#thinking about community and lack of third places and individualism a lot these days

[blackpilljesus]

I find community discourse incredibly annoying. People are often like "Wheres's the community? We need community! People are so individualistic these days". Individualism gets a lot of criticism but nobody ever questions why this happens. While there are some merits to communities, historically communities have mainly benefitted the priviledged. Most communities evolve into divide-and-rule politics where some are seen as more deserving than others (based on things that cannot be controlled). If you're a marginalised person, more often than not you get bs from communities, not love and protection as advertised.

When you're on the short stick side of the divide-and-rule politics in communities, communities are dangerous for you. It will be seen as acceptable to abuse & put you in horrible conditions simply bc of what you are. Those who abuse tend to be in higher positions in communities so when you call them out people wouldn't care or believe you. You'll be punished when you fight back however. When you're marginalised in a community you receive the worst brunts from people and it's seen as okay to be less deserving of support. You wont be supported in community.

People talk about "safety in numbers" but when the community faces trouble, they will have no problem abandoning or sacrificing the marginalised to save themselves at large. Communities have no problem throwing others away or isolating them once it benefits them. Alot of the time people are used & abused in communities so they're fed up with that, fed up of being treated like second class citizens in communities.

Look at the way communties people reminisce about & yearn for actually turned out. "We had community back in the day" yeah the same ones full of predatory uncles that would abuse women & children and get defended, the same communities full of victim blaming & shaming women + girls for being abused, the same communities where some were implicitly told they were more inferior but if they obeyed those higher up in power they can be forgiven. People talk about a lack of a "third place" bc of the rise of secularism so less are going to places of worship but many people leave those communities (even if their faith is still intact) because of corruption & abuse. The judgements & hypocrisy in these places is a lot (one of the reasons I personally left religion & the community too).

Best believe if you can hold your own down, being in a community is more dangerous than being alone bc like i said when things go south your ass will be on the chopping block first. Hell if people just want to abuse, they'll go for the marginalised first & so much abuse is enabled in communities. They'll ostracise & shun you and the threat of that alone keeps many in line to uphold abusive structures in place in communities.

"But humans are natural social creatures that want to be in groups" is something I hear often & that should make you stop and think of how so many people going against this instinct to survive says a lot about how dangerous alot of communities are. It's our nature to socialise, be in groups yet it's chosen to be independent because of the danger groups actually present when you're not seen as a valued member of them.

At this point people would either say "look inwards" or "find better communities out there" but the problem is that status in communities isnt entirely based on the merit of the way you behave. Finding communities where you're accepted & valued IRL tends to be based on things you cant control. It's not like the internet where you put yourself out there & eventually find your community even if they live all over the world. In reality it's another ballgame, people are more closed off & judgemental if you dont fit certain standards so it's more difficult to find places where you'll fit in. Also, as mentioned the determining factors of the way you'll be treated in communities are based on things you cant control, your characteristics will do more speaking and determination for you. So it's not as easy as just "find a better community". Given the way activism is on the internet, many people forget how conservative & hostile the real world actually is. Things like sexism, colorism, racism, ableism, homophobia, lookism etc; play a big role in most communities irl which is why many people seek alt communities online even though those come with issues of their own but to not stray away from the point this is why many people arent fucking with -irl- community shit anymore.

This discource pisses me off because when you constantly receive crap from communities people blame you for it but when you leave you get badgered for not having or being part of community. Communities benefit the priviledged as they uplift those on top, they get to take more from communities & enrich themselves while those at the bottom get fucked over and it's no wonder so many people get fed up and decide to put things into their own hands than risk being in/trusting communities that wont hesitate to risk or end your life over bs. I know that not all communities out there will be horrible but as mentioned finding communities IRL where you'll be accepted as a marginalised person is difficult. Finding equitable communities where everyone is held accountable for their actions, where people genuienly help each other to get by & survive over divide-and-rule politics is difficult.

People complaining about lack of community but wont address the rampant abuse that happens in them tells me they dont care about community spirit as they claim they just want pools of people to exploit and are disguising it under communal spirit & protection. I dont fw communities & sometimes people will tell me i cant do everything alone, no man is an island -good thing i'm a woman then lol- but fr the people this crap comes from are the type of people that make communities suck & i wouldn't want to be in a community with them anyways bc they're horrible & would just exploit. Individualism is on the rise because so many of us marginalised people who grew up in communities realise we're better off alone & idc what anyone says if they feel they're better off within communitities then bet but a lot of the time others are better off alone. And icl one positive of capitalism is that it gives you a chance to rely on communities less & have a more independent lifestyle. Yes there's still a level of people/community engagement but we're not as tightly bound to a community like a small tribe in a village bc tbh i'd probably be dead by now if i had to live & rely on others that way.

Instead of just criticising individualism & guilt tripping people to join communities, if people actually care do inflection about your "communities". Except this wont happen bc this isnt about community spirit but looking for others to exploit which is why it's being aggresively pushed.

#Also communities isolate people anyways #Yes being alone can also make things dangerous; it isnt perfect & if communities see you they'll view u as a easy target but overall #i personally find it better to be independent of 'community'; doesnt mean i isolate myself tho #If you find good communities out there stick with them; Im not saying isolate yourself; you can work with people but keep distant #dont tie yourself into community #Personally I think people fearmonger around being independent so they cant hold the threat of being ostracised from communities over you #anti community #community

[knightmareaceblue]

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AO3

Disclaimer: Henry will not actually be wearing a helmet or using rope. Sorry to disappoint.

“’Humanity, and indeed all Creatures, are social Beings by both necessity and desire. To this end, the Human Trait of KINDNESS has integrated into the Soul, a Conduit of Compassion and Community. KINDNESS is thought to be the source of empathy, and compels Humankind to feats of incredible might for the sake of other Living Beings. KINDNESS as a Trait is unique, as it can supplement the effects of the other Traits both in ACTING and in magic. For this reason, KINDNESS has gained the Moniker of ‘The Supportive Trait’, and is considered the most passive of the Soul Traits.’

“’Those who are imbued with abundant KINDNESS are naturally adept to the magic of Healing. With their KINDNESS, these individuals pour their overwhelming empathy into their magic. Through this and their Desire to help other Creatures, a Healer can speed the Healing Process, Alleviate Pain, and Repair injuries and illnesses that come about as a result of Magic, such as Status Effects. As KINDNESS dominant souls are a rarity, the limit of a fully unleashed KINDNESS soul is entirely unknown. We theorize, however-”

“Ugh…” The reading was interrupted by the long groan of a bored green ghost who, despite having the ability to float at will, was lying face-down on one of the cots. He pulled his face out of the green bed to moan at Henry. “It’s like I’m back in high school. Is this drivel really necessary? Do I really need to know that having a lot of KINDNESS makes me compassionate or whatever?”

Henry lowered the book from his nose, quirking a brow at Charles. “Remember what I said about souls with a lack of PATIENCE having trouble learning magic? I think I’ve figured out why.”

“I just don’t get how some dry textbook speak is supposed to help me learn healing magic.” Charles huffed, letting his head drop dramatically on to the cot. “It’s like, wow, bland definitions! That’s totally going to make me understand magic!”

In all fairness, the text of the book Henry had bought all that time ago (less than a week – damn, it felt like so much longer) was actually quite the interesting study of magic. It approached the subject in a clear and concise manner, examining ancient legends with scientific scrutiny and using rough translations of old magic texts as reference. Still, Charles had always had trouble sitting still, so Henry could understand how the book wouldn’t be compelling for him.

“Magic isn’t just about understanding,” He tried to explain for perhaps the third time that day, “It’s about… being inspired. Feeling an intense connection deep inside yourself and letting your KINDNESS or DETERMINATION or whatever guide your soul. Magic doesn’t come naturally to humans, so we need that connection to be able to do anything magical. That’s why it’s so difficult for us, and why it’s so powerful in comparison to monsters’ magic.”

The only response Charles gave was a long, exasperated groan. Okay, looks like they needed a study break.

Henry sat himself on the cot next to Charles’ prone ghostly form, pondering for a moment what he should do next. After a moment, he flopped down next to Charles, laying face up as the other remained lying down, face buried in a pillow. Even without the use of his PATIENCE, Henry could tell the situation required a more… delicate touch than he was used to providing. Reassurances might get him going again, but that wouldn’t help long-term. There was something missing, something Henry couldn’t place his finger on, and just running ahead with their plan wouldn’t fix that. What he needed was something personal. Something he could relate back to his KINDNESS.

So, after only a moment of hesitation, Henry spoke up, “Hey, can I tell you a secret?”

“…?” Charles left the pity party long enough to give Henry a questioning look.

“I like hugs.” Henry confided. “Like, really like hugs.”

A surprised snort escaped Charles’ translucent green lips at that. “Really?” His tone, Henry noted with fond amusement, was much lighter than it had been previously.

“Really.” Henry smiled encouragingly as he continued. “An almost worryingly amount, actually. Like, arms around you shouldn’t feel so good? But they’re just so warm and soft… like, like a really heavy blanket with a heartbeat and free will.”

“Didn’t expect that from you.” Charles had flipped so he was also lying on his stomach – again, pointless, as he could fly and fall through the bed at a moment’s notice, but there was something nostalgic about lying on his stomach with Charles once again. It was like they were back in Charles’ on-base apartment, lying on a fluffy blanket and watching movies with Charles’ hot chocolate warming his hands. Even in these difficult times, there was comfort to be found in the familiarity.

Henry couldn’t wait until this became his new normal.

“Well, I didn’t think I’d like them either.” Henry confided, whispering his secret as if it were the dead of night. “Growing up, I was… pretty scared of adults. And other kids. And being touched in general. I honestly couldn’t tell you if I hated them all, or if I’d just convinced myself I did so I didn’t feel like I was missing out on something. It just made things easier, I guess.” Henry cushioned his head on his folded arms, unable to suppress the smile growing on his face. He’d seen television shows where kids had stayed up late confiding in each other like this, and even though it was the middle of the day, it made Henry feel giddy inside knowing he was fulfilling one of his secret childhood fantasies. “So I was pretty surprised when hugging other people felt good? Like, I feel warm and less anxious, and I don’t feel as cold when I’m alone. Why didn’t anyone tell me having friends was good for your mental health?”

Charles mirrored Henry’s movements, pillowing his head on his arms with a warm, affectionate smile adorning his green face. “Henry?”

“Yeah?”

With only a pause to toss his arm over Henry’s shoulders and pull him into a fond embrace, Charles cheerfully proclaimed, “I’m going to punch your parents in their stupid ugly faces.”

It was more surprise than elation that caused Henry to begin snickering. “Heh, bring me along when you do. I’d love to see that.” before snuggling closer to Charles. He was unexpectedly warm for an incorporeal specter. This was nice. This was so nice. A part of Henry wished it could always be like this – just being comfortably held, knowing he’d never have to be alone again. Unfortunately, the hum of murmuring broke through the haze of tranquility that had fallen over the two friends.

“Oh my god, that’s so cute…”

Henry strained his ear, turned towards the direction the Doctor was standing in, and yelled back, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer!”

Alphys, obviously not expecting to break through the bubble of their own world that Charles and Henry had created, jumped when she was addressed. “Oh, uh, sorry! D-don’t mind me, heh heh…” Trailing behind her was Chief Copperbottom, trailing along with a freakishly blank expression. He hadn’t been all there in a long time, but since his husband had left to climb the mountain, it was like he’d become a zombie, constantly attempting to walk off with a sluggish, clumsy limp.

Looking at him made Henry sad, in an odd sort of way. He didn’t want to be sad for this bastard – his space station plan had gotten Charles killed – but, well, there wasn’t much left in there to hate. Instead he just felt a gnawing emptiness when he looked at the once proud leader of the Toppat Clan. Frustration and pity battling within him in equal measures.

“Man, it’s so weird that you’re walking the leader of the Toppat Clan like he’s some kind of dog.” Commented Charles, who apparently didn’t have quite the same reservations about the chief.

“Well, uh, he still needs exercise,” Alphys’ fingers tapped together as she spoke, her eyes not quite meeting Henry’s. From anyone else he’d find this behavior suspicious, but Doctor Alphys was simply an anxious mess, so he didn’t think much of it. “A-and I, um, I can’t really leave him alone like this. H-He’s still very clumsy and slow, and he-he keeps trying to wander off…”

“Like he’s doing now?” Charles pointed at the once Chief, who was shambling towards the entrance of the tent like a mindless zombie.

Doctor Alphys shrieked and grabbed him by the back of his long coat, pulling him into the tent again. “No, no! Reginald, your husband wants you to stay here, where it’s safe.” The good doctor sighed. “Geez, he’s worse than the amalgamates. At least they respond to me, for the most part.” The good Doctor then plastered on a big, encouraging smile and turned back towards Charles and Henry. “So, uh, how goes the healing magic?”

“It…” Henry winced, not sure how to put it without hurting Charles’ feelings. “…goes.”

“Yeah, it goes… in circles!” Charles, apparently, had no qualms about hurting Charles’ feelings. “I suck at this. How am I supposed to heal Henry’s soul when I can only barely heal flesh wounds?”

“Well, uh, I don’t think freaking out is going to help anything.” Alphys pointed out gently. “Listen, I know how you feel. Like you should be able to help, like you have everything you need to fix everything that’s gone wrong but somehow it’s just. Still. Out of grasp.” She sighed, her eyes falling to the scanner. “B-but if you let your mistakes and your failings control your life, you aren’t going to fix anything. You’ll just put yourself on a downward spiral, and make everyone else miserable in your vain attempts to feel even a little good about yourself.” Judging from the tone of her voice, Henry figured she was speaking from experience. “Take my advice, Charles. Stop trying to force it. Human magic is stronger, yes, but it’s also harder to pull off. You need to just… go by instinct.”

Charles huffed. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the reason your best friend is dying.”

“And neither are you.” Henry countered immediately, refusing to indulge Charles’ pity party. “Look, if something isn’t working, we need to try a different approach. Stop focusing on the ‘magic’ aspect and start focusing on harnessing your KINDNESS. That’s what’ll get that magic juice flowing.”

“How would I do that?”

“That’s why we’re reading this!” Henry pointed out his book again. “So we can figure that out!”

“But I hate studying…!” Charles moaned like a misbehaving child. It was slightly pathetic, but mostly funny.

Henry couldn’t help himself. “’If thou will be a sloth, the Princess wilst not be saved, and thou’ll never return home!’”

The look Charles gave him was well worth the embarrassment of reciting that quote, because he looked so utterly bewildered. Alphys, on the other hand, wheezed out a majestic laugh. She, clearly, was a woman of culture. Henry laughed as well when her response only made Charles more confused.

The jovial atmosphere was cut short when Henry heard crying. It was quiet, barely audible over the noise the three of them were making, but it still managed to catch Henry’s attention. With all the strength he had left in his soul, Henry pulled away from Charles and followed the quiet whimpers to the bedside of one Dave Panpa. The rest of the bodies were as still as always, but tears streamed down Dave’s face and his breath hitched. An uneasy tension rose in Henry. What…?

“Hey, is he alright?” Good ol’ Charles had trailed after Henry, and was watching Dave with worry written plainly on his face. “Did… did they hurt him when they were fighting Gaster?”

“I doubt that.” The Doctor replied from her spot next to another bed, examining General Galeforce. “Nobody else is showing any signs of distress, like they did when Sven lost his eye, so I don’t think it’s physical pain. Maybe it’s something psychological…?”

Henry looked up at Charles, who was looking right back at him. Without words, Henry knew they were both thinking the same thing; even just knowing Rupert and Dave for a short time, Henry knew how close those two were, and Charles and Rupert had apparently talked at least enough for Charles to know the connection between Rupert and Dave. In his current state, with circumstances as they were, there was only one thing that could reach Dave and Dave alone enough to cause this.

Rupert was either hurt or down, and those who climbed the mountain were losing the fight.

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

“Okay,” Charles announced as Henry finished checking his bag, “If we’re going to do this, we need to set a few ground rules. Rule one: No magic. Period.”

Henry nodded, taking out a banana peel and considering it briefly, before putting it back. It would be absolutely humiliating to the Doctor if they beat him by tripping him with a banana peel, and that was reason enough for Henry to keep it in his inventory.

“Rule two: We don’t separate for ANY reason. If you hear a weird noise, we investigate together. I don’t care if being a soul without a body makes me more vulnerable to Gaster, you’re not allowed to go it alone. Capiche?”

“Capiche,” Henry agreed as he fished out his teleporter. For a second he considered tossing it – the thing had only worked once in all the SAVES he’d attempted, and tended to be more trouble than it was worth, but in the end decided to take it as well. Weirder things have happened, so...

“And lastly…” Henry was pulled away from his bag to look Charles’ in the eyes. There was so much emotion in those KIND emerald orbs: grief, fear, loneliness, conviction, courage. And DETERMINATION. “Promise me you’ll be careful, okay? I can’t lose you, Henry. I just… I-”

The poor thing. Henry brought Charles in for another hug, relishing in the warmth of it. “I know, buddy. God, do I know.”

There was a lot to lose regardless of what they did. If they went, Charles could have his soul stolen, and Henry would end up dead, at best. But staying and doing nothing wasn’t an option, not when Gaster’s power was so great and his methods so terrible. Whatever he was planning for the world, it couldn’t be good. CHOICE was limited; they had to ACT, now. Or else they’d never be able to live a happy, normal life.

Henry never thought he’d want that before now. A normal life, with Charles and Galeforce and maybe even Ellie by his side. That sounded… unexpectedly pleasant.

The two wayward souls marched through the camp together, neither being really noticed by the combined forces of the soldiers and Royal Guards who were preparing for the event that Gaster brought the fight to them again. There was nothing that brought people together quite like a common enemy, Henry supposed.

It was then that they were surprised by the appearance of an armoured Boss Monster. Covered in shiny bronze metal and cloaked with a majestic purple cape, it took Henry a moment to realize that the large, mountain-like figure lacked the golden flowing locks of King Asgore.

“Your Grace?” Henry questioned.

“Oh, good morning, Henry.” The Queen greeted calmly, as though she wasn’t garbed for war. “Out for a stroll? Given your condition, are you sure you should just be out and about?”

The human shook his head. “I’m… fine. Surprised about the armour, though.”

“Yes, well…” The Queen looked up towards the mountain, her face growing more and more worried. “It’s necessary. Asgore and I will be going back to the Underground, and we’ll need to be prepared for anything.”

Henry did not expect that. “Ah, I thought you were staying behind to help organize the defense?”

“That was the original plan.” She confirmed. Her tone was cold, but Henry had the vague feeling it wasn’t directed at him. Didn’t stop the shiver that ran down his spine, though. “but then I learned that Frisk and Chara ascended the mountain without permission to aid in the fight.” Her hands tightened into fiery fists. “I was already hesitant about letting Asriel go, and his nature would make it easy for him to protect himself and escape. But those two would be targets.” The last word fell out of her mouth in a fierce growl that made Henry jump. With how sweet and motherly she tended to be, it was easy to forget that this woman was equal to the King of all Monsters in power.

“Well, uh, funny story. We’re going up too.” Charles informed her. “We don’t think the fight is going well and, uh, we’re not in the greatest shape, but we’re better than nothing.”

“I do not think that would be the wisest idea…” Toriel murmured, skeptical. “But I suppose there’s no way I can reasonably stop you, so it’s best for us to go together.”

“Finally!” Henry threw up his hands. “Someone who acknowledges that I’m not in any chain of command around here!”

Toriel hardly looked impressed by his statement, but she sighed and motioned for them to follow her. “Asgore knows the Underground better than perhaps any monster alive. We’ll be entering the Underground by propelling down through a hole in the Ruins, which isn’t as close as I’d like, but it’s the safest spot to enter without attracting attention to ourselves. With the Underground empty, we’ll have to be prepared for an attack around every corner. It won’t be a field trip.”

As they walked, Henry fished around in his bag, pulling out a random stick. “Neither was infiltrating the Toppats. I know we’re only humans, and we haven’t lived nearly as long as you have, but we’re not children. We’ve got a future to FIGHT for, too.”

This gave the Queen pause. “Yes, I suppose you do. I apologize if I’ve been condescending. I’m just… worried. For my children.”

“Then let’s not waste another moment.” The booming voice of King Asgore rang over them, drawing their attention to the armoured monster. He looked down at Henry and Charles, his eyes widening in surprise. “So… you two are joining us?”

“We, uh, kind of have to sir.” Charles rubbed the back of his head, nervously smiling up at the boss monster. “I mean, it’s either this or die. I’d rather FIGHT, if you don’t mind.”

Asgore nodded approvingly. “Very good, then! Hopefully we’ll be able to find the children and stop Gaster together. Now, do you two have everything you need? Water? Food?…uh, multivitamins?”

Good lord. Even in the midst of war, this guy had ‘dorky dad’ written all over him.

“We’re all set, sir!” Charles saluted.

“Good, good.” The King stood tall and proud over the two of them. When Henry had first met them, he had a hard time imagining them married, with how cold and vitriolic Toriel could be towards the large goat. Now, standing shoulder to shoulder in matching royal armour, both staring out DETERMINED at the mountain their children were trapped in with a madman, they almost looked like partners. Henry doubted they’d rekindle the flames of romance while battling a goopy mad scientist, but whatever history they had between them was capable of being set aside for the sake of their children.

Humans and monsters, government and Toppats, the King and the Queen… it felt like everybody was putting aside their differences because of Gaster. Well, at least some good was coming out of this whole mess.

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

Mount Ebott was less impressive the second time Henry had to climb it.

The scenery was much more exciting to Charles, however. “I grew up in a big city, not a lot of nature,” He explained when Henry pulled him away from a flowerbed, “And, uh, after joining the military, I don’t really have the time to ‘stop and smell the flowers’ while on missions, you know?” He smiled as he watched some birds fluttering overhead, bringing mouthfuls of worms back to their nests. “It’s really pretty out here. Now that the monsters are free, I hope they make it a park or something.”

Once they’d dealt with Gaster, Henry decided, he’d take Charles out on a nature hike somewhere. It wasn’t something he’d have expected the pilot to enjoy, but he supposed there was always more to learn about the people you love.

Even without actively using analytical magic, Henry’s PATIENCE made him more OBSERVANT than most, so it was him who noticed the sound of footsteps following behind them. Difficult to pick up, due to the natural noises made by the animals and the forest, but present. He called out to the others, grinding their climb to a halt, and waited…

and waited…

“Uh, Henry? Are you sure-?”

“Just hold on…”

And then, from behind the trees, came Reginald Copperbottom. The man blinked, surprised to see the group halted and staring at him.

Well, damn. This put a hindrance on things.

“Oh, um…” Asgore shifted awkwardly as they all stared at the Toppat’s Chief. “Howdy? How- how did you follow us up without anyone noticing you?”

Reginald blinked creepily at them. His muscles were weirdly stiff. “I… Right Hand Man? Where? You… you can’t be the void. I… ngh…” The poor man cradled his clearly aching head in his hands.

“Oh good lord.” Charles ran a hand down his face, looking tired. “Okay, come on, buddy, let’s take you back…”

“Unhand me!” Declared Reginald, his voice louder than normal as his gray eye flared red for the briefest moment before dulling again. “I… can’t leave him. Not… again.”

The Queen sighed, taking a step forward with her paw raised. “Perhaps we can… persuade him to rest and take him back.”

“Err, it may not be in our best interest to knock out a human at the moment…” Asgore informed her gently. He then stepped in front of the man. “I will carry him back and then rejoin you later. We should regroup at our Old Home in the Ruins-”

His attempt to grab Reginald only resulted in the man stepping back away from Asgore. Desperately, he turned to Henry. “Please… Please…”

Their eyes met. The blacks of Reginald’s eyes seemed to expand, the shadows growing and merging with  the darkness of the overcast sky, with the shade provided by the trees. The world around him suddenly didn’t exist. All that was there was him and Reginald, two broken souls standing face to face.

“I… need…” Reginald pleaded weakly. “to h-help… them. Please...”

And despite the barrier created by Reginald’s soul wound, Henry understood. He felt helpless, useless. He needed to SAVE his Right Hand Man, and his successor. The desire was so great that he managed to project his very thoughts to Henry, in an effort to communicate what he couldn’t speak. Henry got that; just days ago he’d passed out in a hotel room, so desperate to SAVE the one person who understood him that he didn’t even care what happened to him. That desperation, that fear, it was so familiar, like the looming shadows over his childhood bed. Henry’s feelings on the man himself couldn’t be more mixed, but in that moment he only had one thing to say.

“Okay.”

The shadows retreated, what little sunlight that made it through the cloud cover cutting through the darkness that had cloaked the forest. Toriel and Asgore both stood their stunned, not knowing what to say. Charles was a little less subtle.

“Henry?!” He looked reasonably panicked. Geez, how long had he been caught in Reginald’s spell? “Are you okay?! Did he brainwash you?! How many fingers am I holding up?!”

Henry pushed the pair of green digits out of his face. “I’m fine. Come on, we have to keep moving. Who knows what Gaster’s up to?”

“Ah, are you forgetting…? Toriel gestured to Reginald, still watching the group blankly.

“…” A ghost of a smile crossed Henry’s face. “Right, sorry. C’mon, Reginald.” Henry took the man by the arm, leading him back in the direction of the camp. Charles, ever loyal, trailed at his heels. Once they were a fair distance away from the Royals, Reginald allowing himself to be dragged along with some confusion, Henry gripped Reginald by both arms and informed him, coolly. “Follow behind us, but keep at a distance. We’ll find them.”

Reginald simply nodded.

“Uh, is this smart?” Charles asked.

Honestly, probably not, but… “I don’t think we’ll be able to keep him away.” Henry pointed out. “Besides, so long as he’s just behind us, he shouldn’t be in trouble. And maybe his PATIENCE will come in handy? Considering mine, well… isn’t.” Henry’s hand drifted onto his chest, feeling the weak pulses of his soul.

The pair of uneasy humans headed back to the King and Queen, letting Reginald walk behind. Silently, Henry hoped this wouldn’t come back to bite him later.

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

The descent was slow, with the Queen and King using Blue Magic to slowly lower Herny down into the Underground. Charles floated next to him the entire time down, keeping casual conversation going despite the tense way he’d eye the ground far below them. Still, he kept his clear worry under wraps, instead rambling on in a comforting, familiar way until Henry hit the bottom of the pit. The golden flowers at the bottom were bright and cheerful, a starch contrast to the dark stone walls and deep purple columns. Absently, Henry recognized the area from vague descriptions tossed around back at camp.

The Ruins.

“So this is where the monsters have been living?” Charles asked, his tone noticeably downcast. “Geez, no wonder they hated humans. Hey, fun fact, did you know regular sunlight exposure is directly correlated with decreased risk of depression and anxiety? Just, you know, throwing that out there.”

Henry pat Charles on the head, the only thing he could think to do. “Yeah, I know. This place is actually really chilly.”

“Really? My sense of touch is super muted. It’s hard to tell.”

“Indeed.” Toriel and Asgore floated down behind them, the armoured royals drawing attention back towards themselves. The queen smiled bitterly as she gazed upon her old Home. “While Hotland is quite warm due to the lava flowing freely through it, the rest of the Underground is fairly frigid. As you can imagine, things were quite bleak in the early days of the monsters banishment. I was fairly young then… even I couldn’t tell you how many monsters fell down in those first ten years under the mountain. We lost so many good people to HOPELESSNESS…”

“Those were dark days, indeed.” The King concurred as he walked past the group. “The first step to restoring HOPE to the people was creating some semblance of a normal life. We focused our efforts on creating a society, a monetary system, and eventually a functional city. I remember the day when our castle was completed. It was on that day, when construction of our city was truly done, that I christened our new city… ‘Home’.”

“A crude moniker,” The Queen commented, “But it did get the point across. Even if we were forced down here, we could still build happy lives. We burrowed deeper into the Underground once things got safer, each new settlement sowing more and more hope in our people. And then, something so miraculous occurred that no monsters fell down the entire year. The first of such an occurrence since we’d been sealed away.”

“The birth of our Asriel.” Asgore sullenly informed the two humans.

Silence rang out over the Underground. The air was tense with bittersweet nostalgia, and Henry suddenly felt incredibly awkward, and also slightly guilty, which didn’t make much sense.

“I’m, uh, sorry.” He finally said, feeling sheepish and shy.

Even on Henry’s adult head, Toriel’s paw was large enough to grip his entire skull. It was a little anxiety inducing, but there was also something comforting about that warmth threading through his silver hair. Henry’s shoulders relaxed as they stared out over the cavern.

The sound of something hitting the flowers behind them forced the group to turn around, just in time to see Reginald get up and brush himself off, as if he hadn’t just fallen several stories down a hole.

A long, long moment passed as the group just simply stared at Reginald. Toriel, eventually, asked Henry, “I thought you sent him back to camp?”

“Uhh…” Was Henry’s very eloquent response. He decided it was wiser to not inform the royals that he’d essentially invited Reginald to follow after. With nothing else to do, Henry just shrugged.

“Well, uh, no way we’re getting him back to camp anytime soon.” Charles pointed out. Unlike Henry, he was a lousy liar, so hopefully they were too distracted to focus on the way his voice wavered. “It’s, you know, probably better to just… stick him in a bed somewhere and come back for him later. I mean, what else are we supposed to do? Throw him up the hole?”

Toriel’s eyes narrowed in on the ceiling, as if debating doing just that. Then she sighed. “Oh, very well. We’ll have to go through my old house to get to the rest of the Underground, anyways. Might as well drop in and lock him in the master bedroom.”

She was annoyed, and possibly suspicious, but at least Toriel wasn’t outwardly angry at him. Hopefully it would stay that way.

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

Toriel took point as the five wandered through the Ruins. They were moving quickly, with Toriel solving puzzles as they went, but Henry couldn’t help but notice how Charles and Reginald both fawned over the architecture of the place. Once again, Henry was struck with the thought that they’d have to come back after everything was settled, and firmly reminded himself that he couldn’t think about that now, he had to focus on the situation at hand.

If he screwed up, there was much more than his soul on the line this time.

Toriel’s home, the ‘castle’ was actually a small cozy house nestled in the back of Home, surrounded by the leaves of a tree that Henry thought at first was dead, but Charles told him no, actually, it just… lost its leaves as soon as they grew. What a strange plant.

“And there are many more like it throughout the Underground,” Asgore told them, “Why, the Royal Palace in New Home has a fabulous garden! Oh, while we’re there, I should water the flowers…”

“This is hardly the time, Asgore.” Toriel pointed out, mildly exasperated. Her annoyance then shifted into something sterner, angrier, and she tensed. “Wait, hold on. There’s somebody here…”

Already Henry could see what she was talking about. Through the window, though it was difficult to see through, Henry could make out the golden glow of light. This place had been abandoned for days; who the hell lit that fire?

The Queen and human exchanged a short glance, and nodded. While Toriel’s fists lit up with a glowing flame, Henry reached into his bag and pulled out a little taser. Effective? Probably not against an immortal insane goop monster, but it made Henry feel safer. With the other three watching from the safety of the doorway, Toriel and Henry crept closer, and closer… and Henry powered on his taser, holding it high above his head-!

“OH, WOWIE! VISITORS!”

Both Toriel and Henry stared slack-jawed at Papyrus, then looked at each, then back at Papyrus. The tall skeleton was smiling innocently despite the electricity and fire they’d been prepared to assault him with.

Seconds later found the group gathered around the warm flame, bowls of adequately cooked spaghetti shoved into their laps. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but Papyrus hadn’t had any sauce, so they were just eating bowls of dry noodles. Henry dumped his into the fire when Papyrus wasn’t looking.

“I APOLOGIZE FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO KEEP FRISK SAFE,” The skeleton told them as he twirled spaghetti on the edge of his fork. Despite his booming voice, Papyrus was unsurprisingly morose about the fight. “WE DIDN’T REALIZE THEY WERE THERE UNTIL JUST BEFORE THINGS WENT SOUTH. GASTER ATTEMPTED TO DUST ME, AND RUPERT…” His gaze fell on to the still body on the couch. Rupert was wrapped in a blanket, his dull gray eyes unfocused and staring blankly into the distance. With that sad look on his face, Papyrus continued. “RUPERT SAVED ME.”

“I’m not surprised.” Charles sighed, twirling the spaghetti. Since it was magical spaghetti he could probably eat it, but apparently didn’t intend on trying. “He’s gruff, but he’s got a good heart.” The glowing green orbs of Charles’ eyes were glued on Rupert too still body.

“This may sound harsh, but we might be lucky we didn’t get here sooner.” Toriel spoke as she returned from the kitchen with a small handful of snails adorning her spaghetti. “Otherwise we would have been subjected to the same fate. And you said you ended up here after you were tossed into that tear?”

“INDEED.” Papyrus confirmed. “BECAUSE I WAS HOLDING ON TO RUPERT WE GOT HERE TOGETHER, BUT THE OTHERS… WHO KNOWS WHERE THEY ENDED UP.” His own bowl of spaghetti was also untouched as Papyrus occupied himself with playing with the food. “THEY COULD BE ANYWHERE.”

“We wull haf to… keep un eye opun… for them un the way.” Asgore decided around mouthfuls of spaghetti. He shoveled the last of his bowl into his mouth and then spooned himself seconds. At the speed he was downing the bowls, it was hard to tell if he was even tasting the food as he shoveled it down his gaping gullet. “Thank you for the information, Papyrus. Will you be coming along?”

“…” His eyes shifted back towards Rupert, and Henry figured he wouldn’t be coming along. “ACTUALLY, IF YOU DON’T MIND, I’D LIKE TO STAY HERE WITH RUPERT. AFTER ALL, SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE SURE HE DOESN’T OVERSLEEP, AND AS SANS’ BROTHER I’M CLEARLY THE MOST QUALIFIED.”

“I understand.” Toriel’s paw rested on Papyrus’ shoulder, offering him some reassurance. “Papyrus, you’ve done well. If it’s not too much a bother, would you also mind taking care of Mister Copperbottom here while we face Gaster? He followed us, and we didn’t realize until it was too late to go back.”

“NYEH HEH HEH!” Papyrus saluted. “NEVER FEAR, YOUR MAJESTY! ROYAL GUARDSMAN IN TRAINING, MASTER SENTRY PAPYRUS, WILL KEEP THESE HUMANS SAFE DURING THE FIGHT!”

Under the Queen’s instruction, Reginald was locked inside the master bedroom, to be freed upon victory or death, whichever came first. His sad eyes stared directly into Henry’s as the door closed, and though he’d not really promised a thing, Henry felt vaguely like he was betraying Reginald, somehow. Well, whatever. It wasn’t like he owed the guy anything. It didn’t stop the churning of his gut, but that’s what Henry told himself, anyways. Papyrus took Rupert to the beds that may have been Chara and Asriel’s at one point, and laid him to rest before escorting the party of four to the door that would lead to Snowdin. The air got colder in the hallway, and Toriel’s eyes became haunted as she stared at the door before her. They only lingered for a moment before pressing onward, past the doorway and into the snow. Despite the tension of the situation, Charles’ eyes lit up as he saw the white expanse of the path before them, and Henry tried not to groan. Yay, snow, his favourite…

The only thing that made the environment tolerable was Charles’ warm presence hovering close enough that his chin rested on the crown of Henry’s head, giving a little warmth to the other human. It was soothing. So soothing that Henry almost didn’t hear the crunch of snow behind him. Henry couldn’t resist. He peaked.

At first nobody seemed to be there, but as Henry took the time to look around he noticed a familiar figure in the shadows, hiding amongst the trees, his two hats drawing Henry’s attention to the lump emerging from the darkness.

Reginald. How the fuck…?

No, it didn’t matter. If he wanted to die, well, no skin off Henry’s nose. With Charles’ warmth above, Reginald’s PATIENCE behind, and the Queen and King protecting them from straight ahead, Henry tried to focus on the upcoming battle.

His chest still hurt.

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

I think the title card and illustration from this chapter are both among the best in the entire story. A shame they belong to what is my least favourite chapter so far.

Anyways, next chapter: Flowey and Right Hand Man end up in a peculiar place...

#THSC #The Henry Stickmin Collection #Henry Stickmin #Undertale #Valiant Souls #Knightmare Writing #Charles Calvin #Alphys #Toriel #Asgore Dreemurr #Reginald Copperbottom #Papyrus #Rupert Price #Dave Panpa #The final battle starts soon! #I'm kind of anxious #And excited #Friendship Fluff #Not a lot happens this chapter #But we needed to get everyone into place for the final battle #Sorry if it disappoints #Queen Toriel

[fandom-pardes]

According to halacha, which actions are Azula liable for?

Reposted from my Tumblr.

One of my favorite ways to study Jewish texts is to take a fictional character or situation and examine it through the lens of Jewish text and tradition.

I’ve done this before with ABC’s Once Upon A Time. Now I’m going to take up this exercise again with Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Before I begin, a few things to keep in mind.

I’m not a Talmud scholar.

There is no definitive Jewish Opinion™ about any issue pertaining to halacha. Unanimous opinions on halacha are so rare that when we find one, we assume something went wrong in the process..

Azula is a morally polarizing character in AtLA fandom. Regardless of who you ask, you’re bound to get some strong opinions about exactly what she’s done, the extent to which she’s responsible for it, and what this says about her morality or lack thereof. I’m not going to rehash those arguments. I think I’ve made it clear that I care less about whether people approve of her behavior than I do about how their statements about her reinforce harmful messages about women, people of color, LGBT people and mentally ill people.

Nevertheless, she’s incredibly interesting, and studying Jewish text is fun, so here we are.

Why examine Azula’s actions through the lens of halacha?

Halacha gets a lot of flack because it comes off as excessively legalistic. But, in my opinion, that’s based on a misunderstanding of what halacha is. Usually translated as “Jewish law,” the word halacha actually comes from the root word that means “to go/walk.”

Halacha is not a collection of rules for the sake of having rules. It’s meant to take us somewhere. You can write a library of books about exactly what that is and what it means. But for the sake of simplicity, halacha is how we show that we recognize the holiness of everything in creation. So we aim to do right by one another, by the land we live in and by the creatures we share this world with.

Before we can launch into examining the halachic ramifications of the things Azula does, we need to establish some boundaries.

Only the show counts. It’s the common frame of reference universally accepted by the vast majority of fandom. Fandom’s stances on the comics, novelizations and other tie-in materials are too variable to base an analysis on.

Word of God is immaterial. While some would use the phrase Death of the Author, Jewish tradition has a more entertaining take on it. In the Talmud, there’s a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and some of his peers. In that story, Rabbi Eliezer says that if he’s right, this or that miraculous thing would happen, and those miraculous things do happen. But the other rabbis still reject it because we don’t determine halacha by miraculous signs. Eventually, God parts the heavens and says, “Rabbi Eliezer is right.” But another rabbi responds, “The Torah is not in heaven,” meaning that the Torah was meant for human beings on earth to interpret for themselves. And God’s response? To smile and say, “My children have defeated Me.”

Now, let’s begin.

Is Azula bound by halacha?

She’s not Jewish, so no. However, all human beings are bound by the Noahide laws. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Noahide covenant applies to all humans on all worlds. According to the Talmud (Sanhedrin 56a.24):

Since the halakhot of the descendants of Noah have been mentioned, a full discussion of the Noahide mitzvot is presented. The Sages taught in a baraita: The descendants of Noah, i.e., all of humanity, were commanded to observe seven mitzvot: The mitzva of establishing courts of judgment; and the prohibition against blessing, i.e., cursing, the name of God; and the prohibition of idol worship; and the prohibition against forbidden sexual relations; and the prohibition of bloodshed; and the prohibition of robbery; and the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal.

What is Azula’s legal status?

In any case, we know the rules, and now we have to decide whether Azula broke them or not, right?

Not so fast.

First, we have to determine if Azula is of the appropriate legal status to be held accountable for upholding the Noahide laws. In other words: when she committed certain acts, was Azula an adult capable of making rational decisions?

Clear your mind of the idea that being an adult is the same as being a grownup. Instead, think of it as a term that defines when people can make legally binding decisions.

As far as I can tell, the Talmud doesn’t say when a gentile becomes an adult. However, we can use halacha as a guide.

Now for a warning.

If frank talk about the physical development of adolescents makes you uncomfortable, you might want to skip this next part. There’s nothing graphic or titillating about what I’m going to discuss, but if breasts and pubic hair squick you out, skip this part until I say it’s safe in bold like this.

According to halacha, a girl reaches adulthood when she’s twelve years and one day old and has two pubic hairs. Yeah, you read that right. Twelve and two pubes are the requirement. Before this point, nothing she does is legally binding, even if she’s really smart and claims to be fully aware of what she’s doing. After this point, her actions are legally binding, even if she says she had no idea what she was doing.

On the show, we see Azula in a range of ages. In “Zuko Alone,” we see her at roughly eight years old. In “The Storm,” she’s about eleven. In all the other episodes she’s in, she’s fourteen. So, from a legal standpoint, flashback!Azula is too young for her actions to be legally binding. At that point in time, the responsibility would fall to her parents.

Um, I’m not willing to speculate about the genitals of an underage cartoon character, so for the sake of argument, I’m assuming that 14-year-old Azula meets the two pubes requirement. Thus, 14-year-old Azula is responsible for her actions.

If you skipped that last part, it’s safe to continue now.

OK, we’ve established that flashback!Azula is too young for her actions to be legally binding, but in the main story, Azula is legally an adult and responsible for her actions.

We good? Alright.

Which Noahide laws does Azula actually break?

This is both easier and harder than it seems.

The laws about idol worship, cursing God, and forbidden sexual acts don’t apply to her because neither religion nor sex are portrayed as such on the show. Also, the law about establishing courts of justice is a communal obligation, not one that falls on a single individual, so that’s another one we don’t have to concern ourselves with.

That leaves the prohibitions against bloodshed, robbery and eating a limb cut from a living animal.

First up: bloodshed.

The connotation of the prohibition against bloodshed is not for general acts of violence, but actual murder.

Here’s where I think I’m going to throw a lot of people for a loop. Azula doesn’t kill anyone on the show. She tries. She comes close. She wouldn’t lose sleep over it if she did. But nobody’s dead because of her. She doesn’t even take lives as collateral damage.

One could argue that zapping Aang with lightning counts as killing, but when the Sages talk about death and dying, I assume they mean the kind where the dead stay dead, not people who are revived by magic spirit water. Furthermore, if someone’s about to kill you (and I think entering the Avatar State qualifies here), you are halachically obligated to save your own life, even if it means killing that person.

Second: robbery.

We’ll come back to that.

Third: eating a limb from a living animal.

This prohibition is often expanded to incorporate all forms of animal cruelty.

The show does portray animal cruelty. We see a prime example with the circus in “Appa’s Lost Days.”

But what about Azula? We don’t see her interact with many animals on the show, but there are two notable examples: Appa the sky bison in “Appa’s Lost Days” and Bosco the bear in “The Crossroads of Destiny.”

How does her behavior measure up? Despite her earlier behavior of terrorizing turtleducks, Azula does not harm either Appa or Bosco.

On the show, Mai and Ty Lee are seen spending time with Bosco in the throne room while the Earth King is imprisoned. So, at the very least, they treat the bear well.

So, Azula is not liable for animal cruelty.

*hands Azula her Not As Big A Jerk As She Could Have Been award*

Now, let’s revisit that prohibition against robbery.

Given the prescribed punishment (decapitation), the connotation seems to be taking the rightful property of another through violent means. That being said, the prohibition against robbery is often extended to include all sorts of theft.

This one might have some legs. On the show, does Azula take the rightful property of another, and does she use violent means to do so?

Absolutely.

A major example is stealing the clothes of the Kyoshi Warriors after defeating them in combat.

But!

The show takes place during a time of war, and the Kyoshi Warriors, as allies of the Avatar, are enemies of the Fire Nation. So does beating them up and taking their uniforms fall under the prohibition against robbery, or are the Kyoshi Warrior uniforms considered the spoils of war and thus free for the taking?

Halachically speaking, it might actually be the latter. When fighting the Kyoshi Warriors, Azula acts as a military commander during a time of war and achieves a decisive victory against an elite combat unit. Thus, she is entitled to take their stuff.

So, back to the original question: which actions does Azula commit during the show that she’s halachically liable for?

The answer, shockingly, may be: none.

On the show, we’re encouraged to think of Azula as a Very Bad Girl who does Very Bad Things. She’s calculating, ruthless and deceptive. She’s also full of herself. She’s not someone who inspires warm, fuzzy feelings in most people. But when you put her actions under the microscope, she exercises remarkable restraint compared to what she’s capable of.

Don’t worry. No one’s going to nominate her for a Nobel Peace Prize just yet. This is Azula we’re talking about. She’s not acting out of an overwhelming love for humanity. But it is interesting that despite her threats to kill, maim and destroy, she doesn’t participate in wanton destruction or wasteful loss of life.

#azula #atla meta #jewish meta

[nacrelyses]

okay brain if i make the post will you shut up

so love, me normally can be interpreted in a romantic sense, and it would make sense for it to be interpreted in a romantic sense of someone who desperately wishes they weren’t so different from the norm, so “bad”, so “abnormal”; that they’re so tired of being different and being treated different that they just want to be loved like they’re normal, loved like a nobody

but that’s not what i’m making this post about god damnit keep on track-

[under a read more because it’s very heavy. tw external and internal queerphobia, existential despair, also this is so long oh god 2k words]

 i could make a joke about how “cross my i’s, dot my t’s” is a joke about going on testosterone but uh i’m just going to talk about first stanza 

“I was delivered holding scissors, I live deliberately, I’m a quitter And a winner anyway, cause I never agreed to participate in this game”

this’ll come up later in this long ass post but the child is delivered holding the scissors to cut their own umbilical cord. when a child is born and they are a queer individual, it is up to them to cut the ties that hurt them the most - even the most close and familial ones. in the way that an umbilical cord is cut because the baby no longer needs the mother’s nutrients, the child is born with the inevitable fate of having to cut off those whose approval and love they can no longer thrive off of, or can no longer receive. or, it could be a metaphor for the scissors of fate, where the child is born with their fate in their own hands and they, being an outlier in queerphobic society, must make do with what they’ve got.

“i live deliberately, i’m a quitter” the child lives deliberately in their quest for self discovery and their need to understand and accept their queerness but at the same time they are a quitter in all the things that society considers normal but they cannot utilize to function: a white collar job when the child is an artist, a nuclear family when the child just doesn’t want one, keeping in contact with your parents when the parents do not accept their child.

“And a winner anyway, cause I never agreed to participate in this game” this comes up later in the post as well but yeah the child never agreed to participate in this game of life. they didn’t ask to be a player, but by default of their unwillingness and their lack of consent, they are made a winner because they are the only player at the table of their own life. they are made an unwilling winner for something they never had the consciousness to consent to experience. they can be called “strong” later in life for overcoming queerphobia, lauded as a “winner” over their oppression, but it rings hollow because to be a real winner, you have to have agreed to be playing in the first place. 

and then the chorus, this is pretty obvious. like the 

“And I'd rather be normal. Yes, so normal I suggest that we keep this informal Cause a normal human being wouldn't need To pretend to be normal to be normal Well I guess that's the least that I owe ya To be normal in a way I couldn’t be C’mon, c’mon, and love me normally”

because you know, that could kinda be interpreted as a queer child talking to their queerphobic parents. it doesn’t fucking matter if their parents are proud of them for their grades or their achievements now because no matter what, they’re proud of the persona of the child they’ve constructed for themselves. they’re proud of a fraud. the child knows they’ll never truly be loved the way they are, that their parents will only love who they want the child to be and they’ll only love the image they have of their child. think of it like internalized queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, the idea that similar to i/me/myself, it would be easier if i were a girl [or cisgender, for a general application] and it would be easier if i were normal. the child would rather be normal in the way their parents see normal and they feel that they owe their parents, for all their parents have done to provide for them and pay for their bills and everything, the bare minimum of pretending to be normal so that they don’t break their parents’ hearts. and it’s really for the sake of everyone in the family because if they’re outed, the parents will argue, the parents will be sad, their siblings will be upset by the arguing and the mourning, they feel as though they owe their family this bare minimum of pretending -  both for their own safety, and for the prosperity of their family. moving on.

“If I could live in third person, well I don’t think life would be much worse than it is In the current tense, presently, this sentence ending in question marks or dot dot dot…”

the child feels like if they were an outsider witnessing their own life in a third person perspective, it still wouldn’t change a lot. or it wouldn’t be much worse, it might actually be better, in a sense, because they’re fully disassociated from the identity that alienates them so from their parents and their parents’ approval. but they’re living in first person, so this sentence (their life, basically, drawing upon how a suicide prevention thing a while back was using a semicolon as a symbol of your life being an author’s sentence) ends in two ways. a question mark, showing how their existence as someone outside the “norm” of a queerphobic society is rife with constant questioning and identity gaslighting because of how “abnormal” it is to deviate from the norm that you are left without many resources to figure yourself out. you die at the end of the day perhaps not even knowing who you truly are because society has not yet normalized terms that could better articulate your identity, and because you can never really know yourself. or, your sentence ends in a dot dot dot. forever unfinished. you leave with so many loose ends - maybe you move out and cut off contact with your family forever, and live perhaps happier but never knowing if they change their mind (oh god now i’m thinking about change your mind from steven universe and how steven’s entire story is a metaphor for the trans experience). maybe you decide to continue pretending and you cut off the option of really getting to know yourself a little bit better, and you die never knowing who you could have been. so living in full disassociation would at the very least not be much worse than how the first person tense currently is.

“I drank myself to death to be the afterlife of the party When the afterparty came, I was rolling in my grave”

no i am not an alcoholic, thank you very much, i am a responsible person. but the substance abuse reference can be applied to any self destructive habit that arises out of a need to cope - in this case, the child’s need to cope with their fractured identity. maybe they turn towards being hyperfeminine or hypermasculine in an attempt to feel connected with their assigned gender, which branches out into so many different destructive habits (aforementioned drinking, drugs, eating disorders, etc). they do so to become the “afterlife” of the party - if you think about a “party” as a moment in time, it can be the moment you are in in your life. the child turns towards these destructive habits to try to achieve the unachievable. to bring the afterlife into life, to bring their parents’ false image of the child into fruition when that is never impossible and that in itself becomes destructive. but they do this in the current moment of their life, in the current party, so when the afterparty comes, they’re already dead. when the afterparty comes, they roll in their grave because it’s a hollow call for what they could have been: a more genuine person to themselves, a happier individual free of parents’ queerphobia. 

“I want you to love the way they so seamlessly, like a dream for me, so beautifully, oh so dutifully jam that square peg in the round hole in their hearts”

the bridge monologue is very very romantic-coded and i don’t think i can pull much meaning from the first bit but here, have the “jam the square peg in the round hold in their hearts”. the child has learned to “seamlessly”, like a second instinct, to jam the square peg of their parents’ false image into the round hole in their hearts, to somehow cram something into a space that was never meant to fit and should not be fitted at all. this quote speaks as though it’s the child talking to their parents, telling them, “i want you to love me, but you are only loving me as i am now, when i am literally destroying myself to be who you’re capable of loving”

“I want you to tell 'em that you love the way that they don't stick out like sore middle fingers That they crawl their way up the side of the bell curve, stick their flag in the peak, and slide their way back down I want you to tell them that you love the way that they're not maladaptive, not malcontent, not malignant or maleficent, but rather that you love them exactly the way that everybody else is”

yep. so the bell curve, the statistical graph, the idea that their child could sit perfectly at the average as the cishet kid their parents expected them to be. the way that they’re not “maladaptive, not malcontent, not malignant or maleficent”, which can all be adjectives weaponized in queerphobic rhetoric against the queer community. and the final line, that their parents love the child “exactly the way that everybody else is”. their parents hold their child to a supposed “norm” that does not really exist because of how suppressed queerness is in society, that the norm is most likely not the norm at all and who’s to say what’s a norm? their parents love them when they are “normal” and it feels like that’s the only way they’ll ever be able to love you. they’ll not be able to learn how to love a different you. 

“I was nothing before so I couldn’t have asked to be born I'll be nothing again, so what am I between now and then? Is there nothing to fear? Cause sh*t's getting weird So to God who made this man, you better have one hell of a plan”

deep breath. okay. okay. first of all, will wood’s inflections from the last line of the first bridge all throughout the second bridge are gorgeous and hit so hard. 

but yeah. here we go here we go ho boy

the idea that birth in itself is actually an immoral thing, since children don’t ask to be born. they don’t ask to be brought into this world, to experience this world, to develop mental illnesses and to face queerphobia or discrimination or danger in any sense because of who they are. they don’t ask to be born into a family that consistently alienates them and forces them to keep quiet about something that’s so important to them. and the child, in learning that their parents are queerphobic and will never accept them the way they are, realizes now even more that they never asked to be born. they didn’t ask for this closeted life. they didn’t ask for this kind of pain, this kind of false love, this kind of otherness. they never asked for any of this. 

“i’ll be nothing again...” the idea that life is finite, that they’ll become that “nothing” they were before they were born if they come out to their parents because in that sense, it’s the parents asking themselves, “why did we have a child that turned out this way? we didn’t ask for this kind of child. we never asked for this kind of person. we never asked to raise them as they are now.” look if you can’t fucking accept that your child will be anything other than a cishet individual made to play out your nuclear family life so you can project your ideas of parenting and hopefully help parent your grandchildren in all the ways you fucked up your own kids i want you to-to- the window is right there. leave. fucking leave. 

“Is there nothing to fear? Cause sh*t's getting weird So to God who made this man, you better have one hell of a plan”

is there really nothing to fear, from your parents? they’re supposed to be your closest guidance but is there truly nothing to fear from them if they hate the idea of who you really are? the child is questioning their identity (”shit’s getting weird”) and everything they’ve ever perceived their parents as is thrown up in the air.

and we can’t have all this internalized queerphobia without some religious trauma, can we? the child asks the all knowing, all seeing God, “what was your plan for me?” did this God intend for this child to have to go through this pain? this suffering which is often carried out in the name of aforementioned deity? this God better have one hell of a plan, really, because this child sure as hell needs one, and this God better have a good enough excuse to be able to redeem themselves in this child’s eyes. 

all the choruses are just the child constantly asking their parents: “am i normal enough?” “do i need to pretend more?” “i know i owe you this much at least, can you tell me you love me? the normal me?” “can you tell me you love me at all?”

#this was over 2k words but here *throws this and dives out the window* #will wood #the normal album #love me normally #also god bless tumblr never putting word limits on their posts #will wood analysis #love me normally analysis

[brittledame]

Pairing: Shirabu Kenjirou/Reader

Warnings: Explicit, Cursing, Hair-pulling, Name-Calling, Hate Sex, Spanking, Slight degradation, Panty stealing, Table sex

Word Count: 7.6K

Summary: A school project brings together two academic rivals, where their dislike for one another reaches a whole new level. You and Shirabu constantly duke it out for the top grade, where it becomes an everyday occurrence to see the two scowling at and insulting one another. The tension between you two finally reaches a boiling point one afternoon when an argument breaks out.

Series: Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 & Part 3)

Shiratorizawa was a private school full to the brim of prestige and practically screams ‘money’. Inside of the sleek modern exterior, each extracurricular club ranging from calligraphy to kyūdō possessed state-of-the-art facilities. Basically, you name it and there was most likely already a club for it, with each one allocated a ridiculous amount of funding. It did help that a lot of old and new money sent their kids to the school, which unfortunately leads to uppity pricks with uptight attitudes flaunting their wealth at the drop of a hat festering the hallways.

One such uppity prick went by the name of Shirabu Kenjirou and he was the bane of your existence. He came from an affluent background, old money resulting from smart trades in property stock way back before the global telecommunications were even conceptualised. You could smell the money oozing from his pores in the form of some ridiculously over-priced Giorgio Armani cologne, topped off with his neatly pressed uniform and copper-toned hair perfectly sleek.

The part that pissed you off the most about the male, and has led to your open dislike for the asshole, was the fact that he got into Shiratorizawa solely by his phenomenal grades, never once relying on daddy’s money to get in, like most of your cohort. Meanwhile, you made every single second count when studying, not a moment wasted between school and sleep, just to hope to qualify for the academic scholarship. For a while your parents fretted that you were studying too much just to pass some school’s entrance exams, where their platitudes of ‘you’re already plenty intelligent enough, honey’ and ‘you could ace it this very moment’ weren’t enough to soothe your stressed mind.

Not even three months later, you sat the exam and low and behold, you did ace it, much to your amazement. It was a beautiful moment, witnessing your name on their admittance board not even a month later, tears of relief gathering in your eyes. The only thing that ruined your moment was the name that ranked just above yours, taking in first place: Shirabu Kenjirou. So, your well-known rivalry with the copper-tinged blonde asshole started one-sided and quickly evolved into something much greater than you could’ve ever imagined.

For both your first and second year, you shared the same class as Shirabu. It was to be expected since you were both in the same grade average bracket, but still a girl could dream, right? Much to your ever-growing annoyance you were placed in the same third year class as well. Evidently you were unable to escape his prickly attitude.

Every task, assignment and exam became a silent challenge between the two of you. Each and every time, you’d throw yourself into your studies just to wipe the smug look he gives you every time he pulls through with the top mark.

The worst part of all this was the fact that he consistently pulled high marks while balancing a sport on top of his studies. You’d have to give it to him, you honestly don’t know when he manages to fit in eating and sleeping in that hectic schedule of his.

Now to place two head-strong individuals together was just begging for trouble, especially when your little competition has reached infamy around the sprawling campus. Turn out trouble is exactly what your science teacher was looking for when she placed the two of you together for the physic unit’s partner research report about their topic of choice. You looked at her like she’d lost her goddamn mind, not sparing the equally shocked Shirabu a glance. You didn’t even bother to argue with her, knowing it would’ve ended up worse somehow if you did.

“Fuck.” You muttered, hoping four the next six weeks to pass quickly

As soon as the Ms. Nakamura dismissed the class, you marched over to his desk. Stopping directly in front of him, you perched your hands on your hips and gave him a disdainful look.

“Look, for the course of this project I am willing to be civil with you.” You place a genial hand over your chest to complete your saintly sacrifice. Looking up, Shirabu gives you a blank look, before returning to annotating his textbook with bright sticky notes.

‘What a fucking dick,’ You silently seethe.

“Whatever. Just pick a topic and I’ll start on it.” His monotone voice serves to piss you off more. You curl your hands into tight fists, resisting the glorious thought of punching his pretty face.

“Um, I think not. We’ll pick the topic out together and we’ll equally distribute the work. I don’t want to hear you bitching to your hot teammates that I’m slacking.”

Grabbing a vacant chair near his desk, you spin it around and sit on it backwards, ignoring his disgruntled look. Tapping on your phone, you open a new contact and start filling it out.

“What’s your number, dickhead?” Shirabu’s head shot up at the insult and you grin at him, shaking your phone in front of his face.

“None of your fucking business, bitch.” He bites out, forehead creasing as he glares at you, completing his signature expression.

“Well, asshole, if you somehow managed to forget already, let me remind you. We need to collaborate on this and to do that, we need a line of communication. Texting is the easiest option.” You reason. You weren’t fond of the idea of Shirabu having your number either, the ass will probably write it in the boy’s changeroom as retribution for some misdeed you’ve done.

Deliberating, Shirabu’s pen stops its furious scribbling. Heaving a great sigh, he concludes that unfortunately you were correct, but that didn’t mean he had to explicitly admit that.

Snatching your phone, he ignores your indignant shout as he taps out his phone number and tosses the phone back at you.

“Great, thanks for being a team player, sport.” You say, as you clean the screen off on the bottom of your uniform top.

As you get up and return the chair to its correct place, you trudge over to your desk whilst starting to conjuring up some topic ideas to suggest.

Peeking from under his uneven fringe, Shirabu watches your skirt sway as you walk. He loves it whenever you walk away from him, leaving him to both think in peace and admire the way your hypnotising hips move as you walk. The short purple plaid Shiratorizawa skirt left little to his imagination whenever you bent over, or a strong breeze came through. Shirabu briefly wondered how the hell you evaded the school’s disciplinary committee’s strict uniform coding monitors in the hallway because he’s sure that you’re breaking at least two of them on any given day.

The next day, you texted Shirabu the list of thesis concepts you wrote up. You were surprised when your phone vibrated in your hand, delivering his speedy reply.

Shithead: Sure.

What the fuck were you meant to do with that dry ass reply?

Now angry that he wasn’t taking you seriously, you texted him back to pick a god damn topic before you went over to his practice and caused a scene. And just like that he stopped being obstinate and picked the one you were secretly hoping he would choose; it was the one focusing on Einstein’s thought experiments how his process was adapted into modern-day quantum research.

After a few back and forth texts by that afternoon you had both scheduled a few meetups over the next few weeks for the more challenging components, such as devising a solid thesis and finding some credible academic papers to back-up your statements.

A week later found you waiting in the library, going through your homework as you wait for Shirabu’s team practice to end, hoping to make good use of some of your free time.

By the time Shirabu swept into the room, you had already gotten a good head start in the assignment. Dressed in his neatly pressed uniform and not a hair out of place, you almost suspected that he made up the excuse of volleyball practice to get out of spending anymore time than necessary with you. The asshole breezes past you, not even offering an apology or reason as to why he was late, but you could at least deduct that practice was at fault – that is if he even went.

“Well since you decided to keep me waiting for –“ You glance down at your phone, “forty-five minutes, I already started it. I’ve written both the study’s aim and objective and began devising the outline for what needs to be addressed in the introduction.” You say shortly, not waiting for him to seat himself and set up before you push your laptop across the desk and into his personal space.

Shirabu rolls his eyes at your accusing tone and started to read what you’ve written up in the shared word document. Kenjirou was mildly impressed at how much you accomplished in such a short amount of time, but he tried not to show that outwardly though, afraid your already inflated ego would grow. Grunting in agreement, Shirabu slid the laptop back over to you.

“That’s fine. I’ll start pulling some sources for the statements you outlined and start writing them up. Why don’t you start researching any recent projects detailing new discoveries and start collecting data to include?”

That last part was less of a question and more of a demand, but his usual flat tone made it hard to distinguish between the two. The lack of inflection in his voice could just about put anyone to sleep, and after sitting here for almost an hour in the calming atmosphere of the library, you were ready to start dozing off.

A sharp kick to your shin ripped you out of your thoughts, causing to to yelp and rub at the sore spot. A quick look at Shirabu’s smug face illuminated by his screen was enough to rid the last of your daze, begrudgingly returning to your work.

Two hours had passed, filled by the tap-tapping abuse of your keyboards and the occasional groan released by you at another paywall obstructing an article containing some nice data. Other than that, Shirabu was a quiet as a graveyard. You’d assume he had spontaneously passed away if not for the typing and blinking, the fucker didn’t even look like he was breathing.

What a completely boring guy with a nasty attitude. The most interesting thing about him was his unfortunate fringe, looking like he got mugged in an alleyway by a guy with no fine motor skills wielding a pair of scissors.

Plainly coloured hair, irises almost an identical shade of almost blonde but not quite there. He was of average stature, maybe a little below for the volleyball team. He was completely normal, nothing you would normally give a second glance while passing by, and yet…

You mentally shake away the unwanted thoughts conjured by the sight of his hands, or the slight flexing of his arm under the thin fabric of the uniform shirt.

Dirty little fantasies of Shirabu just snapping one day after one too many insults, throwing you over his lap and just going to town on your ass with the same hand that scored so many serving points for the elite team filled your head incessantly. The force would jostle you forward, tears in your eyes as you beg him – for what you don’t know, but you would beg and he’d wrap his strong hand around your throat, the threat of cutting off your blood flow to your brain was enough to stop your breathless begs.

Wrapped up in your raunchy thoughts, your typing ceases and your eyebrows furrow as you’re faced with the horrible realisation that you actually have feelings other than hate for the up-tight prick. The feelings were far from romantic, more likely resting somewhere between hate and dislike, but it was still the principle of the matter. Acknowledging those feelings alone felt like you ceded your part in a game that you two had unofficially started.

Fuck.

The next few weeks were going to be hell. You internally groaned at the thought.

You had no idea just how right you were, as the next few Friday sessions were almost unbearable for you since that day. After that dreadful meet up, one could slice the tension that brewed between the two of you with their bare hand, even though it was solely emanating from you.

As most horrific diseases start, it was all innocuous at the beginning. The session all started the same: witty quips and digging barbs swapped at the beginning of your sessions before silently coming to the unanimous agreement to not speak another word to one another unless it was absolutely necessary. Even then, you could feel the migraine pulsating threateningly behind your eyes at how effortlessly hot he was. The headache was quite literally the physical manifestation of the vexation you felt towards the irritating copper-haired male.

It turned out that your exasperation was mutual, Kenjirou thought if he had to sit through another session with your loud breathing or deafening clacking of your keyboard, he was going to start ripping out hair. He was at his wit’s end and he had no reason as to why you set him off so easily. Not even the over-exuberant Goshiki could elicit such a nasty comment so quickly from him, even on his worst days.

The tension mounting between you two from previous sessions hung heavy in the air, but neither of you were willing to acknowledge the elephant stampeding through the small and rarely used study room.

The irritating sound of your long, trimmed nails typing, no more like smashing, on your keyboard cut through the tension. It was enough to put Kenjirou on edge faster than any other assignment meet up. He’s had a hell of a week and while he didn’t have grueling practice today, spending it alone with you was the cherry on top.

Usually the silent and calming ambiance of the library never failed to soothe him when he’s tense and anxious, but his irritation was hitting a whole new level he’s never experienced before.

“I swear if you keep smashing at your keyboard like that, I’ll rip them off and shove them up your ass.” He seethes, hands curling into fists where they rested on the table.

Looking up, you give him an incredulous look before opening your mouth. God what Shirabu wouldn’t give to get that stupid mouth of yours to not ever open again. He’d be saving the world from one less idiot spreading their stupidity.

“That’s kinky Shirabu. This is a library, keep it in your pants and save it for the bedroom.” You tease, fluttering your long eyelashes at him paired with a plastic grin.

At the murderous look his gives you, you throw back your head and laugh quietly. You weren’t willing to face the librarian’s wrath if you broke the rules, even if you were situated on the deserted top floor in a room furthest from her station at the entrance.

Conversation stalls from there on out, with only the clacking of your keyboard’s once again filling the air, although you do take greater care when typing now, not that the asshole thanked you for your consideration.

Kenjirou watches you from his periphery as you brush your glossy hair over you your shoulder, ponytail bouncing with added weight. That stupid ass hair style that made Kenjirou want to reach over and yank –

“I know you lost a couple of brain cells playing volleyball but come on, are you really that slow?” You raised your eyebrow at him, glancing at the unfinished excel charts Kenjirou had elected to do.

Giving you an unimpressed look, he chooses not to bite, thinking he’s already wasted enough time acknowledging your existence. Kenjirou hadn’t even noticed you talking to him, he was just that used to tuning you out and hearing your annoying voice as background noise.

“Can you add a trendline to the data, so that the upward trend we mention in the discussion is clearly evident in the chart?” You carefully enunciate each word to him.

Your demeaning tone and slow talking really pissed Shirabu off this time, he clenches his jaw and expels an exasperated breath through his nose.

“I’d appreciate it if you don't address me like that ever again. A trendline on the data we collected is pointless, just a pretty line. If we generated the data ourselves, then maybe, but the studies these numbers are sourced off of don’t even have trendlines.” His reasoning is rock-solid, but he was a prick about it, so you rolled your eyes and moved on to the next section of the paper that needed sorting.

“Fine, I acquiesce. A trendline here would be rather inappropriate.” He scoffs at your formal language. This was coming from the same girl that he heard on many occasions say obscenities so vulgar it’d make a seasoned soldier blush.

Tense silence fills the void between you both. You brushed of the strange sensation of being on edge. It is true that Shirabu seems even more pissy than usual, but you’ve been dealing with his shit for weeks now, you could put up with two more sessions with the unbearable prick. Hopefully.

Focusing back on the shared document open before you, you stare blankly as you try to decipher his nonsense tables. Concerned, you quickly scroll through the rest of the discussion he had begrudgingly volunteered to complete. To your absolute horror, you noticed that your format of your portion of the discussion was utterly incongruous with his formatting.

Well shit.

While grammar mistakes and sentence structure could be tweaked and fixed within a day’s work, it would take you both at least a good day's to make the report’s content flow freely and have a singular format. Thankfully, you guys have the time to fix up his – and maybe some of your – mistakes.

“Could you not?” You say shortly, tacking on a sharp glare aimed at the bane of your existence.

“Could I not what? Use your big girl words.” He bites back, not even trying to hide his annoyance with you anymore.

“Could you please stop fucking up our assignment. I don’t know about you, daddy’s money, but I’d really like to get full marks for this.” You shoot back, angry that he had the gall to be annoyed at you when he was the one fucking up the format of the assignment.

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m doing everything that we outlined in our past sessions.” Kenjirou fumed. He swears to fucking god, if he has to argue with you over the (lack of) importance of a trend line for this data set again he’s going to scream.

Crossing your arms over your chest, you miss the way his eyes quickly flit down. Kenjirou hates himself for the way his dick twitched at the sight of you inadvertently pressing your breasts together. Licking his lips, he allows you to stew over his words and watches as you reluctantly accept his logic.

It was true, you guys didn’t really decide on a true format in the initial planning phases, it seemed like a far-off issue to worry about at that moment. Well the future is now and that issue was just going to compound by the day if it didn’t get sorted out soon. It didn’t help that you hated editing papers with a passion.

At your silence, he rolled his eyes so hard you were scared they may get stuck – although he deserves at least that much for all the shit he’s given you over the past three years. He turned back to his work and went back to ignoring you.

Oh well, two can play at that game. You didn’t want, nor need, to talk to the prick anyway.

Shifting your restless legs under the table, you accidentally kick Shirabu in the shin, earning you a dirty look. Enjoying the ugly look of his face, you give him a sickly-sweet smile.

“Oops, my bad, Shirabu. I’ll sure to be more cautious next time!” Topping off your act with some obnoxious batting of your eyelashes.

“Do it again and I’ll wipe that look off your face real fast.” He sneered back at you.

Ignoring all common sense, you played with the idea of what exactly he meant by his threat. Most likely nothing sexual and most definitely involving a punch. But that doesn’t stop you from briefly entertaining a short sexual fantasy involving the two of you fucking in his chair.

Damn, these thoughts have been getting more frequent and out-of-hand recently. If they became anymore of an issue, you may just have to see the on-campus therapist about your obvious undiagnosed nymphomania.

True to your nature, you decide to grab the metaphorical bull by the horn to see how hard he bucks. Adjusting your posture again, you lean your elbows on the table as you uncross your legs and again hit his leg stretched out under the table.

You could practically hear Shirabu’s restraint snap, a dark expression taking over his face. He jerks up and out of his chair and proceeds stalks towards you, a dangerous glint in his ochre eyes.

‘Oh shit, I might have actually overdone it this time. He’s going to fucking kill me.’ You were frozen in place, not even breathing as he towers over your seated form. You mentally said your goodbye’s to family and friends. They wouldn’t be shocked to find out that you met your end due to pure pettiness.

You were expecting at least a slap, maybe even a gut punch, so when he grabbed your arms and hoisted you onto your feet, you assumed the absolute worst. Unexpectedly, he backed your body against the table, his hips pinning yours against the hard edge, making it dig harshly into your back.

You gasp as a calloused hand grabs the back of your exposed neck, the other moving to your waist. He pulls himself incredibly close to you. You're sure there isn’t an atom of space left between the two of you now, feeling every inch of his body pressed up against yours.

He bends down and breathes softly into your ear words that set off a blaze within you.

“I warned you not to try me today and yet you kept on pushing me.” His low tone sent shivers down your spine.

Hands flat on the table, you shove yourself up against his hard chest even more, meeting his dark expression head-on.

“I figured you were all bark and no bite, so what’s the harm?” Ignoring the sharp edge of his previous words, you kept making digs at him. You already made peace with the fact that you may die at the hands of the unfairly attractive man before you.

Snapping, Shirabu grabs you by your tie, pulling you upwards and meeting your lips in a fierce kiss. It honestly was more teeth than lips, but you’d take whatever he would give you. Lust quickly replaced shock as you reciprocated the kiss, giving back as much as he gave you.

Never one to be one-upped, you both furiously made out against the table. Eventually you reluctantly conceded to him, pulling away gasping for breath to fill your aching lungs. While he didn't look as effected as you, he still panted as he caught his breath.

Lips kiss-swollen from the hard kiss he gave you, he gulped at the mussed up look of your uniform from the short make-out session. The sight alone was enough to spur him back into action. You met his lips half-way, hands flying up to bury themselves into surprisingly soft hair.

The kiss was more than just that, it was a battle of wills. It was another challenge set before you both, another one added to the extensive list of trials. It tested who had the guts to resolve the unresolved sexual tension building between you both.

Fingers digging into your soft flesh, he easily hoisted you up onto the table, slotting himself between the space made between your open legs. The kiss picks up intensity as he throws in a few nips at your bottom lip, while you lightly bite at his tongue invading your mouth.

You gasp at a particularly harsh bite at your bottom lip, drawing back to give the self-satisified male a scowl.

“Oh? Is this the reason why you’ve always been so short with me. It’s cute that you don’t know how to act around your crush.” Your teasing words make the male between your legs tense up.

“I’d rather bite off my own tongue than date you, bitch.” He goes to kiss you again. It was the only thing that got you to shut up, which he very enjoyed.

“Who said anything about dating, dearest? My, my, so you have been thinking of me.” You laughed and gave him a belittling look.

“The only thoughts I’ve had about you involve either shutting you up or fucking you senseless, so make of that what you will.” He grits out between clenched teeth, not willing to give you that inch he threw out to you like a lifeline.

If he was going to go through with this, he at least wanted you to know exactly what he wanted to get out of it. Nothing more, nothing less.

You consider him under hooded eyelids, gaze sweeping up and down his clothed torso. Well at least he wanted the same thing that’s been haunting your waking thoughts for the past month. You weren’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth that's for sure.

“Sure, I mean you could try, but I doubt that you could even a moan out of me.” You said languidly, setting up another challenge. Now all he had to do was pick up the gauntlet.

Words igniting a fire within him, his lips tipped into a lopsided smirk. You had no idea what you just started and he was more than happy to show you the consequences of your bold actions.

“Oh, I assure you, I’m not going to stop until I hear you screaming.”

The room you occupied was situated on the top floor, at the end of a long corridor of empty study rooms exactly like this one. It was highly unlikely that the elderly librarian at the entrance would hear what was about to go down. It was also unlikely any snooping students would come across your study room on the neglected floor.

You fully expected him to pull you into another bruising kiss before fucking you but it seemed that the stupidly hot bastard was just full of surprises today. Instead, he pulled you off the table and turned you to face the chair he had previously occupied. With the hand placed at the nape of your neck, the other moving to your opposite side of your waist, he pushed you down to lie against the cold tabletop. Though definitely not for your benefit, he pushed aside any stray bits of paper out of your way to prevent them from creasing.

You gasp as the pressure he applies onto you forces the breath out of your lungs, pressing you hard against the unforgiving surface. Hands scrabbling for a purchase to help you establish a counter force to push up against him, he bends down and breathes softly into your ear.

“Look at you so pliant for me, I could get used to this.” His smug tone made your blood boil. That bastard was going to milk this situation for all it has and you have no ground to stand on to refute him when you were planning on doing the exact same.

“You know, your nasty attitude destroys that pretty boy stereotype you have going on.” You retort. You weren’t going to take his bullshit laying down – metaphorically speaking.

Fed up with you running your mouth, always talking but never saying anything of substance, he hastily loosens his tie. Without warning, he shoves a bundle of fabric into your mouth, quickly moving his fingers away from teeth that would gladly bite down onto his precious setting tools.

Trying to voice your anger, you squirm in his grasp with muffled nonsensical words leaving your mouth.

Kenjirou marvels at the sight of your stuffed mouth, words finally muted and wide eyes that were angry at his action. If he knew this is all he had to do to get you to shut up for more than two seconds then he’d gladly do it again.

Kenjirou couldn’t help but wonder if your cheeks would also look like that if he’s shoved his dick between your plush pink lips but he saves that thought for another day. After all, he had at least half a year left to put up with your bullshit.

Pressing his hips against your ass, he revels at the feeling of finally having you under him, squirming and all. Deciding not to draw this out anymore than he already has, he smoothly grinds his slowly growing erection into the cleft of your ass obscured by ugly purple plaid.

Unsatisfied with the lack of friction, he flips up your skirt to reveal lacy panties. He thought it was a bit risqué to wear them at school but who was he to complain about the lovely gift.

You gave a muffled shout when he snapped against the waist band against your hip. Tempted, you considered trying to kick him in the shin again somehow in your position. The thought dissolved into nothing as he lightly smacks your ass, causing you to jolt forward more in surprise than in pain.

With the absence of any complaints or irritating whinging, Kenjirou weighed the plump flesh in his hand, grinning to himself when he hears you moan at his curious squeezing. He wondered what other delicious noises you’ll make under him.

Well there was only way to find out.

Winding his hand back, his hand came down with a loud ringing smack, hard enough to leave his hand pleasantly tingling. The pink imprint of his hand on your ass was going to be burned into his mind for a long time, a wave a heat rolling through him and coalescing in his groin.

Again, you jolt forward at the impact, nails scratching at the acrylic lacquer of the tabletop, unable to find purchase. While you could feel the poor skin pulse dully with pain, pure arousal flashed hot and bright within you. If you had ever thought spanking would be something you were into, you’re pretty sure Shirabu was one of the worst people to discover along with, always the one to abuse any situation.

The next time his hand came down on your ass, you mistakenly tensed, causing the pain to shoot through you ten-fold. You wince at the sensation of him hitting the exact same spot over and over again. You were sure the spot would be rouge red by this point, but the pain didn’t take away from the pleasure you derived from his rough treatment.

Mixing things up, Kenjirou bites his lip as he aims a smack right at the apex of your thighs, close enough to your core that the vibrations of the hit ripped a lewd moan from your lips, much louder than the rest. Blood rushing down to his already engorged cock at your noises, he knows that he could easily get addicted to your bent form. You enjoying the spanking was just a fun bonus for him.

“I should’ve guessed you were into spanking. It fits the ���good school girl’ façade you’ve got going on,” Shirabu hums, throwing the words back into your face. Leaning down, he breathes into your ear, “I could really get used to you like this beneath me. I have such big plans for you.”

Shivering at his low tone, your mind whirled chaotically with half-baked ideas of what exactly he had in plan for you. Honestly, as long as it ended up with his dick inside of you, you don’t care about the rest. You were always opposed to the saying ‘It’s not the destination, it’s all about the journey.’ And this situation was no different to you.

Kenjirou slides your panties over your ass and down your legs, half tempted to chuck them across the room just to see you panicking over locating them after this. On second thought… He shoves the offending piece of lace into his back pocket, as a present for himself putting up with you.

His hands bracket you bottoms of your ass and smooths his thumbs over the soft pink flesh. Kenjirou watching them slightly jiggle in the palms of his hand, admiring the rosy tinge he painted them. Kenjirou firmly decided that the flesh looked much prettier painted pink by the very hand that slammed balls over the side of the net with shocking force.

Fingers gliding over the cheeks and trailing downward, he makes contact with your wet lips. Mildly surprised, he runs a slender finer between them, gathering your juices.

“Look at how wet you are for me. I bet I won't even have to prep you, your greedy hole will probably just suck me in.” He states, rubbing his finger slowly -torturously - over the entrance of your hole.

You whine through your makeshift gag and buck your hips against his fingertips, hoping for them to dip in deeper. The pad of his crooked index finger dipped shallowly into you a few times from your efforts. Kenjirou was greatly amused at your efforts, deciding to hold his fingers in place for you to try and fail to fuck into yourself.

“Look at how desperate you are, it’s honestly pathetic. I expected so much more from you.” He tutted.

The flash of anger fizzled and died before it took root, much too distracted by him inserting his entire index finger in without warning. While you had explored yourself on more than a few occasions, mapping out sensitive flesh with your fingers, the feeling of his much longer and slightly thicker finger inside of you was incredible.

You whimper at the slick feeling of him moving his finger in and out of you, occasionally curling against the spongy tissue, seeking for the bundle of nerves that will make you scream. Slotting in another finger and him twisting them simultaneously had you panting and clenching your eyes at the full feeling from just the two.

Feeling your walls tighten and quiver around his finger as he crooked them a few times, he doubled down to find your erogenous zone before he fucks you. It only took another finger and few moments of scissoring them deep inside of you, indicated by your abrupt gasping jerk.

Licking his lips, he rubs his fingers harshly against the soft area, committing to memory the muffled breathy moans and whimpers that dropped from your panting mouth. Dick twitching, hard and painful within his tight slacks draws him out of his mind. He withdraws his saturated fingers from your sopping hole, briefly abandoning the sensitive spot for now.

Slumping, you simultaneously miss and despise his fingers fucking into you, hating that he found your G-spot quicker than you’d anticipated. The prick was too smart for his own good, the asshole probably knew more about female anatomy and orgasms than you did with biology being his best class.

The rustle of his pants being undone pulls you back to reality. Oh god this is really happening. Your breath picks up, anticipating the next move the bitter setter will make next.

The sensation of something long, hot and rigid, his dick you assumed, rests between your still stinging cheeks. His fingers dip back between your lips and gather more liquid arousal. Kenjirou ignores your groan at the odd feeling, preoccupied with smearing your slick over his dick, taking his sweet time.

One hand on his cock, guiding the tip to sit at your entrance, with the other placed for support on your hip. Tense, you waited for him to just slam on in, not anticipating him to draw out the moment. You hated the way that you squirmed at the thought of his dick being so close but so far away from where you wanted it most.

“You better hold onto the desk. Once I start, I’m not going to stop until I hear you screaming.” He said, smug tone and all ringing loud and clear.

You huff indignantly at his statement, as if to say: ‘Sure, whatever you say, asshole.’

Rolling his eyes, he tightens his grip as he starts to insert himself inside of you. Obviously taking pity on you, he graciously chooses to glide in at a decent pace. The breath was punched out of your lungs as he completely sheathed himself inside you, hot and throbbing. You try not to violently shiver around him because you couldn’t bare the thought of inflating his already unhealthily enlarged ego.

Dropping the niceties, as if there were any with Shirabu involved, he slid out not a moment later and slammed back on in, loving the sound of his skin smacking against yours. Sloppy sounds of your fucking fill the air and frankly you’d be pretty grossed right now if your brain didn’t reside in your pussy that very moment.

Fucking you from behind, Kenjirou grabs a fistful of shiny hair and harshly rips back your head, hot breath cascading over perspiring skin.

“You take me so well, like you were made for me. Maybe I should fuck this hole of yours again sometime.”

In retribution, you clench down as hard as feasibly possible, hoping to knock him off of that high horse of his. The grunt that rings in your ears pacifies your ire, but the unexpected resistance doesn't stop him from trying to fuck up into you even harder.

Pardoning his attitude, you loosen up for him, more so for your own pleasure than his. He doesn’t hesitate to pick up his unforgiving pace, pumping in and out of you like a sex-crazed mad-man. Eyes rolling into your head, you felt the tip of his thick dick kiss the entrance of your cervix, which paired fantastically with the friction his thick cock made against your quivering walls.

Moaning around the tie as he furiously fucks you from behind, you can feel the piece of fabric become saturated with your drool. He seemed to appreciate the sounds you made, hands tightening around your hips and starts to seek out the highly sensitive spot hidden somewhere inside of you.

Every time he slid out, he’d readjust his angle with only the tip still in before slamming back on into, waiting for the moment he found his target. The pain of the table cutting into your stomach is buried underneath the pleasure Kenjirou relentlessly delivered to you.

An idea flashed in Kenjirou’s mind, a cruel one, but not too cruel as revenge for all the shit you’ve put him through. Unknowing of the feral grin on his face, you continued to moan as his dick fills you so perfectly, suddenly jolting when you feel his warm lips against your throat. You let out a squeal and clenched down hard around his length when you feel his teeth bury into the soft skin. Manicured nails scratching small divots into the desk as he sucks the bruise deep into your skin.

You grit your teeth when you feel him release your skin, the spot already feeling sore at the rough treatment. You could tell from the position that it was too high for the uniform’s collar to hide and wearing a scarf in this summer weather was way too suspicious. That motherfucker probably planned that; you silently fume as he smirks against your perspiring flesh.

The worst part though was when all conspiring thoughts of retribution were wiped clean from you mind as your entire nervous system is struck by lightning. You cry out loudly at the sensation, to which Kenjirou huffed under his breath, muttering out a quiet ‘Thank fuck’ that went unacknowledged by you as you tried to recuperate from him hitting your G-spot with the force of a tank.

Kenjirou greedily ate up each cry leaving your lips as he continued to hit the sensitive nerves with deadly precision. The sight of you writhing underneath him was enough payment for the annoyance he’d suffered through at your hands the past month. But it was the feel of your walls clutching at him tightly and your delicious moans that was the true reward for all his patience.

The wet squelching noises of your furious fucking was enough to make you blush, which was hilarious thinking about it. Not even four weeks ago you were ready to jump the table and non-sexually choke him out with your tie – and now he was railing you with his tie as a makeshift gag.

Ah, fate truly was a bitch.

Thrusts becoming frantic, you knew that Kenjirou was nearing his end and you would swear bloody vengeance if he finished and left you high and dry. It turns that promise would be for naught. Shirabu reaches around you with his still slick covered fingers and rubs furiously at your clit, giving it a few good squeezes, rightfully assuming you loved the rough treatment. And that you did, you bucked wildly in his grasp, moans hitting a whole new pitch as you unravel quickly under his dual ministrations.

The arousal that had been sitting hot inside of you, seemed to snap and unleashed upon you an orgasm that had stars sear into your eyelids, eyes clenched tightly as the sensation threatened to drown you in it. What felt like pure electricity coursed through your veins, feeling as if Shirabu’s dick had just sent you to a new dimension, brain liquefying inside of your skull.

Behind you, Kenjirou seizes up as he feels you tighten up considerably around him, delivering him to his peak as well. His pace slows as his hips stutter, unleashing his load within you. Even completely incoherent, you shivered at the feeling of him feeling at you, not able to muster up and ounce of disgust at the feeling. That should’ve been the moment that you knew that you were truly fucked; you were completely wrapped around Shirabu’s long pretty fingers.

Limbs trembling with the aftershocks of your orgasm, you laid there limply as he pulled out. You felt a bead of sweat drop down your brow as you weakly collect yourself together, drawing yourself up on shaky arms. The sensation of thick globules of Shirabu’s cum slipping out of you was enough of a distraction to brush of the intense stare Shirabu aimed at your leaking hole.

Leaning back, Kenjirou fights down the flush on his cheeks from watching his cum slowly dripping out of you, feeling hot under the collar from both the sight and  from the mind-blowing orgasm. Shuffling back, he cleans himself off with a clean tissue in his shirt pocket before tucking himself back into his boxer briefs and pulling up his pants.

Slumped against the table, you felt like a wreck, both inside and out. Dick rearranging your insides aside, you were happy that Shirabu deigned for you to orgasm instead of leaving you a begging mess, which was a very likely move for the bastard.

Your jaw felt sore from how full your mouth was with his tie crammed in. Pulling out the wet article, you tossed it onto the table in his general direction. Kenjirou looks at the crumpled fabric with disgust. Weirdly, he doesn't complain as he gathers some tissues from his bag to wrap the article in until he can get it cleaned.

Choosing not to question his sudden pacified attitude towards you, you pushed yourself up on weak arms. Kenjirou laughs at your struggle, not at all intimidated by your nasty glare.

“Asshole.” You mumble under your breath.

You make quick work of cleaning yourself up too, feeling weirdly exposed bent over and naked from the waist down whilst a fully clothed Shirabu almost looked bored, acting as if he didn’t just fuck your brains out.

Your skirt slides back into place as you stand upright, shortly followed by more of his load trickling out of you. Pinned underneath his burning stare, you refused to give him an inch and fought back the tremble that threatened to overtake your body at the odd sensation.

“Alright, now sit down. Let’s finish this project before I leave and you have to finish fixing up the format by yourself.”

You blink at him. “Really?”

It seems the bastard wouldn’t even let you properly clean up first before diving back into the assignment.

“Really. Now get your lazy ass up, you’re creasing our data sets.”

Not willing to reveal how flustered you were, you downplay your disgust at the feeling his cum drying on your thighs and stiffly walk over to your chair, trying to spy your panties somewhere on the ground, but ultimately found nothing. You could have sworn that Shirabu smirked at your searching looks, but a second glance showed you his normal bored expression.

Sticking your nose up in the air, you start discussing your plan on how to fix the minor issue of formatting. Shirabu gave lackluster nods at your prodding, clearly wanting nothing more than to leave. You did your best to push through the sensation of the sticky mess drying between your legs, internally fretting as to where your panties may lie. You're pretty sure that you'd perish on the spot if a staff member found them.

Thankfully, it took only half an hour before Shirabu beat a hasty retreat, quickly placing all his stuff neatly into his bag and intent on walking out of the room without another word. The fucker wasn’t even going to say goodbye to you.

Shifting in your seat, you start packing up. Eyes wildly darting around, you didn’t notice him pausing in the open doorway.

Glancing over his shoulder, shooting you a dastardly smirk, Kenjirou savours your infuriated expression before turning away and walking off. Slightly confused, you squint as you try to make out an odd-looking lump in his back pocket. At the sight of familiar lace peeking out of his slacks, your eyes widen in shock and indignant rage.

“That bastard.”

Edit: I fixed an incongruity with a bit in the end scene, sorry to anyone that picked it up!!

Notes: We need more Shirabu content so here I am delivering some extremely self-indulgent content. I made Shirabu a dick but I made reader a bitch towards him and he strikes me as the type to hate stuck up people. Hope you all enjoyed!

#shirabu kenjiro x reader #shirabu kenjirou #haikyuu!! x reader #x reader #Shirabu x you #haikyuu reader insert #shiratorizawa #haikyuu!! #haikyuu!! fic #haikyu!! x reader #haikyu!! #shirabu kenjirou x reader

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Everything you need to know about day one of Brexit

By Ian Dunt

Oh sweet Christ not Brexit again.

Yes, you will never escape. It will never be over. Decades from now, as your wrinkled fingers grasp the remote for your 3D holo-viewer, the main news item will still be about Brexit.

At least we got a break during the coronavirus emergency.

Yep, say what you like about pandemics, but at least they take trade talks off the front pages. Still, it's back now. We leave at the end of the year. And deal or no-deal, things at the border are going to be very different.

OK lay it out for me.

For decades we have had frictionless trade with Europe in the customs union and single market. The customs union got rid of tariffs, which are taxes on goods entering a territory, and the single market harmonised regulations, which means goods are made to the same standards. Once you're outside of them, you need checks at the border to make sure people are paying the right tax and complying with the regulations.

And that's what's about to happen?

Exactly. And this will apply regardless of whether there is a deal or not. I want to issue a word of warning before we go any further: It's a horror show. The level of tediousness here is off the scale. This is like someone came up with a super-powered serum for the concept of bureaucracy and then injected it directly into your bloodstream. But you didn't turn into Chris Evans in Captain America, you turned into Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. The worst things are the acronyms. Everything has an acronym. But you need to get your head around it in order to understand what's going to happen to us next month.

I don't care. I hate this. I want this conversation to stop.

You can't, it's too late. You are trapped here with me and the acronyms. OK so here's the basic problem, the one from which all others follow. Our customs system currently processes around 55 million declarations a year. In 2021, it will process around 270 million. It needs to massively ramp up capacity.

It's just as well the government has such a good track record of implementing complex IT projects at speed then.

Quite. To be fair, the government has put a lot of effort into this, albeit belatedly. More than 35 government departments and public bodies are involved, including HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office (HO), the Department for Transport (DfT), the Border and Protocol Delivery Group (BPDG) and the Transition Task Force (TTF).

Sweet Jesus the acronyms.

Actually, most of those are abbreviations, but let's not get caught up on details. We've barely scratched the surface. There are three key areas where the government needs to build capacity: IT systems to process the customs declarations, physical infrastructure at or near ports, and staff in government and the private sector to keep the customs system going.

That's a lot to do.

It is. But the government made things easier in one crucial respect: it delayed its own import declarations system until July next year.

What does that mean?

It means that stuff coming into Britain from Europe basically gets waved through. There are still technically customs requirements, but they've been pushed back six months. This allowed them to make sure goods would still enter the country and let them focus on trying to get the exports right.

It's hardly taking back control, is it?

No it isn't, but they're undertaking a systems-level change at an eye-watering timetable, so it was a necessary sacrifice.

Couldn't they have extended transition to prepare for this?

Yes they could, but chose not to. That's cost them. Covid seriously delayed preparations, dominated attention in business and government, paused ministerial decision-making and put communication with traders into deep-freeze over the summer.

So what are the biggest risks now?

The IT systems. There are 10 critical IT systems which are needed at the GB–EU border. Then there are the European systems which UK exporters will need to use to get access to the continent. We're not going to go into all of them here - we're going to massively simplify.

Thank heavens.

Don't worry, it'll still make your brain dribble out of your ears. We're also going to simplify by taking goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland off the table. That's its own separate hellscape. And we're going to focus on the Dover-Calais crossing. There are many others going from England to France, but this is the main route. It serves 'accompanied goods' - when a driver in a lorry takes the goods onto a ferry and then drives it off on the other side of the Channel. This is called RoRo, for roll-on-roll-off.

Acronym. Drink.

If you keep that up you'll be smashed by the end of the article and won't have any idea what I'm talking about.

I already have no idea what you're talking about.

Fair enough, drink away. The trouble with customs IT systems is this: Everyone needs to be filling in the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. If they don't, things break down. That doesn't just apply to the UK and French governments. It applies to exporters and importers, ports, hauliers and others. Customs is all or nothing. If one section is wrong, it's all wrong. Lorries are often full of lots of different consignments of goods from different exporters. Plenty of them travel with 100 individual separate consignments on them. This is called 'groupage'. So if one input of one customs form in one of those consignments is wrong, the whole lorry is delayed. And if that lorry is delayed, all the lorries behind it are delayed. The potential for breakdown is therefore very significant.

This is already making me anxious. It's like Jenga but it reaches all the way into the sky and is composed entirely of knives.

You also need to make sure that third party software used by places like the ports integrates with the government systems. And that assumes that the government IT systems actually work and have staff with the proper experience and training to operate them. And this too is interrelated. If one of the systems breaks down, it has a knock-on effect on the other systems. You keep seeing this same problem crop up. It's not one of error, exactly. It's about the consequence of the error, the knock-on effects of it.

How robust are those IT systems looking right now?

Not great. Some have been delayed indefinitely, some for a set period, some are in trials and some are online. But even when they're finished, you really want to give all the people using them time to understand them, to get used to them, so that when we leave transition there are as few mistakes as possible. All four industry representative bodies, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and the British International Freight Association (Bifa), have raised concerns about the government's level of preparedness, saying that they don't believe the border will be fully functioning by next month.

That's two more acronyms by my count.

I'm glad to see you sticking to the important information here. The trouble is that lack of government preparedness doesn't just affect it - it affects trader preparedness as well. If they're not getting clear communication from the government about what is happening and how it is happening, they don't know what to do. And the government has a bad record here. It has marched traders up the hill on no-deal several times over recent years, only to march them down again. Now many simply ignore it. Government communications have, until recently, centred on the "opportunities" of Brexit, which does nothing to indicate the urgency with which people need to make expensive and time-consuming changes. Even in October, just 45% of high-value traders who trade exclusively with the EU had started to invest in readiness.

Oh dear.

There are some reasons to be more optimistic. The first is that government communication has belatedly started to improve.  A new campaign in October was much better, telling traders that "time is running out". There's also one really important thing to remember about all this: it's not a long term problem. Brexit has plenty of those and they are severe, but this is not one of them. This is a short, sharp, embarrassing shock. Eventually, the market will adjust. People will see what happens in January and find ways around it so they can get their goods to market. Some people think that will happen very quickly indeed - no more than a month. Some think it'll take the first quarter of next year or longer. But very few people think it will last the whole year. What we're looking at here is the most dramatic, but also ultimately the most superficial, of Brexit impacts.

Starting to feel a bit tipsy now.

Cool, then it might be a good time to start talking about the IT systems.

No. Stop.

What?

I don't want to hear it. I want to get out.

It's too late. You're trapped here in an imaginary world in which I am talking to myself and explaining customs procedures. And in fact your resistance to this conversation probably points to some kind of deep-seated psychological trauma which I'm working my way through.

Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tyre tread on burst stomach.

Very good, Rorschach. So look, there are really four forms you need to remember. First, the import/export declaration. Second, the safety and security documentation. Third, the sanitary and phytosanitary measures for agricultural goods. And fourth, the system that collects these data sets and connects them to the lorry which is transporting the good.

What's in the import/export declaration?

They basically state what the good is, its value and how much duty you have to pay on it. It's the tax bit. It's all very complex, laborious and crammed full of technical minutiae but that's the executive summary. It needs to be lodged before the good gets to the French border.

How do you lodge it?

You do it through a UK system called the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight, or Chief.

Drink.

This is a really old system and before Brexit was even a twinkle in Boris Johnson's eye, the UK planned to turn it off and migrate all traders to a new system called the Customs Declarations Service, or CDS.

Drink.

CDS was meant to replace Chief from January 2019 and then switch off altogether by March 2021, but there were repeated delays. So instead they're keeping Chief for trade between Britain and the EU and using CDS for trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, because it has the capacity for dual tariff fields. CDS is then going to be scaled up until it can deal with all the declarations.

No acronyms there.

Actually trade between Britain and Europe is called GB-EU and trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is called GB-NI, but let's not worry about that. The government insists that Chief now has an increased capacity that can handle 400 million annual declarations - way higher than the 265 million which are expected. HMRC has paid Fujitsu £85 million to provide technical support. But others aren't convinced. They're not sure it can handle the load and nervous that there isn't enough support if something goes wrong.

Very reassuring.

Isn't it. Remember that the importer on the EU side also has to be doing all of this - at the right time, in the right place - on the European customs system.

OK so what about the safety and security thing?

It's a document outlining what the good is, so it can be assessed for potential risks. Again, it's a long complex thing with multiple data fields. Like import/export, it has to be done in advance of the goods reaching Calais. It's submitted to the UK government via a new system called S&S GB.

Drink.

It must also be submitted to the EU member state's Import Control System, which is called ICS.

Drink. OK tell me about the sanitary pad things.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures, or SPS.

Drink.

These are there to protect people, animals and plants from disease or pests. They cover products of an animal origin, like cheese, or meat, or fish, as well as live animal exports, plants and plant products, and even the wooden crates used to transport other types of goods. It's painstaking stuff, but I think, given the pandemic we're all going through, we all understand why it's important.

Yeah, fair enough. You've sold me. I'm totally on board with this stuff.

These kinds of goods have to enter Europe through specific Border Control Posts, or BCPs.

Drink.

And there they undergo some, or all, of a variety of checks. There's a documentary check for the official certification which travels with the good. There are identity checks, which provide a visual confirmation that the consignment corresponds to the documentation. And there's a physical check to verify the goods are compliant with the rules, for instance temperature sampling, or laboratory testing. You know that whole chlorine-washed chicken thing?

Sure.

Well this is where they check whether it has been and stop it getting into Europe if it has. But it's actually the documentary check which is the hardest part in terms of UK preparedness. It includes something called an Export Health Certificate, or EHC.

Drink. Jesus Christ.

These are documents which confirm that the product meets the health requirements of the EU. So they might say that the animal was vaccinated, for instance. Some products, like a cut of lamb, will just have one EHC. But others, like a chicken pizza, will have more than one.

We've talked about this before. People shouldn't put chicken on pizza.

You are wrong, it's a perfectly legitimate pizza topping, and in fact you are so wrong that I have started using chicken pizza as my trade-good shorthand. Chicken pizza is the new widgets.

What even are widgets?

No-one knows, that's why economists love them. A chicken pizza, however, is a composite good for the purposes of SPS. The chicken and the cheese are different animal products, so they would need separate export health certificates. And all these certificates have to be verified by an official veterinarian, or OV.

You're just messing me about now.

No seriously, they use that acronym. This whole area of public life has been radicalised into extreme acronym use. Anyway, the OV goes through the details, queries the documents and signs them off. But there's assistance from a person pulling together all the paperwork. They're called a Certification Support Officer, or…

I can't believe this.

...CSO. These guys are mostly in private practices, usually farming practices. It's not a big part of their workload - maybe 20% of what they do. But if you don't have those vets, you can't send the export. That would be catastrophic for the farming, food and hospitality sectors. And that's where we have an issue. There are restrictions on getting that many OVs up and running. There's a tight labour market for vets and the UK is highly reliant on Europeans coming over to do the job, but the end of free movement makes that much more difficult and expensive, as does the covid pandemic.

So what has the government done?

It pumped £300,000 into providing free training for the role. Many vets took it up. The number of qualified vets has jumped from 600 in February 2019 to 1,200 today. But that still leaves a capacity gap of 200.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

No it doesn't, but when you start to scratch away at the figures, they fall apart. The 200 figure is the number of 'full time equivalent' qualified vets required. And if vets only spend about 20% of their time doing this, it means we'll actually need an extra 1,000 vets training in the additional qualification.

Oh dear.

Yep. Groups representing the sector are seriously worried about this. And as with customs, the smooth functioning of the border will rely on the importer on the EU side doing all the bits they're required to do too, by creating a record in the Trade Control and Expert System, or Traces NT.

Drink. OK, what's the fourth bit of IT?

Transport. This involves wrapping all the other forms together and attaching them to a vehicle. In the UK, we'll be doing this through something called the Goods Vehicle Movement Service, or GVMS.

Drink.

It links export declaration references together into one single Goods Movement Reference, or GMR.

Drink. Bloody hell man these people are out of control.

The GMR should come out like a barcode, a one-stop shop for all the tied-together information we've been discussing. GVMS will be needed for certain movements in January, particularly for trade with Northern Ireland, but it won't be a requirement of all imports until July. It's currently being tested and there are dark murmurs about its functionality from those who have come into contact with it. Mercifully, exporters into Europe on January 1st will be using the French system, SI Brexit. This was operational a year ago and has been fully tested several times.

Those lazy French with their useless romantic dispositions.

It's almost like they're a nation that cares about shopkeepers.

Speaking of which, how're British businesses going to deal with all this additional paperwork?

Many companies will be OK. Very big corporations are well ahead and in many cases have set up a European entity so that they can sell directly from their UK entity to the EU one. Then they'll probably just reflect the customs costs in a subtly increased retail price. Smaller companies who are used to exporting to the rest of the world outside of Europe also have an advantage. They're used to these kinds of things. The people who are most at risk are the small-to-medium-sized enterprises who have traded exclusively with Europe.

Small-to-medium-sized… Oh no.

Yeah, that's right. SMEs. Which, by the way, comprise the vast majority of companies in the UK. If you send just two or three loads of your product a month to Europe, it probably won't be worth the cost in manpower and money preparing for all this stuff. They'll likely just accept a shrinkage in their business. For many of them, the whole thing is a bafflement. Honestly, you read the guidance on all these systems and it's like it's in an alien code - a garbled assault of acronyms and complex systems. Many small firms, already suffering from covid, just throw up their hands in despair.

Bleak. It's always the little guys that get it.

Yes, although paradoxically, that actually presents one of the few reasons for optimism. Well, not optimism exactly, but a hope for least-badism. Now that so many people feel January will be chaotic, they might just decide not to bother trying to send anything. Goods will get stuck at a warehouse instead of on a truck.

Seriously? That's your good news? Aren't you just displacing disruption from the ports to other parts of the supply network?

Yes precisely. But there really are no good outcomes here.

Because if that doesn't happen, the system seizes up?

Yeah exactly. Lorries head to Dover then get held up because they don't have the correct paperwork. Then lorries behind those lorries get caught up, pushing the queue out, dominating Kent, creating a huge singular blockage. The government's own Reasonable Worst Case Scenario, or RWCS…

Drink.

... estimates that between 40% and 70% of lorries may not be ready for border controls, leading to queues of up to 7,000 trucks.

But that would only be going out right? The stuff we bring in to the country would be unaffected because we're not putting in place controls.

Kind of. It's certainly true that most imports should have a clear run into the UK. You can keep those two lanes separate. But most hauliers are from Romania, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. They pay a lease on their trucks, which means they have to keep them going if they're to make money. They can't afford to get stuck in a queue at the border. So there's a good chance they'll look at the log-jam in the UK and think: 'I'm not touching that with a barge pole'. This would mean Britain struggled to get its imports, including potentially fresh food and medicines.

Wow.

Yeah, it could be bad. But there are plans for that eventuality. The government has set up some emergency routes, for instance on the Newhaven-Dieppe crossing. There's additional ferry capacity at eight ports, with the Department for Transport acting as the referee on which vehicles get onto their crossing. But it's not a like-for-like replacement. Many of these crossings take much longer than the short gap between Dover and Calais, and they often operate for unaccompanied goods overnight. If the import is urgent, or fresh, or, like some covid vaccines, needs to be kept at a certain temperature, then you may have a problem.

What is the government doing to make sure this doesn't happen? How will they control the blockage?

There's three parts to that really. The first is controlling access to Kent, which the trucks head into to get to Dover. This project has no acronym, but instead adopted one of the least elegant names in the history of British policy-making: The Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border Service.

Wait but...

Yeah. HGV: Heavy Goods Vehicle.

I fully accept now that it was a mistake to adopt this drinking idea.

Before the lorry gets to Kent, the driver will fill out an online form with a bunch of information - the registration number, the destination, details of the consignments, confirmations that the import/export documents have been filled in, export health certificates, the whole lot basically. Those that are judged to have all the documentation are given a Kent Access Pass, or KAP.

Drink.

And that allows them to go into Kent. Police can hand out £300 fines to lorries found on the Kent roads without the permit.

But this is all done on trust right? It's a self-assessment form.

Yep. It'll rely on people filling it out right. It's not linked to EU customs systems. So there's no guarantee that documents they claim to have completed will be accepted by EU customs authorities. But on the plus side, the software was launched recently and most people think it'll work OK. It's better than nothing, basically.

Alright so what's next? Traffic management?

Exactly. It's uncanny how naturally your questions lead me onto the next thing I want to discuss.

That's because I am you.

Don't talk about that, it makes it weird. Alright so first up we have the traffic flow plans. The Department for Transport is taking an existing temporary system to create contraflow on the M20 and putting it on a permanent footing, allowing 2,000 lorries to be held on the motorway while traffic still flows in both directions on the London-bound side.

OK, what's next?

Well then there's the issue of actual sites. HMRC has identified seven locations outside the ports. There's prep work being done at a site in Sevington, Ashford, at a cost of £110 million, to act as a clearing house for another 2,000 lorries. Some 600 lorries can be held on the approach to Manston airport, with more at the airport itself. These two sites, along with the M20 contraflow, are for holding traffic. There are also plans for Ebbsfleet International Station, North Weald Airfield and Warrington to be used for bureaucratic checks away from the border. Other sites, potentially in the Thames Gateway and Birmingham areas, are also being considered. They insist that this should give them capacity for 9,700 lorries, which is above the 7,000 in their worst case scenario.

Assuming that scenario is correct.

Right. Covid and other unrelated events, like a fire breaking out for instance, could mean that even the worst case scenario is an underestimate. We just don't know. Plus that relies on all of this being up in time. The government has passed legislation to streamline planning processes, but the timetable is unbelievably tight. The same thing goes for staff.

These are the customs officials who check all the paperwork, right?

That's certainly part of it. They're split into two departments: HMRC and Border Force. HMRC needs 8,600 full-time equivalent staff in place for January 1st. They still need another 1,500 but seem confident they'll have them. Border Force recruited an additional 900 staff ahead of a possible no-deal last year and is trying to bring in 1,000 more. Ministers are confident they'll have enough people in place by January 1st, but trade experts are less convinced.

Recurring theme.

Indeed. It's easy to get fixated on numbers but it really matters how well you've trained people too. You can have someone helping with customs work after a day or two, but for them to have any real sense of what they're doing, you're going to want a year's training. And then there's the question of personality type. Customs is a very specific kind of work, full of extremely complex documentation which must be got right. For some people, that is unimaginably boring. For others, it's very satisfying. But you need the right ones. And that's not what typically happens when people get desperate on a recruitment drive.

What's the other part of the staffing problem?

The private sector. It's a job called 'customs broker'. They're basically people who come in and help companies with their customs forms. Like I said, this stuff is mind-meltingly complex. You really do need someone to come and help you do it. And that's what the government wants too of course, because the more people getting it right, the fewer delays at the border. But as of last September, just 53% of traders said they planned to use a customs broker, with 30% unsure and 18% saying they were going to do the work themselves. Those aren't good numbers.

Are there enough of them to meet demand?

No. This has been a long-running problem. Almost two-thirds of customs brokers do not have enough staff to handle the increased paperwork from leaving the EU. And actually capacity seems to have reduced over the year due to the covid pandemic. The UK needs thousands more.

What's the government doing about it?

It's invested £84 million since 2018 into training, recruitment and IT system development. But many customs brokers are still hesitant about taking on new salary costs to build a capacity that won't be fully required until next July and they're nervous about taking on unprepared customers.  Of the £84 million on offer, just £52 million had been taken up in mid-October.

Is that… is that it? Please say that's it. I'm wasted.

It is.

OK so give me the executive summary.

We're about to experience the sudden implementation of complex customs processes in a nation which forgot they existed. This involves the introduction of numerous interrelated IT systems which have been under-tested. It's not clear that either government or traders are fully prepared for what's about to happen. In order to minimise the disruption the government is introducing various traffic management projects and trying to bulk up staff capacity. But there's just too many variables to know how it'll pan out. Maybe the systems will hold out and many traders will anyway sit out January because of concerns about queues. Or maybe the systems will fail, traders won't fill in forms right and the whole thing will blow up in our face. The most likely outcome right now is somewhere between shambles and catastrophe. We have to hope it's a shambles.

Can you do it in acronym-speak?

Amid RHA and Bifa concerns about the lack of progress, HMRC, Defra, the HO, the Dft, the BPDG and the TTF are building up IT systems for post-Brexit GB-EU trade and particularly for RoRo at Dover-Calais which will involve exporters submitting import/export declarations to Chief and the CDS, S&S information to S&S GB and ICS, and collating their SPS documentation - including an EHC filled out by an CSO under the supervision of an OV sent via a BCP - with the importer logging it on Traces NT, while generating a GMR via GVMS and SI Brexit, and then HGVs getting a KAP, all to avoid the RWCS.

D… Drink?

Yes I think so. That seems very sensible.

#Brexit #customs

[innuendostudios]

Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie, a video essay on how the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers recruit. Clocking in at 41 minutes, 6756 words, 633 individual drawings, and 27 sources (including three full books), it is by far the longest and most heavily-researched video in The Alt-Right Playbook. I am very tired.

It took so long to put this behemoth together that my Patreon started to dip. So, maybe a little more than usual, if you want to keep seeing videos like these, please consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, your friend Gabe is starting to worry you.

Gabe’s always been just, you know, a regular guy. Not very political. He likes video games, sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, and anime. White guy shit. The only offbeat thing about him is you suspect there’s like a 20% chance he’s a furry. For all intents and purposes, Gabe is a normie.

But recently Gabe’s been spending a lot of time on some radically conservative forums, and listening to radically conservative podcasts, and picking some radically conservative arguments with you and your friends. You never would have expected this, not from Gabe, and, given the speed it’s happened, it’s worrying to think where it might be headed.

How have the Alt-Right gotten their hooks into your friend?

If you’ve ever known a Gabe, this video is for you. Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie.

Step 1: Identify the Audience

What you need to know before we begin is: around 2013, the Nazis went online.

Hate groups in the US, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had been growing in number since the noughts, but, between 2012 and 2014, they dropped by almost a quarter. Patriot groups dropped by over a third. However, hate crimes stayed about the same. Radical conservatism was not shrinking, but decentralizing. Still radical, still often violent, but now full of white nationalist nomads unlikely to join a formal organization.

This didn’t make them harmless. What it did was protect their asses from the typical hate group cycle: getting the public’s attention, making allies in conservative media, swelling their numbers, and then eventually disgracing themselves with failures, infighting, and, often enough, members committing horrific acts of violence, which come with social and sometimes legal consequences for all the other members.

So the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers these days don’t so much have members. They have hashtags, followers, viewers, and subscribers. This insulates them from their own audience. If Gabe, as a member of that audience, were to go out and commit a crime on their behalf, there’d be little doubt they had a hand in radicalizing him, but it’d be very hard to claim they told him to do it. On some of these sites, where Gabe spends hours and hours of his day, he’s never created an account or left a comment; the people radicalizing him don’t even know he’s there.

This distributed nature is what makes the Alt-Right, and the movements connected to it, unique. (You may remember a notable proof-of-concept for this strategy.) Doing almost everything online has, as compared with traditional hate movements, dramatically increased their reach and inoculated them from consequence. The trade-off, as we will see, is a lack of control.

And so we come to Gabe.

Gabe exists at the intersection of the kinds of people the Alt-Right is looking for - straight white cis men who feel emasculated by modern society, primarily, though they do make exceptions - and the kinds of people who are vulnerable to recruitment. Gabe fits the first profile in that he got bullied in high school, and often feels he has to hide his nerdy side for fear of getting ridiculed. The Alt-Right also has success with men who can’t get laid or recently got divorced or feel anxious about an influx of non-white people in their community. These things can make one feel like less than the confident white man they’re “supposed” to be. And it’s the closest they will ever come to being minoritized.

Regarding the second profile, it’s important to know that Gabe is not categorically different from you or me. He’s a cishet white dude - his problems are not unique. There isn’t a ton of research into the demography of the Alt-Right, but there may be a higher-than-average chance Gabe has a history of being abused or comes from a broken home. You don’t know if it’s true of Gabe, he’s never said. But most abuse survivors don’t become Nazis. The things that make people like Gabe recruitable tend to be situational: it happens often during periods of transition, as dramatic as the death of a loved or as benign as moving to a new city. Things that make people ask big life questions. Gabe has concerns like economic precarity, not knowing his place in a changing world, stressful working conditions. In other words, Gabe is suffering under late capitalism, same as everyone, and it’s entirely plausible he could have gone down the path to becoming a Leftist.

This is not to make an “economic anxiety” argument: the animating force of the Far Right is and always has been bigotry. But the Alt-Right targets Gabe by treating his “economic anxiety” as one of many things bigotry can be sold as a solution to. It is their aim that, when dissatisfied white men go looking for answers, they find the Alt-Right before they find us.

Step Two: Establish a Community

Were Gabe pledging an old-school hate movement, there would probably be a recruiter to usher him into an existing community. But that’s the kind of formalized interaction modern extremists try to avoid. Online extremism has many points of entry, and everybody’s journey is unique, so rather than be comprehensive we will focus on what are, in my estimation, the two most common pathways: the Far Right creates a community Gabe is likely to stumble into, or infiltrates a community Gabe is already in.

The stumble-upon method has two main branches, one of which is just “Gabe ends up on a chan board,” which we’ve already done a video about. The other is kind of the polar opposite of 4chan’s cult of anonymity: Gabe ends up in the fandom of a Far Right thought leader.

These folks are charismatic media personalities (that’s charismatic according to Gabe’s tastes, not ours; I don’t understand it, either). These personalities may gain traction on any number of platforms, from podcasts to reportage to blogging, though the most effective platform for redpilling is, and yes I am biting the hand that feeds me, YouTube. They may get Gabe’s attention through fairly standard means, like talking about or even generating controversy to get themselves trending, while some of the more committed will employ dubious SEO tactics like clickbait, google bombing, and data voids (just pause for definitions, we don’t have time).

What they tend to have in common, especially the most accessible ones, is that they don’t present themselves as entry points to the radical Right. In fact, many did not set out to be Far Right thought leaders, and may not think of themselves as such (though they are often selling products, of which the Alt-Right are among their biggest purchasers, and it’s not like they’re turning the money away). How they present is the same way anyone presents who wants to be successful on social media: accessible, approachable, authentic. The face-to-face relationship a budding extremist forms with their recruiter or the leader of their hate group’s local chapter are here folded into one parasocial relationship with a complete stranger.

Why this person appeals to Gabe is they’re not selling politics as politics, but conservatism as a kind of lifestyle brand. They rely heavily on criticizing or ridiculing the Left: feminists are oversensitive, Black people unintelligent, queer folks doomed to loneliness, and trans people insane; I dunno if it’s a coincidence that these are all things Gabe thinks about himself in his low moments. By contrast, they don’t sell conservatism as having sounder policies or a more coherent moral framework, but that abandoning progressive principles and embracing conservative ones will make Gabe happier. Remember, Gabe isn’t looking for white nationalism or misogyny, what he wants is the cure to soul-sickness, and these friendly micro-celebs are here to offer a shot of life advice with politics as the chaser. It is extremely important that politics be presented as a set of affects, not a set of beliefs.

The second pathway is infiltration, which is its own beast. Media personalities sometimes become gateways to the Right almost by accident: they do something edgy, a part of their audience reacts positively, and, facing no real consequence, they do it more; this leads to further positive reinforcement from conservative fans, the rest of the audience acclimates, and the cycle repeats, the personality pushing the envelope further and further based on what flies with their increasingly conservative audience. In this way, they become a right-wing figure by both radicalizing and being radicalized by their audience.

Infiltration is deliberate.

The Far Right will reliably target any community that has 1) a large, white, male population, 2) whose niche interests allow them to feel vaguely marginalized, and 3) who are not used to progressive critique of said interests. This isn’t to say progressive critique doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been baked into the property from the beginning, but that it has been, so far, easy for white guys to ignore. As such, progressives within that community probably don’t talk politics much, and women and minorities are perfectly welcome to post, same as anyone, but just, you know, don’t, don’t make identity politics, you know, like, a thing.

Given Gabe’s proclivities, he’s probably already in a number of fan communities where he can geek out and not get teased. And this is where the Far Right will go looking for him

Communities are at their most vulnerable to infiltration at times of political discord. This can happen naturally - say, a new property in the fandom has a Black protagonist - or it can be provoked - say, a bunch of channers join the forum and say provocative things about race to get people arguing - or both. Left to its own devices, the community might sort out its differences and maybe even come out more progressive than they started. But, with the right pressure applied in the right moment, these communities can devolve into arguments about the need to remove a nebulously-defined “politics” from the conversation.

The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with,” but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.

(Now, it is curious how the things that provoke the most disagreement tend to be whichever ones make white dudes uncomfortable. One of life’s great, unanswerable mysteries.)

You can gather where this is going: a community that doesn’t tolerate progressivism but does tolerate Nazism is going to start collecting Nazis, Nazis whose goal is to drive a wedge between the community and the Left. Once the Left acknowledges, “Hey, your community’s developing a Nazi problem,” the Nazis - who are, remember, trusted, apolitical members of the community who might just be kidding about all the Nazi shit - say, “Did you hear that, guys?! Those cultural Marxists just called all of us Nazis!” Wedge. Similarly, any community members who say, “but Nazis though” are framed as infiltrators pushing an agenda, even if they’ve been there longer than the Nazis have. They get the wedge, too.

This is how fandoms radicalize. They are built as - yeah, I’ll say it - safe spaces for nerds, weebs, and furries, and are told that the Left is a threat to their safety. Given a choice between leaving a community that has mattered to him for years and simply adjusting to the community’s shifting politics, the assumption is that Gabe will stay. This assumption is right often enough that a lot of fandoms have been colonized.

What is true of both of these methods - Gabe finding the Right or the Right finding him - is that Gabe does not come nor stay for the ideology. He’s here for the community, the sense of belonging, of being with his people, of having his fears validated and his enjoyment shared. The ideology is simply the price of admission.

Step Three: Isolate

There is a vast, interconnected network of Far Right communities out there, and Gabe is, at this point, only on the periphery. In order to keep him in, they need to disrupt his relationships to other communities, and become, more and more, his primary online social space. Having made this space hostile to the Left, they now seek to break his connections to progressives elsewhere in his life.

This is hard to do online. The whole appeal of moving radicalism to the internet is that your away-from-keyboard life doesn’t have to change. You are crypto the moment you log off. Some thought leaders will encourage their audience to cut ties with Family of Origin, or “deFOO,” but, even then, they can’t monitor whether the audience has actually done it the way an in-person movement could. And so alienating Gabe from the Left is less controlled, and, consequently, may be less total. How much Gabe isolates is up to him.

But the vast majority of Far Right media presumes an alienation from the Left. Part of conservative bloggers and YouTubers making the Left look pathetic is doing a lot take-downs and responses. This is a constant repetition of the Left’s arguments for the purpose of mockery, and, for Gabe, it starts to replace any engagement with progressive media directly. He soon knows the Left only through caricature. It also trains him, if he does directly engage, to approach the Left with the same combative stance as his role models. (For reference, see my comment section.) And this is only if he doesn’t partake in one of the many active boycotts of “SJW media.”

In addition to mocking the Left’s arguments, they also, curiously, appropriate them. This is one part sanitization: liberal centrism is more socially acceptable; indeed, many figures on the outer layers think of themselves as moderates, even as they serve as gateways to radicalism. But, also, many of Gabe’s problems could be addressed by progressive leftism, so they sell him racist, sexist versions of it. Yes, there is a problem with workers being underpaid and overextended, but the solution isn’t unions, it’s deporting immigrants; yes, there is a chronic loneliness and anger to being a man in the modern age, but it’s not because of the toxic masculine expectations placed on you by the patriarchy, it’s women being slutty; yes, wealth disparity does mean a tiny percentage of elites have more influence over culture and politics than the rest of us combined, but the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the Jews. And it’s hard for Gabe to reject these ideas without, in the process, rejecting the progressive ideas they’re copied from; the Right’s “take the red pill” is, to the untrained eye, similar to the Left’s “get woke.” (Or, at least, the bowdlerized version of “get woke” that is no longer specifically about race which came to fashion when white people started saying it, grumble grumble.)

Take the red pill or reject them both; either is a step to the right.

As this rhetoric slips into his day-to-day conversation, even as seemingly harmless “irreverence,” it may strain relationships with people who are not entertained by this shit. Off-color comments about race and gender can certainly be wearying for female and non-white friends, which can lead to a passive distance or an eventual confrontation [“why is everyone but me so sensitive?!”], which only seem to confirm what his reactionary community says about liberal snowflakes. If he says these things on social media, he may get his account suspended, and, if he comes back under an alt, you can bet his new reactionary friends will be the first to reconnect, applaud the behavior that got him banned, and repeat should he get banned again. A few cycles of this and he’s lost touch with everyone else.

Also, his adoption of the insular, meme-laden terminology of this community makes him less and less comprehensible to outsiders.

Over time, sources of information get replaced with community-approved ones: conservative news, conservative YouTube, conservative Wikipedia if he’s really committed. The Algorithm soon takes note and stops recommending media from the Left. He stops watching shows with a “liberal agenda,” which usually means shows starring women and people of color. Now, there is evidence that the human mind responds to fictional characters similarly to real people, and that consuming diverse media can decrease bigotry in ways roughly analogous to having a diverse group of friends, which is one of many reasons we say representation matters. By consuming a homogenous media diet, Gabe stymies his ability to have even parasocial relationships with anyone who isn’t a cishet conservative white dude or one of their approved exceptions.

To the extent that any of this happens, it happens at Gabe’s discretion and at his own chosen pace. It has not been forced on him, only encouraged and rewarded. But the fact that it hasn’t been forced can make him all the more willing to accept it, because it seems safe to consider; even though his life and social circle are changing to accommodate, he does not feel committed. But many Gabes have walked these halls, and, if they close the door behind them, there’s nowhere left to go but down.

Step Four: Raise their Power Level

(...and they say we ruined anime.)

Consider the ecosystem of the Alt-Right as layers of an onion, with Gabe sitting at the edge and ready to traverse towards the center. (No, I’m not just going to reiterate the PewDiePipeline, though, if you haven’t seen it, go do that.)

The outer layer of the onion is extremism at its most plausibly deniable. Without careful scrutiny, the public-facing figureheads could pass as dispassionate, and the websites as merely problematic rather than softly fascist. It is valuable if Gabe believes this as well; that, at this stage, he believe the bigotry is simply trolling, the extremists an insignificant minority, and any report of harassment faked. That he believe where he is is as deep as the rabbit hole goes. And that he continue to believe this at each successive layer.

People in the deepest crevices of the Alt-Right self-report getting redpilled on multiple issues at different times in their journey to the center of the onion. If Gabe’s first red pill is about the SJWs coming for his free speech, he’ll think that’s all anyone in his community believes; there’s no racism here, people are just making a point about their right to use slurs. Then, when he gets redpilled on the white genocide, he’ll laugh at those Alt-Lite cucks who tried to sweep the race realists under the rug, and at himself for having once been one, but acknowledge that those channels and websites are still useful for onboarding people, so he won’t denounce them. At the same time, nobody takes those manosphere betas seriously.

And this process is reiterated with every pill swallowed: gender essentialism, autogynephilia, birtherism, Sandy Hook truth, pizzagate, QAnon if he’s really out there. The heart of the onion is typically the Jewish Question, but these can happen in any order, and in any number. But each layer sells itself as being, finally, the ultimate truth. Each denies the validity of the others; the layers ahead don’t exist, they’re made up my liberals, while the people behind are asleep where you are now awake. That’s why they chose “the red pill” as their metaphor: take it, and everything will be revealed. That’s why it cozies up with conspiracism. But what’s supposed to follow is that this knowledge help Gabe in some way, and it doesn’t. Blaming immigrants doesn’t actually fix the economy, and hating women doesn’t make men less lonely. But, having been alienated from everything outside the onion, once that sinks in, the only recourse on offer is to seek out the next pill.

And pills are easy to find. Those within the network have laissez-faire relationships, even as they, on paper, disavow one another. When they need a source or a guest host, they aren’t going to go to the Left; they’re going to feature each other. The Left is the enemy; their ideas are beneath consideration, and the only reason to engage them is for public humiliation. [Shapiro’s book.] But you can interview “western chauvinists” and that doesn’t mean you’re endorsing them, just, you know, it’s fine to hear ‘em out, nothing should be off-limits in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, Nazis are apolitical.

And because these folks keep showing up in each others’ metadata, regardless of what they say, Google thinks there is definitely a relationship between the guy “just asking questions” and the guy denying the Holocaust. Gabe is softly exposed to many flavors of conservatism just slightly more radical than he is now, and is expected, at the very least, to not question their presence. This is an environment where deradicalizing - listening to the Left - would be sleeping with the enemy, but radicalizing further? You do you, buddy.

Gabe’s emotional journey, however, is somewhat more complex. If you’ve spent any time reading or watching reactionary media you’ve probably noticed it’s really. fucking. repetitive. It’s a few thousand phrasings of the same handful of arguments. Like, there’s only so many jokes about attack helicopters! But these people just crank out content, and most of it’s derivative; the reason to pick one personality over another isn’t because they say something different, but because they say it differently. Gabe just picks the affect it’s delivered in.

Repetition dulls the shock of the most egregious statements, making them appear normal and prepping him for more extreme ideas. Meanwhile, the arguments themselves? They’re not good. (BreadTube will never run out of shit to debunk.) They are repetitive because they’re not good. They’re mantric. A good argument you only need to hear one time; if you can follow it, internalize it, and explain it to someone else, you know you’ve understood it. But a bad argument can’t convince you on its own merits, so it will often rely on affect. This can be the snappy, thought-terminating cliche, or the long, winding diatribe that sounds really sensible while you’re hearing it but when someone asks you for the gist you can only say “go watch these 17 videos and it’ll all make sense.” Both these approaches are largely devoid of content, but, gosh, if they don’t sound sure of themselves.

And that mode can be very persuasive, but it doesn’t stick the way a coherent argument does. It needs to be repeated, the affect replenished, because the words matter less than the delivery. There needs to be a steady stream of confident voices saying “we’ve got this figured out and everyone else is stupid” or Gabe’s gonna notice the flaws. They are not well-hidden.

And the catch-22 of returning to that stream over and over is that these communities are stressful even as they are calming. People afraid they will die virgins go to forums with people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, you will die a virgin.” People afraid Syrians are coming to kill us all watch videos by people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, Syrians are coming to kill us all.” Others have already pointed out that rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of digital self-harm, but I need to you understand the toxic recursion of it: Gabe is going to these communities to get upset. Every emotion is converted into anger, because sadness, fear, and despair are paralyzing but anger is motivating; Gabe feels less helpless when he’s pissed off. And so, while he’s topping up on reassuring nonsense, he’s also topping up on stress. And, being cut off from everything outside the network, the only place he knows to go to release that stress is back to the place that gives it to him. It’s a feedback loop, pulling him deeper and deeper on the promise that, at some point, relief will come.

It is a similar dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships.

When someone in Gabe’s community makes a racist joke, they are presenting Gabe with a choice between the human interaction of laughing with his friends and his societal responsibility not to be a fuckin’ racist. And not laughing seems ridiculous; everybody’s friends here; no one’s getting hurt; this is harmless. And so the irreverent race joke draws a line between the personal and the political, and suggests that one can be safely prioritized over the other. One way to look at radicalization is being asked to stick with that seemingly innocuous decision as the stakes are raised incrementally: first with edgier humor, and then comments that are funny because they’re shocking but you couldn’t really call them jokes, and then “funny” comments that are also sincerely angry, but, in each instance, since he laughed with his bros last time, it stands to reason he should keep favoring the personal over some abstracted notion of “politics.”

This is why the progressive adage “the personal is political” is among the most threatening things you can say in these spaces.

I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument. Most of us who laughed at edgy jokes when we were teenagers didn’t grow up to be Nazis. It is a slippery slope in the specific context of being in community with people trying to radicalize you. Gabe is a lonely white boy in need of friends, and laughing at a racist joke is personal, while not laughing is political. Staying in a community that has Nazis in it is personal, and leaving is political. The personal is what brings people together and the political drives them apart. (The “only if some of them are bigots” part of that sentence is usually lopped off). There’s this joke on the internet that nerds perceive only two races: white and political. Following that logic, what could be more apolitical than an ethnostate?

They are banking on his willingness to adapt his beliefs to suit an environment that meets a need. That same need can be satisfied by white nationalism. There are few things more seductive to people who doubt their own worth than being told you are valuable simply for being white. And you can sub in male, cis, straight, allosexual, or able-bodied. It just takes priming: by the time Gabe officially embraces bigotry, he’s already been acting like a bigot for months. The red pill is simply the moment he says it out loud.

Change Gabe’s surroundings, and you change Gabe.

Step Five: ???

The final step in a traditional extremist group would be getting a mission. But that is one thing the Alt-Right can’t do. Once you start giving clear directives, you can’t play yourselves off as a bunch of unaffiliated hashtags and think tanks; you are now a formalized movement accountable to its followers, and can be judged and policed as such.

To my mind, Charlottesville was an attempt to become such a movement, taking things offline and getting all the different groups working collectively. And, as so often happens when these people get in the same space - especially with no official leaders or means of control over their members - it backfired. Their true colors came out before they were ready and a counter-protester lost her life.

This would be the point where, historically, an extremist group starts to disintegrate. Their veneer of respectability gone, they’re now hated by the public, the media wants nothing more to do with them, and everyone not in jail turns on each other or goes underground. This is also the point where the liberal establishment says, “My job here is done,” and utterly fails to retake control of the narrative, allowing the next batch of radicals to pick up more or less where the last one left off.

But to an already-decentralized group like the Alt-Right, Charlottesville was bad but eminently survivable. People retreated back to the internet, with its code words and anonymous forums, but that’s where much of the work was already done anyway. The platforms where they organized kept tolerating them, the authorities still didn’t classify them as terrorists, and any disgraced figureheads were replaced with up-and-comers.

The major change in strategy is that it doesn’t seem anyone has tried to formalize the Alt-Right since.

So where does that leave Gabe? He’s gone through this whole process of largely hands-off indoctrination - and I should stress his journey may look like what we’ve outlined or it may look different in places, this video is not comprehensive - but now he’s swallowed every pill he cares to, he blames half a dozen minorities for everything he sees as wrong with the world, and no one will give him anything to do. You’ve got this ad hoc movement frothing young men into a militant fervor and then just leaving them to stew in their own hate. Should we really be surprised at how many commit mass shootings?

This is a machine for producing lone wolves.

Leaving men to take up arms of their own volition is a way of enacting terror while being just outside the popular conception of a terror cell. There are also, of course, more classic militias that will offer Gabe clear directives - they’re recruiting from the same pool. And Gabe may stop short of this step, settling in a middle layer that suits him or finding the inner layers too extreme. But violence is the logical conclusion of an ideology of hate, and, should Gabe take this step, he can approach violence in the same incremental fashion he approached conservatism.

He can start with yelling at people on Twitter, and then maybe collective brigading, DDoS attacks, sharing dox, leaking nudes, calling their phone numbers, texting them pictures of their houses from the sidewalk. These acts of cruelty become games of oneupmanship within his community. All this can start as far back as Step 2, and get more intense the deeper he goes. Some people join explicitly partake in harassment and violence the way Gabe joined to talk about anime.

But this behavior can serve as a kind of buy-in. The Left and the feminists and the LGBTQs and the Muslims and the immigrants are all, within his community, subhuman. You’ve maybe heard the conservative catchphrase “feminism is cancer”; well don’t treat cancer by having a respectful exchange of ideas with it, but by eradicating it down to the last cell. Cruelty against the Left is framed as righteous.

From any other perspective, posting someone’s bank information is something you might feel ashamed of. Which creates a psychological imperative not to consider other perspectives. A thing that keeps people in is staving off the guilt they will reckon with the moment they step out. Gabe is also aware that anything he’s done to the Left could be done to him if he leaves; some communities even keep dox on their members as insurance. And the things he’s been encouraged to do to the Left will likely make him feel that the Left would never take him now; the radical Right is the only home he’s got. Harassment becomes another tool of isolation.

Steadily, options for Gabe are whittled down to being a vigilante or a nihilist. There are periods of elation: moments the Alt-Right feels it’s winning - or, more accurately, the people they hate are losing - are like cocaine. They are authoritarians, after all. But the times in between are mean and angry. They are antisocial, starved of emotional connection, consuming incompatible conspiracies that may at any point run them afoul of one another, devoted to figureheads who cater to but cannot risk leading them, and living under constant threat of being outed to the Left or turned on by the Right for stepping out of line. Gabe took this journey for the sense of community and purpose, and, but for the rare moments everything goes their way, the Alt-Right can’t maintain either. They can only keep promising his day will come, a story he could get from a $5 palm reading.

The feeling there’s nothing left but to kill yourself or someone else is so common it’s a meme.

But there is always a third option: Gabe can leave.

Pre-Conclusion: For Fuck’s Sake Do Not Make Gabe Your Whole-Ass Praxis

Before we continue, I want to state plainly that Gabe went off the deep end because he found a community willing to tell him that, because he is a cishet white man, the world revolves around him. Do not treat him like this is true.

If a fraction of the energy spent having debates with America’s Gabes were spent instead on voter re-enfranchisement, prisoner’s rights, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and redistricting, Gabe’s opinions, in the societal sense, wouldn’t matter. Reactionary conservatism is a small and largely unpopular ideology that is only so represented in our culture and politics because they’ve learned how to game the system.

And I get it. Those are huge problems that are going to take years to address, where, if you know a Gabe, that’s a conversation you could have today. And, if you think you can get through to him, it is worthwhile to try. This is a fight on many fronts and deradicalization is one of them. But it is only one, so please keep it in perspective. It sends an awful message when we spend more time trying to get bigots back on our side than we do the people they are bigoted against.

Your value as a lefty does not hinge on whether you can change Gabe’s mind.

Conclusion: How Gabe Gets Out

He may just grow out of it. These communities skew young, and some folks hit a point where hanging with edgy teens doesn’t feel cool anymore.

He may become disillusioned after the movement fails to deliver on its promises.

He may become disillusioned if something goes wrong in his life and his community isn’t there for him, if he feels they like his race and his gender but don’t actually care about him.

He may be shocked if he sees the Alt-Right at its worst before being appropriately conditioned. Charlottesville was a step too far for a lot of people.

His community may turn on him for any perceived unorthodoxy, and he may leave out of necessity.

He may be separated by circumstance from the community - a trip with no internet, hospitalization, arrest - and not be able to top up on the rhetoric. This may lead him to question his beliefs.

His community may disappear, either tearing itself apart or getting shut down by authorities.

He may have incidental contact with populations he’s supposed to hate, and have trouble reconciling who they are in person with what he’s been told about them. In his community, people bond over shared intolerance, but, suddenly, being tolerant helps him make friends. (This is one reason the Alt-Right has made a battleground of the college campus.)

He may form or revisit relationships outside the network, people who can offer him the connection he’s been looking for. This may reintroduce outside perspectives. More importantly, it rekindles his ability to have healthy relationships at all, something the Alt-Right has estranged him from.

As with recruiters, it seems these “escape hatch” relationships can sometimes be parasocial; coming to respect a public figure who is on the Left, or is critical of the Alt-Right.

Someone he is close to may compel him to choose, “me or the movement.” A lot of young men leave to save a romantic relationship.

Hearing stories from people who’ve already jumped may help; there aren’t a lot of public formers, and some raise suspicions as to their sincerity, but it is getting more common, and may be the closest we get to exit counseling for the Alt-Right.

He may become aware of the ways he’s being manipulated, or have them revealed to him, maybe because he stumbled into BreadTube, I dunno. Knowledge that you are being indoctrinated is no guarantee it won’t work - you are not immune to propaganda - but it can help one resist.

And he may revisit a core belief system that used to guide him, be it religion or social justice or a really wholesome fandom, and be reminded of the identity he used to have.

Moments like these, in isolation or in aggregate, can inspire Gabe to jump. They are also good times for friends to intervene. The reach and the impunity that comes with the internet means it has never been easier to fall into reactionary extremism. It has also never been easier to get out. People who exit skinhead gangs often fear for their lives; for Gabe, there’s a chance getting out is as simple as going to a different website. Much of his community does not know his name or his face and he may not important enough to dox.

What doesn’t get Gabe out - not reliably, not that I have seen - is an argument with a stranger who proves all his facts wrong and his ideology bunk. Facts don’t always work because facts don’t care about his feelings. This was about staying in a community, and holding onto an identity, that mattered to him. It was about belonging, and that is something a rando from the other side of the culture war can’t give him and probably shouldn’t be responsible for.

The theme here is human connection. Before he can do the work of disentangling himself, and facing the guilt of what he’s believed and maybe done, he has to know there’s somewhere for him on the other end of it. That the Right hasn’t ruined him. They’ve told him all of history is groups fighting each other over status, and, without his clan, he’ll be an exile. He needs a better story.

I don’t know that lefty spaces are ideal for this, in no small part because bringing someone who’s a bit of a Nazi but working on it into diverse communities is… questionable. And it probably wouldn’t be good for him, either; having just gotten out of a toxic belief system, he’s going to be deeply skeptical of all ideologies. In a perfect world, people who care about Gabe could build for him - to use a therapy term - a holding space. Someplace private - physical or digital - where Gabe can work out his feelings, where he is both encouraged and expected to be better but is not, in the moment, judged. That comes later. It is delicate and time-consuming work that should not be done in public, but we find these beliefs, built up over the course of months or years, tend to fall away very quickly with a shift of environment. Change Gabe’s surroundings and you change Gabe.

But, instead, a lot of people who jump are functionally deprogramming themselves, which is working for a lot of them, but it’s haphazard, and there are recidivists.

If you don’t personally know a Gabe, or have training as a counselor, you may not be in a position to help him. Possibly there are things you can do to disrupt the recruitment process or prevent infiltration of spaces you’re in - I’m looking into it, but talk to your mods - but, elephant in the room: meaningful change will require reform on the part of platform holders. Tools to disrupt this process already exist and are being used on groups like ISIS, but they’re not being used on the Alt-Right because they try oh so very hard not to get classified as terrorists (and also any functioning anti-radicalization policy would require banning a lot of conservative politicians, so there’s that...).

But what makes our story better than theirs is that the fight for social and economic justice, though it is long, and difficult, and frustrating, when it works, it fulfills the promise the Right can’t keep: it materially make people’s lives better. I am not prone to sentimentality, or to giving these videos happy endings. But one thing we have that the Alt-Right doesn’t is hope.

#video essay

[pk-majora]

Exploring my natal chart pt.3. idk how to describe this one other than me looking at my placements i understand the least lmfao.

So my Saturn is in Aries and is in the third house and this is what I found about that:

"Saturn in the 3rd House in Aries – With Saturn in the 3rd house in Aries, there is a penchant for communication that is direct, candid and to the point. These individuals don't beat around the bush and they have a certain confidence and enthusiasm that compels others to believe in them."

SOURCE: https://astroligion.com/saturn-in-3rd-house/

"If the third house starts in the sign of Aries, we see an individual with a fast mind and an aggressive approach to communication. This is someone energized and filled with active ideas, whose mind never stops working."

SOURCE: https://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/astrology/houses/third/

"People born with Saturn in the third house in their birth chart are precise, resilient and capable of seeing things in depth. They can organize very efficiently and deal with life in the most traditional and conservative way.

It’s possible they’ll have an inclination towards mathematics and logic, their mind being very capable of developing great strategies when put in such a situation.

These people don’t like to waste too much time with a project and prefer to be alone because they sometimes feel like people can only bring them trouble. This is because they may encounter problems with communication and can’t find the way to express themselves clearly all the time.

The main purpose of the 3rd house sits in the subconscious functioning of the natives’ mind, when these are dealing with their most comfortable surroundings.

This house refers to the purest way people behave and communicate or how they function when interacting, so with that in mind, it’s obvious that it doesn’t deal with the unconscious.

It seems the small things people say and do unconsciously are the ones that present who they actually are!

Saturn in 3rd house natives may seem shy and distant. Some can be turned off by them, so they should listen and actually use what they have learned.

This way, they won’t need to do a lot of talking, still their loved ones will adore them for listening.

Saturn in 3rd house individuals have some serious difficulties when communicating.

These natives believe their opinions will get seriously criticized, therefore, they’re insecure and wouldn’t even think of trying to talk about their feelings or thoughts.

Because of this, they’re unwilling to communicate and are scared of making a mistake. It’s normal for them to be shy and always concerned with others’ opinion of them.

Talking is frequently a challenge for them and they could have dealt with some kind of speech impairment when young.

Saturn in 3rd house people aren’t necessarily spontaneous as far as learning goes, small-talk and day-to-day discussions about the latest news.

They simply don’t have a lot of interest in simple subjects and are all the time serious because they dislike superficiality in all its forms.

They may be very good when it comes to research, but are often scared or not at all bold enough to deal with the new and the methods that haven’t been tested.

With Saturn here, things generally refer to a highly analytical and precise mind, which can be the effect of many principles taught to them during their first years of school.

From a young age, some of them have been educated to respect every rule, so they may seem insecure when dealing with the unknown as they take their time to act and are cautious.

Many of them have only studied and thought of nothing else, while others were denied to attend a college with strict regulations, where they’d have felt really good.

As children, they probably felt unappreciated for their way of thinking and even called dumb. If disregarded and told their opinions don’t matter, it’s possible they may have learned to remain silent and to open only when thinking they have something very interesting to say.

The psychological buildup of people usually depends upon what’s known, tested and appreciated.

Saturn in 3rd house individuals deal with cognitive activities by insisting and striving for perfection, security for them being attained only when the truth is understood and every little detail has been studied.

If not, any form of advice coming from others can intimidate them. The slow movement of Saturn supplies many problems in matters relating to home and family members.

Natives having Saturn in 3rd house typically start speaking at an older age than other children, could have a somewhat sluggish and fearful speech or can be exaggeratedly timid to talk about their own ideas.

They may take a while to process all the information coming towards them, and while their intelligence isn’t lower when compared to others’, Saturn often makes them seem less smart.

Even if they may possess a high intellect, their surroundings would make them feel too scared to talk, which they accept as a reality until seeing what their speech can do.

It doesn’t matter if men or women, they could be late bloomers who use only their own pace. Saturn makes these natives extremely stable when it comes to the knowledge they’ve obtained throughout the years.

What they have heard is strongly fixated in their mind and generates new ideas, which can produce an even more developed mind in the long run, a greater understanding than the one of somebody who absorbs data fast, yet in a chaotic manner.

Saturn is the bully of all planets, making people with it in the 3rd house seem distant or too shy. Situations in which communication is needed can make them feel uneasy, but since they don’t necessarily say too many things, they have this great way of listening.

And it’s not that they want to be this way, they just are! Don’t even think they will ever speak in public, yet Saturn in the 3rd house makes them silent and ready to develop great observational skills that eventually lead them to success.

They prefer to work in the shadows, sometimes as journalists or scientists and are disciplined or very well coordinated, finding those who happen talkative and unorganized very bothersome.

They have probably been discouraged to talk when young, possibly because their parents considered some things should never be discussed.

Saturn in the 3rd house can even briefly disrupt them in school as well, however, they will surely devote a lot of their time and efforts to the aspects of life related to education.

They may need to study twice as harder, but at least they have their own strategies when it comes to working towards reaching their objectives.

It’s possible they’ll want to achieve great successes in research, but for this to happen, fighting their own anxieties would become very important.

It’s good that Saturn provides patience and endurance, so these would be two of their advantage when it comes to accomplishing any type of task.

Their communication is lacking a lot of heart and soul, therefore, they won’t call or text a person until initially determining what they want to say.

This can be terrific for some professions, especially those that require the employees to be as discreet as possible.

Natives with Saturn in the 3rd house are fantastic at managing confidential information and working for newspapers, or for tasks where they don’t need to interact that much with their colleagues and superiors.

They’re also cautious and manage to obtain results faster than others because they’re always minding their own business.

It’s suggested they spend some more time examining other individuals and their desires because this can help them determine what they want too and they surely are capable of good relationships.

They should use their instincts and have significant talks with both their family and friends.

Relaxing and letting their few communication abilities unfold will put them in the ideal direction, so they’ll eventually learn how to talk more openly, which can be their life’s challenge."

SOURCE: https://i.thehoroscope.co/saturn-in-3rd-house-what-it-means-for-your-personality-and-life/

(Aquarius ascendant) "If Saturn is placed in the sign of Aries in the 3rd house but if the 3rd lord Mars is placed in the sign of Scorpio in the ***10th house*** then people working in mines, chemical industry, or petrochemical industry as engineers or as workers are generally seen from this placement. Scorpio is a sign of digging and drilling and so people involved in a type of work where there is digging or drilling involved can also be seen from this placement. Also, people working with construction equipment such as construction vehicles or ploughing can also be seen. People working in coal, oil, and gas industries can also be seen such as working on underground pipelines."

SOURCE: https://www.rajbihani.com/raj/1158/

***I just thought this one was interesting bc all of this is true for except my scorpio mars is in the ninth house... so idk how accurate it makes the whole statement.***

#my natal chart #pt 3

[medranochav]

my moms been living with us for 4 months now. her stay was initially tolerable but is now triggering and I find myself regressing in a lot of ways. Her grief has evolved into torment and per her m.o. she'd like for her issues to take first priority. Except, my sis and I are grown now, and as a therapised household (literally we've all been in counseling, babies included) though we still lean on each other for support, we ultimately don't function codependently.

And beeecause that's not how we grew up, I think my mother is now having to contend with the reality that she has to do the emotional work of surviving her many traumas (and currently her many dramas) on her own. We support her but we can't fix it for her.

Currently, it's a crisis a day and she's spiraling into mini catastrophic states everytime. Which was sufferable at first because despite my labored support, I still maintained my boundaries and didn't adopt her distress as my own. The problem now is the increasing frequency with which these crying spells are taking place. Not to mention the fact that she's been doing so in front of the kids; something that would normally be acceptable because my sis and I make space for feelings (even our own) in our home. The difference being, we do so responsibly. We listen, we talk, give affection and/or space but always with the fundamental knowledge that our emotions belong to us individually and only we can be accountable for them. A gentle reminder that though part of a unit, they still have agency and accountability.

This interdependency makes way for a more compassionate exchange. Whenever they see us cry or be vunerable, the kids have the wherewithal to approach us without attaching themselves to our emotional circumstance. It's an empathy that perceives our emotional reactions as relatable but still not their responsibility. I've seen our work proven time and time again.

One example is when my sister's [redacted] died and the boys spotted her crying on the couch. Without being prompted, they approached her independently, commiserated, hugged and kissed her and shortly after went back to playing on their electronics. It was such a graceful display of emotional validation that demonstrated their love for her without sacrificing their own desires in doing so. Truly remarkable, that at ages 5-8 they maintained boundaries while still being there for their mom.

They're also there for one another but it's seldom a sinking ship. And when emotional support is rejected they respect that as well, without taking it personally [tbh that has more to do with concepts of mandatory consent that we impart on them, but as is evident, it applies. #intersectionality] It's an ongoing practice that I'm proud to be a part of, considering the kids have codependent figureheads in both their maternal and paternal families. WE'RE TRYING TO BREAK CYCLES HERE.

Yes, our home is a safe space for emotional processing but always leveraged with the emotional balance of self reliance, awareness and resiliency. The kids have proven to have the capacity for this and through teaching them, so do we.

It's human to have outbursts, but my mother's pattern is proving to be less intrinsic and more deliberate. She needs an audience in order to experience catharsis. A potentially reasonable behavior except for it's her only one. So it's imbalanced and seeks refuge in the reliance of our total empathy.

Furthermore she's disingenuous in her emotional performances. When approached out of concern, she responds with the proverbial, "I'm ok." Like, its subtle but super manipulative to say that, when we can CLEARLY see she's not. The kids see and hear her, the least she could do is not gaslight them. And I'm not saying her tactics are successful but it exposes the bby's to unnecessary dysfunction and covertly teaches them to assume the responsibility of communicating her emotion for her. She's also non verbal and unpredictable and tho not at her best rn [like, literally who is? this year has wrecked us all] she and we deserve proper communication.

The mind games are soul sucking and triggering for me in a way that is not for my sister. Though we share a mother, the repective versions of her that we experienced as children differ greatly.

My sister's the eldest and spent the first couple years of her life as the only child to a very young mother living alone in America after being displaced by the civil unrest in her native El Salvador. By age 3, with the addition of a new baby sister (my moms 2nd) she was sent to a country fully at war. My sisters would spend the next half decade of their lives in sunny wartorn tropics, watched over and raised by our family of four women. A blissful antithesis to their future with our mom. Upon the return to their forgotten country of origin (USA) and severed from the only family and community they've ever known, the girls were whisked away by a mother they barely remembered and a baby brother they had never met... marking the beginning of my mom's descent into single motherhood.

My mom resented having a brood of kids, namely her 2nd and 3rd, who's father was abusive and absent. Don't know much of the facts outside of what she would ritualistically berate my siblings about during her brutal tantrums -as if it were their fault they simply existed. The second born, my other sister, left home at 12 and has been estranged ever since and the third, my brother, has recently severed bonds abruptly claiming a new life with a woman he's known barely a year yet now calls wife. Proving that despite being raised by the same woman we all had different mothers.

Since my siblings endured a childhood with a volatile, violent woman who managed her emotions thru physical abuse... when she wasn't, she was neglectful of them, turning her attention onto me... the youngest (four years removed from the rest of the pack). I bore witness to said abuse until I was 5, when it was litigiously exposed, forcing her to abandon corporal punishment and rely solely on mental/emotional abuse. That's the version of my mom I got.

I was 10 when my sister left for college. Just my brother and I remained. Similarly to each other we both lived in service to our mother. Whereas his duties were more physically laborious, mine consisted of full on emotional labor. I spent most of my childhood navigating a homelife that was so saturated and occupied by my mother's opera of a life, that there was no room for my feelings, thoughts, desires or identity. I was her plaything, a person sans agency. My age and vulnerability proved advantagous when grooming me. I learned to behave in ways satisfactory to her needs. I was made to react to (and collect) her emotional distress, endorse her judgements of others, perform well in school as a testament to her rearing, and accept her violations of me as normal. I was a shackled spectator, whose own emotions were mere reflections of her dramatizations. I was tailored to be the MOST convenient. So I kept secrets and coped alone. I knew just enough abt myself to remain human but lacked the vision to actualize it. And because emotional abuse is so insidious in its indoctrination, I was really none the wiser until I too moved away years later.

I'm almost 30 now and I'm a mess. I can't establish enduring relationships, I'm fat, I'm broke, I'm debilitatingly avoidant, socially inept, codependent, confused and lack significant self worth. I spent the past decade delving deep into undoing all the work done to me to keep me a reliable supply for my mother and coming to terms with all the time lost in doing so. I've had glimpses and proof of another life but this year sent me back to old coping mechanisms and devastatingly familiar relationships. I read that by its very nature, all pandemics have to end and I thought I was strong enough to share a definite time&space with my abuser for the foreseeable future.... but with no end in sight, I kind of really wish I had established a clearer version of myself and where I stand in this family, to her.

Similar predicaments flung us both to the south and having her here is like a screen forging images of the same dysfunction I exhibited upon my arrival 7 years ago. There's so much I wish I could tell my former self, namely, "it's not your fault. you're not alone. you don't have to try so hard and tomorrow is another day" And perhapz it's this layered vision of myself as seen thru her that compels me to want to save her, but doing so requires me to get too close to a flame I've yet to extinguish. Im not foundationally sound enough to go up in flames and rebuild afterwards, I need a few more rounds of therapy for all that. I'm a stitch away from coming apart at the seams. Weak construction, but I'm still standing. I have more life to live and can't risk the breeze of my mother's chaotic whims to topple what's taken years to forge. I love her, because she's the only mom I got and because she's the kids' only access to our motherland. How can I reconcile this version of me with this version of her?

[takerfoxx]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Season 5, Episode 13, “The Heart, Part 2,” First Impressions!

I am going to miss this show, I really am.

Well. Here we are. The final episode of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, an almost three decade later reboot of a show I’ve never seen, which in turn was a spin-off of a show I’ve never seen, and yet somehow became one of my favorite shows of all time.

Now, when this show was first announced, there was a lot of pushback. You had the usual murder’s row of so-called anti-SJW troglodytes who like to swoop in on anything that looks like it wasn’t designed with straight white guys in mind (and speaking as a straight white guy, these guys are just. So. Tiresome!), as well as fans of the original who didn’t care for the new character designs, direction, or lack of connection to Masters of the Universe. Which, okay, I get it, and to be honest the little to no He-Man business still strikes me as weird, but come on guys. It’s been almost thirty years! Times have changed, audiences have changed, and the targeted audience of kids’ shows today are very different from what they were in the eighties. 

But despite all that nontroversy, She-Ra rose above and established itself as a genuinely great show in it’s own right, becoming both a critical and commercial success. Like, okay, it wasn’t Avatar the Last Airbender or Steven Universe-level big, but it definitely established a real niche for itself and gathered a sizeable fanbase. The excellent writing, incredibly on-point comedic timing, superb voice acting, casual diversity, oodles of complex and likeable characters, tight-plotting, mature handling of difficult topics, and immaculate direction made it out to be an amazing children’s show from a decade that has had no shortage of amazing children’s shows, and expectations were insane for the final season, with the climatic final episode being under incredible scrutiny. 

I mean, it makes sense, right? For once, given the huge LGBTQ fanbase the show has, and given how many times the LGBTQ community have been burned at the last second, there is little wonder that they would be wary. And while some shows like the aforementioned Avatar the Last Airbender and Breaking Bad have remained of high quality throughout its run and delivered with an excellent finale (or so I’m told, still working my way through), others like Voltron Legendary Defender and Game of Thrones have become notorious for shitting the bed in their latter halves, and other shows like Steven Universe have had more mixed receptions. So how would She-Ra turn out? Would it end up flopping at the end, or would it stick the landing and enter the pantheon of shows that actually completed their entire story arcs and are fondly remembered?

Yes. Yes, it did. 

The final season was spectacular. It started off all right, but from the third episode on immediately turned into pure brilliance, one that seemed to constantly top itself with wonderful character development, emotional payoffs, scenes of gripping tension, ballsy writing, and fantastic action. And any finale that makes me cry gets a thumb’s up from me.

Now, obviously I have a lot of gushing to do, but before it do, I should point out that I don’t think the finale is 100% perfect. There are things that kind of bugged me, and a few others that I felt really could have done better. Of course none of them were deal breakers, only little flaws that I feel could have stood to either have had more focus or different execution. And I might as well get the negative things out of the way.

And for me, the biggest problem is Shadow Weaver’s exit. 

And to be clear, I don’t have a problem whatsoever with Shadow Weaver dying. I wanted her to die. I’m glad she died. Nor do I have a problem for her dying to save the two girls she’s spent two decades abusing. And nor do I have a problem with them mourning her death, given that they never actually forgave her, and it only made sense that they would have complicated feelings toward her. All of those are fine!

What I have a problem with is how that moment was framed and directed. It was framed like a heroic sacrifice, from the dramatic final stand moment to Shadow Weaver being suddenly acting selfless to her telling Catra how proud she was of her and finally showing her face. 

Everything about that moment was exceptionally well done, yes, but the problem I have is that it doesn’t feel earned. That’s the sort of end you give a morally complex character that has been struggling with their negative qualities throughout a long character arc. And I’m sorry, but while Shadow Weaver is a pretty great and complicated character in her own right, she as never even tried to redeem herself until that moment. With Catra, we still saw how much her actions haunted and tormented her, even when she was at her worst. We saw her wrestling with her ingrained toxic behaviors and her conscience, so that when she finally makes the decision to do something right and, as far as she knew, sacrificed her life to rescue Glimmer and save Adora, it felt all kinds of earned!

But even after defecting to the Princess Rebellion, Shadow Weaver showed no signs of wanting to change. She showed no signs of regretting her mistreatment of Adora and Catra, and still continued to demean, undercut, and gaslight them whenever she was with them, and whenever she was called out on it, she would just brush it off and/or roll her eyes. Even when she was “helping” and “praising” her golden child Adora, she still continued to try to twist her head and mold her into what she wanted Adora would be. And her treatment of Catra didn’t change at all.

So I’m sorry, but that moment just didn’t work for me. Yes, I know Noelle has said that her sacrifice was still selfishly motivated, and I believe it, but it still felt off, especially with her finally telling Catra that she was proud of her, when she was AGAIN demeaning her earlier in that same episode! It carries the unintentional implication that Catra needed Shadow Weaver’s validation in order to move on. I honestly would have preferred that she never got it but realized that she didn’t need it to begin with. And that “You’re welcome,” which is incredibly condescending, was framed as a badass final line. There’s a disconnect between her character arc and its payoff that feels off. I wish something had been handled differently. 

The second issue I had was just how rushed a lot of the character payoffs felt at the end. Yes, I know Noelle said that she doesn’t want to do an epilogue and would like us to decide for ourselves how things turned out, and that’s fine. But one day later wouldn’t hurt. Wrong Hordak was shown a couple times cowering next to Swift Wind in group shots and then straight up disappeared. And given their complicated history together, Scorpia and Catra deserved so much more than just a hi and a hug. Chipped Micah was given more time to harm and demean Glimmer than real Micah was given to love her. The Entrapdak thing got more focus and despite what I said about Hordak needing to either die or lose his memories, I’m not too upset that he didn’t do either, but instead simply broke free and got a happy ending, and Mermista’s line of, “So, are we like okay with this?” was great, but it feels like there should have been more. And I know they never had their own character arc and did all they needed to do last season, but if you’re going to bring Double Trouble back, then give us more than just one episode and a two-second cameo at the end. 

Like, just give us some kind of montage of the rebuilding stage. Show us Wrong Hordak leading his scared and confused brothers in becoming individuals. Have him meet the real Hordak and show us how they would respond to one another! Give us a proper Catra/Scorpia reconciliation! Do more with Double Trouble or don’t bring them back at all. Hell, pair them up with Wrong Hordak partway through the season so they could bounce off each other, because that would be comedy GOLD! And while I’m glad that we at least got to see Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio (and they adopted Imp!), it sucks that that was their only scene this season, and it didn’t even have any lines. I’m not so upset about Huntara, because I know her voice actress is hard to get ahold of, so I’m okay with her just getting a wordless scene, but the others kind of bug.

I understand that time was a factor, but surely something could have been done.

All right, now I got all those out my system, let the gushing BEGIN!

Catra and Adora. Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man oh man. Now, I know I said that Catra needs to leave in order for her redemption to work, but even though she didn’t and got pretty much forgiven and accepted by everyone she hurt, I’m still very happy with how her redemption arc went down. Because she made the switch early in the season, showed genuine regret for what she did, made real attempts to apologize to those she hurt without expecting forgiveness, was shown wrestling with her bad traits, sometimes falling back into them, sometimes almost succumbing to bad habits, but was also shown finally making the right decisions and rising above them. She was the best-written character in the show with the most complex character arc, and they fucking NAILED the landing. 

And that is because of her love of Adora. 

Catra and Adora, two white-hot messes of weirdly compatible issues. Catra is so afraid of abandonment that she instinctively pushes those she loves away or runs away herself rather than let them leave her, and Adora only knows how to place others before herself, to be selfless to a fault, take all the blame for everything, and not let herself be the one who’s loved and protected. The two needed each other in order to overcome their issues, to put aside the damage Shadow Weaver instilled in them.

And they finally did.

Catra came back for Adora. She stayed by her side, refused to leave, and refused to let Adora give up. And Adora rose above her feelings of failure, allowed herself to be loved by another, and became whole. 

And then we got it. We finally got the moment we’ve all been waiting for, all been praying for, all wanted so goddamned desperately. 

We got the Big Goddamn Kiss.

The love each other. They’re lovers. They’re soulmates. After everything, how could they be anything else? It’s pure, 100% romantic love, a full, no ambiguity friends-to-rivals-to-enemies-to-allies-to-lovers storyline. Not subtext, no reading between the lines. It’s real, it’s canon, it’s between the two main leaders, and it happened right on the screen and saved the goddamned world.

Catra finally reached out to someone and showed love, and Adora finally allowed herself to be brought up and loved. And it’s that love that overcame Horde Prime’s virus and destroyed the Heart of Etheria. It’s that love that freed the magic, released She-Ra, and allowed her to vanquish Horde Prime once and for all. 

And hey, two girls kissing, turning into a rainbow, and annihilating the influence of a controlling religious cult and the symbol of exploitative colonizers? Hmmm, subtle!

I love it. 

Look, after everyone talking about how much the finale made them cry, and after already sobbing my eyes out when Angella sacrificed herself in season 3, I was worried that I wouldn’t feel the same, that everything had already been spoiled for me so it wouldn’t have the same emotional impact. Hell, the kiss itself had been spoiled for me! So if I knew it was coming, how could it affect me like it did others.

I was wrong. I was so wrong. When Catra screamed at Adora that she loved her and always had, the tears came gushing out. And when they finally did kiss, it made me happier than I had been for a long time. It was such a beautiful moment, and it was so wonderful to see all the magic unleashed, turning Etheria back into the paradise it was meant to be, and the Spire into a giant floating sprig of broccoli!

The Horde was finally defeat, and Horde Prime ripped out of his Wi-Fi network and destroyed once and for all. He will not rise again. His corrupted vision of purity is finally eradicated once and for all, and the galaxy is free again.

It was wonderful.

Other moments I want to highlight! Beginning with Bow! 

Oh Bow. I haven’t talked as much about you as I did at the start of the show, but you really are wonderful. After similar unpowered male goofball sidekicks like Xander and Sokka being big balls of toxic masculinity and ingrained misogyny caused by insecurities that they had to overcome, we get an unpowered male goofball sidekick who is a shining example of positive masculinity, someone who knows who he is and is comfortable with it, someone who more than holds his own in battle, constantly makes himself useful, and stands proud with his superpowered friends. And even then, he still feels like real person, one that gets frustrated, feels down, and gets angry at both himself and his friends, but still continues on, because he’s a soldier and that’s what he does. 

So it was wonderful that he got the Rise Up and Fight speech, because he deserved it, and oh it felt so good, seeing all those instances of people throwing off Horde Prime’s control while his words were playing. Bow really is wonderful.

And Hordak! Look, I know what I said about wanting more from his ending, but my God, that moment when he threw off Horde Prime’s control and shot Horde Prime in the back to save Entrapta and reclaim his identity was so! Fucking! Cool! I was cheering in my car when that happened! So good! 

And hey, give it up for Glimmer for not listening to Chipped Micah and refusing to back down. She overcame a brilliant sorcerer wielding dark magic through the power of sheer stubbornness! Chef kiss, beautiful!

Though I really do think she got most of her stubbornness from her mom. Miss yah, Angie. 

And Scorpia and Perfuma? Why, I think I like that quite a lot! Why yes, give Perfuma a big, strong girlfriend with a huge heart! Give Scorpia tiny, cute hippie girlfriend who will take no shit from anyone. Yes, I like this very much.

So...yeah. This really was wonderful. The world is saved, the Best Friend Squad is about to go on a space romp, and it feels good. And from there? Well, Noelle told us to come with that ourselves, so yeah, I’m sure Etheria was able to fully rebuild following the Horde’s destruction. I’m sure that Wrong Hordak became some kind of benevolent leader to his lost brothers and helped them come to grips with their individuality. I’m sure that Scorpia rebuilt the Scorpion Kingdom from the Fright Zone’s ruins and made it a haven to the lost Horde soldiers. I’m sure that Sea Hawk and Mermista burned down a boat together. I’m sure that Glimmer and Bow were married and became king and queen of Brightmoon and had a long and loving reign with lots of babies. I’m sure that Entrapta was given all the discarded Horde and First Ones tech to crack and find good uses for and remained as happy as a clam, especially considering the Hordak harem she’s built. I’m sure that Adora and Catra continued to build each other up, helped and supported one another to keep themselves from falling into bad habits, and Melog was always there as a faithful therapy magi-cat. I’m sure that Perfuma helped Catra along with meditative exercises and Catra never had the heart to tell her that she was just napping. I’m sure that Frosta grew up to be a strong and powerful queen who also founded her own iceball league. I’m sure that everyone started going to Netossa and Spinnerella’s game nights and just decided to put up with Netossa when she got like...that, because at that point she deserved to. I’m sure that Swift Wind finally did emancipate the horses and taught them to form their own weird society, but still made time to visit Madam Razz. I’m sure that Kyle and Rogelio became proud adopted fathers of little Imp, and one day while chilling at the local pub, Lonnie caught the eye of a big, strong purple woman. 

I’m sure they were all very happy from there on.

I am going to miss this show. It was a wonderful experience, one that’s given me so much. It made me laugh,it made me cry, it made me cheer, it made me shiver, it made me bite my nails, but most of all, it made me happy. 

So thank you Noelle and Molly. Thank you Chuck and Mary Elizabeth. Thank you Sunna and Aaliyah. Thank you Aimee, AJ, Karen, Marcus, Keston, Reshma, Lorraine, Christine, Adam, Genesis, Vella, Merit, Gina, and Jordan. Thank you to all the writers, animators, and directors. Thank you to everyone who worked on this show. Thank you all.

And a very special thank you to @smxmuffinpeddling​ for filling my dash with She-Ra content, which convinced me to check this show out in the first place!

#she ra and the princesses of power #she ra #spop #adora #catra #bow #glimmer #horde prime #hordak #mermista #sea hawk #swift wind #shadow weaver #scorpia #perfuma #wrong hordak #frosta #netossa #spinnerella #best friend squad #entrapta #catradora #entrapdak #glimbow #micah #etheria #all the tags! #john cena! #noelle stevenson #molly ostertag

[houseki-no-suffering]

Pssst.... gush about some thing you’ve wanted to for so long but haven’t found the ask to do so! I really like reading your metas or off-the-wall posts.

aw ty!

mmmh usually i just crank out a random meta when i feel like it, which i havent had the energy to do in a while. so have a lot of hcs about gem language, gem society and how it resembles a totalitarian system cause why not, this is already a dystopia. 

goes from cute to shady real quick, have fun

Gem Vocabulary

gems have no gender, they dont age, they dont reproduce. the whole vocabulary about relationships, aging and sex must be completely different in gem language. they probably lack a lot of words we commonly use, and have unique words for things we dont have (like winter duty, patrol duty... i wouldnt be surprised if gem language had unique grammatical features for those)

this is one of the reasons why its so unfair of aechmea to call cairn ‘wife’ and ‘princess.’ the gems have no concept of wife-ness, we dont know if a gem equivalent of marriage exists, but its definitely much, much different from what the lunarians (and us) perceive as one.

do gems have anything akin coming of age? this could be weird bc gems can potentially live forever, but they can also be abducted by the lunarians at any time, so who’s to say how long a lustrous will live? how do you calculate being ‘of age’? is it by calculating the average life-span of a gem? 

how do they measure time and seasons? we know they have winter and summer and phos mentions ‘spring’ in chapter 20, but what about months and lunar phases? do they have words for that or are months just too small a timeframe for the immortal lustrous to utilize? how do they measure time? in hours and seconds? weeks? different units altogether?

Gem Relationships

similarly, gem relationships are codified in a completely different way. we know they have a concept of romance bc dia ships phos and shinsha and makes comments here and there about other gems being in love. 

at the same time, the relationships btw alexandrite and chrysoberyl, padpa and rutile, ghost/cairn and lapis etc are little different from ‘pure’ sibling/sibling relationships or senpai/kohai relationships.

this is not to say that they’re all romantic in nature, but the way they’re codified in canon (especially in the way the characters grief for their partner) makes me think that even if the gems have no blood/physical kinship with one another they have a very articulated system of establishing family bonds.

dia and bort are clearly siblings, but the same can’t be said, for example, for rutile and padpa, even if they were partners and even if they display a similar junior/senior relationship. this means that relationships are predicated on something else in hnk, and kinship, family and romance are all codified in a different way.

think of vulcans in star trek: physical contact such as two fingers touching, holding hands and kissing is unknown of (save for very specific circumstances). and vulcan people have a completely different way of expressing intimacy and romance than humans. 

this makes me think: just how many canonically romantic relationships are there in hnk (if any) that we’re simply unaware of bc the way gems codify and express romance is so different from ours? is romance even common? rare? perceived as weird? useless? 

what about other relationships? the gems use ‘little brother/ older brother’ but what if this is just japanese approximations? what kind of relationships can lustrous language really express and how different are they from ours?

Imagination

as @ruddy-rutile​ pointed out some time ago, the gems lack a concept of fantasy. thats why i posted that panel about alex’s original lunarian designs. sure, it’s funny, but it also makes you think: these gems are not raised to think outside the box and they can do it without being told so only under exceptional circumstances.

of the vast library of texts that ghost (and lapis) used to take care of, just how many are novels and fiction? none of them? a small amount? a decent amount? in a society thats as focused on practicality, efficiency and conservatism as the lustrous’, how is fiction perceived if perceived at all? 

is there art? red beryl’s craft comes very close to art when they express their feelings about ‘fashion for fashion’s sake,’ but it’s an exception that the other gems find hard to grasp.

phos is often told to stop fantasizing about the world and get things done, the only tale we know the gems are told is the actual story of how their world came to be. the gems always talk about real things, stuff that happened, and make and do things that have a practical use. 

even bort’s jellyfish diary is just made up of a recollection of what happened when they tried to feed them. still, the fact that bort names the jellyfish makes you think that these rocks do have potential for fantasy, theyre just not used to it

Totalitarianism and Privacy

to make this even more shady, here’s your gentle reminder that:

- gems’ rooms have no doors. the only door ive been able to find is the one in shinsha’s room (ch 2) and that is because shinsha’s room is closed off to other people and full of mercury. its like putting a patch on smth you dont want to deal with (much like shinsha’s whole character arc tbh)

- the gems have little to no free time. or their free time can be revoked any time in case an emergency occurs, sensei is napping etc. the gems’ time is rigorously managed by jade, euc and sensei. each gem has a place to be and a time to be.

this means that a missing gem can be found at all times and slackers can be identified very easily. they all have a job and they have to follow it. this is not to say that they have no fun ever, but leisure time is rare and (at least as far as we know) its not contemplated when tasks are assigned each day.

the mere fact that there is a morning assembly and tasks are assigned each day makes you think. is this communism? is this totalitarianism? but most importantly, is this a scary dystopia that hits you in the face like a brick the third time you reread ch 2?   

- sameness > equality. i already went over this in the past. gems society underlines sameness and conformity over anything else. the gems think theyre equal but theyre actually ‘similar.’

a system based on equality emphasizes differences so that every individual can do the best with what they have got and get back what they need, according to their personal needs. 

these gems emphasize sameness: everyone is upheld to the same standards, even when those standards dont match with a gem’s unique characteristics (ie phos cannot be a fighter, no reason to keep saying stuff like ‘if only you were stronger/you’re useless’ etc. they’re a rock with an imagination in a world where dull reality is the rule. just make them write theater plays and play with slugs with shinsha, wth)

It’s real 1984 hours:

all of the above means that:

- your sense of self is subordinated to the group. if you dont belong you’re simply a nothing. at times, the gems almost display a collective consciousness (a pretty hostile one too): everything must be decided together and done together

- you are what you do. gems identify completely with their job. thats why a job is so important, thats why this system is so fucked up. self worth is not inherent, it depends on what you can do. talk about a breeding ground for mental health issues 

- you dont have a saying in picking your career or deciding for you future. thats up to sensei (and maybe euc and jade). unless you have a very strong affinity with a certain task (like red beryl and alex)

- youre expected to follow orders all the damn time. no matter how much sensei wants his gems to exert free will, they still prefer to do what theyre told. ill admit, its much easier than taking your life in your hands and decide what youre gonna do with it, but damn if it isnt depressing. and childish

- euclase and sensei are the authority. sensei and euc are the powers that be. in the sense that they assign tasks, they decide on times and battle plans, on purpose etc. lets not forget that euc was the one to take on sensei’s role after he ‘resigned.’ 

i wonder what would happen if euc were abducted and the gems had no one to follow anymore, no orders. who’d be the new leader? would there be one? lets not forget that no matter how gentle euc is, phos is shit scared of them.

- thought police is a thing. to end this meta on what is probably the shadiest note: surveillance is a thing. the gems report on each other, it’s thought police, no sugarcoating this. 

there’s no privacy, no secrets. even antarc reads rutile’s diary. this goes from cute and childish (’you did this one wrong thing, im gonna tell sensei’) to absolutely fucked up (’you did this one wrong thing, im gonna tell sensei’)

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #hnk #meta #best #im a sociologist what did ya expect #pls feel free to add on this

[jennymanrique]

How communities can heal post-pandemic

Experts warn that even if the United States reaches the elusive herd immunity, closing the growing inequality gaps separating low-income communities of color from the rest of the country will require more work.

Health care and education disparities. Lack of affordable housing. Racism and police abuse. Job loss. These are just a few of the inequity gaps — exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — that face low-income communities of color. Professionals who work with them directly say closing those gaps will require a complicated healing process.

“We know COVID is the disease that has revealed our illness as a society: the valleys of inequality that pre-existed COVID have been flooded with the tsunami of the disease,” said Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity and Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change, speaking at a May 7 briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services.

Many mixed-status families that included undocumented immigrants were locked out of federal assistance until the March 2021 passage of the American Rescue Act, Pastor said. Now they are “kind of reluctant to tap in, because they’re worried that may count against them if there’s eventually a route to legalization in the future.”

Two-thirds of California’s undocumented immigrants have been in the country for more than a decade and are waiting for Congress to work out their path to citizenship. COVID has affected them like no other population because lack of insurance, mistrust and fear have prevented them from accessing health services.

“Every state relief program should try to think about what it can do to be fully accessible to undocumented Californians,” said Pastor, who also sits on the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Last summer, the California Healthy Places Index indicated that the virus was going to devastate Blacks, Latinos and Asians, but the state did not bring COVID tests to those communities. Without data on positivity rates, counties couldn’t determine how safe it would be to reopen.

California decided to allocate 40% of vaccines to the 25% of communities that scoring worst on this index. Local mobile clinics receive doses, mobilize trusted messengers and run campaigns to encourage vaccination.

Still, the initial vaccine rollout was “a recipe for racial inequality,” added Pastor. Doses were available to anyone of a certain age category or occupation, but the older populations are overwhelmingly white while younger populations belong to communities of color.

“It could be argued that everyone in that age category had an equal shot at getting the vaccine, as long as they had a computer (to make the appointment), high-speed Internet, a job where they could take three hours off in the middle of the day to chase down a vaccine, and access to a car, rather than mass transit,” said Pastor.

Education is another gap area for communities of color. They’ve experienced a tremendous loss in learning and, despite the reopening of schools, are the most reluctant to come back. Black and brown families who suffered from the virus in their homes are afraid to send their children to places where they may be infected, and the digital divide has accentuated students’ difficulties in keeping up with their homework.

In Los Angeles County, 13% of K through 12 white children lacked a computer with high-speed Internet, but for black and Latino children, the figure was around 40%, Pastor said.

He added that the pandemic also has disproportionately affected the incomes of communities of color. While it has not caused a 2008-like recession, which hit the economy evenly, we’re facing a “micro recession.” Stock markets and property are up, so the wallets of people with annual incomes of more than $100,000 are unaffected, but those at the bottom of the labor market have lost income, employment and wages.

Mental health is yet another area of disparity, Pastor said. “The level of mental health trauma is high and we need to have culturally sensitive mental health resources available. We need to destigmatize the issue, make it be seen as something that is social and at the community level, not just your individual failing, so people feel confident accessing those resources.”

The Community Coalition, founded in South Los Angeles by Congresswoman Karen Bass, is one example of fostering post-pandemic healing by having multiracial, multigenerational communities generate the solutions they need.

Leslie Johnson, Vice President of Organizational Development at Community Coalition, told the briefing that it launched a website in English and Spanish that allows residents to check on their emotional health, instituted a teletherapy program with licensed therapists of color, and held healing circles in local parks to address “the devastating impact (of COVID) all around on physical, financial and mental health.”

She added that targeted funding and having elected officials understand these kinds of interventions are essential: “Racism is the true pandemic that we are fighting against. COVID-19 has exacerbated a lot of pre-existing conditions in our community that are fostered by institutional racism and white supremacy. We must call for solutions that are bold, not just at the individual level but at the systems level.”

Community Coalition has raised funds to buy personal protective equipment, made direct cash payments to families to help cover rent and utilities, provided laptops and hardware to students and installed Internet hotspots. It also offered Pfizer vaccinations in a local park, including nighttime appointments so people wouldn’t have to miss work.

Los Angeles will receive about $1.3 billion from the federal government from the American Rescue Plan. With its share of those resources, The Community Coalition will make loans to women business owners, help people with rent and mortgage payments and utilities, and increase youth employment opportunities.

Originally published here

Want to read this piece in Spanish? Click here

#English #Post pandemic #Covid-19 #Coronavirus #income inequality #african american #Latinos #mental health #economic inequality #unemployment #asian american #loss of income #loss of wages

[sonofsallyjackson]

Heroes of Olympus should have been in first-person.

@jo-march-is-a-lesbian​ wrote a really wonderful post about how “Percy Jackson and the Olympians is better than Heroes of Olympus…because it understood simplicity and character development.”  It highlights some reasons I also found HoO less rewarding namely that it was an overcomplicated story with limited character growth, lacked a common thesis, and was super jarring when it switched perspectives.  

And with that my little brain went: I can fix this.  Which frankly is ridiculous.  I can’t come up with a compelling thesis like “The idea that we should place our hope in our loved ones, our friends and our family, and if we do that, we won’t be tempted to give up hope again.”   But I can imagine a simple change that would have solved some of the issues and also played to Rick’s strengths as a writer:  Each book should have been written in first person and narrated by a different character.

With so many people on the quest, I often felt like I was watching a bunch of one-dimensional characters fight for their right to be the main character.  I didn’t know who to focus on but I was also dissatisfied.  There were all these new wonderful characters in front of me who I wanted to love, but I didn’t feel like I actually knew them.  I mean I don’t feel like I know the Stoll Brothers either, but I’m not concerned about that fact because they are side characters.  When everyone is painted as the main character,  I have certain expectations for growth, personality, and voice.  The story would have been better served if the characters took turns narrating the action, allowing us to settle into their perspective, see their growth, and better understand their personality.

Plus Rick kills first-person.  While I’m not particularly a fan of Trials of Apollo, it’s not because I don’t know the characters.  Apollo is so very different than Percy. Their voices, even though they can both be jokesters at times, reflect their different life-experiences, thought processes and provide massive insight into their characters.   If the Seven (and Nico and Reyna) got the same treatment, I would be absolutely giddy.  

I recognize that rewriting the HoO series in first-person is something a talented fanfiction writer with a lot of time on their hands could actually do.  But I am not talented like that and I certainly don’t have the discipline to actually write that much fic, especially if I was trying to keep the events vaguely the same just with different narration and pacing.  So instead I’ve included who I think should have narrated each book below the cut.  I’d love to hear any opinions people have regarding this idea, especially who they would have wanted to see to narrate each book.

In addition to picking the narrator, I’ve highlighted what should be the “quest” so to speak of each story.  Personally, MoA, HoH and BoO are kind of a blur to me despite reading them all recently.  It’s hard to distinguish what happens in each book because it’s all one massive quest with a whole bunch of mini-quests.    While the different narrators would obviously make the books more distinctive, splitting the series into seven books would also help simplify each book’s individual goal.  Eight books would have allowed for better integration of the plot to find the physician’s cure, but with the prophecy of seven, it seemed like seven books was the best option, if I was going to be doing something as blasphemous as splitting books.   

As a note, I ran out of steam as I went so not all opinions are fully fleshed out. 

Book 1:  The Lost Hero The Quest: Rescue Hera/Juno Narrator:  Jason 

Why this would be cool: 

He is literally Juno’s chosen sent on a quest to rescue her.  It’s poetic enough to give him the book.

Jason’s journey is just as much about rediscovering himself as it is about saving Juno.   Of the new characters, I feel like I understand Jason the least. Mainly because I felt like I was missing the entire first half of his story.  Jason, like Percy and Annabeth, is a hero of the Titan War. I know some of his accomplishments, but I don’t have any bearing on what his life was like or how he felt about it.   He doesn’t seem like the type to relish Praetor-ship since he doesn’t have the same intense need to get back to his camp as Percy.  Was he just hoisted on his comrades’ shields after killing the Titan without any real choice in the matter? Give me Jason’s memories coming back slowly over the course of the quest (with potentially a fractured memory of a mistake he made in the Roman’s final Titan battle that makes him doubt their ability to both rescue Piper’s dad and save Hero but he makes the decision to anyway because he can’t just hurt his friend like that.   Let me understand how Jason is the person he is today.  Give me glances of the Roman Camp with emphasis on the heavy expectations that have always followed him as the son of Jupiter and foreshadow why he eventually chooses to design all the shrines for the minor gods so he can have his own place in the world as a figure between the two camps.

Let’s dive into those feelings of anger/guilt/resentment when people at camp are disappointed with him for not being Percy or in Chiron’s case are nervous about what his presence means. 

I want to dig deeper regarding Jason’s feelings about reconnecting with Thalia.  He knows that if the gods hadn’t been determined to keep the two camps completely separate, he could have grown up with his sister. 

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:  

We miss some of the internal turmoil regarding the fact that Piper’s Dad has been captured and she must betray her friends. 

We also don’t feel the tensions of Piper’s relationship with Aphrodite. I don’t see Piper bringing up the conversation with her mom saying that her mist memories were so strong because she automatically sensed the potential of a romantic relationship with Jason.  

We don’t have any of Leo’s conflicted feelings regarding rescuing Hera or his fear of being made an outcast for his fire abilities.  Jason has to go with Leo to discover Bunker 9 and Festus.  

Leo doesn’t actively save the day with the Cyclops. 

We don’t know how Piper feels about her charm-speak or see her defeat Madea (as the boys are in their weird trance thing). 

Knowledge about Gaea’s involvement in wrecking Leo’s life will come later.  

Book 2: The Son of Neptune The Quest: Free Thantos Narrator:  Hazel

Why this would be cool: 

The stakes are so incredibly high. Hazel is literally risking her second chance at life by agreeing to go on this chance.  She’s going to the place she died to fight the monster she created. She also has to deal with the trauma of knowing she may have bought the world time with her first sacrifice but it now means nothing if she can’t succeed again.  

We get to see Camp Jupiter from the view of someone who loves it but doesn’t really fit in.  Hazel joined Camp Jupiter just after the final battle.  She enters a community that has learned to fight as a well-oiled machine but that has lost people.  Dakota or the others may remark to her about how things were before or the people who are missing.  Hazel sees a community that she’s not quite a part of both because she didn’t fight in the war and because she’s in the fifth cohort with a feared godly parent.

It would explore her relationship with Nico more (because I love their dynamic and I want more).   She knows she can’t replace his real sister, but she feels comfortable and happy at the opportunity to have a brother, especially one who is out of time like she is.   

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:  

Frankly, the largest pushback would be from the fans who expected this to be Percy’s book since we just watched Jason rediscover who he is.

Percy’s phone call to his mom doesn’t have the same intensity.  

Frank’s relationship with Mars and how desperate he was to be claimed but now he doesn’t think he can live up to his father’s expectations.  

Frank and his grandmother.  We aren’t in Frank’s head as he changes shape till later.  

Book 3: Mark of Athena The Quest: Close the Divide Between The Two Camps by finding Athena’s statue and Rescue Nico Narrator(s):  Annabeth and Leo

Why Annabeth: 

So I can have all the emotions at the reunion with Percy.  

Annabeth’s relationship with her Mom has never been great, but imagine beginning the book with Annabeth being given the Mark of Athena. They haven’t left for New Rome yet and her nerves are already all over the place.  Then Athena/Minerva comes, gives her an impossible quest, and breaks her hat.   Annabeth wants to prove to her mother that she’s worthy because despite everything she still values her mother’s opinions.  Also her fatal flaw of hubris makes her believe she will succeed where everyone else failed.

Much of the book already follows her in third person limited so we just get things with a little extra emotion.  

Why Leo:  

Leo has to grapple with the fact he started this war by being the one to fire the cannon even if he didn’t have any control.  He is motivated to fix it

If we’re going to include the Sammy plot, we need to do it now.   Leo doesn’t like being the odd one out on the ship but he certainly doesn’t like the feeling of being notable because of his grandfather.  

We still need to get into those feelings of abandonment and anger at Gaea for killing his mom.  

Nemesis 

Leo comes into his own with the discovery of the Archimedes sphere and the decision to value people over objects.  

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

The aquarium shenanigans 

The fight between Jason and Percy in Kansas needs to happen differently so that the others are present and try to stop it.  

Neither of them went ashore to meet Hercules.  

I think we might need to move up the Calypso meeting to this book, but that also kills some of the suspense since Frank will have the fireproof coating prior to his adventures in Venice when he gains faith in his abilities.  It also might mean Leo opens the fortune cookie from Nemesis unless for some odd reason he doesn’t have it.  There’s a lot more narrative weight for it coming later, but in order to get in as many book events as we can in, it might need to come earlier. 

Book 4:  House of Hades Pt. 1

The Quest: Survive Tartarus Narrator(s): Annabeth and Percy

The first time I read House of Hades, I read it out of order (reading all the Percy and Annabeth chapters until they were on the elevator out of Tartarus before going back and reading the others), because I couldn’t handle the back and forth.  I felt like the tension would build, I’d be invested in this plot and then we’d switch to the other plot. Plus I was very concerned for my children.  So I feel fully justified in saying that there is more than enough material to give the two of them their own book.

I just feel like all the feelings would be magnified.  

Percy’s commentary slowly losing its humor because he can’t anymore.

Annabeth’s guilt at having pulled him in being extra loud.  

Downsides beyond adding an entire book: Just imagine all the outrage at two cliffhangers in a row, because you know the book would end with them in the elevator remembering Bob’s words about the stars.   

Book 5:  House of Hades Pt. 2

The Quest:  Close the Doors of Death Narrator(s): Frank and Hazel

Frank and Hazel experience the most growth on the quest to close the doors so this book is all theirs.  Hazel learns to control the mist.  Frank experiments with his transformations.  I want nothing but them growing into themselves and their abilities.  

The good thing about turning the two warring storylines from House of Hades into separate books is that we lose very little plot.  

Book 6:  House of Hades Pt. 3/Blood of Olympus Pt 1 (Personally I would call this one Ambassador of Pluto)

The Quest:  Unite the Gods’ Personalities. Narrator: Nico

To clarify what I mean by HoH 3, I just mean anything done with the intention of trying to cross paths with Reyna, including the adventure with Cupid, in addition to the existing Nico&Reyna plotline in BoO.  

Nico dealing with all the emotions and his most recent near-death experience.

He kept the secret of the camps so the world wouldn’t end in chaos, but now that the world is in chaos he will be the one to fix it.  

In the short time he’s on the Argo 2, Nico realizes that even though this wasn’t his quest; this is his family and he needs to protect them.  

The reader has a pretty good idea Nico is gay, even if the word isn’t explicitly said from the descriptions (his guilty Percy thoughts - he let down the man he loves even if he won’t admit it.) This means that Cupid’s forceful outing is potentially less surprising so the reader can be properly outraged at Cupid.  

Downside: Reyna definitely has adventures when Nico is passed out, especially the whole waking up with the Hunters, but I think it’s excusable for a whole book from Nico’s perspective.  

Also, the battle between the camps and gifting of the statue needs to happen in this book, but we shouldn’t find out if the gods have regained control of their forms yet.  We alleviate some tensions because Camp Half-blood is likely to be overrun with Octavian’s monsters instead of the Roman armies and Gaea could awaken any second, but there’s an odd moment of calm and an uneasy truce.  (Octavian is potentially taken under custody to be held for trial only to escape in the next book.) 

Book 7:  Blood of Olympus Pt 2 (and the aftermath)

The Quest:  Like The Last Olympian, the final book’s focus is entirely on defeating the series’ big bad, in this case, Gaea.  Leo’s quest for the Physician’s cure parallels Percy’s River Styx visit.  

Narrator(s):  Leo and Piper

Leo has his death hanging over his head.  He has decided that he will be the one to die not any of his friends.  He got the cloth from Calypso so the “fire” portion of the prophecy applies to him and not Frank.  (Yes I know you can’t control prophecies, but do you think that’s going to stop Leo.)  

It’s the ultimate revenge for killing his mom.  We can have memories of both the happy times with Esperanza and the fear he felt for thinking he caused the fire. 

Piper’s perspective is necessary as we need to be with her during the fight with the giants.   

This series began with Piper, Leo, and Jason.  It ends that way too with the three of them killing Gaea and the two of them narrating.  

Downsides: 

The Percabeth I love you-the feud is over scene remains in Piper’s perspective.  

Since we’re not following Reyna’s delivery of the statue concurrently we don’t know when to anticipate the healed gods appearing in the battle with the giants.  

The book can still get away with not showing us Percy’s reunion with Sally or forcing Leo to tell the others he’s alive so they’re all grieving. 

#pjo meta #pjo fandom #pjo/hoo #hoo #riordanverse #heroes of olympus #my meta #percy jackon and the olympians #the seven #jason grace #hazel levesque #leo valdez #piper mclean #percy jackson #annabeth chase #frank zhang #the fandom once again improving hoo

[cannotescape]

Thoughts on The ballad of songbirds and snakes

I was curious to read the latest installment in the hunger games saga and I wasn’t disapointed. I’ll try to stay spoiler free in the review. In any case, the spoilers will be after a read more.

Many successful YA authors has been revisiting their work these past years. I... wasn’t impressed by most of them. The only sequel I’ve read that was worth the original work was La belle sauvage imo (not the entire Book of Dust series, sadly).

After reading The ballad of songbirds and snakes, it seems that the key for writing a sequel is actually to make it a prequel lol, with 0 to 1 character from the original. Add to it foreshadowing and a few hints and you get a winner.

A Snow redemption arc?

Knowing the premise, my first fear was that Snow was going to be the protagonist. I was smelling the redemption / justification arc from miles away. But Collins isn’t Rowling and Snow isn’t Snape (there is a Snape-like character though. he’s pretty interesting). The book can be summarized in one sentence: explaining a behavior isn’t the same as excusing it.

The book put the reader through an interesting experience: should we root for Snow, knowing what he will do in the future, and how long can we excuse his behavior? My reading experience was basically me trying to guess what Collins wanted me to think. I was waiting for the end to make up my mind about the book. There were hints that made me pause and go “huh” but I truly wasn’t sure how all of this was going to end.

I understood really late that Collins just let her readers choose what they wanted to think. You want to excuse Snow? You can, there’s enough material for that, and there’s enough good people around him for you to root for him. Linking his fate to Lucy Gray’s was clever. Making us believe that they were in the same boat (the hunger theme and the attention given to food made sure of that), when they couldn’t be farther apart? Well done. I can’t believe I fell for it.

So yeah, in my mind, Snow definitely isn’t redeemed or even excused in the end. You end up hating him even more. Collins doesn’t do manicheism apparently, so you get to empathize with him. Life and people put him in a difficult situation. But his pride and the importance he has given to his family’s status is what allowed people to blackmail him into doing... things.

Hints that Snow wasn’t being redeemed:

- talking about Lucy Gray like she’s his property - his strategy of differentiating her from the districts and immediately making her a potential Capitol citizen - not visiting Clemmensia in the hospital (it was emphasized enough times to make me pause) - choosing ignorance when faced with a situation he doesn’t want to deal with (refusing to acknowledge what Tigris must have done to survive during the war) - being quick as fuck to justify killing people (self-defense, yeah, but for how long?) - being condescending against Sejanus and district born people.

2. Just another Hunger Games book?

I started reading the story thinking it was going to be a hunger games book. It’s not. First of all, the games are nothing like the future ones. For historical and plot-related reasons (they’re building the games after all). What is striking is the lack of excitement: from the audience in the Capitol, and from the readers. Collins knows how to build suspense, she proved it with the first trilogy. It made the catharsis worked 100%: we were as much the spectators of the games as the Capitol.

Removing the excitement from the games? Making them dull and exposing them as the sheer horror show they are? Bold move. I also noticed that, overall, the tributes showed more empathy than in Katniss’ games. The war ended 10 years before. They had yet to forget “who the real enemy is”.

Just like in the THG, Collins used metaphors of the games in different parts of the book. The mentors have their own games going on (with a “prize” that is often presented as a lifesaver) + what happens in the very end. It didn’t bother me. I like symbolism and the games pervading every aspects of life is a good one.

What doesn’t make this a hunger games book is also the fact that... Katniss isn’t Snow. We’re following his story but he isn’t the real protagonist. Lucy Gray is a much better candidate, but the book is an actual demonstration of what happens when the narrative is taken away from you. The third person narrator was a nice change too. I think it allowed the narrator to present his thoughts as the truth without being immediately seen as biased. Free indirect discourse also makes you forget that the thoughts being expressed are Snow’s. Until the very end, when it becomes impossible to separate him from the narrator.

3. Class analysis

The rise of the bourgeoisie / nouveaux riches vs the fall of an ancient aristocracy grasping at straws to stay in power. Classic.

I don’t remember who theorized it (Gramsci maybe? or Paretto?) but the best way for a system to stay in place is to welcome a few “exceptional” people (and the word is meaningful in the book) from the lower but rising class. The Capitol is actively implementing this policy. The war made them aware of the benefits of having allies in the districts, mainly the richest families. The end of the book emphasizes the link between bourgeoisie and aristocracy - between money and status. And the most succesful citizen will be at the intersection of them.

Bonus: mockingjays and jabberjays being metaphors of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Mockingjays are a district evolution of the Capitol-made jabberjays, and they’re slowy but surely taking over.

Meaningful quote: “Give it up,” he muttered to the thing. “You’re no jabberjay.”

Oh, and what happens when the decaying aristocracy doesn’t want to bulge or evolve and the rising bourgeoisie is getting tired of being refused power and privilege?! Yep, a revolution. Not saying a revolution led by the working class can’t happen (it’s basically the hunger games’ plot), but the bourgeoise / aristocracy allyship certainly can slow the process down.

4. The hanging tree

Loved to read about how the song was created. And seeing its meanings change the more the story progresses. At first a remembrance of the Capitol’s cruelty, then a way to communicate a meeting place. Finally, a mourning song about treason. The line “they said who murdered three” only hit me with its full meaning two days after finishing the book lol. The murderer wasn’t hung after all.

Meaningful quote: “Music caused trouble”. I fucking love the simple irony in all those little sentences when you know how all this will end.

Tldr: All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It gives you insight into Panem’s world (and ours let’s be honest, the parallels are blatant) and makes Katniss’ story even more powerful imo.

Also, the only love story worth mentioning was one between two girls lmao so there’s that (it’s a blink and you miss it kind of thing, but it’s there).

Spoilers under the cut (not very spoilery tbh but better be safe).

5. Lucy Gray

Like I said, the real protagonist. Her legacy has literally been erased, which is fucking heartbreaking. There’s a reason why I couldn’t remember if she was even mentioned in the original trilogy.

And yet her legacy lived on. The song she wrote not only was passed down from one generation to the next depite being immediately forbidden, but it also became the symbol of the rebellion. Same symbolism can be seen in the mockingjays, who are deeply associated with her.

I just have a lot of feelings about her and I’m happy that Katniss made everything worth it in the end. And despite being two very different characters, Katniss became her reincarnation designed specifically to haunt Snow. And I just love that Katniss doesn’t know anything of Lucy Gray. But she’s unknowingly reenacting her life. Because her legacy was that powerful. Or because everything that Snow hated in District 12 are very present in these two strong girls. Funny what an environment can do

Meaningful quotes: “Well, I hope old you doesn’t haunt new you. We’ve already got enough ghosts between us.”

“Good-bye Lucy Gray, we hardly knew you.”

“She could fly around District 12 all she liked but she and her mockingjays would never harm him again.”

6. The philosophy behind the book

Freedom vs order and security, the social contract, what an individual can do against a corrupted society, is it possible to change things from the inside? (interesting to have Plutarch’s ancestor mentioned), the elite reproduction (hi Flickerman!), what do cricumstances do to human beings (the Mary Shelley’s quote at the beginning).

Meaningful quote : “People aren’t so bad, really,” she said. “It’s what the world does to them. Like us, in the arena. We did things in there we’d never have considered if they’d just left us alone.”

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #the hunger games #THG #suzanne collins #I wrote an essay... again #huh someone misses doing english commentaries lol #anyway I would be very curious to know what anybody else though of the book #I really think Collins saw what happened in the last 10 years and thought 'maybe I need to write about tyrany again' lol #long post

[sophiehotch]

PORTRAITS OF CONGRESS: CHARLIE KEETING (NY-10) BY SOPHIA HOTCHNER - AUGUST 11, 2020 - THE WASHINGTON POST

When I sat down with Representative Charlie Keeting - an environmental activist and the current NY-10 Representative, there was an immediate sense of warmth. Maybe that had to do with the fact that the bustling-yet-quiet walls of the cafe they had chosen to meet in was a beautiful shade of corals and yellows, or maybe it had to do with the Representative’s dedication to making sure I was comfortable, but there’s no denying that Charlie Keeting has a warm heart beating in his chest.

I met Charlie Keeting (who uses they/them and he/him pronouns interchangeably) back at the beginning of the year when I had the opportunity to collect information on current Democratic activists, of which Charlie had made the list. Their activism in trans health and trans safety (they’re agender themselves), their work with LGBTQ+ youth within their district and beyond, and their unflinching stance on climate change have made them a bright young face in Washington - one many kids and young adults can see themselves in. On top of that, their eclectic style and infectious laughter certainly made me feel right at home within our small world of interviews.

We order before we get started, Representative Keeting settling on a Mediterranean Salad - “Vegan,” they say, “I’m working on it, but it’s not always feasible for everyone, and that’s okay,” - and then we begin our conversation about what it means to be a leader in congress at an age so young, what’s next for the New York Representative, and the upcoming elections.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: So, Representative, tell us a little about yourself - where you grew up, what your life was like at a young age?

REP. KEETING: I grew up in a small suburb in north New York - Rochester, to be exact. I was more than fortunate enough to be able to grow up in a household that was extremely LGBTQ+ friendly, and despite being a child of divorce, really lovely. My mom came out when I was six. She told my dad she had met someone else and we just kind of moved on from there. My upbringing was... a bit abnormal to say the least for two reasons: one, my dad and mom remained best friends (which I know doesn’t always happen in divorces), and two, my dad was halfway across the country. Regardless, my parents were more than supportive of everything I did, and Rochester might have been a small town, but it has a lovely queer community within it.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: It’s really great that you had such a supportive community at such a young age.

REP. KEETING: Honestly, I’m thankful for it every day. Growing up being encouraged to explore myself, my interests, and my identity is definitely one of the reasons I feel so comfortable today.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: Has DC and the world of politics changed that at all? 

REP. KEETING: I certainly don’t always have the freedoms that I’d like to have in regards to how I’d like to dress. Regulations on the hill for what constitutes as formal are still extremely gendered. It’ll be something I work on if I get the chance to return to the Capitol in the winter.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: Yes, you’re up for re-election, correct?

REP. KEETING: I am indeed.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: How are you feeling about the campaign?

REP. KEETING: I’m feeling pretty good. If the citizens of New York City want me in office, they’ll put me there, you know? If that’s not what they want, I’ll surely be doing this work in other capacities. I’ve been in and around Washington since 2012 doing different sorts of climate and political work, so I’m pretty confident that I won’t be leaving the city or the realm of politics anytime soon.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: You did work for different politicians before you were elected office, correct? Writing grants and doing climate crisis research?

REP. KEETING: Yes, I used to be knee deep in grant-writing on any given day in the first few years i spent here. I don’t think I miss it completely, but I do miss some of it sometimes.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: Did you always know you wanted to go into politics eventually? Or was it just a natural next step?

REP. KEETING: I can confidently say the younger version of me had no idea they were going to end up in politics. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but my parents have always been supportive no matter what I attempted to make of my life. I knew from a young age I was heavily interested in science and the arts, so I figured I’d end up doing something in those categories. I still kind of do, and I still paint and create art displays and curate galleries when I can, but that’s definitely taken a back seat to the science side of my interests, which have turned very political with the climate crisis. It was definitely more of a natural next step to slide into office.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: Sometimes things just fall into place, don’t they?

REP. KEETING: It certainly feels like it. My degree was like that too. So many people ask me why I double majored in Climate Science and Art History, but it just felt right. Moral of the story? Pursue your interests as much as you can. Hobbies, career options, whatever they are. Pursue it. Nothing is too small to care about.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: That’s good advice. I know younger me would have loved to hear that more. On the topic of your schooling and on the climate crisis - you’re nearing the completion of your PhD, yes? How has your schooling and your continuing education informed your stance on certain topics?

REP. KEETING: Since I had the opportunity to complete my masters degree in Climate & Society, I was able to put a lot of that work to use right away because it was a partially practical degree. I ended up working for a couple of environmental firms here in DC, working with politicians to help implement eco-friendly laws, but also tangible laws. I’d say that’s the biggest way my education has helped impact my stance -- in a much more actionable way. Studying both sides of it allowed me to see the changes that needed to be made from the science side of it, but also taught me the best way to explore how things can be implemented in a manageable and realistic way.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: At the same time, you’ve been a large inspiration for a lot of young activists, both within Climate Activism as well as in the LGBTQ+ Community  - what are your thoughts on that? Do you have any words of wisdom for your followers?

REP. KEETING: As much as it’s an honor to be seen as an inspiration, I’m not the first and I’m certainly not the last to fight for what I’m fighting for. I’m just one person who was elected into office to help do the work from a legislative perspective. Connect with your local communities, find workplaces and grassroots communities that stand for what you believe in. I didn’t start in politics, after all - I started there, and it most certainly shaped who I am today. And - as cheesy as it is - follow your heart. As long as you love what you do, you’ll never be really bored a day in your life. Frustrated? Maybe. But never bored.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: On that note of inspiration and firsts, this is your first term in congress, and you’re only 34. How has being a young activist in Congress shaped your experience?

REP. KEETING: I wish it wasn’t true, but people do tend to take me less seriously. What part of lack of respect that falls under is up for debate, but I do think my age definitely comes into play. It’s easy to claim seniority and push that ‘seasoned minds know best’, but I don’t think that’s true. I think what it really comes down to is how dedicated you are to your work, no matter your age. At the same time, being a young representative in Congress has allowed me to connect with a demographic of young voters that has felt consistently under-heard from the older members of the administration. By no means do I want to be a spokesperson, and I’m certainly not going to be young forever, but I think my age has helped me form an immediate connection with a lot of younger individuals who are maybe voting for the first time, or voting for the third or fourth time, who want to see their ideas moving into congress.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: Do you have any plans for last minute moves in the House before your re-election? Or will you be waiting for a hopeful new term to bring forward any movements or bills to the table?

REP. KEETING: A combination of both. I know there’s always the chance that I might not get another term in office, so I definitely have a few more things up my sleeve before the elections potentially take that chance. But I can confidently say that if I’m able to take up office again in January, rest assured I won’t be playing nice. I’ve got a lot I want to do, and a team behind me ready to help me make it happen.

SOPHIA HOTCHNER: Last question, for the sake of the fact that I kind of have to - you’ve vocalized your support for the Democratic Candidates, correct? How do you see the landscape of Capitol Hill changing depending on who takes office?

REP. KEETING: I most certainly have. I’m a vocal supporter of Berkeley-Zafar, and I’ll continue to be so. I’m not sure exactly how my job will change after the elections quite yet, but definitely the majority in the house will shape how much I’ll be able to get done next term, considering most of my politics aren’t quite… in line with most of the GOP’s. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. We still have some time left on the campaign trail, and I’ll be excited to see how it all plays out, that’s for sure.

I thanked Representative Keeting for sitting down for lunch with me as we wrap up, talking more casually about the meal and they ask me how everything’s going at the Post. It’s small conversations like this that make it easy to see why the Representative is only projecting upward. Their interest in community building and cross-disciplinary studies make them a strong candidate for politics, despite not growing up rooted in politics. They care and are passionate about their work, and it’s easy to feel that through the few conversations I’ve had with them. I’m positive others who have interacted with Representative Keeting know exactly what I’m talking about. 

Representative Keeting is currently running for re-election within the 10th District of New York State (Manhattan) and you can find their platform located on their website. Make sure you’re registered to vote, and get out to the polls this November!

#tags broken but yknow i'll tag this later #this is so long sorry y'all

[deliciousmeta]

According to halacha, which actions is Azula liable for?

One of my favorite ways to study Jewish texts is to take a fictional character or situation and examine it through the lens of Jewish text and tradition.

I’ve done this before with ABC’s Once Upon A Time. Now I’m going to take up this exercise again with Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Before I begin, a few things to keep in mind.

I’m not a Talmud scholar.

There is no definitive Jewish Opinion™ about any issue pertaining to halacha. Unanimous opinions on halacha are so rare that when we find one, we assume something went wrong in the process..

Azula is a morally polarizing character in AtLA fandom. Regardless of who you ask, you’re bound to get some strong opinions about exactly what she’s done, the extent to which she’s responsible for it, and what this says about her morality or lack thereof. I’m not going to rehash those arguments. I think I’ve made it clear that I care less about whether people approve of her behavior than I do about how their statements about her reinforce harmful messages about women, people of color, LGBT people and mentally ill people.

Nevertheless, she’s incredibly interesting, and studying Jewish text is fun, so here we are.

Why examine Azula’s actions through the lens of halacha?

Halacha gets a lot of flack because it comes off as excessively legalistic. But, in my opinion, that’s based on a misunderstanding of what halacha is. Usually translated as “Jewish law,” the word halacha actually comes from the root word that means “to go/walk.”

Halacha is not a collection of rules for the sake of having rules. It’s meant to take us somewhere. You can write a library of books about exactly what that is and what it means. But for the sake of simplicity, halacha is how we show that we recognize the holiness of everything in creation. So we aim to do right by one another, by the land we live in and by the creatures we share this world with.

Before we can launch into examining the halachic ramifications of the things Azula does, we need to establish some boundaries.

Only the show counts. It’s the common frame of reference universally accepted by the vast majority of fandom. Fandom’s stances on the comics, novelizations and other tie-in materials are too variable to base an analysis on.

Word of God is immaterial. While some would use the phrase Death of the Author, Jewish tradition has a more entertaining take on it. In the Talmud, there’s a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and some of his peers. In that story, Rabbi Eliezer says that if he’s right, this or that miraculous thing would happen, and those miraculous things do happen. But the other rabbis still reject it because we don’t determine halacha by miraculous signs. Eventually, God parts the heavens and says, “Rabbi Eliezer is right.” But another rabbi responds, “The Torah is not in heaven,” meaning that the Torah was meant for human beings on earth to interpret for themselves. And God’s response? To smile and say, “My children have defeated Me.”

Now, let’s begin.

Is Azula bound by halacha?

She’s not Jewish, so no. However, all human beings are bound by the Noahide laws. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Noahide covenant applies to all humans on all worlds. According to the Talmud (Sanhedrin 56a.24):

Since the halakhot of the descendants of Noah have been mentioned, a full discussion of the Noahide mitzvot is presented. The Sages taught in a baraita: The descendants of Noah, i.e., all of humanity, were commanded to observe seven mitzvot: The mitzva of establishing courts of judgment; and the prohibition against blessing, i.e., cursing, the name of God; and the prohibition of idol worship; and the prohibition against forbidden sexual relations; and the prohibition of bloodshed; and the prohibition of robbery; and the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal.

What is Azula’s legal status?

In any case, we know the rules, and now we have to decide whether Azula broke them or not, right?

Not so fast.

First, we have to determine if Azula is of the appropriate legal status to be held accountable for upholding the Noahide laws. In other words: when she committed certain acts, was Azula an adult capable of making rational decisions?

Clear your mind of the idea that being an adult is the same as being a grownup. Instead, think of it as a term that defines when people can make legally binding decisions.

As far as I can tell, the Talmud doesn’t say when a gentile becomes an adult. However, we can use halacha as a guide.

Now for a warning.

If frank talk about the physical development of adolescents makes you uncomfortable, you might want to skip this next part. There’s nothing graphic or titillating about what I’m going to discuss, but if breasts and pubic hair squick you out, skip this part until I say it’s safe in bold like this.

According to halacha, a girl reaches adulthood when she’s twelve years and one day old and has two pubic hairs. Yeah, you read that right. Twelve and two pubes are the requirement. Before this point, nothing she does is legally binding, even if she’s really smart and claims to be fully aware of what she’s doing. After this point, her actions are legally binding, even if she says she had no idea what she was doing.

On the show, we see Azula in a range of ages. In “Zuko Alone,” we see her at roughly eight years old. In “The Storm,” she’s about eleven. In all the other episodes she’s in, she’s fourteen. So, from a legal standpoint, flashback!Azula is too young for her actions to be legally binding. At that point in time, the responsibility would fall to her parents.

Um, I’m not willing to speculate about the genitals of an underage cartoon character, so for the sake of argument, I’m assuming that 14-year-old Azula meets the two pubes requirement. Thus, 14-year-old Azula is responsible for her actions.

If you skipped that last part, it’s safe to continue now.

OK, we’ve established that flashback!Azula is too young for her actions to be legally binding, but in the main story, Azula is legally an adult and responsible for her actions.

We good? Alright.

Which Noahide laws does Azula actually break?

This is both easier and harder than it seems.

The laws about idol worship, cursing God, and forbidden sexual acts don’t apply to her because neither religion nor sex are portrayed as such on the show. Also, the law about establishing courts of justice is a communal obligation, not one that falls on a single individual, so that’s another one we don’t have to concern ourselves with.

That leaves the prohibitions against bloodshed, robbery and eating a limb cut from a living animal.

First up: bloodshed.

The connotation of the prohibition against bloodshed is not for general acts of violence, but actual murder.

Here’s where I think I’m going to throw a lot of people for a loop. Azula doesn’t kill anyone on the show. She tries. She comes close. She wouldn’t lose sleep over it if she did. But nobody’s dead because of her. She doesn’t even take lives as collateral damage.

One could argue that zapping Aang with lightning counts as killing, but when the Sages talk about death and dying, I assume they mean the kind where the dead stay dead, not people who are revived by magic spirit water. Furthermore, if someone’s about to kill you (and I think entering the Avatar State qualifies here), you are halachically obligated to save your own life, even if it means killing that person.

Second: robbery.

We’ll come back to that.

Third: eating a limb from a living animal.

This prohibition is often expanded to incorporate all forms of animal cruelty.

The show does portray animal cruelty. We see a prime example with the circus in “Appa’s Lost Days.”

But what about Azula? We don’t see her interact with many animals on the show, but there are two notable examples: Appa the sky bison in “Appa’s Lost Days” and Bosco the bear in “The Crossroads of Destiny.”

How does her behavior measure up? Despite her earlier behavior of terrorizing turtleducks, Azula does not harm either Appa or Bosco.

On the show, Mai and Ty Lee are seen spending time with Bosco in the throne room while the Earth King is imprisoned. So, at the very least, they treat the bear well.

So, Azula is not liable for animal cruelty.

*hands Azula her Not As Big A Jerk As She Could Have Been award*

Now, let’s revisit that prohibition against robbery.

Given the prescribed punishment (decapitation), the connotation seems to be taking the rightful property of another through violent means. That being said, the prohibition against robbery is often extended to include all sorts of theft.

This one might have some legs. On the show, does Azula take the rightful property of another, and does she use violent means to do so?

Absolutely.

A major example is stealing the clothes of the Kyoshi Warriors after defeating them in combat.

But!

The show takes place during a time of war, and the Kyoshi Warriors, as allies of the Avatar, are enemies of the Fire Nation. So does beating them up and taking their uniforms fall under the prohibition against robbery, or are the Kyoshi Warrior uniforms considered the spoils of war and thus free for the taking?

Halachically speaking, it might actually be the latter. When fighting the Kyoshi Warriors, Azula acts as a military commander during a time of war and achieves a decisive victory against an elite combat unit. Thus, she is entitled to take their stuff.

So, back to the original question: which actions does Azula commit during the show that she’s halachically liable for?

The answer, shockingly, may be: none.

On the show, we’re encouraged to think of Azula as a Very Bad Girl who does Very Bad Things. She’s calculating, ruthless and deceptive. She’s also full of herself. She’s not someone who inspires warm, fuzzy feelings in most people. But when you put her actions under the microscope, she exercises remarkable restraint compared to what she’s capable of.

Don’t worry. No one’s going to nominate her for a Nobel Peace Prize just yet. This is Azula we’re talking about. She’s not acting out of an overwhelming love for humanity. But it is interesting that despite her threats to kill, maim and destroy, she doesn’t participate in wanton destruction or wasteful loss of life.

#azula #azula meta #jewish meta #atla meta