#25 years of labour for this is crazy work

[nando161mando]

25 years of labour for this is crazy work

[boldlyvoid]

Hypothetically | Chapter 25-27

summary: Reader and Spencer were friends in kindergarten, she watched him grow up and explore the world while she was still trying to catch up to him. now that they work together, they fall in love incredibly fast.

friends to lovers, case of the week style story

A/N: Set between seasons 4 and 6, not following canon. all original crimes based on real-life stories.

Warnings 18+: Murderers, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Blood, Guns, mentions of autopsy, Fluff, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, bed-sharing, Riding, Unprotected Sex, Virgin Reader, Case of the Week, original crimes, Food mention, Smut, Oral Sex, Light BDSM, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Talk, obgyn appointments and info, Home Invasion, Past Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Emotional Manipulation, Grooming, Pedophilia mention, non-con oral (male receiving), Pregnant Sex, Daddy Kink, Breeding Kink, Homophobia, conversion therapy

Word Count: 18k

chapter 25

“What do you mean we’re working a missing dog case?” Hotch questioned his whole entire life at that moment as Mindy and Garcia explained the case they think they found.

“Sir, I promise you’re going to want to listen to this,” Garcia said softly, her green dress and pink hair pom-poms really reassuring him that everything was fine.

Y/N watched him roll his eyes and wish he was somewhere else, he had been getting more and more fed up with work lately. Having a hard time with Strauss, his wife, and the job in general. After Hayley almost died last year and being stabbed, he had the worst luck on the team.

“It’s going to take a minute for you to see what we see,” Mindy matched Garcia’s aura perfectly, dressed in a cat sweater.

“All 5 of these families have reported dogs missing in the Sacramento area. You think that’s not that weird, they’re probably stealing dogs for fights and step one in the serial killer handbook. But you’d be wrong,” Garcia explained, flipping from photos of missing dog posters to murdered families.

“The dogs go missing right, the parents put all their information onto a flyer, the flyer gets plastered into the neighbourhood where everyone sees it. The unsub takes the flyer, and the dog and returns it to the family just to get inside of the house. He learns what their safety protocols are like and then he decides to break in and murder,” Mindy laid it all out easily for them to follow.

“Is there any evidence that the killer is the dognapper?” Prentiss asked, chewing on the end of her pencil as she tried to wrap her head around it all.

“No,” Garcia pressed her lips together quickly. “But! Family number 5, they were murdered on Friday. Their crime scene is the newest, it’s where we’ll get the best idea of what’s going on.”

“Sir,” Mindy added. “If I’m correct about this, another family is going to die in 2 days. There’s been another small dog reported missing in Sacramento, the same type of family and everything. It’s a signature if I’ve ever seen one.”

“Send us everything you have, wheels up in 20,” Hotch sighed, taking his things and leaving the room.

“Is he okay?” Y/N asked Rossi.

Dave and he were the closest, Hotch never told his secrets of personal gossip to anyone else. He knew Rossi understood family problems the best. Having been married and divorced 3 times each.

“Don’t repeat this, Garcia that means you,” he teased her quickly. “He asked Hayley if she wanted more kids, after seeing you and JJ expanding the BAU’s gifted children program. She said she’d only have another baby if he took a few years off.”

“Oh,” Y/N wasn’t surprised. If Spencer wasn’t in the BAU he probably wouldn’t get it either. “He’s young, he can come back at any time, as you did.”

“Which is what I said to him. He just doesn’t know how he’d fill all the time yet, he doesn’t have an interest in fishing or cigars like moi,” Rossi explained. Standing up and straightening out his suit, “not to mention the writing chops to keep your brain fresh.”

“Come on grandpa, it’s time to board the plane you can brag later,” Derek patted him on the back. “Some of us like to stay active and have fun on our time off.”

“I’ll have you know I’m very fun,” Rossi argues as they leave the room. They were like a bunch of teenagers sometimes.

“Well, I’ll see you in a few days, just be in Vegas by Sunday at 2 pm,” Y/N frowned at Spencer. “Call me when you’re free?”

Spencer leaned in and kissed her softly. Rubbing his hand over her belly as he did so, saying goodbye to the little dude in there. “Be good, take care of each other.”

She smiled, wishing he didn’t have to go again. “We always do, come home to me safely boy wonder.”

In Penelope’s office, Mindy had basically moved in. It was big enough for the two of them and they worked together anyway. Sharing all the computer space, rolling around each other like crazy people as they switched jobs. That meant that Mindy’s office became Y/N’s office when she stayed back on a case.

Y/N would be 33 weeks pregnant as of Thursday, and officially Mrs. Dr. Reid by Sunday.

If everything went according to plan. This case seemed simple enough to get them home in time. If not, the flight from LA to Vegas wasn’t even that long. Y/N and Will had a plan if this was to happen, JJ and Spencer would head right to Vegas while Will and Henry flew in with Y/N. All she really needed was her wedding dress and hospital go-bag, and Spencer.

She wasn’t going to go into labour any time soon, Matty was still way too high and she was barely even having Braxton hicks contractions yet. If her body wasn’t practicing, surely it wouldn’t just start. She was a planner, she planned everything and this pregnancy didn’t seem to listen. All she wanted was for him to be born on or after June 10th, healthy and happy, that’s her only wish.

She hated cases like these, ones that made her sit behind a desk and just look at everything till it made sense. But it never did, not in her brain. Thinking like an unsub was the only time it made sense, but she never understood it. Kidnapping a dog just to kill a family was never going to be something one could just understand.

The only idea she had was to get someone inside the newest victims’ house and just wait for the unsub to return the dog. It would be the easiest way to bring him in for questioning. So she called Hotch.

“Hotchner,” he answered shortly.

“Hey, I was just wondering if you had a plan yet? If not, I’ve been thinking.”

“We’re trying to find a way to get eyes and ears inside the vics home,” Hotch explained, it sounded like he was driving and yelling over the speaker.

“I was thinking you could send in Reid or Morgan posing as a tutor or coach of some kind, then you can hide the equipment in the bag they bring in, it would be the least suspicious,” she ran her thoughts through to him.

“That would work, I’ll have the team see what we can do from our end,” Hotch ended the call abruptly. Still in the bad mood from when he left.

She couldn’t blame him, it’s a hard spot raising kids and having this job. Y/N and Spencer were still trying to figure out how they were going to pull it off. She couldn’t imagine what it was like for Haley, always being alone with Jack and half the time her life was in danger. The risk that came with the job almost didn’t feel worth it, especially when it meant losing your family on top of everything else.

They sent Derek in, with Penelope in his ear, as he set up the cameras and microphones. Setting up 24/7 patrol across the street in a model home. Meaning that Y/N’s job was basically over and all she had to do was kick her feet up and eat snacks until she could go home.

—

Spencer crawled into bed 2 days later around 4 in the morning, cuddling into her without even taking off his work clothes. She barely slept when Spencer wasn’t home, she opened her eyes when she noticed he was there, as if she hadn’t even slept yet.

He smelled like hotel soap and stale airplane air. “Hi,” he whispered as he tried to cuddle in close to her, being held back by her belly.

“Home just in time to have to fly out again,” she smiled at him softly.

“I know,” he sighed. “I doubt the bureau would like us if we used the jet to travel to a wedding. It’s bad enough we have one and no other unit does.”

“Are you excited or nervous?”

“Both.”

“Mmm,” she hummed along. “I’m nervous.”

“Why?”

“I still haven’t written my vows and,” she stopped herself, frowning a little as Spencer laid a hand on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s all happening so fast. I feel like I haven’t had a chance to enjoy any of it and I’m worried if this is how fast the lead-up is, then how fast will the night be over?”

“Oh bunny,” he cooed. “I’ll make sure we get a moment alone, how about we sneak off during the party and go to the swing and just spend time together? Really make the most of our day.”

“Okay,” she smiled again. “A part of me wishes it was just us.”

“How about this,” Spencer said as he sat up, turning on the bedside lamp before getting out of bed. He looked through his underwear drawer and pulled out the box the rings were in. “Marry me, right now?”

“What?” She laughed.

“Just me and you, marry me?”

“It won’t count this way?” She rebutted, sitting up as well as she squinted in the light. Trying to wake up more.

“you’re not religious and you hate the government even though you work for them,” he reminded her. “Having a sheet of paper and dedicating my life to you are two completely different things.”

“I told you I don’t have my vows ready!”

Spencer sat on the bed, sitting directly across from her as he placed the rings on the bed. Taking both her hands in his as he looked into her eyes. “Just make it up?”

“You’re insufferable,” she teased him.

“And you love me,” he teased right back.

“Fine, Spencer Reid, you big fuckin’ dork,” she couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “My whole life I’ve just wanted to love you. I don’t know how I managed to pull it off, but here I am."

She let out a long, shaky breath as she continued. "You complete me, I don’t feel right when you’re not around and I never want to lose you. Marrying you means more to me than just becoming your wife, I don’t care about the term or the tax benefits," she laughed as a tear fell down her cheek. he wiped it away quickly.

"I was perfectly content just being in your rotation. Being your partner for life is a blessing to me, I’m going to love you forever.” She picked up and ring and put it on his finger.

His eyes were glossy as he watched her shaking hand slip the ring over him. He loved her more than he even knew how to describe at the moment.

“Do you remember that one time you asked me to show you how a real man loves a woman?”

She laughed, looking down at her gigantic belly. “Kinda hard to forget when I’m carrying around this extra 30 pounds.”

“It reminded me of a quote I read on a swing one time,” he said softly, watching her eyes gleam as she knew where he was going.

“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Y/N with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her nonetheless because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”

“What’s that from?” Y/N couldn’t stop the tears from falling down her cheeks, she had never known what book he was reading. She always wondered what his thoughts were in that moment when their eyes locked in remembrance all those years ago.

“Great Expectations by Charles Dickens,” Spencer replied, starting to cry as well.

That’s when she remembered it, looking over at the book that had been sitting on his bedside table for months. It was the book he re-read the most, the book he was reading that first night in Wichita when she asked to crawl into his bed. The book he put down before they conceived Matthew. The whole time she was falling in love with him, the way she did as a child, he was reading the same book because it reminded him of her.

“I didn’t expect that book to hold such a place in my heart the first time I read it. I only brought it to the park with me that day because it was the closest book to me, and I was having a really hard day,” he stopped to wipe his tears softly. “Yet somehow, every single bad day in my life has been made better by you. You’re my greatest expectation, and the only one I’m trying the hardest to live up to.”

“I love you,” she replied to him softly. Holding his face in her hands now as she stared into his eyes, “you’re always going to be everything I’ve ever wanted and all I’ll ever need. You’ve met every expectation, and beyond.”

“I love you,” he smiled. He took her left hand off his cheek, sliding the silver band over her ring finger, pressing it snugly against her engagement ring. “forever.”

“And then some,” Y/N added before kissing him softly.

She smiled against his lips, sitting back and looking at him with complete wonder. “Dr. Y/L/N,” she teased him, pretending to tip her imaginary hat.

“Agent Reid,” he copied her causing them both to laugh again.

“So when is our real anniversary then?” Y/N asked softly, trying to remember what day of the month it was.

“It’s April 20th.”

“Our anniversary cannot be 4/20!” She panicked. “Oh. My god!”

Spencer laughed from down deep in his gut, laying down against the sheets as she smacked his arm lightly. “I’m serious, but that’s so funny though,” she laughed too.

She laid back against the sheets then, Spencer cuddled into her side. His face in the crook of her neck while laying a leg over hers. She held him as close as she could, Matthew really starting to get in the way of everything she did now.

She let out a deep breath as she settled with Spencer against her. “I love you so much, my husband.”

“I love you more, my wife,” he replied. The words sounding like heaven on his lips.

chapter 26

She let out a deep breath when the dress actually zipped up. She was so worried that in the last 2 weeks her body had completely changed. JJ finished with her zipper, fluffing her dress and making sure everything was in place.

Her mom was wiping her tears for the 4th time in the last hour, Y/N couldn’t stop laughing every time she heard her sniffle. It didn’t feel as life-changing as her mother made it seem, Spencer and Y/N were already married in her opinion, this was just a nice formality for their parents.

She could hear all the people talking in her parent’s yard, a few kids yelling as they ran around each other. People were already drinking, there was food and snacks all around. It was just a big party where they were going to tell everyone exactly how much they loved each other.

As much as she was ready mentally, her body was shot. The butterflies in her stomach wouldn’t leave, the baby was kicking from the anxiety in her body no matter how hard she tried to calm down. It was nerve-wracking to be so open in front of so many people.

It was even worse with the fact she hadn’t seen Spencer since yesterday. As much as he claimed he wasn’t superstitious, he really didn’t want to see her before the wedding. Claiming his mother was the worried one, Y/N let it slide no matter how much she hated sleeping in her childhood bed all by herself with a mini-gymnast in her stomach.

“Are you ready?” JJ asked her softly.

She nodded, looking in the mirror at herself one last time. “Can I have a minute?”

“Sure,” JJ smiled, taking Debbie with her as they walked out of her room.

She stood in the window, opening the blinds and looking out towards the swings once again. Spencer was sitting there, swinging while staring at her window.

She smiled, feeling the butterflies leave her system in a beautiful flurry as their eyes locked. She was ready, she had always been ready to marry him.

She walked out of the room and down the stairs, holding the railing carefully. She was just wearing a pair of crocs under her dress, not trusting her big clumsy ass with heels.

She waited in the foyer as Emily walked across the street to gather everyone. She was officiating for them, Spencer wanted her to be the one to marry them, she was the closest thing to a sister he had.

Every single important person in their lives was in the crowd. Even Spencers father was there, in the back, quiet. Diana was happy to see him, Spencer felt indifferent. Gideon came too, which made it a little easier.

They all walked across the street then, gathering at the end of the makeshift aisle they laid out in the park. Penelope played a simple wedding march, starting the ceremony officially.

Everyone stood, turning towards them. Chloe went down first, dropping flower petals in big clumps here and there before running towards her mom. Then it was Y/N’s turn, opting out of the whole bridesmaid’s thing for the sake of not having to pick and choose between her co-workers and sisters-in-law.

Her dad extended an arm for her, she took it as she softly smiled at him. He looked like he was trying not to cry, “ready?”

“Let’s go,” she whispered.

Seeing Spencer at the end of the aisle was like a dream. She began to walk towards him, every step closer made her heartbeat louder and louder in her chest. Before she knew it she was standing in front of him, her dad giving her a soft kiss on the cheek before handing her over to Spencer.

The idea of giving her away was weird. He wasn’t giving her to him, he was simply helping her reach him. And he always had been.

Spencer’s hand was soft in hers and they stepped towards Emily together.

The music stopped then, causing them to turn to each other and smile. It was time.

It felt more like time stopped, however, getting a sort of tunnel vision for each other as the rest of the world faded away.

“Welcome everyone, you can take a seat,” Emily cut into the moment. “A few weeks ago Spencer asked me if I’d marry him off to his best friend, I of course said yes because who can say no to that face?”

Everyone laughed as Spencer blushed. “Spencer is the smartest man to work in the FBI, we’re not afraid to admit that. From the day I met him, he was nothing but informative and kind, as well as shy and personal. It took a while to learn anything about him, but once you get to know him he’s like an open book. And it’s a good story.”

“Like most good fairy tales, it’s a story told in two parts. Starting with a meet-cute of cosmic proportions, a plotline that would make any other ’right for each other at the wrong time,’ story run for the hills,” Emily exaggerated.

“And finally, a reunion,” her voice was soft then. “I’ll never forget the day Spencer held the door open for Y/N, she walked in with a smile on her face that was almost as big as Spencers. He introduced us to a childhood friend that day, not realizing she would become part of our family.”

Y/N felt herself getting a little choked up, seeing Penelope and JJ wiping their tears just off to the side.

“It’s a story best told in the first person,” Emily laughed at her own joke. “So, without further ado, ladies first,” she instructed, stepping away from the altar to keep the focus on them.

“Well?” Y/N shook her head at him, motioning with her hand for him to start speaking. Making everyone laugh once again. Spencer’s smile was adorable as he giggled.

“Would you say— hypothetically, of course, that soulmates are real, Doctor Reid?” She questioned him softly.

He nodded, “I would.”

“Good,” she smiled. “Because I think you’re mine. And I think I’ve known that for a very long time. There was something about you, that first day I saw you. You weren’t shoving dirt up your nose or pulling on my hair. You were reading a book, I believe it was Matilda, you were all by yourself and you looked sad.”

“Me, being me,” she laughed to herself, “I marched over to you and I asked if you wanted to play in the sandbox with me. One small gesture changed the entire course of my life, you became a friend and then a stranger again in the blink of an eye. I know what it’s like to know of you and not be in your presence and it’s the worst.”

She didn’t want to cry, but she knew she was about to. “I know you’re my soulmate because my soul physically aches when you’re not around. Like magnets, I’m pulled towards you and I’m willing to crush anything that gets in the way. You and I were once the same cosmic rock just floating through space, separated for millions of years until the time was right.”

“I found you right when I needed you,” she wiped a tear off her cheek quickly. “When we needed each other. And I’m never going to let you go.”

She turned towards Emily, grabbing a ring from her. “With this ring, you’re tied to me for eternity now, the way things always should have been.”

“I love you,” Spencer whispered, wiping his own tears before holding her hands again.

“Your turn, pretty boy,” she teased him one last time, laughing to try and stop the tears.

“Most of you know the story,” Spencer began his speech. Staring into Y/N’s eyes, trying to forget there was an audience.

“We met in kindergarten, she was wearing a sundress with green and pink flowers, much like today. You had bangs back then and a cute pink bow in your hair. And you were as stubborn then as you are now,” he smiled. “Mrs. Richardson had told me twice that we weren’t allowed to put water in the sandbox, no matter how important it was to the construction of my model pyramids. That’s why I was reading my book. You went to your backpack, grabbed a water bottle, and poured it right into the sand without thinking twice about the consequences.

“I didn’t really see you again until I was 13, I sat on that swing with my copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens while you sat in your window way up there.” He pointed at her house, past the swing set. “I’ll never know what you were reading or what you were thinking, but I have the exact moment I saw you ingrained in my memory,” Spencer’s words were soft as his thumbs ran over her hands.

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets.” Spencer recited from memory.

“You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Y/N, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you,” Spencer’s voice trailed off to a whisper as he reached the end.

“I read that quote moments before seeing you again, and part of me knew the universe had greater plans for us. And I knew, Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!”

“With this ring,” Spencer finally added. Lifting the last ring from Derek’s extended hand, placing it on Y/N’s ring finger where it belonged. “I vow to love you till my very last moments, and if heaven is real I’ll be waiting for your loving embrace.”

She wiped her tears quickly, looking up as she tried to stop her mascara from smudging. “You’re a dick sometimes,” she started to laugh before hearing the crowd do the same.

“You love me,” he teased her.

“I do,” she smiled, pulling him in and kissing him hard on the lips. Getting lost in his embrace as the world around them stopped.

—

Having every single person that she loved mingle around her parent’s backyard felt a little surreal. Her father and Rossi were smoking cigars together on the desk, Levi and Will were discussing training stories while Chloe and Henry chased each other around the yard.

Emily and Noelle were slowly dancing in their own little world to the music that played, not too far from Haley and Arron who had the same idea. Jack was talking to Derek, sharing stories about their favourite superhero.

Diana and Debbie were going around making sure everyone had a drink or a snack, discussing their children and showing off to everyone that was there. It was a lot to take in, but she wouldn’t change it for the world. This was the most perfect little wedding she could have ever asked for.

Spencer never left her side, holding her hand where ever she went for the majority of the night. Knowing she hated being the centre of anyone else attention, calming her down from all the eyes that were on her.

“Do you want to go to the swing?” He whispered in her ear when they were finally alone.

“Please,” she looked up at him with pleading eyes. Wanting to just be alone with him for a while.

She snuck out of the yard and across the street, Y/N sat down on the swing for the first time in years, her big belly thanking her for the relief. Spencer pushed her lightly on the swing, helping her swing in the late-night spring breeze in rural Nevada.

The light in her bedroom was still on, illuminating the empty room she called hers for the majority of her life. Still unable to process the fact that she did it, she married Spencer. She made a life in his orbit, she was happy and loved and making a family with the man of her dreams.

This was the best revenge she could have ever gotten on any childhood bully or predator in her life. Pure happiness, that no one could take from her. Knowing she did this on her own, meeting Spencer out of the blue and building a life of joy and peace was so unbelievably wonderful.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about,” Spencer asked softly as he continued to push her on the swing.

“I’m just amazed that I did it,” she said softly.

“Did what?”

“all this,” she waved her arm out in front of her. “I grew up, I made friends and a family and found the love of my life even after believing for so long that I never would.”

“the universe had better plans for you than you thought,” She could hear the smile on Spencer’s face as he spoke. “You’re so deserving of the world and then some, you’re worth the universe to me. Brighter than any star in the sky, more powerful than the big-bang.”

She dragged her feet along the sand, stopping the swing abruptly before turning around to see Spencer. His eyes glistened in the moonlight or the streetlight. Either way, his brown eyes were glowing as she looked up at him softly.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

She wrapped her arms around him as best as she could, pressing her cheek against his chest softly. “For showing me that love is real.”

“Being able to love you has been the best part of my life.”

She pulled him into another kiss, holding his face softly as she peppered kisses to his lips over and over. “You get me forever.”

“And then some.”

“Hypothetically,” she teased him lightly. “Anything is possible when the two of us get together.”

“I love you,” was all he could say before kissing her again.

They could hear the music travelling across the street for the yard, she wrapped her arms around him and swayed to the beat. Taking a moment completely alone with him to just appreciate him. To hold him close, hear his heartbeat through his suit jacket and just take it all in.

The rest of her life started at that moment, the birth of a new future. One with endless possibilities, endless happiness, and the most love in the whole world.

Soulmates, 500 years in the making.

Placing 500 more years of possibilities in the hands of Fate, who cradled them in her loving embrace. Making a future for them unlike any she’s made before.

Epilogue

2020

The birds chirping used to make her wake up with a smile, now it made her panic a little. She was so overly used to being woken up to a baby crying, a kid with a tummy ache, or the sound of fighting coming from the cribs in the twin’s room.

When it was quiet she worried, opening her eyes and looking around to see all 4 of her children cuddled up around her and Spencer. Completely asleep, and absolutely adorable.

Matthews’s face was beside hers on the pillow. His long hair falling over his face, just like his fathers used to all those years ago. She kissed her baby on the forehead, unable to fully understand that he was 10 now.

The twins were in the middle, Harper and Derek were attached at the hip all day long. Sleeping basically on top of each other, it was the only way they were peaceful. Since being squished together in the womb, they’ve become best friends and each other’s comfort person over the last 6 years.

Alice on the other hand was a daddy’s girl. Probably because she got the most time with him, 2 and a half years’ worth of all Spencer’s love and affection.

Spencer had quit the BAU when they got pregnant with their last baby, deciding he wanted to be with his kids full time. He wanted to be more present, to make more memories and just be a good dad.

Every morning Alice would find her way into the bed, she’d do whatever it took to get between Y/N and Spencer, cuddling into her father’s arms and going back to sleep. Almost every time, she would push her mom’s arms away, waking Y/N up in the process just to smirk at her as if to say; “haha my turn.”

She loved her little family. And they loved her too, she had been out of town for a week on a really bad case that required all hands on deck. They called her every day, begging her to come home soon, breaking her heart. So it wasn’t a surprise to see all of them snuggled in, taking in all the time with her that they could.

Matthews’s eyes fluttered as he woke up, his big beautiful brown eyes looking at her softly. “Mom,” he said softly with a smile before wrapping his arms around her neck and snuggling into her. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, Mr. Magoo,” she whispered into his hair, holding him close. He still smelled like her little baby, only bigger as he rested against her.

“Are we still going to Uncle Dave’s tonight?” He asked as he settled against her, wanting her to run her fingers through his hair. It calmed him as it did for Spencer, soothing his mind as it ran a million miles a minute.

“I think so,” she replied, picking him up softly and laying on her back more. “I think all your cousins are going to be there too.”

“Even Jack?” He asked, sitting up with wonder in his eyes. Jack was 15 now, and just the coolest dude in Matthews’s life. Much like how Spencer looked up to Hotch in the beginning.

“Even Jack!” She whispered with enthusiasm, trying to keep the others asleep but it was too late.

“Mommy!” Harper cried, pushing Derek away from her as she leaped into her mother’s arms.

“Hi sweetheart,” she couldn’t stop herself from laughing as she got smothered in hugs from the twins.

Spencer looked over at her then. Alice was snuggled into his neck, one hand on his shoulder, the other in his hair. She had always played with his hair every chance she could get. Especially whenever he held her or gave her a ride on his shoulders as they walked through the park.

“Hi,” Spencer smiled.

There he was, the love of her life. His smile made her feel at home, the love between them only growing every morning when they laid eyes on each other.

“Are you going to say hi to mommy?” Spencer asked Alice, rubbing her back softly.

She raised her hand to wave softly before dropping it back onto Spencer’s head with a smack, “ow?” He laughed lightly, making her bounce on his chest and laugh in response.

She was always quiet in the morning, leaving all the talking to her siblings. She was the calmest of them all, she was also the easiest of the 4 of them. She didn’t cry unless she was desperate for food or attention, she slept through the nights and was just all around not fussy at all. A literal blessing to their lives.

The twins were a lot, they knew they would be. She doesn’t miss the days and nights of them taking turns screaming. And she definitely doesn’t miss the ache of her body as two babies sucked her dry for almost 6 months. Breastfeeding kicked her ass the most, eventually making her lose too much weight and faint from low blood pressure, it sucked.

The outcome was beyond worth it. Derek and Harper were the craziest, funniest, loudest 6-year-olds in the whole world. If they weren’t writing a show, pretending to direct a spooky movie or pulling pranks on their father, they were planning to.

They had a specific dynamic, Harper was the planner and Derek was the do-er. Harper would come up with the sneakiest, worst ideas a child could have and somehow always managed to convince Derek to do it for her. A modern-day Jekyll and Hyde terrorized her home.

But Matthew, He was the sweetest. Being a single child till the age of 4 meant he was around Spencer and Y/N all the time, just the three of them. He’s shy but outgoing, he speaks his mind and he isn’t afraid to share his thoughts and feelings. He’s the best part of both of them but with all the confidence to follow his dreams. He was handsome and smart, he was sweet and kind, he was her baby. Forever and always, no matter how big he got.

He’s smart like Spencer, but not jumping through elementary school as fast. They agreed to let him decide when he turned 14. He deserved the chance to grow up with his own age group, to make friends and memories that were good and happy, to build the confidence to stand up for himself and others before he finished school. He didn’t mind it, he enjoyed helping other students when he finished his work early and asking for extra credit assignments.

And he liked being in class with Roz LaMontagne. They were smitten with each other from day one, always holding hands and playing nicely. JJ and Y/N always felt bad peeling them apart from each other at the end of a playdate, they were best friends.

It was like Roz had 2 older brothers with Henry and Matt, the 3 of them being so close in age they were often mistaken for triplets, with JJ and Y/N being their lesbian moms. It was a ruse that came in handy when they saw men checking them out, or when they wanted a family discount at the zoo.

Her life felt perfect, it was far from it in reality but she was happy with that. She worked long hours, her kids missed her every day, she didn’t see Spencer as often as she’d like and she was always tired. But that was what it took, she would work herself to the bone in an instant if it meant that she could come home and be snuggled like this every time.

“How was your week?” She asked Harper, brushing her strawberry blond hair behind her ear as she cuddled into her other side. Now having 3 children laying on top of her.

“Dad took us to the air and space museum,” Derek answered for her.

“No way!” Y/N enthused. “You need to tell me everything you learned!”

“The Museum is the largest of the Smithsonian's 19 museums and its Center for Earth and Planetary studies is one of the Institution's nine research centres. More than eight million people a year visit the Museum's two locations, making it one of the most visited museums in the country,” Matthew explained, remembering the sign at the entrance from memory.

“Wow, what was everyone’s favourite part? Maybe we can go again soon and you can all show me?” She suggested, riling them all up till they were bouncing on the mattress and screaming suggestions back and forth.

“Okay, okay,” Y/N settled them down. Watching them all sit-down and smile as they tried to stop laugh and listen. “Why don’t we go get breakfast and spend the morning together before we get ready to go to Aunt Penny’s party tonight okay?”

“I thought it was Uncle Dave's party?” Derek asked.

“It’s at his house but you know how aunt penny plans,” Y/N smiled at him. “How about you all go get dressed and pick something nice to wear while I talk to your dad for a bit?”

“Anything I want to wear?” Harper questioned her, very serious.

Y/N laughed, shaking her head, “something nice, but yes your choice.”

“Yes!” Harper screamed, hopping off the bed making the whole room shake as she ran down the hall. The sound of her bare feet slapping the hardwood carrying through the hallway in an echo.

“Matty, I’ll dress Alice, can you just watch her for a minute?” Spencer asked as he placed Alice in the middle of the bed.

“Sure,” Matthew smiled. “Come on Ali, I’ll read you a book?”

She put her arms out for her brother to carry her, and soon enough it was just Spencer and Y/N all alone again. Spencer and her both falling back against the pillows and sighing in the quiet.

Spencer pulled her into a hug, wrapping himself around her as he kissed her cheek, “I missed you so much, I hate when you’re gone.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” she said softly. “I got a job offer last night, and I think I’m going to take it.”

“What is it?”

“VICAP and the BAU are merging, even more, I’ve been asked to be the Chief of VICAP to personally overview the program and pass the information along to Prentiss,” She explained. “It would be a 9-5 thing, 5 days a week. I’d be home for dinner and all weekend long. We could have another baby or go on vacation? You know the possibilities are endless.”

Spencer kissed her again, “you’d be able to help people and be home all the time.”

“Exactly,” she smiled into his embrace. “I told them I’d let them know later today, they want me to start next month.”

“Follow your gut,” Spencer whispered, happy at the decision she was making either way.

“My gut is currently saying ‘feeeeed meeee’, so let’s get going!” She cheered as she tried to escape from his embrace.

He just held on tighter, tickling her stomach and kissing her neck, “help!” She cried, joking obviously and the kids knew that. Sure enough, 4 pairs of feet came running back into their room, dog piling them.

“I said help! Not suffocate me?!” She teased them as Spencer let her go, each taking a child and tickling them instead. Everyone was screaming again, giggling from deep in their stomach, feeling sick from how happy they were.

She loved every moment of it.

—

After 10 years, the BAU had gone through a lot of changes. Everyone seemed to come and go at least once, some leaving for good when their families started. But there were a lot of new faces now, once someone was on the team they were family.

It was a rare occasion for everyone to get together, especially now that almost everyone had kids. Spencer and Y/N went from being the 2nd set of parents to aunty and uncle to 8 kids in 10 years.

That meant that there were currently 12 screaming kids terrorizing Rossi’s beautiful backyard as the adults sat around the fire. “Please tell me no one here has a baby announcement to make, I don’t think I can handle a thirteenth,” Rossi complained, grey hair making him look more like papa Rossi than uncle Dave now.

“No,” everyone said in unison, laughing at the abundantly clear meaning. They were all too tired to do it all again.

“Like Spencer’s mom said, why have another when you can stop at perfection?” Emily joked as she leaned into Noelle’s embrace. “PJ is the best little guy in the world.”

“Spencer makes some great kids,” Y/N laughed. Remembering that time Emily nervously asked them if Spencer would be the donor for her child. Wanting her kid to be born with the best DNA she could think of.

“That he does,” Noelle smiled, looking into the yard to see PJ, Michael and Hank roughhousing like they always were.

They all had kids fairly close together, always making sure each new member of the BAU's gifted children program had friends who were more like family in their lives. Their small chosen family expanded not only in size but with the amount of love they shared for each other.

Henry was 12 now, Jack 15. They had always gotten along well together, being a little more on the nerdy side. They welcomed Matthew into their little group with open arms, as well as Roz.

Hotch ended up becoming Section Chief, taking a desk job so that he could spend more time with his family. They welcomed Jessie 6 years ago, right around the time Y/N had the twins. She was a spitting image of Haley with all the stern seriousness of Hotch. Seeing her and Harper try and work together was always funny. Harper and Derek were always trying to start shit somewhere, while Jessie ran to Y/N to tattle on them. It was the funniest dynamic out of all the age groups, and it was only going to get worse as they grew up.

“I don’t know,” Y/N sighed, looking at her kids as they all smiled and laughed. The joy they brought her was unimaginable, “I think 5 would be interesting.”

“You’re a psycho, and I should know, I’m an expert,” JJ just shook her head, blinking at the craziness. “I can barely handle 3.”

“Alice was so easy though,” she whined. “All of them were good, I miss having a baby who wanted to cuddle with me. It’s not fair Spencer gets all the attention now.”

“You could always quit, they’d love that,” he teased her softly, not wanting to wake Alice as she slept on him, tired from playing with everyone during the afternoon.

“My new position is going to be better for us,” she smirked.

“What position?” Penelope yelled at her.

“I’m going to be the VICAP unit chief,” she smiled, watching them all light up as they congratulated her. Starling the sleeping Alice on Spencer’s chest.

“I think I’ve done enough fieldwork, I’d like to cook more dinners and read more bedtime stories now,” she smiled. “I never thought I’d say that.”

“I don’t think any of us did,” Haley added. “I never expected Aaron to slow down, but when he did I think it was the best thing he chose to do. Jack and Jessie love having him around all the time.”

“To 10 plus years on the job, 10 years of friendship and the 12 new lives we brought into this world,” Y/N said as she lifted her can of ginger-ale, everyone following with their own drinks.

“To family,” Prentiss added.

“To family,” they all repeated.

Taking a sip before smiling at each other, everything ended up okay. It was more than they ever expected, and everything they hoped for.

—

The kids all fell asleep on the ride home. Spencer and Y/N each taking one of the twins upstairs first, placing them in their beds softly before returning to the garage for the others. Finding Matthew trying to carefully bring Alice inside to help his parents.

“Hey Matty it’s okay,” Spencer whispered, placing a hand on his back. “you go inside with your mom and I’ll take care of this.”

“Okay,” he replied, extremely tired as his eyelids drooped.

Y/N wrapped her arm around his shoulders, he was almost as tall as her already and she wasn’t ready for that. “Come on my baby,” she whispered as she led him into the house and up the stairs.

She helped him change into a pair of pyjamas before helping him into his bed, covering him in his adorable planet-covered sheets. She tucked him in nice a snug before sitting on the edge, looking down at him as he closed his eyes and settled in.

She brushed his brown curls off his face, making way for the kiss she was about to leave on his forehead. “Goodnight my Matty Magoo, I love you to the moon and back.”

“I love you to the edge of the milky way,” he replied with a small smile. “I’m excited for you to be home more. Dad worries about you and it makes him sad, I like seeing you both happy together.” He rambled all his thoughts out at night just like Spencer did.

She kissed his head softly, holding his cheeks in her hand as she looked into his beautiful brown eyes. “You are so sweet, have a good sleep and I will see you tomorrow. I love you.” She told him again, and she’d tell him a million more times if she could.

“I love you, too, mom,” he smiled one last time before closing his eyes.

She shut off his lamp, closing his door on the way out.

She stood in the hallway then, a hand on her heart as she thought about just how much she loved him. JJ wasn’t kidding when she said you grow a love so big you’d kill for them.

Back in the twin’s room, she made sure they were comfortable for the night, taking Harper out of the crazy dress and pants she picked out for the day. Tucking both of them into their little beds, kissing their heads before turning on their nightlight. They didn’t like the dark, and they liked to keep their door open a little so buddy could sneak in.

In her own room, she found Spencer in bed, shirtless with a book. He got sexier as he got older, it was impossible and yet it happened. Every year he looked different, in a wonderful way.

His hair was fluffy, his tummy was fuller— a dad bod as Penelope would call it. He wore glasses all the time now, having a hard time reading without them. It made him incredibly hot.

She changed into a cute pyjama set, satin shorts and a spaghetti strap top, wanting to get his attention away from whatever book he found this time.

She could feel his eyes on her as she changed, not wanting to look at him and make him stop.

He put his book down when she got in beside him, still on the right side after all these years. “What?” She asked him as he kept staring at her.

“Were you serious?”

“Yes I do think you’re sexy, I didn’t think you could read minds too?” She teased him.

“Funny,” he smiled at her. “Do you want another baby?”

She shrugged, “we could Russian roulette this and just see if it happens?”

“Seriously?” His voice dropped, softer than normal. “Because I would have 16 more kids with you if you wanted. They’re all so amazing, every time.”

“I know,” she felt her heart melt. “Matthew said you get sad when I’m not here, he worries for you.”

“All week, Harper wore her regular outfits because she likes making you laugh with her silly ones,” Spencer told her. They liked to share secrets about their kids at night. Basically profiling them.

“I love them,” her heart felt like it was going to burst.

“Come here,” Spencer requested, waiting for her to sit on his hips and look down into his eyes like she always did. She brushed the hair off his face, holding his cheeks in her hands.

His eyes are so much like Matthews, but it was Alice who looked the most like him. She had his nose, his chin, she was tall and skinny and just the most adorable copy of him. Every feature on him was in one of their kids, he saw the same thing in her.

“Are you sure?” She asked him softly.

“The only thing in the whole world that I know for certain is that I love you and this family. Even gravity is simply a hypothetical, but you and me… I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” his words soft and his expression softer.

She kissed him, pressing her lips against his for the first time in a while. It always felt like coming home, this was where she was meant to be.

When she pulled back all she wanted to do was look at him for a minute, to imagine what new little face the two of them could make together. All 4 of their children were so perfect, she couldn’t imagine a 5th possibility.

“Put a baby in me,” She whispered.

She didn’t have to tell him twice, he reached over to the night table to turn off the light before kissing her neck softly. His big, warm hands wrapped around her back, pulling her in closer to him.

He was so much different now from the first time they did this. Confident, stronger, older, but he was still her soft boy. He held her with care, kissed her like she was made out of glass. The contrast of his actions and the feeling of his rough hands on her body made her feel like she was on fire.

He pushed the straps of her shirt off her shoulders, dipping her back a little so he could kiss her cheek. He pushed her shirt down, freeing one of her breasts, holding it softly in his hands before kissing the newly exposed skin.

His tongue swiped across her nipple, making her gasp and grip his arm as she rutted into the feeling. He cradled her head in his hands, laying her back with her head now at the foot of the bed.

Still, between her legs, he pulled the satin shorts down slowly to see she never wore any underwear under them. He smirked, running his finger softly over her vagina, watching in awe as she spread her legs wider for him.

She could see how hard he was, his erection making a tent in his boxers as he teased her softly. “Still so perfect,” he praised her. “Look how tight you are, sucking my finger inside that tight heat.”

She tightened around him on purpose then, feeling his finger slip in even more. “Fuck,” he gasped. Moving down more to place a kiss on her clit.

Her breathing picked up then, even after 11 years of sex with this man, the thought of his tongue on her still made her shiver. He was just that good, always getting better every time he dove face-first into her.

Her back arched the second his tongue connected with her clit. Pushing herself into his tongue more and more as he explored her. Two fingers were inside of her now, Spencer’s mouth kissing and sucking and licking every single inch of her pussy as she quietly gasped into the darkness.

She wanted to scream for more, she always did, but she couldn’t anymore. There were 4 sets of ears just down the hall trying to have a peaceful night’s sleep, she had to remind herself of that every time.

“Fuck, Spencer,” she whispered, biting her lip so nothing else slipped out.

“What?” He whispered against her skin, kissing her groin and lower tummy.

“Please,” she begged softly, sitting up and climbing onto his lap once more. “Daddy?”

It had been years since she said that to him, not able to utter the words once he actually became a father. It lit a fire in him, pulling her in closer before he ripped the shirt off her body.

He held her against him, kissing her neck as he basically growled at the feeling. Becoming almost feral with the thought of fucking her. She was in love with the feeling, when he got rough with her it was the best.

She enjoyed every second of it, knowing she’d wake up in the morning with beard burn on her neck and between her thighs, not giving a single fuck. It was so worth it, the tickle of his facial hair on her skin beside his mouth, she craved it.

“I need you out of those boxers, sir,” she panted, holding his hair as he continued to kiss her neck.

He pulled off her, looking at her in the darkness with lust-filled eyes. “Lay back,” he instructed her.

She always listened, laying back against the pillows as he freed himself from the confines of his underwear. Crawling on top of her and hovering slightly as he looked down at her. He brushed her hair off her face, kissing her lips lightly before smiling.

“Tell me again what you want?”

She smirked, “I want you to put a baby in me, fill me up. Let me make you a daddy again?”

The noise that left his throat was enough to make her clit twitch again, it was deep and guttural and beyond sexy. He became an animal on nights like this.

She spread her legs again, wrapping her knees around him as he pulled him in against her body. “Fuck me, Spencer.”

He lined himself up with her quickly, dragging the head of his cock through her folds a few times before he began to push in. Little by little, achingly slow. Teasing her, knowing just how badly she wanted him to pound into her.

“Yes,” she sighed as he bottomed out, dropping her head back against the pillow softly.

Her hands roamed his back, waiting for him to start to move again. Digging her nails in when he finally did, pulling out slowly before pushing back in with effort.

“Ah,” she moaned softly, covering her own mouth as he started to move faster.

“Shhh,” he reminded her, kissing her neck again as he found his rhythm.

“Shut up and fuck me then,” she sounded desperate. “Please,” she added. Not wanting him to stop out of spite.

“Shut up and take it,” he ordered, placing his own hand over her mouth as he fucked her harder.

She couldn’t believe it, he was holding one hand over her mouth while his other reached for her clit, making her jolt forward at the contact. It was everything she wanted, it was rough and powerful and just the best reminder that she belonged to him.

Spencer was hers, she was his, they created this entire world together. She felt so overwhelmed, she wasn’t aware that she was crying at the pleasure till Spencer moved his hand off her mouth to wipe off a tear.

“Keep going,” she encouraged him. “Please, please.”

“Shhh,” he soothed her, “I’m going to make you feel so good bunny, you’re going to be so full, so beautiful carrying another one of our babies.”

That did it for her, she tilted her head back as she arched her back. Pulling Spencer’s fingers into her mouth so that she wouldn’t moan too loud as she came on his cock.

Spencer shuttered at the feeling, fucking into her with vigour as he tried to hold in his own moans. Sounding more like a whimper when he finally came, spilling into her with the force of a Mack truck.

He dropped against her body then, breathing deep into her neck. She wrapped her legs around him tightly, holding him inside of her so nothing slipped out. “Fuck.”

“I love you,” Spencer breathed against her skin.

She ran her fingers through his hair softly before kissing his forehead. “I love you more.”

They stayed like that for a while, only pulling apart finally to get cleaned up. Spencer turned back on the light, helping her to the bathroom quietly before stripping the sheets off the bed.

She returned to a freshly made bed and a dressed Spencer waiting for her. She put her shorts and a t-shirt back on, slipping into bed and cuddling into him once more. Having to look presentable for when the kids eventually came running into their room at 7 am.

She sighed into his embrace, smiling softly against his skin. “What was that Buddha quote you told me all those years ago?”

“When you meet your soulmate, remember that the act to bring you together was 500 years in the making. So always appreciate and be kind to each other,” Spencer replied softly.

“Goodnight, Spence,” she kissed his jaw softly as she snuggled in closer.

“Goodnight, bunny.”

the end

[blesspastacraig]

A Year in Review

I wanted to creat a list of sorts of everything I wrote in 2020, since I managed to do a lot.

Here’s my one shots:

Not Alone - Published 08 Jan 2020

"I keep telling you, I don't want to go" Craig complains as he burps one of his two newborn twin daughters. His mom, thankfully is burping the other. Craig knows he should be nicer to her but two newborns has him at the end of his tether.

"I know but I'm going to keep pushing you until you do" she says, swaying and patting Daisy's back.

or Craig and Tweek bond at a young parents group because they're the only two people with twins.

New Beginnings - Published 19 Feb 2020

Tweek doesn’t want to push her, so they’re both a little cautious of one another. Tweek doesn’t want to barge in and fill a role she hasn’t given him yet. She’s never had a second parental figure before, and Tweek doesn’t want to force himself into that slot. He barely feels worthy of being the father to his biological child, let alone a stepdad figure to this poor little girl who’s life he’s just invaded.

Or Tweek takes Craig's daughter to a daddy daughter dance because Craig is unable.

Love Chooses You - Published 29 March 2020

He's heard the phrase that you can't choose who you love before, and really, right now he knows it's true. Damien never would have chosen to love Pip of all people.

Rebuild - Published 11 May 2020

“I’m flying Craig!” Tweek cries from the top of the concrete slab. Craig doesn’t answer, only sighs. He sinks down knowing he’s gonna let it happen. He doesn’t want to let it happen but the alcohol has made him slow. Kinda in the same way the drugs have made Tweek fast. They’re out of sync with no way of catching up until sobriety. So Craig just watches, letting it happen. Like he’s watching his own body do nothing. The inner voice tells him to move, to stop it but the body can’t unstick itself from the ground.

Coming Out - Published 20 May 2020

If Tweek is being honest his friends were Craig’s friends, originally. Now they’re his friends too but before Tweek had been a bit of a loner. Not by choice, but for whatever reason kids at school either didn’t like him or just didn’t know he existed. He spent most of his time alone, reading books, studying, playing music or anything one can do alone to ease boredom. For the longest time he’d been the freak and now he actually had friends, like, for real.

Red Racer and Ice Cream - Published 12 June 2020

He could leave, but he knows Tweek will start worrying about him. Tweek is having a good night, he seems pleasantly drunk and is having a great time with Jimmy and Token. Craig doesn't want to wreck what is shaping up to ve a good night for Tweek. It's taken a while to get Tweek to really feel comfortable in social situations like these. He wants Tweek to have the best night he can.

Much Ado About Theatre - Published 15 June 2020

"It's in english stupid, just old english" Tweek reminds Craig.

"Whatever I don't get it. It's like reading gibberish" Craig says dismissively, clearly frustrated.

"Why are you -nghh- taking this class then?" Tweek asks, purely curious. It's not just Shakespeare Craig seems disinterested in. He seems uncomfortable onstage as a whole.

"Because you're taking it" Craig admits sheepishly, a blush appearing on his cheeks.

Sure - Published 19 June 2020

Craig gets his first piercing and Tweek accompanies for moral support. They talk about facing fears and the future.

or Tweek is covered with piercings and tattoos and Craig is a body mod virgin.

Firsts - Published 02 July 2020

Craig likes having a Birthday in the winter. It's kind of a good excuse for only inviting like, four people to his gatherings on the excuse they can't go outside. Craig was never big on the schoolyard politics, even when he was small. The idea that he had to have the biggest party, or the most extravagant and have to decide who or whom not to invite stressed him out. He likes having the excuse that he only had a small house, and that his Birthday was in winter in Colorado, so that he can only invite his best friends and be done with it.

or Craig and Tweek's first birthdays together as boyfriends.

Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Serotonin, Oxytocin and Vasopressin - Published July 11 2020

Tweek sighs boredly as he stirs the potion in his cauldron. It's not that he doesn't like earning a living making potions for people and casting spells but it's so much of the same thing. It's always love potions, that's all he makes these days.

Distracted - Published 26 July 2020

Tweek and Craig needed this break so badly. He feels kind of bad for Craig's mom, who is probably going to have a sleepless night babysitting their son. But holy shit, they needed this.

Stir Crazy - Published 14 August 2020

Craig Tucker: Tucker baby coming 2020! We could not be more excited to announce that Tweek and I are having a baby! There's no one else I'd rather go on this crazy journey with. - with Tweek Tucker.

or Craig is pregnant in quarantine.

Source Decay - Published 16 August 2020

Craig still hasn't taken off his wedding ring. He knows he should, but he just hasn't found it in him yet. He knows Tweek hasn't either, he's seen it in pictures even though now they've been separated longer than they were together.

Baby’s First Skateboard - Published 10 September 2020

Craig and Tweek never really grew out of skateboarding. They do it less often than they did before becoming parents, but they still do their best to make time.

You’re the Boss at Home - Published 18 September 2020

So he has mixed feelings about his last day. He knows he'll miss working, he's always been a working person and he knows he won't like sitting at home waiting to go into labor. But also, he doesn't have to deal with everyone fussing over him being pregnant anymore.

Little Star - Published 03 October 2020

This can't be happening to him, he can't have a baby! What would he do with a baby? He doesn't know. He doesn't even know what he's going to do when he goes into labour. He knows, inevitably he will. That he will go into labour, the baby has to come out some way and it's gonna hurt. He knows all this, but he can't bring himself to ask for help. He knows he's in trouble but he doesn't know how to ask for help.

Baby Love - Published 02 November 2020

Craig tries to swallow down the pain. He can't yell or cry out. Everyone will know then. He has to stay quiet or else everyone will know. He bites down on his lip hard and crouches on the floor near his bed. He has to just breathe, if he breathes through it he can make it. He knows he can.

This Time Around - Published 12 November 2020

Tweek knew he was pregnant with his second child straight away. It was a 180 from his first pregnancy, where he took months to figure it out. When he was pregnant with his first child, his son Teddy, he didn't really have much in the way of symptoms besides being hungry all the time. That was pretty easy to dismiss and write off. They weren't trying for a baby, so Tweek had no reason to assume he was pregnant. He only worked it out because he began showing.

Whatever We Are - Published 22 December 2020

It's hard because Stan isn't quite sure what he is to Kyle. Is it just sex? Is it more? Does Kyle maybe wanna make it more official soon? Stan doesn't know. He knows he loves Kyle and he'd pretty much do whatever Kyle wants. But for now, he's just enjoying the intimacy.

Temptation - Published 24 December 2020

Being summoned is kinda annoying. It's kind of like being asleep, super deeply and then pulled into the bright bustling world with no warning. It's no wonder most demons are angry and violent.

Tweek is an imp, so he's more on the mischievous, poltergeist side of the spectrum. He still scares the shit out of most people who summon him. Usually kids with ouija boards who don't know what they're doing. It's whatever, Tweek usually chases them for a bit, makes them scream and that's enough mischief for one day. Tweek can choose to appear by choice, and leave when he wants to but he rarely does. Humans are mostly annoying, so he stays in his own little world until some idiot summons him.

Traditions - Published 25 December 2020

"I hate Christmas" Craig sighs, looking around at all the lights and decorations. He glares at all the people bustling around. Don't they have homes to go to? He rests a hand on his swollen stomach, he certainly wishes he was home.

Here’s My Multichapters, completed and ongoing:

The Sound of Silence - Completed 25 January 2020

15 Chapters

Craig manages to find himself alone, jobless and a new parent. He struggles to put the pieces of his life back together and build something new for both himself and his daughter.

Don’t Break Me - Completed 26 March 2020

2 Chapters

"What are you -ngrhh- accusing me of?" Tweek growls.

"Literally nothing Tweek, I'm accusing you of your health improving? Isn't that good?" Craig huffs in annoyance. He's sick of his intentions being misinterpreted.

Insight - Completed 10 April 2020

2 Chapters

Craig listens to the incessant ticking of the clock on his wall. He can’t actually see it, it’s night and all the lights are off. But he can hear it, a constant reminder of the passing of time. He knows he should sleep, he really wishes he could but it’s just too hard. Knowing Tweek isn’t here but not knowing where Tweek is. He can’t help but worry even though he has so much more to worry about. His mom would tell him off, tell him he needs to rest but this thing with Tweek has him so messed up.

When We’re Older - Completed 04 July 2020

10 Chapters

When they're older they'll start again. They'll get married, find a house, do it all right. Have children when the time is right and build the loving, nurturing home they both have always wanted.

Stowaway - Completed 14 July 2020

3 Chapters

He's slowly beginning to accept it himself, yes, he's pregnant. He knows it but he's not quite ready to face the consequences yet. He didn't intend to get pregnant, he just got too drunk at a party and had sex with a childhood friend. Consensual but unprotected. He feels stupid now.

So he hides them, the baby, like a little stowaway.

Algorithm - Completed 12 August 2020

5 Chapters

Craig shakes his head. He looks at the homemade bracelet which spells Craig on Tweeks wrist. His heart breaks thinking about how Tweek will cut it off once he knows the truth.

Two for the Price of One - Completed 26 August 2020

4 Chapters

Craig has never been one to succumb to baby fever. He knows a lot of people in his profession do. Both he and his husband, Tweek, professional lives revolve around babies. Newborns too, and while Craig acknowledges that babies may be cute, other people's kids have never really triggered some urge to have his own.

Hungry - Completed 11 September 2020

2 Chapters

Tweek has heard about cryptic pregnancies before. He's seen I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant before, people saying they didn't have any nausea, felt normal, didn't put on weight. This isn't quite that, Tweek gained a small amount of weight. He felt fatigued, but he just put that down to stress. He didn't feel nauseous unless he had a headache, so it was really easy to blame that on the headache. The real only symptom he's had is the hunger. He doesn't think it's far fetched that he didn't realise, surely?

or Tweek doesn't realise he's pregnant because his only real symptom is being hungry all the time :)

Creek Week 2020 - Completed 02 November 2020

7 Chapters

My contribution for this years Creek Week 2020

All seven of these are short snippets of either fics I intend to write, or AU's I have left unfinished. But I thought it might be fun to share small excerpts.

Complicated - Ongoing, Last updated 08 January 2021

18 Chapters Published, 20 Chapters all together.

Craig kind of has an image. It's not that he's pretending to be someone else, but he likes to be perceived as aloof, cold and quiet. He's nice to people who truly know him, but he doesn't like to be perceived as soft from the outside. People already think he's kind of weird, and putting up those walls really helps him to keep unwanted people out. His boyfriend sees his sensitive side, his friends do and his family do. The rest of the world gets a cold shoulder, at least until he gets to know someone and decides to let them in.

Craig and Tweek figure out an unplanned pregnancy, Craig learns families come in all shapes and sizes. Especially LGBTQ ones.

AO3 Statistics:

Word Count: 261512

Hits: 22599

Works Published: 31

Top Five Fics by Hits:

1. Complicated

2. When We’re Older

3. The Sound of Silence

4. Stowaway

5. Hungry

All in all, not a bad output. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read, leave kudos and comment. ❤️

[weirendavidong]

The past 6 months of work have been crazy i must say. So was the past 2 years of pandemic as well. The world and daily life I now have is vastly different from the one I used to lead in the past. 

And with the added pressure of work (which is at times LITERALLY life and death situations)... more often than not, my countenance is downcast. I find it difficult to savour and enjoy the present moment because my soul is torn and fixated onto two timezones:

My heart dwells on the past - past happiness, past regrets, past friendships. Of course, everything is more beautiful thru the rose-tinted glasses called ‘nostalgia’. But boy, I do miss the carefree days of fooling around, without the heavy duties of adulthood. I could stay up all night if I wanted to - and I could somehow sleep in if I wanted to. 

My mind worries about the future - work schedules, loved ones falling ill, wedding and house planning. Particularly, the stress of work has taken a huge chunk from me - leaving me to become a hollow shell of myself lately. In recent times, my life was planned around my work roster. But thanks be to God, I learned how toxic it is to allow such a mindset to persist. 

The Teacher summed it in Ecclesiastes 2:

22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

That has accurately described my tossing and turning in the night, wondering how busy I will be the next day - so much so that sleep often escapes me.

But does that mean to drop all things and be a sluggard? My heart is convicted “No.” for I know that we all have a God-given assignment on earth to obey. This is my lot from the Lord. And I do have to change my mind to the following:

23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:23-24)

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Colossians 3:1-2)

I am learning at this tender cusp of adulthood, that work, in and of itself, will always be what it is: a toil, a burden, and eventually, a vanity. After all, the hard labours of men resulted from a fallen world.

But with Christ, are not these things redeemed? For if I trust that my labours are for Christ and not men, and if I set my mind on the things above, I know my labour is not in vain. 

Yet, I have to remember to enjoy the presence and the things of God.

24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? (Ecc 2:24-25)

12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man. (Ecc 3:12-13)

I am making efforts to live my life - to the fullest way God had intended.

[what-is-your-plan-today]

Stark Spangled Forever- Utter Nonsense Drabble... 40 Questions!

Yeah so don’t ask me where this came  from, but I saw these floating around and for some reason decided it would be funny if Steve and Katie answered  some of them instead of me...

I think the original post was from @odaatlover​  and I think I was taggeed by @sweater-daddiesdumbdork​. Anyway, I took my favourite ones and this was the result...enjoy!

1. What’s one animal you wish you could have as a pet but can’t?

Katie: I’d kinda like a tiger. They’re so graceful and  pretty but pack a mean bite and you wouldn’t mess with one would you?

Steve: Who does that remind you of?

2. Favorite thing to wear to sleep?

Steve: (grinning) Nothing.

Katie : I can confirm that is also my favourite thing he sleeps in...

3. What song really gets you going?

Katie: In what way? If it’s to dance and just act like a crazy fool to then its always going to be “Back in Black” because it reminds me a lot of Tony and happy times growing up. But if its one to spark memories then its our wedding song.

Steve: “The Only One In Color” by Trapt. I also kinda like the John Legend song  “You and I” because it reminds me of her, you know, the bit aout trying on every damned out fit she ownes before we can go out.

Katie: I don’t do that.

Steve looks at Katie, eyebrow raising.

Katie: Ok, maybe I can be a little incecisive....but tha wasn’t really the point of the...you know what, never mind. Next...

4. Where do you usually eat your meals?

Steve: It depends. If its breakfast or lunch dring the week then it’s usual eaten on the go whilst we’re getting the kids sorted or I’m in between classes...but dinner, well we always try and sit down. And at weekends we always eat at the table with the kids. 

5. Favorite meal: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Katie: Dinner. During the week Steve and I eat a little bit later than the kids so we have that time to ourselves just to decompress and talk about our day, have a bit of us time...and at weekend we’re al together so I love it.

Steve: I love it for all those reasons, and also because she’s the best damned cook on the planet.

6. Most embarrassing habit?

Katie: Erm...

Steve: It’s pretty embarassing when you throw a Brat tantrum about something.. Katie: I don’t do that in public.

Steve: Bullshit. I refer you to the whole car purchasing situation a few years ago.

Katie: Jamie was only a baby...I was hormonal.

Steve: Hormonal my ass, you were being a brat.

Katie:  Whatever.  Yours is definately the need to stand with your hands on your hips and give someone your Captain look, especially when it’s someone you have never met before but they just happen to be doing something to piss you off.

Steve:  I make no apologies for this.  People can be idiots.

7. Chocolate or fruity candy?

Both at same time: Chocolate.

Steve: Preferably British.  Cadbury’s to be specific. I got a taste for it when I was in London during the war.

Katie: He has a secret stash he hides from the kids...it’s great to blackmail him with.

8. Soft or hard tacos?

Steve: Soft

Katie: Hard

Steve: Although hard ones always remind me of when you went into labour with Jamie.  We were making them for lunch and you had a contraction and crushed one...

Katie: Oh yeah, maybe soft in that case...because that was painful.  And then I went throguh that another 3 times.Which is your fault.

Steve: I take full responsibility, yes. 

9. Worst way to break up a fight?

Katie: Walk into the middle of it and say “Prove it, put the hamer down...” Steve: sighs, That was one time.

Katie: And it levelled a forest.

Steve: Did it work?

Katie: Hmmm, suppose so.

Steve: There you go ...but if its a fight between us, the I can think of the best way to break it up...

Katie : grinning, yeah...that’ s pretty funny. Or the worst one is telling you you’re in the spare room.

Steve: Yeah...that sucks.

10. Best thing to say in an elevator of strangers?

Katie: Putting on deep voice “Before we get started, does anyone wanna get out?”

Steve: Sighing  I wish I had some smart reply to that bu I don’t...

Katie: No, you just threw us out the side of the damned thing from 14 storeys up

Steve: 19

Katie: That’s...that’s not better Steve.

11. Any hidden talents?

Steve: Not so much hidden really but I’m not a bad artist and Katie’s singing and piano playing is off the scale.

Katie: Steve’s really good at DIY. Like, brilliantly good.  And also pretty savvy with technology all things considered...

Steve: When you say all things considered you mean because I’m like 112

Katie: Actually, you’re like 127 if you count the 15 years you spent back in time after putting the stones back.

Steve: hesitates I thought you said they didn’t count because I didn’t spend them with you.

Katie: They don’t, but they still happened.

12. Socks or bare feet around the house?

Steve: Socks

Katie: Bare feet

Steve: Neither of those protect you from standing on lego, which for the record, I reckon has to be a pain worse than chilbirth.

Katie:  Seriously? You’re going there?

Steve: Ok, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but it still hurts like hell.

13: Favorite board game?

Katie: Monopoly. Its funny to watch Emmy and Jamie getting really agitated and annoyed. The younger 3 don’t really get it, Rori just likes to help Steve by sorting all his money into piles and suggesting things he can spend it on.

Steve: Namely tutus and tap shoes...she still wants to be chorus girl.

14:Heat on or keep it cold with lots of layers?

Katie: Oh my God. Steve is a nightmare as he runs hotter than any of us, so whilst we want the fire or heat on he’s complaining he’s boiling hot all the time. Our bedroom is like an ice block.

Steve: Doll, I’ve been in an ice block. Trust me, our bedroom is like a furnace in comparison.

Katie: It si nice though, like sleeping with a big hot  water bottle.

15: At what age did you first have alcohol?

Katie: I’m sure Tony gave me beer when I was 15 or something but the first time I ever got drunk was aged 17. I went to a keg party at one of my friends and I was aboslutely shit faced. Tony held my hair back whilst i puked my guts upt for a good hour once I was home. I had the hangover to end all hangovers the next day and he cracked JARVIS up to maximum volume just to teach me a lesson.

Steve:  I think I was 18. Me and Buck drank a bottle of his dad’s home made hooch...yeah, it didn’t take me much to get me drunk back then and I was very, very illl. Ma thought I had a fever. Mr Barnes thought it was hilarious, but still gave us both a slap upside th head...

16. What’s the most amount of money you’ve spent on a single item of clothing?

Katie: I would say my wedding dress, but Tony bought that for me, so it would probably the the dress I wore to the  SIP Launch for The Color Of Revenge...that cost...well it was in the tens of thousands

Steve:  Blinking How much?

Katie: You don’t need to know.

17. What do you typically wear to formal events?

Steve: Whatever my gal tells me to.

Katie: And you always look great Soldier.

18. Favorite memory?

Steve: Oooh, other than when we adopted Emmy or the kids were born, I’d have to say when Katie agreed to be my wife. I’ll never forget that day as long as I live.

Katie: Me neither, not least becase I got my camero...

Steve: rolls eyes.

Katie:  Joking aside, yeah the engagement sticks in my mind but I think it was when you finally kissed me for the first time. I knew then that I was never gonna let you go.

Steve: yeah...that...ok you know what this is an impossible question after being together for so long.

19. Favorite shoes?

Katie: I have a pair of sparkly gold Jimmy Choo stilettoes that I’ve had for ages. They’re gorgeous, with ankle straps and pointed toes. I’ve had them for almost  17 years but they’re amazin.

Steve: grins. Yeah, they’re my favourite shoes too...

Katie: Pervert.

Steve: I’m not even gonna deny it. Those shoes ALWAYS stay on if I can help it.

20. Most dangerous thing you’ve ever done?

Both start to laugh hysterically.

Steve: Where do we start?

Katie: New York, Washington, Sokovia, Lagos, Leipzig, Siberia, Wakanda, Upstate and proablly a whole load of other places in between could be good places Stevie.

Steve: Yeah, this...I can’t answer this. 

21. Most embarrassing thing your parents have caught you doing?

Katie: I was 7 when my parents died but taking Tony as surrogate, I reckon him catching us in the kitchen when we were...you know, and he didn’t actually know about us has got to be up there.

Steve: Yeah, that was pretty bad... although my Ma once caught me and Bucky measuring our... looks down.

Katie: splutters What? You never told me this?

Steve: Well its not exactly somethign that crops up in conersation sweethheart? “Oh by the way, once when we were 16 me and Buck compared sizes...” Katie: Blinks. Boys are strange. So who had the biggest...

Steve: Next question...

22. Last time you had an orgasm?

Both grin.

Steve: Last night 

Katie: I can confrim this...there’s not many nights to be fair where we don’t...

23: Celebrity Crushes?

Katie: grins. Does Bucky Barnes count?

Steve: Fuck you.

24: Makeup or natural?

Katie: Normally I just wear a bit of tinted moisturiser and mascara, now I have the kids anyway. I don’t have time to really do my face in a morning. I’ll make the effort when we go out though...

Steve: You don’t need it honey.

Katie: Awww thanks baby.

Steve: Although that red lipstick you wear, the bright red..yeah...I like that... grins wickedly and winks It smears well...

Katie flushes: dirt bag

25. Favorite season?

Katie: Summer. Growing up in Malibu I like the sun and warmth.

Steve: Fall. It’s an artists dream...the colours and textures are amazing to work with

Katie: Fall is rubbish. Everything dies and it’s a bit shit.

Steve: But you make apple pie and get to snuggle in my sweaters.

Katie: literally the only 2 things good about it. 

26. Are you a competitive person?

Katie snorts and looks at Steve

Steve: I’m not even going to deny it. 

Katie: He even refuses to let the kids win a games sometimes.

Steve: Important life lessons, Doll. 

27. First pet you’ve ever owned?

Katie: My goldfish Flounder, the one that Tony replaced about 8 times. Other than that it was my Turkey Marv, he was ace.

Steve: I didn’t have any growing up so mine would be Lucky. He was a great dog. 

28. Favorite pasta dish?

Steve: Mac and Cheese, specifically Katie’s. It’s amazing.

Katie smiling: Yeah  I like Mac and Cheese, but I also enjoy carbonara.

29. Favorite kind of pizza?

Both: Pepperoni.

Steve: New York Style.

Katie: I like Deepdish every now and then.

Steve: It’s not the same...

Katie: well dur, that’s the point.

Steve: Yeah, not convinced. 

30. Lots of acquaintances or a handful of close friends?

Katie: Handful of close friends, without a doubt. They become an extension of your family, you know. All of us in the Avengers were close and when you have that bond, you’ll do anything for one another.

Steve: Agree completely. When you’re close like we all are then it makes everything that little bit easier, knowing that whatever you’re facing you’ve got each others 6.

31: Something that ruins your appetite?

Katie: Narrows eyes Whenver I see Ross on Tv. Makes me want to puke.

Steve: You really should let that go you know?

Katie: Never. I hold a grudge very well.

Steve: Don’t I know it.

32. Night out with a bunch of friends in public or night in with one friend having deep conversations?

Steve: I’ve never been one for big nights out. I enjoy the odd one now and then but, I’d much rather curl up on the sofa or round the firepit with Katie or Sam or Bucky with a beer and some decent talk.

Katie: Yeah, at one time I would have said night out hands down, but certianly since having the kids, or even since we started dating, it’s definately change my ideas a little. Some of the nicest nights we’ve had have been spent on the sofa.

Steve grins: yeah...

Katie: And not just because of that....

33. Have you ever told someone you loved them first?

Steve: I’ve only ever told one girl I loved them and she’s sat right here, and I said it first that night...

Katie: smiling Yeah, yeah you did. I wasn’t far behind though, like 3 seconds or something.

34. Have you ever had sex on the first date?

Katie: Does a one night stand count as a first date? Because if so then yes...

Steve: Same.

Katie: Lottie?

Steve: Storm?

Both look at one another,  teasingly.

Katie: Ok next question...

35. Heroes or villains?

Steve: Some people might say there’s a fine line between the two. Katie: Oh here he goes, getting all Captain Philosophical again...look, everyone knows we were suposedly the heroes Steve, and to be fair we saved the world a fair few times, we were even fighting in the shadows during the Nomad years.

Steve: I know, I know...

36. How many plates can you eat at a buffet?

Steve: You know I’ve never actually counted.

Katie: You did 20 at the last brunch we went to.

Steve: 20...that’s...impressive.

Katie: smirking Bucky did 22

Steve: sighs Of course he did...

37: Favorite dessert?

Steve: Apple pie, preferably Katie’s

Katie: Pecan pie. Hands down. 

38 Would you rather watch a TV show or a movie?

Steve: Ooh, that’s..i suppose it depends. I do like a good TV series, especially if we can curl up and binge watch once the kids are going to bed but I do have fond memories of us working through the films on my list...

Katie: smiling, yeah we had a lot of fun. Still

39. What’s your favorite compliment to give?

Steve: I love telling Katie how beautiful she is, and what a wonderful mother she is...all of which is true.

Katie: I like to remind Steve that he’s my Steve Rogers, not Captain America...because he is. And he’s the most amazing man on the planet, with or withouth that serum coursing through his veins. Which is what makes him the best dad the kids could wish for.

40. What’s the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to you?

Steve: smiling,  she’s sat right next to me.

Katie: smiling , back at ya soldier.

[sadmmann]

Exactly 8 years ago, on July 22, 2011, two cooperative terrorist acts took place in Norway. The first attack was carried out by a bomb in the center of Oslo, 8 people were killed as a result of an explosion, and at least 209 people were injured, 12 seriously. A few hours later, a terrorist landed on the island of Utoya, there was a summer youth camp on it, and on that day hundreds of children were on the island. An armed mentally ill man opened fire on children, adolescents and adults. As a result, 69 people died and 110 were injured. 77 people died in this terrible, crazy tragic event. 77 smiles, dreams and aspirations are gone. Hundreds of people received the hardest injuries that they are fighting to this day, with physical and moral. Someone has learned to live again and someone will never be able to return to their former life. Because of the psychopath who thought that killing for a "good" purpose is right. Not. I want you to look at these faces and read their names, study their stories and remember. They deserve it.

Oslo bombing

Hanna Endresen, 61, Oslo

Receptionist in the security department of the Government Administration Services. She was described as a "good colleague".

Tove Ashill Knutsen, 56, Oslo

Secretary with the electricians and information technology workers' union. On her way to subway station when bomb exploded.

Kai Hauge, 32, Oslo

Owned a bar and restaurant in Oslo. A colleague described his death as "a great loss".

Jon Vegard Lervag, 32, Oslo

A lawyer who worked in the justice department. He was described as "socially engaged".

Ida Marie Hill, 34, Oslo

Originally from Grue, Hedmark county, Ida worked as an adviser to the ministry of justice. She was described as "a dear and highly-valued employee".

Hanne Ekroll Loevlie, 30, Oslo

A senior government worker originally from Tyristrand, Buskerud county. Colleagues said she "represented the best in us".

Anne Lise Holter, 51, Valer i Oestfold, Oestfold county

Senior consultant to Norway's PM Jens Stoltenberg's office. Officials sent their "warmest thoughts and sympathy" to her family and friends.

Kjersti Berg Sand, 26, Nord-Ordal

Worked on international issues in Justice Department. Colleagues said they had lost a "dear and highly valued employee".

Utoeya island shooting

Mona Abdinur, 18, Oslo

The committed young politician was described as "a well-loved friend, who was socially engaged and interested in multicultural issues". 

Maria Maageroe Johannesen, 17, Noetteroey, Vestfold county

Student at Greve Forest High School who was interested in music, dance and drama. Described as a wonderful, conscientious girl who was a "ray of sunshine".

Ismail Haji Ahmed 19 Hamar, Hedmark county

Better known as Isma Brown after appearing on a talent show. The dance instructor was described as a "very bubbly, happy, caring and happy boy. He was very positive with a very big heart.

Ronja Soettar Johansen, 17, Vefsn, Nordland county

An active blogger, Ronja had a keen interest in music. Friends said she was "a person with courage, commitment and kindness".

Thomas Margido Antonsen, 16, Oslo

A student council representative. Described by friends as "a boy who spread joy".

Sondre Kjoeren, 17, Orkdal, Soer-Troendelag county

Described as a gentle but committed person. He was said to have been heavily involved in efforts to get a new sports hall in his village.

Porntip Ardam, 21, Oslo

Known as Pamela. She was described as talented, super-intelligent, politically active and down to earth.

Margrethe Boeyum Kloeven, 16, Baerum, Akershus county

The student council leader was described as an "active and versatile girl".

Modupe Ellen Awoyemi, 15, Drammen, Buskerud county

Daughter of the city council politician Lola Awoyemi. Described as a kind and open girl, who was active in AUF discussions.

Syvert Knudsen, 17, Lyngdal, Vest-Agder county

The student politician is believed to have been one of the first shot on the island. His family described him as a "bubbly" boy with a keen interest in music.

Lene Maria Bergum, 19, Namsos, Nord-Troendelag

Her head teacher described her as an excellent, beautiful youth, who was sociable, interested in international issues. She had planned to start a summer job as a journalist.

Anders Kristiansen, 18, Bardu, Troms county

An active young politician and leader of the AUF in his area. He was said to be "full of initiative" with "a great desire to work in politics".

Kevin Daae Berland, 15, Akoey, Hordaland county

Active in Askoey AUF and was involved in local politics as well as being a member of the youth council.

Elisabeth Troennes Lie, 16, Halden, Oestfold county

A board member of the Halden AUF. Described as "the sweetest person in the world".

Trond Berntsen, 51, Oevre Eiker, Buskerud county

Crown Princess of Norway's step-brother. The royal court said the off-duty police officer was killed while working as a security guard on the island.

Gunnar Linaker, 23, Bardu, Troms county

Regional secretary of Labour party's youth wing. Father described him as a "calm, big teddy bear with lots of humour and lots of love".

Sverre Flate Bjoerkavag, 28, Sula, Soer-Troendelag county

Union official concerned about justice, equality and community thinking. Described as a well-liked young man who fought for pupils and students' rights. Was training to be a nurse.

Tamta Lipartelliani, 23, Georgia

Secretary of the international committee of the Young Socialists of Georgia.

Torjus Jakobsen Blattmann, 17, Kristiansand,Vest-Agder county

Son of former political adviser. His father said he was a boy "full of humour" who loved playing the guitar.

Eva Kathinka Lutken, 17, Sarpsborg, Oestfold county

She was described as an active politician who was well liked.

Monica Boesei, 45, Hole, Buskerud county

PM Jens Stoltenberg said: "To many of us, she was the embodiment of Utoeya. And now she is dead. Shot and killed whilst taking care of and giving joy to young people."

Even Flugstad Malmedal, 18, Gjoevik, Oppland county

The student with an interest in politics was described as "a gentle boy who stood up for his friends".

Carina Borgund, 18, Oslo

Friends and family said she was "kind, caring, gentle and positive. She loved life and spread joy to everyone around her".

Tarald Kuven Mjelde, 18, Osteroey

Said to be a big fan of Chelsea football team and described as "very warm, friendly and socially engaged".

Johannes Buoe, 14, Mandal, Vest-Agder county

"An independent boy with a good sense of humour," his parents told NRK. He was interested in dogs, hunting, snowmobiling and took an active part in the youth community.

Ruth Benedicte Vatndal Nilsen, 15, Toensberg, Vestfold county

Described by friends as "always happy, positive, and without prejudice".

Asta Sofie Helland Dahl, 16, Sortland, Nordland county

Teachers described her as a wonderful girl who was "open and cheerful".

Hakon Oedegaard, 17, Trondheim, Soer-Troendelag county

Music student at Heimdal high school and member of Byasen school marching band. Described as a role model for others in the band.

Sondre Furseth Dale, 17, Haugesund, Rogaland county

Had large network of friends through music scene and politics. Described as a dedicated person who put 100% into everything he was interested in.

Emil Okkenhaug, 15, Levanger, Nord-Troendelag county

A sports lover described as modest and liked by all who knew him.

Monica Iselin Didriksen, 18, Sund, Hordaland county

Active in Sund AUF, she was described by friends as a unique and bubbly girl.

Diderik Aamodt Olsen, 19, Nesodden, Akershus county

Vice president of Nesodden AUF. He was the youngest member of editorial staff working on the organisation's magazine.

Gizem Dogan, 17, Trondheim, Soer-Troendelag county

Described as a clever student who contributed to the cohesion of her class. Elected as central member of local AUF a month before the tragedy.

Henrik Pedersen, 27, Porsanger, Finnmark county

Leader of Porsanger AUF. Described as a "breath of fresh air" in the local community. A Labour colleague said he was very engaged and engaging.

Andreas Edvardsen, 18, Sarpsborg, Oestfold county

Director of Sarpsborg AUF and active in in the Labour youth league regional committee in Oestfold. Described as "a very caring and confident person".

Rolf Christopher Perreau, 25, Trondheim, Soer-Troendelag county

Known as Christopher. Long-term member of the AUF and was elected to the board in October. Described as a skilled orator and a charismatic young politician.

Tore Eikeland ,21, Osteroy, Hordaland county

PM Jens Stoltenberg described him as "one of our most talented young politicians".

Karar Mustafa Qasim, 19, Vestby, Akershus county

Originally from Iraq, Karar was with friends at summer camp when he was killed. The local mayor described his death as "an enormous tragedy".

Bendik Rosnaes Ellingsen, 18, Rygge, Oestfold county

Had a summer job at the justice ministry before attending camp. He was secretary of Moss Regional Labour Youth, who said they had lost a caring, open and inclusive boy.

Bano Abobakar Rashid, 18, Nesodden, Akershus county

Leader of Nesodden AUF. She was said to have dedicated her life to fighting for democracy and against racism.

Aleksander Aas Eriksen, 16, Meråker, Nord-Troendelag county

Described as socially-engaged as well as "impulsive and passionate".

Henrik Rasmussen, 18, Hadsel, Nordland county

Treasurer of Hadsel AUF. Said to be a very committed person, both in politics and culture.

Andrine Bakkene Espeland, 16, Fredrikstad, Oestfold county

Described as a politically-engaged girl who was keen to take care of the weakest.

Synne Roeyneland, 18, Oslo

A student described by friends as a "funny girl, who always had something to offer: opinions about politics and love and fun and witty comments".

Hanne Balch Fjalestad, 43, Lunner, Oppland county

Danish government confirmed the Danish national was killed while working on the island as a first aid assistant. She was with her 20-year-old daughter, who survived the shooting.

Ida Beathe Rogne, 17, Oestre Toten, Oppland county

A keen student described as happy and funny as well as determined.

Silje Merete Fjellbu, 17, Tinn, Telemark county

Student politician described as a "wonderful girl who had much to contribute".

Simon Saebo, 18, Salangen, Troms county

The student politician was said to be a natural leader. Those who knew him described him as trusting and kind, and a person who showed great concern for others.

Hanne Kristine Fridtun, 19 Stryn, Sogn og Fjordane county

The nursing student was the local AUF county chairman. Described as energetic with great commitment.

Marianne Sandvik, 16, Hundvag, Stavanger

The student was described as a quiet girl who always stood up for those who needed her. Her father said she was concerned with injustice in the world.

Andreas Dalby Groennesby, 17, Stange, Hedmark county

His father had exchanged text messages with him before the shooting. His father told NRK that public support had helped at a painful, terrible time.

Fredrik Lund Schjetne, 18, Eidsvoll, Akershus county

Described by friends as "a great person" whom it was "an honour" to have known.

Snorre Haller, 30, Trondheim, Soer-Troendelag county

Painter and union man. He was a board member of the Joint Association's Central Youth Committee. Described as a "kind, quiet and generous man".

Lejla Selaci, 17, Fredrikstad, Oestfold county

Leader of the AUF in Fredrikstad. Described as a "very happy and social girl who committed herself to what she believed in".

Rune Havdal, 43, Oevre Eiker, Buskerud county

Worked as a security guard on the island of Utoeya.

Birgitte Smetbak, 15, Noetteroey, Vestfold county

Politicians from her local area said hearing news of her death was "a difficult day".

Guro Vartdal Havoll, 18, Oersta, Moere og Romsdal

An active and determined politician, the young student's family said she was inspired by Ghandi and wanted to make the world a "better place".

Isabel Victoria Green Sogn, 17, Oslo

An enthusiastic member of the AUF who saw her future involved in politics.

Ingrid Berg Heggelund, 18, As, Akershus county

A student who said she loved going to school.

Silje Stamneshagen, 18, Askoey, Hordaland county

Active in Askoey AUF and played in school band. Classmates described her as a happy girl who lit up the school day and every day.

Karin Elena Holst, 15, Rana, Nordland county

A member of the Rana AUF, she spoke to her mother during the shooting. She had urged her daughter to hang up and hide.

Victoria Stenberg, 17, Nes, Akershus county

The oldest of three siblings, she was said to be looking forward to the youth camp.

Eivind Hovden, 15, Tokke, Telemark county

Eivind was involved in his local youth centre and was attending his first summer camp. Described as an "amazing guy, always happy, caring and helpful".

Tina Sukuvara, 18, Vadsoe, Finnmark county

Described as "very talented and engaged" and a person who participated actively in political debates.

Jamil Rafal Mohamad Jamil, 20, Eigersund, Rogaland county

Originally from Iraq, Jamil was described as happy, attentive and curious with a strong desire to contribute.

Sharidyn Svebakk-Boehn, 14, Drammen, Buskerud county

Known as Sissi to friends and family, the schoolgirl was described as a "beautiful, caring and vibrant girl".

Steinar Jessen, 16 Alta, Finnmark county

A keen member of the AUF. The mayor of Alta described him as "a flower that would have grown big and strong".

Havard Vederhus, 21, Oslo

Elected leader of Oslo Labour Youth in February. Friends said he was "ambitious and fearless".

Espen Joergensen, 17, Bodoe, Nordland county

Had recently become head of Bodoe AUF. His best friend said he was someone who could "light up the darkest days".

[madrasbook]

New Zealanders, Famous for Being Laid Back, Get on Top of Covid-19

Are New Zealanders as laid back as they are famous for? Thus went a query on Quora. Yes, in a nice way, said one software engineer who lived in New Zealand. Yes, agreed a New Zealand author too, but with a caveat – “Until you push us into a corner or do something we view as unfair or unjust. Then watch out. We are a warrior nation at heart. And we won’t back down from something that feels wrong to us.” One Indian software engineer disagreed and said ‘laid back’ should be substituted with ‘pragmatism’. The positive identity of New Zealanders is tied to Kiwi ingenuity as they often can come up with unconventional solutions to problems.

As an Indian, I only know the famous Kiwi cricketers as they were called until the term ‘Kiwi’ sort of came to be identified with a racist slant. Now they are Black Caps. Who can forget the famous and charismatic Richard Hadlee, one of the four great all-rounders of his time (Kapil Dev, Ian Botham and Imran Khan being the other three)? Then there was Martin Crowe, who stole our hearts with his beautiful cover drives, and also in the way he fought cancer and finally was consumed by it one day. Kane Williamson, the cool captain of the present New Zealand cricket team, stood like a rock when handed out what looked like an unfair defeat in the World Cup final in 2019. He said, “The players are shattered at the moment.”

New Zealand PM the Knight in the Country’s Shining Armour

But the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn’t let the nation get shattered when it needed her the most.

For a country of 4.91 million people today, with more than one-fourth of them overseas-born, Prime Minister Ardern’s response to the rampaging pandemic – that threatened the Britons to almost the brink and exposed the many deficiencies in their response – ensured that it was contained in a stellar way in this isolated nation, which in 1907 became self-governing Dominion of New Zealand under the British Crown. In 1983, the country technically severed the imperial connection through the new letter patent ‘Realm of New Zealand’, repealing the Imperial Letter Patent of 1917, and cut off the remaining link by removing the residual power of British Parliament to legislate for New Zealand by bringing in the Constitutional Act 1986. Always shadowed by its more famous trans-Tasman rival, Australia, New Zealand today has shown to the world what a determined leadership in a crisis can do. The kind and firm Prime Minister, who faced more crises in her short term at the helm, has proved much more capable of handling them superbly. The world stood up and took note of this centre-left Labour leader, who stitched up a delicate coalition to win the 2017 polls, when terrorists struck in a mosque in Christchurch in March 2019, as she led the nation in providing an empathetic leadership. Close on its heels came the Whaakari/White Island volcano eruption in December 2019 and Prime Minister Ardern again led the nation with determination.

Britain’s Feet of Clay and New Zealand’s Grip over the Situation

The Sunday Times from London made a scathing expose of the British government’s ‘laid back’ response to the coronavirus infections that was initially brushed off as non-threatening. The Times report alleged that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – who later was to get infected with the coronavirus necessitating his admission into the ICU of St. Thomas’ Hospital and who eventually recovered from Covid-19 – was taking it easy and holidaying, mired in personal problems of his life, at a crucial time period in late February when tough decisions such as a lockdown should have been made. Poor modelling and a belief in herd immunity, repeatedly parroted by the establishment as enough to take of the disease in itself, resulted in British government’s initial intrepid response. When the British PM finally woke up to strike a lockdown in late March, things were under water. The death toll in UK (in hospitals as of April 19, 2020) has crossed 15,000 and infections well over 100,000.

While you could also take a sympathetic view that the British government, which sent as much as 270,000 pieces of support equipment to China on its request, did not foresee a worst situation as it eventually panned out, staying under the Covid-19 curve and then fighting it out. The situation seems overwhelming as the NHS is trying to procure enough PPEs and put in the required number of ICU beds. The good news is that people staying in hospitals from the Covid-19 disease is showing signs of tapering off. But the British government had to fight hard to bring the situation under its control, which seems to have not happened completely yet.

What makes New Zealand a role-model in its fight against coronavirus infections is the foresight with which the Prime Minister responded to the developing situation. Although, like many nations, New Zealand stopped incoming flights and people into the country late February, Prime Minister Ardern clamped a nationwide lockdown from March 25, 2020, a day after the British PM announced it from March 24, alarmed by the situation in Italy and Spain and modelling studies, which suggested 80,000 infections and 14,000 deaths if the situation goes unchecked in New Zealand. At that time, New Zealand had 102 cases of coronavirus infections and not a single death. The message to New Zealanders was “Act as if you have Covid-19. This will save lives.” The emphasis was on what was called a bubble – a smaller area where you could move around for biking and walking, say just your neighbourhood, with social distancing.

A Clear Elimination Strategy and Ashley Bloomfield a National Hero

As on April 19, 2020, only nine people have died from Covid-19 and 1431 infected with the coronavirus in New Zealand. Recoveries are at an impressive 912 cases. For a country of nearly 5 million people, there are only 519 active cases. New Zealand’s policy of ‘elimination’, rather than containment pursued by the United States and other Western nations, “is working,” reported the Washington Post in its report on April 7. A simple stat on this would make the situation clear: the number of new infections was lower than the number of recovered cases.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/new-zealand-isnt-just-flattening-the-curve-its-squashing-it/2020/04/07/6cab3a4a-7822-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html

In New Zealand’s fight against the pandemic. at the forefront is the nation’s Director General of Health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, whose press conferences – at times addressed alongside Prime Minister Ardern – have become a huge hit among New Zealanders for the precise way in which he delivers data. It even prompted New Zealanders to make him New Zealander of the Year 2021 for his “competent, calm and factual” updates. But he is humble enough to say, “I am lucky to be part of a fantastic team.”

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/dr-ashley-bloomfield-responds-humbly-news-petition-him-new-zealander-year

On April 6, Tess Nicole called Ashley Bloomfield “the country’s unassuming rock star.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/new-zealand-covid-19-coronavirus-ashley-bloomfield.html

Typical New Zealander Coming to the Fore

“New Zealand is a low-context country,” said Rosie, host of the YouTube channel, NotEvenFrench, in one of her YouTube videos. Rosie is a New Zealander who lives in Paris with her French partner. She says New Zealanders are open, warm and friendly and believe in clear and straightforward communication. And they are casual in their dress sense too, she emphasised, preferring flip-flops and even walking barefoot. “New Zealand is a beautiful country,” she points out and there cannot be two views on that. Bountiful nature is spread across New Zealand, uninhibited in some parts, with only the cities and urban areas a bit dense with populace.

Prime Minister Ardern uses the characteristic New Zealander trait of open and clear communication. She takes pains to explain, repeat and emphasise. She is active on Facebook and goes Facebook live to delve into questions posed by the people of her country. When announcing the lockdown on March 23, she clearly explained the rules of the lockdown. And when the imminent end of the lockdown is slated for April 22, a month after it was clamped, the New Zealand PM has started explaining the rules for relaxation from level 4 (complete lockdown) to level 3 (lockdown with some relaxations but strict on social distancing). She gets to the bottom of it, clearly explaining the implications of various scenarios, including what it would mean to scale down to level 3 and what precautions that the country has to take to adhere to those. She also cautions that a revert to level 4 might happen if there are flagrant violations.

New Zealand’s Future

The New Zealand government has also understood the pain of its countrymen during the lockdown and Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced a series of concessions including a six-month holiday on principal and tax on mortgages. The Government also plans to implement a business finance guarantee for small and medium businesses to protect jobs and support the economy in the unprecedented times.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-newzealand-banks/new-zealand-announces-mortgage-holiday-business-finance-support-to-cushion-virus-impact-idUSKBN21B0CA

But as everywhere, economic slump is a worrying outcome of the lockdown. And how economy will fare during the lockdown and after the lockdown is lifted is a challenge that the New Zealand government is confronted with. New Zealand is slated to go to polls in September 2020, and if Jacinda Ardern would pull it off again also remains to be seen.

Cricket-crazy Indians little realise that rugby is a religion in New Zealand. And the country won the Rugby World Cup in 2015. There was a YouTube video released then: The Greatest haka ever?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKFYTFJ_kw

Well, for now, it could be the greatest haka seeing the way Jacinda Ardern and Dr. Ashley Bloomfield are leading the Covid-19 campaign for the All Blacks.

[thebluecatwriter]

Day 25 of project Vegoshi.

I found the good location, right in the city center, a new shopping mall which will be opened by the end of 2019, perfect timing. They love us, offered 9 free month rent, omg

The day after I got offered 50k euro grant ( 1/3 of what we need to open the business) even before we started raising fund.

It's €50000 omg, for our business idea...

Omg it's getting real.

The rent of the center is quite high but me the the co founder agree that it's the place. If vegoshi can't survive in that shopping mall, we can't survive anywhere.

So, go big or go home?

GO BIG OR GO HOME ???

At this point I'm in pretty weird time when I'm earning quite some money, more than I planned, not enough to brag about but pretty much a lot. Have a better labour job than I ever had, a business that I'm cofounding, a community that I'm a board member. Sounds like a perfect life to my last year self, but at this point I'm not happy. Idk why? Even on the day we received the offer, I wasn't that much happy than I should. Something wrong with me, idk. Like what do you want now?

Everymorning, serve business and rich ppl in their breakfast buffet service , listening to their conversation about millions of dollars and global expansion. Very interesting. In the afternoon it's my turn pitching about our concept and asking for hundred of thousand euro, negotiating premise prices that go up and down tens of thousands just by a change of buyer's attitude. Practicing all the fking dealing skills that I learn from my last boss, playing mindgame with the broker/ dealer to estimate the real worth of what they are selling.

It's pretty scary and challenging, the entrepreneur world. It takes a lot of courage to do all of these , and time and efforts. Ppl are not always giving up their job and agreeing to work at 6am in the restaurant to pay the bill and work to raise fund and research at night to nurture the company. They don't do that, all my friends are applying or working in big company now, I'm going my own way.

And yes I have no idea if it works, to be honest after 1.5 months I'm fking tired of the waitressing fking job that I'm working rn that made me wake up at 5am every damn morning, 6-7 days a week. It's exhausting. I'm exhausted all day. It needs to stop at some points or I might go crazy with the overwhelming workload.

So that's why I'm gonna go big this time, I have nothing to lose. I would kill if i have to renew my next year visa by this waitressing contract, thanks but no. All my life I aim at being the own boss of my own business , now I'm gonna work my ass off to raise enough sales to pay the rent.

if we failed we're gonna call bankrupt and I'm gonna just go home, sleeping in my small bedroom in saigon for 6 months , eating my mom's happy food or may be backpacking travel around Asia and meditate with my sister whatsoever. If we failed on this perfect deal and this big step, at least we know we tried our best.

Big.

[mumofadaofficial-blog]

Sometimes life really is a fairy tale.

I knew I wanted children, hell, I thought I wanted a football team of them! Nathan on the other hand, didn’t think he would ever have a girlfriend, didn’t think he would ever fall in love, didn’t think he would ever move away from home (let alone to Norfolk), and definitely hadn’t even thought about kids. 

Me and Nathan met in Australia, one of my favourite places with the best memories! I was at a stage in my life where I didn’t want a boyfriend, I was happy with myself and content to be just me. Then BOOM, like a sack of shit, Nathan comes along (not that he’s a sack of shit but you know what I mean).

My first opinion of Nathan on a night out was ‘what a wanker!’ ‘Look at him, so arrogant’ Then I found myself outside with no one to speak to but him, instantly I thought ‘wow, you bitch, he’s actually nice!’ ‘That arrogant look is just his face!’ (Soz Nath) We got on like a house on fire, laughed and chatted most of the night  and then it came to the point that left me speechless…a hard task if you know me. He said mid conversation ‘I’ve got to stop talking to you else I’m gonna fall in love with you’ And that was it, he was gone! LIKE WTF!!!! Thinking about it now, how many girls you used that line on Nath? haha 

Now I was a bit unlucky in love previously and my dad said to me once ‘When you find the right one, you’ll know’. I thought that was bullshit and that Robbie P was living in some sort of fairy tale world. 

I woke up and couldn’t stop thinking that I had to to speak to him and see him again, problem was, I only knew his name was Nathan and that he lived in a house down the road. Should I just rock up there? Absolutely fucking not. So what did I do…trusty old Tinder! There was probably only about 40 people live in the area so it couldn’t be that hard to find him. I set the location to the lowest possible and got to work (yes I am a nutter!!) But I found him, swiped right and it was a match, slid into his DMs and the rest was history. With in about 2 weeks he had moved in and we started our relationship on that little banana farm in the middle of nowhere. We became best friends, I was due to come home to England but decided I had to give this a go, I went back to Oz and started my 2nd year visa, best decision I’ve ever made. We travelled some more together, made some amazing memories and decided it was time to come home to England and work towards our future.

 I remember asking him once if he wanted kids…he told me he’d never thought about it, maybe one day but maybe not. I think we were probably about 6 months into our relationship at this point, why he didn’t run a mile at my physco questions then I will never know! 🔪Maybe he knew I was the one….maybe he’s just too laid back to care! At that point I told him I could see us together for the rest of our lives, and if it was out of the question then that was going to be a big problem for me. I think he called me a nutter and maybe a few other words, but we’re still together so he must of seen something for us - even if he’s not very good with words!

Once we moved home I always did the big hint drops of babies and engagement and he would just say ‘Maybe one day’ then he told me the more times I spoke about marriage the longer it would take him to ask me…it did the trick and I stopped asking, well, stopped asking as much anyway.

So I found myself, 25 years old and in a seriously happy relationship with my best friend. It seemed like everyone around me was getting pregnant or getting engaged. I was jealous! As selfish as that sounds I really wanted that to be me, I’m sure I’m not alone in this and I reckon a lot of people must feel like this at some point in their life. Id been on the pill since 16/17 and had all the thoughts of ‘how long will it take for this to come out of my system?’ and ‘Can I even get pregnant’. 

Id got to that stage of GIMME A BABY!! 

So in true me style, I had a melt down, cried a little bit and told Nath how I felt. Then in true Nathan style he simply said ‘Well, your not gonna get pregnant if you don’t stop taking your pill are you!’ 

That was it, we were officially trying for a fricken baby and I felt like I was going to combust with excitement! Now before trying for a baby me and Nath simply thought, if your not using any contraception and your having sex, your just gonna get pregnant, right? Little did we know about that fertile window. After month one of trying and not getting pregnant (very impatient I know), I got myself a handy little app and turned into some sort of crazy sex planner. If that app was green, we were doing it, and if it wasn’t, well maybe we should just incase. Poor Nath didn’t know what had hit him! I was recording periods, when we had sex, my moods, the lot! I think I must of done about 10 pregnancy tests in this time, I’m so impatient I just had to keep checking. Turns out it happened pretty quickly! We started trying at the end of August and by October I was preggers! I just had a ‘feeling’ now I’m not sure if everyone feels this when they are pregnant but I knew I was, I was convinced. We bought a test and I was itching to get home and do it. 

*Weeing commenced* It was one of those digital clear blue ones, I just sat there watching this little egg timer on the screen and it was too much, it was taking forever, I couldn’t cope sitting there so walked away and left it to develop. As I came back and bent down to pick it up, it pinged up on the screen ‘PREGNANT’ I could not fucking believe it! Naturally, I burst into tear, ran down stairs with my hand over my mouth and threw the test at Nathan. I think the actual words to come out of his mouth were ‘your fucking joking me’. He then started nervous laughing and reminded me how I told him it would probably take us a while to get pregnant because id been on the pill for so long, Opps. 2-3 weeks pregnant, I wanted to wait until our 12 week scan to tell anybody so now we had to try and keep it a secret! Hardest thing ever!! I remember us going to my mum and dads for tea one night before my scan and I asked Nathan if we could tell them, I thought they would suss it out If not as I’d been feeling a bit sick and faint. So I’m sat at the tea table and said ‘You know how your both really really good parents…’ Dad then chirps up ‘OH WHAT DO YOU WANT NOW!’ (Thanks dad, really killed my flow) I then started crying and think I just about managed to get the words out ‘How do you feel about being grandparents again?’ I think we all had a little cry and then the excitement began! To tell Nathans mum and dad we wanted to wait until we were face to face so we couldn’t tell them until nearly Christmas time, after my scan. We got a card that was a Christmas card for grandparents and then put a scan picture inside. Nathans mum had completely bypassed the front of the card, then saw the scan picture and was gobsmacked! More tears - theres been a lot.

Finally we could tell the world - Best Christmas Ever!!

Robbie P was right, I’d got my fairytale after all and all my dreams had come true. 

Pregnancy was pretty kind to me with a small amount of sickness. For probably the first time ever I was happy with my body and the amazing thing it was doing. It always blows my mind what a womans body is capable of doing and how it can grow a tiny human. The summer however, was not so kind! Hottest summer ever and I’m waddling around like a bloody whale. Being heavily pregnant I imagine is not very comfortable at the best of times, but its a nightmare in the summer when nothing fits. Thats actually something I have noticed that winter maternity clothes are great, summer, crap! Just an FYI for people, and I’m sure I’m speaking on behalf of any woman thats been pregnant or is currently. Do not say to them, I repeat, do not say ‘WOAH, your huge!’ ‘Your massive’ ‘Look at the size of you’ thats the point where every woman just smiles sweetly and mutters under their breath to themselves. Definitely not what you want to hear when your walking round feeling like a flump squashed into clothes. 

When I’d got just 6 weeks left until due date I think Nath decided he’d try and put me into early labour to put me out of my sweaty misery. I got a call at work from my mum to say that Nathan had been in an accident and was at the hospital. I can’t explain the turmoil that goes through your mind. I just remember crying and asking if he was ok, mum didn’t say too much other than that he was going for a scan and that he was ok. I was told to drive to the hospital sensibly and not to panic…..of corse you do nothing but panic! I think I actually had a go at him when I got to the hospital, so kind and caring! Typical me. Him and mum had been arguing since late morning about who was going to ring me and tell me as neither of them wanted to do it, not like I was gonna have a breakdown or anything 😬

He’d rolled his fully loaded cement truck down a bank, completely squashed it and managed to pull himself out. To look at the photographs and from what the ambulance service had said, he was lucky to be alive, you can’t actually tell how a body could of been in the cab of the lorry, let alone got out of it. Nath had broke his back, now that sounds quite extreme but from looking at the photos I was happy that was his only problem. One good thing about it, he had to wear a back brace which people were more interested in staring at than my big bump - cheers Nath, always looking out for me.

Now after that and what happened with Ada I’m still trying to work out whether we are the luckiest or the unluckiest people in the world? Hopefully that was our bad year and we can have a break from shit for a while now please 🙏🏼 It has definitely tested us and I can't even begin to describe my stress levels throughout everything, but, It made me know 100% that if I was going to have to go through that much shit with anyone, I couldn't of picked a better person to tinder stalk. So this is kind of an appreciation post, thanks Nath for being my person, my bestie and super dad to the coolest kid out - you da bestest 🖤

[thetaiseytales]

Week 5

21st December 2016

2:00pm

Mum and I collect every year to send presents to mum's and children in need who live in local refuges. I was 40+1 weeks pregnant, very depressed and very very uncomfortable but I'd been looking forward to delivering the gifts so much that I ended up having such a lovely day that day. It was my last day as me, my last day living life as I then knew it...

Although I suffered with crippling prenatal depression, I was so ready (well, materialistically ready) for Taisey. She was called exactly that from about 25 weeks. Her bedroom was set up, wardrobe bursting with clothes that (thankfully) were handed down through the family! Bottles were sterilised, blankets were washed and nappies were filling my house to the brim... But had I packed my hospital bag? Had I f*£k.

Maybe it was the fear of actually giving birth that stopped me from doing it properly. I took my PJ's and clothes, nappies, bottles and milk for Taisey and that was it! I wasn't prepared at all because I wasn't prepared to even enter that hospital to give birth. I hadn't been in hospital since I was born. Never had an operation, never even broken a bone... I was painstakingly scared and it ruined my whole pregnancy, that and the sickness. I threw up all day, every day from about day 21 to the very end and it was hell on earth. I also worked full time which also sucked the life from me but I am thankful because it prepared me for the exhaustion that is parenthood.

Mum dropped me home after visiting the refuge where I met some friends. My partner was having a 'lads night' so we were bound to our true home - the kitchen! I remember my friend Sam saying to me, "wouldn't it be weird if your waters broke right now!" And we laughed because it was such an inconvenient time, house full of people and 4 days before Christmas.

4:25pm

I picked up a brush to sweep the kitchen floor and, 90's babies you will know this, I had a 'That's so Raven' moment.

I felt a pop.

I didn't say anything and walked to the toilet that was thankfully downstairs in our house at the time! I looked down and it was green. I knew what it was straight away. I felt all the colour drain from my face as I walked back into the kitchen. I popped my head around the living room door and said "Babe, don't mean to alarm you but I think my waters have just gone..." I don't think a single person in that house had an ounce of blood in their faces! "And on a Wednesday!" I heard one of Curt's friends say as I was on the phone to the midwife explaining in detail what kind of green 'it' was. Lovely.

Curtis asked me if I was ready and I told him not to panic because we'll be coming back home soon anyway to wait... All I can say is thank God he packed me a bag because what followed was a whirlwind!

Just as we were leaving my friend Amy came through the door. I remember wrapping my arms so tightly around her, she was the only person in the whole house who had been through what I was about to. I genuinely don't think I'd have made it through labour without that hug. She looked me dead in the eyes and said "you got this!" I definitely had something but I don't think it was 'this'...

We got in the car and as soon as we hit Chivvy roundabout I was contacting for 1 minute, 2 minutes apart... I remember my mum trying to stay calm for me but she knew this baby was coming and fast! We walked into the hospital and I was crippled over in pain. I hadn't cried much until that point. It all hit me at once, she was coming. I was about to become a mum... On a Wednesday!

5:00pm

I'm in a lift in the hopsital doubled over in agony, clutching the bar as I hear the ping to tell us we'd arrived at the right floor. They lead me into a ward and examined me as I fidgeted in what I thought was 'pain'... Little did I know this was a mere raindrop in an ocean in comparison to what was coming.

After examination they took me straight up to delivery, this alone made me panic. I was terrified. I had no idea how I was going to deliver this baby. All I knew is that I wanted drugs and I wanted all of them and I wanted them now.

I begged for some pain relief as they told me I was 7cm dilated. A HCA passed me the gas and air which seemed to block out a lot of my labour yet reduce NO PAIN. I felt every single part of my labour from start to finish and I couldn't be more proud of that considering I wanted to feel absolutely nothing and would have loved a c section in the beginning! I know many have pain relief-less births but I, Zoey Tout, actually did something worth while!!! For the first time in my life I achieved something and my god did it hurt!

7:00pm

There are midwives and nurses all over me and this labour is in full swing! They are promising me pain relief as I scream down the ward in agony! No pain relief comes. Not even a shot of pethidine to calm me down... I'll still never know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing but I do regret the gas and air. It's blurred things that didn't need to be blurred and it didn't help with any pain!

8:00pm

I'm 9cm. "Zoey, your baby probably isn't going to cry when she comes out, she may be taken straight away!" I heard someone say... Fine by me at this point as I was so mentally ill I had no attachment to her yet.

I felt this force go through me and I knew I was about to start pushing! "I need to push!" I screamed. "Funny that..." I heard my midwife say... I hated that woman by 8:15. If you ever get to delivering babies and it's starting to irritate you, change profession for goodness sake. Thankfully I had a wonderful student midwife at my side who held my hand and talked me through the whole process.

One thing I remember about birth is that they told me I smashed it but I genuinely put zero thought into the whole thing. My body took over and I had my baby.

It was last push time... Her head was there, 'would you like to touch her head?' I was asked. "Absolutely not thanks." Was my reply, "just get her out of me!" The last thing I wanted to do was to feel, see or even think about what was 'down there'!

8:25pm

Last push was over and my very red and wrinkly little baby was laying on my chest screaming her lungs out. I couldn't believe it. My body started going into shock as I writhed on the bed below our brand new little life. 15 minutes after birth I was in the shower and begging to go home. I didn't want to be there just as much as the midwife clearly didn't want to be part of my labour so get me home!

1:30am

We burst through the door, our little one in tow. The house looked like a bomb had hit it but all I could think about was crawling into bed. Taisey held my finger the whole night that first night and slept straight through, it was bliss and we have always been thankful for her incredible sleeping habits!

I was up at 9am and out the door Christmas shopping the very next day... Crazy, I know 😂

[misssophiachase]

25 Days of Klaroline + Mikaelson Siblings (photo not mine obviously, credit to Julie Plec). This is a totally crazy and crack like take on the 12 Days of Christmas theme with some family goodness (and lots of bickering).

We Are Family

"I did not sign up for this, Nik," Rebekah managed to bite out through gritted teeth. "You know how much I hate cows."

"And here I thought you'd feel a special kinship with your kind, Rebekah." Kol appeared from the balcony of the compound, surprisingly relaxed given their enormous task.

"Shut it Kol before I come up there and do it for you! What the hell happened to all your bloody minions? They should be doing the dirty work, big brother."

"Caroline and I set down some ground rules and agreed that our presents this year needed to be assistance free, and uncompelled."

"You mean Caroline set down the ground rules? Because that sure as hell doesn't sound like you, Niklaus," Elijah confirmed. "Last time I checked this plan isn't asistance free." 

"Ah, semantics. I'm sure she meant my minions, there's no way in hell she'd ever expect you to help me in the first place with..."

"Hard labour?" Elijah muttered. "Geese are vicious. I have feathers down my shirt and rips in my best suit trousers from those pests."

"You realise you don't have to wear a suit all the time, right? Especially when wrangling wayward animals."

"I know fashion is a foreign concept for you Kol but putting that fact aside, I don't recall asking your opinion."

"I don't know it's not so bad, Elijah."

"That's because you were auditioning all those maids-a-milking," Rebekah drawled. "You realise they only liked you because they needed the job, right?"

"Niklaus, why do I have to put up with this immaturity?"

"Says the biggest 1000 year-old child in the room. If anyone is putting up with anything it's me."

"I think we all are," Elijah offered, his normally even tone strained. Klaus figured his resolve must have been weakened by the run-in with his feathered friends. "I just hope Caroline truly appreciates this circus you’re planning for Christmas, Niklaus." 

"It's not a circus," he bristled, defensively. When Klaus had awoken from such a vivid dream, he knew exactly what to get Caroline. She loved unique gestures and Christmas and he knew this would be one of his best plans yet.

Trying to garner his family's assistance was another challenge but after much bickering, physical altercations and blackmail they'd come to an agreement, albeit reluctantly. 

"I need a status report," he instructed, changing the subject. "Elijah. Drummers and Lords?"

"Booked."

"Did you ever think we could have possibly modernised this little show of Christmas affection?" Klaus chose not to entertain his inane suggestions.  

"If Kol had his way we'd have strippers stripping," Rebekah teased, poking her tongue out at her brother.  

"Rings, Rebekah?"

"I picked them up from the jeweller yesterday, got myself a few other pieces on your tab for my trouble." Of course she did. It was always about Rebekah after all.

"What else, am I forgetting?" He said, more to himself than the others.

"I had a little trouble with the partridge," Kol admitted. "Do you know how difficult it is to find one of those already in a pear tree?"

"And I thought I was the blonde one," Rebekah scoffed.

"But day one is tomorrow," Klaus hissed, feeling like his best laid plans were unravelling thanks to his inept siblings who couldn't remember the lyrics to a well known English Christmas carol.

"No, that's day two," he insisted. "A partridge and a pear tree."

"No day two is calling birds," Rebekah answered knowingly even though it was in fact four.

"Are you sure it's not swans? I found these splashing around in my bath," Katherine growled, as they majestically waddled in behind her. "And I have no intention of cleaning it up." 

"What are they doing here already?" Klaus was pacing now, unsure of how to proceed he was that mad. "It's not day seven yet."

"But I got seven geese," Elijah murmured.

"You did what?"  

"It was a traumatic experience Niklaus but I'm fairly certain there were seven snapping at my nether regions."

"Sounds like Katherine, the house guest that will never leave," Kol joked.

"Sleep with one eye open is all I'm going to say Mikaelson," she meowed. "I might have a little, white oak surprise watiing."

"Enough!" Klaus shouted, his patience well and truly worn out. "All I asked was for you to do one thing and you can't even stop bickering long enough to do it."

"Any reason there are some guys in tights leaping around the yard?" Klaus stilled, why did she have to come home at that exact moment?

"Who cares?" Kol rebuffed. "Look, we have swans, darling." If this was his attempt at deflection, Klaus was worried.

"Any connection to the hens in the kitchen sink?" She asked curiously, her blue eyes regarding Klaus curiously.

"I was prepping them for Christmas dinner," Rebekah offered weakly.

"What is going on here?" Klaus knew by the hands on hips stance, the game was up. "There's only so much poultry I can handle in the same space."

"Hear, hear," Katherine agreed, giving the swans a dirty look.       

"I was planning on surprising you for Christmas," he murmured. "Surprise."

"What exactly did you do besides robbing Noah's ark of all its animal life?"

"It wasn't me," he blurted out. "It was them. I mean I don't know how difficult it is to take on a very simple task."

"Simple task?" Elijah shot back.  

"Last time I checked the rules state that we can't have any assistance, Klaus. What part of that don't you understand?"

"I did a bit."

"Oh, which part?" Rebekah insisted, now her hands were firmly on hip. "Did you organise the cows, the rings, the turtle doves?"

"The maids, the dancers, the pipers..."

"Fine, alright," he growled. "But silly me for thinking any of you could pull this off," he scoffed. "I promise I was doing all this for you, love."

"Don't you love me, you rule breaker," she huffed.

Knowing Caroline intimately he couldn't miss the slight tugging at the corners of her mouth. One look around the room told Klaus she wasn't the only one. Before too long they errupted in fits of laughter, even Katherine who didn't have a sense of humour most of the time.

"You set me up!"

"I can't believe you don't think we know the lyrics," Elijah scoffed, his offence obvious. 

"That's what you get for flauting the rules, Klaus," she smirked. She looked pretty hot right now but Klaus was supposed to be mad not attempting to jump his girlfriend.

"So, I know what your motives were," Klaus said pointedly to his girlfriend. She was a stickler for the rules, that's for sure. "But what about the rest of you?" He accused, wagging his finger in their direction.

"Are you kidding? Messing with you is my favourite past time," Kol chuckled. "Actually it's something we all have in common." Even his girlfriend by the looks of it. Sudden'y he realised she fit in perfectly fine.

"Yeah, who says we don't agree on anything?"

"We had a talk," Caroline began. "I was suspicious about your unlawful activity and your siblings wanted to play with you, as usual."

"Me too," Katherine offered. Klaus cocked his left eyebrow in his brother's girlfriend's direction. "What can I say? I'm still pissed about that whole 500 year vendetta."

"So, we made a deal."

"I don't think I like the sounds of this." Klaus hated being left out just as much as he hated secrets.

"In exchange for the prank, we get the compound all to ourselves after the holidays."

"We can only take so much noise within these paper thin walls and you are worse than rabbits," Kol groaned.

"Now, that's a visual I didn't need, Kol," Rebekah cursed. Then it struck him, his girlfriend was brilliant. He knew it before but now it was truly confirmed. Maybe she would fit in with their manipualtive family after all. This had been her plan all along to get them out of the house. It was genuis.  

The way Klaus saw it, being far away from his siblings was a definite bonus after the drama they'd no doubt inflict over the holidays. 

"I can't believe it," he muttered, pretending to be angry. "And if you want to keep your livers I suggest you disperse so I can have a word with my girlfriend here. Oh and while you're at it you might want to check there's no other wildlife present in the compound."

"I'll swap you," Elijah offered to Katherine. "Geese for the swans."

"If anyone finds a maid around the place, feel free to send her to my bedroom," Kol chuckled.

"Charming, Kol," she drawled. "Well, I don't know about anyone else but I'm definitely keeping the rings."

"You sneaky thing," he grinned, pulling her into his arms once they were out of vampire earshot. "You planned this

"No, that was you with all that rule breaking," she deflected. "I was just working with what I had."

"I just wanted it to be special," he implored, running his hands through her golden locks.

"The thought was there, no matter how huge. The reason I came up with those rules wasn't to be annoying. I don't need grand gestures, Klaus. You could have drawn me a picture and that would have been more than enough."

"I draw you pictures all the time though."

"And I love everyone of them," she smiled. "But just for future gift-giving reference, I have a huge bird phobia."

"Noted," he murmured, grazing his nose against hers. "Then I'm not sure you should be out in the open with all these birds on the loose, probably best we take this to the bedroom until all wildlife has been captured. Don't you think, love?"

"Knowing your siblings that might take a while so I fully support that plan," she grinned wickedly, leaning in to capture his mouth with hers before pulling him upstairs. Maybe if they were lucky the siblings would make themselves scarce sooner.  

[vsionvry]

To My Sisters: Photographer Liv Latricia Habel On Her Resilient Self-Portrait Series ‘Diasporan Daughters’

Danish American photographer Liv Latricia Habel is the creator of the reflective visual diary ‘Diasporan Daughters’. It’s a moving series of self-portraits that explore her take on what it means to be a mixed Black woman, and what it is to be seen as a mixed Black woman in Denmark. Raised in Germany by her mum and currently living in Copenhagen, Liv’s series comments on her personal experiences of being one of the few brown faces in her community growing up. She also dives into her connections with America and her different relationships with religion. This interesting combination of personal lived experiences informs not only the style of her photographs but also the meanings behind them. Liv explores societal expectations, her personal views, representation and resilience through her images. I got the pleasure to sit down with her (over Zoom) and talk all things self-love, fighting spirit, sisterhood, alter egos, and the craziness that is code-switching.

RC: Hey Liv. how are you doing?

LH: I’m doing good, I’ve just moved to a new apartment.

RC: That sounds fun; you get to decorate a new space. Do you do all that feng shui stuff?

LH: I don’t really know anything about that [laughs]

RC: Neither do I! You just put what feels right wherever.

LH: Right, exactly. How are you?

RC: I’m doing good too, tired but good! I’m happy I got to hop on this call with you though, it’s a cool change of pace.

RC: So do you study film or photography or something else creative?

LH: Yeah, I study at Copenhagen Film and Photography School. It's a one year compact course and it’s ending this December. I also studied Visual Communications a few years ago.

RC: Ooh, that’s a good combo, they work together well.

LH: Right now I’m using my skills, but it's not really what I want to work with.

RC: What do you want to work with?

LH: Photography!

RC: [laughs] I like that.

LH: I like working with photography, but it’s not my main income.

RC: Sometimes you need a plan B to help your plan A.

LH: Yeah.

RC: So is the book Diasporan Daughters a project for school or a personal project?

LH: This is a personal project, my evaluation project for school is about young female and Black artists, which I’ve been photographing.

RC: That’s super relevant nowadays, it’s also nice to do a little showcasing because all this talent is there, but not a lot of people know about it.

LH: Yeah, exactly.

RC: I was wondering what made you come up with this project?

LH: [laughs] Okay the interview is starting!

I came up with it because of my own story. My mum is Danish and my dad’s Black American. I grew up in Germany with my mum who’s white and with my white family. My school and community were totally white, so I spent my childhood and adolescent life learning to look like everyone else. I couldn’t mirror myself in anyone around me, neither in my family nor my friends till I was 19 and moved to Copenhagen and found my own community and friends.

RC: Oh wow!

LH: I was 20 when I had my first Black friend and started having contact with my family in the US, so it wasn’t that many years ago. I think of it as being a chameleon sometimes since I have so many identities that frame who I am today. I guess everyone has different identities and we can code-switch when we talk and adapt. Which is just superhuman! But for me, as a mixed Black woman, it's even crazier because of the way I grew up: I have so many identities. There are the ones that I’ve been living with, but also the identities society has given to me – which are a reflection of structural racism too. So you know, when I’m walking down the street in a specific neighborhood in Copenhagen, where there’s a lot of sex workers, and I’ve dressed up, and look good: men directly ask me how much I am.

RC: Really?!

LH: Or if it’s another situation where I might be confused for someone else, only because of my skin color.

RC: I definitely felt that through the book because there were a lot of photographs of you in different settings.

LH: Some of the portraits, I can definitely see myself in, I mean one of them is my alter ego.

RC: Ah which one is that one?!

LH: The one where I’m sitting with the pink bandana.

RC: Boss lady?!

LH: Yeah, its me when I’m the best me [laughs]

RC: That’s really cool, cause it's not only different identities you’re exploring but different versions of yourself as well.

LH: Exactly. It's different versions of myself, that’s what I mean by identities actually. Some of the images aren’t me, but what society thinks of me. Like my expereinces of being mistaken as a sex worker or cleaning lady. They’re stigmatized stereotypes of a Black woman in white society.

“There are the ones that I’ve been living with, but also the identities society has given to me..”

RC: I like that! It’s an ongoing story, you can add more as you go. 

RC: Why did you decide to title your series Diasporan Daughters?

LH: Hmm, being part of the Black diaspora means everything in terms of my looks to me and society. It is also such a big part of who I am, and the title refers to all the women and girls who are part of the Black diaspora. That obviously includes the African diaspora, but for me, being part of the Black diaspora means more since my African roots are pretty far away [laughs].

RC: It felt like a love letter where you said ‘I’m writing this for me, but also for you’. That’s a sweet idea I think.

LH: It is! In the beginning of the book it says “For my Sisters”.

LH: Each one of us is unique with our individual experiences, but we have a lot  in common. Especially when you’re living in the diaspora. I guess it's a different experience to be a Ghanian woman living in Accra for example, where you were born and grew up surrounded by a lot of other Black women. I imagine that experience differs to mine:  living as a Black woman in a white dominated society. So the book is mainly for my sisters in the diaspora.

RC: I also saw one of your images was of you standing beside the Queen Mary statue in Copenhagen. She’s a very powerful woman, why did you feel it was important to take that photo?

LH: I wanted to add this archetype of a fighting personality. And for me, this picture has connections to the Black Panther movement. At the same time, this image also connects to the Black Lives Matter movement that has been expanding worldwide in 2020 after Breonna Taylor and George Floyd's murder. For me, the only public symbol fighting the Black struggle that exists here in Denmark, is the Queen Mary statue. She means so much because she led the labour riots of former slaves and plantation workers in the then Danish colonised West Indies. So, it’s all connected for me: fighting for your liberty as a Black person since slavery till today. 

RC: She’s also powerful because of the scale. The statue is a lot bigger than many others in Copenhagen, so when you get there, you have to look up. I was almost thinking, is this really here? It is one of the only public images of a Black woman – there should be more!

LH: Definitely. For me, this image is not the strongest stylistically in the book, but its content definitely says a lot more than a lot of the other pictures because it has so much more depth.

RC: You’ve spoken about people of color’s experiences, not only in Denmark, but around the world too. There was one photo where you were wearing a red scarf, I was wondering if that had anything to do with the Burqa Ban in Denmark, or if there was any connection with that?

LH: That’s a good question. No, it doesn’t actually. My dad’s family is Muslim, so I got the whole outfit from my aunt. I grew up pretty nonreligious; I only went to church on Christmas, and I had a Confirmation because of the presents and because everyone else in my class had one – so that’s been my relationship with religion. Being in Philly and celebrating Eid made me experience a different religion that’s part of me. I’ll probably never get into Islam because I disagree with parts that I think can be problematic, as a lot of other religions around the world can be. As a Black woman wearing a sign of God means so much, because if you’re walking around in the streets as a brown or Black woman wearing a hijab, you’re looked at way more than if you’re not wearing a scarf. I’ve only worn a hijab once for Eid with my family, but when I’m wearing a scarf just for a bad hair day, I can get looked at differently.

RC: Yeah, I guess you can pick it up.

LH: Yes exactly, the photo comments on that, and also for the little part of me that’s Muslim too.

RC: That’s really nice, that you recognize these different dimensions and layers to yourself. It’s not just ‘I didn’t grow up with this, so I’m going to ignore it’, I think that’s quite a powerful photo in your collection.

LH: Thank you, there's also just so much stigma connected to being a Muslim woman and wearing a headscarf, niqab or burqa I find, especially here in Denmark, politically, it’s often connected to Islamophobia.

RC: The other thing I wanted to ask about was the types of text you include in your book. You have poetry from Maya Angelou and lyrics from Cardi B’s and Megan Thee Stallion’s song WAP.

LH: I’ve known the poem from Maya Angelou for some years, and I think it’s a very beautiful poem. I actually have to look up when it was written – it was published around 25 years ago. But it expresses how important it is to have self-worth, self-esteem, show who you are, and to be proud of who you are and every bit of yourself. That’s why I chose it, and WAP, I just think it’s a hilarious song, and I think since Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliott and other female pioneers in Hip Hop have been rapping about femininity, being in control of their own sexuality, and about sex in general. WAP is just the biggest 2020 example of how women should express that part of themselves. It’s a very extroverted song, whereas the Phenomenal Women poem is very ‘You have to stand up for yourself, but you don’t have to shout it out’. WAP, on the other hand, is ‘You shout it out!’- [laughs].

RC: I think that’s pretty interesting because they both talk about the strength and resilience of a woman just in very different ways.

LH: I also added an extract from the report of the African American Policy Forum. It is a list of all the African American women who have been killed by police brutality. And that’s a list of 48 women who have been murdered or died in detention because of the color of their skin. This is only the official list you know –

RC: Somethings aren’t documented…

LH: Yeah, exactly! Where have you actually seen the book?

RC: I saw a version of it online! So I did some stalking [laughs].

LH: Ahh okay, well done! I’ve actually changed a bit of the layout of those names from the online version. I’ve put the names of the women who have died in the same year in the same paragraph. Since 2011, there's been so many murders. The rate has been increasing, but I find that we don’t talk about it as much as the Black men being murdered in the US. 

RC: Is that why you felt it was important to showcase it in your book?

LH: Yes, it's definitely a different rate when we talk about the US. In my experience, we talk a lot about men, and how they are targeted more in terms of police brutality. But after George Floyd, there weren’t that many people talking about Breonna Taylor in my circles, which happened three months before. Even my mum’s friend was like ‘Who’s Breonna Taylor?' and I was like ‘Yoo, educate yourself!’ So that’s why I added them. Also, I’m a woman myself!

RC: You gotta work in your own interest –

LH: Exactly! I can't relate to the men, but I can represent us.

RC: It’s a solidarity moment. What do you hope people take away from your book?

LH: So I hope that everyone who sees and reads it can get something positive, meaningful, and forceful out of it, which they can translate into something that drives them. Secondly, when I’m a bigger photographer and if..

no, when the book gets -

RC: Yes! WHEN! You have to manifest!

LH: [laughs] Yes, when the book is out there on bookshelves, I hope I can also be a representative Black face for young mixed Black kids and girls. Now I’m also saying mixed because I’m that myself, but it'd just be good to get more representation out there. My biggest dream as a child was just to see someone who looks like me in this Western world.

RC: Do you think that would have helped you when you were younger in Germany?

LH: For sure! That said, I’m also extremely privileged because I’m light skinned. Knowing that, It’s very much like standing in between two worlds especially when I’ve only grown up with one side. I’m always thinking I’m not white enough or not Black enough and trying to find an in-between. So with the book, I  wanted to acknowledge that you can be as many different parts of yourself as you want to be

RC: You don’t have to choose.

LH: Exactly, you don’t need to choose!

[encephalonfatigue]

a history of radical ideas behind hancock’s meadowvale and ‘new towns’ like it

this started as a reflection on a short Chomsky book, but it provoked a long excursion into the town planning ideas that informed the design of Meadowvale, a suburb i have spent almost my entire life in. i hilariously had to rewrite this entire essay from memory after having accidentally deleted it upon pasting in my last cited passage into my Notes app, which promptly proceeded to crash after i tried to undo the paste. i have permanently pledged to do all future writing in a proper word processor. requiem for a Notes app nightmare.

Requiem for the American Dream is largely composed of fragments of interviews with Chomsky conducted for a documentary of the same name. Consequently its tone is very conversational and it’s pretty conducive to the audiobook format. (Someone’s uploaded it onto YouTube if you’re in the mood for such listening.)

The book opens with Chomsky comparing the present situation to the Great Depression as he recalls it. He talks about how even though things were bad then – much worse than now – there was still a sense that things would get better. Chomsky says that sense of hope has vanished. People no longer have a sense of upward mobility being possible. The bubble has burst and the American Dream has collapsed.

The American Dream commonly elicits images of white-picket fences and other stock imagery of the American suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs, and though this was in Canada, my parents as immigrants bought into this ‘dream’. As I reflect on our experiences, I see Chomsky’s words ringing true. My dad’s income has not only failed to increase for over the past decade but has in fact fallen. My mom has worked longer and longer hours over the years, even working through vacation days, because work has to be done and she feels terrified of not being able to meet the unreasonable expectations of her bosses.

Chomsky makes a very fascinating point citing something Alan Greenspan said about why his tenure as chair of the Federal Reserve was so successful. Greenspan said in his testimony before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in 1997:

“[A] typical restraint on compensation increases has been evident for a few years now and appears to be mainly the consequence of greater worker insecurity. In 1991, at the bottom of the recession, a survey of workers at large firms by International Survey Research Corporation indicated that 25 percent feared being laid off. In 1996 . . . the same survey organization found that 46 percent were fearful of a job layoff. The reluctance of workers to leave their jobs to seek other employment as the labor market tightened has provided further evidence of such concern, as has the tendency toward longer labor union contracts. …The low level of work stoppages of recent years also attests to concern about job security. Thus, the willingness of workers in recent years to trade off smaller increases in wages for greater job security seems to be reasonably well documented.”

Marx refers to this as the reserve army of labour – the unemployed and underemployed, more destitute than you, willing to take your job for less compensation and worse working conditions. That’s the sort of circumstance very conducive to capitalist production. The highly productive economy relies on the fear of losing one’s job. I see that daily as my mom works enormous amounts of unpaid overtime because she is absolutely terrified of losing her job.

And to make it worse, how much of this labour is focused on bettering humanity as a whole, and how much of it is focused on meeting the desires and interests of the wealthy few? I’m glad Chomsky offers a term to describe this sort of economy. He actually references a term used by Citi Group: “plutonomy” – an economy that is driven by the demand of the wealthy few. Basically labour structured around the whims of the rich – a type of neo-feudalism. This is also visible in the suburbs, but only certain parts of it. The wealthier suburbs. You see an army of gig workers mowing people’s lawns, landscaping gardens, cleaning people’s houses, delivering food and Amazon orders, making people’s food, caring for people’s aging parents, raising people’s kids. There are long commodity chains around the material inputs for each of these jobs too. But it is bourgeois consumption that drives the economy. Canada is categorized as a plutonomy by Citi Group. This is only amplified by orders of magnitude for the extremely wealthy.

What if the economy was structured very differently, where instead of wealthy people directing where labour should be focused according to their interests, we came to decisions more democratically for the wider interest of the public at large. Chomsky mentions a very interesting case regarding transportation and the way alienation has eroded our ability to collectively organize:

“After the housing bubble and the financial crash, as you remember, the government pretty much took over the auto industry. It was virtually nationalized and in government hands. That means popular hands. That meant there were choices that the public could’ve made. If there had been an organized, active public, there would have been choices that people like us could’ve made about what to do with the auto industry. Well, unfortunately, there wasn’t that active mobilization and organization, so what was done was the natural thing that benefits the powerful. The industry was pretty much a taxpayer expense, and returned to essentially the same owners—some different faces, but the same banks, the same institutions, and so on—and it went on producing what it had been producing: automobiles.

There was another possibility. The industry could have been handed over to the workforce and the communities, and they could have made a democratic decision about what to do. And maybe their decision—I would at least hope that their decision—would have been to produce what the country desperately needs, which is not more cars on the street, but efficient mass transportation for our own benefit, and for the benefit of our grandchildren. If they’re gonna have a world to survive in, it’s not gonna be through automobiles—it’s gonna be through efficient forms of transportation. Retooling it wouldn’t have been that expensive, and it would be beneficial to them, beneficial to us, beneficial to the future. That was a possibility. And things like that are happening all the time, constantly.

This is one of the few countries, certainly one of the few developed societies, that doesn’t have high-speed transportation. You can take a high-speed train from Beijing to Kazakhstan, but not from New York to Boston. In Boston, where I live, many people literally spend three or four hours a day just commuting. That’s crazy wasted time. All of this could be overcome by a rational mass transportation system, which would also contribute significantly to solving the major problem we face—namely, environmental destruction. So that’s one kind of thing that could be done, but there are many others, large and small.

So, there’s no reason why production in the United States can’t be for the benefit of people, of the workforce in the United States, the consumers in the United States, and the future of the world. It can be done.”

When I look at Meadowvale, the suburban neighbourhood I live in, I ponder these early proposals for its development where mass transit was the central focus. One fascinating nugget of local Meadowvale history is that Moshe Safdie’s McGill thesis, conducted under Daniel van Ginkel, was a proposal for the development of the Meadowvale ‘new town’, and while this proposal remained ultimately unrealized, it became the basis of his landmark work Habitat 67.

The Carleton professor Inderbir Singh Riar, in his doctoral dissertation at Columbia, describes this van Ginkel project that Safdie worked on as drawing from the Marxist-inflected Metabolist movement of the architects Kenzo Tange and Fumihiko Maki:

“The van Ginkels elsewhere admitted admiring Tange’s 1960 Tokyo Bay proposal and their work had absorbed aspects of its heroic planning: an unrealised 1961 master plan for the new town of Meadowvale, Ontario, found massive pyramidal “clusters” of civic buildings, industrial sectors, and housing complexes attached to a transport spine facilitating “as complete as possible a separation between automobile and pedestrian” (fig. 3.6).78 Partially in the spirit of Man in the City, Meadowvale at its most heroic reflected concerns being concurrently advanced by the Japanese Metabolists for whom Tange served as éminence grise. Drawing on biological connotations of “growth”, Fumihiko Maki’s influential concept of “collective form”, which acknowledged debts to Team 10 ideas, aimed to represent “groups of buildings and quasi-buildings… not a collection of unrelated, separate buildings, but of buildings that have reasons to be together” by systems of “linkage”.”

More sketches of Safdie’s Meadowvale plan.

Rair also explored this fascinating development from Safdie’s Meadowvale ‘new town’ proposal into the great Montreal landmark of Habitat 67, and one can see in this description that these ‘linkages’ were not solely thematic, as to make the development more aesthetically cohesive, but also about establishing a system of mass transit. He writes about Safdie’s formative project in this way:

“The suggestion came from Moshe Safdie, who, upon graduating from McGill University in 1961, had worked for the van Ginkels on the Meadowvale new town and was, by early September 1963, among their young Expo 67 staff architects. Safdie had contributed some of the more heroic elaborations of Meadowvale in massive pyramidal housing, commercial, and industrial sectors set along a transportation system: each “productive unit depends on others just as they depend on it”; “Rapid transit unites the centre city”; the “key point is TRANSPORTATION”.”

It’s fascinating to see here that early hopes for Meadowvale actually matched the sort of sensible focus on mass transit that Chomsky mentions would be more possible under a more democratic economy. The issue is how these visions are often radically watered down under the dictates of capital. While Safdie’s vision did not come to fruition, the town planner that did come to shape Meadowvale was Macklin Hancock, a graduate of Harvard, greatly influenced there by the principles of Bauhaus, the ‘new town’ movement and its ‘garden city’ precedent. While many of these architectural and planning movements were infused with the radical politics of socialists, their design principles under capitalist development all but shed their radical roots. Hancock, unlike his more radical professors at Harvard, did not see these design principles as requiring the socialist politics behind them, but rather saw them as design projects that could be profitable under a ‘free-enterprise’ economy. Hancock writes:

“What is essential is to develop principles and techniques, within our free enterprise socio-economic framework, to link effectively the handling of traffic with the design of communities.”

While Hancock did enact some very important principles from the ‘new town’ movement – e.g. focusing on making the community more walkable, by segregating car traffic and pedestrian walkways and ensuring the connectivity of these walkways through tunnels and bridges avoiding traffic intersections, and granted I have benefited often from these ideas during bike-rides to the Meadowvale library and community centre. I cannot emphasize how valuable a tunnel or bridge crossing a road is, rather than traffic light crosswalks. Especially crosswalks across wide vehicle roads which remain fairly dangerous in my experience as people try to negotiate tightly timed turns at red lights, or try rushing through amber lights, or for that matter, when crosswalk buttons stop functioning, and one has to cross while that red hand remains illuminated.

All this being said, I still find the mass transit available in Meadowvale less than satisfying. Hancock was often styled as a type of conservationist and environmentalist and recognized early on the severe consequences of an underfunded or non-existent mass transit system, both environmentally and from the perspective of economic productivity. He writes in a 1963 article for Traffic Quarterly:

“Those nations with cities built around a compact principle employing mass transit as the basic element of transportation have an opportunity to provide production at less cost than we, with a corresponding benefit to the economy and amenity of the family unit.”

Hancock in a more recent interview with Streeter recognized the awful state of mass transit in the GTA, caused by the chronic underfunding of the TTC:

"They don’t seem to understand how to create and maintain a transportation system… These are the communication systems of a city, the Romans knew this. Know why there is so much gridlock coming into the city? Because they’ve ignored the TTC for the past 20 years and there are more and more people coming into the city to work every day."

Hancock goes on to suggest that they should have TTC extensions out to places outside the city like Meadowvale. And I agree with Hancock. While the GO train into downtown from Meadowvale is likely the most successful aspect of public transit available in the neighbourhood, Meadowvale still deserves better, and every trip for me to anywhere downtown requires a stop through Union Station before I can proceed to any other destination in the city. 

Meadowvale GO Station

Additionally anywhere else in the GTA takes a prohibitively long duration to reach, as most of it is based on public buses that travel on the same congested highways as all the other private cars, though this is beginning to change for more central regions in Mississauga, where there is now a corridor for public buses alone (and potentially a path for future LRT development). What I do know is that I’m one of those people who Chomsky describes, commuting for four hours a day (in fact often it’s closer to 4.5 to 5 hours).

My main point is that however visionary the architects and planners we bring to the table may be, they can only go so far as capitalist development dictates, and often times that severely limits the radical vision on offer. What I want to do here is trace through some of these radical thinkers that influenced Macklin Hancock as a way of seeing the radical history of certain suburban plans before they were co-opted by the needs of capital over ordinary residents. Before I go into that though, I think it’s worth looking at Moshe Safdie himself, who had offered a fascinating proposal for Meadowvale that eventually took shape in Montreal instead.

Inderbir Singh Riar wrote of this blurring of ‘town and country’ (which is a theme at the centre of the ‘new town’ movement I will get into later):

“Still early in his career, Safdie – who had, under Daniel van Ginkel, designed a modular housing system as his McGill thesis project that would become the basis of Habitat 67 – saw the future city in terms of regional planning. His Meadowvale scheme, which brooked little distinction between town and country, recalled the linear city originating in the Spanish planner Arturo Soria y Mata’s ciudad lineal of 1882, with its sections of infrastructure – water, gas, electricity, and sewage – extending an optimal line to which components of the city would simply attach.”

This notion of the “linear city” became successfully realized in various Frankfurt developments by the Ernst May, and exported into Soviet planning schemes. In fact Soviet planners subscribing to “linear city” principles became the primary faction allied with “garden city” planners in the Soviet Union forming the ‘disurbanist’ camp against the ‘urbanist’ camp, which I will also get into later. What’s fascinating is that all these schemes were of great interest to leftist intellectuals. Rair traces Safdie’s ideas for Meadowvale and eventually Montreal’s Habitat 67 to the utopian socialist, Charles Fourier’s Phalanstère and the New Babylon proposed by the Situationist Constant Nieuwenhuys:

“Constant believed as much and thought New Babylon heir to the nineteenth-century utopian socialist Charles Fourier’s phalanstère, a building based on a desire for “architecture unitaire” – the Situationists called for a “unitary urbanism” – and designed for a self-contained community governed by “passional attractions”. (Debord sought “lived ambiances and their transformation into a superior passionnal quality”.) Walter Benjamin had described the phalanstère – in the context of related ferro-vitreous enviroments of the nineteenth century that he took from Giedion – in terms of the capacity of advanced building systems to change radically the processes of everyday life:

‘Its highly complicated organisation is like a piece of machinery. The meshing of passions, the intricate interaction of the passions mécanistes with the passion cabaliste, are primitive analogies to machinery in the material of psychology. This human machinery produces the land of milk of honey, the primeval wish symbol that Fourier’s utopia filled with new life.’”

What’s fascinating I think is that Safdie in the past has identified with socialism and contends that it still informs his work:

“Absolutely I feel the ideological base I grew up with is still the foundation of my beliefs. The socialism of early Israel has an enormous influence on my practice… It’s very basic and constant in my ideas. I’m more focused on society as a whole.”

Like Chomsky his young experiences on a kibbutz became deeply formative to Safdie’s anarcho-socialist impulses, and in his book “Beyond Habitat” Safdie elaborated more on his relationship to leftist politics:

"This is not bureaucratic socialism; it's a much more humane interpretation of Marxism. I think the kibbutz is an open-ended, civilized interpretation, respectful of man in contrast with the Russian misinterpretation. The kibbutz members actually live by the rule, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." There is no private property, only communal property. Everything is owned by the community, not the state, and that is a big difference."

It is fascinating that “communal property” was actually a central concept to early ‘garden city’ and ‘new town’ proposals, which would eventually take a far less radical form in the work of Macklin Hancock’s new town projects of Don Mills, Meadowvale, and Erin Mills.

If you’ve ever seen the cover of the 1992 documentary “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media”, it is Chomsky’s face plastered across a large screen. A snapshot from one of the documentary’s opening scenes. I actually spent many moments of my childhood under that screen playing mini-golf, eating cake and other sugary goods, and taking unbearable photographs with Santa Claus. 

Erin Mills today

This is the four-way screen that used to sit under the postmodern ‘town tower’ of Erin Mills Town Centre, also developed by Macklin Hancock. That tower is gone now, replaced by a strange glass globe, but the screen under that tower is forever emblazoned within that Chomsky documentary, and this piece of trivia is sometimes even featured in real-estate postings for the Erin Mills area. 

The glass globe of Erin Mills today.

Following a quote by John Milton, the Chomsky documentary actually opens with overhead snapshots of Erin Mills Town Centre, before focusing in on the multimedia screen.

Opening screenshots from the documentary “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media”

Instead of collectively owned approaches to development, Macklin Hancock’s first ‘new town’ project (Don MIlls) was executed under the finance of a subsidiary owned by the arch-capitalist E. P. Taylor who also had his finger in every other industry of vice: alcohol, gambling, tar & chemicals, mining, gated communities, off-shore tax havens, and sugary soda drinks for children. Curiously, his brother Fred Taylor was an artist and a communist, constantly criticizing his brother, and who E. P. Taylor was perpetually embarrassed by.

A painting of Chabolley Square, Montreal (1955) by the communist Fred Taylor (brother of arch-capitalist E. P. Taylor).

Hancock’s first job as a town planner came while he was still a graduate student at Harvard. His father-in-law worked for a company owned by E. P. Taylor and got Hancock to design a plan for what would become Don Mills. Hancock actually tried to convince his professors to allow him to undertake the project as extra credit towards his degree, but they declined, thinking he had bitten off more than he could chew. While on the project, he tried to convince one of his Harvard professors, Walter Gropius, to design the commercial heart of Don Mills ‘new town’, but Gropius “gently refused” as Dave LeBlanc put it in The Globe & Mail. Instead Gropius suggested another recent graduate of Harvard, John Parkin, who accepted the offer. Parkin would leave behind traces of Bauhaus design all over Toronto, and especially in the Don Mills area with buildings like Don Mills Collegiate and the Janssen Building.

Parkin was also involved in designing the Simpson’s building at Yorkdale Shopping Centre (now The Bay) together with Victor Gruen – the committed socialist often considered the ‘inventor’ of the shopping mall. Certainly shopping centres did not turn out to be the centres of civic community that Gruen initially envisioned. The young architect most responsible for the Simpson’s section of Yorkdale was actually John Andrews, who designed the CN Tower along with great brutalist landmarks like the University of Toronto Scarborough campus and the University of Guelph South Residence buildings. Andrews’ first job after graduating from Harvard was in the Parkin firm working on Don Mills. Afterwards, while working on the Simpson’s building at Yorkdale, he experimented in the vernacular of New Formalism, and I admittedly have a soft spot for those types of minimalist lines and the white vaulted ceilings that still adorn the exterior of The Bay. It’s probably my favourite decorative feature to Yorkdale. Andrews was actually drawing on the work of Minoru Yamasaki who was also working with the New Formalist vernacular at the time. Yamasaki is maybe most famous for designing the World Trade Towers, but he is also the architect behind the Pruitt-Igoe social housing complex. Catherine Liu, in a video interview with Jacobin, commented on how the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe and its condemnation by postmodernists (as a failure of top-down modernist ambition and idealistic design out of tune with the reality of the ‘gang violence’ that it would breed), was ultimately a mischaracterization of what amounted to a racist project by the white business class of defunding social housing primarily used by racialized communities.

Social housing was actually a central idea in the ‘new towns’ movement, but by the time it was taken up by Macklin Hancock around Toronto this was no longer a central focus. In fact one of the criticisms of Don Mills was its lack of non-profit housing. Anyway, after executing Don Mills rather ‘successfully’, to a fair degree of acclaim, he went back to Harvard to finish his degree. He would later go on to take these ‘new town’ ideas westward into Mississauga to develop both Meadowvale and Erin Mills along ‘new town’ principles. In fact, E. P. Taylor was one of the early speculators buying up land around the Missinihe (Credit River), which would eventually constitute part of the neighbourhood of Erin Mills. 

The name Erin Mills itself was a sort of franchised extension of the success at Don Mills. The name was simply taken from nearby Erindale – ‘Erin’ being a mythic name for Ireland (since many of the early European settlers in the area hailed from Ireland), and dale was just another poetic name for valley (in this case, carved out by the Missinihe). There never was a historic mill site called ‘Erin Mills’ along the Missinihe as I had initially assumed. It’s actually quite interesting to see how settler colonialism is infused within the names developers gave to these ‘new suburban utopias’. It really begs the question ‘utopia’ for whom?

Thirteen years after purchasing all that land around the Missinihe, E. P. Taylor’s subsidiary Don Mills Development Corp announced a plan to build a New Town  in four phases, and Macklin Hancock would be called back to the drawing table. Jan Dean tells the story along with the developer Larry Robbins in the Mississauga News:

“As Robbins tells it, the whole Erin Mills development – all four phases with all those thousands of homes and commercial and industrial buildings – started as a gleam in the eye of iconic Canadian entrepreneur E.P. Taylor.  After the huge success of his Don Mills project Taylor dreamed of a similar project in the Credit River watershed.  He started buying up parcels of land in the area, getting friends and colleagues to purchase it in their names to keep the prices down.  And by 1954 Taylor’s company, Canadian Equity and Development Ltd. (CEDL) which also owned Don Mills Development Ltd. (DMD), owned 10,000 pristine acres of the watershed. It was a plot of land that Robbins describes as “a developer's dream where five creeks all flow into the Credit River in a south-easterly direction.” One third of the land was in Oakville, the other two-thirds in Toronto Township – what would become the City of Mississauga. “The land sold for $1,000 an acre,” says Robbins.  “Now it would be worth more than $1-million an acre for raw land.””

The four quadrants of Don Mills and the same quadrant structure of Erin Mills Town Centre, to me, has certain thematic resonances with four rivers of the biblical Eden, and so the utopian allusion is certainly there, as I see it. But as I mentioned before, whose utopia was it? It is interesting that the nostalgic utopia this late capitalist development alludes to, that of ‘bucolic’ mills along the pastoral fields by the Credit River, was at the same time signifying a process that dispossessed the Anishinaabe who lived along the Missinihe. I did an audio piece on how the deforestation projects and decimation of salmon populations these mills perpetrated led to the exodus of the Anishinaabe as their livelihoods became endangered from the collapse of their resource base.

Lake Wabukayne

One interesting little body of water that I sometimes access along the network of walkways that Macklin Hancock designed in Meadowvale is known as Lake Wabukayne. It used to be a cattle pond on the Cook Farm, and became a flood control reservoir developed and financed by Cadillac Fairview for preventing surges of water, which could affect Erin Mills downstream of Wabukayne Creek. 

An image of Wabukayne Creek (above) flowing nearby Erin Mills Town Centre, behind Quenippenon Meadows Community Park, named after another Anishinaabeg chief. His name is often rendered Kineubenae, Quinipeno, or Quenebenaw. He witnessed first hand British colonial deceit in the wake of signing Treaty 13A.

Concrete storm water management structure at Lake Wabukayne farther upstream in Meadowvale.

A note about the name of the creek and the reservoir: Chief Wabukayne was an Anishinaabeg leader murdered by a white man in Toronto who was trying to solicit sex from Wabuayne’s sister. And after this white man (a murderer of an Anishinaabeg Chief) was acquitted by the court, there was almost a full-scale indigenous insurrection resulting from the unjust ruling.

Erin Mills Town Centre today is owned by the Ontario Pension Board, but was previously owned and operated by Cadillac Fairview, which is in turn owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund. David Harvey has pointed out the strange entanglements of capitalism, such that its less about which individual is a capitalist and who is proletariat, and more about the different roles people now play in different circumstances. Pensioners are capitalists, but I think there is some nuance here worth flushing out here.

The management consultant and business professor Peter Drucker in his 1972 book “The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America” opens his book by writing:

“If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production by the workers"—and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition—then the United States is the first truly "Socialist" country.

Through their pension funds, employees of American business today own at least 25 percent of its equity capital, which is more than enough for control. The pension funds of the self-employed, of the public employees, and of school and college teachers own at least another 10 per- cent, giving the workers of America ownership of more than one-third of the equity capital of American business. Within another ten years the pension funds will inevitably increase their holdings, and by 1985 (probably sooner), they will own at least 50—if not 60—percent of equity capital. Ten years later, or well before the turn of the century, their holding should exceed around two-thirds of the equity capital (that is, the common shares) plus a major portion—perhaps 40 percent—of the debt capital (bonds, debentures, and notes) of the American economy. Inflation can only speed up this process.

Even more important especially for Socialist theory, the largest employee pension funds, those of the 1,000-1,300 biggest companies plus the 35 industry-wide funds (those of the college teachers and the teamsters for instance) already own control* of practically every single one of the

1,000 largest industrial corporations in America. This includes control of companies with sales well below $100 million, by today's standards at best fair-sized companies, if not actually small; the pension funds also control the fifty largest companies in each of the "non-industrial" groups, that is, in banking, insurance, retail, communications, and transportation.t These are what Socialist theory calls the "command positions" of the economy; whoever controls them is in command of the rest.

Indeed, aside from farming, a larger sector of the American economy is owned today by the American worker through his investment agent, the pension fund, than Allende in Chile had brought under government ownership to make Chile a "Socialist country," than Castro's Cuba has actually nationalized, or than had been nationalized in Hungary or Poland at the height of Stalinism.”

While this was in 1972, business elites still accept Drucker’s premise. For example, Roger L. Martin (former dean of Rotman School of Management) in a 2014 Harvard Business Review article agreed with Drucker:

“Workers, he predicted, would own the means of production — but not through the violent overthrow of capitalism in the way Marx had suggested. Rather they the ownership would come through the stocks held by their pension funds. Drucker was right, especially if you lump traditional pension funds along with their sovereign wealth fund cousins. The top 350 pension and sovereign wealth funds control just under $20 trillion of assets. They are the largest holders of securities in for-profit organizations competing in democratic capitalist environments.”

However, it’s worth considering how the ownership of these assets is not the same as democratic control over them. While this ‘pension fund socialism’ is hardly a threat to capitalism, and Drucker saw it as a saving grace of capitalism, Martin laments that these giant pension funds are monopolistic in nature and undermine capitalist competition. I am less interested in its undermining of capitalist competition (which I don’t perceive as a necessarily good thing), and more interested in how these monopolistic tendencies concentrate power. The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin writes:

“The logic of accumulation lies in the growing concentration and centralization of control over capital. Formal ownership can be spread out (as in the “owners” of shares in pension plans), whereas the management of this property is controlled by financial capital.”

I think this is an important point, because I often ponder the difficult struggle over divesting university pension funds and similar types of investments out of fossil fuels. What degree of democratic control exists in the allocation of capital? Samir Amin believes that ultimately a de-financialisation of economic management is required, and elaborates on how abolishing pension funds is a necessary step towards this goal:

“The de-financialisation of economic management would also require two sets of legislation. The first concerns the authority of a sovereign state to ban speculative fund (hedge funds) operations in its territory. The second concerns pension funds, which are now major operators in the financialisation of the economic system. These funds were designed - first in the US of course - to transfer to employees the risks normally incurred by capital, and which are the reasons invoked to justify capital‟s remuneration! So this is a scandalous arrangement, in clear contradiction even with the ideological defense of capitalism! But this “invention” is an ideal instrument for the strategies of accumulation dominated by monopolies. The abolition of pension funds is necessary for the benefit of distributive pension systems, which, by their very nature, require and allow democratic debate to determine the amounts and periods of assessment and the relationship between the amounts of pensions and remuneration paid. In a democracy that respects social rights, these pension systems are universally available to all workers. However, at a pinch, and so as not to prohibit what a group of individuals might desire to put in place, supplementary pensions funds could be allowed. All measures of de-financialisation suggested here lead to an obvious conclusion: A world without Wall Street, to borrow the title of the book by François Morin, is possible and desirable.”

I think Peter Frase also provides a really interesting critique of this sort of ‘market socialism’ framing, even mentioning Peter Drucker explicitly. Frase first cites something Matt Yglesias writes in reference to the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund:

“[T]he right thing to do is to just directly think about the issue of how best to ensure that everyone obtains the financial benefits of equity investments. And the answer, I think, is sovereign wealth funds. That’s how they do it in Singapore and conceptually it’s the right way to do it. An American version of Singapore’s Central Provident Fund would be much too large for any market to absorb, but the US share of world GDP should shrink over time and it’s conceivable that there would be some way to work this out on the state level to create smaller units. A fund like that would render the public listing issue irrelevant, since it would clearly have the scale to get in on the private equity game. This would, needless to say, entail injecting a hefty element of socialism into American public policy but I’m always hearing from smart conservatives how much they admire Singapore.”

After citing this remark by Yglesias, Frase lists out all the problems that still remain with this sort of ‘market socialism’:

“you would still have profit-seeking companies competing with each other, and they would still be subject to the same kind of discipline they are now--the shareholders, which is to say the sovereign wealth funds, would demand the highest possible return on their investment… the important point about capitalism without capitalists is that in many ways it isn't any better than capitalism with capitalists. You still have to sell your labor power and submit to a boss in order to survive, so alienation persists. Since firms are still competing to deliver the highest returns to their shareholders, there will still be pressure to exploit employees more intensely and to prevent them from organizing for their rights. Exploitation goes on as before, and it will be all the more robust insofar as it is now a kind of collective self-exploitation. And on top of all of this, the system will still be prone to the booms and busts and problems of overaccumulation that occur in today's capitalism. It was, after all, public and union pension funds that bought many of the toxic mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble.

…now each person is simultaneously a capitalist and a worker, in some degree or for some part of their life. Thinking through the inadequacy of such an arrangement is, for me, a more accessible way of thinking through the arguments of people like André Gorz and Moishe Postone. They argued that the point isn't to get rid of the capitalist class and have the workers take over: the point is to get rid of capital and wage labor.”

I started this long tangent on pension funds remarking that it was Cadillac Fairview that owned and operated Erin Mills Town Centre and even a lot of the surrounding infrastructure (like the flood-control reservoir of Lake Wabukayne in Meadowvale). I found it a very curious thing that it was the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan who owned Cadillac Fairview. My mom works in finance, and many of the people in the corporation she works for come from OTPP, because they are totally woven into the fabric of Canadian high finance just as any other capitalist financial corporation. It’s remarkable that Cadillac Fairview actually owns the entire TD Centre out of which the Toronto Dominion bank operates out from. This is maybe the most significant Bauhaus architectural landmark in the downtown core of Toronto designed none other than Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe.

I swear there is a better photo I took of this building, but this is the only one I could find for now. The Mies TD Centre building is the black one on the far right.

This is a shot of it I snagged from google maps.

Mies Van der Rohe is possibly one of the most well known of the Bauhaus architects, and the last director of the Bauhaus school, an institution with a stormy connection with the left. In 1926, Mies Van der Rohe had designed a memorial to the communist ‘martyrs’ of the German revolution, Spartacist League leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, commissioned by the then president of the German Communist Party, Eduard Fuchs. This memorial, with its hammer and sickle and all, had been later destroyed by the Nazis, whom Mies Van der Rohe had capitulated to in strides and bounds, trying to keep the doors of the Bauhaus school open, but eventually failed. Mies had gone so far as to make submissions for Third Reich buildings like their Reichsbank competition and their pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, complete with sketches of swastika flags and a stone eagle. By 1937, the Bauhaus school had shuttered and Mies left for the US. This trajectory was what led Mies to design some of the most famous modernist skyscrapers plastered with the names of large corporations and banks – exactly as one sees with the TD Centre at the heart of the Toronto financial district. The architectural critic Tom Dykhoff writes:

“…his future patron would be no government, no political system, but the economic system that was emerging triumphant in the US. Modernism…would succeed as the landscape not of communism, bolshevism or nazism, but of international capitalism.”

The Bauhaus school before Mies Van der Rohe had a reputation, especially among the Nazis for being infiltrated by all sorts of leftist elements, particularly communists. It might be worth taking a moment here to describe what was the Bauhaus movement in fact was and a bit about its founder – Walter Gropius, the Harvard professor who had greatly influenced Macklin Hancock during his time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Irish communist Jenny Farrell wrote a great introduction to Bauhaus for People’s World:

“The Bauhaus began in Weimar in 1919 as a state school for art and architecture. The guiding principles in the Bauhaus Manifesto were community, unity of art, practical education, cooperation between craft and industry, and a sense of belonging to the people. All artistic disciplines were to be reunited under the leadership of a new architectural art.

The name Bauhaus plays on the German word Bauhütte (construction/building hut)—the workshop where the builders of the great medieval cathedrals worked together: quarrymen, plasterers, mortar-makers, stone-cutters, masons, and others. Here there were no strict dividing lines between artists and craftsmen, and the builders were both in one. This was an important concept for the Bauhaus school. As the word Hütte means hut, the term was modernized to Haus (house). In this way, the term Bauhaus refers to a workshop, the sense of community and the equality of art and craft under the guidance of architecture, as cultivated in medieval cathedral workshops.”

The medievalist impulses of Morris’s Arts & Crafts movement deeply informed the early Bauhaus before its direction towards more futurist and urban aesthetics. J. Dakota Brown in a Jacobin article writes:

“The cover of the Bauhaus’s founding manifesto carried Lyonel Feininger’s woodcut of a cathedral rising into a turbulent sky, beset by shafts of light. In the writings of Arts and Crafts theorists like John Ruskin and William Morris, the Gothic cathedral had represented the integration of art, labor, and life in the pre-capitalist world. Bauhaus pedagogy reimagined the structure of the medieval guilds: “apprentices” worked under a “master of form” (normally a painter) and a “master of craft” (a skilled artisan). Students who passed the initial coursework became “journeymen” eligible for waged work in the workshops. Many later became “young masters” — junior teachers — themselves. The Bauhaus Manifesto promised to “raze the arrogant wall between artist and artisan” through a dual education that would form a new type of producer.”

An Arts & Crafts Movement display at the Royal Ontario Museum.

This medievalism of the Bauhaus school in fact did find its way into the work of Macklin Hancock in Don Mills, although Hancock’s other influence of ‘new towns’ were also deeply informed by the work of William Morris. The president of Don Mills Residents Inc., Tony West, explains:

"Most European towns start with a castle and then outside you had people with dwellings and the fields where people work.”

In the case of Don Mills it is the shopping centre that serves the role of the medieval castle, which ironically seems a fitting way to frame the feudalistic nature of capitalist consumerism. Around this castle are the four quadrants of Don Mills, each with a school, church and housing – all of which connected by a network of walkways (as I see in Meadowvale also). The Donway then is often framed as the ‘medieval wall’ wrapping around the Don Mills ‘new town’.

However, Bauhaus’s coalescence of building and architectural design was ultimately rejected by many of the architects and planners around Macklin Hancock, as they saw the architect as an importantly neutral mediator between the developer and the builder – again willing to forsake core design principles for the sake of maintaining the terms of capital. I am not sure about Hancock’s take on Gropius, but it is interesting some of the remarks made in an issue of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (Serial No 341, Vol. 31, No. 1) that featured an article by Macklin Hancock and his colleague Douglas Lee called “Don Mills New Town”. It opens with an editorial by the President saying:

“The very fact that imagination has been freed and traditional restraints removed is making us more soberly thoughtful, more critical of new forms of expression, less apt to mistake novelty for beauty, less willing to accept the philosophies of contemporary prophets without fully understanding them… It is suggested sometimes that the architect should abandon his professional status and take part commercially in the building operation. This we must not do. The professional function of the architect is vital to the orderly operation of the business of building.”

Later in the issue, from Alberta, the architect Maxwell Bates writes:

“In the United States, Dr Gropius recently said that the architect will have to become part builder to survive… At first glance, the combination may seem healthy and natural, but I think consideration shows it to be extremely dangerous. Although the position of the architect, internationally speaking, has suffered some modification in our century, it has gradually evolved, without great basic changes, for hundreds of years. His position has depended on a relative independence as between owner and builder on the one hand, and a general acknowledgement of architecture as an art, even as the mother of the arts, on the other hand. The architect is the only side of the owner, architect, builder triangle able to make impartial judgments. On this impartiality, which corresponds in a way with the independence of the judiciary from party politics, depends the respect with which he has been generally regarded by the building trades. Much of his authority on the job is traditional. To become party to a building contract is to lose all eminence due to his professional, impartial standing. So the English architect foresees the architect becoming less of an artist; and the famous architect, Dr Gropius, foresees the necessity of relinquishing his other traditional support, his independence as mediator between contracting parties.”

I wonder what Hancock thought of this, and I wonder if these remarks were specifically targeted at Hancock, and consequently published together with his Don Mills article. Certainly, whatever their concerns, Hancock still fit very well into the capitalist arrangement (’mediating between contracting parties’) as he wrote with Lee in his article on Don Mills New Town:

“It is the aim of the Development Company to create, under the free enterprise system, an integrated new town which will satisfy the requirements of private investment, and which will also be in accordance with the best principles of town planning.”

It’s clear Hancock thought he could pull off both. I think it’s interesting now to take a closer look at Walter Gropius who so influenced Hancock, and the sort of leftist currents that he was moved by. I think this is why Hancock is always being found to emphasize terms like “free enterprise” and “private investment” as people like Gropius were often seen as socialists, and for good reason. Jenny Farrell talks about the ‘Cathedral of Socialism’ that was featured on the front page of the Bauhaus founding manifesto:

“With this commonality of craft and art in medieval cathedral construction in mind, the “Cathedral of Socialism” was understood as a utopian building and embodiment of a future social structure, intended to overcome the consequences of alienation, the causes of which were seen more in the division of labor than in wage labor.

Walter Gropius added this woodcut by Lyonel Feininger to the founding manifesto of the Bauhaus in 1919 as the title page. A triad surrounds the cathedral spire: the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, their rays flowing into each other. The choice of cathedral references the Bauhütte and underlines the centrality of architecture. The old-fashioned woodcutting technique combines with a futuristic cubist design.”

Lyonel Feininger‘s “Cathedral of Socialism”

It’s actually worth seeing the way Tom Wolfe, the arch-reactionary journalist, talks about Gropius and the Bauhaus movement in general. I actually bought one of his books “From Bauhaus to Our House” from a used bookstore during my first year in Kingston. I did not really know who Tom Wolfe was at the time, but I was somewhat interested in the Bauhaus movement. Little did I know the book would be a weird anti-socialist tirade. It’s fascinating the way Wolfe yearns with nostalgia for a time when rich aristocratic families with taste commissioned classical re-renderings all over the city, but now, corporate bodies have to accept modernist architecture as a slap across the mouth:

“…after 1945 our plutocrats, bureaucrats, board chairmen, CEOs, commissioners, and college presidents undergo an inexplicable change. They become diffident and reticent. All at once they are willing to accept that glass of ice water in the face, that bracing slap across the mouth, that reprimand for the fat on one’s bourgeois soul, known as modern architecture.”

Wolfe then quotes a manifesto of the Novembergruppe, of which Gropius was chairman, which states:

“Painters, Architects, Sculptors, you whom the bourgeoisie pays with high rewards for your work—out of vanity, snobbery, and boredom—Hear! To this money there clings the sweat and blood and nervous energy of thousands of poor hounded human beings—Hear! It is an unclean profit …we must be true socialists—we must kindle the highest socialist virtue: the brotherhood of man.”

Wolfe next quotes Gropius speaking on the class commitments of the Novermbergruppe’s Workers’ Council for Art (i.e. ‘Soviet’ for Art):

“The intellectual bourgeois … has proved himself unfit to be the bearer of a German culture… New, intellectually undeveloped levels of our people are rising from the depths. They are our chief hope.”

Jenny Farrell includes this Gropius quote in her People’s World article for the centenary of the Bauhaus school’s founding:

“In Gropius’s words: ‘the more their class pride grows, the more the people will despise imitating the rich and independently invent their own style of living. This understanding by the people is the fertile ground for the art to come.’”

Yet Gropius would actually turn out to be a moderating force in the Bauhaus school who would curtail the more radical communist direction that Hannes Meyer brought the Bauhaus school towards after he was appointed director of the school after Gropius. J. Dakota Brown gives a fascinating account of this story:

“Years of political wrangling had delayed many of Gropius’s plans, but the institution seemed to be on secure footing when he abruptly announced his departure in 1928. Gropius offered the directorship to Hannes Meyer, hired the previous year to head the architecture department… The Bauhaus would now be oriented toward “necessities” rather than “luxuries,” centering the needs of the proletariat. Design problems would take their cues less from formal exercises directed by painters, and more from current research in the natural and social sciences.

Departing from the official position that the Bauhaus was engaged in “objective, entirely non-political cultural work,” Meyer was open in his communist sympathies. He rearranged the class schedule to more closely approximate an industrial workday and happily reported that increased cohesion and cooperation during his directorship signaled “an undeniable degree of proletarianization.” Under Meyer, a growing body of communist students came to understand the Marxist worldview as the only consistent outcome of a Bauhaus education.

Trade union facilities and workers’ housing completed under Meyer, after all, had clear precedents in projects initiated by Gropius — who once defended his own generous master’s quarters by saying, “what we today consider luxury will tomorrow be the norm!” In the background, however, Gropius, Kandinsky, and Josef Albers were already plotting Meyer’s dismissal.

Meyer’s political sympathies naturally attracted controversy. Bauhaus students were overheard singing communist songs at a 1930 party, which produced a feeding frenzy in the right-wing press. Later, it came to light that Meyer and a Bauhaus student group had each donated money to a Communist-led miner’s strike.

Attempting to stem the formation of a fully-fledged “communist cell” at the Bauhaus, the masters dismissed twenty students in a move that made Meyer himself a target of student anger. Nonetheless, the liberal mayor of Dessau — encouraged by Gropius and the old masters (with the exception of Klee) — demanded his resignation.

A few months later, Meyer boarded a train to Moscow with several of his closest students. Stalinist policy on design and architecture, however, would prove hostile to Meyer, who rounded out the rest of his career as a city planner in Mexico. Over the next decades, Gropius and the remaining masters would construct a canonical version of the Bauhaus that erased Meyer’s contributions altogether.”

After Meyer was removed from the Bauhaus directorship, Mies van der Rohe took leadership, and there was a significant political shift that accommodated the fascist pressure of the Nazis.

It’s remarkable to see how entangled leftist politics was in both the work of Gropius and the Bauhaus school in general, and to think it was a major influence on Macklin Hancock’s plan for Meadowvale, the sleepy Mississauga suburb where I live that exists on the very fringes of the city, only minutes from farm land that still covers many land plots in Milton.

Yet even more than Gropius and the Bauhaus movement, the other professor at Harvard that had a great influence on Macklin Hancock was William Holford, who spent much of his career spreading the ideas of the ‘new town’ movement. Macklin Hancock ultimately called Don Mills, Erin Mills, and Meadowvale ‘new towns’ because those were the design principles he was principally informed by. There is less information on Holford out there than Gropius, but I actually find Holford even more interesting. However, before going into Holford, it might be worth tracing out what the ‘new town’ movement was.

Charley cartoon commissioned by post-war Labour government to promote their New Town plan. The film was created at the behest of Stafford Cripps (UK’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and once leading spokesman for the Popular Front with the Communist Party which got him expelled from the Labour Party).

Professor Georgia Wrighton, on a Monocle episode on ‘new towns’ provides an excellent introduction sketching out the post-war history of this movement in the UK, locating its origin in the ‘garden city’ movement which tried to combine ‘town’ and ‘country’, in a way that brought the imagined healthiness of the ‘countryside’ into the town’ for an elevated quality of life. Wrighton specifically mentions the “radical new Labour government under Atlee” planning ten satellite towns around London to deal with the housing crises after WW2 and house “bombed out Londoners” in such a way that dealt with the earlier problems of development under the industrial revolution – namely disorganized and unplanned development, overcrowding, and pollution. The early policies of these ‘new towns’ involved affordable rentals for the working class, as well as mixed-class housing to prevent class stratification and segregation. One of the most important features was that the increased value of the land from the ongoing building of the new towns was to go back into the ‘new town’ for maintenance and renewal. Wrighton describes an early feeling of a “socialist utopia being built in the brave new world of the 1945-era”, but by the late fifties, the invisible hand of the private market began creeping into these developments, such that the early model of land value uplift going into ‘new town’ refurbishment was abandoned as the privatization model of the late fifties involved selling off the land into private hands. All that remained was the council housing which had to find alternative revenue streams.

This model that Wrighton discusses is explicitly spelled out in the ‘garden city’ principles of Ebenezer Howard, who often rubbed shoulders with other anarchists and socialists. This model though was actually a Georgist one. Henry George had formulated a similar idea where the rising value of land would be reabsorbed by the public through a land value tax, that prevented people from profiting of the mere possession of land and recapture the collective’s common inheritance. Though Howard had drawn on people even more radical than George. In 1889, Edward Bellamy the socialist novelist had his book “Looking Backward” first published (serially) in the journal Brotherhood edited by J. Bruce Wallace. There’s a fascinating connection between Wallace and the Bolsheviks that I will get into soon. But Bellamy’s novel would make a significant impression on Howard after his first reading of it, although he became more sceptical about it in later readings. Like William Morris, he was mainly concerned with the idea of the state becoming one large capitalist corporation that replaced all other capitalists and all the centralized bureaucracy that would entail (although this is not actually that far from the process Engels describes in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” and which is more recently explored in books like “The People’s Republic of Walmart”, and this gets back to Drucker’s ‘pension fund socialism’ I was discussing earlier). However, other aspects of Bellamy’s novel would persist in its influence on Howard.

In addition to the obvious influence of William Morris, another interesting figure that left traces in Howard’s work was Kropotkin. Howard briefly cites Kropotkin’s book “Fields, Factories and Workshops” in the second edition of his seminal work “To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform” – though what Howard was interested in was not the revolutionary aspects of Kropotkin, but those of local initiative and self-government.

The first planner to put Howard’s principles into practice was Raymond Unwin who planned Letchworth, often called the first garden city. Unwin was both an engineer and a town planner who spent much of his life trying to improve working class housing. He was friends with the socialist Edward Carpenter, interested in John Ruskin, and deeply committed to the Marxism of William Morris – even moving to Manchester to become secretary of Morris’s Socialist League and editing its newspaper. He was also very involved in the Labour Church, which was one of the primary forces of Christian socialism at the time.

Letchworth became the site of Britain’s first roundabout. The Yale professor James C. Scott, interprets “traffic circles” as a sort of anarchist assemblage that replaces the centralized control of traffic lights, with a self-managed traffic junction that has proven to actually be more efficient and safer in a number of contexts. In his book “Two Cheers for Anarchism”, Scott briefly discusses various “red light removal” campaigns in Europe and some impressive results of their implementation .

Letchworth, and ‘garden cities’ more broadly, would become a deeply influential in the town planning of both Cold War super powers. I personally find the influence of ‘garden cities’ on Soviet planning to be particularly interesting. Rosemary Wakefield, in her fascinating book on ‘new towns’ called “Practicing Utopia” writes:

“The garden city concept was introduced into Russia by 1908, and social reformers in Saint Petersburg published a Russian translation of Howard’s text in 1911. A small party of Russians made the pilgrimage to Letchworth in 1909 with German garden city enthusiasts, and again in 1911 with a Danish and German delegation. The infl uential Russian architectural journal Gorodskoe Delo eagerly promoted garden city ventures, while architect Vladimir Semionov worked with architect and urban reformer Raymond Unwin in England and wrote extensively on garden city ideals. Based on Semionov’s design, the Moscow- Kazan Railway Company began construction of Russia’s first model garden city at the Prozorovskaia Station, forty kilometers east of Moscow. It was such a success that the Russian Ministry of Transport began building similar settlements for railway employees. Garden city– style projects popped up in Siberia, where an All- Russian Garden Cities Society was founded.”

The Soviet planner Semionov that Wakefield mentions actually ended up planning major Soviet cities like Kharkov and Stalingrad, drawing on Howard’s ‘garden city’ principles. Wakefield describes a fascinating debate that unfolded within Soviet planning circles between urbanists and disurbanists (which included enthusiasts of ‘garden city’ principles that influenced Macklin Hancock, as well as ‘linear city’  principles which influenced Moshe Safdie’s unrealized Meadowvale proposal). Wakefield on the debate:

“A passionate debate ensued on the nature of the sotsgorod, or socialist city, as the Soviet Union hurtled into urban and industrial transformation. The battle was initially drawn between two camps: the disurbanists, who argued for decentralization mostly following the garden city ideal, and urbanists, who demanded an increased scale of urbanization and industrialization.

Linear industrial towns were proposed by El Lissitzky and by Nikolai Miliutin, especially the latter as outlined in his seminal publication The Problem of Building Socialist Cities (1930).19 The linear city had political appeal, because it seemed to abolish the division between city and country according to the principles outlined by Karl Marx. Miliutin produced such plans for the new industrial towns of Magnitogorsk in the Urals, Stalingrad on the Volga River, and Avtozavod, where an automobile plant was taking shape under the direction of Ford Motor Company. Parallel industrial and residential strips were separated by greenbelts and highways. The towns would be nodes along transportation routes in one continuous band of development. Miliutin’s groundbreaking concepts were published in Ernst May’s Das Neue Frankfurt and were featured in the Proletarian Building Display in Berlin in 1931.20 The linear city ideal survived as one of the most viable alternatives to the concentric pattern of garden and satellite cities.”

Another fascinating Soviet connection involves a rumour (an urban myth, or rather a ‘garden city’ myth) that Lenin actually visited Letchworth during his time in London in 1907 for the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, attended also by other Russian revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, Stalin, and Maxim Gorky. The congress was hosted in Hackney at a Tolstoyan socialist church called the Brotherhood Church, founded by J. Bruce Wallace, a resident of Unwin’s Letchworth garden city. Wallace was actually the first to publish Bellamy’s novel in serialized form in his journal of the same name – Brotherhood. Gorky described the Brotherhood Church thus:

“I can still see vividly before me those bare wooden walls unadorned to the point of absurdity, the lancet windows looking down on a small, narrow hall which might have been a classroom in a poor school.”

Part of the Lenin in Letchworth rumour involves Wallace possibly hosting Lenin for a night in Letchworth, where Lenin also allegedly gave a talk. There is a fascinating BBC Radio 4 episode on this idea of Lenin visiting Letchworth. In Robert Beevers' book "The Garden City Utopia", there is an interesting endnote that he includes: 

“[the] Letchworth branch of the Social Democratic Federation was in touch with the R.S.D.L.P. Congress, as is indicated by the fact that it passed a resolution protesting at the harassment of its delegates by the police, vide The Citizen, 20 July 1907.”

Russian revolutionaries garbed in funny-looking disguises and set on overthrowing the tyrannical Czar, gathered in Wallace’s Brotherhood Church, for three weeks, and were subject to jeering protestors as well as curious onlookers. The BBC programme on Lenin in Letchworth has a fascinating excerpt written by Kruspskaya (Lenin’s wife) from an earlier visit to London with Lenin in 1902-1903 describing their visits to various socialist churches. She writes of Lenin:

“He visited eating houses and churches. In English churches the service is usually followed by a short lecture and a debate. Ilyich was particularly fond of those debates, because ordinary workers took part in them. He scanned the newspapers for notices of working-class meetings in some out-of-the-way district, where there were only rank-and-file workers from the bench – as we say now – without any pomp and leaders. These meetings were usually devoted to the discussion of some question or project, such as a garden-city scheme. Ilyich would listen attentively, and afterwards say joyfully: "They are just bursting with socialism! If a speaker starts talking rot a worker gets up right away and takes the bull by the horns, shows up the very essence of capitalism." It was the rank and-file British worker who had preserved his class instinct in face of everything, that Ilyich always relied upon. Visitors to Britain usually saw only the labour aristocracy, corrupted by the bourgeoisie and itself bourgeoisified. Naturally Ilyich studied that upper stratum, too, and the concrete forms which this bourgeois influence took, without for a moment forgetting the significance of that fact. But he also tried to discover the motive forces of the future revolution in England.

There was hardly a meeting anywhere we did not go to. Once we wandered into a socialist church. There are such churches in England. The socialist in charge was droning through the Bible, and then delivered a sermon to the effect that the exodus of the Jews from Egypt symbolized the exodus of the workers from the kingdom of capitalism into the kingdom of socialism. Everyone stood up and sang from a socialist hymn-book: "Lead us, O Lord, from the Kingdom of Capitalism into the Kingdom of Socialism." We went to that church again afterwards – it was the Seven Sisters Church – to hear a talk for young people. A young man spoke about municipal socialism and tried to prove that no revolution was needed, while the socialist who had officiated as clergyman during our first visit declared that he had been a member of the party for twelve years and for twelve years he had been fighting opportunism – and that was what municipal socialism was – opportunism pure and simple.”

The BBC programme also shares an excerpt from Orwell’s classic “The Road to Wigan Pier” (a book I’ve even seen Marxist-Leninists approve of), that offers up a brutally derisive account of Letchworth:

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right—the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity.”

Orwell can truly be so insufferable sometimes. As Orwell famously spent much of his youth as a colonial police officer in Burma, I think it’s rather rich to hear him criticize other people in the fashion he does. While on the topic of Southeast Asia, it’s worth making a small detour regarding the influence of ‘garden city’ principles in one ‘non-aligned’ country before proceeding onto its influence in America.

As most of my extended family lives in Singapore, and I have visited them a handful of times, I’m quite aware of the way Singapore often refers to itself as The Garden City – a branding inaugurated under the young Lee Kuan Yew, at that time a Fabian socialist from his time in Cambridge throughout the early decades of his political career. Architectural critics have made much of Le Corbusier’s influence on early Singapore development and planning. Le Corbusier was of course rather taken with Howard’s “garden city” ideas and many of his design plans show that greening influence. 

WOHA building behind Hong Lim Park (where expressions of dissent are contained) in Singapore.

I’m less interested in Le Corbusier, a notorious anti-Semite and as far as I’m concerned – a fascist. However, I am interested in the rationale behind Lee Kuan Yew’s insistence on making Singapore into a ‘garden city’. Part of it was making life more pleasant for the people who lived on this tiny Southeast Asian island, but it seems the central focus was attracting foreign investment and tourists. So the ‘magnet’ Ebenezer Howard wrote of, was maybe less about attracting people (unless they were tourists) and more about making the island more conducive to capital, which is not wholly distant from the sort of ideas prevalent throughout a lot of Fabian reformist socialism. I have not been able to locate any explicit references to Ebenezer Howard in early Singaporean state planning policy, but would be fascinated if anything on that were to come up in the future. 

It is worth commenting that Moshe Safdie (who worked on the proposal for Meadowvale as his thesis project) was the architect behind Singapore’s iconic Marina Bay Sands building, the second most expensive building at the time of its completion. The irony that a socialist would not only build such an extravagant building but that it was also a casino resort has not been lost on me. Utopian socialist design can almost never succeed in progressing its core political principles under capitalism.

As for the influence of ‘garden cities’ in the US, the beating heart of capital, I will turn to Rosemary Wakefield to explain how Unwin and Howard worked together with Clarence Stein, a progressive planner that would become influential on American suburban design, and greatly influence Macklin Hancock:

“The American interpretation of garden cities is equally illustrative of the fusion of influences comprising both the new town birthright and the regional vision that framed it. In 1923, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright sailed for England to meet with Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin and make the pilgrimage to Letchworth, Hampstead Garden Suburb, and the newly established Welwyn Garden City. The experience was clearly the inspiration for the “city planning atelier” that Stein organized to discuss how the garden city could fi t the needs of America. He and Wright persuaded Unwin to help shape the group’s theoretical framework, with the result that Unwin became actively involved in the American planning scene.”

Stein’s Radburn was an explicit influence for Hancock. While Stein offered some interesting ideas that kept with the ‘garden city’ tradition – like reducing the size of private yards to produce greater public spaces, facing house fronts onto these green public spaces and placing garages at the back of hosues where they would lead directly into house kitchens, as well as important greenbelting measures – despite all this, Stein did not retain the same socialist impulses as Howard or Unwin, and never did claim the label of socialist as such. Even still, he was very critical of capitalism believing:

“(a) the revolution was at hand, and (b) capitalism could not and perhaps should not survive. He expressed his political views quite openly in these letters.” (in the words of Tridib Banerjee)

Prudence Anne Phillimore described Stein’s relationship to capitalism in this way:

“He also appealed to people to reject the waste and extravagance that had become an integral part of life in a capitalist society. Although Stein did not venture as far into socialism, he was vitally concerned to find a means of eliminating the unnecessary waste which comes from our system of competitive production and distribution, " and to remove 22 staples, like housing, from the competitive market. Both the economical use of land and the control of unearned increment on land (through single ownership) and the aesthetics of city planning became focal points In Stein’s work.”

Despite holding onto this Georgist idea from the ‘garden city’ movement Stein was disturbingly accommodating to segregationist policies. Andreas Panagidis in a case study on Radburn writes:

“as the planners were trying to comprehensively design the neighbourhood, they were also posing segregationist questions such as “what should be the policy in relation to the admission of negroes and other people of other races than white?” (Stein cited in Birch, 1980), and by the eventual racial discrimination by the realtors of both Jews and African-Americans (Schafer, 1983). The residents' educational and religious backgrounds would end up being “more or less the same” (Stein, 1949).”

Another influence of Hancock, this time concerning the placement of a shopping mall as the ‘town centre’ of a ‘new town’, was the planner and mortgage banker James Rouse, another ‘new town’ planner, but one far less anxious about capitalism. He was a philanthropist and advocate for ‘free enterprise’ economies. Freedom for whom? People with money, to do what they want with their money. While Rouse spoke the rhetoric of racial equality saying:

"The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind," he wrote. "There really can be no other end purpose of planning except to develop better people….An inspired, concerned and loving society will dignify man; will find the ways to develop his talent; will put the fruits of his labor and intellect to effective use; will achieve brotherhood; eliminate bigotry and intolerance; will care for the indigent, the delinquent, the sick, the aged; seek the truth and communicate it; respect differences among man."

Paige Glotzer in her book “How the Suburbs Were Segregated” gives a more sobering account of Rouse’s involvement in networks of segregationist developers:

“In Baltimore, one of the most prominent developers to gain power in the 1960s was James Rouse. Rouse was a self-described liberal whose politics and development priorities seemed, on the surface at least, to constitute a considerable break with predominant exclusionary patterns. However, Rouse’s rise is precisely why a longer history of suburban power is necessary to understand the persistence of housing segregation. Indeed, Rouse was a part of the Roland Park Company network. Before he became famous as a developer in the 1960s, Rouse began his career in the Baltimore office of the FHA and worked closely with Roland Park Company officials in business endeavors and government consulting. By the 1950s, Rouse and Mowbray together were in charge of spearheading federal urban renewal policy based on their work in Baltimore. This policy ultimately wreaked devastation on communities throughout the country. In Baltimore alone, urban renewal displaced over ten thousand households. As was the case around the country, the majority of those who lost their homes were African American.

Often lauded both for his malls and for the racially integrated planned suburb of Columbia, Maryland, well outside Baltimore, Rouse’s early and midcareer work consisted of fortifying the very socioeconomic and racial borders that the Roland Park Company had created. Nowhere was this clearer than in Cross Keys in the early 1960s, where Rouse developed a gated planned community next to Roland Park called the Village of Cross Keys after urban renewal destroyed the long-standing African American community of the same name.”

Glotzer’s work on redlining is important for underscoring how planning communities under a capitalist economy, despite the radical ideas you bring to the table will inevitably devolve to accommodate the dictates of capital – if developers consider the uplift of property value a paramount consideration, than segregation becomes a justifiable means of achieving it. While suburbs in the US have become symbols where white families escape to from inner cities to live lives segregated from other racialized families – suburbs around Toronto have become havens for immigrant communities. Peel Region, where both Meadowvale and Erin Mills are located in, has the highest percentage of ‘visible minorities’ in the GTA (at 62.3%). In fact, 50.8% of Peel’s population is of South Asian ancestry, making the term ‘visible minority’ a clumsy one at best. Yet racial diversity is not a barometer for a just economy. In fact, in many ways, more affluent white millennials are able to afford living in the downtown core of Toronto, where the suburbs outside the city became unfashionable or less desirable places to live, at best merely signifiers for adventurous eaters who read the Globe & Mail and visit ‘ethnic’ hole-in-the-wall eateries run by immigrants.

Some papers I’ve read saw ‘new town’ developments of Hancock as opportunities for corporate consolidation. Stephen Bocking writes about this process in the case of Don Mills:

“Most significant, however, was the extent to which Don Mills reflected the shared influence of the planning profession and corporate interests. Professional ideas about neighborhoods, ample green spaces, and lower density had ample opportunity for expression: Don Mills was described by Architectural Forum as “a planner’s dream coming true.” This dream came true largely because it was consistent with private interests and with the capacity of a single large developer, E. P. Taylor, to assemble a large land area; to install water, sewer, and other services (the cost of these was then transferred to the buyers); and to manage and market the entire project. Carver had argued in Houses for Canadians that effective professional planning of neighborhoods required close contact between planners and developers: “If urban development is to take the form of planned neighbourhoods it will be necessary to achieve a much closer coordination between the technical staffs of planning boards and the actual developers of suburban property.” As Don Mills demonstrated, such coordination, and hence the practical expression of planning ideas, would be easier with fewer and larger developers that would have the resources to hire professional planners and that could impose a single vision on an entire community. Thus, the application of planning expertise to new communities was inseparable from the consolidation of the home-building industry. Both planners and developers benefited from their association: the former, through new professional opportunities; and the latter, through the opportunity to present their planned communities as distinct from the older areas of the city and as ideal sites for families pursuing the suburban ideal.

After beginning Don Mills, Taylor bought 6,000 acres on the western out- skirts of Toronto, where he eventually built during the 1970s and 1980s another huge development, Erin Mills, which would house about 170,000 people. As an integrated community with a variety of housing types and forms of employment, it also represented a combination of professional planning expertise and corporate agendas.”

For me, the concern is less about a single planner’s imposition of will on an entire community (which I think is a false way of framing what planners do) nor is my issue with the large scale of community building – I think scale provides many advantages to ensuring a well-functioning and cohesive community. My issue is when something of this scale is done under a capitalist economy, and it is the wealthy capitalist investors like E. P. Taylor who benefit and reap the unfair profits off such an enterprise, yet externalize the future costs of renewal. Even in the case of a private developer like Cadillac Fairview doing the development, while being owned by a public workers’ pension fund, the issue remains of profit and rate of return being the ultimate goal of the endeavour. And in such a case you see issues of chronically underfunded mass transit and the increasing unaffordability of housing creeping up on ‘new towns’ like Erin Mills and Meadowvale. Owen Hatherley, the historian of communist architecture saw this problem of ‘new towns’ running back to their earliest days, even in their most radical iterations:

“…Morris’ age of rest arrives, as the first part of the book describes, after a violent proletarian revolution. Many years after it, London has depopulated, the Houses of Parliament are used to store dung, iron bridges have been rebuilt in stone, and most of the population lives long, quiet, fulfilled lives in cottages among greenery, something which curiously does not seem to have produced a suburban mentality. No phalanxes, collectives, or communes feature in this vision of communism.

Morris, then a member of the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and a correspondent of Engels, was conspicuous both for the radicalism of his vision of class struggle and the conservatism of his vision of the city. His disciples would lose the first trait, but cling to the second.

The architect and planner Raymond Unwin, a fellow SDF member, would return to the idea, ridiculed by Marx and Engels, of building the socialist society in fragments under capitalism, drawing on the self-organized but otherwise deeply Fabian “common-sense socialism” of Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City of To-morrow.” Between 1903 and 1913, Unwin designed the garden city of Letchworth just outside of London, the Hampstead Garden Suburb, and the massive suburb of Wythenshawe to the south of Manchester.

The first two were funded by philanthropists, and aimed to mix, to the point where it would no longer be obvious which was which, cottages for workers and cottages for the middle class. It was the latter that soon dominated.”

Marx and Engels were right that the “building the socialist society in fragments under capitalism” would never produce the utopia envisioned at the outset, because capitalism has a logic of its own. 

I sometimes wonder what Macklin Hancock thought of it all, as his father, Leslie Hancock, was actually a socialist politician of Tommy Douglas’s CCF party (forerunner to the NDP) who represented Wellington South in Ontario’s Legislative Assembly. 

Curiously Macklin Hancock was born in China, where his father was a horticulturalist at Nanking University, but their family left amidst the Nationalist revolutionary turmoil erupting in 1927. I presume this exodus was precipitated during the ‘Nanking incident’ in March, where both Nationalists and Communists raided foreign consulates – seizing millions of dollars worth of British concessions. At that time the Kuomintang (KMT) government was backed by the Soviet Union, and led by Chiang Kai-shek, who blamed the incident on instigation by the Communist Party of China and Soviet advisors. I believe this event was somewhat of a turning point where the KMT broke their alliance with the Communists and dismissed Soviet advisors. Many communists were arrested and executed in what has become known as the Shanghai Massacre. By July of 1927, Mikhail Borodin, the once Soviet advisor to Sun Yat-sen, was ordered out of the country, accompanied by Soong Ching-ling (Sun Yat-sen’s widow) on the train ride out of Wuhan. Macklin Hancock’s father-in-law William Macklin (whom Hancock was named after) was also in China at the time with Leslie Hancock and left around the same time. Macklin had established a hospital in Nanjing, and was known to the locals there as Ma Lin. He even counted the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen among friends according to a Globe & Mail article by Tenille Bonoguore.

An exhibit display of Sun Yat Sen’s revolutionary comrades throughout British Malaya, at the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall in Singapore. Tan Kah Kee can be seen in the top left, a supporter of the revolutionary overthrow of the Qing government as well as a supporter of the communists in China, which got him expelled from Singapore by the British colonial government. He remained in China serving in various positions in the Chinese Communist Party.

One of the great though vastly underappreciated ‘new town’ planners of the left – Macklin Hancock’s Harvard professor William Holford – shortly after these revolutionary events in China, took a trip to the Soviet Union. The Chinese architect Chen Zhanxiang’s memories of Holford are recounted in a book by Jun Wang called “Beijing Record: A Physical and Political History of Planning Modern Beijing”:

“Holford visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s and back home, he published a book entitled God’s Plan, describing the socialist country as a “planners’ paradise.” Chen Zhanxiang never read that book but heard about it from his teacher on many occasions. For him, the most unforgettable thing about the Soviet Union was that under socialism, the state ownership of land and the overriding power of the state ensured implementation of all plans. For this reason, Chen Zhanxiang, like many other students, had good opinions of socialism.”

I would love to read this book, but have been completely unsuccessful in tracking it down. What an incredible name for a book on Soviet planning, haha: God’s Plan. These religious allusions are part of what makes me so fascinated by Holford. There’s a fascinating thing he wrote about his experience in the Soviet Union that alludes to these Edenic utopian resonances that I think colour Holford’s own planning work. Gordon E. Cherry and Leith Penny in their book on Holford write:

“The appeal of the Soviet Union, however, was of a different order. For Holford, as for so many of his generation, a romantic notion of Soviet society provided a focus for a whole range of personal and social idealisms, a new Jerusalem in which it could be supposed the individual was liberated from the constraining hypocracies and injustices of life in England.”

They then quote something Holford wrote about the anxious excitement he felt about the Soviet Union, though totally conscious of the fact it could all end as a total and disturbing failure:

“It seems to me now that there could be illusions which one ought not only to let alone, but even to defend against disillusionment. We go merrily pricking the bubbles in the course of what we call education. Things and people I believed in years ago I only have sympathy for now-which is a poor thing. There remain the big illusions–love, friends, work, the big ideal of the socialist state. They go further than I can see, and because they are bigger than myself, there is something in me that makes me follow. But my ever-curious intelligence soon uncovers a danger, like a hole in a tooth. If I go on probing for proofs and experiences will I end up by pricking another bubble? Will it be the old myth of the Garden of Eden over again? I don’t know. The old serpent intellect replies, ‘you will never know unless you find out for yourself. And the outcome of it all is that I refuse to try and answer riddles, and so I say ‘Let it all come! I’ll hang on to what I have until I can’t hang on any longer’.”

And then maybe the most fascinating remark I’ve found of his on communism in general is his excitement at reading Lenin but his hilarious exercise in self-criticism – some old Christian self-flagellation – regarding his unworthiness to consider himself a worker, but rather a bourgeois intellectual. This is a letter Holford wrote to Gordon Stephenson in 1933 (Stephenson being another architect in the habit of mingling with English socialists and communists, and who would also visit the Soviet Union, twice):

“I get all worked up reading Lenin, or about Lenin or publications by the friends of the Soviet, URSS publications etc., kidding myself I’m a WORKER. Conversely, when I read ultra capitalist stuff, newspapers that make me vomit, platitudes of Dictators, or luxury nonsense, then I want to bust things up, start a clean fresh order of life, do something. The thing that worries me is that it is all in the head—not in the bones. I was bred as bourgeois as anybody and when my head and my sympathies move very far along the communistic line I become nothing more than a ‘bourgeois intellectual’. And that may mean a lot or it may mean nothing. The change to a real live communist cannot come about only through the head, and there people like Bernard Shaw utterly fail. I don’t mean he isn’t useful. He gingers people up, particularly the jolly old bourgeoisie, but his great mission never gets beyond the itching powder stage. He is Britain’s Great Irritant—useful but uninspiring.

...Conviction! that’s all it is. The old Christians used to pray for conviction, and now I suppose the only thing to do is to work for it. Just occasionally I feel holes in the armour.”

I think Holford’s dig at Shaw is hilarious, although curiously Lenin was rather sympathetic to Shaw calling him “a good man fallen among Fabians.” Gorky said he was “one of the bravest thinkers of Europe”. There’s a fairly fascinating letter Lenin wrote Gorky on December of 1921 after the Russian Civil War while the country was descending into famine:

“I am very sorry to write in haste. I am terribly tired. I’ve got insomnia. I am going away for treatment. I have been requested to write to you: would you write to Bernard Shaw asking him to go to America, and to Wells who is said to be in America now, to get them both to help us in collecting aid to the starving? It would be a good thing if you wrote them. The starving will then get a bit more. The famine is very bad. Make sure to have a good rest and better treatment.”

Lenin would end up begging the wealthier Western countries for aid, asking for “bread and medicine”, in light of the crop failure, and ended up negotiating with President Hoover, who sent aid asking they depart with some of their gold holdings to defray the costs. Some estimates have the famine’s death toll at 1-2 million. A Soviet estimate was at 5 million. Gorky ended up writing to H. G. Wells, the other Fabian they were in contact with, who quoted parts of Gorky’s letter in an article.

Shaw was actually very sympathetic to the Soviet Union, and in 1931, years after Lenin’s death had this to say about him:

“We should not think that the importance of Lenin is a matter of the past, because Lenin died. We should think of the future, of the importance of Lenin for the future, and his importance for the future is such that, should the experiment Lenin undertook — the experiment of socialism — fail, then modern civilization will perish, like many civilizations have already perished in the past.”

Shaw remained an ardent supporter of the Soviet Union for the rest of his life, even having a framed portrait of Stalin displayed on his mantel. This was not uncommon for socialists of the time though. Even Frida Kahlo, secret lover of Trotsky, had Stalin’s portrait pinned to her headboard above her bed, among other revolutionaries including Mao.

As for Shaw, his sympathies extended in other weird and disturbing directions, expressing disturbingly affirmative comments towards Hitler and Mussolini. It really does make you worry about the ‘fascist creep’ of red-brown alliances sometimes. Shaw was also a eugenicist, though this was common among socialists of his sort at the time. Even Tommy Douglas was a eugenicist, and certainly Lee Kuan Yew’s Fabian years were also formative to the eugenicist impulses that coloured his views for the rest of his life, long after he had abandoned a commitment to socialism.

A statue of Shaw at Niagara-on-the-Lake (home of the Shaw Festival).

As for Shaw’s relationship to ‘garden cities’, he regularly gave talks at places like Letchworth, as he was in the same Fabian orbit as Unwin and Howard. In fact Shaw was one of Ebenezer Howard’s investors calling him:

“... one of those heroic simpletons who do big things whilst our prominent worldings are explaining why they are Utopian and impossible. And of course it is they who will make money out of his work.”

But what of this legacy of Letchworth. What utopia did it birth or whom did it make a lot of money for? Owen Hatherley sees Letchworth as not particularly radical, especially in what it turned out to be:

“In all of these, you can get the sense that the hope and the reality never quite met, as Letchworth became just another affluent Hertfordshire commuter town. As the planner and writer Adrian Jones puts it, "Letchworth is a comfortable place in an increasingly uncomfortable country, and that is why people like it". That isn't to be sniffed at, but it would have disappointed the radicals of the 1910s…

With little state support, the original garden city became reliant on an uneasy mix of private finance and local enthusiasm; the main employer in a town where women who didn't want to wear corsets could feel comfortable became the Spirella Corset Factory.

The British government likes to talk about building new garden cities, but never about building new new towns, which are still associated with unfashionable concepts like modernity, public ownership, and equality. It's this, rather than a love for alternative lifestyles or Arts and Crafts architecture, that has inflated the reputation of the garden cities.

At the railway station is an advertisement for Le Jardin, Luxury Retirement Living, a "stunning collection" of one- and two-bedroom retirement apartments. Its architecture is a debased version of Parker and Unwin's asymmetrical, pitched-roof style, with none of the space or grace. That's where utopia ends, here.”

Yet is there anything radical to reclaim from the surprisingly radical roots of many of these ‘new towns’ and ‘garden cities’? The suburbs are often scoffed at, yet what radical potentials lie in their midst? Hatherley doesn’t believe these ‘new towns’ are anything to scorn, and in a London Review of Books piece, defends them from the types of attacks Jane Jacobs once subjected them to throughout her career:

“There’s a problem, too, with the way her scorn for new towns and suburbs extended to those who chose to live in them. It seemed to baffle her that anyone could ever choose Levittown over the West Village, or Harlow over Stepney. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities – which would become official policy in Britain, with the building of new towns after the Second World War – were ‘really very nice ... if you were docile and had no plans of your own’. This is nothing but a reflex on her part. Raphael Samuel recalls in The Lost World of British Communism that Wythenshawe, an interwar council suburb in Manchester, a project and a Radiant Garden City Beautiful if ever there were one, was a prime recruiting ground for radical politics, because it was inhabited by workers who had the self-sacrifice and drive to move out of the slums, even if it meant paying more rent. The postwar new towns attracted people who had plans; they wanted to get out of what they considered hopeless, dead-end places and bring up their children somewhere fresh and modern. Many early suburbs and new towns weren’t places for the passive, for ‘children’, yet this is just how Jacobs saw them.”

Raymond Unwin was involved with the development of Wythenshawe, and it became a hotbed of radical politics as Hatherley points out. I think about Meadowvale and what, if any, radical potential lies within its network of pedestrian pathways and the library and community centre at the heart of its town centre, and if there is any future possibility of a more socialized model of housing. There are new plans beginning to be proposed for Meadowvale’s renewal, and I think one of the most important abandoned ideas from the “garden city” and “new town” movements was some type of mechanism for collective ownership. 

Lake Aquitaine a ‘constructed reservoir’ designed by Macklin Hancock.

We have public spaces like Lake Aquitaine, some green-belted areas, greened pedestrian networks, the community centre, and library – but the increasing unaffordability of housing is the elephant in the room. 

I’ve often attended a book club at Eden United Church, which sits directly across the road from Meadowvale Town Centre. One of the members also serves at the food bank that’s operated out of the church building, and she describes this gentleman she knows, an immigrant who has spent the past three or so years of his life sleeping on a couch, sharing a small space with a few other people. The large majority of his income, often unstable, goes to rent – sometimes, after paying rent and other basic necessities (but mostly rent), he has as little as $10 to stretch out for the entire month to support himself, and comes to the food bank to be able to make ends meet. He finally was able to secure a subsidized unit and came to tell her because he was so incredibly happy. She mentioned to us that listening to his story broke her heart and she wanted to cry, because there are people in immense desperation. Another person I met, who often attends the church is disabled, surviving on ODSP, and mentions that there are very long wait-lists for subsidized housing units in the Meadowvale area, and has been trying to get politicians in the area to do something about it. I think it is time we start revisiting some of the collectivized mechanisms of the early ‘garden city’ plans, whether it be old Georgist mechanisms, or new proposals put forward by people like Hatherley, who often emphasizes this aspect of ‘garden cities’:

“A key concept of the original garden cities was collective ownership, with them owned and managed by some sort of community trust for the benefit of residents, rather than in the hands – and for the benefit of – developers such as Persimmon and Barratt. This was mostly honoured in the breach in the first generation such as Letchworth or Welwyn. But today, a garden city could be run as a Community Land Trust, a form of ownership that contains clauses against speculation, stopping cities becoming middle-class commuter towns and ensuring their original intention – places without hierarchies, slums, “luxury living” colonies or class distinctions.

However, co-operative or community ownership is usually elective, favouring enthusiasts and those with time on their hands. The new city should aim for the universality that council housing once provided, through a system of housing allocation that would make housing accessible to anyone that wants it. The best model for this is still renting through the local authority.”

Holly Firmin in the New Socialist puts forward some interesting ideas for new new towns that I think would be worth considering for Meadowvale’s renewal:

“New New Towns would also provide the opportunity to enact emerging ideas around community wealth building. What better way to develop strong anchor institutions and create a locally rooted economy, based on new forms of worker ownership, than to design a New Town on these principles from the ground-up? Rather than exploiting the workers that build New Towns, they could instead belong to unionised, local co-operative construction companies. Original New Towns were themselves committed to a kind of proto-community wealth building policy of ‘self-containment’, which encouraged residents to work, rest and play within the boundary of the town.”

Can you imagine if Meadowvale’s renewal project provided jobs to local residents for maintenance, repair, and new building projects, and secured housing for everyone who needed it? Current plans for Mississauga are trying to reach a target 35% of units as ‘affordable’ housing (I guess they want the majority of its housing then to be unaffordable), but they intend these units to be acquired by way of market rental or ‘affordable’ ownership schemes. Under these schemes housing remains a commodity, subject to the market, which even Clarence Stein (not a socialist) believed should not be so. 

2018 list of Mississauga neighbourhoods by affordability, Meadowvale Village listed at third highest cost, Meadowvale (new town) at twelfth (out of nineteen)

Hatherley provides some interesting examples in Seoul that focus rather on de-commodification and ‘regeneration without gentrification’, and I think these need to be options kept on the table:

“A more radical model still is in schemes that both renovate and de-commodify. Recent examples include the renovation of the Seewon Sangga development in Seoul, which in its mix of housing, industry, markets and self-proclaimed ‘regeneration without gentrification’’, presents a model of redevelopment far more intelligent than anything we have dared in the UK. Similarly unusual is the renovation of the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris by the architects Lacaton and Vassal, which took a 1960s tower, slated to be demolished, and renovated it for the existing residents, giving them new winter gardens and adding wings of new social housing to the existing structure with no evictions and no changes in ownership. Notably, both of these were proven to be far cheaper than demolition and building anew, and neither has been precious about making major changes to the existing building fabric.”

I get a little nervous reading about re-development and renewal plans for Meadowvale. How much will focus on making the neighbourhood more inclusive, and how much will result in it displacing the vibrant immigrant and working-class communities that have made Meadowvale what it is today. I’m able to chat with public transit bus drivers and artists at my neighbourhood church, but the strain of housing is hard on many people. It is sad that one of the only non-profit housing options available in Meadowvale is an elderly residence that was built and operated by the United Church. We cannot rely on the private charity and generosity to make housing affordable for everyone. It has to be central and systemic to the entire fabric of our neighbourhood.

I think about Gordon Stephenson, whom Holford often wrote letters to. Stephenson was considered a man of the left in many ways like Holford. He designed Stevenage, the first of Labour’s post-war British ‘new towns’ – located between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. The pedestrian spaces and design were referred to as “Festival Style”, and Clarence Stein was consulted, with many parts of Radburn becoming features in Stevenage. Monica Felton, feminist, town planner, peace activist and Labour Party member was chair of the Stevenage Development Corporation in 1949 but was dismissed from her job, unofficially because of her status as a fellow traveller, going on Soviet-organized trips to North Korea and participating in Soviet propaganda broadcasts – even winning the Stalin Prize in 1952.

Concerning questions of the ‘renewal’ of Meadowvale, Macklin Hancock’s ‘new town’: the question will always persist: whose utopia are we creating, uncreating, recreating when we engage in these processes of ‘renewal’? Stephenson, though considered a progressive, was also responsible for his 1957 plan to redevelop the entire downtown core of Halifax, which involved the forceful eviction of Africville (which he described as a “little-frequented part of the City… an encampment, or a shack town”). This ultimately led to the forced removal of a poor but vibrant Black community in Nova Scotia.

The story of Africville has its origins in the Underground Railroad. Some slave escapees settled in the area around the 1830s or 1840s – though the Black community in Nova Scotia existed since at least the 18th century, particularly after the American Revolution, when Black ‘Loyalists’ came to settle around Halifax. (As J. Sakai explains in Settlers, liberating slaves for participating in imperial military operations is hardly liberatory, both on the side of the British and the United States, and consequently the same oppressive structures from slavery will persist since they have not been properly addressed through real liberation.) Africville were a largely self-sufficient community, though one that had to resist perpetual attempts of removal and environmental racism.

Since the Halifax explosion of December 1917, when four residents of Africville died, the city had been trying to find a way to rid itself of the settlement. 1917 was the same year Trotsky was detained at the Halifax harbor on British MI5 intelligence. In March of 1917, Trotsky was making his way from New York back to Russia to join the revolution that was breaking out there. On April 3, he was detained by British officers and sent to the Amherst concentration camp, all of which he described in in a chapter of his book “My Life”. 

By April 29th, Trotsky was told to pack his bags and he and his family were released – but not without stirring up some trouble in the concentration camp during his stay, where he spent time organizing the prisoners, setting up translation teams, political discussion groups, and proselytizing on behalf of the revolution. Captain F. C. Whiteman, second-in-command at the camp commented that if Trotsky had stayed in the camp any longer, he’d have turned all the German prisoners into communists. By the time of the Halifax explosion on December 6, Trotsky was already back in Russia, the Winter Palace had been seized by the Bolsheviks, and a Constituent Assembly had been elected – only to be closed down by Lenin in January.

Back in Halifax, the targeting of Africville was intensified by the city. Despite paying taxes, Africville did not receive most services from the city – no sewage or water, no roads, no health services, no electricity. A open-pit dump site was built in Africville in the 1950s, leading up to its classification as a ‘slum’ and its ultimate demise.

Stephenson had accepted a position at the University of Toronto in 1955, after initially planning to accept a position at MIT, but being denied permanent residency in the US. While in Toronto he worked on an ‘urban renewal’ project for Regent Park, while also helping with the design of the Kingston waterfront and the Eaton’s Centre. While Stephenson saw the poor conditions of Africville and said that it “stands as an indictment of society and not of its inhabitants”, many of the justifications for the ‘slum clearance’ efforts and forced relocation at Africville involved business interests, such that commercial development could expand into the area. Despite Stephenson’s socialist leanings, his most remembered legacy in Canada was the razing of Africville – roundly condemned now not only by all manner leftist political parties throughout Turtle Island, but even by liberals. This is the way Stephenson described Africville in his 1957 Halifax redevelopment report:

“There is a little frequented part of the City, overlooking Bedford Basin, which presents an unusual problem for any community to face. In what may be described as an encampment, or shack town, there live about seventy negro families. They are descendants of early settlers, and it is probable that Africville originated with a few shacks well over a century ago. Title to some of the land will be difficult to ascertain. Some of the hutted homes are on railway land, some on City land, some on private land. There will be families with squatters rights, and others with clear title to land which is now appreciating considerably in value. The Citizens of Africville live a life apart. On a sunny, summer day, the small children roam at will in a spacious area and swim in what amounts to their private lagoon. In winter, life is far from idyllic. In terms of the physical condition of buildings and sanitation, the story is deplorable. Shallow wells and cesspools, in close proximity, are scattered about the slopes between the shacks. There are no accurate records of conditions in Africville. There are only two things to be said. The families will have to be rehoused in the near future. The land which they now occupy will be required for the further development of the City. A solution which is satisfactory, socially as well as economically, will be difficult to achieve. Africville stands as an indictment of society and not of its inhabitants. They are old Canadians who have never had the opportunities enjoyed by their more fortunate fellows.”

While Stephenson’s plan was framed as a progressive way to provide public housing to improve the material livelihoods of the residents of Africville, it was more fundamentally about clearing the land to make it more attractive to capital. Stephenson commented that after clearance, “It may now redevelop the land for highest potential its use.” And while his plan was initially accepted as a viable liberal welfare reform, radical Black activism in Halifax began raising more awareness about the actual nature of the relocation process. Visits to Halifax by the Black Panthers and Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael) helped establish a Black Panther Halifax chapter in 1969 and the Black United Front, lead by organizers such as Rocky Jones, Joan Jones, and Yvonne Atwell. The displacement of Africville, and the role of capitalist investors as well as ongoing racism came into clearer view and the true nature of Halifax’s ‘urban renewal’ process came into larger provincial and national discourses on racism. 

However, these visits by radical Black Power activists put the local Black community on the radar of the RCMP who conducted surveillance projects on them for years to come. Rocky Jones would be tracked by the RCMP for over a decade. Jenifer Nelson’s book “Razing Africville” details some of the measures the RCMP took including tapping phones, intercepting mail, stakeouts outside homes, undercover incursions and informant operations into Black community meetings and nightclubs.

This is part of Stephenson’s legacy in Canada. While it is useful to see the radical roots of certain ‘garden city’ principles had on the ‘new town’ movement, advocated by progressives like Stephenson and Holford, and their eventual affect in Macklin Hancock’s Meadowvale, it is maybe more important to look to radical racialized groups like the Black United Front in Halifax to more closely examine the real effects these ‘new town’ planners had in practice. Whose utopia were they creating? Whose utopia were they renewing under racial capitalism?

William Holford called Hancock’s Don Mills ‘new town’ “probably the most attractive natural town site that I have ever seen.” High praise from a very distinguished planner of the left, yet for whom was Don Mills attractive under the ‘free-enterprise’ economy Hancock always made accommodation for. Whose freedom was prioritized in this ‘free market’? Attractive to capital or to ordinary working people? And now decades later, with GTA house prices unimaginably high, who can afford to be attracted to a place with scanty non-profit offerings.

Macklin Hancock grew up many of his years on his family plot in Cooksville, Mississauga, where he lived next to the nursery run by his father Leslie Hancock. The nursery was said to have hired a number of Japanese Canadians during WW2, so as to help them avoid the internment camps setup by the Canadian government. This plot is also very close to the home Duchess Olga lived in at the end of her life – she was a Romanov, youngest child of the Czar Alexander III, who fled the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The Hancock plot of land has recently been acquired by the City of Mississauga as parkland, and the woodlot on this plot has some of the oldest white pine trees in the area. Much of Mississauga used to be covered in these tall white pines, before they were processed in 19th century sawmills on the Credit River, like those around Meadowvale Village, and sold to the Royal British Navy for their imperial projects abroad and to construct roads that would become the backbone of Canadian settler capitalism. The attendant deforestation and destruction of the Credit River and its salmon populations would displace the Anishinaabe. Meadowvale ‘new town’ was in many ways named after this ‘bucolic’ old utopian village on the Credit River, a good distance east of what would become the New Town’s core. These nostalgic allusions to some utopia of White settlers was at the same time an indirect allusion to the destruction of indigenous communities who had treasured and lived off this land for centuries. This is the complicated history that Meadowvale will have to come to terms with as it looks for new ways forward.

[best-street-shark]

Get him Hawks!

Added cheeky bollocks to what Hunt was saying is that when they say ‘funding the NHS’ what they also mean is ‘pouring cash into we own pockets lol’.

It’s the PFI that does it, good breakdown 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nhs-funding-pfi-contracts-hospitals-debts-what-is-it-rbs-a7134881.html there.

PFI built 55bn quids worth of hospital infrastructure, the government underwrote the debt and the financiers putting up the capital still, bizarrely considering the loans were safe as fuck, were allowed to charge mind-numbingly high interest. So now we have a shitload of foundation trusts with a black hole in their budget. The scale of the problem is so big that if the NHS just stopped everything, no staff, no services, no public use for the buildings, and poured every penny into those fucking loans (and forget the bollocks, that’s what they are), two years later it would still be giving the financiers money. They are absolutely crippling and only the smallest trusts, with relatively low PFI debts to start with, have been able to pay them off early and get on with healthcare again.

Okay so that’s bad but how does it mean the tories are nicking cash? Because those PFI payments don’t disappear. They go straight into the coffers of the investing companies, a combination of construction firms and financial institutions that put up the dough, and there was no ‘purity test’ of any kind. The NHS is giving money to firms registered in Guernsey (famously HICL, one of the largest PFI holders) or the fucking Cayman Isles. Who’s receiving the dividends for those billion pound payments? Impossible to know. Who even owns the shares? Functionally impossible to know, but we are constantly reminded that a ton of pension funds invested FUNNY THAT.

Side note, pension funds are often invested in shady shit. It’s basically a smokescreen/human shield thing. If an institution knows that an asset is primarily at risk from government intervention, say because people might kick up a fuss about arms deals or PFI payments and it becomes politically impossible for the government not to act, if the institution can say ‘yeah but look at all these pension funds bruv be a shame if something happened to them’ the government is basically fucked and can’t do shit.

So those payments go to rich people that would have known which institutions would be awarded PFI contracts. Osbourne started more PFI contracts annually than any other chancellor in history. If you don’t think the tories and their donors, under a deliberately untraceable chain of portfolios and financial products, have heavily invested in those contracts then you are bananas. 

(Any prick saying but those were labour, actually the tories started PFI in 1992. Blair, as part of his bid to win Biggest Cunt In The Universe, expanded their use, the coalition then expanded their use again)

But hey, it’s not like those PFI debts are being flipped around, building a big pile of volatility if the payments were ever stopped, that would be crazy! Oh wait.

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-how-private-firms-make-quick-killing-from-pfi-9488351.html

Then we have NHS outsourcing, that’s always fun. Cash strapped trusts turn to private services to try and make a short term saving. Or they were ‘encouraged’ to with Any Qualified Provider measures. Either way it’s always the same story, private healthcare promises the earth, doesn’t deliver but is locked in to providing the service. The chances of a trust having the cash on hand to ‘renationalise’ their ambulance, cleaning or catering service to do it in house again is functionally zero. Interestingly a lot of charities offer to take these contracts, doing the job without profit being skimmed off the top, but this runs afoul of both competition law and the Any Qualified Provider stipulations. 

Private services being shite is demonstrated by being victim to the fucking things but there’s a nice series of examples if you’re curious 

http://www.nhsforsale.info/database/what-s-the-impact.html

This list of tory and lib dem MPs with links to private healthcare companies is a little old but it’s worth a read, just because it also mentions a few donors that donated to their personal election funds which is normally (perceived) as scary legal no-no enough that it isn’t widely reported considering how scummy it is

http://www.unitetheunion.org/uploaded/documents/final%20mp%20dossier%2028%20nov%201411-20887.pdf

Luckily privatised services are discredited as fuck by now, so it won’t be a problem for long! Oh. Oh wait

https://www.ft.com/content/2a9315ee-c937-11e6-8f29-9445cac8966f (FT paywall, 2017 has a 14% increase in outsourcing costs)

But still, the tories are giving the NHS loads, it’s not like the PFI payments and outsourcing is more than a drop in the ocean right?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-cash-injection-2-billion-spent-outsourcing-private-care-providers-disgrace-healthcare-service-a7651531.html

It’s one of the big fibs of NHS funding that this shit is complicated. It’s opaque for sure, deliberately so, but it’s not complicated and the solution is actually really simple. An independent auditor is established with full investigatory powers, then they identify people personally profiting from money that was supposed to pay for your nans hip replacement, then that person is hung from a fucking tree by the neck until dead you grubby thieving bastards

[antisocial-otaku]

Glowing Skull Analysis

I don’t know how I still have the will to analyse this crappy season, but here I am.

The glowing skull has been driving me utterly crazy since 1st of January and I trully want to figure out what is about.

I’ve been talking with @lookingforawaybacktonarnia​, @monikakrasnorada​, @loveteaelephants​, @goodmythicalmail​ and @sherchemistlock​ about it but even then we can’t come to a final conclusion, so I’d love to know what your opinion is.

I watched the whole season again (yes, I suffered again watching that thing) and I compiled all the dialogue we can hear while the skull is shown, either glowing or not. Also, I specified if the two lamps in that wall are on or off as it may be important, cause we can see them turning off and on in some scenes, and it makes no sense. I added numbers to each scene so you can see how the skull looks in the pic I attach at the end. You can click here if you want to see it right now. (right click, open new window if my tumblr behaves stupid) Just search for the same number.

This is gonna be long, but mostly because of the dialogues, you can skip to the end to see my conclussions, but if you want to look if there’s any conection between the dialogues and the skull glowing, you can read them.

THE SIX THATCHERS:

1.      Minute 13:10  ➤ GLOWING. Lestrade comes in and explains  them the “Charlie” case (two lamps on)

- Lestrade: “The son who was in tibet, DNA all checks out.”[…] “Night of the party the car is empty. Then a week later… the dead boy is found at the wheel.”   - John: “The seats?”  - Sherlock: “Yes, the car seats.” - Lestrade: “Yeah, Right…” - John: “theres’s something else” - Lestrade: “Yes please.”  - Sherlock: “One condition.” - Lestrade: “Okay.”   - Sherlock: “Take all the credit”  - Lestrade: “Yeah, you say that, and then John blogs about it, and you get all the credit anyway. Which makes me look like some kind of prima Donna who insists on getting credit for something he didn’t do. So, you take all the glory, thank you. Just solve the bloody thing will you? it’s driving me nuts.”

2.       Minute 25:09  ➤  GLOWING. Sherlock talks to the client who wants to know why his wife left him. (two lamps on)

- Sherlock: “Now, you haven’t always been in life insurance, have you? You started out in manual labour. Oh, don’t bother being astonished. Your right hand’s almost an entire size bigger than your left.” - Client: “Oh, I was a carpenter, like my dad.”[…] “How the hell… Yes, E-cigarettes.” - Sherlock: “But you’re convinced you can give up, so…You don’t want to buy a pipe, because that means you’re not serious about quitting.” - John: “Yeah? It’s been there since 9:00 this morning.” - Sherlock: “Has it? Where were you?” - Client: “What about my girlfriend?” - Sherlock: “What?” - Client: “You said I had an ex.” - Sherlock: “You’ve got a Japanese tattoo in the crook of your elbow in the name akako.” - Client: “But surely that means I want to forget her, not that I’m indifferent.”[…] “I thought you’d done something clever. Oh, no. No, but now you’ve explained it. It’s dead simple, innit?” […] “what do you mean?” - Sherlock: “Have you ever wondered if your wife was a little bit out of your league?” […] “This drug will then render the president entirely susceptible to the will of that new master.” - Client: “What?” - Sherlock: “Moriarty will then use the president as a pawn . tipping the balance in favour of a first-strike policy against Russia.” - Client: “I don’t. Just the bras.” - John: “So. What’s this all about, then?” - Sherlock: “Having fun”

(continuation) Lestrade showing them the Thatcher bust. - Lestrade: “Oh, I think you’ll like it.”  “Different part of town.” “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be pleased.” 

- Sherlock: “I am pleased.” - Lestrade: “You don’t look pleased.”

3.       Minute 42:15 ➤  GLOWING. Sherlock with AGRA USB in Baker Street (two lamps on) - Sherlock: “Well?” - Lestrade: “He can’t have got far. We’ll have him in a bit.” - Sherlock: “I very much doubt it.” - Lestrade: “Why?” - Sherlock: “Because I think he used to work with Mary.”

 4.       Minute 6:48 ➤ NO GLOWING. Sherlock is with a client who killed his brother cause of amnesia. (two lamps on)

- Sherlock: “The heart medication you are taking is known to cause bouts of amnesia.” 

- Client: “Yes, I think so. Why?”

THE LYING DETECTIVE:

5.       Minute 12:30 ➤  GLOWING. Faith scene (two lamps on)  

- Faith: “I don’t understand.” […]  “How?” […] “So, what do you think? My case”

The next scene was hard to write down so sorry if it’s hard to follow, you can look at the pics, they can help.

 Sherlock walking on Baker Street walls : 

GLOWING:

 6.       Sherlock walking on Baker Street walls:

Minute 26:00 ➤  Just arrived at Baker Street (we can only see the left lamp on) - Wiggins: “They found your address. They brought you here.” (lamps off)  

 7.       Minute 26:03 ➤  Sherlock disoriented

- Wiggins: “You’ve had too much. And that’s me saying it.” (lamps off)   Minute 26:27 - Sherlock: “They’re always poor, and lonely, and strange. But those are only the ones we catch.” “But if you are rich, and powerful, and necessary…” “Anyone.” “What if you had the compulsion to kill and money? What then?” Minute 26:36 ➤  Sherlock spinning. (two lamps off)

 8.       NOT GLOWING : 

- Minute 26:21 ➤  Sherlock starts walking on the Wall. (two lamps off)   - Minute 26:48 ➤  Sherlock   falls into the sofa (two lamps off, right lamp possition changes when the skull is not glowing.)

 9.      Minute 1:02:02 ➤   BLACK skull, only time we see it like that. (Two lamps on, and there’s a third on too.)

- John: “What are you doing?” - Mycroft: “Why fixate on culverton Smith?” - Mrs. Hudson: “What are these dreadful people doing in my house?” - Mycroft: “My brother has embarked  in a programme of self-destruction” - Mrs. Hudson: “What’s on his mind? And you’ve had all this time? You’re so funny, you are! Poor old Sherlock, always going on about you. I mean he knows you’re an idiot, But that’s okay, ‘cause you are a lovely doctor. But he has no idea what an idiot you are! You want to know what’s bothering Sherlock? Easiest thing in the world, anyone can do it.” […] “Well, what does he do with anything he can’t answer, John? Every time.” - John: “He stabs it” - Mrs. Hudson: “And that’s his departed wife.”

10.     Minute 1:20:34 ➤  GLOWING. John says he cheated on Mary. (two lamps on)

- John: “I cheated on you, Mary.”

 11.   Minute 1:23:19 ➤  GLOWING. John and Sherlock are going to get cake (Lamp off, we can only see the right one) 

- John: “What. What is it? What’s wrong?” - Sherlock: “Isn’t that right, Mary?”

 THE FINAL PROBLEM:

12.      Minute 7:47 ➤  NOT GLOWING: Mycroft in Baker Street (two lamps on)

- Mrs. Hudson: “ You have to sit in the chair” - Mycroft: “So, what happens now? Are you going to make deductions?”[…]“The roads we walk have demons beneath. And yours have been waiting for a very long time.”[…] “I used, at discreet intervals, potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition.”[…] “Seven years between myself and Sherlock, one year between Sherlock and Eurus.”[…]“She was incandescent, even then.”

13.      Minute 16:21 ➤  GLOWING. Mycroft explains what the grenade is. (two lamps on)

- Mycroft: “It’s a DX-707. I’ve authorised the purchase of quite a number of these.”[…]“The motion sensor has activated.  If any of us move, the grenade will detonate. Assuming walls of reasonable strength. I am moved to wonder if the cafe below is open.” […] “ We have a maximum of three seconds to vacate the blast radius.” […] “Yes, agreed.”

14.     Minute 18:28 ➤  GLOWING. (not sure though, I think when is off it looks more Brown-ish like in number 12).  Running away from the grenade. (two lamps off)  you can see how the lamps suddently are off in here)

15.     Minute 1:27:27  ➤ GLOWING. Sherlock and John together in Baker Street.

16.     Minute 1:27:38//1:28:00  ➤  GLOWING. When we see the cases they’re working on. (left lamp on, we can see it only in the ventriloquist one.)

- Mary narrating: “there is always one last hope.” “like they’ve always been there, and they always will.”

17.     Minute 14:38 Continuation of 12 (sorry I didn’t notice this one before and had to put it in the end.) ➤  GLOWING. 

- Mycroft: “This is the story I told our parents to spare them further pain, and to account for the absence of an identifiable body.”[…] “The depth of Eurus’s psychosis and the extent of her abilities couldn’t hope to be contained in any ordinary institution. Uncle Rudi took care of things. There’s a place called Sherrinford. An island. It’s a secure and very secretive installation whose sole purpose is to contain what we call the uncontainables.”

 CONCLUSIONS:

-    The state of the skull seems bound to Sherlock ➤  The only moment in which Sherlock is NOT in the room is when the skull is black.  I love John’s MP theory but this moment here and the fact that we see the skull in the 3 episodes is what makes me be not 100% sure about that theory.

-   Connection between skull and drugs ➤  The only episode in which we can see the skull trully blue is in TLD, the only one in which TS12 is named. Also Baker Street kichen’s (where Sherlock has drugs) colour is similar to the one of the skull. Also we are shown TD12 illuminated.

-   Connection between skull and MP  ➤ Arwel said on Twitter the skull is like the base sliding in HLV, that happens when Sherlock is entering/is in MP  (you can see the whole tweet Exchange in here) Also, if you look at the moment in number 5, you can see how John seems not the be present (just the balloon), first he dissapears and then we are shown only the balloon while John speaks (27:42) and yes, the skull is glowing. Another moment with an MP feel is when Sherlock walks in Baker Street walls, the skull starts glowing when he starts walking on the walls, and then when he falls into the sofa stops glowing.

-    The sentences they say while we see the skull glowing, together, make no sense, so it seems we can rule it out. (if anyone find any kind of code in the sentences please tell me) -  Also, @monikakrasnorada thought about the skull as a CT Scan, you can read it here 

-   Talking to @goodmythicalmail she told me she thinks is it’s linked to how close Sherlock is to dying / his depth into the dream.

If you have any other theory or if you have something else to back up the ones above, just reply to this post. ^^ (also please tell me if there’s any mistake cause my brain is off after writing all this.)

Tags below the cut

@jawnlock-is-real @sherchemistlock @inevitably-johnlocked @shawleyleres @jenna221b @tjlcisthenewsexy @lookingforawaybacktonarnia @aamapolaa @loveteaelephants @goodmythicalmail @the-7-percent-solution @teaandqueerbaiting @welovethebeekeeper @swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool @themanandthemachine @worriesconstantly @kimbiablue

[pemborongbuahkurma9746-blog]

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