honestly enjoyable read? plus when I was taking my SATs way back when they had an essay section, I could use this book for literally any prompt they gave

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: this book is wild. Everyone is a messy bitch who lives for drama & I love it. I just finished it and omg

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: my emo teen- girl rebelling ass ate this shit up back in high school. Is this book overrated? I don’t care. I love it for nostalgic value anyways

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood: startling beautiful lines. I have almost half this book underlined. A popular read in recent times, with good reason.

A picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: I fundamentally disagree with everything written in this book. That is exactly the point. About being gay & sinning. I would not recommend this as a ‘light’ read though. Easy to get swept up in Wilde’s sharp wit & not catch the intentional malice behind what he says, underneath.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I just. Love this. That’s all I have to say. Yeah.gif

All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren: The nihilism of Oscar Wilde but set to a political backdrop in the 30’s with stylistic prose akin what you’d read from Hemingway. Probably not for everyone’s taste. But right up my alley in terms of political intrigue. If ur a stuffy English Major with who likes books about corruption, you’ll like this.

Popularized books that are worth the hype they had:

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: there’s something so…engaging about the way this is written. It’s pretty much about kids who have to act like adults for their shitty parents. I couldn’t put this down though.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn: as with all her novels, this gets dark. This gets ugly. An absolute thriller, & I can’t recommend her books enough. (You might know her from Gone Girl & Sharp Objects. This story follows similar tone). Honestly I rec anything by Flynn.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman: you’ve probably heard of or seen this movie. Well guess what? the book is even better.

YOU by Caroline Kepnes: aka the adapted Netflix series where dan from gossip girl plays plays joe, who is basically Dan but Unhinged. But like, the books are great. “Hidden Bodies” which is the sequel to this is even better, in my opinion. Just plz don’t romance Joe cus you saw penn badgley in a Netflix poster & were thirsty 4 him

Lesser Known/underrated books which could use your love:

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley: A reimagining of King Lear, set on an Iowa farm in the late 1970s. Powerful and disturbing

The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers: specifically for classical music lovers. Basically a long meditation on supernal mysteries of music, specifically Bach’s intricate Goldberg Variations (you’ll wanna have the Glenn Gould recording to hand), & those of the DNA molecule (especially as a code to be broken) It gradually dawns on you that the two couples listening to the music and studying the molecule are themselves engaged in something strangely molecular and musical. You won’t always understand this book, but it keeps taking your breath away.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn: did I buy this book solely because of this tumblr post? Yeah. But it was easily one of the best decisions I’ve made. The way he manipulates letter-language is wild. Woah. Highly recommended.

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window & Disappeared by Jonas Johnson: a 100 year old dude escapes his nursery home a steals a suitcase full of drug money then goes on a giant crime spree. HIGHLY entertaining. We stan a King

The Sellout by Paul Beatty: probably the greatest satirical comedy written within the last 50 years. I said what I said.

Children’s/teen/YA books you should absolutely read

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster: wonderfully creative, beautifully told. Takes abstract constructs and turns them into concrete beings and landscapes in amazing, engaging ways. Please read this. One of my all-time favorite books. Takes the protagonist, Milo, on a fantastical adventure borne through boredom on what he though would be another average day. Seriously. I love this book. So much.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman: another beautifully creative foray into a parallel universe where something Not Quite Right lurks beneath a pretty surface. If you’ve seen the movie adaption - great. Still read the book. It’s absolutely worth it.

Love that Dog by Sharon Creech: technically free verse poetry from the perspective of a young boy dealing with the loss of his pet dog who has to write poetry for a class assignment from his teacher. This is…so good. Oh my god. Oh my god? Poetry for non-poetry people.

The Giver by Louis Lowery: Listen. I know you were forced 2 read this in primary English. I know you probably hated it on principle. But this shit was all that kept me going, when I was younger. It made me feel so understood, before I could define trauma or the meaning of depression. This book made me feel seen.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: ya know what? Fuck 2013 tumblr for dumbing this book down into a basic ass Grunge Anthem. I have never seen a book so adequately grapple with how awful romanticizing trauma can be. This book goes into the horrible side of adolescence in a way that’s genuine, and in a way which doesn’t put trauma/mental illness on a pedestal. I needed that shit, when I read it. I still love this book today. The lines will stay with you forever, after you read some of them.

All the Bright Places, by Jennifer Niven: this was another one of those books that I read in an essential time, which lodged into me afterwards. About two teenagers who meet while standing on the bell tower of their school, both contemplating suicide. Highly recommend. Prepare to cry.

You didn’t ask for Poetry but I’m including some because I am poetry TRASH:

Rice by Nikky Finney

A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

One Big Self by C.D. Wright

LOOK by Solmaz Sharif

Poetry for people who think poetry is inaccessible to them:

New American Best Friend by Olivia Gatwood

Our Numbered Days by Neil Hillborn

Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim

There are literally SO SO SO many books I could also add, but these are the ones that came to mind. Bolded ones are those I especially love. Happy reading!

#book recs #classic literature #children’s literature too #if I could only rec one #I’d pick phantom tollbooth #followed by Their eyes were watching god #words #srry if ur on mobile & this is a long post #quarentine things #recs

[whoareurl]

birthday fic for softersteve <3

i’ve been gone for ages soz but i had to pop by and give @softersteve some birthday love because i still read their blog religiously for all the soft steve content so here’s some shrinkyclinks of my own. it’s a bit light on snez but there’s plenty of whump! and i might have an idea for a part 2 but we’ll see

-

By the time spring break rolls around, Steve is practically dead on his feet. Midterms floored him and he’d spent so much time in the art building over the past two weeks that he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s developed a conditioned rage response to the hideous 80s wallpaper in his favourite workroom. So, when it comes time to pack for their week-long trip home, Bucky is the one who does most of the hard work. The lucky bastards in engineering don’t have midterms in the spring semester and the bright-eyed innocence in Bucky’s eyes kinda makes Steve want to stab him in the hand with a fork. 

“Got everything?” Bucky asks as Steve slips into the passenger seat, dosed up on Ambien and fully prepared to fall asleep as soon as they hit the interstate. It’s only a two hour drive, much shorter than what many students have to endure, but it’s still more than Steve’s stomach can handle, especially with all the stress he’s been under lately. Besides, his joints have been aching all day and the beginning of spring allergy season is making him congested so he’s happy for the option of a little time out. “All your meds?”

Steve rolls his eyes fondly, already feeling heavy-lidded. “Yes, ma.”

Bucky grins and, like the dickhead he is, plays up his role. “Are you sure you don’t need the bathroom before we leave?”

Steve slaps him and buckles himself in. “Jerk.”

“Punk,” Bucky shoots back and starts the engine. “I’m putting on my country playlist so you’re just gonna have to deal until the meds knock you out.”

Steve groans but it’s a playful groan. Despite his protests, Steve doesn’t actually hate the country songs Bucky adores. Well, not all of them. And he’s gonna be out cold in about twenty minutes so he figures it’s only fair to indulge Bucky’s garbage music taste.

“You’re the boss,” he says, firing off a mocking salute before tucking his school sweatshirt up between his neck and his shoulder and settling in for the ride.

He expects to be woken by Bucky telling him they’ve arrived so it’s with some surprise and confusion that Steve finds himself awake barely an hour later with an absolute cacophony of bells ringing in his head and a thin sheen of sweat all over his skin. He lets out a little groan and makes an aborted move to get Bucky’s attention before he remembers that he’s driving. 

“B-Buck,” he croaks out without ever really deciding to speak. 

Bucky hums gently and, when he looks over at Steve, he pales quite significantly. “Stevie? What’s wrong? You gonna be sick?”

As he’s speaking, Bucky is already turning the music off and reaching blindly behind him for a plastic bag which he thrusts into Steve’s lap as a makeshift sickbag. Steve coughs and then he can’t stop coughing. And then he thinks back to the midterms and the stress and the all-nighters and he feels a weight settle heavily on his shoulders. So, it wasn’t allergies. He’s not sure if the timing is excellent or awful since now he’s not going to be enjoying his time off but at least he won’t be missing class. Either way, this is already shaping up to be one hell of a spring cold.

“You’re running a fever,” Bucky worries as he briefly touches Steve’s forehead, glancing between Steve and the road.

“I know!” Steve snaps and feels immediately guilty. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Bucky returns and he doesn’t even sound fazed. Ambien-fuelled Steve isn’t exactly known for being a barrel of laughs. And right now, he feels like garbage. “We’re about 45 minutes out. You gonna be okay?”

Steve sighs and is about to make a half-hearted quip about not having much choice when he’s suddenly overtaken by a desperate need to sneeze.

“Heh’NGXshoo!” Steve is thrown forward with the unexpected force of it and stays there when he can feel another one building. “EhYISHHew! NXGH’huh!”

“Don’t stifle,” Bucky mumbles. Steve feels Bucky’s hand land on his back and rub along the bumps of his spine. 

Without tissues, the best Steve can do is wipe his nose on the cuff of his hoodie and sniffle the rest back. It’s, fundamentally, super fucking gross. God, he’s so cold and he cannot stop shivering. The fact that his t-shirt is soaked with cold sweat certainly isn’t helping but he’s sure as hell not going to take it off. Because that would mean having to take his hoodie off and the thought makes him want to cry. Instead, he kicks off his shoes and brings his knees up to his chest, grateful, for once in his life, that he’s small enough to curl up in Bucky’s passenger seat. 

“Services coming up,” Bucky says. Without opening his eyes, Steve knows exactly the worried expression Bucky is wearing by the tone of his voice. “I can pick up some tissues?”

Steve sniffles, feeling somewhat pitiful. Tissues would certainly be good. But they’ll get there faster if they don’t stop. It’s a dilemma but, in the end, when another violent shiver wracks through him, Bucky makes the decision for him.

“Alright. Tissues and a blanket,” he says, cranking up the heat and angling the blowers so they’re all pointed at Steve. 

When they’re parked in the service station, Bucky reaches over to push Steve’s sweaty hair off his forehead. “You don’t do anything by halves, huh, Stevie?” He says gently, leaning in to kiss Steve’s forehead. “I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything stupid?”

“Can’t. You’re taking all the stupid,” Steve mumbles, forcing a weak smile. This seems so appease Bucky somewhat and he smiles back. 

“Five minutes,” he says, and then he’s gone. 

Steve feels awful, there’s no denying it. The joint pain he’d been feeling earlier has progressed from a dull ache to something a bit more aggressive, particularly in his hips, and the congestion in his sinuses has spread down into his upper chest. He feels the tightness pulling just below his collarbones and resigns himself to the fact that this is going to be a nightmare of a week.

True to his word, Bucky returns quickly and throws a fleece blanket over Steve’s shivering body. “Sorry, pal, all they had were Yankees blankets.”

Steve makes a face. “I better not have Gerrit Cole’s face on me right now,” he grumbles, cracking one eye open to look at Bucky.

Bucky laughs, ripping open a fresh box of tissues and settling it near the gear shift. “You gonna take it off if he’s on there?”

“Fuck off,” Steve grumbles, opting not to look and live in warm, comfortable denial. 

His next breath catches deep in his chest and he curls in on himself with another rattling cough. Thankfully, he gets it under control before Bucky starts rummaging through the glove box for his inhaler. He’s actually gone one in his pocket thank you very much. Not that anybody ever bothers checking anymore. No, his reputation for leaving it at home - either out of forgetfulness or, for one memorable year in middle school, sheer stubbornness - has pretty much put an end to anybody bothering to check if he’s carrying one before they hand him another. He supposes he should be touched and, on a good day, he is. But today is not a good day. Today is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and Steve just wants to be asleep.

“Not long now, Stevie,” Bucky says soothingly. Steve wants to be annoyed because he’s not a child but he can’t find it in himself because, damnit, Bucky’s voice is actually soothing when he talks like that. 

Fuck, he’s so in love.

~ 

By the time they’re pulling up outside Sarah Rogers’s house, Steve feels truly miserable. He’d started feeling nauseous about ten minutes ago and had opened the window for some air which only brought back his earlier shivers with a vengeance. And, to top it all off, he saw the Yankees logo on the damn blanket. Today sucked. 

“Come on, babydoll,” Bucky says as he helps Steve out of the car. 

Somewhat reluctantly, Steve abandons the traitorous blanket in the car but snags the box of tissues and lets Bucky sling his arm around his shoulders as they head up to the door. As usual, Bucky rings the doorbell to let Sarah know they’re there and then heads inside. Steve shivers involuntarily at the warmth of the house and catches a few, itchy sneezes into a fresh handful of tissues. 

His nose hasn’t stopped running since it started nearly an hour ago and all he wants is a change of clothes and a nap.

“My boys!” Sarah exclaims as she comes out of the living room to greet them, expression softening when she sees the state of her son. 

That expression is just too much for Steve who detaches himself from Bucky and wraps his mother up in a hug. He can’t smell anything through his stuffy nose but he can imagine the homely way she always smells and has to blink back tears. God, he’s a mess. He blames the Ambien more than anything. Everybody knows they fuck with you if you don’t sleep long enough.

“Aw, honey,” Sarah mutters into Steve’s hair, running a hand up and down his back. “You shouldn’t have come all this way if you weren’t feeling well. I’ll still be here in the summer.”

“Didn’t feel bad until we left,” Steve admits, somehow completely forgetting how much worse that makes his cold sound. 

Sarah frowns and holds him at arms length, looking him up and down. “That came on fast. How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay, Ma,” Steve starts but Bucky interrupts before he can offer any platitudes. 

“Like hell you are,” Bucky grumbles, slipping his arm around Steve’s waist. “Bed. Let’s go.”

Steve huffs, his indignation giving him the strength to stand his ground. “I’m fine.”

Bucky yawns. “Who said it was for you? I drove all the way here. I need a nap.”

“Well, you can go without me,” Steve says, unsure why exactly he’s continuing this argument. He wants to go to bed. But he’s not going because he’s told to, even if it is Bucky and Ma.

Bucky pouts. “But I sleep better with you there.”

That bastard. Steve knows what he’s doing. He’s used this tactic time and again and the worst part is that it always works. It’s working now. Steve knows he’s going to agree even before his Ma presses a kiss to his cheek and says, “Take the guest bed, boys. You’ll have more space.”

So Steve lets Bucky drag him upstairs, lets Bucky dig out a sleep shirt for him while he gets undressed, lets Bucky pull him tight against his side and tuck a hot water bottle against his back. He gives in. He cuddles up close and drifts off tracing the curve of Bucky’s hip bone with his fingers. 

Bucky’s so beautiful. Steve doesn’t know how he got so lucky. 

“Marry me,” he whispers as he finally drops off the edge of the cliff into sleep.

part two

#acefic #acefic stucky

[dailyaudiobible]

12/01/2020 DAB Transcript

Daniel 8:1-27, 1 John 2:1-17, Psalms 120:1-7, Proverbs 28:25-26

Today is the 1st day of December welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you as we collectively greet a new month, the final month of the year, the final leg of our journey, although this journey is a never ending one and…and should be as we find ourselves more and more in a relationship with the Scriptures instead of in some kind of obligatory devotional state that we never can quite get to. Nevertheless, it is December 1st and here we are. We made it to the 12th month of the year. I think that was…well…I don’t think that was ultimately questionable it was…just there's been days and weeks during this year where it’s like, “what is going on?” We made it. We made it. Well done! Let's dive into this month. Let's finish strong as we move through it and prepare for the brand-new year. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Daniel chapter 8.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in first John, today we could probably notice that John, at least in his letters…well…at least in this letter because where just at the very first one…in this letter he doesn't sound so dissimilar to James or so dissimilar to Peter and their letters in that you can claim faith but the evidence of like a faith filled life ends up being a transformed life otherwise you can say whatever you want. So, let me just quote a portion of…of what we read today. “The one who says, I have come to know Him, and yet doesn't keep His commands is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly in him the love of God is made complete. This is how we know we are in Him. The one who says he remains in Him should walk just as He walked.” Alright, so we can see this is more than just giving lip service to a religious belief system. The evidence of your true faith in Christ is that Christ is within you, transforming you and that is evident. And, so, easy enough, easy enough here to step back and look at our own lives and ask what's the evidence here? Like I am my own evidence to where my faith is at. So, John’s being direct because this is something to be direct about, this is foundational. Like, the goal of our faith is that we would be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, that our lives would be lived like Jesus, that we would be the hands and feet of Jesus, that we would be the body of Christ in this world. And that's not just something you can say. Like, if everybody in the world just said, “yeah, I guess I believe in this Jesus. Okay, Jesus is now my Savior” and then just went about their lives and there was no transformation whatsoever nothing would happen in the world. Being Christlike isn't something we say it's something we are becoming. And that means we have to participate. We are in collaboration. Our role is to be aware, to be humble and to be surrendered to God's will and ways and to obey and walk with Him. What a relief. If you're walking with God, well, how much safer can that be? And being transformed isn't just for us and it isn't just so we have a better prayer life. Like everything…if we’re being transformed then everything is being touched. If you are being…if something is transformed, its very nature is altered into something else. That's pretty big. We are not who we were at all. And this continuing transformation process with in us that we would also know as sanctification touches everything about us. So, picking up with John and putting it back into John's words, “the one who says he is in the light but hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother or sister remains in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him, but the one who hates his brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and doesn’t know where he’s going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” So again, not dissimilar to James or Peter. Talk is cheap. You can say whatever you want, but if the words that you say are not consistent with the life that you live, then you're not living true and you're not living truthfully. And John says that this happens because, basically because our faith, our trust is put in the world instead of in Christ. And the world that…according to John is passing away. So, hope and trust are put into something that is not going to last, which is a theme that we have seen since we began reading the letters of the New Testament. So, we are at the beginning of the last month of the year and we have talked several times over the last couple months as we came into the last quarter of the year about finishing strong. And John…John is forthright today in giving us ways to look into that as we move toward the end of the year and finishing the year strong. Are our claims about our faith consistent with the lives we are living?

Prayer:

Father we acknowledge the question. It's…it's been a fundamental question for a very, very long time and it exposes so much within us. And if we were honest, we…we would say sometimes…sometimes like the first half of the day can be great and the second half of the day can be awful, one hour can be fantastic another hour can be horrible. We have an ebb and flow and we are tossed around and pulled in all kinds of directions and this shows us how much we swing back and forth putting our trust in the world, putting our trust in You and trying to make both reconcile when they won't ever. We were made for You. We were made for earth, but we are in this world and not of it. And, so, help us Lord. Expose the system of the world that is all around us and ubiquitous so that we can't see it unless we’re focusing our full attention. We can’t do that. We’re or pulled in all kinds of directions. But You are the most-high God. You are the sovereign Lord, and You know who we are, and You love us, and You are Fathering us. And, so, we trust in You to lead us forward. And Father these areas where the things that we say and the things we do don't match and are actually far away from each other, forgive us Lord. This has just exposed the sin. And help us as we repent to move toward wholeness. This is what a fully sanctified person will look like, whole, like Jesus, like the Savior. This is the goal and we want to be fully participating in it. So, come Holy Spirit and lead us as we move into the busiest time of the year. We hold on to You for dear life. We declare this and we pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, its where you…well…its home, it’s where you find out everything that's going on around here.

It is indeed Christmas time around here, so I think that's what's going on pretty much everywhere now, in one form or another. For us this year we have the Daily Audio Bible Shop open and we’ve put as many things on sale as we can. We’re not doing a Christmas Box this year as I've explained. Normally that's what we do but with just this year, and all the different lockdowns and protocols and everything that happens we’ve decided just to open up the store and say you can make your own, you can make your own box. Pick all of the things that you like, things you want to give away, things you want to keep for yourself. And if you spend $40 or more in the Daily Audio Bible Shop we will send you the 2020 Daily Audio Bible ornament. That’s something that we've had in the Christmas box all along. And, so, we’ll send that to you along with your order. We have…we have Global Campfire Klean Kanteens in stock right now although that's probably going to not be the case over the next couple of days. But these are beautiful. The only time we've had them this year and so get them while you can. They will not last long, but they are…well…I mean there this double-walled food grade stainless steel constructed like thermos that I use literally every day of my life because it keeps my coffee warm all day. Like, I’m…I had to turn my head, but now I'm looking one that’s full of…of coffee right now. So, check them out while they last. Check out the other stuff that's in the…in the DAB Shop, the like coffee. Like you can send a coffee subscription to somebody and have that land freshly roasted every month on their door. You can do that for yourself. Check…check out the tea. Check out the nitrogen filled portable windfarm coffee that we have in…in the steeped packaging. This is…it's kind of like a coffee filter…kinda like a teabag, right, but only made out of coffee filter with the right amount of coffee inside of it then nitro sealed to get the oxygen out of it so it won’t deteriorate so that it will last and stay fresh and then you just crack that open, pop it into your coffee mug, pour hot water over it, and then just steep it, steep it for a couple minutes and you have really great coffee on the go. And most on the go coffee, well, at least in my experience isn’t all that great. So, check all of this out, as well as the Global Campfire line of resources and all of the different media resources, books, and videos and music. So, check it out at dailyaudiobible.com in the Shop.

One thing I should mention is shipping cutoffs. And for international…if you are outside of the United States then the…the shipping cutoff is today. And we’re just taking our queues trying to get things to arrive by Christmas. We have an arrangement with FedEx that allows us to ship pretty close to the price of domestic shipping. It just takes…it’s just a little bit more unpredictable because they then bring it…import it into the country and then send it through the regular mail of the country. And, so, at some point it ends up in the…in the local mail system and we have no control of and it’s just a lot cheaper. So, that cutoff is today. You can order internationally any day any time but if you're hoping for something to arrive for Christmas time for Christmas day today would be the cutoff date for international. If you are domestic, if you are with in the United States we have a little bit of time and we’ll keep you posted there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage, and I thank you humbly and profoundly for your partnership here at the end of the year. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or if you prefer the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the red button up at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

[singing starts] Dear Lord please help the people that are homeless to know You. Please help them to know You. Please help them to know that they’re just not through this by themselves. Please help them to get through this with Your help. Please help someone to feed them and to give them a little bit of food please help them to be happy to have food and closer to live. Amen [singing stops]. Hi I’m Jaylin.

Hi family it’s Carla Jean from Nevada I’ve been posting on the Facebook DAB friends page but I thought I’d call and let you know that my husband Marty not only has Covid, but he has diabetic ketoacidosis. His blood sugars are over 1500. He’s a in the ICU in Las Vegas and it doesn’t look good. He was diagnosed with coronavirus two weeks ago and didn’t want to go to the hospital. He had to diabetic seizures that me and my 15-year-old son had to bring him out of. Finally, we convinced him to go to the hospital on Tuesday. On Wednesday both Elisha and I started being symptomatic for coronavirus. Family, I need you to really pray okay? I love you all very much.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family my name is El and I’m from the UK and this is my first time calling and I’m just calling today because me and my husband are going through some fertility issues. We’ve been trying for a baby now for two years and it just doesn’t seem to be working out for us the way we had hoped. So, I just ask that you pray for us during this time. Pray that God will bless us with a baby and pray for our marriage as we go fertility struggles. And, yeah, just if you wouldn’t mind to keep us in your prayers. Thank you.

Hi DAB family it’s Friday, November 27th and this is Peggy in California. I called a few weeks ago and asked for your prayers for my son Mason and I have felt the power of that in my conversations with him. I just thank you so very much and I ask that you would continue to pray for him because I think he’s on the brink of making some…a real positive move and he needs to be resolved and it’s going to be hard but I just pray that you would continue to reach out with me in that. And I also want to just lift up all the other adult children that have been mentioned in so many of the calls. It is definitely a struggle that many of us share. And, so, I want to lift up this prayer. Lord I pray that You will give all of the adult children of DAB family the discernment they need to understand the clear choices between good and evil and right and wrong, between what is life giving and life destroying and between a path into a secure and good future and a dead-end street. I pray that they will not allow the world to shape them but instead they will be shaped by You. I know that the influence of the enemy can come in so subtly as being nearly unobserved until it’s too late. But I pray that the Holy Spirit given wisdom and discernment they can be prepared for the enemy and anticipate his plans. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. Bye family God bless you all.

Hi this is Pamela from Pennsylvania calling again. This time I just want to thank Brian and his family, China. And I never said anything, but congratulations on the beautiful baby that you’re welcoming into your family. I’m welcoming my third grandchild in February, which is a beautiful thing. My daughter’s a missionary and they’re…it’s just a wonderful loving family. But I wanted to thank Brian for the commentary and the long-standing wisdom in your words in understanding the Scriptures. It comes across very clear and I appreciate that very much because if anybody kept track of my other phone calls I did grow up in a very dysfunctional place and that led to some very dark places in my life. But…and actually all three of my children have gone to Christian school and because of the influence of the Christian school that my daughters went to I became saved and came to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. So, I’m very thankful for that. And since that time little by little God has been putting the pieces back together in my life the way it was intended to be according to God. So, growing up in a dysfunctional environment I’m way behind all the people who grew up in a Christian environment and I’ve been scampering to catch up. Brian, I just appreciate your help. It’s making things make sense. So, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

[rational-mastermind]

A/N: Hey!! Everyone wants more Quinnvoyant right? Right?? Well too bad, it’s all I have. And an au! Soulmate au where if you write on yourself, it’ll show up on your Soulmate.

--

  Everyone knew that if you wrote on yourself, it would appear on your soulmate as well. And Chris Quinn was no exception to this. Though, for a long time, there was only cute things like drawings of cats and rainbows and stars. Cute poems. Reminders. It was fine enough when he was a kid but as he got older it was just embarrassing. So he would wear long sleeves and hide the writing as best as he could.

   Sometimes he would talk with her, but she was too shy to reveal where she lived or who she was. Which kind of annoyed him. Wasn’t the whole point supposed to be that they would meet?

   When they got to high school, they talked less. Life got busy for her. Life was busy enough for him as well. Sometimes they would check in. Sometimes it would be reminders of homework assignments, or notes in class. Just kind of easily forgetting the other can see what they wrote.

   Then one day, his skin started getting covered in words, very quickly. Bright red marker showed up all over his arms and hands and it crawled all over his body. The same words over and over and over.

   “FREAK”

   “PSYCHO”

   “CREEP”

   “KILL ME”

   None too surprisingly, the only place she didn’t write was on her right arm. She was too busy writing, after all.

   Chris found a nearby ballpoint pen and began writing.

   “Et tu?”

   The scribbling suddenly stopped. For a moment he was worried. But then the ink began running off. It looked wet and began to run down his arms.

   Tears.

   After watching it a moment he began writing himself.

   “What happened?”

   “Bullies.” was the eventual reply.

   “Why?”

   “Cause it’s true.”

   “Same.”

   “What do you mean?”

   Chris sighed. He knew he wasn’t like other kids. They would all avoid him, be afraid of him, or talk about him weird just cause he talked about blood and death and demons and stuff that went bump in the night. He wasn’t gothic. Not by a long shot. He just...liked gore. He liked pain. He once got into a fight. One of the kids had a knife.

   He couldn’t stop giggling.

   There was something so...so thrilling, when he saw the red.

   The voices in his head only encouraged it.

   “I’m a psychopath.” he wrote.

   “I don’t think you are.”

   “That makes one of us.”

   “Well what makes you so weird?”

   “I… hear voices… And… I see things.”

   “Really?”

   “Yeah. But I’m told it’s not-”

   “Me too.”

   Chris stared at the two simple words. Somehow, it utterly stumped him. He felt...weird. He wasn’t sure why though. But he wasn’t entirely opposed to it.

   “What kind of things do you see?” he asked.

   “It’s hard to describe. Sometimes it’s people. Sometimes it’s just screaming. Or loud talking. Sometimes it’s colors and random pictures. What about you?”

   “More about dogs and demons and the end of the world and shit.”

   The rest of the writing on his body started to disappear. She was wiping it off.

   “Can we switch brains?”

   “Yeah, yours sounds more fun.” he chuckled to himself. After a moment’s thought he ventured forth to ask. “So what do you imagine I’m like?”

   “I don’t know. When I try to read you I get this weird image of something dirty and gritty like a horror movie. But at the same time, I also get this...warmth.”

   “Warmth?”

   “Like a towel out of the dryer. It’s warm and soft and it feels like home. It’s funny... Reading your words…”

   Chris felt a bizarre fuzziness grab hold of his brain. The world seemed to darken around him as she continued to write.

   “I can almost see you

   Christopher Quinn”

   Suddenly Chris felt very uneasy and quickly began rinsing off their conversation and scrub the words away. An unsettling chill surrounded him. It was weird. It was creepy. It was...sexy?

   Chris then proceeded to dunk his head under the sink and run cold water over him as well.

   They stopped talking after that.

   Chris got into writing. Finished high school and began making his living.

   Then the asylum.

   Then the Shadow.

   Then the Ministry.

   Chris went through so much hell. Of course it had its positives. There was Trilby and kicking demon ass. A good use of his psychotic tendencies. Making the world safe from the Shadow and keeping magic a secret. The people around the Ministry weren’t too bad. Yarrow was a bit...boring. But Jim was fun to mess with. And Claire was fun. There was always something to do, even if that something normally made Trilby roll his eyes.

   Then one day, well… It was bound to happen.

   Trilby was going to be out of action for a while. A mix up with a vampire left him incapable of going on assignments with Chris. But anyone who ever called Chris a “loose cannon” would recommend that he got someone to tag along in place of Trilby. Someone responsible and level-headed.

   Well who better than the absent-minded psychic he was pounding in the off hours?

   Yeah they were knocking boots. Nothing to get too attached over. It’s not like Chris got to know her life story or anything. Just letting off a bit of steam whenever they could hook up. All he knew was that she was very very much a psychic. Something he found interesting and she found best kept swept under the rug, much to his own disappointment.

   At first she seemed hesitant to go on a mission with him, but after some convincing, and a lot of unusual head shaking and slicing motions from Trilby behind her, she finally agreed.

   It was a simple mission. Done and over in a day. Of course it was the traveling that took the longest. It was on the farthest end of Ireland, naturally. It had some cultists and brainwashing and something to do with summoning a pagan deity. Claire was a natural and it was actually kind of fun getting to do work stuff with her.

   They were traveling back and Claire was already writing up their required report on a notepad. Chris couldn’t help but notice the way she gnawed on a pencil as she tried to focus. The way her fingers drummed through the air like she was at the computer back at HQ, if not fiddling with her large, round glasses. The way the air around her became still and focused as she accidentally projected her feelings about them. Chris could practically hear the gears grinding away in her brain as she tried to recall every needed detail.

   He chuckled to himself and it instantly snapped the tension in the air as her brain derailed.

   “What? What’s funny?” she asked, looking up.

   “Nothing. Just.. I dunno.” he shrugged. “You’re so focused.”

   “Well… I mean..” she shrugged as well. “It gets kinda hard to report faithfully.”

   “Eh those pricks in the higher-ups always find flaws in our reports. No matter what.” Chris rolled his eyes.

   “Hm. True.” Claire sighed. “But it’s not just them. You go looking through so many different minds, so many different vibes and lives it’s kinda easy to forget what’s happening in the real world. You know?”

   “Well.. No. I wouldn’t.” Chris glanced back at her.

   “Oh.. yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

   Chris chuckled again.

   “Hey by the way, you were pretty great back there.”

   “Hmm.. I wouldn’t say that.” Claire shrugged.

   “You kidding me? The way you fucked with that one-”

   “Ummm.” Claire interrupted and Chris noticed she looked horribly uncomfortable as she fidgeted with her glasses more. “If.. If it’s all the same Chris.. Can we not talk about...that?”

   “Oh.. Right. Sorry. Forget that makes you uneasy.”

   “Just…something drilled into me, I guess.”

   There was a moment of silence. Then Chris spoke up.

   “Hey um.. Can I...ask something?”

   “If you wanna know if I can predict the future, the answer is no.” Claire rolled her eyes.

   “Damn.” Chris clicked his tongue in disappointment. “....Did you always hate your powers?”

   “Mm..” Claire was quiet for a moment before she shrugged and looked out the window of the car. “What was there to like?”

   “Um, cause it’s fucking psychic powers.”

   “Yeah, exactly.” she sighed. “They always got me in trouble.. It.. Creeps a lot of people out.”

   “Come on. It couldn’t have always been that bad-”

   “No. It was.” Claire growled, her voice taking on a tone akin to earlier that day, but somehow lacking the same venom behind it. “It was always that bad. It was awful. You’ve no idea.”

   “...Well… Like what?”

   “....Like earlier.” Claire shrugged. “But.. By accident. I would...hurt them.. And scare them.”

   Chris frowned. Claire was normally so bubbly, happy, a bit forgetful, but chipper despite the depressing and horrific nightmare that their livelihood was. He hated seeing her this downtrodden. It was wrong. Like on a fundamental scale, this was just wrong.

   “...Did.. Something traumatic happen?” he asked. “Something that made you hate it so much?”

   Claire gave a dry chuckle before replying. “I wouldn’t say...traumatic but.. Well.. It did drive a wedge between me and some really important people.”

   “Was there a guy?”

   “....Yeah…”

   Chris felt something grip him. A sudden kind of deep-rooted anger. The kind akin to staring down a vampire or some other unholy abomination. Not counting Trilby, of course.

   “Who-”

   “Should get some gas. Before the ferry.”

   Chris sighed but found a station and pulled over. Clearly she didn’t wanna keep talking. While he was filling up, she went inside to use the bathroom.

   “Look over the report. Jot down anything I missed, got it?”

   “Yeah..”

    Chris felt crummy and stupid and angry. Claire was a great person! Why would anyone hate her for having psychic powers? Okay yeah so she kind of really mentally fucked with that one guy. And yeah okay so maybe she kinda caused another to have an aneurysm. Yeah sure that might’ve been a more common problem when she was a kid and yeah it might’ve been like Stephen King’s Fury, but so?

   And it’s not like Chris would’ve hurt this guy…. Much.

   He growled and kicked a tire before getting back in the car. He sighed and leaned against the wheel, waiting for Claire to return. That was when he noticed Claire’s notepad left laying on the space between their seats. Oh right.. Reporting.

   Chris sighed and grabbed it. He looked over the notes. Everything seemed in order. She left off at the part where cultists were about to start sacrificing the local children but she’ll likely finish jotting down the basic plot when they got back. Chris grabbed the ballpoint pen she had been using and was about to go back and fix her grammar when something caught his eye.

   A small doodle Claire had in the corner. It was a cat.

   Chris squinted and looked it over carefully. It looked familiar.

   Suddenly it dawned on him. He had seen this before.

   Chris’ mind started racing, putting all the pieces together. But.. But how could he prove it? And how could he prove it without worrying Claire?

   Chris then looked back at the pen in his hand and had a perfect idea.

   Meanwhile Claire was hiding in the bathroom. She knew this was a bad idea. She knew this was gonna be horrible! She knew this was gonna happen and she just had to keep playing with fire, didn’t she??

   “Stupid stupid stupid!” Claire banged her head on the wall. “Listen! To your! Intuition!!”

   Of course she knew who he was. Ever since the first day Trilby introduced him at the STP.

   Claire and Trilby were discussing the differences in using iodized salt compared to sea salt, though ultimately, they both knew pink Himalayan was best. But then Claire felt it. A familiar presence.

    She suddenly felt an oncoming wave of giddy excitement that made her almost tremble. And a familiar warmth that quickly wrapped around her like a towel fresh out of the dryer.

   “Claire? You okay?”

   “Think someone’s-”

   “Trilby! We gotta go do a thing with cake- Oh. Hey.” Chris had rounded the door to Trilby’s cubicle but stopped short seeing Claire.

   “Hey.” Claire waved.

   “First of all, never again. Secondly, I never introduced you two, have I? Chris, meet Claire. Claire-”

   But she already knew who he was. But a deep anxiety prevented her from saying anything. But after getting to meet him, within all of five minutes she forgot entirely, simply living in the moment. And then she forgot again when they agreed to meet up after work. And she kept forgetting to a point it would’ve felt awkward to start saying anything then and gosh dammit.

   ‘Claire, why do you do this to yourself??’ she sighed and stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Always have to make everything awkward and weird…youfreak Can’t just remember to freaking speak up and say what’s on your mind?’

   Claire only hoped Chris would drop the subject and they could return to their normal status quo. At least she got to see him. At least they got to talk face to face. It was better than what most people could hope for. After all, some people never find their soulmates.

  ‘But they write every day.’  her unhelpful thoughts reminded her as she returned to the car. ‘When was the last time we wrote to each other?’

   She opened the car door and-

   “I KNEW IT!!!”

    “Aah!”

   Claire stumbled back, tripped on her heels and fell backwards onto the pavement.

   “What the hell, Chris?!” Claire scolded as she picked herself up.

   “Take a look in the mirror!”

   She got up and looked at her reflection in the window. She gasped, seeing a rather crude doodle of a cat across her cheek. She looked through the window only to find Chris with a matching mark and a wide grin stretching from ear to ear.

   “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!” he asked.

   Claire stammered, laughed, and ended up crying. Her heart was pounding, she felt scared and worried. Chris’ smile disappeared and he got out of the car and came around to her.

   “Hey.. Hey hey hey. Hang on now.” he came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “What? What is it?”

   “I thought you’d hate me.” Claire managed to get out with a hiccup.

   “I know.. I’m sorry.. I didn’t hate you. I never did! I just.. You…”

   “Scared you.. Like.. I scare everyone.” she sniffled.

   “No! You didn’t scare me! I just.. I.. I dunno.” Chris shrugged. “I was a dumb teenager. I didn’t know what I was feeling.. I’m sorry.. I’m so sorry…”

   Claire simply shook her head. Chris ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment.

   “...If it’ll make you feel better I could still kick my ass.”

  Claire laughed. She choked and then giggled some more and finally started wiping away her tears.

   “Please don’t.”

   Chris smiled and hugged her tight. She weakly hugged him back.

   “I’m sorry.”

   “I know..”

   After that, they began writing to each other more and more often. Little notes, here and there.

 “That was a lot of fun last night.”

 “There’s coffee in the breakroom.”

 “Fought a ghost. It was gross.”

 “Kissed one the other day.”

 “I’m stealing the last slice of cake. Don’t tell Trilby.”

   It was nice. It was fun. It was one thing that Claire would say was normal about their lives.

  “You wanna do something else after work tonight?”

 “I got a new cat figurine!”

 “Got to see the sunset while on the job. Reminded me of..”

 “Hey you’ve been quiet. You okay?”

 “Can I tell you something?”

   “I love you.”

#chzo mythos #quinnvoyant #chris quinn #claire #soulmate au #my writing #rational writing

[peraltasames]

nothing has changed me quite like you

requested by @storyinmyeyes - 12. Sneaking away to a hidden corner to share a secretive kiss title from/vaguely inspired by nothing is u by bleachers ♥

read on ao3

Friday nights, for most of Jake’s time at the Nine-Nine, have been the agreed-upon time for drinks at Shaw’s. The members in attendance vary - Holt is usually only there for celebrations, Terry swings by for a drink or two every few weeks, Rosa’s absence is usually the first (and often, only) indication that she’s in a new relationship - but at least some combination of their group has usually congregated by eight o’clock.

Tonight, Terry has made an appearance, which prompted Gina to come as well; Rosa is on her fourth or fifth drink already, mumbling something about the precinct’s new detective, Adrian Pimento; Hitchcock and Scully have fallen asleep at a table across the bar after devouring half the menu and a pitcher of beer; and Charles and Jake are discussing the case they worked all week and successfully closed just over an hour ago.

“I still can’t believe his best friend tried to frame him,” Charles mutters with a swig of his beer, oblivious to Gina’s annoyed glare as he accidentally elbows her, “I mean, what kind of a person does that? I would never do that to you, Jake.”

“You’re also not a murderer, Charles,” Jake points out. “What would you be framing me for, cheese theft?”

Charles scoffs. “As if anyone would believe you have my taste in cheese.”

Jake raises his eyebrows rather than questioning the merits of his friend’s argument, looking down at his nearly empty glass. The thought of ditching the gang to head to Amy’s apartment would typically be crossing his mind right about now, and more often than not over the past eight months, it’s what he would end up doing, if she weren’t out for dinner with a group of friends from college.

Being in a committed, adult relationship, Jake has learned, is a lot better than TV and movies have led him to believe. They’ve fallen into a bit of a domestic routine - due in part to Amy’s schedule for nights spent at each other’s apartments, which they almost always follow - but it couldn’t feel less routine. He doesn’t fully comprehend why or how, other than his vague understanding that it must have something to do with how completely in love he is with her, but every single night they spend watching Jeopardy or ordering Thai food is somehow better than the last.

Despite the fact that he’s itching to text her and ask if her dinner is over yet, he’s trying his hardest to remain engaged in the conversation and let Amy enjoy a night with her friends (after three nights spent at his place, a clear breach of the schedule).

“I’m just saying, Terry, if you’re looking to get some gouda, everyone knows to consult my bi-weekly rankings,” Charles drawls, speaking over the rest of their table. “You’re not gonna call Jake.”

“Oh my god, Charles, how are you still talking about cheese? Nobody is fighting you on this.”

He can see Boyle gearing up to lecture him on the fundamental importance of gouda to a well-seasoned palate, and - fortunately - Gina stops it before Jake can attempt to.

“Does anyone want another round of drinks? I think it’s Jake’s turn to - oh damn.” Gina is clearly observing something Jake is not yet privy to, her eyes glued somewhere behind his head. “Who knew Santiago looked hot when she takes off those horrible pantsuits? I keep saying you should burn them, Jake.”

He whips his head around to face the entrance, greeted with the radiant beauty standing in the doorway with a sleeveless black dress hugging the curves of her body and shiny, dark hair falling down her shoulders in such a way that Jake is questioning the reality of the fact that he’s dating someone so breathtakingly gorgeous.

His stare is probably caught somewhere between awe and lust when she meets his gaze, blushing a little before she smiles and starts to make her way over to him.

“Hey, guys.” Amy greets the squad as she approaches the booth, stopping once she reaches Jake to lean over and kiss him. He’s hardly able to reciprocate before she pulls away, far too shaken by her angelic presence.

Before she can take a seat in the available spot next to Terry, he reaches out to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her into the booth, partially on his lap, eliciting a small giggle from her pink-tinted lips.

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” he says with an adoring smile, as Charles moves over and he shifts correspondingly to make room for her. His arm snakes around her waist and keeps her close, his thumb brushing over the silky material of her dress in a way that he knows from previous experience has the capacity to attain her undivided attention. “How was dinner?”

She shrugs, resting her hand on his thigh - her usual countermove to his methods of distraction - and turns to face the rest of their group. It’s amazing how desensitized their friends have become to their displays of affection at non-work events - their current level of proximity would’ve surely earned a few fake gags or unwanted attention (from someone others than Charles, who is still very much staring at them) a few months ago. Now, their relationship is a normal, natural part of all of their lives - Jake and Amy have grown to be referred to as one unit, a package deal rivalled only by Hitchcock and Scully.

“It was okay. I missed you guys, though.” Her eyes flicker briefly to each of her friends before landing back on Jake, twinkling warmly as she smiles at him.

Jake is still coming to terms with the extent of how deeply in love with her he is, and moments like these - when she gives him that look - still completely rattle his brain and make the rest of the world fizzle out. There are thirty people, maybe, in the room, dozens of conversations going on around in him, a song playing through the speakers, glasses and bottles clinking against one another, and all he can focus on is the sound of her voice as she asks him how his day was and, even more predominantly, how perfect her glossy lips look as they move and how badly he needs to be kissing her right now.

“Let’s go,” he says, probably way too abruptly jumping up from the table and taking her hand in his. She furrows her brow in confusion as he leads her away from the bar and towards the hallway leading to the bathrooms, navigating their path through the tables and various bar patrons.

“Jake, where are we-”

He cups her face in his hands and swiftly leans down to kiss her. She promptly reciprocates and wraps her arms around his neck, tugging his body flush against hers and deepening the kiss. They get lost in it for a minute, breaking apart only when a drunk guy comes stumbling out of the men’s room a few feet away from them.

“What was that for?” Amy asks, laughing softly and playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. She looks happy, exorbitantly happy - her face is practically gleaming with positive energy. She looks like the personification of joy and affection and love.

“You’re beautiful,” is all he manages to say, a horrible understatement, but it only makes her smile grow.

“You’re adorable. Cheesy, but adorable.” She stands on her tiptoes to peck his lips again, pulling away slowly. “I’m gonna go get a beer, do you want one?”

He nods, still at a loss for words, and makes his way back to the booth with an awestruck smile still plastered on his face. His eyes can’t help but linger on her as she approaches the bar and tries to get the attention of the bartender - which she does in about half a second, along with the attention of every other guy sitting at the bar (the spark of jealousy and protectiveness doesn’t stand a chance of catching flame when she’s still smiling and looking at him from across the room.)

“God, quit staring at her, Peralta,” Rosa complains, wrinkling her nose. “It’s weird.”

Jake jerks his head away from Amy and furrows his eyebrows. “It’s not weird, she’s my girlfriend.”

“You stares at her a lot before she was your girlfriend, if I remember correctly,” Terry chimes in.

“Hey!” Jake exclaims defensively, as if it isn’t indisputably true (looking back, his casual crush on a colleague was not so casual at all). “Leave me alone, Terry, shouldn’t you be home watching HGTV with Sharon and changing diapers by now?”

Terry just laughs, idly sipping his drink. “You mock me now, Peralta, but in a few years that’ll be you guys.”

Jake scoffs, unable to think of a proper rebuttal before Amy is back and he’s sliding over to make room for her at his side once more.

Terry’s totally ridiculous, he thinks.

(The way she fits into his side, her hand finds his without a moment of hesitation and their fingers slide together like it’s their intended purpose begs to differ, but still.)

Terry is ridiculous.

(They’ve only been dating for eight months. Jake’s never even thought about marriage or kids much before. He’s not that old, he’s not that emotionally mature - it took everything in him to respond with more than “noice, smort” when she confessed her love a few weeks ago, even though he loves her with every fibre of his being. God, he loves her.)

Completely ridiculous.

“You okay, babe?” Amy asks him a few minutes into his quiet contemplation, squeezing his hand twice.

He looks down at her, sees her perfect smile shining up at him, and it feels like his heart is doing acrobatics in his chest.

“Yeah,” he grins at her and squeezes back, his thumb lightly brushing over the ring finger on her left hand.

Maybe Terry’s not that ridiculous.

#jake x amy #b99 fic #peraltiago #kiss prompts #y'all i delivered with the fluff tonight but....winter is coming #i've never seen game of thrones that was a blind reference #myfics

[headspace-hotel]

Best type of take on dragons: dragons as eldritch, beautiful beings that inspire fear purely because of their dangerous, lovely otherness

There is precedence for this in the sheer charisma of dragons in stories and how incredibly powerful, unique and intelligent they often are, beings either capable of forging incredibly deep bonds with humans or posing a horrifying existential threat to them. Dragons are More Than humans, and they are fundamentally different from us. Fablehaven did this right in having dragons exude “dragon fear,” a magical aura of immobilizing terror that means most beings that come into a dragon’s presence can’t function or move. I think there’s SO much great potential in portraying dragons as inhabiting that space between “terrifying” and “impossibly beautiful,” that sort of immobilizing awe that accompanies something that we cannot understand and that could destroy us or love us. Creatures that have intelligence beyond humans, that are both more wonderful and more horrible than we have the capability to truly comprehend.

I would like to see more dragons that are just...not cleanly monsters or friends, necessarily, but creatures that are completely otherworldly. Perhaps even creatures that, if they gave a single shit what humans were up to, might be gods.

Give me dragons that overwhelm with their presence, inspiring terror, fanaticism, obsessive love in those that encounter them, able to bend ordinary beings into utter devotion just through the force of their charisma. Dragons that people almost cannot bear to look at, but that you are irresistibly drawn to. Give me dragons that the eye cannot quite interpret, whose wings beat with thousands of fractals of possible perception and whose hides might be every color of the rainbow or a cool, unrelenting black. Give me dragons whose voices seem to echo from deep places in their listeners’ bodies, slithering up from their guts like thoughts that always existed deep inside them. Dragons that seem to exist outside of the normal rules of reality, that seem like they cannot possibly be killed because they are not the sort of thing that dies.

Give me dragons that are older than planets, in whose eyes the the birth of the universe can be glimpsed. Give me dragons old enough to know the answers to all the questions we keep asking, and that terrify us just with their ability to erase our doubt. What are we, next to a Dragon? A creature that has existed much longer than us and that will outlive us? What an honor to be noticed, seen, by such creatures, but also what a horror, to live noticed and seen by beings that could save or end us, decide whether we deserve to be saved using a rubric we can’t begin to understand?

Why quibble over whether dragons are evil beasts or powerful companions? Give me a creature that represents both the fears that live deepest in the darkest, most unspeakable places in our minds, and the pure, deep intimacy and acceptance and oneness that we are almost afraid to want. The wrath of a dragon is every nightmare we can hardly bear to think about, but the companionship of a dragon is the deepest love we know how to ache for.

#dragons #fantasy #ideas #dragon ideas #fantasy worldbuilding #dragon #fantasy creatures #fantasy beings #worldbuilding #cosmic horror #worldbuilding ideas #worldbuilding thoughts #dragon thoughts

[steves-strapcollection]

okay I'm reeeeeally starting to get sick of some of the discourse around MAID esp discourse that paints ppl who opt into or support it as Inherently Ableist and twisting the SHIT out of the "death with dignity" phrase that often accompanies it.

a lot of the ppl who opt into MAID aren't doing it in response to becoming disabled (you can't even opt into MAID for merely becoming disabled), it's in response to being diagnosed with a terminal illness from which there is zero hope for recovering or leading a remotely pleasurable life. you have to be 100% on medical death row to even qualify in some places and in an advanced stage of said illness. and what a lot of ppl are ACTUALLY fighting for is to be able to opt into MAID while in hospice, bc they don't want to die at home. death with dignity means wanting to be able to die with your mind still clear, your voice still strong. it's about creating a time for family to make it and say goodbye, and being able to say goodbye themselves. it's about dying PEACEFULLY when you wouldn't otherwise.

and I've had it with y'all calling EVERYTHING ableist. an individual not wanting to become incontinent is NOT ableist. someone wanting to die instead of becoming fully paralyzed by a disease is NOT ableist. someone wanting to die while still mostly in control of their body is NOT ableist. stop projecting on TERMINALLY ILL PEOPLE.

yes, terminal illness results in disability, but MAID is not fucking about disability and stop MAKING it about disability. MAID is a PALIATIVE issue. not a disability issue.

and if ur fucking feelings are hurt by someone dying of prostate cancer wanting to opt into MAID, and one of their issues happens to be incontinence, that is a YOU problem and stop complaining when ppl rope u in with pro-lifers.

people opting into MAID are NEVER thinking "oh God I would rather DIE than be disabled bc disabled ppl are better off DEAD", they're thinking "I am dying and it is a horrible way to go, and I refuse to put myself and my family through that".

I had someone patronize me about MAID bc I was talking about how my dad wanted to opt into MAID, but the wait time was too long and we couldn't care for him anymore. his morphine and fentanyl doses were too high for non-medical professionals to be administering, so we opted into hospice and you can't choose MAID if u go into hospice! even CONSIDERING MAID is enough to disqualify u from going into hospice. she straight up said "well we should focus more on providing resources for families with dying loved ones instead of just offering euthanasia. disabled loved ones should never be considered a burden better off dead" and I was just..... fucking shocked and I don't know how to explain that my dad was SICK. yes, he was disabled too in the sense that he was completely paralyzed, had a feeding tube, and couldn't even TALK anymore, but he was SICK. like being disabled due to terminal FUCKING illness is not part of the disability discussion. u can't just rope MAID into ur fucking discourse bc MAID is only fucking available to TERMINALLY SICK PEOPLE who usually also happen to be disabled due to that illness.

and maybe it's a fundamental misunderstanding about what "terminal illness" is. if you are terminally ill, you will DIE of that illness. maybe something else will get you, but chances are, you're going to die of that specific thing. that's why not all cancer patients are called terminally ill. the label "terminal" is reserved for "you 100% will not survive this". not for a lack of accessible treatment, or lack of government assistance to live better while sick. it is a one-way ticket, no way to turn back, done.

my dad was diagnosed w a terminal illness in August 2016. they called it terminal THEN bc there was zero cure and zero treatment for what he had. he couldn't opt into MAID at that point bc his illness could progress slowly, and he could have possibly had years before his life was SIGNIFICANTLY impacted. there was room to argue that he could have lived happily and pain free, with only a bit of limitations and choosing MAID then was cutting that potential off at the knees. he progressed FAST and was dead the following September. and the biggest thing for him is he did not want to die at home, which is why he ultimately did not opt into it (added with it that we just couldn't take care of him anymore and the wait period for MAID was too long, he needed to go into hospice. we all had caregiver burn-out). and his death was.... traumatizing. the week leading up to it was literally traumatizing. like straight up my family has PTSD it was so awful

so yeah, I'm sick of ppl turning a PALIATIVE issue into a disability issue bc ppl are upset that others do not want to die slowly and painfully and potentially a-fucking-lone and they just happen to also share common symptoms of disabilities (lack of mobility, incontinence, drooling, inability to swallow, etc).

#do not fuckn reblog lads #u literally cannot change my mind about MAID #I have a 50% chance of dying of what my dad did and I will opt into MAID the MOMENT I am deemed ready to #I will NOT put my loved ones thru that horror show. I don't personally want to GO THROUGH that horror show #my dad was so fucking scared that last week #he lived in an unending panic attack bc he couldn't fucking breathe #They had to start giving him sedatives to reduce the panic and then he just slept #gasping for breath and wheezing #for a WEEK #but hey it was ableist for him to have wanted otherwise huh :) #I'm probs gonna delete this #mourning tag

[runrundoyourstuff]

Steven for the ask thing!

(in reference to this character ask meme)

Why I like them

Steven is one of those characters who I think on the surface doesn’t seem that interesting, but then I feel like you squint a little bit more and like all of a sudden, you realize that he’s really well written. He grows so much throughout the series but in a gradual way such that I feel like you don’t realize it’s happening while it’s happening, but then you go back to Season 1 and are just in awe. 

I also think it’s really important that we have a male protagonist of a major action cartoon (which would have even five years ago been labeled “a boys’ show by the industry…which really likes to gender), whose primary powers are empathy-based (both natural and supernatural empathy,) and who strives to help his friends learn to communicate their emotions in healthy ways. Modeling that, I think, does a lot to plant the seeds of combatting toxic masculinity. Plus, he’s secure enough in his masculinity, that he sometimes crosses-dresses, and neither he, nor any of the characters in the show, nor the show itself treats it as a joke:

(And the show isn’t like self-congratulatory on this point either. Which is great. It normalizes boys and men being okay with expressing their emotions and being secure in their masculinity in quiet ways, and doesn’t make a thing out of it. It just does it.)

Why I don’t

I mean I think this is part of the point and is actually good writing, but in Season 1–especially early in Season 1–he can be kinda annoying lol. (He explicitly acknowledges this in Familiar.)

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

Dang this one is hard because unlike the other characters, he’s literally featured in every episode. I think something that tends to be true about Steven is that, in his eagerness to help others express their feelings in healthy ways, he sometimes neglects to do so himself. But his emotions are so live for him, and so I really like episodes where that ends up coming out, like Storm in the Room, Steven’s Dream, Adventures in Light Distortion, Stuck Together, Mindful Education etc.Of these, if I had to pick a favorite, I think I’d either say Full Disclosure, in which he realizes for the first time what the consequences and stakes of being a Crystal Gem–and being his mother’s son–can be for the first time, or Lion 4: Alternate Ending, in which we see him really really struggling with the idea of his “magical destiny”. In both cases, he is supported and validated by the people he loves. And that’s the heart of the show. :) 

Favorite season/movie

Probably Season 4. So much of what this show is about is how Steven (and the rest of the characters) relate to Rose Quartz. And I think Season 4–in which Steven deals with the idea that Rose supposedly “shattered” Pink Diamond–represents a real shift in how this plays out. Prior to the last few episodes of Season 3 (Bismuth, and then Back to the Moon), he saw his mother as this all-perfect figure, and he felt pressure to live up to her legacy, and that was really hard for him. In Season 4, he instead starts to deal with the fact that (he thinks) his mother did this horrible thing…and how can that be, because he always thought that she was this infallible, perfect, loving being? And it terrifies him. SU is primarily a show about growing up, and part of growing up is realizing that our parents aren’t perfect. There’s a deep terror in that for kids, and I think the show dramatizes it perfectly with this arc.

(This fits into a larger discussion about how SU models how children have changing relationships with their parents as they grow up, and I’ve written a more extensive essay about that here, if anyone is interested.)

Favorite line

Ahhhh this is so hard because there are just so many interesting for him, but if I really had to pick one, I think it would be this one from Three Gems and a Baby:

“Wow, you guys were wrong about everything…No, I mean, about changing and growing. And how it doesn’t come naturally to you? But look at you now! I know you’ll never stop missing Mom, but I bet she would’ve loved this. I do.”

I think this quote just captures something so fundamental about Steven (and about the show as a whole.) He loves the people around him so deeply, even as they all live in the shadow of his mom–whether it’s grief for her, her legacy, or any one of the other million ways Rose is present in the show. And in the here and now, he’s committed to building that family day after day, helping them all to grow, and growing himself. 

Favorite outfit

Okay, I’m not sure this technically counts, but I love him in his caterpillar sleeping bag:

OTP

Once again, not a big shipper. But I guess Connie, if I had to choose.

Brotp

Boy oh boy, this is hard because I really love all of his relationships (and as the focal character of the show, he has a relationship with literally every character), but I guess if I had to pick, I’d say his relationship with Pearl or with Greg.

Head Canon

The first time Steven had a Cookie Cat was as a young child at the Beach with Greg and the Gems, and every time he eats one–every time he hears the silly jingle on TV–he’s reminded of that. That’s part of why he likes them so much.

Unpopular opinion

I don’t actually know whether or not this is actually an unpopular opinion or not, but I don’t really want to see Steven in a full-on romantic relationship that’s explicitly acknowledged as such. I know it’s been hinted at with Connie a few times–especially early on–but it’s never explicitly been romance. And I think one of the things the show excels at is striking a nice balance between different types of positive relationship dynamics, and I worry that, if he were to end up in a serious romantic relationship, that would become a focus moreso than other types of relationships.

A wish

Again, probably not super likely, but I’d like to see Steven physically age. We know from Steven’s Birthday that Steven’s body “ages” depending on how old he feels mentally. And we’ve seen him mature so much since Season 2–I’d love to see that reflected in his design.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen

It’s been hinted at a few times, but it’d be so painful to see Steven like explicitly start to question his humanity. (It might happen…and tbh it would be some good angst material, but still so painful lol)

5 words to best describe them

Empathetic, Sensitive, Emotive, Outgoing, Fun-loving

My nickname for them

Your Ding Dang Diamond. (I’m so bad at this lol)

#su #steven universe #su meta #long post #asks

[popculturespiritwow]

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #33: YOUR DERIVATIVE SHIT (AKA TWIST AND SHOUT)

This cover. Black to me signals death, or something awful. And I was certain that we get all-black pages somewhat regularly in WicDiv, but you know, it’s not true. Both when Luci gets “killed” and Laura herself “dies”, we get pages that are black but for two tiny almost exactly duplicated comments.

The Underworld is obviously a land of darkness, and there are two moments – during Laura’s first trip down there and then when Persephone first gets her hands on Woden – where we get a splash page of endless black into which the character is falling.

But the only time in WicDiv that we’re given a non-dialogue-y black page is when Sakhmet takes out her dad in issue 17, and again in issue 28 when she massacres her party people after coming to believe they’re all laughing at her. That last one does give one tiny little glimpse of her, though.

So if there is a “language” to the all-blacks (non haka version) (love you Kiwis), it would seem to be something to do with violence and lost time.

But we’ve already done all the blood and nightmares in this arc, and this issue is instead filled with twists and reveals and honest soul-rending conversation and reunions and new friends and overall kind of a lot of reader satisfaction.  So a very different thing.

Another take on the all-black is this is what you put on your cover when you’re terrified anything else will give something away. But for as much anxiety as Kieron talks about in his notes about “keeping the secrets” of this issue (and also his sense of what nonsense that fear is), he and Jamie have never had any trouble obscuring  reveals before.

So here’s my thought: Maybe it’s like Disneyland. Disney theme parks are built in such a way that on the way in you have to go through a tunnel of some kind, and before you do you can’t really see inside to all the happy happy joy joy good stuff.

The idea is, Disney wants you to feel like you’re entering into a whole different world than the one you left behind, a better world where you can be happy and spend money and want to take the same picture in front of the castle that everyone else does and still feel like it’s special.  And part of that is creating a clear sense of boundary; there was where you were and there’s where you’re going, and the tunnel stands as passage in between.

Maybe that’s why you do a black cover: Not to hide anything or signal violence but to create a boundary, a sense of a passage into something new. 

PHALLUCIES

So we begin with the Vibrator as key. I want to say it might be the perfect Gillen/McKelvie image – it’s naughty and seems like a joke and has been sitting there for so long that we no longer think much of it when in fact it is absolutely essential.

Nothing in WicDiv is superfluous, minor or irrelevant. Everything is trying to express something important. (TELL US ABOUT THE VEILS KIERON.)

A bigger question: does the fact that Jon (and not only Jon but the truth about Laura) is released into the story via a phallic device that vibrates have even more to say? Is pleasure or self-care in a sense the key in WicDiv, a path to freedom and life?

Have I not mentioned already I was an English major?

READ ONLY MIMIRY (#SorryNotSorry)

After an arc that seems very caught up in how the characters are all caught up in/pinned down by stories, suddenly out of nowhere we have Jon, this breath of fresh air who sees that path for the garbage it is and refuses it. He will not fit the options Ananke poses, or any duality, thanks very much.

He is the one who builds.

Of course he is then force-wrapped into stories – the Pantheon (I love the horror of his reaction to his ascent), this weird Odin/Thor thing (complete with the nod to Thor’s alter ego Donald Blake) and also the biblical Abraham and Isaac story, the father sacrificing his son to God (now comes with beheading!).

And if I understand the father/son dynamic, as much as Jon sees the Mimir thing for the lie or trap it is, he still can’t quite help himself from being a builder. There are rules he can bend (see: vibrator) but he can’t quite enact a full break.

His call is really quite beautiful. “You walked among your foes for the sake of love,” the spooky Ananke heads say. “Struck down you are raised up, the Sky King’s grandest treasure.” It’s pretty much the absolute opposite of his Dad’s call.

How crazy is it that we’re 2/3rds done with the series, we’ve just been introduced to a major new character (okay we saw him once before but still), and he fits in so well?

Probably we’re being set up for betrayal and heartbreak, but for now I love it with all the loves. 

MACK THAT KNIFE

Can we just talk about the knife for a second? Like, how exactly does it work? Clearly it somehow enables the user to disengage the head from the body while keeping the head alive. But whereas with Jon that might have happened literally – put your elbow into it, David! – in the case of Luci, Tara and Inanna Ananke used her signature head pop. So what’s the deal? It’s enough to have the knife in your possession when doing with the murdering, or something else?

Also, post-beheading, we see Ananke referring to Jon as “it”.

Is this because he’s now “just” a living head? Or is this how she actually honestly sees all the gods?  It’s um, upsetting to say the least. 

Of course so is Woden’s take on things: Jon stole my life (by being born, you horrible human looking meat puppet), so now I get to steal his.

I don’t know how it would have been possible Woden could sink lower in my estimation than he has (#Dio4Vr), but in fact it is and he has.

CASSANDRA VS. THE DESTROYER ROUND II

As much as I love the Jon reveal, the thing that really rocked my world was actually not that but Laura explaining what she’s been going through. I just – this poor girl. And though we still have two arcs to go, in a way this moment is the heart of the series. Kieron seems to say as much in the notes, talking about how the artist lives in this awful reality of getting what they dreamed of, but it involves awful stuff happening to oneself and others. 

“I’ve talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv’s success. Laura’s arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.”

Art is built on suffering and loss—and that means on the back of horror done to others. To wish to be an artist is in a sense to sacrifice those relationships in a fundamental and sometimes literal way, in fact that seems a necessity to one’s success. Being a storyteller may be incredibly nourishing for others, but it’s built on harm done to those you love.

Jesus Christ this is dark. And we haven’t even gotten to the point yet of facing the question that society’s survival is supposedly built on those artists’, those children’s destruction. We love you so much, you inspire us, but what cements that for the century is your deaths.

What do you make of this follow-up moment where Laura suddenly turns it to 11 with Cass?

It only happens after Cassandra calls Laura Persephone for the first time, which seems like it’s meant as a kind of respect. Knowing what she’s been through, she is now worthy of her name in Cassandra’s eyes. She is an equal.

Except it seems to set Laura on the path of what – connection, for sure. But through sex, which is actually more escape than intimacy.

What is “The Destroyer”, in the end? Less a malevolence associated with Laura, it seems to me, than the character of all the gods when they get lost in their stories about themselves.  

(More to the point: What the heck is the Machine? Jon says it does nothing. Whuhhh?)

A STEP A HEAD/STOP MAKING SENSE

So, after quite some issues away from it, in the end we return to the heads. Lots and lots of heads. Jon’s head (god that’s a delightful reveal), then Sakhmet’s slice of head – and Minerva – and then finally, the big finish.

I would say my head exploded except I feel like that gag has already been played.

As he has mentioned often in his notes, Kieron loves to hide much bigger reveals within the reveal we know that’s coming. In this case, we knew there was this other Daft Punk member hiding in the darkness somewhere, and we knew there was something up with Laura we needed to hear about.

So we get that and say thank you, and then there’s still four incredible jaw dropping can we please do a happy dance for Luci pages.

Kieron goes into a ton more detail on this writing strategy here, and the particular nightmare challenges posed by this issue. I’ll post excerpts below, but you should read them in full. They are fantastic.

But if I can just ask one question: What the hell happened with Minerva? Am I to believe she did not feel bad about Sakhmet, that she’s that good an actor? Je refuse! And also isn’t the point of the Sakhead reveal that still-Minerva blew it with her fearfulness and lack of skill?

#CRAFTSERVICE: ON TWISTS

Okay… twists.

In reality, for me, it’s a case of once you’ve decided that this is the plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this. Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.

(You could argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)

It’s been strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on. Seeing who got what and who didn’t, and how people reinforced people has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise – though I’ve had people talk about that directly and personally. Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.

When Ray Fawkes told me “There’s a reason you’re doing all the decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I’d overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3… but it turned out fine.

“Played the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it’s impacted every single conversation I’ve ever had about WicDiv. Like just writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song… and then realised there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist? No, someone may notice that, and it’s against my rules anyway. I quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.

As if anyone is watching that closely, y'know?

That’s an extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent (the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I’ve been telling friends that I’ll never write a story that operates like this again. Partially that is because I wouldn’t want to repeat myself, and partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don’t think I want to do this to myself again. I’ll find some other way to torture myself.

 So apparently Mini has been off all this time. I’m stunned by that.

#CRAFTSERVICE: MORE ON TWISTS!

I’d note that setting up twists that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey – pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the actual sleight of hand over here.”

Oh you’re expecting a big reveal are you, cool cool cool here it is and also SURPRISE.

He talks about this again later, in response to the reveal that Mimir is just a talking head.

When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the new information.

Oh you’re blown away by Mimir are you? SURPRISE, there are three other heads.  And also Minerva is not Minerva.

It’s a great insight, too – if you fear one bit of new information is going to naturally lead to others, drop it all right now before they even have time to think about it.

#CRAFTSERVICE: ON WHAT WRITING IS FOR

I know this is a lot of quoting the author, but hey it’s a big issue and the author has some great stuff to say and it is helping me. 

How do I actually feel when someone guesses something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…

I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop” and shrug.

And then you get over your ass, because you know all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m winning.

Certainly I’ve heard many writers talk about their writing as coming from a personal place. And as a writer myself I’ve had to learn (again and again) that having a sparkly fun idea is not going to be enough to get me up and writing every day, even if people like it. That I need what I’m writing to come from something more specific in me.

But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard an artist talk about their work as well, their work. The journey they’re taking to try and deal with something or figure something out or to let go and get free and be a better version of them. It makes so much sense, and man does it challenge me to have another think about my own work. Because I think most of the time I almost think of the journey as the thing that has to come before the work, the thing that prevents the work – Ima just get my act together and then write this script in fifteen years or so. And reading this it strikes me  oh wait, that’s just the thing I tell myself so I don’t have to do the work.

 There’s so much more to say about this issue. But it’s taken me the better part of a week to say this much already so maybe I’ll just leave it there. Suffice to say, it’s a giant of story.

(And yes, that’s my exhausted end of words attempt at a Mimir pun.)

I’ll be back next week with the two specials. And then, Mothering Invention!

#wicdiv #kieron gillen #jamie mckelvie #masterpiece theater but with severed heads

[destroyyourbinder]

ROGD is driving me crazy (part 5)

I was planning on writing a long, well-researched piece on why "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD) is not really a thing as such, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to it. I don't dispute that there is something really bizarre going on with the tremendous increase in female children and adolescents seeking transition or gender-dysphoria-related care, and I don't dispute that there is a social contagion aspect, linked to social media use and access to the internet, to this rise in gender dysphoria/trans-identification. But the whole concept of ROGD is suspect, and it drives me nuts that it's taken as the gold standard now for questioning the wiseness of transitioning children or the broader claims about gender made by transgender ideology. Here's a not-so-brief, but as brief as I can get without weeks of research, rundown of what is bothering me, in several parts (PART 1) (PART 2) (PART 3 & 4) (PART 5) ------- I have seen terrifying behavior from parents in online trans-skeptical communities attempting to coerce their so-called ROGD kids into "desistance", including one example of a mother forcing her child to watch my "Destroy Your Binder" video. There was an incident in the detransition community where a detransitioned woman reported that a mother of a trans-identifying teen (a complete stranger to the detrans woman) attempted to get her to fly across the country to stay with her family to try to lecture her daughter into desistance. Obviously a parent with such frightening boundary issues is probably contributing to her child's mental health issues, but framing the kid's issues as a stubborn and bizarre form of "trendy" or "attention-getting" behavior will never help the whole family system realize that dude, there's a bunch of big problems going on beyond the individual child's gender stuff. Defining the problem as "ROGD" versus "legitimate" gender dysphoria is inherently individualizing and invalidating of a young person's very serious issues with gender and sexuality and social interaction/relationships; it makes the problem the gullibility of the child, a nebulous problem with "technology" these days, or pathologizes the dynamics of teen girl relational networks and identity formation without recognizing that it is heteropatriarchy (including that within family systems and school hierarchies/organizational structures) that drives the toxicity of so much teen girl behavior. Without understanding this, there is no good basis for therapeutic work with children and young adults affected by new narratives of transgender identity and gender dysphoria, and I am very much afraid of what parents and professionals are willing to try to get a kid to "desist" when just raw "desistance" is the goal and not finding a way to cope with the horrible set-up for female people, autistic people, and/or gay people in this world. I am scared that much of the information we have about this phenomenon is driven by the self-interested reports of parents rather than by the voices of the kids themselves, including kids or young adults who did desist or who have come out the other side, and that some parents seem to be motivated by discomfort with gender non-conformity or homosexuality in general rather than a concern about the bodily integrity or long-term well being of their children. One of the hardest things for me to hear from these parents and professionals is that these ROGD kids' distress "makes no sense" because they were formerly feminine girl children who seemed happy with their lot and now they've gone about ruining themselves. There is even a quote in the Littman study about female children whose trans-identification was considered so particularly boggling because they formerly wore bikinis or makeup. These kids' daily or weekly gender progress is measured against resemblance to a former fantasy childhood where these girls were satisfied with their gender conditioning rather than quietly discontent the whole time, their feelings continually dismissed by their caretakers and peers in favor of inculcation into femininity and a heterosexual life. This belies horrible, regressive ideas about gender development in children in many ROGD-invested parents and professionals, where there exists a proper development for female children, such that if they are "actually girls" they will develop into a being that is properly satisfied with all the shit women put up with and likely appropriately feminine, rather than being a confused and discontent teen who rejects their embodiment (supposedly a different creature than that thing that is a "transgender boy", who is some medical anomaly where male gender stereotypes erupt from the brain-mouth connection of a 3-year-old female child). This sort of apolitical view about gender which refuses to acknowledge that all female children develop their gender identity under conditions of pervasive low-to-high-level sexual captivity, violence, violation, and coercion, totally misunderstands typical gender development in girls, the eventual gender development of gay women, and the development of any type of gender dysphoria in children. Most crucially, it fails to recognize that the typical development of female people is not the healthiest way we can be, because we live in a world fundamentally antagonistic to us and our needs. Whether you as a medical professional hold the view that trans boys and men are such because their gender development went awry early in life and transition is the best we can do for such difficult and tragic cases, or trans boys and men are such because they have some innate difference from women, you will have difficulty drawing a line between these cases and cases of gender non-conforming or unhappy girls and women without relying on severely regressive and anti-feminist gender stereotypes, stereotypes that will ultimately condemn those on both sides of the line to being fed to the wolves-- different wolves maybe, but wolves nonetheless-- of patriarchal abuse. I guess some people are fine with this, and maybe I can say nothing to them. But the point is that ROGD kids, adolescents, and young adults clearly are not, and the reason why their cases are so hard to resolve or treat both ethically and successfully is that they point out that awful practice of drawing the line itself. ROGD patients very vocally do not want you to draw the line on the side that will include them with their birth sex, even if there’s no particular reason why you shouldn’t. But parents and some medical professionals absolutely do and will travel to hell itself to box them in. What is at stake when we draw the line, and for whom? And who, after all, gets to wield the cosmic (or perhaps just pharmaceutically-well-funded) fluorescent spray paint can that does the drawing? Those girls with so-called ROGD, as well as most trans people who are female, know exactly what’s at stake, and most wish to magically appear on the other side of that line without having to see the ugliness of how the line is made or acknowledge the existence of the lines-- and a line-drawer-- at all.This is impossible so long as we’re in the business of transitioning people, and so long as the medical industry does it there is going to be a line, and people in white coats drawing it. I ask you to notice that the line, the gatekeeper, doesn’t already come provided by nature; you’ll never discover it somewhere out there in brains or bodies or god forbid, the toy preferences of tiny children. If we accept the inevitability of transition, the line will always have to be drawn, and by somebody, with consequences for the real flesh and blood of the real human beings who live in the bodies standing on each side. There will always be two sides. So: will you pick up the brush and paint to draw the line? Will you play the grand referee in this gender game? Or are you willing to see what this game is, and put it all down, and walk away?

#dysphoria #writings #ROGD

[robobrainmurdermysterytheatre]

This is the place in Fallout 4 that broke me. 

It broke me because as I thoroughly searched for tin cans, I read through the terminals and saw all the horrors and had a moment where the realization violently hit me - “We’ve done this before.”

Not literally. We haven’t literally scooped out prisoners brains and used them for robots to fuel the war machine, no. But the American government, in our actual, real world, has performed unethical human experimentation on prisoners. They did it because they knew nobody would care about “criminals.” Even the game does it - reading the terminal in the observation wing, I was thinking “psh, these are murderers oh well for them.” But there’s less than a dozen entries in that terminal. There are at least 80 brains in the little tanks littered around. A few dozen more already in the Robobrains. There are holding bays for 90 bodies in the incinerator room. I doubt all of these people were violent offenders. Not to mention the one subject mentioned who was a veteran involved in a physical altercation where the victim eventually died so she was convicted of manslaughter. Did she have PTSD? Did the guy she beat the piss out of try to assault her?

And back to the actual, real experimentation done on actual, real, living human prisoners in our world - most of them were carried out between the 1940′s and the 1970′s. In that time frame in American history all sorts of things could land you a prison sentence including being mentally ill, being black in the wrong place, being gay, doing activism, being in an interracial relationship, being poor, hell even if the good ol boys in charge didn’t like you for whatever reason. You slap that “criminal” label on someone, they’re not someone anymore, they’re a criminal and the average American will give you licence to do whatever the hell you want to them because “Welp, they shouldn’t have done crimes, sorry, I don’t make the rules.” That last part hasn’t changed. And that’s the world we live in, and it’s terrifying. And sad. Listen, I’m all for doing awful things to child molesters and rapists and murderers and babykillers and all manner of actual awful people. But the fact is, most of the “criminals” in our nation are not any of those things.

And that’s what broke me. The spiraling thought that this seems like something that could really, actually happen in our world because other, similar things have really, actually happened and nothing has really changed and also how many other horrible things in this game are so similar to things that have actually, really happened or have the potential to happen because at it’s core the pre-war Fallout world and our world share a lot of the same, fundamental, dug-in, terrible beliefs and values?

Sorry this was so long, and serious, but I had to get it off my chest.

If you’re interested in the sordid history of unethical human experimentation on prisoners (and other vulnerable, confined populations!) in America you can check out this pretty good summary here: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41811750/ns/health-health_care/t/ugly-past-us-human-experiments-uncovered/#.XDBlp2qFxEc.link 

Or just Google it, there’s tons of information.

#Fallout 4 #fallout 4 screenshots