#I am privileged to not have to face this horror every day

[ierr]

can you make a fic about choso fucking you in a scream mask for halloween it would mean so much i literally love your stories 😭🙏🏽

❝ 𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 ! ❞ － 𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐎 𝐊. 𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓

⇨⚠︎︎ 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 !¡⚠︎︎⇦ mask kink, knife play, rough sex, degradation?, top!choso, bottom!reader, black!reader

𝐀𝐍. SOOOO SOOOO SORRY THIS IS LATE, I’ve been working a lot and writing a lot so I just needed a tiny break but i am back now! I was meant for this to get done ON halloween but I didn’t have enough energy to do so but pretend this is on Halloween, BUT IM SO GLAD YOU LOVE MY STORIES 😙 enjoy my spooky ghost 👻.

𝐮𝐩𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬!! - once I hit 1,000 followers I will do a face reveal In one of stories 🙈, I will not be writing smut for awhile and gonna start writing more fluffy stories and maybe angst. LASTLY, the racer series will continue back up again but not till either December or January. THATS ALL!

WARNING IMPORTANT MESSAGE AT THE END OF STORY!!!.

— 𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐎

When you told Choso about the idea he thought you went crazy. He knew your love for horror movies especially the Scream series, so does this surprise him? Kind of! But realistically no. It was obvious that you had a mask kink by the way you would giggle and kick your feet every-time Ghostface came onto screen ಠ_ಠ. So when you came to him about the Idea he was shocked at first but decided to desire your dirty little fantasies of him fucking you with the scream mask.

It’s been a good awhile since you came to Choso about the Idea, wondering when the day he would do It and well…he decided to do it halloween night. Honestly you’re a forgettable person so you forgot you even came to Choso about the Idea! Till he came out of nowhere behind you covering your mouth with a very sharp knife to your neck. Your eyes widened thinking It was someone robbing you till you felt those familiar muscles flex behind you, calming down a bit, you huffed but soon gasped feeling him pull your head back more against chest with the knife pressed up against your neck, not enough to hurt you of course but enough to make you intimidated. Your hands clenched around his bigger arms feeling his bulge press against your ass just aching to get released, you moaned softly into his hand feeling him buck against you, Choso had a small blush on his cheeks but luckily the mask covered it all giving him an advantage to do anything to you without your teasing.

“You like this?.” He whispered deep into your ear feeling you nod against his chest, but that wasn’t an answer. He groaned a bit pressing the knife against your throat a little harder with a tsk, “That’s not an answer baby..” Your eyes went wide feeling the tiny blades scratch against your neck whimpering from the hold he had on you, “Yes.” Your small little yes was muffled from his hand but he heard it, smirking underneath his mask. He kept a firm hold against you still having a tight hold on you. He hummed trailing the knife across your neck, “What should I do with you, huh?” He questioned tilting his head a little looking at you through the mask, “Should I make you beg for it? Scream for it?.” Your legs were getting weaker and weaker by the minute he kept whispering into your ear, you didn’t think he would take the role this seriously but you’re loving it..you couldn’t say a word except grumble into his hand, Choso smirked underneath the mask, “Hmmm..I have a better Idea.”

“I wanna hear you scream.”

And that’s what exactly what he did. The minute he dropped the knife, and dragging you to your guys shared room was the moment you realized you’re gonna lose walking privileges, when he threw you onto the bed he looked down at you like he was stalking..hunting. It scared you bit especially knowing his height. His height and muscles put everything together making him more intimidating than he already was, you moved up the bed as he moved closer stopping you Into your tracks as he gripped your ankles dragging you down the bed making you squeal. To make this more interesting, you fought against him kicking your legs to get out of his hold but the weight on your ankles increased practically pinning you to the bed. Choso took this as an advantage to crawl onto the bed getting on top of you, you looked so fucking cute underneath him.

By the way he was tilting his head you knew he had that cocky grin on his face. You moved your thighs together to get pleasure on your lower area, It’s been aching ever since you felt his bulge on your butt. You were soaking through your panties and you know Choso knew that too, he looked down to see you rubbing your legs together continuing to make eye contact with him with a bitten lip. Fuck. He clicked his tongue with a low hum trailing his hand to your pj pants putting his hand inside without a care in the world using his middle finger to feel how wet you are, you twitched feeling the single finger rub against your clit, moaning from the pleasure. Choso chuckled keeping his eyes on you as he continued to rub your clit nice and slow, you were already so wet. Choso staring at you with the scream mask on turned you on even more, your little mask kink was putting you to work.

Your back arched off the bed a little feeling him slide his middle inside you starting to thrust slowly. Your eyes fluttered at the feeling, bucking your hips up against his finger, you whined. “I want more..please give me more.” Choso tilted his head at your widening with a small smirk, he loved the feeling of making you whine for more, “More? You sure you want more?” He asked and without hesitation you nodded your head not thinking about the consequences. Once he saw the nod of approval he removed his finger from your pussy, instantly ripping off your pants to expose your lower area, without a doubt he went to unbuckle his belt letting his pants drop to the floor along with his boxers taking his cock into his hand stroking it slowly, lining it up with your hole, he cursed underneath his breath feeling how warm you were as he slid into you.

“Fuck..” He mumbled thrusting at a slow pace to let you get used to it, Choso was a big guy which meant..his cock was also big making you hiss slightly feeling him slide himself all the way In. After a few seconds he started to thrust at a steady pace soon picking the pace up, gripping your hips Into his hands feeling how tight you were getting. Moans and skin slapping were the only things being heard throughout the room, by the way Choso kept looking down at you with the mask was gonna make you cum instantly. Your nails digged deep into the covers feeling his thrusts get more harsher and deeper making tears prick in the corner of your eyes, Choso tooo notice if this smirking behind the mask as he continued to slam his hips against yours, “You like this? You like getting turned on by a mask?.” He panted with a weary chuckle seeing how much of a mess you were becoming underneath him, you could barely keep your eyes open as you stared at up at him. The look you were giving him made himself go hard, growling as he thrusts harder and deeper, your eyes snapped open as more tears pricked in the corner of your eyes feeling him pick up the pace, “W-Wait!- Choso-.” You couldn’t finish your sentence before a loud moan interrupted feeling your knot start to form, the pleasure was turning into pain but It was good pain.

Choso didn’t care about your whines or begs for him to stop, he continued to thrust deeper and harder also feeling his knot, “M’finna cum..fuck. Is this what you wanted? Huh?.” He said breathlessly throwing his head back letting a moan fall, “Finna fucking breed you baby..oh f-fuck.” He groaned deeply feeling his orgasm hit filling you deep with his cum soon after hitting your own orgasm, you moaned loudly letting your eyes flutter close twitching from still feeling him cum inside you. After a few seconds and slow thrusts he pulled out, taking off the mask to look at you with a soft look, “Did I go too rough?” He asked , with a small chuckle you shook your head tiredly reaching up to wrap your arms around his neck pulling him closer to your face, “It was just how I imagined.” You replied, Choso sighed in relief leaning more into your touch, “I’m glad you liked it.”

“Little freak.”

PLEASE READ!!

So I have recently discovered a very hateful message on my dashboard with one of my stories and I wanna say this is NOT okay. If anyone has a problem with me writing ONLY black readers please keep it to yourself, I’m not gonna show the screenshot because It’s really sickening and disgusting but please, I don’t want my tumblr space to be full of hate or rude comments. I want my community to feel more included In fanfics since there’s not that many which is WHY i’m only writing black readers, again my space is for anyone but PLEASE don’t say hurtful things.

[thefeastandthefast]

Hands down, favorite scene of this whole drama and one that made me feel something more than just different degrees of amusement:

Princess Wanning tossing her hair back to dance for the king of Dai, dressed in pristine white silk, helpless rage which cannot be vented cracking through the studied blankness on her face. Such a sharp and elegant recontextualization of all the aggressive swishing and twirling we see her do in the previous episodes.

Following closely in second place would be the scene of her wading shivering into the milky blue river surrounded by fiery autumn foliage and the red of her blood seeping out into the water all around her. The physician refers to her numerous miscarriages, but her grim, expectant, tearless face in that scene implies that they were abortions done with whatever means she could manage (likely the only assertion of agency possible in her position).

To be completely honest, Wanning's storyline is the only one in this drama that consistently triggers genuine emotion for me, even before we got the brief flashback of her years as a hostage to an enemy state. I am obviously extremely well-entertained by the production's commitment to the pulpiest of melodrama rendered with the lushest of visuals, but the lack of even the possibility of actual danger and failure for our protagonists takes much of the tension out. Yes, Xue Fangfei has trauma responses to her experiences, but we know that her commitment to vengeance carried out with morally clean and justifiable methods will still succeed in making every last villain in her path pay. We're assured of her eventual happiness and success before the story even begins because of genre conventions.

The protagonists live in the fantasy world of 爽剧- a genre meant for the purpose of the viewer's visceral, lizard brain satisfaction. The noose of the drama's world and its rules will always loosen for our female lead Xue Fangfei because this type of narrative demands it.

I went into the drama knowing this was the genre, so it's perfectly meeting my expectations... but I think if Xue Fangfei was forced to operate within the same social strictures as her female opponents instead of having her endeavors facilitated by the pulled punches of internally inconsistent world-building, this drama would have been elevated to something ultimately much more satisfying and enduring. The Story of Minglan is still the pinnacle of historical drama 爽剧 for this reason.

But Wanning doesn't live in a 爽剧; she's in a psychological horror, one where every single one of the inescapable rules of a ghoulish feudal, patriarchal world compounded to get her into the situation she ended up. For all her seemingly limitless power and privilege once Wanning returns to Yan, they are insufficient to undo the permanent damage to her status as a virtuous woman in her society and her own perception of her womanhood in such a paradigm.

I'm speculating that the king of Dai probably died painfully at her hands at some point (I'm still at episode 36, so I don't know if it's addressed later!) But in the end, Wanning's righteous fury has very few easily embodied targets for righteous vengeance, unlike the wrongs done to Xue Fangfei and those she takes under her wing- wrongs which neatly trace back to specific villains to be eliminated. And of course, XFF’s personal beef with these villains just so happen to align perfectly with the noble goals of king and country.

Even when Wanning playacts her sick little romance with Shen Yurong, a brutal emotional clarity always breaks her immersion. She has a complete lack of illusion about the world in which her story operates. She was sacrificed for the noble goals of king and country, for peacemaking, and so she knows she will get no satisfaction from those who permitted and benefited from that sacrifice. So, for me, watching her do whatever the fuck she wants in response to that unrightable wrong and indulge every selfish, horrifying, nihilistic whim is more 爽 (viscerally satisfying) than anything else in this show.

[hel-phoenyx]

New Year's Eve, part 9

Following through on @corneille-but-not-the-author and @soupedepates collab with me

Who. In the damn world. Thought this was a good idea. To put me in a city patrol. With Sigismund goddamn Warsowar.

Well. The answer is easy. Of course it's Walpurgis, who else. Saying it's gonna "strenghten teamwork" or some bullshit like this. Not even him doesn't believe in that. It's just the excuse for Warsowar. So he doesn't cry or something.

The silence is deafening. We haven't talked at all since our last altercation, after Domhildr outed me. Or pretended I was gay. Whatever. I never felt inclinations, but in the little I've felt, I've always preffered men, so I guess it's true.

Just thinking about that makes my skin crawl. Amandine stopped most of the rumors and nasty remarks, but I still get mean looks. I am not the token brown AND the token gay of the cops. The diversity pass.

I hate this.

I enrolled to change the system. Now I am part of it, and in the way I hate the most.

Warsowar isn't even looking at me. You can say so if I disgust you. i'm used to it.

Always been used to it until I met Tyr.

I can't start a conversation by myself, tho. It would look like I'm making an effort. I don't want to make an effort for him. At all.

He looks paler than usual.

Some people run away when they see us approaching, I sigh. I pray every day for the destruction of the police system, even if I'd get jobless, that doesn't mean I enjoy being looked at with fear in the eyes. I mean, not right now.

I chose fear because it gave me more power than hatred. To replace love. Everything feels empty now.

I don't even have the energy to feel angry.

Warsowar looks in one of the streets, signals me to come behind him. Nothing, but we can never be too cautious. Somethimes there is (horror) drug deals in the vicinity.

I usually go first to give them time to escape. I don't care anymore.

No one. He walks one step, two steps, stops.

Still looking in the opposite direction.

"You know, POCs aren't the only people to be subjected to racism."

I roll my eyes. First words you're adressing me and it's that ? Someone took to heart my comment on the privileges.

"Right. Say that to the immigrant syrian cop. What, you're gonna lecture me on anti-white racism now ?"

"No, it's not what I wanted to say. what I meant is, the occidental world doesn't spare an ounce of pity for poeple that are not american or western european."

"The point ?"

"My name, Fenrir. Do you think it looks western ?"

... Good point. I recall mayor Sarovar is polish. Still, won't forgive that fucker for every last ounce of suffering he cast upon us. He's part of the system. And he just profits from it.

I don't see why I would take pity of that nouveau riche.

...

He's shaking.

Something is wrong.

I don't feel anger.

Am I

Am I worried ?

For mayor Sarovar's son ?

Nah.

Not a chance.

Still, there is something in his face when he turns towards me.

"Just... Wanted you to know that. That you're being unfair."

"World is unfair, Warsowar."

"Then don't add to it."

Hell, he doesn't even look mad. Just shaken. Pupils are dilated, cheeks pale, sweat is subtly covering his brow. His hands, always holding a pencil or typing on a computer, are shivering in vain.

He reminds me of someone.

Who ?

"..... We probably should stop for a while. You don't look able to continue the patrol."

"No. We have to finish the job."

I roll my eyes. That feeling of familiarity is gnawing at the back of my head. But, who in the hell-

"What's gonna finish is your heart if you don't stop for a while, you look like you're about to have a panic attack. Sit down."

Because i ain't carrying the patrol on with a colleague in this state. He could get hurt stupidly, or I could get hurt trying to cover from him. As much as I don't like him, Walpurgis is gonna kill me if his precious rich boy comes to harm, and I'm already on eggshells because of that damn rumor.

Luckily for me, Sigismund Warsowar is a good boi that listens to his elders. Fuck, I don't even know if I'm older than him. He has never looked more like a child when he sits down, try to take back the control of his breathing. The noises even strenghten that feeling of familiarity.

"Alright. We're not getting anywhere if you don't calm down, so, focus on my breathing. It should help countering the panic attack. Breathe in... Breathe out..."

"How.... Do you know how to calm down panic attacks..."

"This should be a basic skill for a cop, especially one who specialises in helping ignored people. Also I have experience, I've spend so much time calming down-"

Tyr.

That's where the feeling was coming for.

He has the exact same haunted eyes. The exact same shivering when I found him the first time back in elementary.

...

...

...

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I do my best to steady my breathing, try to at least calm down that one. My own heart is beating like crazy.

How

How could I not recognize the signs ?

Tyr also comes from a rich family. The af Mundir are a plague to society as much as Sarovar Warsowar is.

We fought a lot back then. For good reasons. Or petty ones. But I never, ever, projected the sins of his family upon him.

...

Ha.

I've been an hypocrite, haven't I ?

Sigismund ends up calming down. I extend a hand. He takes it. He's still shaky, but at least his cheeks are less pale, and his breathing seems to have stabilised.

"Better ?"

"...... Yeah. Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

I start walking, leading the patrol this time. But before I turn up the corner, I throw a look towards him, following a little more hesitantly.

"Look, I still don't like you, man. But i'm sorry. For dragging you into my mess."

"I didn't... Expect an apology, especially right now ?"

I sigh.

"You don't have to take it. That also does not mean we're buddy buddy or that I suddenly like your girlfriend. I still owe her a forced outing. But you had nothing to do with this and I'm the one who dragged you in, so I at least owe you this one."

".... Apology accepted. Thanks for owning up to that, at least."

I smile. Bitterly

"You know, you remind me of someone. And I still have to decide if it's a good thing."

***

Alright.

I held up my part of the contract, I apologised to Sigismund. Still can't stand that fucker, but at least it's for legitimate reasons, now. Ha.

No way in hell i'm apologizing to Domhildr. I'm still contemplating reminding her who has the power here. And even if I'd do nothing, I've thrown shit, she outed me, we're even, somehow.

That means there is only one person left.

I don't have any news about Tyr. Last time I've heard about him, it was through Gustav telling me he is crashing their house, screenless for a good while, so he can play with the kid. The kid that bears my name.

He also told me Kriss forbade him from giving me news. She's updating all his friends taking her calls on how he's doing. The precision is telling me not all of them do.

Looks like I have, after all, get them away from each other.

I am not even satisfied.

So. I don't know in which state I'm gonna find him. But I at least have to try and make things up to him.

I remember the hospital bed, and my face scrunching up when I saw who was next to it. The words, coming out of my mouth, "what the fuck is THAT ONE doing here ????". Then the insults, the fights.

I remember raising my fist.

I remember a snappy voice cutting me immeditaly.

"Enough."

He was on the hospital bed. Fist clenched. Looking at me with a rage I have never seen.

His finger extending to the door.

"You get the fuck out of here, Fen. Now."

I remember the look, not vindictive, I expexted to find on THAT guy's face. Instead there was worry. Worry, but never for me. I was, I am, insignifiant to both of their eyes.

I never want to see that look on Tyr's eyes ever again.

My finger presses the call button.

Kriss, surprisingly, answers.

"Fenrir, what an unpleasant surprise."

"I take it you still resent me."

That's not a question. That is, anyway, quickly answered.

"Still do indeed. But this is not about me. I suppose you call to talk to Tyr ?"

"... Yeah."

"You're an intelligent one. All the others tell me they tried to ring his phone that he turned off. I'll let you have that, you do know better."

Even that doesn't make me smile.

"Can I ? Please ?"

"Oh. a please in-between the fangs of Fenrir Wolffsen, what a surprise. Tell you what, just for that please, I'll hand the phone to him. But I warn you. If it's not for an apology, I will come to your apartment and beat you up."

Kriss is not up to the challenge and I know it, yet I shiver in terror. The idea of that 1m70-something woman coming to my flat to kick me in the balls has something unsettling. Probably because it's Kriss.

I hear her talking through muffled earphone, probably with a hand on the mic while she's warning Tyr. before, Finally, I hear a tired, deep voice on the other side of the mic.

"Hello, Fenrir."

".... Sup."

"I have to warn you, he continues, still emotionless. Kriss told me that if the next words out of your mouth weren't an apology, I would be allowed to hang up. and i'm very tempted to do so. So, do your worst."

That tone hurts me more than the words.

"Okay. I 'm sorry."

Pause. On the other side of the phone, apparently, my conversation partner is stunned. But I am not finished.

"I realise now that I've acted rashly out of jealousy, and hurt you uselessly in the process. And I don't like seeing you like this, Tyr. Especially of it's because of me. So I am really, really sorry for my actions regarding Domhildr and Sigismund."

And I think I believe it.

A sigh rips through the mic.

"... That's already something. But you know, Fenrir, I want you to understand that it's not only because you've been completely insensitive about Domi's flirting attempt that I've been that hurt. It's all the insinuating about my own self-worth."

"... What do you mean ?"

"I'll tell you a little something. When people ask us constantly if you ever get tired of being the second choice, you start believing in it. I'll choose to believe because I do not think you're that heartless that it was a coincidence, but it didn't come at a good time. At all."

Another sigh.

"So. Congrats. You managed to destroy the relationship between me and the woman I'm in love with. Doing so, you jeopardized our own."

... A goal reached, eh, but at what cost ?

I used to believe they were the reason you didn't choose me, back then. Now I don't even know if you'd choose me anyway.

I should let go of it.

Yet

You've always been my first choice.

Why can't you see it ?

Why am I not yours ?

".... I'm sorry."

"And I'll choose to believe you are. But I don't think you've earned my forgiveness on this one with just words. Prove me you've changed and I'll think about it. Leave them alone. Domhildr, but also Oli, or even Meili even if sometimes he deserves it."

Pause.

His voice get harsher.

"And especially Kaizarz."

...

I won't get better, will I ?

"Alright. i'll try. In the meantime, I have a favor to ask of you."

My voice is trembling. Fuck.

"What is it ?"

"Kriss told me you're living at her house for the time being, and you didn't got out at all. So what do you think if I organised a little outing with everyone ? Aarni, Brynja, Gustav, Hector, Thorfinn. For old time's sake."

I hear an hesitation, some words thrown probably to the power couple. before something exhales on the phone.

"... Alright. I'll let you organize the details with Gustav, I am absolutely not in the right mood to be the party organizer. Find us a good bar, let's get wasted, for old time's sake as you said. But I am not accepting this invitation as your friend. You're still on thin ice, Fenrir."

".... Fair enough. I'll call Gustav later."

"Fine by me. Good bye, Fenrir."

A click.

He hangs up.

Something runs on my cheeks.

Wet.

Weird.

I have not cried since that day on the hospital.

[thefictionalgirl]

There was me, as I close my eyes,

Oh, so far I've come,

But it's bitter on my tongue

To utter the words of my journey.

I die, I bleed

Trying my best,

Then why am I proven

Every other day,

That it's not enough-

They throw the questions on

My face, they hit me harder than a slap.

And I'm tired, I'm too tired

Of the world trying to prove me wrong.

And I'm exhausted,

For they'll never see my best.

They say, privileges aren't true.

But look at me, and touch my wounds,

My wishes burn my skin

And leave me begging for it to stop.

And they've got it easier,

So don't you dare tell me that

It's not about privileges,

And the one trying hard is falling apart,

And screaming “WHY NOT ME?”

I hit my head onto the bathroom walls,

And pulled my hairs,

For I behold them achieving my dream,

And I, like a ghost of failure,

Linger around the doom of my wishes.

My cries never stop, my pain doesn't cease.

I burnt myself out, trying to achieve,

Inch by inch I made myself ready,

But like a shattering house of cards,

It was taken away from me,

making me look like a maniac

Who doesn't know how to stop

Yearning for the unreachable dream

Which she was always so sure of

Having, loving, cherishing. . .

And how could I smile when

Whatever I knew, whatever I felt,

Got away from me like a wave in ocean,

Quickly and cunningly.

And I yell “WHY NOT ME?”

I gave my blood, I gave my sweat

I gave every bit of life I had

To make it alive for me,

But like an insomniac’s

Wish to sleep, my dreams leave me

Like the comfort of a childhood

Vanishes leaving me cold and isolated.

And now here I am, just the bones

Scattered around,

My dreams altered into curses,

And each torments me to the horror.

Once the beautiful daydream,

Now haunts me like the nightmare it became.

✒Dee 13.01.2025

[allmylove-minh]

musings on compassion

To know an individual, ask them how they developed compassion. When did you start to be aware of hardships and your ability to help? I have heard answers that range from thought-provoking to horrifying. In seventh grade, my math teacher revealed that he had been a high school bully. His youth was peppered with bruising fights and sharp racial slurs. It took being roommates with a Black student in college for him to recognize the impact of his actions. It shocked me that someone so intelligent regarding math could be so dense. If only what I thought was true. Academic achievement does not always correlate with capacity for kindness. One can have a doctorate in math, yet lack their theory of mind.

 Theory of Mind is the idea that people develop empathy and an understanding of other people's views and struggles at a certain stage of brain development, typically as children.. Of course, everyone develops at a different age. But, I have always felt that children of color are expected to develop theory of mind at a younger age. We are expected to be grateful for American progress. Every Martin Luther King Day, we are reminded of the need for nonviolent cooperation. Never are we taught to advocate against cruelty, to do what it takes to have an equitable society. No school lesson taught me that MLK had a 4% popularity rate when he got executed. To be a student in America is to read about the March on Washington, yet hear protesters get insulted for asserting their right to live without police brutality. We learn lessons of compassion. But the overarching message is compliance. If every student was taught self advocacy and empathy, society would be a fairer place. Instead, the scales of justice lean towards acquitting the privileged.

Survivors of their treatment must grit their teeth and walk it out. It kills my sister and I to be understanding when our peers are cruel or spiteful, but being upset only earns us reminders of how bad things used to be. Of course we have to understand. People fear those who are different. We were both children. But one of us had to forgive, and the other got to forget. Many youth of color encounter people that seemingly lack theory of mind when it comes to us. People are not born cruel. Unfortunately, other children are not born understanding the causes and consequences of discrimination.

My sister and I developed compassion at a young age. In Oklahoma, students like us had it thrust upon us. Every teacher I complained to called me dramatic. Their precious favorite would never hurt a fly. Maybe I was not hit with a flyswatter. However, I was constantly encountering traps that reminded me of how little compassion people had. Students at my high school refused to sit near me because they thought I would give them Covid, as if my very presence was a harbinger of doom. None of them said it to my face, but whispers of “China virus” trailed in my wake. The rumors were about as avoidable as my own shadow. Likewise, other Asian students were used for target practice. I remember my best friend and I getting hit with a barrage of pencils as we were chased down the hallway. Passers-by saw and heard. No one made a move to help us.

The one thing I am grateful for is that it gave me the ability to find my people. I was able to understand who was safe and who was not. When I was in class I gravitated towards people who I felt would understand the same ostracization. Even though my friends who are Black or Hispanic may not have my exact struggles, they know what it is to be mocked for the way they were born. I've heard horror stories from friends who were body shamed for having a certain physique that people associated with being more adult, even though they were still children. I think many other children of immigrants can sympathize with the feeling of being treated with suspicion. No matter how long it has been on American soil, no one acknowledges the roots we’ve sprouted. Instead we are seen as foreign, other, alien. I hope that children in the future do not have to carry compassion and understand that white kids are still learning how not to be cruel. Instead, I hope that society develops understanding and respect towards people who have historically faced oppression. I want to have children, but I feel dread at the possibility of having to explain racism. I feel sad at the fact that my culture has beauty standards and oftentimes society has beauty standards that I'm going to have to talk to my kids about. My mom tells me that it's because of my compassion that I worry about these things. but that just makes me wonder how people live their lives without feeling these things. Why did my math teacher need to be college roommates with a black person to understand why calling them slurs was wrong?

 Part of me has always felt that my white friends can't really feel as much compassion towards me because there's a chance they were those bullies in high school. In sophomore year, one of the people I considered a best friend told me that she didn't want to date a person of color because she was afraid that their culture would be too weird and different for her. If my life was a book, that would have been foreshadowing. At one point, she defended her boyfriend’s disparaging descriptions of Chinatown. He called it filthy, boring, and full of Asians. The last part was said in the same tone one would describe cockroaches.

Eventually, I broke off our friendship. She did not respect me as a friend. Our conversations centered around her. What Albanian dance was like, who she had feelings for, her strict parents. My interests were boring at best, and disgusting at worst. Comparing my beloved cultural dessert to vomit was the last straw. But I was called dramatic. Our mutual friends thought what she did was wrong. Yet they remained friends with her. I think they are compassionate. They’re aware of social issues and privilege. Somehow, racism was not a deal breaker. Compassionate is a fickle feeling. We feel stronger compassion based on our existing biases. Sometimes I wonder if the injustice we tolerate hints at our numbed senses of compassion. We spend our childhoods seeing our peers grow cruel, learning harassment and stereotypes. How do I stay hopeful when I know what it is to be hunted?

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Brendan O'Neill

Published: Nov 11, 2023

One of the weirdest things about identitarian activists is that they hate being asked where they’re from but they love telling you where they’re from. Politely inquire about their ethnic or cultural origins and they’ll damn you as a racist. ‘How dare you, I’m as British as you!’, they’ll yell, either to your face or in a column in the Guardian in which they’ll document at great, yawn-inducing length the horror of having some dim pleb ask about their family origins.

Then, in the next breath, before you’ve even had a chance to splutter your apology, they’ll tell you their entire ancestral history. You’ll know where their great grandmother was born, the exact quantity of melanin grandad had in his skin, which maternal haplogroup they belong to, as revealed by 23andMe. Just don’t say ‘Oh, that’s where you’re from’, because they’ll call you racist again.

This political schizophrenia of taking offence at the question ‘Where are you from?’ while simultaneously feeling a burning urge to tell the entire world where you are from was best captured in the Ngozi Fulani controversy. You remember Ms Fulani: she’s the black charity worker from Hackney in London whose ‘racist’ run-in with long-serving royal aide Lady Susan Hussey hit the headlines last year. Lady Hussey’s crime? At a Buckingham Palace do, she asked Ms Fulani where she is from. Call the cops! What a bigoted old bat.

Not so fast. Ms Fulani was adorned in African threads at the palace. She frequently decks herself out in the Pan-African colours and Africa-shaped earrings. To constantly suggest to the world that you are from somewhere else and then reach for the smelling salts when someone asks ‘Where, exactly?’ is a bit much, no?

Now, in literary form, Afua Hirsch has done the same thing. Ms Hirsch is an author, broadcaster and writer for the Guardian. Her first book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was all about the horror, the sheer indignity, of ‘The Question’. The question, of course, is ‘Where are you from?’. I am asked this ‘every single day, often multiple times’, said Hirsch. Really? Where’s she hanging out? It feels like a ‘daily ritual of unsettling’, she wrote. Oh, please. If I penned a sad book every time someone asked me, on account of my very un-British name, ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’, or ‘Where were your parents born?’, I’d be the most prolific author in Christendom.

Now, we have Ms Hirsch’s second book, Decolonising My Body. And you’ll never believe it: it is an eye-wateringly detailed answer to… The Question! Here’s my question: if Hirsch hates being asked where she is from, why has she written a whole tome on where she is ‘from’?

I now know more about Ms Hirsch’s ethnic and cultural origins than I do about my own. To her credit, she admits that this is because she comes from a staggeringly privileged background. I ‘know quite a lot about my ancestors’ and ‘there’s a privilege attached to this’, she says. Her African ancestors were not the ‘enslaved’, but rather were ‘antecedents about whom written records were kept’. Fancy. As someone who knows next to nothing about his colonised forebears – largely thanks to the Potato Famine of the 1840s and the catastrophic fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin in 1922 – I confess to feeling envy while reading Ms Hirsch’s comprehensive tale of her origins. How the other half live, eh?

When I say her new book is detailed, I mean it is detailed. In her first book, she told us off for being nosey about her family origins; in her new book, she’s telling us about the time she got her butthole lasered. She finds herself in ‘the undignified position of spreading my butt cheeks under the chill of a laser clinician’s hosepipe-like nozzle, as atoms are excised, electrons rise and fall, and light beams are making their way into my crack’. The whole thing cost her £1,000. They must be paying well at the Guardian if contributors can splash out a grand on having their anal fluff zapped.

Surely we need to talk about how easily the identitarian elites can shift from exasperation at being asked ‘Where are you from?’ to absolute blaséness about telling the world what their ringpieces look like. Don’t you dare ask where my family is from but please listen to me describe the hair follicles on my arsehole. Excuse me, what?

As its title suggests, Hirsch’s book is a somewhat narcissistic endeavour. It’s all about her body. More specifically, it’s about how empire and colonialism interrupted the mystical traditions through which Hirsch’s African ancestors marked and celebrated their bodies – with tribal tattoos, menstrual festivals and whatnot – and how Hirsch now wants to rediscover all that stuff.

She says she wants to ‘decolonise’ her body of its ‘Western’ expectations – thinness, hairlessness, white-defined attractiveness – and let it become more African. Imagine how time-rich, and literally rich, you would need to be to spend so much energy obsessing over your own flesh and skin. To publish a book about decolonising the body of a privately educated Guardianista while everyone else is wondering if they have enough cash to keep the lights on speaks to the pathological self-regard of the new elites. In this era of economic, military and moral crises, Hirsch is going to have to work a lot harder to convince me that the fact that her period ‘still often takes me by surprise’ is something we need to know.

Hirsch’s argument is that she has been violently ripped from the ‘magical’ traditions of her African history by colonialism and capitalism. So where her historical forebears held menstruation ceremonies and celebrated women for having hairy legs and insisted upon the tattooing of female flesh, our new era heaps shame on women for bleeding, discourages female hair growth, and idolises ‘pure’ over ‘marked’ flesh. None of this is quite right though, is it? Period chatter is everywhere these days. You can’t so much as click on Instagram without seeing some feted female influencer showing off hair-covered shins that would make Peter Sellers wonder if he should reach for some Veet. As for tats – not having a tattoo is the great shame in the 21st-century West. What, you haven’t had a tribal slogan pasted on your pasty flesh by a needle-wielder in Camden? What’s wrong with you?

And yet our body-decolonising Ms Hirsch perseveres, regardless. To counter the evil West’s disdain for old African tribes’ celebration of menstruation, she takes her poor daughter to a tribal period shindig in south London. They have to traverse the South Circular, ‘one of the most congested roads not just in London, but in the world’, and Hirsch, under instruction from the London-based tribal priestess, must wear all-white clothing, which in this case means a ‘floor-length summer robe, made from soft sheets of cotton’. Still, at least it connects Hirsch to her tribal lineage, even if her daughter, by Hirsch’s own admission, would rather be anywhere else.

Hirsch’s favourite word is ‘conditioning’. She thinks women like her – women of non-British origins – have been ‘conditioned’ to discard the tribal rituals their elders engaged in. Perhaps. Or perhaps black women and all women in London in 2023 would just rather buy some tampons for their pubescent daughters than subject them to an old-world menstrual ritual in a posh garden in south London. Who can tell?

Hirsch says ‘the forces of globalisation’ lead to a situation where ‘people like me’ – people of colour – have been ‘conditioned’ to behave and think in a particular way. That is, in a Western way. There’s a darkly ironic twist here. Hirsch’s obsession with the idea of ‘conditioning’ means she ends up viewing African-origin people in a similar way to how old colonialists viewed them – as vacant-brained entities swayed this way and that by the messaging of their superiors under capitalism. It smells like neo-colonialism disguised as anti-colonialism.

Hirsch thinks that even she – an expensively educated, successful writer – has been ‘conditioned’. She wonders if her submission to laser hair-removal is a craven acceptance of Western culture’s white-supremacist loathing of female hair. ‘Why do I keep on coming back’, she wonders, ‘to uncomfortable and expensive appointments, just to squash the capillaries which nature, in its wisdom, wanted us to have in our nether regions’? Again with the nether regions. She ends up staring at her vagina and reminiscing about her lost hair. She beholds the ‘pathetic little tuft of hair clinging to my bikini area, with a forlorn sense of having banished something that may have loved me’. I cannot imagine ever having a deep thought about my pubes – is that only me?

Who is responsible for the fact that even Hirsch, with all her education, has done things to her body that she later thinks she shouldn’t have done? It’s Charles Darwin. It’s always Charles Darwin. On the thousands of pounds she’s spent on ‘pink-packaged razors’ and ‘painful, expensive waxing’, Hirsch says, ‘The person I do blame… is Charles Darwin’. You might think of Darwin as the most important scientific figure of the period of Enlightenment, the brilliant man who revealed to us the truth of both nature and humanity, but to Ms Hirsch he’s the bloke whose ‘paradigm-shifting work on evolution’ led to the inexorable destruction of ‘attitudes to body hair [that] were as diverse as the cultures [they were] rooted in’.

In short, Darwin’s exploration of the origins of species, of the origins of man, helped to nurture a colonial discomfort with tribal culture. Imagine witnessing the epoch-shaping discoveries of a man like Darwin and thinking: ‘He’s the reason I feel compelled to get my butthole lasered.’ The narcissism of it, the anti-Enlightenment of it.

Anti-Enlightenment is the right phrase for where Hirsch ends up. Throughout the book she dabbles not only with tribal cultures – which, in my view, declined and fell for good reason – but also with astrology and even witchcraft. She quotes authors who bemoan the disdaining by ‘intelligent persons’ of ‘witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies’. It falls to her sensible-sounding parents to keep a check on her descent into pre-modern hysteria. Her father, the esteemed geophysicist Peter Hirsch, responds to her pleas that a planetary ‘conjunction’ in the sky must be a sign that she should change her life by saying: ‘It’s just from our arbitrary viewpoint that the planets appear close together… It doesn’t mean anything deeper.’ Yes, dad!

Her mum is even better. Asked by Afua why women of African origin don’t wear ‘waist beads’ anymore, her mum essentially says: ‘Because we have nice knickers now.’ Hirsch discovers, alongside the wonder of menstrual rituals and tribal tats, that wearing beads across one’s belly is a great African way to demonstrate a) that you are fertile and b) you have a chunky ass. Why don’t you wear them, she asks her Ghanaian-British mum? To which comes the glorious reply: ‘As soon as we heard about Marks & Spencer’s underwear, we stopped wearing beads…’ Exactly. All those desperately poor African ladies who hold up their sanitary / undergarment equipment with beads around their bellies would love a pair of comfy high-street knickers, even if wealthy writers like Afua Hirsch frown upon such basic desires. Give me good underwear over tribal realness any day of the week.

Fundamentally, this is a daft book. It bemoans Western capitalism while singing the praises of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and Rihanna. (And the people, black and white, whose labour is exploited by Oprah’s media machine and Rihanna’s make-up machine? Shush! Don’t mention them.) It attacks cultural appropriation while telling the tale of this hyper-privileged Londoner who gets ‘adorned’ in the fashions of ancient Africans.

I hate to be the one to ask this, but how is it any different for a privately educated woman of colour from Wimbledon to experiment in the cultures and jewelleries of African nations than it is for a right-on white ‘appropriator’ to do the same? It would be like me donning the animal skins my ancestors wore as they searched high and low for grub in the wilds of pre-modern Ireland. ‘Wanker’ would be the cry of friends and family if I were to put on the rough uniform of my tragic, regressive forebears.

Hirsch’s retreat from modernity into the witchy traditions of old is some rich lady shit. Anyone who can traipse through London to attend menstrual rituals and traverse Africa to examine beads and pants is clearly someone with too much time on their hands. And that’s the rub. Identity politics is a fundamentally privileged pursuit. Indeed, it is the means through which the well-off launder their class privilege and turn it into oppression. There is nothing in Ms Hirsch’s plush, lovely life that can be described as oppression – apart from being asked The Question, of course… – and so she plunders ancient communities for little pieces of victimhood she might claim as her own. And thus is her cultural power in the here and now fortified, with more of that hottest currency of all: ethnic suffering.

Hirsch’s book confirms that the new elites have retreated from reason, fleeing from Enlightenment into the tattooed arms of fashionable tribalism. ‘Educated people, and people like me, [were] brought up to learn about, understand and respect science’, she writes, but now many of us are ‘following our curiosity’ and embracing ‘systems of ancestral knowledge’. Yes you are. From ‘decolonise the curriculum’ to the upper-middle-class fads for everything from African jewellery to Tibetan spiritualism, the right-on and rich are turning their backs on modernity and its gains and knowledge. Knock yourselves out. The rest of us, however, who have no cultural clout to gain from dabbling in magic and other ancient bullshit, prefer science, civilisation and comfortable undergarments.

==

These people are fucking bonkers. They think they're the most fascinating and enlightened people on the planet, when they're just the most mediocre, narcissistic people, using big, empty, academic, jargony words to hide the fact they're completely fucking insane.

For the record, Hirsch's ancestors are Norwegian, German-Jewish, British and Ghanaian. So her appropriation of African aesthetics isn't actually any more meaningful than espousing her Norwegian viking ancestry.

We have to stop giving these lunatics oxygen.

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

Sorry I'm too much of a coward to say anything not on anonymous but your posts are meaningful and informative. I know that I am not immune to propaganda so it's wild to me that all I see around tumblr these days is anti-Israel propaganda. (And yes I can see when it's propaganda when people are blaming Jewish people and Israeli for everything bad that has ever happened) And it's not like I don't empathize with Palestine, or that I somehow hate or am bigoted towards Palestinians. It's not that. I support every group facing genocide to be liberated from genocide. I just genuinely don't know if what I'm reading online is real or propaganda. And I don't think that that is a good enough reason to be antisemitic, because there is NO reason to be antisemitic, ever. And it's scary because I know that all of the people I see on either side may possibly be buying into propaganda. And I don't know what to think. Who to believe. Because I'm not there where it is happening. So it is very refreshing to see anyone talking about the "wrong" side and what they're going through. When all is said and done, people are dying, and I'm a privileged westerner who is not immune to propaganda. I appreciate you for standing against antisemitism when the whole of these privileged Non-Jewish Non-Palestinian people are trying to take sides on a war that they will never even understand no matter how much twitter tumblr tiktok or wikipedia they read. Thanks for that

Thank you this means a lot.

Propaganda can and does come from both sides of a conflict. And sorting through it is difficult and time consuming. I wish more people would either put in the effort or shut up.

And if there is one thing Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians have in common, it’s that the west likes them better dead.

The west likes Palestinians best when they are weeping and covered in dust and blood for the camera. They like Jews better as a pile of shoes found at Auschwitz than as a living people.

To the average westerner, this whole situation of complex geopolitics and the horrors of armed conflict are reduced to a hashtag. Bloody pictures to put on their social media accounts to alleviate their own white guilt. It exists to soothe their ego and teach them an important lesson. It exists to ‘test’ them to see if they’d be ‘on the right side of history’.

I don’t know how I move past seeing blood libel posts with 30k notes. I don’t know how I unsee the fetishization of Palestine. I don’t know how I move on knowing just how vapid and selfish and uneducated and cruel the average westerner is. Maybe I was just naive.

[indigo-ghost-girl]

I have alot to say

And since apparently its a strike for Palestine for the next couple of days I thought I would speak my mind. Its the least I can do.

Im so tired. Tired of news that people are dieing. I'm so incredibly tired. It's not becuse I don't want to know what is happening. I'm tired because MY people, one of the ritchest countries on earth, are not only doing nothing to stop the attacks but are actively contributing to them.

The bible says, "Love thy neibour" so why in HELL are we attacking them??

I just watched a video about a Palestinian American woman being shoved out of a room when she spoke her mind to a politition. And no one came to help her. They shoved her out. People WITH MY FACE shoved her out. MY SKIN COLOUR, MY LANGUAGE, MY HAIR COLOUR.

I am not proud of my country. And unless they step up to change I don't think I ever will again.

The people of Gaza have every right to be furious with us.

I try so hard to be neutral and hear both sides of the argument to make sure I know the facts. But I can't stay silent any longer. I've been so afraid to speak up, I'm so privileged but that means the people around me, my family, I'm afraid they will have opposing views. And I cannot afford to lose them.

I can only imagine what horrors the Palestinian people are going though. Bombed in churches, hospitals, trapped under rubble for hours.

I remember I had a nightmare once. We were running from something and we took refuge in a church in the middle of nowhere. They had no chairs and I had to sit on the floor against the wall. Everything was so tense.

Then the stained glass window exploded. Shattered in an instant and sent glass flying everywhere. We watched the the countryside around us was bombarded with smaller bombs. The safest place was inside and I remember prying that nothing would hit us directly again. The ground shook, it was so incredibly distorted.

We had to make a break for it, but there where people outside with some form of deadly weaponry, imagine like a gun that shot shrapnel.

I got to wake up from that nightmare. For some people that is there reality.

I'm so tired of living this reality. I feel powerless and stupid. I can only do so much. And it infuriats me. And no one will take me seriously becuse I'm young. At first it was because I was a child now it's becuse I'm inexperienced.

WHO CARES??? I'm not a mind reader. I haven't actually lived through a bombing. But I have felt pain before. I haven't been forced to leave my home, but I have been forced to move houses.

Yes they aren't the same thing. YES IM LUCKY I KNOW. But I know what it's like to hurt and some people clearly don't.

I just. Want to live. A centminent I'm sure the people of Gaza share. I want to laugh. Love. Share meals with loved ones. Create, Share. Live life.

Why are they denied that chance?

[thessalian]

Thess vs Putting Off the Offputting

I am going to go to bed in a minute. I just don't want to.

It's not that I'm not tired. Oh no. I am fucking exhausted. Thing is ... if I go to bed, then I will wake up and it will be tomorrow and I will have to do more overtime and it will be hell. I mean, I know that's going to happen anyway and I should face it well-rested, but ... I'm just struggling to face the whole concept of "another week of overtime".

Also, admittedly, there's other sources of stress. The Conservative Party conference is going on, and the Tories are ... terrifying this year. Suella Braverman is referring to the Human Rights Act as "the Criminal Rights Act" and yelling about how "multiculturalism has failed" (lady ... you are distinctly Not White. Could you please not be such a boomerang bigot for five minutes?) and it's just awful. Not to mention the health secretary talking about "bringing sex-specific language back to the NHS", which basically means not letting trans women onto women's wards - mostly this is discussing patients, but there's enough of a thing about how "NHS staff should not declare their pronouns to each new patient". There's a whole bunch of transphobic "we know what a woman is" bullshit and then it comes back to Suella Braverman, saying that people who are facing "discrimination" over their sexuality or gender presentation are not valid asylum-seekers. Yes, even including people from countries who will actively imprison, torture, or execute people for being in any way queer.

The country I live in is ugly as hell, and I don't feel safe here, but not only do I have to live in it, but I have to deal with it while disabled, all the while watching every bit of safety I might have here be stripped away - as a queer person, as a disabled person, and yes, as an immigrant. I may have some privilege because white, but that didn't work for the Polish people who used to live here until they became Brexit scapegoats. This place gets more bigoted and awful by the day, and trying to focus on the day-to-day doesn't help, particularly not when I'm consistently pulling overtime that is not recommended for my level of disability because our office runs horrifically understaffed. So, yeah, the idea of getting up and repeating the whole mess of overtime, interspersed with seeing what horrors the current government is going to try to force into practice before they're finally forced to hold a general election ... it's offputting.

But seven former Bioware employees are suing Bioware after Bioware laid them off the other month and entirely shafted them on severance pay. So something might be going right for someone, somewhere. Something needs to help me get to sleep at night...

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Rebecca Ferguson: The first to ask questions in the intview

Ferguson calls via videocall from London and takes the interview in her own hands.

Rebecca Ferguson: Before we start I'd like to ask whats there behind you on the table. Sorry, I like to see through zoom-interviews the rooms of my intviewers.

ICONIST: What particular are you interested in?

Ferguson: The first book in the pile, for example.

ICONIST: I have to take a look for myself now. Here, "Bill Gates. How the prevent the next pandemic."

Ferguson: Oh. Does Bill have some good advice in it?

ICONIST: It's complicated. Gates had already warned of the dangers of such pandemics before the Covid outbreak. He later received death threats because one of his quotes, taken out of context, was used to create the grotesque fake news that he wanted to use the corona virus to microchip all of humanity. With that, we could now seamlessly move on to the conspiracies in your new series, Silo, in which no one knows which stories about human threats are true and which are fabricated.

Ferguson: *laughs* You are right.

ICONIST: The world has been destroyed, 10,000 people have survived in an underground silo, locked up there, isolated from the outside world. Nobody knows what really happened outside. You're not entirely wrong to take this as a depressing parable of the pandemic, are you?

Ferguson: There are certainly many parallels to events that happened not so long ago - the horror of the Covid lockdowns, governments wanting to control their environment, scarcity of resources and the need to recycle in order to survive. Only the novels on which the series is based have been published since 2011. And as an actress, what interests me most is the quality of the storytelling and the characters. When I was working on this role, I didn't think too much about whether the future society in the film had anything to do with today's society. To be honest, I don't want to think about the future of the world because sometimes it gets me pretty depressed. I am aware that I lead a very privileged life and that I am very fortunate. Don't get me wrong: it's important to me to speak my mind, for example I'm fighting for equality at every level. I accept those battles that I am convinced I must fight. Other than that, I just try to be friendly to others.

ICONIST: Your series about the silo society offers less action-packed science fiction escapism, instead it relies more on dialogue. It is reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's end-time visions in his play "Happy Days" - with two actors who are stuck in a mound of earth after an apocalypse, sink into it and console themselves with purposeful optimism about their hopeless situation.

Ferguson: I love your reference to Samuel Beckett *laughs* Makes perfect sense. I've done a lot of research on depression and trauma to better understand the loneliness, grief, and loss that weighs on my character. And I like philosophy. The theses of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, for example, both of which assume the natural equality of human beings, i.e. that humans are good by nature and only become evil through society. It was interesting to transfer such thoughts to the film, to ask oneself: What happens when you condense this thesis and show what happens when many people are isolated in a room closed off from the outside world? And when down there one lie about the alleged causes of the catastrophe is followed by another. Do people rebel against lies? Regardless of the penalties they face? Those were the basic questions that fascinated me about this series.

ICONIST: The series is based on Hugh Howey's internationally successful best-selling trilogy "Wool", which is adored by fans. Did you feel pressure to live up to expectations? There are enough examples of film adaptations of fantasy and science fiction novels that have been torn apart by fans.

Ferguson: No, I didn't feel any pressure. It's great that this book series was so successful and has so many fans. I can only do my best. If people don't like it, that's unfortunate, but then there's nothing you can do about it. However, before I engage more intensely with such a role, I always do a lot of research on fan sites. I spend hours reading all sorts of things there.

ICONIST: Why are you doing that?

Ferguson: Because I often discover interesting details on these sites. For example, if a fan writes, "I love how the author describes how Juliette keeps her hand in a pocket the whole time." That's a small but significant detail. I said to myself, "Great, I'm going to do this the whole time through the shoot."

ICONIST: You say you don't like to think about the future too often. In a podcast "Spark Hunter" published in 2022, you dealt with the currently much discussed topic of the future of artificial intelligence. Actress Trudie Styler, wife of Sting, directed. What appealed to you about recording a podcast – actually more of a radio play – in addition to all your film commitments?

Ferguson: I like Trudie very much. When she called me one day and asked, "Do you want to do a radio play with actor Mark Rylance?" I immediately said, "If Mark Rylance is in, I'll be in, no matter what it is." Then sent me the scripts and I got scared at first.

ICONIST: Why?

Ferguson: Because it was pretty complicated stuff, with a lot of details about AI. It was just hard to understand at first. Mark Rylance voicing the inventor of a female artificial intelligence robot whom I speak. And then suddenly this robot starts to develop feelings, it takes pleasure in provocation and in questioning society. And reveals morbid feelings about human life - it's brilliant.

ICONIST: Sting also has a small speaking role in the podcast. In 1984 he had an unforgettable scene as an actor in David Lynch's film adaptation of "Dune - the desert planet" as the villain Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. There he stands with an oiled naked body, only wearing a futuristic loincloth, which he himself once described as the "first example of flying underpants".

(Rebecca Ferguson is laughing)

You can be seen as Lady Jessica in Dennis Villeneuve's remake of Dune. While working on the podcast, did you and Sting talk a bit about how sci-fi staging has changed over the past 40 years?

Ferguson: We actually did. I remember sitting with him and his wife at a table in their beautiful home at their winery in Tuscany. At one of our long dinners, I asked him, "Do you know what I'm filming?" "No," he said, "what?" Then I revealed to him that we were remaking Dune. And then his eyes suddenly lit up and we went on a long journey in our conversation, talking about what it was like shooting the first film back then, compared to the new one.

ICONIST: And the flying underpants?

Ferguson: (laughs) I won't give you any details, that's between Sting and me.

ICONIST: In winter comes the second part of the Dune film adaptation, in which you again play Lady Jessica, the mother of the young hero Paul Atreides. In the summer you can also be seen again as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust alongside Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning" - and already in the ten parts of the Apple TV series "Silo". it doesn't get any better. Aren't you afraid of overexposure?

Ferguson: No. This is going to be a big year for me, with three very different film productions that I'm very proud of. Things like that don't happen all the time. I don't worry too much about it. I'm damn happy it turned out that way. You never know if something like this will happen again. Actors often come into the limelight very quickly, but then just as quickly go out of fashion. Age is often not helpful either. In that sense, I feel like I'm in a good place right now. I've been very lucky.

ICONIST: It is your third appearance in the Mission: Impossible series and your second in Dune. Is it also important for you to have something like consistency in big blockbusters, in times of intensifying competition between film studios and streaming providers with an unprecedented oversupply of films, in which there are also rows and rows of flops?

Ferguson: It's actually nice that I now know my role in "Mission: Impossible" well, because working on the set is complicated because we often don't have finished scripts. Working on the Mission: Impossible movies is so different from other movies. But that's what makes it so exciting. I know my role, but I'm always getting to know new actors who are in for the first time. In their eyes, I can immediately see what they're thinking when they're on set for the first time: "What the hell…?" Then I just think to myself: "I know that, I felt the same way at first." Then it's nice, when you are already familiar with your role. Lady Jessica in "Dune" is also a cool woman. In the second part, however, she is changed. I won't reveal any details now. Just this much: Your performances in the second part are so different from those in the first that it felt like I was playing a new person.

ICONIST: What does it do to you when you switch from one large-scale production to the next?

Ferguson: Well, while I was shooting Silo, I got a message that I had to do some reshoots on the Mission: Impossible movie. I love that kind of thing yeah You always think you need breaks. Until it suddenly: "We need you for four days in June to reshoot scenes for 'Mission: Impossible'." Then you're suddenly sucked in again. I love that because I love the roles too. It sure would be bad if I had to work on set in a terrible environment. That's not the case. It is great.

translated from German by @edwardslovelyelizabeth exclusively for @rebeccalouisaferguson

[cytser]

i'm annoyed so you get a rin vent on a platform that doesn't have my face directly attached

i've seen so many posts both on twitter and tumblr recently guilting people for not posting about current events, and acting as if you're morally/ethically at fault if you're not actively posting about it. and i'm sorry, but are you hearing yourselves?

obviously, what is happening is extremely disturbing. there aren't words to describe the level of horror, so i'm not going to try to find them. i should think this goes without saying, but i'm going to say it just so we're clear that my post isn't coming from the angle of 'but who cares about what's happening?'

but you have absolutely no idea how people are impacted by what's happening. you have no idea what personal connection people may have. you have no idea the impact it may be having on their mental states, and when you act so dismissive and act like 'this is negatively impacting my mental health' is a privileged take, you show what you really think about mental health.

there are so many reasons why people may not feel able to talk about it! people may not be able to understand what's happening. people may have grown up in warzones. people may have delusions, obsessions, flashbacks, suicidal ideation triggered that they do not have a healthy way of managing.

and from a practical standpoint, what is the point in expecting everyone to burn themselves out? when people are burnt out, they lack an ability to critically examine what they're reading. with the amount of propaganda and mis/disinformation, it is extremely important right now for people to be taking time and care to consider what they're reading. insisting that people shout while burnt out just means that mis/disinformation is going to rule. who does that help?

'you're privileged to not be under threat of death!!' well, for a start you don't know everyone's personal situations. but beyond that, you guys know it isn't morally wrong to use one's privilege, right?

when this all started, it triggered my ocd so badly that for days straight i was compulsively checking the news and making myself more and more afraid and distressed. every person who i told, including my literal actual therapist, suggested i stop. so i did! and now i take my news from trusted friends (and a few select other reliable sources) and am trying very hard not to fall into another ocd spiral because with other things going on in my life as well i'm genuinely unsure if i'd survive

i'm glad if you've never reached a level of mental distress where you're concerned for your ability to keep yourself safe, but this is the reality that a lot of people are dealing with, and those people are also the one's most likely to think they're morally failing if they refuse to share every post they see

if you do have the energy to keep posting things, then obviously i encourage you to. but i also encourage you to be critical about what you share, to make sure you understand the history, to understand that everyone is spreading propaganda, and to seriously consider the bias held by the people who's voices you're sharing.

first- and second-person accounts are typically you're best bet, along with people who's jobs revolve around this (activists, journalists, politicians but be fucking careful there), as you can generally assume they know the history - but still be careful, make yourself aware of red flags, read the replies if you're worried because odds are someone will be providing more context there. sharing propaganda is not helpful, it just makes it harder for you to understand what's happening and how to help

part of why this is so difficult to talk about is because the levels of performative activism and just straight-up horrific things i've been seeing on my social media is way more than i've seen during other conflicts. it is very dificult to engage with without a good knowledge, and most people who are engaging do not have a good knowledge

i've had to unfollow so many people over the past couple of weeks because they've clearly been so poisoned from propaganda. it seems a lot of people care more about looking like 'good activists' than they do about actually being good activists

[aaronymous999]

GOD trans horror is such an untapped market…

The body horror of puberty for a lot of us gender dysphoric trans folks is talked about a lot so I won’t get all that into it. On the other hand, one that may be just my personal experience, is the social horror and anxiety of existing in spaces of the past and around people who knew me pre-transition.

When I transitioned, the few people I told outside my family ( who I am immensely grateful and privileged to have supporting me ) gave very unsupportive responses, and I knew that with myself already being bullied, it would only get worse. So I left it all behind, and I gained weight. I cut my hair. My name is legally changed. I’m less pale and I dress differently. I’ve gone through puberty, I’ve started HRT. Nobody recognizes me, and I’d like to keep it that way despite a while where I would constantly dream about my old friends accepting me, and then subsequent nightmares where I am trapped in my old body but with my current mind which is terrifying on it’s own merits and I might write something about that at some point… but my point being is that most of my anxiety stems from seeing people I used to know in public. Undoubtedly, who would be hostile to me if they knew, and it rids me with paranoia and anxiety that I don’t think will ever leave me. It’s almost like I’m keeping a secret, not maliciously of course, but a secret to protect myself, to not become a statistic. That’s a little overdramatic and personal I know- but I think it’s a real horror of my own life that’s rarely expressed in fiction, even within metaphor. I’ve always been one to attach myself to horror that represents the own horrors I face in my day to day life, which is why I find the typical slasher deeply uninteresting compared to the small town secrets and underlying bigotry and unspoken threats of violence that I come across in media every once in a while.

I deeply connect with the horror of hiding something, something that is not wrong or immoral, but something that could get you seriously harmed if revealed. It’s a deeply queer sense of horror in my opinion and if there’s any horror writers out there I’d love to see it… or if anyone knows any media that in metaphor or outright explores this I would absolutely LOVE to hear it.

So often I feel like I’ve found something that expresses this but- it almost always ends in a secret that’s legitimately kind of bad or just straight up that way. As much as I love Omori I found the conclusion somewhat disappointing after all the fascinating internal conflict that Sunny goes through. It kind of makes the journey less valuable and scary with the conclusion in mind but that might just be me. I would love to see something- a return to the past or an old home town out of necessity that leads to increasing paranoia and the sense of being unsafe in an environment which you once called home. Which I can imagine is also deeply personal to other demographics of people. Which is why I’m surprised it’s not written about as often as it seems to be relatable to people.

[readjthompson]

Well, since my novelette Cancel Toby Chalmers! (copyright me, now) has been sitting around, completed, for nearly 16 months, I’ve decided to share it for free, until it’s later released as part of a Toby Chalmers collection.

Here are Chapters 8 and 9.

Chapter 8

Yet again, his grip on his dwindling optimism weakening by the moment, Toby visited his Amazon Author Page. Only self-published efforts met his gaze.

He’d released improved edits of Fleshless Fingers and all of his bizarro books, and put together another collection, Mementoes of Madness II, to showcase his short fiction. Not being particularly artistic, he’d culled his cellphone gallery for drunkenly-shot photos of landscapes, spoiled fruit, stars and roadkill, and fashioned makeshift cover designs from them. Sadly, none of his efforts had resulted in so much as a single sale.

There’d been plenty of ratings and reviews, though, both on Amazon and Goodreads, each bearing but a single star out of five. None of the reviewers had bothered to read so much as a word of his prose, it seemed. They wrote, “Don’t buy from this racist,” “Each dollar spent on Toby Chalmers’ fiction gives Hitler’s ghost a boner,” “Nazi writers, fuck off,” and similar single-sentence contributions. Many listed black authors who consumers should consider, as if Toby was actively attempting to oppose such individuals. Some of the reviewers’ names he recognized, editors and authors now united against him.

Toby had deactivated his every social media account, hoping that his detractors would find someone new to disparage. But successive searches of his name continued to summon fresh vitriol. Alleged anarchists wanted him arrested. So-called liberals were calling for his suicide.

Only black-hating racists, none of whom had the slightest bit of interest in reading his fiction, defended him. They seemed to have adopted Toby as a member of the far right, though he’d never so much as registered to vote, out of disgust with both political parties.

“Don’t do it,” Toby muttered now, even as he visited social media and searched for his name yet again. The top result, new to him, had already attained over two million views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and thousands of replies and reposts. Wow, that’s the smuggest avatar photo that I’ve ever seen, Toby thought. This dude looks like he had his own cock removed, just so he could blow himself every time he sits down to pee. Why’s he wearing a dashiki? He’s whiter than I am. Joseph McCarthy Jr., huh. Runs Transylvoria, apparently. Didn’t I send that magazine a review copy of Fleshless Fingers all those years ago? Never heard back from ’em, or read an issue of theirs, for that matter. What’s this douche have to say about me?

He read:

A CALL TO ACTION

Hello, hi, and howdy again, my beautifully diverse followers. ’Tis I, your ally in all equality efforts, your genial genius, your longtime pal-o-roony, Transylvoria Joe. By now, you must know that I’d never let a single day go by without connecting with you, my horror brethren. And boy, do I have a sermon for you now.

Remember those terrible days when the literary community eschewed censorship? Straight, cisgender, racially challenged males filled books with their rightwing ideology and profited, flaunting their collective privilege in everyone’s faces. Perpetuating white supremacy, gender inequality, heteronormativity, and even worse, gender binarism, they gave us heroes only they could relate to. Ooh, I’m shaking just thinking about it.

When those authors filled their books with hate speech, claiming that they were practicing idiomatic realism, we, as a society, actually nodded our heads and said, “Well, I guess that makes sense.” Boy, were we ever wrong.

Those straight, cisgender, racially challenged males had us all fooled, you see. They wrote bigoted characters so well because they’re bigots themselves. Those of them who became editors only published people just like them. That’s why we at Transylvoria, along with countless likeminded horror fanatics, have spent the last few years pushing those has-beens aside, so that diverse authors can finally stand up and take their well-deserved bows.

Indeed, we’ve taken great strides forward in abolishing literary inequality. But if you think that it’s time to rest on our laurels, to abandon our egalitarian efforts and let the old guard strike back, I say to you not today!

Think about it for a moment. Sure, most straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors have seen their books go out of print. And most right-thinking publishers will no longer consider such men for publication. The problem is, with the self-publishing tools available these days, anyone can invent a publisher on the spot and self-publish whatever they want.

This means that straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors can reprint their old fiction, and even print new fiction, with impunity, and steal sales away from the far more deserving diverse authors. It’s sickening, really. One Stephen King is enough!

The onus is on us, united, to balance the scales in the horror lit scene. Books by straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors other than Stephen King must be removed from circulation, permanently. Libraries and book retailers, both online and brick and mortar, must be urged to destroy all such books in their possession immediately and never restock them.

No longer should straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male authors be allowed to self-publish horror fiction. No longer should they post short stories to their blogs or social media accounts. Their books’ Goodreads listings should be deleted, as should all mentions of them online. In fact, these guys should never be allowed to refer to themselves as authors again.

We can erase the literary scene’s past mistakes, one straight, cisgender, racially challenged, male author at a time. For our first target, I nominate Toby Chalmers. The man unequivocally stated that he hates black people. Well, we love black people and hate Toby Chalmers.

Contact Amazon today, all of you. Tell them that you’ll boycott their company if Toby Chalmers’ books aren’t removed from publication. Start a petition. March in the street. Recruit others to our cause. Silence anyone who stands up for Toby Chalmers.

As always, Transylvoria pride forever. I platonically love each and every one of you. Air kisses all around.

“Air kisses all around,” Toby muttered. “What a piece of shit.” Can this man and his lickspittles really do it? he wondered. Can they erase every trace of my fiction, make it as if I never wrote anything?

As he read reply after reply praising Joseph McCarthy Jr. and his position, and denigrating Toby as if he was Hitler reincarnated, the notion seemed far less than impossible. All of these insane, wretched fascists masquerading as liberals, he thought, shaking his head. How did society ever devolve to this?

My books can’t just disappear. I’ll beat cancel culture, somehow. For the moment, I’d better stockpile author copies of my books while they’re still in print. Guess it’s time to spend some money on this “career” of mine. Yippee.

 

Chapter 9

“Hey, Shadrach, someone’s callin’ me. Why don’t you run into the store and grab us some juice boxes and pickle-flavored cashews. Here’s twenty bucks. With the leftover money, you can buy some candy or a magazine, or whatever you want.”

“I don’t hear your phone ringing.”

“It’s on silent mode.”

Suspiciously, Shadrach squinted at his least favorite person, as Joe slid his phone from his pocket and pressed it to his ear. “You’ve got Joe,” he greeted. “Oh, hey there, buddy. What’s the good word?” His free hand made a shooing motion.

Reluctantly, Shadrach emerged from the Prius. What’s this psycho up to now? he wondered. His phone screen was dark. No one was calling him.

Thus far, Joe had limited his domination games to his own private property, but there was a first time for everything, and Shadrach didn’t trust him one iota. There were fourteen vehicles in the parking lot. Would anyone protect Shadrach if Joe went on the offensive again?

He entered the supermarket and grabbed a shopping basket. Rightward, flies buzzed in the produce section. Leftward, oldsters lingered to converse with cashiers, though their groceries were already bagged. Those sonances seemed strangely subdued.

The pickle-flavored cashews and juice boxes were easy enough to find—Shadrach had accompanied his uncle on many a shopping errand—and he wasn’t in the mood to purchase anything for himself. Still, the air conditioning felt good on his skin, and he was in no hurry to return to his uncle’s side, so he wandered from aisle to aisle, avoiding the eyes of his fellow shoppers.

Suddenly, just as Shadrach strode past shelves of dry noodles, a stiff forefinger met his shoulder. “Are you gonna buy anything, nigger?” hissed a voice in his ear.

Reluctantly pivoting on his heels, the boy beheld his uncle. Joe had changed his clothes in the car. The black hat and zipped-up windbreaker he now wore were emblazoned with the word SECURITY. Coiled tubing ascended from his collar to a phony earpiece.

Blushing furiously, more embarrassed than he’d ever been, Shadrach begged, “Please don’t do this.”

“I asked you a question, boy! We’ve had a report of theft on these premises! Do you plan to pay for those groceries?!”

Other shoppers had drifted over to observe the spectacle. Shadrach couldn’t read their expressions through his sudden tears.

“I…I have twenty dollars,” he whined, pulling the bill from his pocket.

“Dirty, stinkin’, thievin’ nigger! Twenty dollars was the exact amount reported stolen! I knew by the look of you that you were no good! Put down those groceries and put your hands behind your back!”

“Oh…I’m sorry, Uncle Jojo. I’ll be good from now on. I’ll only laugh at what you say I can laugh at. You don’t have to do this to me.”

“Save it for your court date, nigger! Put down those fuckin’ groceries! Put your fuckin’ hands behind your back! Right fuckin’ now!” Joe now brandished handcuffs and grinned from ear to ear.

Supermarket employees joined the shoppers at both ends of the aisle, swelling the audience to two dozen Caucasians, all of whom crept steadily closer.

“Um, excuse me, what’s all this about?” one elderly mop-gripper queried, squinting through cat eye glasses.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Joe, “this here’s my nephew. He was actin’ like a racist so I’m teaching him empathy for black people. He’s experiencing but a taste of what they’ve endured in this country for so long. Soon, he’ll love his fellow humans as much as I do.”

Surely, someone will stand up for me now, Shadrach thought, sniffling. They’ll call over a real security guard and get my uncle the help he needs. Maybe my mom can leave rehab early and take care of me again.

But as the grocery basket was torn from his grasp, as his arms were pinned behind his back so that his wrists could be handcuffed, as he was led from the store and shoved into the back seat of his uncle’s Prius, all Shadrach heard was a slow clap evolving into full-blown applause.

* * *

After lunch, after dinner, after tearful trembling in the bathtub until its water grew chilly, Shadrach raged his way across Joe’s guestroom, shrieking into a pillow that he held over his mouth. Grace Jones’ Vamp character bared her fangs on framed posters all around him. Shadrach wished that she’d climb into reality to make a meal of his uncle.

The room, which he’d been staying in ever since his mom entered rehab, always smelled like rotted onions and bad milk, no matter how wide he opened its window. If ever it had been vacuumed, he’d never witnessed it. Neither had the bedsheets been washed, nor the cobwebs swept from the ceiling corners, since his arrival. Shadrach wouldn’t miss the place, he decided.

He’d swiped a garbage bag from the garage, which he now filled with clothes, everything but his hated Transylvoria attire. With grim satisfaction, he kicked the window screen from its frame. He wanted to punch holes into the walls and urinate onto the carpet, but feared that his uncle would burst into the room at any minute and chain him to the bed.

“Fuck you, Uncle Joseph,” Shadrach muttered, climbing out of the window, into the night. “I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”

[needstobehelped]

Trying to wrap my head around this so it makes sense but. I'd like to give most people the benefit of the doubt and say that they're on the same page as me for this

It frustrates me to no end both irl and online that for every piece of media saying something negative about Biden there's at least 10 commenters going "Yeah But Trump"

Yes. But Trump. Who for the last 8 years has been terrorizing the political landscape with his abhorrent behavior and irreversible damage to the American Federal Government, who rallies supporters like they're cultists and sits on a Pedestal of So What If I'm Convicted, I'm White And I Have Money And Power And Will Face No Consequence. That Trump. We fucking know he's awful, he should have no place of serious power in this country, anyone who votes for him is severely ignorant and privileged at best and a sycophant with a gun collection at worst. These are not points that need to be rehashed, rammed down our throats at every turn. We know. We remember. Why bring up points that have been said ad nauseum?

What bothers me is not Joe Isn't Being Very Nice Guess I'll Vote For Trump, cause I cannot fathom how that pipeline exists for most people. It's watching in real time as the choices this November have shifted from 2020. Joe won the election 4 years ago by being the blandest, most broadly appealing candidate with the best chances at shutting Trump down. He labeled himself a Democrat, held pretty Moderate beliefs, and had to be pushed with every drop out to at least say some left leaning talking points. honestly, it was an upsetting pick for me back then, too.

There is, however, a gaping chasm of difference between "more out of touch and moderate than I'd like" and "actively participating in genocide despite every sign being thrown in your face". I am horrified every day that passes, every picture and video of children getting slaughtered with unimaginable brutality and apathy, every report that says America's participation is only getting more active. Joe Biden is directly causing murder in the thousands, all in the name of keeping our political footing in the Middle East, if there's any reason to be found at all. And while I understand that a lot of spending must be passed through Congress, and that the Senate in particular is just as fucked up, it does not erase the direct calls, the purposeful misinformation, the silencing of people willing to stand up that all came directly from him.

And the worst part? He still gets my vote. Because while there is no avenue to stop the horrors in Palestine, while both candidates will continue arming Israel with no regard to the people it will kill, there are marginalized peoples in this country whose lives and freedoms hinge on this election. Because my options have become a war criminal who still believes in the supposed democracy of this country, or a felon who has publicly said he will turn our government into a fascist, autocratic state. Our political climate has become one where voting for the democratic party, regardless of whose on the ticket, is the only way to at least hold on to the basic human rights still afforded to us.

Trump is the best thing to happen to the Democratic Party, because in his abhorrence and blatant disregard to any human decency, he has given them the perfect opponent. Why would they need to discuss their views and opinions? Why would they need to convince the American People that they will fight for their rights and protections and freedoms? Why would they need to do any political legwork, when their campaign strategy has already fallen into their laps: I'm Not Trump. Why should anyone care about their Libertarian ideals, their corporate payouts, their dedication to the rich instead of the few, when they can hold onto the bare minimum of Not Being Trump. Hey, I may be selling your rights to the Evangelicals, and your personal information to Big Pharma, but I'm not a Fascist so Vote For Me.

And we have to! Because the alternative is That Fucking Bad! I am seething with rage at how far we've fallen, that "Free Choice" and "Fair Elections" have become even bigger jokes than they already were, that we are stuck in a downward spiral no matter who we pick, the only choice we get is how fast we move. I'm angry. I'm terrified. I'm so fucking tired. The only way to get my frustrations out, and I imagine it's this way for a lot of others, is to vent about how fucking awful Joe Biden is, to keep a record on everything this man has done in the name of Zionism, of Imperialism, to try and hold anyone accountable, cause there is sure as shit no accountability to be found in a voting booth. Who knows if there ever will be again.

[synthanimal]

2023 was a landmark year for my freelance art career and I am incredibly privileged to have gotten the opportunity to work with so many amazing bands and companies. I've learned a ton and accomplished some of the biggest and most rewarding projects to date— from music festival branding, show admats, single art, merch design, beer packaging, and everything in between.

Thank you eternally to all the wonderful clients I've worked with and hope to continue working with next year <3

There is also so much more I haven't posted yet because, well, social media is exhausting and lately I've been trying my best to avoid spending so much time on it (key word: trying).

Outside of my work, this year was also filled with tons of friends and family, live music, travel, horror movies, delicious food, and new and rekindled passions. I've been to over 25 concerts; read 11 books (and started several that are still in progress!!!); and traveled internationally to Japan, Bonaire, and Mexico.

Through all the positives this year, I also faced heavy burn out, imposter syndrome, and was laid off from my full time design job.

I have a tendency to take on an unrealistic amount of things all at once and then get disappointed and frustrated when those inevitably don't all work out. So with 2023 probably being my busiest year so far, I want 2024 to be lighter and filled with more leisure, self reflection, and personal growth.

I'm hoping to be easier on myself in setting more reasonable goals and deadlines and prioritizing my physical and mental health. I want to be more intentional and say no to more things that don't interest me. I want to focus on falling back in love with my craft and working on personal projects again. And honestly, even if I just wake up every day not immediately feeling a creeping sense of guilt and dread, that would be enough, hah.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again— I'm so grateful for everyone who's supported me over the years and I'm looking forward to what's to come in 2024.

[lilacmuse]

55 Days: On Gaza & the Luxury of Grief

A few months after my brother passed away, i experienced something that altered my understanding of grief forever. I was browsing through the news and came across a harrowing series of photographs: a journalist had taken pictures of Syrian refugee families and had them all sitting on chairs, but included empty chairs in each image to represent loved ones who had passed away in the war.

Every photograph contained several empty chairs; the face of each survivor was haunted with grief and exhaustion. My heart shattered as i took the images in and processed the gravity of what they had experienced. I had never realized it until that moment, but even the experience of loss is mired in privilege and inequity. When someone we love passes away, we often cry until our ribs ache, and all our bodies crave is a safe, comfortable place to rest. I can't imagine what it would be like to experience the grief of losing not one, but multiple loved ones, yet not even having the luxury to process the pain because your own life is in mortal danger. Mourning becomes a distant luxury when everything you have is destroyed and you don't know where you'll sleep at night, where your next meal will come from, whether your remaining loved ones will survive, etc.

When my brother died, our entire community came together to offer support; people brought food for months and visited over and over just to sit with us and offer their love. For refugees and people in conflict zones, there is no one to comfort them; entire neighborhoods are annihilated, and lifetimes of bonds and memories are reduced to rubble. I used to spend hours creating floral arrangements and decorations for my brother's grave, and i'd sit for hours and find deep solace in those moments of calm proximity. In conflict zones, mass graves are such a norm, it's a luxury to even know where your loved ones are buried.

This degree of compounded trauma is something most of us will never be able to fathom. When i look at images of the destruction in Gaza, or i see pictures of people holding the bodies of their loved ones, or images of crippled survivors in hospital beds, i think about the gravity of what they've been through- how many added layers of suffering exist on top of every loss- and my heart breaks again and again. I can't even begin to articulate my anger toward the soulless politicians who refuse to call for a permanent ceasefire and the end of the occupation, or the depraved monsters who cheerlead this genocide and continue espousing inhumane justifications for the wanton massacre of thousands of human beings.

My usual raison d'etre is to write about the beauty of human existence, but my spirit aches nightly at the horror the past two months have wrought. Yet every time despair drives its claws into my heart, i see images of doctors and journalists comforting grief-stricken children and making them laugh despite their own pain, i see tender-hearted human beings tending to frightened animals despite their own suffering, i see mothers and fathers praising God as they kiss the bodies of their beloved little flowers, and i am reminded yet again that anything tied to God will never perish.

This is the reality that brings me comfort in these dark times: victory will always be with the ones beloved to God. Every oppressor has a death date and every empire will fall, but the lovers of God will live forever. So it is with the deepest conviction of my heart that i say that Palestine will endure, and Palestine will be free. Palestine will outlive every cruelty, every prejudice, every evil that seeks to destroy it.

x r