#this was heavily referenced from someones art i just don’t remember where i found the original piece so i cant credit them :(

[vividyon]

My wife cant stop thinking about her

#rain world #iterator #looks to the moon #lttm #rw lttm #vivart #this was heavily referenced from someones art i just don’t remember where i found the original piece so i cant credit them :( #big sis moon

[selfproducingfanfictionauthor]

the worlds collide - i: an old face

Summary: Who are you? Now that the new world has collided with the remnants of the old? 

Pairing: BTS x reader (slight Got7/Jackson x reader)

Warnings: Referenced violence, covert sexism, zombies  Notes:  I knoooow I should be working on lessons to build and looking back at you but this idea just won’t let go. I originally wrote it for my 30 minute challenge but it got out of hand. So here it is, a zombie au! Not sure how long it’ll be yet but we’ll see! UNEDITED. Word Count: 3.2k

At the center of the end of the world, humanity was stripped to what it only needs to exist - strength, camaraderie, and grit.

With the undead nipping at your heels day and night, the only thought that remained were thoughts of where the nearest exist is, how to store food, how much farther for the next stronghold, and how long will that stronghold last. To survive, you stripped away everything unnecessary from your former life. All the bashfulness, the shame, and coated yourself with an armor as thick as the new callouses on your fingers - you still remember the first time you’ve went topless around Namjoon, and neither of you flinched.

Frankly, you’ve forgotten how to be anything else but this brought you to your new role in the new world. You’re no longer a girl, or a woman - you’re a survivor.

And with your old life etched in the sinew of your muscles, of your arms and your legs, you became a valuable member of the group. Along with Jungkook and Hoseok, you carry the front, bashing heads of zombies left and right, clearing the way to a new possible food source and haven.

It was a tiring existence, the type of tired that can’t be washed away by sleep. If that’s what you can call those pockets of peace you have when you’ve finally trusted them to watch your back.

It took long for you to finally drop your guard around these boys that you now call your family. Understandable, given that men didn’t really have a great track record for women to trust them even prior to the apocalypse. But you’ve met them in a tight circumstance, that had them trusting you before you even bothered to try.

(It was Jimin who first reached out, somehow unchanged by the cruelty of the new world. Always soft, always yearning.)

The seven of them had been friends before shit went down, and you were just a lucky one to be part of their orbit.

You remind yourself of this now that the new world has began.

This is the longest you’ve stayed in one place since two years ago, and it’s starting to feel like a place everyone could plant their roots in. The town’s largely untouched by the apocalypse, its strategic location in the mountains and quick response had them building trenches and walls, to keep the hoard from closing in.

It’s an extra precaution thoughtfully made by a self-sustaining community. For once, isolation brought forth more benefits than mishaps. They’ve barely lost people, largely untouched by the terrors of the world outside theirs. Innocent. Their lives went on. No nightmares, nothing.

The first time one of the pleasantly-dressed girls approached you with what could’ve been friendship, you flinched.

The boys were taken to it so easily, perhaps being as weary as you are didn’t make them jaded as it has made you.

Namjoon was swept away by the village committee, his brains and leadership evident with how he led you to safety. Jin and Jimin’s apprenticed under the village doctor, Yoongi’s turned to farming along with Taehyung, while Hoseok and Jungkook’s muscles are put to test building houses at the craft shop.

Everybody’s found a place except you, because while this town’s been untouched in all the good ways, it’s also been untouched in a sense that it kept to all the antiquated ways of the old world.

And, you hate how much you resent it in your deepest of hearts.

It’s as if they thought that putting you in a dress will wash away all the blood in your hands, as if you didn’t shed as much as all the boys did if not more. You’ve been turned away from all the things you could do, and are now being forced into things they want you to.

It’s suffocating, being torn with the desire to put your foot down and the fear of being perceived as ungrateful.

“They don’t understand, do they?”

You blink out of your thoughts and turn to a familiar face making himself comfortable beside you.

Jaebeom’s pushed away the unfinished basket to the side and pulled up one of his long legs to rest his elbow on.

By his side is his gun, locked and loaded, always ready even after months of quiet. You didn’t even hear him come in, but instead of being unsettled, you’re a slightest bit relieved to know that at least someone hasn’t gotten rusty.

The scar on his eyebrow stands out underneath the moonlight, and on  the porch of your little house way’s away from the center of the town, you two make a fine pair of outsiders.

“No, they don’t.”

Even in times of peace, loss is inevitable.

Namjoon mulls over this as he looks at the list of names up for the next supply run. Two names have been crossed, and two funerals were attended last week. One had a body, another didn’t.

Old man Jungho died of a heart attack after his son died outside, and along with the grief, Namjoon could feel the pressure placed on his shoulders by a community unused to “unnatural” losses.

He’s developed a cycling procedure that makes it slightly fair to everyone who volunteered. Marked with blue ink are the ones who were in the previous run, those in black are the ones who are up for the next one.

With the latter list down by two, Namjoon turns to a different corner of his notebook to see your name. Until now, he’s had every excuse not to put you out there but now…

“Fuck,” Namjoon sighs and rubs his face with his hands. He doesn’t know why you’ll want to do this again. He’s tried asking you but somehow, you’ve grown farther and farther away.

When he tried to find you in the village garden with Yoongi, suddenly you’re out getting water. When Seokjin did your monthly checkup, you’re as impenetrable as the walls, when Hoseok tried to approach you with improvements for your home, you brush him away saying you’ve dealt with it with Jaebeom.

Jaebeom.

Whom you’ve only met a month in after you’ve settled into town. Who somehow’s been rumored to visit your house after dark, when the boys you’ve spent two years with haven’t even gotten the chance to step into your home.

Namjoon lets out a shaky breath. You’ve been so unreachable it’s made him cry out of frustration when the nights are dark and the seven of them feel your absence the most in their own quaint home.

They miss you, so much. Even Yoongi who’s as taciturn as they come has tried reaching out to you, working endlessly hard in his own little garden at the back of their house to produce strawberries that you love so much.

“Who’s on the list?”

Hoseok steps in the kitchen and jolts Namjoon out of his longing. He’s wearing his “fight” pants and boots, his gun taken out of the secret cellar and empty go bag slung on his shoulders.

Namjoon pushes his notebook towards him and watches as his friend’s face grow dark at the sight of your name.

“No.”

Namjoon sighs at the conviction in his friend’s voice. It draws in Jungkook from the living room, wearing the same pants and same tension in his shoulders every run.

It’s different when it was just the seven of them, now, they have to lead a bunch of unseasoned people outside the walls just so they don’t go in blind when - not if - shit hits the fan. The loss of the Youngho weighs heavily on Jungkook. They were of the same age, but not the same life experience and ultimately, that was what killed him.

“No, what?”

Jungkook takes in the tension of the room and glances down at the open notebook. “Oh.”

He mouths your name silently, treasuring each syllable. How long since he’s called you? How long since you two talked? Back outside, he liked to believe you and him had a special bond born in the midst of danger and trivial common hobbies from the old world.

He still has that photo card of an old gaming character you two loved.

“I can’t play favorites.” Namjoon states, teetering between duty and keeping you safe inside the walls. If you knew, you’d probably hate him for this, but you don’t.

“You can - you have!” Hoseok slams his hands on the table, the sound echoing inside their house. Everything falls silent followed by footsteps from the second floor.  “What makes it different now?”

“The difference is the fact that we lost someone!” Namjoon bellows, his anger and stress rolling off him like waves but Hoseok doesn’t stand down. He knows its selfish, but the only thing that has him going now that you’ve pulled away is the knowledge that you’re safe.

“We always lose someone—“

“It’s not just us anymore, you know that, Hobi.”

Hoseok bites his cheek at Namjoon’s use of his nickname and he could feel the rest watching him like a hawk. All at once the fight goes out of him. It’s true. In exchange for safety, the get a community - for better or worse.

A hand lands on his shoulder and he turns to Taehyung, who in turn offers a strained smile. “At least, she has two of you to keep an eye on her out there. Like old times.”

Hoseok never thought he’d feel nostalgic about the times they’re elbow-deep in zombie gut but — “Yeah, like old times.”

Except, it isn’t like the old times.

Jungkook’s always been an awkward guy around girls, especially pre-apocalypse. He was all long limbs and Bambi eyes, not quite steadfast on what he was as a man and easily shaken by every attractive girl’s attention.

And although he’s grown a bit, confident in his looks and skills in this new world, he still hasn’t mastered the art of rejecting someone.

(He’s never had to, not when it was you.)

And so, he’s stuck at the last meeting with his back against the wall and one of the town’s remaining daughters - Hyerin-  crowding his space as opposed to being beside you across the room.

He doesn’t even know that Hyerin signed up for the run, especially with how he’s told her that it’s dangerous and that she hasn’t had the proper training to go out there. It rankles him all sorts of wrong when she said that her father said that “it isn’t as dangerous as they made it out to be” as if they’re lying about the dangers they’ve faced.

And sure, they’ve cleared out a large space around the town of zombies but things can always go wrong, and if there’s anything Jungkook has learned is that things have a habit of luring you to a false sense of security before fucking everything up.

Hoseok’s giving the briefing to their small group of ten, and he could see his friend’s eyes linger a second too long whenever it passes you. You with your hair pulled back and back straight, it almost brings him back.

But then you smile at something Jaebeom says and Jungkook feels his chest tightening on cue. You haven’t smiled nor even looked at him since the start of this briefing. What had he done wrong? What have they done wrong that drove you away?

“We might encounter people on this run, and I want you to remember - people are more dangerous than zombies.” Hoseok reminds the group, “They can think, they can plot - and are much harder to predict. We’ll need someone to bring up the front before we flank the space—“

Before Jungkook could raise his hand, yours shoot up along with Jaebeom’s.

“I’ll do it.”

From the back, Jungkook could clearly hear the murmurs of the men in the group. Someone, someone stupidly brave enough speaks up, “I think you should let the men handle this, darling.”

Jungkook sees you put your hand on Jaebeom’s arm before turning to where the voice is. It’s one of the older folks, large and burly with eyes alight with mockery.

You smile sickly sweet, “Oh? I’m not the one who puked on the side of the road during the last run, am I?”

The man sputters and laughter erupts around him, his friends who were equal parts terrified at the sight of a half-torso crawling towards them last month. It’s easy to laugh when it’s not your ass on the line.

Before he gets another word in, you remind him, Hoseok, Jungkook and everyone in the room how dangerous you were on the outside. And how dangerous you still are here.

“And for the record, could you stomach killing a man when you can’t even finish off a zombie? I can,” you pause the silence being answer enough, “So, no, I’m not leaving this to the men.”

“Antagonizing them isn’t earning you any points.”

Keeping your eyes on the road helps you steady your nerves. Outside, you could see the remains of pushed over cars as your caravan makes its way away from the forest and down the mountain.

According to the last team’s run’s intel, there were traces of people loitering down the town proper and so Namjoon’s sent a team before you get caught unawares.

Hoseok coughs, “Y/N. Are you listening?”

“I didn’t know there were points to earn.”

One line, and its scathing but, Hoseok thinks, at least you’re talking to him. He was afraid he’s forgotten your voice.

He may have abused his power a bit to split you up from Jaebeom but it still makes sense, given that you two have worked together longer outside. You with your speed and him with his agility, you make a pretty good team.

And with your pretty face, people tend to underestimate you until its too late.

Hoseok pauses and mulls over your statement. Adjustment is hard, he knows, pandering to people who don’t know how hard it is on the outside but it’s needed. He doesn’t understand where your dislike of it comes from, so much so you’ve decided to ostracize yourself not only from the people in town but also from them.

(He’s a man. Of course he doesn’t understand. Old or new world, men can only touch the surface of what damage the world has done to women.)

“Y/N, it’s just so we could live with them peacefully. No trouble.”

You finally turn to him and he shivers from the coolness in your eyes. “When have I caused them any trouble? I help out, don’t I? I’m a functioning member of the community - is it required to be all chummy with them?”

Framed like that, Hoseok doesn’t have any answer but a semblance of the truth lying in a question, “Why don’t you talk to us anymore?”

Outside, the caravan reaches its destination and people pour out of the old trucks.

“Is there anything to talk about?”

Of course, of course there is, Hoseok wanted to say. But job calls, and  when the sight of tracks greet your group, everything goes back to the back burner.

By the looks of it, there were at least four people about. All with large feet which most likely mean they were males.

Hoseok made a executive decision and sent back all of the group except you, Jaebeom and Jungkook. Given the situation, your group had too many people for this run turned reconnaisance and moving that many people will slow down any retreat you might need to do.

So he sent them back up with a message to Namjoon about the situation. He’ll get a lashing later but he’s sure the guys will understand. A small group is more manageable, but a group with established trust and dynamics (at least with the three of you) is more than ideal.

Your tracking leads the team to one of the larger convenient grocery stores in town. It’s long been looted and cleaned out, but somehow, one of the older craftsmen in the village figured out how to run the generator. Now, it’s store room is being used to hold and freeze any meat and fish you can’t afford to salt. How long you’ll have it running with the generator, who knows?

At what previously was an aisle for chips and snacks, you and Hoseok tread lightly, guns cocked and hands steady, your ears straining to hear any off-beat step as you get deeper into the store. Somewhere across the room, you know that Jungkook and Jaebeom are doing the same, closing off the larger exit.

It’s four on four, the odds may not be on your favor if it comes down to it but it’s not on theirs entirely either -whoever they are.

The morning light filters through the broken glass windows and reflects on your gun as you step forward to the large space at the end of the aisle. At the corner of your eye, you see Jungkook, -free of that girl hanging off his arm- tilt his head towards the large freezer ahead of you.

Behind him, Jaebeom moves to the right, taking position for a surprise attack while you three continue to advance. The freezer’s door is slightly ajar and you could almost make out the conversation and the shadows moving about inside. There’s unfettered laughter and guffaws, pulling you into a false sense of familiarity.

That laugh…

You were so in your head that your next step crushes a stray glass and echoes in the store. For a moment, it rings in the air, suspended like Hoseok freezing to look at you, before suddenly everything just- drops.

Out the door, someone tackles you to the ground, grabbing your gun and tossing it under the shelves. Your head bounces against the tiles and it steals your breath in pain but without missing a beat, you drive the heel of your palm to the man’s chin, hard enough to unbalance him off your waist.

The man rolls to the side and tries to grab your foot before you break free and kicks it to his face. With satisfaction, you hear him grunt in pain before grabbing at you again.

To the side, you see Hoseok trying to reach you, his gun similarly tossed away by the paler and taller man clutching his shoulder, slumped against a turned over cart. You’re ears are ringing, and you might’ve hit your head but vaguely you could hear someone punching someone at the other side of the aisle.

Everything happens so fast - and ends so quickly.

Your vision clears up as a cock of a gun rings clear, pausing everyone’s movements.

In front of you is a face you’d never thought you’d see again. He’s darker, with what seems to be a permanent five o’clock shadow on his jaw, but his eyes light up at the sight of you and a smile stretches on his lips, his hands up but uncaring of Jaebeom’s gun against his head.

“Y/N, long time no see.”

You gasp, frozen on the floor. “Jackson.”

End Notes: Hearts are appreciated but comments are gold. Let me know what you think and if you want to be included in a tag list!

#bangtanarmynet #thetruthuntoldnet #bts fanfiction #zombie apocalypse #the worlds collide #bts x reader #bts scenario #rebuilding in a dystopia #slight got7 x reader #namjoon x reader #yoongi x reader #seokjin x reader #jungkook x reader #jimin x reader #taehyung x reader #hoseok x reader #bts angst #bts zombie au #bts fic #bts writing

[jonismitchell]

hey arden do you have any book suggestions? i don’t have any preference/specific genre i’m looking for but i just need something new to read while in quarantine :)

you’re in luck! i happen to be a massive nerd and i’m going to compile a gigantic list of recs for you. here we go.

the only classics worth reading: i want to preface this by saying i did not pick these books because they are written by women. they are just good and they happen to be by women. this reinforces my theory that only women can write.

emma by jane austen: better than pride and prejudice by a long shot. the characters are funny, the romance is swoon worthy (don’t think too hard about the age gap), it says very smart things about society, and i could write an essay on how it revolutionized fiction.

wuthering heights by emily bronte: my all time favourite book about how awful people are and how the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself. it’s absolutely exceptional in every respect. i won’t go into too much detail because i don’t want to give anything away, but you should definitely read this book.

jane eyre by charlotte bronte: i’m not saying i’m a bronte sister stan, i’m just saying i’m a bronte sister stan who can’t be bothered to take five seconds to copy the accent. anyway, i read this book when i was a wee lass and i stole it from an apartment in nice. the characters are genuinely amazing, and it’s an early feminist book, which i think is fantastic.

the handmaid’s tale by margaret atwood: you don’t get more feminist classic than this. set in a dystopian future where women are only valued for their ability to procreate, atwood examines gender roles and still delivers a brilliant adventure story. if you end up liking this, try the power by naomi alderman, which essentially tells of the opposite society.

the bell jar by sylvia plath: an introspective story about mental illness. it’s the type of writing that i feel hits hard at about any age, and i remember feeling really haunted after finishing the whole thing in a night. definitely high up on my list of amazing novels.

feel good books: sometimes, we need to read something that’s not revolutionary but still radical. don’t worry, i got you. here’s the lasagna of novels.

finding audrey by sophie kinsella: this book is funny, heartwarming, and makes you think. as someone with anxiety, i felt really represented by a lot of audrey’s behaviours. her mom is lowkey nuts, but i feel like that shouldn’t impede your enjoyment of the book.

the shadowhunters series by cassandra clare: LISTEN. objectively cassandra clare is a terrible person. objectively these books are not good. but they are amusing! they are comforting! they are interesting! also, there are a million of them. start with the infernal devices: clockwork angel, clockwork prince, and clockwork princess. set in old old london, this series features the only valid love triangle ever, girls who like to read and kick ass, and boys who are soft and play the violin. next, head to the mortal instruments, which is pretty much drinny fanfiction. don’t think too hard during these and you’ll have a good time. after that, read the short story collections the bane chronicles and tales of shadowhunter academy. if you got really into the lore (like me) these books are funny and a little captivating. finally, get to the highlight of this whole thing, the dark artifices. the one true love of my life, emma carstairs, stars in this brilliant trilogy about forbidden love. yes, it’s super corny, but all these books are super corny. if you can’t get enough of the universe (or accidentally got hooked) try out the collection ghosts of the shadow market. once you finish that, you can read the first books in the new series(es), red scrolls of magic and chain of gold. all of these books are jam packed with magic and vaguely plagarized demons. not brilliant, but a fun ride.

emma mills books: emma mills writes cute happy contemporary romances and i can’t recommend her enough! first & then tells the story of a jane austen obsessed nerd who crushes on a jock. which could actually be about me, and if you trust my judgement, you probably like me enough to read this book secretly written about me. foolish hearts gives theatre kids and boy band stans alike a chance to feel represented in what could be one of the sweetest (and funniest!) romances of all time. famous in a small town gives band kids and people who are clarinet-sized a chance to shine, and includes a country singer who struck me with her similarities to taylor swift. (our song is even referenced in the novel!) by far my favourite would have to be this adventure ends, which is hilarious and heartbreaking and talks about fanfiction without looking down on it. all of these books are definitely feel good and will make you believe in heterosexual romance.

mildly upsetting fantasy: just fantasy trilogies that will hurt you.

the poppy war by r.f. kuang: wonder what harry potter would be like if the magic system was complicated and the murder was high? no, like high on opium? and the plot was based on chinese military history? look no further than the brilliant work of art that is the poppy war. this book is by far the best fantasy out there, i cannot exaggerate that enough. also out is the equally compelling sequel the dragon republic, and the final book in the trilogy is set to hit shelves this year. please please please read this amazing book.

six of crows by leigh bardugo: six dysfunctional criminals try to steal from the most heavily guarded prison in the world. what could go wrong? this novel is intelligent and witty, and will keep you on the edge of your seat as you’re dragged into this scheming and brilliant world. in my opinion, this is the only valid book in the grishaverse. this and its equally well plotted sequel, crooked kingdom.

the gilded wolves by roshani choski: this one is definitely similar to six of crows in its funny and smart main cast. the magic system is super unique and the plot is endlessly enjoyable. it’s also set in old old paris! so france is always fun. there are also tons of mythology references and disaster bisexuals. and apparently the sequel (the silvered serpents) comes out july of this year.

scythe by neal shusterman: the first book on this list by a man, wow! i’m so inclusive. anyway, this genius trilogy is set in a world where humanity has solved almost every single problem, except overpopulation and corruption. an elite order called scythes are tasked with killing and managing the order of death. it’s like the hunger games went took a political science seminar. everything spirals out of control very quickly and the characters are so great. the sequels are called thunderhead and the toll respectively, and the overarching tale is gripping.

the cruel prince by holly black: i’m not kidding when i say this is the only faery book that matters. this book stars a human girl who grows up in the magical world and more violence than is statistically necessary. but it’s good! this is also a trilogy (every book on this list is the first one in a trilogy, i am the worst, i’m sorry) and the sequel the wicked king is quite possibly the best scheme-y magic politics thing i’ve ever read. and the final book, queen of nothing, doesn’t disappoint by a long shot.

contemporaries no one talks about

the boy who steals houses by cg drews: this book has autistic representation! and it’s written by book blogger paperfury, who is even more of a delight on the page than she is on the internet. be warned, this book includes heavy mentions of abuse and graphic violence that are unavoidable. but it will break your heart and stitch it back together again. also, waffles.

some boys by patty blount: this book deals very candidly with the aftermath of rape and public pressure. it is also one of my favourite books of all time for its treatment of ‘bro culture.’ and the heroine, grace, is incredibly strong. i read this book in maybe fourth grade? and it essentially inspired me to start giving a damn about social justice. so yeah, there’s that. (i also haven’t read it since fourth grade, so someone will have to tell me if it holds up).

emergency contact by mary choi: i’m rereading this for the second time right now and it’s still really awesome. it tells the story of an unlikely friendship, big dreams, and does it all through a really interesting narrative voice that manages to effectively capture two very different people. it is yet another romance, but it’s really wonderful and heartwarming. (unlike the other two books in this section).

children’s books that treat kids like people

a series of unfortunate events by lemony snicket: this is quite literally my favourite series of all time. it’s upsetting and kind of wrong once you think about it a lot, but it’s also maybe the best thing ever written. i literally cannot explain how much i love these books. there are thirteen books, so you’re definitely in for a good, long time.  

the mysterious benedict society by trenton lee stewart: three books about propaganda and smart kids and found family. i literally do not know what else you want out of a series. it’s fun and there’s only a little bit of kidnapping, so it’s very family appropriate compared to the other books on this list.

wuh luh wuh

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid: i KNOW no one shuts up about this book but you really should read it. like, there’s nothing that will ever top the narrative. the drama, the glamour, the girls who love girls, you know? all the components of a brilliant novel. it’s also got some truly poetic prose and genuinely beautiful moments. the reason everyone talks about this book is because it’s amazing. send tweet.

girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan:  (massive trigger warning for sexual violence)  haha! another violent fantasy book that’s part of a trilogy! thought you escaped that, didn’t you? this magic system is brilliant and the book is so good. it’s a breath of fresh air into young adult fiction. and did i mention it’s a wlw romance? i read this during a math class and had to go to the bathroom to cry when i finished it, because there was finally a heroine in a fantasy novel who i could see myself in. there’s also a sequel, girls of storm and shadow, that is equally amazing.

it’s not like it’s a secret by misa suigura: wlw girls with soft poetry vibes. complicated family lives. candidly dealing with racism, sexism, and homophobia. this book is really good. simply read this book.

i have even MORE book recs but i decided to cut myself off because this is the longest thing i’ve ever written for tumblr. hope you enjoy!

#angxlsrolltheireyes #book recs #asking with you

[antinonymous]

The Punk Rock in Marxist-Leninism

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always hated punk rock; the reasons why having changed significantly. I heavily identified as Right-wing throughout my childhood through early adolescence, so punk rock was a piece of culture that I quickly realized was not for me, with its far-left anarchist aesthetic. If you’d shown and explained to me something like Holiday in Cambodia I wouldn’t have cared in the slightest. Anti-fascists often forget about how the far-right rarely considers the vast and vapid categorizations of different leftists and other anti-fascist types. Anarchists are just as anti-American as Stalinists; anarchists just don’t have a plan (besides the occasional riot) so they’re more docile and easier to ignore. They’re just extra annoying and snobby. The sonic elements of punk mixed in with the political atmosphere sealed it for me. I thought this entire genre of music sounded like some twerp in class who says shit about America just to ‘piss off the system’. Childish, really.

In high school, the first punk band I didn’t immediately hate was neo-Nazi band Skrewdriver. I was introduced to them on a bus for school, with only one black kid on the whole bus, having the song White Power being shown explicitly to them. I remember referencing it to him later in conversation and he said he hated that experience. To me though? Finally, I thought, some punk rock where I can very easily say ‘well I like the music, but I don’t like their politics’ and it isn’t SJW crap. If I were to say stuff like that about other punk rock bands that’d be blasphemy, so I avoided the leftists and found more Nazi punk, where the bad politics were more obvious.

As someone who’s always been into music, my childhood had a specific opinion that I now understand to be just a simple analysis- namely, that politically left-wing music doesn’t do anything to change the system whatsoever. On an open-mic day in my high school the buses had already arrived and then my band got to play Killing in The Name. The school, the ‘system’, allotted us more time because they wanted to hear a cool song. Nobody was inspired by that song that day to think critically about the condition of militarized police in America or how the Klan’s ideology controls the majority of America’s police. I know I didn’t. Frankly, I thought putting politics in music was a waste of time Right or Left. And I found more Rightist music later on, namely in black metal.

Black metal is a mirror image of punk, if that mirror were on two ends of a horseshoe. Both started out as what we today label ‘edgy’, yet generally non-political, and then got somewhat overtaken by the far right and far left. Black metal was firmly cemented in Nazi ideology by the mid-90s with Burzum and the history of the Norwegian second wave, as well as later bands like Germany’s Absurd to solidify National Socialist Black Metal as its own genre. Then there’re wackos like Peste Noire, who, with the help of figures like Anthony Fantano, are somewhat normalized and mainstream while also having deep French nationalist roots. But what makes black metal also similar to punk is the later insurgency movements from either political side into the other genre. Nazi punk distinguishes itself not by its members being skinheads, for skinheads began as a far-left movement, but rather with aesthetics like white and red shoelaces (wrapped straight) and, of course, swastikas. In the mid/late 2010s an anti-fascist black metal scene emerged in response to the atrocities of the Obama administration and Trump’s election victory. This was spearheaded by bands like Gaylord and Neckbeard Death Camp as well as others from Bandcamp and Soundcloud. It didn’t try to distinguish itself at all, in a crypto-anti-fascism directly proselytizing. Nazi punk and anti-fascist black metal are similar in that they, like all music as we’ll be seeing, also don’t achieve anything, but are specifically trying to change the strata of their own genre’s political associations. As my own father put it, there’s only two kinds of Oi – racist and non-racist.

Left-wing black metal was obvious folly that I participated in anyway. But even when I eventually started putting personal politics into my music from 2016 through 2019, I still avoided major bands like Rage and punk rock (besides Bad Religion, which I only liked because I saw a live cover). It was actually Peste Noire who showed me the wonder of sampling in music; yet another far-right appropriation of musical technique, sadly. It was only in late 2019 and 2020 that I listened to bands like Rage and Dead Kennedys, and seeing the amount of effort they put in their messaging left me cynically giggling. Paraphrasing other commentators, music has no effect on political change no matter how radical. Far-left Marxist, Bolshevik, anarchist and Social-Democratic musical compositions have existed since the nineteenth century and were plentiful in the entirety of the 20th century, albeit with significant change after the World Wars. But music is too individualistic to be politically effective as every individual person’s preferences are different. This is how Rage and anarchist punk rock sold so well in America and how I continued to enjoy Peste Noire long after I left the Right.

My music was also inspired by industrial metal band Rammstein, and I’ve since learned that, generally speaking, politically provocative art is an integral part of industrial music generally, which easily puts off someone not paying careful attention to the music. To paraphrase Žižek, artists like Rammstein and Laibach use fascistic language and imagery in a controlled way that lifts various signs from their associations of authoritarianism, leaving them inoffensive enough to gain mainstream credibility. Case in point, Slovenia’s Laibach has caused numerous controversies over their 41-year-career with their overtly militaristic theme, prolific German lyrics, and for having been branded as dissidents by the Yugoslav government, yet they are the only foreign band that has ever performed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They were invited to play in 2015 to celebrate the 70-year-anniversary of the fall of imperial Japanese rule on National Liberation Day. The government would clearly know better than to invite a legitimate fascist band; in their minds that would most certainly create an immediate attempt to try to cause some type of western imperialist unrest. One would wonder why they’d invite anyone at all. But nothing malevolent came about from it; the show went fine, and clips of it are on YouTube. I won’t try to make any comment on any individual in the DPRK or anywhere else, but it’s fascinating to think of what happens when Laibach is played through North Korean speakers, interpreted by those who have few else in common with the band other than they both have experience living under a régime inspired by Marx.

It must be a different experience from, say, the experience of Anarchy in the UK by Sex Pistols as sung on North Korean karaoke by VICE journalist Sam Smith. This leads me to my current gripes with punk rock, specifically in the year 2021.

Sex Pistols are the origin of punk rock’s association with anarchism due to the song mentioned above, but they are also the origin of punk rock’s association with Nazism due to Sid Vicious’ use of a swastika t-shirt. This is no paradox. Both are a result of Liberal nihilism, of having no true political leaning other than blind offensiveness and ideological motivation without one ever needing sincerity in belief. Either that or punk rock bands are explicitly Liberal/conservative, which is a discourse I remember from my childhood. Post-90s punk was too commercial, liberal, gay, et cetera, with bands such as Green Day having been seen as a perversion of the solidarity of the mostly cisgender heteronormative anarchist community of people who actually listen to punk rock. John Lydon is an open Trump-supporter. After the far-right January 6th attack on the Capitol, Dead Kennedys retweeted many Liberal commentators and politicians, including Republicans Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I see not a problem with individual people and artists but a problem with punk rock as artistic expression; it has terminal hollow conformity. Overall, its association with petit bourgeois ideology leaves punk rock with little to give it credibility. Punk rock has always had an insincere, two-faced nature. ‘Punk’s not dead’ is the anti-fascist equivalent of ‘return to tradition’…or is it anti-fascist? Depends on who’s saying it, where’s being said, and who hears it.

Where to turn? Marxist-Leninists (and sometimes even anarchists) will argue that social bureaucracies such as Cuba, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam and the DPRK provide an alternative to American global homogeny. Considering the American military spent over $700,000,000,000 on its military last year, and that many bases are specifically placed around those listed countries, their arguments aren’t entirely unconvincing. They also argue that because Marxist-Leninist politicians provided industrialization and progress for their nations without what Marxist-Leninists would personally term “imperialist war”, they should be praised, as well as the fact that many of the problems commonly associated with those countries are explicitly from American intervention to stop ‘the spread of Marxism’ and to keep them subordinated to western authority. However, as Bordiga writes in Characteristic Theses of the Party, the integral realization of socialism within the limits of one country is inconceivable and the socialist transformation cannot be carried out without insuccess and momentary set-backs. The defence of the proletarian regime against the ever-present dangers of degeneration is possible only if the proletarian State is always solidary with the international struggle of the working class of each country against its own bourgeoisie, its State and its army; this struggle permits of no respite even in wartime. This co-ordination can only be secured if the world communist Party controls the politics and programme of the States where the working class has vanquished.

Am I arguing for left unity, left solidarity, the whole “anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are going for the same communist goal” argument? No, I’m not talking about that. This has been said before but, historically speaking, there’s usually only one correct way to pilot a vehicle and thousands of wrong ways. But I’m talking about music. And I bring up Marxist-Leninism for what could be seen as a superficial reason; that the potency of Musikbolschewismus is greater than the potency of traditional anarchist punk rock. If we’re just talking about music to ‘piss people off’, which is what punk rock culturally amounts to, punk rock could be Marxist-Leninist in that that ideology has more of the nihilistic punk rock mentality than any band you could name. Because Marxist-Leninism can indeed be quite nihilistic, with Russian Bolshevik minority rule in foreign countries paralleling the worst aspects of American imperialism and its related apologia. As for industrialization, the USSR demobilized its military to a lesser extent than other European countries, organized more strictly than NATO. Their industrialization in question was related to impersonal and heavily regulated bureaucratic trade, the aforementioned occupation of eastern Europe and elsewhere, and warcraft: firearms, lightweight tanks, and thousands of nuclear weapons. In 2021, the history of Marxist-Leninist music is both far more potent and plentiful than anarchist punk rock; if a bit old-school, boringly classical, and used in the justification of unjust countries.

What I’m trying to say is this: what is the difference between an English band that wears swastika and MAGA t-shirts singing about how anarchy is good and another band that wears sickle and hammer shirts singing about how the USSR and the PRC are good? Both are nonsense but the latter is sincere with what they say… or are they? Considering punk rock’s edgy, yet ultimately cowardly and insincere anti-authority outlook, I can’t help but wonder what would be if Marxist-Leninism were to ever embrace the potentiality of its status and flaws and make annoying, loud guitar music. It wouldn’t be hard since, comparatively, the bad politics are more obvious. And once it gets started, it’d create a new cycle of the entirety of political thought in music; easily being able to be superior to Right-Libertarian punk rock and all the washed-up bands of the 70s-00s.

What’s the actual transgressive music we have today? Rap music has been mostly dominated by black Americans since the 80s, with a lot of rappers now being women. It is held to a different esteem than even the antisemitic ‘satanic panic’ of the 80s against heavy metal, since legal cases referring to rap lyrics are not unheard of and can even lead to conviction in modern times. It is much closer to the struggles of the global afro-diasporic community than with European writers from 80+ years ago. Punk rock never had, never could, and never will, have a scene of that calibre.

In conclusion, I hope I have provided a cynical pseudo-rehabilitation of punk rock through the example of Marxist-Leninism in a specific manner related to the overall creation of and interpretation of music, which is an important piece of international culture. I know Marxist-Leninist States to be corrupt and are not socialist, but to the eyes of an American, and to the ears of the average punk rock normie, Marxist-Leninism is just as anti-US government as the anarchists, only scarier, because they actually have a plan! So why can’t it be punk? The PRC’s State-sanctioned abductions are certainly not what Bordiga had in mind in regards to a proletarian government being against its own bourgeoisie. Internationality is the way forward. But it almost sounds like it’s against the system if one has that kind of understanding of ‘the system’. Who’s to say there isn’t an obscure 80s punk demo labelled Kidnapping Billionaires somewhere? Punk rock is nothing more than vapid noise to piss of conservatives. That’s it. It has no heart, spirit nor philosophy. The PRC even saying they would like socialism is too far for American conservative wormpeople, and legitimate reasons to criticize the PRC and other social bureaucracies get overshadowed by imperialist greed and racism. Music is not nearly the kind of tool of radicalism Zack de la Rocha thought it was, but with the internationality of Laibach we see it can do more than one can normally expect. It all depends on whether people can distinguish/separate the instrumentation from the proselytization.

#punks not dead #yes it is thank goodness #writing shit #music shit #nazis #racism #black metal #industrial #LAIBACH #rage against the machine

[nevermindirah]

sunday and august? <3

ooh thank you friend!!!

sunday: how frequently do you take requests or prompts, if at all?

ALWAYS! Send me prompts send me prompts! No guarantees it'll spark something for me, of course, but it usually does, and it ALWAYS delights me to get a fic idea and especially that someone wants me specifically to write it!

august: are any of your fics associated with certain genres/artists/songs/etc?

I'm pretty sure I wrote at least one very unfortunate Spuffy songfic as a teenager, I can't remember because I deleted all that shit with extreme prejudice years ago. (Incidentally I kinda feel like Book of Nile is Spuffy for grownups, similar dynamics minus the toxic/abusive elements, am I the only one?)

My two longest fics of all time both include song quotes — I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore is a line from America by Tracy Chapman and you have the right to lose control is a line from Don't Let Go (Love) by En Vogue, and both of those songs get referenced in their respective fics. Which is interesting because between baby Dirah's Spike feelings and now this has not been A Thing for me at all.

I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore also has a lot of references to visual art, because Nile Freeman, and in my Wikipedia rabbit holes I found a sculpture that was in the city where the fic was set that happens to FLAWLESSLY dovetail with the themes of that Tracy Chapman song: Refugee Astronaut by Yinka Shonibare. The verse the title comes from continues with "Taking rockets to the moon / Trying to find a new world / And you're still conquering America". Shonibare has this to say about the themes of Refugee Astronaut: "The refugee astronaut is the reverse of the colonial instinct of the astronaut – someone who is going out to conquer the world. What you have here is a nomadic astronaut just trying to find somewhere that’s still habitable."

If we expand "genres" beyond music or art more generally, politics is one millionty percent a genre that many, many of my fics engage with. I'm a radical who works in US federal policy, it's frustrating, I cope via heavily political porn about immortals 🤷🏻‍♂️

(send me time-themed asks about my fics!)

[justanotherwannabeclassic]

Finding Neverland (13/?)

Summary: When Juliet Jones and Gideon Gold fall through a time portal and find themselves in Neverland, finding a way back home is the least of their worries. One wrong step can irreversibly change the course of history, placing both of their existences in jeopardy. As Juliet attempts to ensure her parents are on course to falling in love, Gideon struggles with the realization that he’s about to meet his deceased brother for the very first time. Will they succeed in preserving the timeline, and what happens when these star-crossed lovers realize their respective families’ goals are at odds? Relationships: Gideon Gold x OC Swan-Jones kiddo, Captain Swan, references to Rumbelle and slight Swanfire

Read now on AO3.

Previous Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Chapter 13

Her plan needs an operation name.

Plans with operation names tend to be more successful -- at least, that’s what the storybooks have told her. Operation: Cobra. Operation: Mongoose. Operation: Light Swan. Operation: Whatever Random Animal Comes to Mind. Operation names had always been Henry’s forte, but since Juliet had long ago made it her own form of rebellion to be the opposite of Henry in a number of ways, she finds herself lacking in the whole “naming operations” department.

Most pressing, however, is that Juliet’s plan needs to actually exist outside of the vague conceptualization of “let’s hook -- pun only kinda intended -- my parents up.” That’s the end goal, right alongside “don’t die” and “get back to the correct point in time.” Though, Juliet reasons, if she fails at part one -- the aforementioned hooking up of her parents -- then she’ll just fade from existence, technically not dying.

After all, she can’t really die if she never existed in the first place.

How comforting.

All of this weighs heavily on her mind, but instead she focuses on naming the whole damn sort-of plan because that feels the least daunting. She needs a win right now, and naming her operation will be it. Only what will it be? She doesn’t know. Henry is the poetic one in the family, stronger with metaphors and fun naming conventions. Juliet’s creativity comes in the form of art and photos. She’s visual, and unfortunately, operation names are not that. 

“Operation: Anything having to do with a Swan” feels a little too on the nose.

“Operation: Kittens” sounds a bit too cute for a  life or non-existence scenario, no matter how much she likes kittens.

She’s still mulling over a name when she notices her father approaching her, coconut in hand. Operation: Coconut, it is. The operation name might not be an animal, but she doesn’t totally have to follow in Henry’s footsteps, pleasing her inner rebellious teen. And despite hating coconut water -- a fact this version of her father apparently doesn’t know -- seeing him with something in hand clearly for her makes her smile, and that’s enough.

“Hi there.”

“Morning.” He holds out the coconut, which she takes gratefully. She can power through pretending to drink coconut water if it means spending more time with him. She misses him -- the version of him she knows and loves -- terribly. “I know that Emma mentioned you weren’t fond of coconuts, but you need sustenance for what’s coming.”

She stares up at him, blinking in confusion, until she realizes that he’s referencing their plan to steal Pan’s shadow. Everything from the previous night is somewhat fuzzy. Try as she might to stay awake, Juliet had found herself dozing when the others had begun discussing the next steps toward successfully saving Henry. She thinks the plan they concocted involved something to do with using her and Emma’s magic, and she resolves to better inquire about the plan some more. At the moment, however, she’s more interesting in the first half of her father’s statement. Emma mentioned that Juliet didn’t like coconuts. That means that they had talked about her, a fact that ignites a small bit of hope. “You guys talk about me?”

“When it’s relevant, yes.”

“What makes it relevant?”

“When you get kidnapped by Pan.”

“Oh, that.” It makes sense. Dimly, she wonders what it was like when she disappeared. She knows that Gideon hadn’t reacted well -- that much she could tell from the way he had refused to let go of hand as they trekked back to camp. But the others? She isn’t sure. Up until now, her father’s past self had acted indifferent since he had found her and Neal outside of Echo Cave. Did he care when she had gone missing? Juliet isn’t sure she wants to know the answer.

“Aye, that.” He glances over the part of camp where Gideon is speaking in a low voice to Neal. She wonders what they’re saying. Her father turns back to her, and scratches behind his ear. It’s an action she’s seen plenty over the course of her life, one that indicates that he’s particularly nervous about whatever he plans to say next. “Listen, love, Pan is a monster. He enjoys both sowing discord and hurting people.”

“I kind of figured that part out when he had his crew kidnap me. And when he attempted to proposition my boyfriend into killing everyone -- which he wasn’t going to do, by the way.” Juliet makes a point of stressing that Gideon wasn’t going to hurt them. Recalling his hesitance outside of Echo Cave, she isn’t positive that her father truly believes her, but it’s worth a shot. She knows that Hook doesn’t actually have a reason to trust Gideon at this juncture, but she still finds her father’s attitude unfair and feels the desire to defend the man she loves. “Pan probably knew you were lurking in the bushes, anyway. He wanted you to think that...that Romeo was was the bad guy, making you not trust him. Sort of like how everyone here doesn’t trust you, even though you’re one of the good guys.

“I’m no hero,” he says with a false sort of laugh. He rights himself quickly enough, and once again runs his fingers through his hair. “At any rate, his stunt at Echo Cave was one such example of that.”

“Neal and I got ourselves out of it.” By revealing way too much information, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Aye, but not without a few bruises, it seems.” He casts another significant glance over his shoulder toward Gideon. For a moment, Juliet struggles to recall just what he’s referencing. Then she remembers Neal’s cover.

As grateful as she is for Neal’s quick thinking, she’s not fond with his particular choice of lie. It had been clever and believable, especially since she’s pretending to be someone that ran away from her family for a man, but she doesn’t like that Gideon is now forced to feign anger and hurt in regards to their relationship.

Her father looks like he’s about to say something else, but he’s cut off by Neal announcing, “Hey, Romeo and I are going to get some water. When we get back, we can leave to get the shadow.”

Juliet doesn’t pay attention to Regina’s argument in response, but instead focuses on Gideon and his resolute expression. He takes a deep breath before following behind Neal and disappearing into the jungle. She’s curious about how the conversation will play out, halfway worried about the effect that it might have on Gideon, but mostly glad he gets the chance to spend time with Neal.

“He loves you.”

Hook’s voice pulls her attention. She wonders now what he would say to her if she actually did come to him with her non-existent worries about whether she and Gideon were moving too fast. Romantic relationship advice had always been more of her mother’s forte. It wasn’t that her father was bad at it, but Juliet had always felt more comfortable turning to her mother -- probably the gender thing. Regardless of who she went to first for advice, her father had always provided a shoulder to cry on when needed. Of course, now that she actually needs his shoulder to cry on, he’s not the same man. 

“Did you really come over here to discuss my love life?”

“No, I didn’t. I came over to ensure your safety.” He continues to stand over her, a large, looming figure covered in black. “However, I did spend an extended period around him. He was driven mad with worry after he realized you disappeared.”

“He’s that kind of guy.” She sits the coconut down and pokes at the ground. She doesn’t want dwell on the effects that her kidnapping had on her boyfriend. She might have been the primary victim in the situation, but her loved one had also been unfairly hurt in the process. As angry as she already had been with Pan, she feels it double in her chest. She’s come to realize exactly why her father had always referred to Peter Pan as a demon.

“Aye, he is.” Her father fixes her with an intense stare. “He seems like the sort of man who would understand if you had reservations regarding your relationship.”

Had this conversation taken place thirty years in his future, Juliet might find his concern to be sweet. Instead, she feels a bubble of guilt forming in her gut at the slight worry in his eyes. She loathes the protracted lies she and Gideon have needed to weave to maintain their covers. She’s uncomfortable lying to her parents in this manner. Though she’s told her fair share of lies to them in the past -- what kid hasn’t lied to their parents every now and then? -- her actions now feel more insidious...and there’s nothing she can do about it except lie some more.

She looks away from her father, the loss of eye contact making her deceptions easier.  “We’ll figure it out. We always have.” She picks up the coconut. “Thanks for this, and checking on me, and discussing my love life even if that wasn’t your full intention.”

“Right.” Juliet thinks he might turn to leave, but he continues to stare at her carefully. “What? Is there something on my face?”

“I should have asked Swan to do this,” he murmured, casting his eyes skyward. He sighs deeply. “Love, did Pan or any of his crew touch you in any way…?”

“Touch me…?” It takes a moment for her to process. “Oh my God.”

Suddenly, she’s fifteen again, drunk off wine coolers and rum stolen from her parents’ liquor cabinet. Juliet remembers the night -- the “unofficial” cast party celebrating the closing of  the school’s production of Legally Blonde: The Musical. (She had been Elle, thank you very much.) Juliet had been reckless then, believing herself unbreakable and immortal in only the way teenagers can. Instead of crashing for the night in Susan Sparrow’s basement, she’d decided to walk home -- she only lived a mile away -- and sneak in through her bedroom window.

“My dad’s the best pirate, so that means I’ve inherited the best sneaking skills. It’s a fact!”

How she would sneak through her second-story bedroom window that night, Juliet didn’t have the opportunity to find out. Her father, by chance thanks to a night patrol, had found her emptying the contents of her stomach into Grumpy’s azaleas.  

Juliet remembers how he had ushered her into the back of the patrol car and driven her home.  She remembers his tight, but loving embrace when he carried back into their house, and tucked her into bed. And, she remembers the lecture she’d received the next day, just the two of them on the back porch swing.

“I loathe that we live in a world that forces me to tell you these things, and I recognize what I’m saying places a burden on you that shouldn’t be yours, but sweetheart, you have to stay safe. I’m not saying don’t imbibe ever. I’d be a hypocrite if I tried. But the world -- and yes, even Storybrooke -- is not a kind place, and it is full of people who enjoy preying on the vulnerable, and inebriation makes us more vulnerable.”

“Dad--”

“When I was just a pirate, I saw terrible men do awful things, and overheard the most sordid of tales. While laying with a consenting woman was always policy on my ship, it was not like that for everyone. And last night, when I found you sick and alone, I was reminded of those men.”

“But nothing happened!”

“And I want nothing to ever happen. The prospect of it, even thinking that -- Juliet, promise me that if you are ever in a situation like that again, you will call someone. Your mother or I, Henry, your grandparents, or even Neal. It doesn’t even have to be family. It can be a trusted and sober friend. Don’t get behind the wheel yourself, or try to wonder home disoriented. We will find you.”

He’d been so concerned then. As much as it embarrasses her now, Juliet had written off his concern as parental paranoia. He’d always had an overprotective streak, the result of his own past trauma. It hadn’t been until she’d grown older and lived a life outside of the protective watch of her parents that she truly began to understand her father’s warnings.

But the man standing before her now isn’t her father -- not yet, anyway. His concern for her isn’t paternal, but it’s still there. As starved as she had been for his attention the previous night, she’s grateful for whatever care he can muster -- even if the delivery lacks his normal affection. At least this way she can pretend that the man before her is the Killian Jones she knows and loves.

She’s happy when she finally doesn’t have to lie. “Nothing happened. I promise.”

He smiles, the relief evident. “Good.”

 -/-

 “So...what do you think of Neverland?”

Small talk has always been an enigma for Gideon. While working with patients, it comes naturally to him. He thinks it’s because he can hide behind the mask of the white coat, and that small talk helps his patients -- especially the kids -- relax. In social situations, however, he finds himself at a loss for words, stumbling over the dumbest of questions.

Like asking his brother what he thinks of the hell hole that is Neverland.

But he has his reasons. Kind of. When Gideon had been younger, he’d asked his father about Neverland and Peter Pan. The concept of an island where no one ever ages had been appealing to him as a child. Truly, it sounded like an awfully big adventure. That had been the moment Gideon first learned that his grandfather was Peter Pan. His parents -- because his father, understandably, felt this was a story best told with his mother present -- had given him the sanitized version of the truth behind Neverland and Peter Pan. Henry and, later, Juliet’s father had given him the unsanitized version. Over the years, he had wondered what his brother’s adventures entailed, and now that Neal is here, Gideon has the opportunity to ask….even if it feels like a stupid question.

It probably is a stupid question, but it feels safe. The novelty of actually getting to know his brother hasn’t fully sunken in, not in the way that matters. Part of him feels as if he’s wasting the moment. Another part of him still wants to run away back to camp. The part of him that recognizes his running back empty-handed would be suspicious keeps him in place.

“I think I wasted way too much of my life here. So, it sucks.” Neal looks over his shoulder. “Please tell me you didn’t ask me to go get water with you so we could discuss Neverland.”

“Um, not really, no.” Gideon looks down at the ground, cheeks flushing red. He takes note of the vines and roots, making certain to not also trip. “J thought it would be good for us to have the chance to talk. You know, without others.”

“So your girlfriend made you drag me out here.”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Realizing how terrible that sounds, he continues, “It’s not that I didn’t want to without her pushing things along, it’s just a lot. It’s weird.”

“Because I’m dead in the future.”  He can’t see Neal’s face. His brother is continuing to push forward toward some pond -- they do have to come back with water, after all. But, Gideon can see the tenseness in his shoulders and hear the heaviness in Neal’s voice. It reminds him of his patients, the ones who had been given the worst medical news. And, in a way, Juliet had handed Neal his own death sentence.

“Something like that.” Gideon takes a deep breath. “I mean, have you ever spent your whole life wondering about someone, having all of these questions, and knowing you might never get answers? And now, suddenly, you an get answers and it feels...daunting.”

There’s a long pause before Neal answers. “Yeah, I get that. Guess it’d be like that if I met my mom again.”

Gideon winces at Neal’s response. “So you meant what you said back at camp? About your secret at Echo Cave?”

“Something like that,” Neal parrots. He stops then, and turns to Gideon. Looking him in the eye, he says, “Just so you know, I was making that stuff up about what I said about your girlfriend. She never said anything about moving too fast.”

“Uh, yeah, I know.”

“You didn’t act like it.”

“I thought it would blow our cover if I was too blase about it.” He shrugs, even though Neal doesn’t appear entirely convinced. “But thanks for your quick thinking. That was helpful.”

“I couldn’t exactly say your girlfriend said you were both from the future,” Neal replies. His expression then turns curious. “Speaking of covers, please tell me your name isn’t actually Romeo. I know Belle loves books, but --”

“It’s not. Just the first thing that came to mind.” Gideon refrains from mentioning that he’s half-convinced that he and Juliet are some incarnation of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers. Henry had mentioned once that Shakespeare had been an Author. “My name is actually Gideon.”

“Gideon Gold, huh?”

“Not all of us can be named Baelfire.” Neal barks out a laugh, and for a moment, Gideon feels a surge of pride. He’s able to make his brother laugh. “Mom’s the one who named me -- after a character from a book -- so you got that part right.”

“And about Belle, apparently.” There’s a twinkle in Neal’s eyes, and Gideon’s stomach immediately drops. He’s struck by how easy Neal had been able to weasel information about the future out of him. Sensing his panic, Neal raises his hands in supplication. “Hey, that part I had figured out since your girlfriend said you were my brother. The way my -- our -- father is with Belle, it wasn’t hard to put two-and-two together. Besides, you look a bit like her.”

Gideon breathes a sigh of relief. “Father says that’s a good thing.”

“Better to inherit her looks than the crocodile skin,” Neal says with a small laugh. “Look, we still need to get water. How about on the way, we talk about normal sibling things -- things that aren’t full of spoilers about the immediate future, so you can stop having a panic attack every time something comes up.”

Gideon cracks a smile.  “Sounds like a plan.”

As they make their way toward the pond, Gideon and Neal trade questions. They start with small questions -- favorite colors, foods, and books -- but quickly the questions grow a bit deeper. Neal listens intently as Gideon shares horror stories from his medical residency and explains his motivations for choosing the medical profession. Neal, in turns, opens about about starting over in the Land Without Magic. By the time they reach the pond, they’re trading stories about living in New York.

“I don’t know if it comforts me to know that the subway system is still a mess that far in the future,” Neal says, dismay evident from his tone to his face after Gideon recounts nearly missing his test in undergrad because he had been trapped in a stalled train.

“Look at it this way, the more things the change, the more they also stay the same. You can count on it like death and taxes.” Gideon immediately regrets his choice of words. I am an idiot.

“Some of us can count on death more easily than others.”

“I’m sorry you had to find out about that. I can’t imagine it’s easy knowing.”  Gideon fills his skein with water. “Juliet wouldn’t have told you if she didn’t have to. I’m pretty sure she feels bad about that.”

Neal scoffs. “Pretty sure?”

“We didn’t exactly have much time to discuss her specific feelings on the matter.” There’s something in Neal’s tone that sets Gideon on edge, but he doesn’t let it show.

“From where I was sitting, she didn’t seem to like me too much.”

“She hardly knows you. Besides, she told me that she didn’t think you were the worst. She even called you charming,” Gideon answers. He feels the need to defend Juliet, even though Neal hasn’t said anything completely off-base.

“She completely blew her gasket when I kissed Emma,” Neal says, and this time Gideon recognizes that his older brother is now hedging for clues about the future.

“I think that’s an extreme read of the situation,” Gideon sighs deeply. He had known this area of conversation was unavoidable, insofar that Juliet had requested that he do whatever possible to discourage Neal from pursuing Emma. Gideon knows he needs to do this, but he hesitates. His conversation with his brother had been going so well, and now he’s going to ruin it all.

“You know, for a brief moment, I thought she was my kid. Once I found out she was from the future, I thought that might be the reason she seemed so mad at me in the cave. I died and left her, and there was some lingering  resentment, and I hoped...” Neal rubs the back of his neck, and looks skyward. “Anyway, then she said you were my brother, and that killed that dream.”

“We’re not the Lannisters.” Their respective family trees might be convoluted, but they’re not blood related. Gideon shudders at the thought. Still...he can’t quite blame Neal from going down that mental path. Knowing his feelings for Emma, it only makes sense.

“Yeah, I hoped not,” Neal says with a broken sort of laugh. “But she’s related to Emma, right? She said her family was here, and she looks a lot like Emma.”

“I think we’re getting into spoiler territory.”

“You know that’s basically confirming my suspicions, right?” Neal kicks a rock into the water. He doesn’t look at Gideon, and for that Gideon is grateful. “So what is she, like her sister? It seems pretty obvious Snow and Charming might want another kid. They don’t strike me as a one-and-done kind of pair.”

They’re not, Gideon thinks. They have another son. They named him after you. He’s a police officer, and lives in Storybrooke with his husband, and they’re in the process of adopting twins. Of course, he can’t tell Neal any of that.

“Listen, Neal…” Gideon comes up short with what to say. He settles on, “You already know a lot about the future.”

“I’m honestly a little surprised the others haven’t noticed the resemblance.”

“They’re not looking for one. People see what they want to see.” Like how you think she’s Emma’s sister. He’d been worried about it, at first, believing that someone might note the similarities in appearance. No one has, and if they’ve thought about it, they’ve held their tongues. They don’t see them as Gideon Gold and Juliet Jones, but rather Romeo and Juliet from far off Verona. Juliet is just another pretty blonde in a sea of pretty blondes, just like how he’s another guy. They’re not looking for family resemblances in the way that Neal is.

“Why’d she not want me kissing Emma anyway?”

“Because you and her didn’t happen back then, er, now. And we’ve changed enough already. We don’t want to wreck the timeline even more than we already have,” Gideon explains slowly. He wonders if this is what Neal had really be trying to get at when he started asking about Juliet. “So you can’t do that anymore. Kiss Emma, I mean.”

Goal: accomplished.

“How can you even know that?”

Or not.

“You know how Henry has his fairytale book with everyone’s stories? There’s another book in the future where that includes this whole adventure, and a ton of stories that happened since Emma first arrive in Storybrooke,” Gideon huffs out. His frustration is growing. Why can’t Neal understand? He feels like a villain, crushing the heart of his victim. “And you and Emma? You’re not in it, at least not as lovers, not since first left her way back when.”

“You love you girlfriend?”

“What?” This is not the direction Gideon had expected the conversation to go. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s a yes or no question. Do you love her?” Neal is once again facing him. Gideon takes in the hard set of his brother’s shoulders, the way his arms are crossed, and his knitted brows. Neal will not back down from this train of thought.

“Of course I love her.”

“How much?

“Really?”

“Humor me.”

Gideon casts his eyes skyward. This is not how he expected to be discussing his love life with his deceased brother. “I have a ring. Back home. I’m planning to propose soon. Going by that, I love her quite a bit.” He pauses, thinking of an earlier conversation. “She’s all my heart.”

Neal’s expression momentarily softens. “Wow, congrats. I hope she says yes.”

“Unsurprisingly, so do I.” He’s fairly certain that she will say ‘yes’. Their friends seem convinced of that fact. Her family, too. The aforementioned Neal Nolan, who acts more like Juliet’s closest friend and confidant than uncle, has even made Gideon promise to run by any proposal plans. “She’s going to agree to it no matter what, but you want the whole thing to be something she’ll remember, right?”

“Okay, so you have this girl--”

“--woman--”

“--woman, fine, you get the point. You have this woman that you love. Now imagine finding out you’re going to die, that you’re going to lose absolutely everything, and you don’t know when or how, but it’s definitely going to happen -- and soon, by the sound of things. You can’t tell me that you won’t do everything possible to hold onto the person you love,” Neal pleads with him. And, in a way, he’s right. If the world ended tomorrow, he’d want nothing more than to spend it with Juliet in his arms. But--

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Gideon doesn’t even try to hide the defeat in his voice. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation. What he wants is for Neal to not even pursue Emma, for them to just act like brothers-- whatever that means. What he wants for the weight of the future to be lifted from both their shoulders. What he wants it to not be the bad guy. He can’t always get what he wants. “Neal, I understand the future is terrifying, and I know you’re probably thinking about every single thing you regret--”

“You know? I don’t think you have any idea how I feel! I’m going to die, and you have a future with your girlfriend to run back to!”

“A future that might not even exist,” Gideon argues, his voice rising. He runs his fingers through his hair and takes a step back. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it. We didn’t even want to be here. We fell through a goddamn portal. J and I, we didn’t even try to, and we fucked things up. Things are bad right now, universe ending bad. So, while I might be sympathetic to your plight -- it fucking sucks -- it’s not high on my priority list.”

Neal blinks, clearly taken aback by Gideon’s outburst. “What are you even talking about?”

“Things that were supposed to happen didn’t end up happening, which set off a domino effect of preventing other things from happening, and we don’t know how to fix it.” His answer comes out in a half-sob, the weight of everything at stake finally taking over.

“Could what you did hurt Henry? Emma?”

“Definitely.”

“Then tell me how I can help.” Neal walks over and places his hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “If Emma and Henry’s future is really in danger, tell me what you two messed up, and I will help fix it.”

Gideon shakes his head. “We can’t. We already told you too much.”

“Look, I already know too much, and I’m a dead guy walking. And by the sound of things, you two are completely in over your head. You need help,” Neal insists. “You know I’m right.”

Gideon considers Neal’s offer. They need help. Desperately. But, “You’re not going to like what we have to do.”

“I kind of already figured that part out.”

Gideon suddenly wishes desperately for Hook’s flask of rum. Juliet is going to kill him. But, if they pull this off, she’ll still exist. That will be something worth celebrating, assuming Neal doesn’t kill him because of the words that come out of his mouth next.

“We need to get Emma and Hook to kiss.” Neal recoils as if Gideon had just burned him. “What.” It’s not a question.

“We need to find a way for Hook and Emma to kiss. They had their first kiss in Neverland, you see, and I know for a fact that the events that led to that kiss didn’t happen, which means that they likely didn’t kiss.” His explanation feels silly, because a kiss feel simple, not monumental. But it’s the first kiss in a series of many more kisses, that will ultimately lead to a fuller and happier life.

“I don’t get it. You’re worked up over them kissing? Wait--first kiss? How many times do they kiss?”

“It’s never crossed my mind to keep count.” Now, that’s a train of thought I don’t need to follow.  Gideon shakes his head, he needs to focus. As expected, Neal isn’t handling the information well. “As for the ‘getting worked up over them kissing’ part, that kiss kind of sets up a chain of very important events. It’s a domino effect.”

“He ran away with my mom, and now he’s kissing the mother of my son. That’s a little messed up, don’t you think?”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like what we had to do.”

“I can’t...I don’t understand how that kiss helps keep Emma and Henry safe.” Neal looks utterly defeated. Gideon wonders how he would feel if someone said that Juliet absolutely needed to be kissing someone else. He decides not to dwell on the thought.

“Like I said, it’s a domino effect. I can’t fully quantify it, but trust me when I say that their futures as I know it depend on this kiss. My future own depends on this kiss.”

“Your future? How--” He stops, eyes widening in realization. He shakes his head. “No, no, no, no.”

Gideon doesn’t know what to say, so he keeps his mouth shut. He’s at a loss for what to do. His mother would know what to say -- she’s the most empathetic person he knows. He’d inherited Belle’s love of books, but not this. For as long as he’s known her, she’s always found a way to bond and sympathize with strangers. Blood relations or not, Neal is still a stranger to Gideon, making it all the harder.

“God, and I thought she was mine and Emma’s kid. Guess I was half right, huh?” Neal turns away from Gideon, and kicks angrily at a ground. “Seriously? Her and him?”

“If it makes you feel better, they’re very happy together.”

“It doesn’t.”

Gideon bites his lip. Unsure of what else to say on the topic of the Swan-Jones relationship, he attempts a different tactic. “He would talk about you to me. Hook, I mean, in the future. Even before Juliet and I were together, we’d talk about you and he’d tell me stories.”

“To ease his guilty conscience,” Neal snorts.

“Maybe, but not in the way you think,” Gideon tells him. It’s strange to defend Juliet’s father to his brother. He recognizes the reasons why Neal resents them, but the Killian Jones Gideon knows is so far removed from one Neal knows, knew. “He told me once that one of his biggest regrets in life was what happened between you and him and Pan. I’m pretty sure he and our father have talked about you, but I’m pretty sure they’d both deny it if anyone asked.”

“Gideon, I’m glad you like your girlfriend’s father,” Neal begins, and Gideon realizes this is the first time he has said his realization aloud, “but Killian Jones is the last person I want in this scenario. He destroyed my family, and you’re asking me to help make sure he raises my son with the woman I love while I...while I’m dead.”

“Then don’t do it for him. Do it for me, your brother. Do it for Juliet, who has no control over who her parents are.” Gideon grabs Neal’s arm, forcing Neal to finally look him in the eyes. “You’re hurt and you’re angry, and that’s a perfectly understandable way to feel. But don’t let your feelings result in either me or Juliet getting harmed. I spent my entire life wondering who you were, don’t let it be this.That’s not fair. Hook, Henry, Emma -- they all told me that you were a hero. So prove it. Be a hero.”

“Just--can you give me a moment, please?” Neal asks, his anger giving way to something that sounds a lot like defeat. “Let me think. You owe me that.”

Gideon opens his mouth to argue that he doesn’t owe Neal anything right now, but he finds himself saying, “Yeah, we can wait.”

Neal moves away, sitting at the edge of the pond. Gideon hesitates before joining him. Silently, they sit and stare at the water. Moonlight cuts through the dense foliage of the jungle, creating slivers of light on the water. It’s beautiful, Gideon thinks. Years earlier, he and Juliet had rented a cabin upstate. The cabin was by the lake, and he remembers the two of them sitting laying on the bank, looking up the stars. They’d discussed their hopes and dreams, and began to tentatively make plans for the future they might have together. Sitting beside his brother, Gideon wonders if that future might ever come to pass.

#cs ff #captain swan ff #cs au #cs canon divergence #s writes finding neverland

[newstechreviews]

Nine students have died at the University of Southern California (USC) this semester, causing alarm on campus and leading students to demand more mental health resources. Now, USC officials say they will open a new psychiatric clinic on Monday.

Dr. Steven Siegel, chairman of the USC psychiatry department, tells TIME the project has been in the works for a few years, and wasn’t in response to the student deaths. “It turns out that all of this attention is on USC this week, and the clinic is opening, but that timeline is not related,” he said Friday.

It comes as students say they have long had trouble accessing mental health care at one of the wealthiest universities in the country, where tuition tops $57,000 and the endowment was $5.5 billion as of June 2018. Three students died by suicide this semester, the school said, and the causes of some of the other deaths have not been publicly confirmed.

Schools across the country have struggled to meet an unprecedented student demand for mental health services on campus, as rates of anxiety and depression among college students have continued to increase in recent years. Between 2009 and 2015, the number of students visiting campus counseling centers increased by about 30% on average, while college enrollment grew by less than 6%, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health found in a 2015 report.

Some universities have opened up satellite counseling clinics above a local Starbucks or in the athletic department to reach more students. Some have allocated more money to counseling services and hired more therapists. Others have rolled out a counseling mobile app or a free online screening for depression.

USC students gathered at a mental health forum on Wednesday night, calling for more mental health counselors, more transparency from the university and more understanding from professors.

USC senior Claire Redlaczyk, 21, attended the forum and talked about the challenge of accessing therapy after her father died in February of her freshman year. That semester, Redlaczyk says she met with a therapist in the university’s counseling center during eight one-hour sessions that she found helpful as she struggled with grief. When she tried to continue the counseling the following school year, “still grieving very heavily,” staff told her that the center couldn’t offer her any more therapy sessions and directed her to a grief support group.

“That was something I really wanted as a sophomore. I remember I was on the phone with the counseling center just crying and begging them to take me, and they were just like, ‘You can go off-campus.’ I was devastated,” Redlaczyk says. “It’s just not very feasible for me to go to therapy off campus. It’s expensive. I don’t have a car. It’s far away, so I just ended up not continuing any therapy after that.”

In a letter to the USC community on Saturday, university officials called the recent student deaths “devastating and heartbreaking” and sought to dispel rumors about how many students had died by suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students. And tight-knit communities, including college campuses, can sometimes experience suicide contagion, a phenomenon in which exposure to suicide can result in suicidal behavior in others.

“People are searching for answers and information as we attempt to make sense of these terrible losses. There is a great deal of speculation about the causes of these deaths and most are being attributed to suicide. This is not correct,” they said in the letter. “These tragic losses have resulted from a number of different causes. In some cases the cause of death is still undetermined, and in others the loved ones do not want details disclosed.”

USC President Carol Folt told The Los Angeles Times that police are now investigating drug overdoses as a potential cause of some of the deaths. The Times also reported that investigators are exploring whether tainted drugs played a role, though that has not been confirmed as a cause of death, and many autopsies and toxicology reports are still pending. In a video interview with Annenberg Media on Monday, USC’s Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman said there are between four and 15 student deaths in a typical academic year.

But the fact that even three of the deaths have been suicides has led students to call for better preventative mental health services.

“We will do more. We’re doing more,” Siegel says. “But we’re not super humans. We don’t read minds. We’re not ever-present, omnipotent forces that can promise you we’re going to stop bad things from happening.”

USC junior Maxwell Pickenpaugh, who uses they/them pronouns, says they would like USC officials to be more transparent about student tragedy and the challenge of addressing mental health on campus. “A lot of us feel really upset with the whole situation,” Pickenpaugh says.

Pickenpaugh, 21, says they have struggled to receive mental health care at USC after being treated for bipolar disorder in high school. When Pickenpaugh contacted the USC counseling center during their freshman year, they say they were told that bipolar disorder was “too long-term of an illness to be treated at USC health center.” Pickenpaugh met with a USC counselor to get recommendations for off-campus care, but it took a month to get that appointment. The USC counselor recommended and helped Pickenpaugh reach out to a handful of outside mental health clinics and therapists, but then never followed up to check in, Pickenpaugh says. And none of the off-campus therapists ever responded.

“I felt really discouraged, and absolutely like, ‘OK, USC just does not care about my mental health.’ It was really hard,” Pickenpaugh says. “I just continued to struggle by myself for a while, really leaning on my family and my friends to help me through it.”

Pickenpaugh says it took nearly two years to find a therapist who would accept their health insurance and charge prices they could afford.

USC’s new psychiatry clinic is aimed at helping students like Pickenpaugh, who had not previously heard about the initiative, but thinks it’s a step in the right direction. “We recognize that the real barrier we have is getting people into longer-term care after they’ve seen student health,” Siegel says.

“The counseling system here and elsewhere is not built or intended—at any college—to be the entire mental health system for the population. It’s a piece of the mental health system. And so what those students are hearing is, ‘We’ve done the part that we think is best done here. We think you need more than that, and so now we need to move you to an environment that can provide the kind of ‘more’ that you need.’”

Siegel says the new clinic will be able to serve 2,500 students annually — which would cut in half the number of off-campus referrals counselors need to make.

He says the university is doing what it can to address its own “microcosm” of a national problem with insufficient access to mental health care. But many students see it as a problem of misplaced priorities.

“What I’ve discovered is that USC puts so much money into so many things that are for image,” says Sabine Bajakian, 22, who graduated in May from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where two of the students who died were enrolled.

“But they won’t really do anything for the counseling center. I don’t know where my tuition is going really,” she says, referencing a $700 million residential and retail complex the university opened in 2017. “Why aren’t there enough counselors?”

The student health center currently has 46 therapists and three psychiatrists on staff, Siegel says.

He and a university spokesperson declined to say how much money the university spent to build and staff the new psychiatry clinic. But by the time it is fully staffed next summer, it will have an additional six psychiatrists and 12 therapists—a step toward providing better mental health care to more of the nearly 50,000 students on USC’s campus.

“With how high our tuition is,” Redlaczyk says, “any student should be able to see a therapist.”

If you or someone you know may be contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

#Blogger

[itsfinancethings]

November 15, 2019 at 08:26PM

Nine students have died at the University of Southern California (USC) this semester, causing alarm on campus and leading students to demand more mental health resources. Now, USC officials say they will open a new psychiatric clinic on Monday.

Dr. Steven Siegel, chairman of the USC psychiatry department, tells TIME the project has been in the works for a few years, and wasn’t in response to the student deaths. “It turns out that all of this attention is on USC this week, and the clinic is opening, but that timeline is not related,” he said Friday.

It comes as students say they have long had trouble accessing mental health care at one of the wealthiest universities in the country, where tuition tops $57,000 and the endowment was $5.5 billion as of June 2018. Three students died by suicide this semester, the school said, and the causes of some of the other deaths have not been publicly confirmed.

Schools across the country have struggled to meet an unprecedented student demand for mental health services on campus, as rates of anxiety and depression among college students have continued to increase in recent years. Between 2009 and 2015, the number of students visiting campus counseling centers increased by about 30% on average, while college enrollment grew by less than 6%, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health found in a 2015 report.

Some universities have opened up satellite counseling clinics above a local Starbucks or in the athletic department to reach more students. Some have allocated more money to counseling services and hired more therapists. Others have rolled out a counseling mobile app or a free online screening for depression.

USC students gathered at a mental health forum on Wednesday night, calling for more mental health counselors, more transparency from the university and more understanding from professors.

USC senior Claire Redlaczyk, 21, attended the forum and talked about the challenge of accessing therapy after her father died in February of her freshman year. That semester, Redlaczyk says she met with a therapist in the university’s counseling center during eight one-hour sessions that she found helpful as she struggled with grief. When she tried to continue the counseling the following school year, “still grieving very heavily,” staff told her that the center couldn’t offer her any more therapy sessions and directed her to a grief support group.

“That was something I really wanted as a sophomore. I remember I was on the phone with the counseling center just crying and begging them to take me, and they were just like, ‘You can go off-campus.’ I was devastated,” Redlaczyk says. “It’s just not very feasible for me to go to therapy off campus. It’s expensive. I don’t have a car. It’s far away, so I just ended up not continuing any therapy after that.”

In a letter to the USC community on Saturday, university officials called the recent student deaths “devastating and heartbreaking” and sought to dispel rumors about how many students had died by suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students. And tight-knit communities, including college campuses, can sometimes experience suicide contagion, a phenomenon in which exposure to suicide can result in suicidal behavior in others.

“People are searching for answers and information as we attempt to make sense of these terrible losses. There is a great deal of speculation about the causes of these deaths and most are being attributed to suicide. This is not correct,” they said in the letter. “These tragic losses have resulted from a number of different causes. In some cases the cause of death is still undetermined, and in others the loved ones do not want details disclosed.”

USC President Carol Folt told The Los Angeles Times that police are now investigating drug overdoses as a potential cause of some of the deaths. The Times also reported that investigators are exploring whether tainted drugs played a role, though that has not been confirmed as a cause of death, and many autopsies and toxicology reports are still pending. In a video interview with Annenberg Media on Monday, USC’s Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman said there are between four and 15 student deaths in a typical academic year.

But the fact that even three of the deaths have been suicides has led students to call for better preventative mental health services.

“We will do more. We’re doing more,” Siegel says. “But we’re not super humans. We don’t read minds. We’re not ever-present, omnipotent forces that can promise you we’re going to stop bad things from happening.”

USC junior Maxwell Pickenpaugh, who uses they/them pronouns, says they would like USC officials to be more transparent about student tragedy and the challenge of addressing mental health on campus. “A lot of us feel really upset with the whole situation,” Pickenpaugh says.

Pickenpaugh, 21, says they have struggled to receive mental health care at USC after being treated for bipolar disorder in high school. When Pickenpaugh contacted the USC counseling center during their freshman year, they say they were told that bipolar disorder was “too long-term of an illness to be treated at USC health center.” Pickenpaugh met with a USC counselor to get recommendations for off-campus care, but it took a month to get that appointment. The USC counselor recommended and helped Pickenpaugh reach out to a handful of outside mental health clinics and therapists, but then never followed up to check in, Pickenpaugh says. And none of the off-campus therapists ever responded.

“I felt really discouraged, and absolutely like, ‘OK, USC just does not care about my mental health.’ It was really hard,” Pickenpaugh says. “I just continued to struggle by myself for a while, really leaning on my family and my friends to help me through it.”

Pickenpaugh says it took nearly two years to find a therapist who would accept their health insurance and charge prices they could afford.

USC’s new psychiatry clinic is aimed at helping students like Pickenpaugh, who had not previously heard about the initiative, but thinks it’s a step in the right direction. “We recognize that the real barrier we have is getting people into longer-term care after they’ve seen student health,” Siegel says.

“The counseling system here and elsewhere is not built or intended—at any college—to be the entire mental health system for the population. It’s a piece of the mental health system. And so what those students are hearing is, ‘We’ve done the part that we think is best done here. We think you need more than that, and so now we need to move you to an environment that can provide the kind of ‘more’ that you need.’”

Siegel says the new clinic will be able to serve 2,500 students annually — which would cut in half the number of off-campus referrals counselors need to make.

He says the university is doing what it can to address its own “microcosm” of a national problem with insufficient access to mental health care. But many students see it as a problem of misplaced priorities.

“What I’ve discovered is that USC puts so much money into so many things that are for image,” says Sabine Bajakian, 22, who graduated in May from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where two of the students who died were enrolled.

“But they won’t really do anything for the counseling center. I don’t know where my tuition is going really,” she says, referencing a $700 million residential and retail complex the university opened in 2017. “Why aren’t there enough counselors?”

The student health center currently has 46 therapists and three psychiatrists on staff, Siegel says.

He and a university spokesperson declined to say how much money the university spent to build and staff the new psychiatry clinic. But by the time it is fully staffed next summer, it will have an additional six psychiatrists and 12 therapists—a step toward providing better mental health care to more of the nearly 50,000 students on USC’s campus.

“With how high our tuition is,” Redlaczyk says, “any student should be able to see a therapist.”

If you or someone you know may be contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

#IFTTT #Blogger

[itsfinancethings]

Nine students have died at the University of Southern California (USC) this semester, causing alarm on campus and leading students to demand more mental health resources. Now, USC officials say they will open a new psychiatric clinic on Monday.

Dr. Steven Siegel, chairman of the USC psychiatry department, tells TIME the project has been in the works for a few years, and wasn’t in response to the student deaths. “It turns out that all of this attention is on USC this week, and the clinic is opening, but that timeline is not related,” he said Friday.

It comes as students say they have long had trouble accessing mental health care at one of the wealthiest universities in the country, where tuition tops $57,000 and the endowment was $5.5 billion as of June 2018. Three students died by suicide this semester, the school said, and the causes of some of the other deaths have not been publicly confirmed.

Schools across the country have struggled to meet an unprecedented student demand for mental health services on campus, as rates of anxiety and depression among college students have continued to increase in recent years. Between 2009 and 2015, the number of students visiting campus counseling centers increased by about 30% on average, while college enrollment grew by less than 6%, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health found in a 2015 report.

Some universities have opened up satellite counseling clinics above a local Starbucks or in the athletic department to reach more students. Some have allocated more money to counseling services and hired more therapists. Others have rolled out a counseling mobile app or a free online screening for depression.

USC students gathered at a mental health forum on Wednesday night, calling for more mental health counselors, more transparency from the university and more understanding from professors.

USC senior Claire Redlaczyk, 21, attended the forum and talked about the challenge of accessing therapy after her father died in February of her freshman year. That semester, Redlaczyk says she met with a therapist in the university’s counseling center during eight one-hour sessions that she found helpful as she struggled with grief. When she tried to continue the counseling the following school year, “still grieving very heavily,” staff told her that the center couldn’t offer her any more therapy sessions and directed her to a grief support group.

“That was something I really wanted as a sophomore. I remember I was on the phone with the counseling center just crying and begging them to take me, and they were just like, ‘You can go off-campus.’ I was devastated,” Redlaczyk says. “It’s just not very feasible for me to go to therapy off campus. It’s expensive. I don’t have a car. It’s far away, so I just ended up not continuing any therapy after that.”

In a letter to the USC community on Saturday, university officials called the recent student deaths “devastating and heartbreaking” and sought to dispel rumors about how many students had died by suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students. And tight-knit communities, including college campuses, can sometimes experience suicide contagion, a phenomenon in which exposure to suicide can result in suicidal behavior in others.

“People are searching for answers and information as we attempt to make sense of these terrible losses. There is a great deal of speculation about the causes of these deaths and most are being attributed to suicide. This is not correct,” they said in the letter. “These tragic losses have resulted from a number of different causes. In some cases the cause of death is still undetermined, and in others the loved ones do not want details disclosed.”

USC President Carol Folt told The Los Angeles Times that police are now investigating drug overdoses as a potential cause of some of the deaths. The Times also reported that investigators are exploring whether tainted drugs played a role, though that has not been confirmed as a cause of death, and many autopsies and toxicology reports are still pending. In a video interview with Annenberg Media on Monday, USC’s Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman said there are between four and 15 student deaths in a typical academic year.

But the fact that even three of the deaths have been suicides has led students to call for better preventative mental health services.

“We will do more. We’re doing more,” Siegel says. “But we’re not super humans. We don’t read minds. We’re not ever-present, omnipotent forces that can promise you we’re going to stop bad things from happening.”

USC junior Maxwell Pickenpaugh, who uses they/them pronouns, says they would like USC officials to be more transparent about student tragedy and the challenge of addressing mental health on campus. “A lot of us feel really upset with the whole situation,” Pickenpaugh says.

Pickenpaugh, 21, says they have struggled to receive mental health care at USC after being treated for bipolar disorder in high school. When Pickenpaugh contacted the USC counseling center during their freshman year, they say they were told that bipolar disorder was “too long-term of an illness to be treated at USC health center.” Pickenpaugh met with a USC counselor to get recommendations for off-campus care, but it took a month to get that appointment. The USC counselor recommended and helped Pickenpaugh reach out to a handful of outside mental health clinics and therapists, but then never followed up to check in, Pickenpaugh says. And none of the off-campus therapists ever responded.

“I felt really discouraged, and absolutely like, ‘OK, USC just does not care about my mental health.’ It was really hard,” Pickenpaugh says. “I just continued to struggle by myself for a while, really leaning on my family and my friends to help me through it.”

Pickenpaugh says it took nearly two years to find a therapist who would accept their health insurance and charge prices they could afford.

USC’s new psychiatry clinic is aimed at helping students like Pickenpaugh, who had not previously heard about the initiative, but thinks it’s a step in the right direction. “We recognize that the real barrier we have is getting people into longer-term care after they’ve seen student health,” Siegel says.

“The counseling system here and elsewhere is not built or intended—at any college—to be the entire mental health system for the population. It’s a piece of the mental health system. And so what those students are hearing is, ‘We’ve done the part that we think is best done here. We think you need more than that, and so now we need to move you to an environment that can provide the kind of ‘more’ that you need.’”

Siegel says the new clinic will be able to serve 2,500 students annually — which would cut in half the number of off-campus referrals counselors need to make.

He says the university is doing what it can to address its own “microcosm” of a national problem with insufficient access to mental health care. But many students see it as a problem of misplaced priorities.

“What I’ve discovered is that USC puts so much money into so many things that are for image,” says Sabine Bajakian, 22, who graduated in May from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where two of the students who died were enrolled.

“But they won’t really do anything for the counseling center. I don’t know where my tuition is going really,” she says, referencing a $700 million residential and retail complex the university opened in 2017. “Why aren’t there enough counselors?”

The student health center currently has 46 therapists and three psychiatrists on staff, Siegel says.

He and a university spokesperson declined to say how much money the university spent to build and staff the new psychiatry clinic. But by the time it is fully staffed next summer, it will have an additional six psychiatrists and 12 therapists—a step toward providing better mental health care to more of the nearly 50,000 students on USC’s campus.

“With how high our tuition is,” Redlaczyk says, “any student should be able to see a therapist.”

If you or someone you know may be contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

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