#I feel very lucky that an identical model was available

[arlo-venn]

Noooo I’m gonna have to reorder all my bumper stickers 😭 one of them is a magnet at least so I can grab that off Wanda before her funeral

[whentherewerebicycles]

Do you have advice/places to start/resources for becoming a kinder and more compassionate listener? I also approach the world and myself from places of shame and judgment and I would really like to grow past that and become more compassionate and accepting and kind. You are a huge inspiration to me and I wish you all the best!

thanks for this really nice message! i've left some recs & thoughts under the cut.

first, some books and resources i've found really useful:

the lost art of listening: how listening can improve relationships (i really, really loved this one and found its strategies useful for basically all of my relationships, from friendships to family relationships to teaching)

scattered (so this one bills itself as being a book about attention deficit disorder, which may or may not be relevant to you. but really it is a book about how our family environments shape our inner voices and our relationships as adults. there is a lot of really deep, moving writing in this book about healing from shame that i think would speak to anyone, not just people who identify as having ADD!)

the body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma (again, PTSD or childhood trauma may not be relevant to your life/situation. i do not identify as someone who's experienced trauma but i do see in my own family how trauma has been passed down between generations and has shaped people's perspectives/styles of emotional processing even if they are not directly experiencing PTSD. i found this book really useful for understanding how chronic lowgrade stress and shame can change your emotional and physiological patterns of response. and i also feel like it just has given me a richer vocabulary for describing my own reactions to certain emotional stimuli or patterns)

anything on attachment theory. i have some ehhh feelings about how attachment theory (in its pop culture forms) tries to divide people into neat little categories, and i think that sometimes attachment theory can start to function like a personality test or something, where people get really invested in their attachment style as their identity. but i do think that the writing on what a secure attachment style looks like & on how securely attached people navigate conflict in their various relationships has been HUGELY important and useful for me. i do not think i had many models of secure attachment in my childhood and that can make it really hard to figure out how to set healthy boundaries or communicate openly around points of conflict. so i don't find it SUPER useful to read a lot about anxious and avoidant styles, but i do find it very useful to read a lot about secure attachment & to build strong friendships with securely attached people.

adult children of emotionally immature parents (this is another one that may or may not apply to your specific situation, but i think will probably helpful to you if your shame is rooted at all in family dynamics. i don't at all consider my parents to be like the parents lindsay gibson describes, but i do think both of my parents were raised by those kinds of people! i love how gentle and compassionate gibson's tone is, and i feel like this book helped me better understand and empathize with my mother in particular. for me a big part of healing from shame has been just like... spending a lot of time trying to understand my parents' experiences better and learning to empathize with them as human beings who were doing the best they could with the models they had available to them. i think my parents were very loving and very committed to trying to be good parents, but were also very much a product of the home environments in which they were raised. learning to see them with more compassion has helped me understand that my hypercritical shaming inner voice is literally just my mother's own inner voice, except i'm lucky that my mother worked hard to soften that voice a little and to contextualize it within a warmer, more loving relationship than she had with her parents. i think that unpacking those tangled family dynamics and understanding where your inner voice comes from can be a really important step towards cultivating other ways of talking to yourself, which in turn will influence the way you are able to talk and relate to others.)

there are also a few books on parenting i've really liked! how to talk so kids will listen (and listen so kids will talk) was one i really loved. i feel like it just gave me a richer set of tools/strategies for listening and communicating my needs. and i kind of appreciate that it's geared towards parents and kids, because i think that, again, for people who did not have great models for those things in childhood, you do need to treat yourself a little bit like a child! you are essentially learning how to re-parent yourself, and, like a child, it's easiest to learn from looking at lots of different models of deep listening and effective communication.

neuroplasticity! one book i liked on this subject was the brain that changes itself, though it's a little more focused on people learning how to heal from or better navigate medical or developmental conditions. but i think the science of neuroplasticity is absolutely fascinating, and it's been soooo so useful for me to have that framework in thinking about myself. you don't need to read a whole book - probably there are lots of good online introductions to the subject! but the core idea -- that the brain is continually rewiring itself, and that we can change/write over old patterns of response by repeatedly reinforcing new ones -- is hugely interesting to me and has been really helpful.

those are a few works that i've really enjoyed! on the more literary side, I also think that Mary Oliver's poetry can be really wonderful as an antidote to shame, as can Audre Lorde's essays and journals ("Eye to Eye" is one of the most incisive explanations I've ever read of how shame affects our self-concept and our relationships with others). and suzanne clothier's bones would rain from the sky: deepening our relationships with dogs is another beautiful essay/memoir-style work that bills itself as a dog training book but is actually just a gorgeous, moving exploration of how to cultivate compassion and gentleness in our relationships with others, whether they are animals or other human beings. truly cannot say enough good things about that beautiful book.

the other thing i would suggest is journaling. i do a ton of journaling, on this blog and in my private journal, and i really firmly believe that writing is one of the best tools we have for processing complicated emotions and rehearsing different patterns of emotional response. i don't journal every day, but i do sit down and engage in sustained reflective writing every single time i experience shame or conflict or a breakdown in communication or a resurgence of ambivalent feelings. the more you journal about your feelings and emotional patterns, the better you come to know yourself, and the more effectively you are able to untangle what's going on in your head/heart. i find that if i am really distraught about something, i basically just need to set aside an hour or two to write through it (and cry lol), and then i am either mostly past it or mostly at peace with it or i've figured out the steps i need to take to resolve things. and i also just really value having a detailed record of my own emotional life! i think that sometimes we can lose sight of how much we've grown or changed, because that growth happens so slowly and we are so immersed in it that it can feel like nothing big has really shifted. but when i can look back at the way i processed Bad Feelings when I was 17, 19, 25, 31, etc i can really see that long-term growth. and i think that having that tangible record is also a way of building trust in myself, almost? like, i know that i can survive a flareup of bad feelings because i see how many times in the past i've weathered those feelings, written my way through them, taken steps to address them, and matured/grown as a result.

my last suggestion is: no matter how deeply entrenched you perceive your patterns or your personality as being, your personality and your patterns will change based on the people you surround yourself. for better or for worse, you will inevitably become more like the people around you. i think one huge thing that changed for me after college was that i went from a very cold, chilly institutional climate full of smart & desperately unhappy people to a very warm, friendly, collegial community where there were lots of smart people, but those smart people were also very kind. i changed SO much just as a result of being surrounded by people who didn't perceive everything as a cutthroat competition and were genuinely interested/invested in each other's learning and growth. i also feel like i made a conscious effort to nurture friendships with people who were generous and kind and nonjudgmental, and a conscious effort to not maintain or nurture relationships with people who were very judgmental or harsh in their assessments of others, or who seem to thrive on negativity. i was really drawn to those people for a long time, because they felt like an externalization of my own inner voice and that felt safe/familiar to me. but spending lots of time with people who are more secure in themselves and genuinely caring towards others just makes me feel soooooo much better.

the change in yourself won't happen overnight - it took me many many years to feel secure in my important friendships and to trust that those people would not abandon me if i messed up or was imperfect or fell short in some way. but i really feel like i have learned and grown so much just through watching how kind, nonjudgmental people navigate life, and through paying close attention to what about their behavior or their way of interacting with others makes me feel so cared for and heard. i guess this is just a long way of saying, if you want to change things about yourself, attach yourself to people who embody the qualities or values you most want to learn. so if deep listening is important to you, look for people who really make you and others feel heard, and imitate the things you see them doing or the behaviors that make you feel affirmed in those conversations. or if cultivating kindness and a nonjudgmental attitude towards yourself and others is important to you, attach yourself to kind, open-minded people who talk about themselves with compassion and don't trash talk or tear down others (in public or in private). pay close attention to how those people live and interact with others, and then try to reproduce those behaviors in your own life. it won't feel natural at first, but (much like writing through your emotional responses) it will get easier and easier with time. i promise!!

[lokiondisneyplus]

Loki is the latest Marvel Studios TV series in the long-running franchise and it’s currently ongoing with five episodes so far available to stream on Disney+ Hotstar Malaysia. For previous breakdowns of Loki episodes, check out Episode 1 here, Episode 2 here, Episode 3 here, Episode 4 here and Episode 5 here.

If you want a non-spoiler guide to Loki, you can head on over here.

Courtesy of Disney+ Hotstar Malaysia, we were lucky enough to be the only Malaysian media to participate in a roundtable interview with Loki Costume Designer Christine Wada and Loki Production Designer Kasra Farahani.

This interview with Loki Production Designer Kasra Farahani has been edited for clarity.

Keep in mind that we’ll be discussing some elements from all five episodes of Loki so far, so there will be spoilers below:

Q: You’ve previously worked on Black Panther and other MCU movies. How different was the experience of working on a TV set instead of a movie’s? Were there limitations?

Yes, I’ve worked on several Marvel projects. For me, this is the most fun one, maybe because I’m in a different position than I was on the other ones. But also, just because this project is unique in a couple of ways.

Number one; it’s literally in its own timeline from the rest of the MCU. It’s separate from the stories we’ve all enjoyed and seen in the MCU so far. The other thing that this one has that’s really great is the amount of visual and narrative variety. We have this kind of base in the TVA that we spend a lot of time in but also we have all these exciting different places in the world that the story takes us to. These were great worlds to design and to imagine.

In our case, there was no difference. The thing about the Marvel series is that it’s pretty much like Marvel movies; in terms of their creative ambition, in terms of the way they’re scheduled, the fact that we have one director.

There was not much about it (Loki) that resembled an episodic project, except for the fact that it was six hours of content that we were trying to make, so it’s a very long project.

In terms of resources, I didn’t ever feel that we were unduly stretched. Always, when you get a creative brief like this, there’s always a period at the beginning of every project where you’re reconciling the creative brief and the resources that you have. That has been the case for every project that I’ve ever worked on regardless of the size. There’s this beginning phase where that’s the case and oftentimes, it’s in that process where you come up with some very great creative solutions that are a direct result of some of the limitations, actually.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that we had some extraordinary limitations in this case (for Loki), but that’s generally true for all projects, in my experience.

Q: What were you inspired by when making designing the sets of the TVA with its retro-futuristic and anachronistic aesthetics?

In the source material, the TVA had a lot of different things going on, but one of the strong themes also was this armada of desks, which is kind of typical of a post-war era bureaucracy look. There was a grain of that in the source material but a lot of it also came from the show’s creator and writer, Michael Waldron, who described in the original document I read before interviewing for this job.

He described the TVA as a kind of mix of Mad Men meets Blade Runner. Part of these two strong visual references for us. On top of that, me and director Kate Herron, even before we met and spoken to each other, were inspired by Terry Gilliam’s Brazil also as a strong influence because of the anachronisms that that story had and also because of the clear presence of this strong monolithic bureaucracy, which is something that we have in the TVA also.

For the TVA, we were looking a lot at wanting to create a world that had a paradoxical feeling, being an imposing monolithic architectural space that has brutalist elements in them and had almost Soviet modernist elements to them. The colour palette and the materials and the whimsical patterning were much more like American style modernism.

The result was hopefully when you’re in an environment like this, you don’t know whether to feel terrified or invited. Hopefully, it creates that feeling in both the characters and the audience; this kind of cognitive dissonance in not knowing whether they can trust the TVA or not. That’s the narrative objective.

The writers came up with these ideas and the idea with that was to kind of create the bubble gum wrapper in the Renaissance era (Loki Episode 2) and the futuristic shovel in the early 20th-century farm field (Loki Episode 1). These ideas were placed there to create a trail of clues for the TVA to follow before they have clarity on Sylvie’s identity. But for the anachronisms generally, that was something we tried to do throughout the TVA to have all kinds of strange things from different timelines and different worlds popping up in terms of props, like the Infinity Stones in the mail cart and stuff like that.

Q: What was it like working with Tom Hiddleston, who is a producer on Loki?

It was very exciting to have this opportunity to take the character and his storyline in a different direction. It became all the more exciting when I read the scripts and I saw the type of journey they were going to take the character on.

Tom is a professor of Loki, basically. After all, ten years or so of playing the character; he knows it better than anybody and he has an in-depth understanding of the character and his backstory; the character’s family relationships and he was really helpful in giving a little talk to all the department heads about the background of his character, which was very informative.

Q: Recently, Loki series director Kate Herron said that 90 percent of production sets were physical. Does this include the world of The Void, and can you tell us more about how you brought it to life?

That’s true. That was what was unique about this show, because of my own design approach, and my goal in creating this large monolithic brutalist environment, I felt strongly that the sets needed to be built kinda wholly and that they needed to have the ceilings in-tact. This was also supported by Loki cinematographer Autumn, in that the way of her own style of photography is very wide and low-angled photography, which is why for both of our creative goals, it made a lot of sense to build these sets like completed and 360-degree environments.

For the TVA, that was almost always the case, with the exception of when you saw outside a window. With the Void (in Loki Episode 5), a lot of that was built practically as well. What I can tell you is that we build a large piece of this landscape on a soundstage, which was about 150 feet by 200 feet of undulating wilderness terrain. In that, we would bring in these different scenery elements on different days to make it feel like different places within the Void.

For example, one day there was the bus stop terrain where we meet Loki. One day it was the giant head. One day it was the drive-in movie theatre where we find Sylvie. All of these things were brought in and we shot there over the course of seven days. The terrain was designed in such a way that depending on what angle you shot, it felt like a very different place. Backgrounds were put in during post-production in visual effects. The Loki palace, where the Loki variants kind of hang out, the bowling alley, all of that was also a 360-degree built set as well.

Q: What was the most challenging set of the entire Loki series that you had to work on?

We had a lot of very ambitious sets but I think the city of Sharoo at the end of Loki Episode 3: Lamentis was a very technical set. The goal was to create this virtual one-in, that appears as a single shot. This was a very involved and elaborate process of choreography, basically.

All the different departments were involved to make this happen because as we watch the sequence, we see tons of actors running around, there are explosions happening, the camera’s panning up to see the planet above crumbling and asteroids pelting the surface.

There was a lot of planning that went through at the very beginning. We brought the paper models of this to Autumn, our cinematographer and creative director, to use to plan some of their shots. One day, we had some more information that fed back to the art department where we developed more involved and elaborate drawings and models which again, fed back to them. In this way, we had kind of an iterative conversation to arrive at what the design was.

So, as we start to build the set, many of the department heads came to visit and check the progress. We rehearsed what the shot was going to be, so we could exactly fine-tune the set to meet the needs of this shot and see where the edits needed to be. In order to do this, we needed to adjust the exact width of the roads or move a piece of scenery here and then figure out exactly, okay, there’s going to be an explosion coming out of the ground here and another explosion coming out of the building here and this is when the camera looks up to the sky and sees the planet explode. This is where the window breaks and this is where the guy jumps out and grabs him and there’s a fight.

There are many, many people involved; Monique Garderton, our stunt coordinator, Kate Herron, the director, and also the special effects team, and of course, visual effects, deeply involved, and Richard Graves, who is kind of our AD (Assistant Director), the circus leader of all of it, organizing everybody to kind of work on this thing altogether. It’s the sort of thing that involves so many different departments that it can only really be discovered when working in a big group together.

I would say that was maybe the most challenging technically because there were so many logistical parameters and so many moving parts.

Q: What are your thoughts on diversity in the production of the creative industry?

I think that it is critically important. As somebody who is myself an immigrant, I was born in Iran and my family moved here when I was quite young. I’m super happy to see the direction that the industry is going in. I think Marvel has been particularly excellent in providing leadership in this way and I honestly have to give a lot of credit to Kate Herron, our director.

Almost more than any other project I’ve been on, she prioritised inclusivity and diversity. I mean, lots of people, don’t get me wrong, it’s on every project and on everyone’s mind, but I think Kate went above and beyond because it’s so fundamental to her worldview and she’s such a sensitive soul in this way. One of the many ways in that it was such a joy to work with Kate and I’m very proud of the many different ethnicities we’re representing, and how many women we’ve had. In our art department, we had close to fifty men and women.

It’s important and leads to better creative results that are more fully realized and more representative of what the fans really want.

[rimmers-swimming-certificate]

Red Dwarf fanfic - Patience

The sleeping quarters on the new ship were bigger and a little more luxurious than the ones that Rimmer remembered. The last time he had been on Red Dwarf, or at least on Red Dwarf in this universe, it had been very different. This was an entirely new, upgraded model, rebuilt by nanobots for reasons that Rimmer still didn’t entirely understand, and from what he had seen of it so far, it was the kind of ship a second technician would have dreamed of being assigned to. Everything about it was better. Even the vending machines were more intelligent, better stocked, and probably much less prone to clogging.

In many ways — actually, probably in every way — it was better than the ship they had used to call home, but it was better in that ‘nice but not yet familiar’ way that a new car was better. It was going to take time to figure out what all the fancy new buttons did, and where to find the headlights and the windscreen wipers. It was going to take time before it felt completely comfortable. As someone who had spent years hopping between dimensions and encountering things and people that were familiar, yet subtly different from the ones that he knew, Rimmer was sure it was going to take time before it felt like home.

Lister didn’t seem to be having any such trouble. Of course, he had a head start on getting used to the place. To Rimmer’s relief, Lister, unlike the ship, hadn’t changed one bit. A little older, maybe, but otherwise identical in every way to the man that Rimmer remembered. He lounged slobbily on a sofa at the other side of the room, humming a tuneless tune under his breath as he casually flicked through the well-thumbed pages of a magazine aimed at women half his age and filled with celebrity gossip over three million years out of date.

All around him was a growing collection of junk. He had, predictably enough, already started to fill every available surface of the living area, and part of the floor, with things he had found around the ship. As though he sensed Rimmer watching him, Lister lowered the magazine and glanced over at him. “Hey,” he said, sounding genuinely pleased to see him. “You’re back in blue.”

Rimmer looked down at his clothing. It had been time. Now that the other Rimmer had left, and taken the Wildfire with him, it was official: he was himself again. It felt good; familiar, like putting on a comfortable pair of old shoes. Ace’s clothes had never felt like that. He nodded.

“What are you doing standing in the doorway?” Lister asked.

Rimmer took a few steps into the room, to allow the door to close behind him. “Just thinking I should get my stuff out of storage,” he said. He made a show of looking at the assorted junk. “While there’s still somewhere left to put it.”

Lister nodded. “You’re still planning on bunking with me then?” he asked.

Honestly, it had never even occurred to Rimmer not to. The ship certainly had enough quarters to spare; they didn’t need to be living in each other's pockets, but he just couldn’t imagine living any other way. For all he had used to complain about Lister's snoring, he had still occasionally had trouble drifting off to sleep on the Wildfire because it was too quiet. For years, when he had woken up in the middle of the night after a bad dream, or had some funny thought occur to him as he drifted off to sleep, he had instinctively tried to talk to Lister about it only to find himself alone.

He shrugged, attempting to give the impression that he didn’t mind one way or another. “Yeah, I’ll probably stick around here,” he said. A horrible thought occurred. He had just assumed he would be welcome, Lister had certainly seemed pleased to have him back on the ship, but what if he wanted his own space? “I mean… If that’s okay with you of course,” he added.

“Yeah, ‘course it is,” Lister told him. “I’ll help you move your stuff out of storage in the morning.” He grinned widely. “It’s not the same around here without your swimming certificates and newspaper clippings brightening the place up.”

Rimmer breathed a silent sigh of relief. “He didn’t have swimming certificates then?” he asked. “The other me?” He tried to keep the jealousy out of his voice, but he heard it anyway. It had been a shock to return home to find another Rimmer, a living Rimmer, no less, in his place. Not only a shock, but confusing too. For a time, he had been convinced that the computer was wrong and he had landed in the wrong dimension.

“Yeah, he did,” Lister told him. “But he took them with him.”

Rimmer nodded. He hadn’t had the opportunity to do that. When he had left, only Lister had known the truth, the others had thought he had died. It would have given the game away if Ace, who had happened to be there at the time, had mysteriously decided to take all of Rimmer’s keepsakes with him when he had headed back out into the unknown.

“I still can’t believe you convinced him to go,” Lister added. “I mean, considering how much work it was to get you to take the plunge. And he was a version of you with no experience at all of parallel universes and no clue about half the smeg he might run into out there.” Lister shook his head in apparent amazement. “When I first met him I thought he was exactly the same as you; you before you died, I mean. He changed a bit while we were in prison, loosened up a bit, if you can believe it, but I figured maybe not having to worry about duties and exams and all that stuff was good for him. Now, I think maybe he was different all along. I mean, he must’ve been, right?”

“How should I know?” Rimmer snapped. Honestly, he hadn’t known him well enough to say. For some reason though, it made him feel better that there might be differences between them. “He never met the real Ace. Maybe not knowing what an insufferable git he was helped.” Not knowing what he might run into out there had probably been a factor too. Rimmer wondered whether he should feel guilty about that. He hadn’t lied exactly, but he had emphasised having his own ship and being a hero side of things over the dangers.

Lister shook his head. “I don’t get it, Rimmer. You were Ace. How can you still hate him?”

“Easily,” Rimmer said. “Sticking on a wig and doing a silly voice doesn’t change who you are, you know. I wasn’t Ace, I was an Ace, just like your other Rimmer is now.”

Lister shrugged, then nodded. “Fair enough.”

Rimmer cleared his throat and folded his arms nervously across his chest. “Are you going to miss him?”

“Ace?”

“The other me.” What he really wanted to ask was, ‘did you miss me?’, but he couldn’t ask that. He couldn't bear it if the answer was no.

Lister frowned thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s only been a couple of days since he left,” he said. “And I’ve got you back… I mean we’ve got you back, so it’s not the same as when you left.” He shrugged. “But yeah, I probably will, a bit.”

Rimmer nodded. That was good. Someone should, and he knew that the others wouldn’t. He brushed a hand down his uniform tunic, then glanced around the room again. “Nice junk collection,” he said.

“It’s not junk,” Lister told him. “It’s salvage.”

“Salvage means things rescued from a shipwreck, Lister. This is junk you found while rooting through the belongings of your former crewmates.”

“Yeah well whatever it is, don’t worry I’ll make room for your stuff,” Lister promised. “You’re lucky it’s all still there, by the way. The others wanted to throw it out.”

A stab of irritation struck him at the thought of that. “Throw it out? My stuff? Why?”

“They thought you were dead, man.” Lister shrugged. “And I guess they’re not as sentimental as I am.”

Translation: they hated him, and they had wanted to get rid of any reminders of his existence. They had probably tried to eject it from an airlock the instant he had left the ship.

“We were still all living on Starbug at the time, don’t forget.” Lister added. “We didn’t have as much room and, well, most of it wasn’t stuff we had any use for.” Lister hesitated. “I think Cat might have been interested in Rachel, but don’t worry, I kept her safe for you.”

A muscle began to twitch just below his left eye at the thought of Cat and Rachel. Not that he had touched her since well before he had died, not even after he had got his hard light drive. Lister was right; Starbug was small, and he wouldn’t have been able to bear the embarrassment of someone walking in on them. He couldn’t imagine wanting to try it now, either. Rachel had been good to him, but it was over between them. Still, the thought of Cat touching her turned his stomach. “Thanks,” he said.

Lister nodded. “Maybe in return you can tell me a bit about what you got up to while you were off being a hero.”

Rimmer didn��t reply. He glanced around the room, looking for a way to change the subject. He strode over to a shelf filled with Lister’s things and picked up a packet of playing cards. The backs of the cards showed soft porn images of women, and he knew instantly that Lister had liberated them from Petersen’s quarters. He quickly checked the pack for anything disgusting, Finding it clean, he held it up to Lister. “Fancy a game?” he asked.

Lister looked at him suspiciously. “I’m going to get it out of you, Rimmer.”

“It’s not a secret,” Rimmer insisted. “I’ve just got back. Give me some time to be myself again before you make me talk about pretending to be him. Now, gin rummy?” he suggested. “Speed? Or how about snap?”

Lister shook his head, still looking suspicious. “Not with those cards. They’re useless. Every single one has a different picture on the back, so all you have to do is memorise which set of breasts belongs to each card. I’ll play later though, with a real pack. In fact, let's have a poker night tonight. All four of us. It’s been a while.”

Rimmer nodded. A quick glance at the deck confirmed that Lister was correct about the cards. He shuffled the assorted sets of breasts, sat down at the table and started to deal himself a game of patience.

“What’re you doing?” Lister asked.

Rimmer glanced over at him again. The magazine was discarded on the floor now, next to a dirty, curry-smeared plate and one — not a pair, just one — dirty sock. Lister was peering at him over the back of the sofa with apparent interest. “Patience,” Rimmer told him.

Lister got up from the sofa. He stepped around the magazine and old plate, and made his way over to the other side of the room, where he folded his arms and leaned against the wall, watching as Rimmer continued to arrange the cards on the table.

Rimmer watched him out of the corner of his eye, as he turned over a card and started to play. Lister continued to stare down at the game as though it was the most interesting thing that had happened aboard the ship in months, and it was a little distracting. “Lister, what are you doing?” Rimmer asked, finally.

“Watching you,” Lister told him.

Rimmer put down the card he had in his hand, and turned to look at him. “Yes, I can see that. What I meant was, why are you watching me?”

Lister shrugged. “I just wanted to see what you were going to do.”

Rimmer turned over another card. He couldn’t use it, so he dropped it on the reject pile and picked up another. “I told you what I’m doing. I’m playing patience.”

“Oh!” Lister grinned and shook his head. “Right, that makes sense. I thought you were telling me to be patient. I thought you were going to do something interesting.”

Rimmer looked up at him incredulously. “The game is called patience, Lister. You know, solitaire? Did you switch brains with the Cat while I was away or something?”

“No, I just…” Lister gave him an embarrassed grin. “I just thought maybe you were going to do a card trick or something.”

Rimmer turned over another card and placed it on top of one already on the table. “Lister, the whole time we’ve known each other, have you ever once seen me show the slightest interest in performing card tricks?”

“Well, no.” Lister pulled out the chair at the opposite side of the table and sat down. He looked down at the cards. “But you’ve been away a while, haven’t you? I figured maybe you picked it up while you were off being Ace.”

Rimmer turned over another card, placed it on the table and made several more moves. “I didn’t,” he said.

“Well you can’t blame me for not knowing that,” Lister told him. “You’ve been back nearly a whole week now and you’ve barely said a single word about what you got up to out there.”

“And so you leapt to the obvious assumption that I’d spent my time learning how to do sleight of hand tricks?”

“Well, no. Not until I thought you were about to do one.”

Rimmer shook his head dismissively and turned over another card in his game. “I did a lot while I was away,” he said. “Far too much to tell you about in just a week. Dozens of heroic rescues, overthrew a couple of fascist dictatorships, organised an uprising or two.” He shrugged in what he hoped was a modest way. “Nothing special.”

Lister smirked.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, it’s just you did that hair flick thing again. It just looks a bit silly when you don’t have the wig on.”

Had he? He hadn’t noticed. He glared at Lister, just on the off-chance that he was messing with him. “No I didn’t,” he said.

“Rimmer, you did. You do it about five times a day. Maybe you should just start wearing the wig again, at least that way you’d have enough hair to have to actually flick it out of your eyes.” He shrugged. “Or you could grow yours out.”

Rimmer shook his head. “Lister, there’s a reason that Ace decided to wear a wig; my hair just doesn’t do that. Anyway, I passed the wig on to the other Rimmer.” Like passing a baton in an endless relay race around the assorted parallel universes, he had handed over the wig to the living version of himself that the nanobots had created in his own universe, and sent him on his way. “And like I was saying, I did loads while I was away, and I’ll tell you about it one day. I’ve just been too busy settling back in.”

“Right, absolutely, makes sense,” Lister told him. “Well, except for the part where you haven’t even got your stuff out of storage yet. Anyway, you’re not busy now.”

He gritted his teeth. Technically, he supposed Lister was right; he wasn’t busy. That didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it. Not yet. One day, maybe. If it ever came up in conversation naturally, rather than when he was being grilled for information. And if it never did, well, maybe Lister would tire of asking after a few years. He pointed at the cards on the table. “I am busy.”

Lister looked decidedly unimpressed as he looked at the game. “Come on Rimmer, the only reason people play that is to kill time because they’re bored. And it’s not even a good way to kill time. Why don’t you watch a film or something, like a normal person?”

“I’m not ‘killing time’, Lister. I play because I enjoy it.”

Lister looked unconvinced. “Okay then, so how come I never saw you play it before?”

Rimmer turned over another card. “When did I have a chance before?” he asked. “Before I died I was always busy. When I wasn’t on duty, I was revising, or trying to convince you to pick up after yourself. I didn’t have a lot of time for sitting around playing games.”

“Yeah, okay.” Lister shrugged. “But I never saw you do it after the crew got wiped out either.”

Rimmer sighed in frustration and slammed another card onto the table. “Lister, why are you so interested in why I’m playing a game? I just wanted to.” God, Lister was infuriating. He could be a master irritant when he wanted to, skilled in the not so subtle art of being annoying. And what was worse, was that he revelled in it. Once he got an idea in his head, he would keep going until he got his way. Rimmer had missed him, more than he had ever realised he would, but he definitely hadn’t missed this. “Can’t you just smeg off and read your magazine, leave me to it?” he tried, knowing that Lister wouldn’t.

Lister didn’t smeg off. Instead, he tucked his chair a little further under the table, rested his chin in a hand and looked down at the cards on the table as though he were the one playing the game.

Rimmer watched him for a moment then sighed. “Fine. If you must know, the reason I didn’t play then, was because I was still soft light. Not being able to pick things up doesn’t exactly make it easy to play cards, you know. Just enlisting the skutters’ help to let me play poker was bad enough, and that doesn't take half the dexterity that this does.”

“Dexterity?” Lister shook his head dismissively. “I thought you said you weren’t doing card tricks. How much dexterity does it take to turn over a playing card and put it down in the right place?”

It took a lot more that Lister could ever realise, and a level that a skutter just didn’t possess. Not unless you were willing to spend about twenty minutes on every move. Rimmer shook his head. “Lister, until you know the frustration of spending hours coaching some idiot of a skutter to perform a simple task that should take two seconds, only to have to watch them screw it up over and over again, I’ll thank you to keep your mouth shut on the subject.”

Lister looked at him, and for a moment Rimmer thought that he was going to argue. Instead, he frowned, then reached for the pile of cards. He moved slowly, as though paying attention to every minuscule movement of his hand and arm as his fingers slid the card from the top of the pile and turned it over. “Okay, yeah,” he said, and handed the card to Rimmer. He looked thoughtful for a moment. “It’s probably a bit like that fake arm Kryten gave me that one time,” he said. “Took me forever just to make the stupid thing pick up a smegging ball. Something like this? There’d have been no way.”

Rimmer looked up at him sharply. “What?”

“Well, until Kryten upped the sensitivity, but that wasn’t any good either, ‘cos then it had a mind of its own.”

Rimmer tried to make sense of what he was hearing, but he couldn’t. He looked at Lister, specifically at Lister’s arms; they both appeared normal. They were covered by the sleeves of his jacket, making it difficult to be sure, but as far as he could tell, they looked exactly the same as they had always done. He allowed his gaze to move to Lister’s hands, where he could see bare skin. They both looked fine too; completely normal. “Lister, what are you talking about?” he asked. “What fake arm?”

“Oh, right,” Lister said. “You weren’t here for that.” He shrugged like it was unimportant, and pointed to one of the cards already turned over on the table. “You can move that one,” he said. “To there.”

Rimmer ignored him, and instead continued to stare at Lister’s hands. They both looked real. They both moved like they were real. If one of them wasn’t, it was the best prosthetic he had ever seen. “Lister, are you trying to tell me that you have a prosthetic arm?” he asked.

“What?” Lister grinned as though that was the funniest thing he’d heard all year. “Of course I don’t.” He flexed the fingers of his right hand compulsively. “Rimmer, have you ever seen those things? Trust me, if I did, you’d have noticed by now. He reached for the card he had told Rimmer to move, and moved it himself.

“Lister, don’t do that!” Rimmer snapped. He snatched the card up and moved it back to where it had been before.”

“I was only helping!”

“Well don’t. This is a one man game; you’re not supposed to help. For all you know, I was saving that move for later.” He looked at the cards, desperately trying to find another move to make first; any other move, just to prove his point. Typically, there were none. He scowled at the cards as though they had done it on purpose, then grabbed the one Lister had moved, and moved it again. “So if you didn’t lose an arm, what were you doing with a prosthetic?” he asked.

Lister shrugged. “I never said I didn’t lose it. I just kinda…” he shrugged, “found it again. But technically I didn’t lose it actually. I knew where it was, it’s just that Kryten hacked it off with a laser scalpel and flushed it out the airlock.” He winced and flexed his fingers again. “Anyway, stop changing the subject.”

“Yes, because the subject of exactly how many times I’ve played a particular card game in the past is infinitely more fascinating than the story of how you lost and somehow found an arm. Come on, what happened?”

“Actually, the subject was what you got up to while you were Ace,” Lister corrected. “Talking about your stupid card game came later.”

“Lister, I want to know how you lost an arm,” Rimmer demanded.

Lister frowned thoughtfully. “Oh, do you?” he asked. “Okay, let’s trade. If I tell you this story, you’ve got to tell me one of yours. Deal?”

Rimmer sighed, the idea that this whole thing might have been a setup suddenly occurred to him, but he really did want to know. He folded his arms and glared at Lister admonishingly. “Okay, fine,” he agreed. “But it better be a good story.”

“Killer virus,” Lister told him. “Got snogged by a three million year old corpse, caught this thing called Epideme.” He shrugged. “Kochanski and Kryten got the idea that they could chase it into my arm, then cut it off.”

Rimmer blinked. “You got snogged by a what?” he frowned. “Wait a minute, that wouldn’t work. You can’t just chase a virus into one part of the body and lop it off, or else they’d have been able to cure everything that way.”

“Turns out you can,” Lister told him. “Or you could with this one, anyway. Except for a few bits of the virus escaped back into my body, so I ended up armless for nothing. In the end they actually had to kill me so Epideme left, then they brought me back to life.”

Rimmer blinked. “Right. So you died?”

“Well, I mean not really. Not like you did, anyway. It doesn’t count if it’s only for a minute or so.”

That was a lot to take in. “And getting the arm back?”

Lister shrugged. “Nanobots. You know that part already.”

“I knew they rebuilt the ship and the crew. You neglected to mention the part where they also rebuilt you.“

“Out of the whole thing, honestly that seemed like the least interesting part.”

Rimmer shook his head. “It’s a part of the story, it’s relevant. And how could you think I wouldn’t be interested in you agreeing to let Kryten cut off your arm to save you from a deadly space virus?”

“Honestly? It wasn’t exactly something I was eager to relive. I only brought it up now because I figured I’d be able to get a story out of you in return.”

“So you did trick me,” Rimmer said. “You lured me in with a hint of a story, knowing I’d want to know more, just so that you could wheedle information out of me in return. I knew it!”

Lister grinned. “Yeah.” The grin faded. “But having one arm sucked like you wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t play the guitar.”

Rimmer smirked. “Well in that case I’m surprised you found anybody willing to help you track down the nanobots. Personally, I’d have been completely willing to sacrifice your arm in order to silence your guitar.”

“Smeg off. You would have as well, wouldn’t you? It was my right arm too. Do you know how crap I am at everything with my left hand? I could hardly do anything for myself.”

Rimmer turned over another card in his game of patience. “You’d have learned. It was only one arm, so it’s not that bad, is it? I didn’t have any arms at all — any body at all — for years, and you didn’t hear me whinging about it.”

“Seriously?” Lister stared at him incredulously. “Rimmer, you used to whinge about it all the time.”

“I didn’t. Not all the time, anyway.” He thought back to the time after he had first been activated. “I mean, maybe I complained a little bit at first, but all things considered I think I handled the whole thing pretty well. Better than you would have done, anyway. And even if I had complained, I’d say that was a whinge-worthy problem. Losing one arm, not so much.”

“This is why I didn’t tell you about this before,” Lister told him. “I knew you’d find some way to trivialise it.”

“I’m not,” Rimmer assured him. “I’m sure the whole thing was very traumatic for you. How terrible it must have been, having to brush your teeth with your left hand.”

Lister shook his head. “Fine. Go on then, you owe me a story. And it better be a good one too.”

Rimmer mulled over his options. He had stories, of course he did. The issue wasn’t thinking of a story, it was thinking of a story that would paint him in the right light; one that Lister would be impressed by, but that didn’t make him sound too much like that insufferable git Ace. He needed something that would remind Lister why he, Rimmer, the Rimmer without a wig, was the superior Rimmer.

He couldn’t think of a single one.

“You’re right, you know,” he said, hoping to fill the time. “I didn’t play patience before. I picked it up while I was off being Ace.”

Lister nodded. “Yeah, I figured,” he said. “It couldn’t have been all daring missions and rescuing the damsel in distress, could it?”

“Sometimes it wasn’t a damsel, men needed rescuing too, you know. In fact, they needed rescuing more than the women because they have a tendency to do more stupid things and get themselves into trouble.”

Lister shrugged. “Fine, so it couldn’t be all rescuing the damsel or,” he hesitated, “…or damson in distress.”

“I don’t think that’s the right word.”

Lister waved a hand dismissively. “My point is, there had to have been some downtime in between. And it’s not like you had us lot around to talk to, so you would’ve needed something to do.”

“I kept myself busy enough.”

“Well yeah, but I bet because you’re, well, you, even though you probably could’ve spent the night in bed with whatever lucky sod you just saved, you’d’ve probably convinced yourself they didn’t actually like you or something, and decided to spend your nights alone in your ship. So you needed something to do, so you got yourself a pack of cards.”

Rimmer sighed. On the one hand, it was nice to be back around someone who understood him. On the other, sometimes it would be nice if Lister didn’t know him quite so perfectly. “I didn’t have to ‘get’ the cards, they were already there, left behind by a previous Ace.”

Lister shook his head. “That wasn’t really the point.”

“Fine. Well if you must know, Lister, I did have a few liaisons. I even had to turn down a couple of marriage proposals. But in-between all that, there was still a lot of time alone. There were times when I would jump into dimension after dimension and find them completely empty. I don’t know whether humans just never evolved there, or whether they wiped themselves out before I arrived, or if I was just in completely the wrong part of the universe. All I know is, there were times that I went for months without speaking to another person. So I had to find something to do.”

Lister nodded. He was quiet for a long moment, then folded his arms tightly and nodded. “Sounds lonely,” he said quietly.

It had been. Long stretches of loneliness and boredom interspersed with the occasional terrifying situation.

Lister was looking at him now with something approaching sympathy in his expression. Lister understood loneliness; a man who had surrounded himself with a large group of friends, who had been friends with everybody, who had thrived on and drawn energy from the social interactions that left Rimmer drained and anxious. A man who had found himself marooned in deep space, the last survivor of the human race.

“It was fine,” Rimmer assured him. It was only a partial lie, half of the time it really had been. Well, a bit less than half. More like a quarter. Or fifteen percent? He shook his head. “Okay yes, it was a bit lonely. But it’s your fault.”

“Mine? How’s it my fault? Because I convinced you to go?”

Actually, that was a good point too, but not the one Rimmer had been trying to make. He shook his head. “No. It’s your fault I couldn’t hack the solitude. Over the past however long it’s been, I must have got used to having you around.”

“So you’re mad at me because you missed me?”

Rimmer shook his head. “I‘m not mad at you, and I didn’t miss you, not specifically. I just missed not being alone; having someone to talk to.”

Lister grinned. “You did. You missed me,” he said.

“Fine. And what about you? Did you miss me?” He hadn’t meant to ask that, but now it was out there, he couldn’t take it back. He held his breath and waited for the reply.

Lister folded his arms. “Yeah, of course I did,” he admitted. He glanced away and dropped his voice to a mumbled whisper. “Even had a couple of dreams about you.”

Rimmer nodded in satisfaction. Lister hadn’t even been on his own. For some of that time, he had had a whole crew to keep him company, not to mention a version of Rimmer himself, and yet he still admitted to missing him. He smiled to himself, confident that he had come out the victor in this competition. “Wait,” he asked. “What kind of dreams?”

“Just dreams, not important.”

He decided to let it go for now. “So, your turn,” he said. “What else did I miss while I was off being a hero? Did Kryten hack off anybody else’s body parts?”

“One arm wasn’t enough for you?”

“Okay, maybe that’s enough dismemberment, but something else interesting must have happened while I was away.”

Lister frowned. “What, other than the entire crew, including you, coming back to life?”

“Other than that. I already know about that.”

“Well yeah, plenty happened,” Lister told him, “but you haven’t held up your side of the bargain yet, have you? A story about you sitting around in your ship playing cards on your own doesn’t exactly count, you know.”

“Of course it does. You never specified what the content of the story needed to be.”

“Suit yourself,” Lister told him, and turned over another of Rimmer’s cards. He placed it exactly where Rimmer would have put it, which allowed him to make five more moves and take two cards out of play. He moved to pick up another card.

“Fine,” Rimmer told him. “I’ll tell you one more story.”

Lister looked up.

“I rescued you once,” Rimmer told him. He hesitated. That wasn’t true, strictly speaking. “Well, no. Not you but another version of you. And it wasn’t much of a rescue either if I’m honest.”

“Great story, Rimmer. I’m on the edge of my seat!”

Rimmer scowled at him. “It was a couple of GELFs with a grudge, and they — the other crew — would have probably handled it fine if I hadn’t shown up, but I did, so I thought it was only right to lend a hand.” As he spoke, he heard himself slip unthinkingly into the Ace Rimmer accent he had perfected over the years. He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I kinda like it.”

Rimmer rolled his eyes and continued in his own accent. “He was a lot like you, the other Lister. If I hadn’t known better — well, if I hadn’t had a ship’s computer that could tell me better — I’d have genuinely believed I was home. It turned out his Rimmer had already left to become Ace, years earlier. When I showed up, the other Lister thought his Rimmer had come back.”

Lister winced. “Did you tell him he hadn’t?”

“I didn’t want to,” Rimmer admitted. He looked away. “Telling him that, was basically the same as telling him that his Rimmer was gone.”

“Yeah,” Lister said. “If I was him, I don’t know how I’d have…” He folded his arms and stopped talking abruptly.

Rimmer nodded. “This thing is, it was a bit more delicate than that. They’d been…” he hesitated, “They were pretty close. Closer than you and I.”

Lister frowned. “Closer than us? Rimmer, the only way they could possibly have been closer than us is if they were…” His eyes widened as understanding dawned. Rimmer nodded, and slowly a smile spread across Lister’s face. “Oh, right,” he said. “Right.”

“It turned out they’d been together for quite some time before he went off to be a hero,” Rimmer said. He shook his head. “The idiot.”

“Hey!” said Lister. “You’re saying sleeping with me makes him an idiot?”

Rimmer shook his head. “No. Well, yes, obviously he must have been. But what I meant was why would a version of me who had someone that loved him, give it all up to go off and be Ace? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Lister shrugged. “You did it.”

Rimmer looked at him for a long moment, trying to figure out exactly what Lister had meant by that.

Lister cleared his throat. “So, what did you think about that particular revelation?”

He considered the question. “Mostly, I thought that I really didn’t want to have to be the one to tell him his boyfriend had died. For a moment, I even thought about playing along, being his Rimmer for a day or two then telling him I had to go off and be a hero again.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

Rimmer shook his head. “Of course not.” He was still Ace at the time, and that would have been a cowardly move. Another time, another circumstance, maybe he would have done. “It wouldn’t have been fair to him.”

“Yeah,” Lister agreed. “Definitely not.”

Rimmer picked up another card, and rather than putting it down, he began to fidget with it, turning it over nervously in his hands. He cleared his throat. “I thought another thing too,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I thought about how glad I was, that there was at least one universe out there where I’d been brave enough to accept who I was.”

Lister nodded, and Rimmer got the impression that he wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t already known. “So how’d he take it?” he asked. “When you told him you weren’t his Rimmer?”

Rimmer continued to fidget with the playing card. “I think he already knew, really. I mean, I think he hoped I was his Rimmer, but he didn’t really believe it. He’d already accepted that he was gone. That’s how it works, isn’t it? As soon as you get into the ship and make your first jump that’s supposed to be it. It’s meant to be a one way trip, and he knew that.”

Lister nodded. “Meant to, anyway.”

“He asked me to stay,” Rimmer continued. “Not to replace his Rimmer or anything like that, just to make a home there. Stop leaping dimensions and just… just be me again. It was tempting, too.” In fact, he had stayed for a little while, but he had found that he needed to move on. “When I told him I needed to go, he’s the one that told me I should try to get home. I think he could tell my heart wasn’t in it anymore.”

“And so you came back,” Lister said. He smiled warmly. “I’m glad. No offence to the other Lister, but if you were going to settle down somewhere, it had to be here.”

“It wasn’t quite as simple as just ‘coming back’,” Rimmer told him. “It was actually very difficult. You can’t safely jump between similar dimensions, you know. It involved multiple jumps, a fair amount of danger, and a lot of luck. Of course, if I’d known you’d gone and made yourself a brand new Rimmer, I might have just stayed where I was.” He could hear the jealousy in his voice, and he didn’t care

Lister shook his head. “Come on, you know that wasn’t planned. Anyway, he wasn’t you. I mean, he was you, but he wasn’t you you, was he?”

That was the kind of thing that Rimmer might have rolled his eyes at, once upon a time. Now, it made perfect sense. He had met a lot of people who both were, and were not, people he had known. It was a strange feeling, one that he had never quite got used to. “Still, I was surplus to requirements around here, wasn’t I?” He was fishing and he knew it. He didn’t care.

Lister seemed to know it too. It was obvious that he was playing along as he shook his head sympathetically. “Of course not!” He paused, then shrugged, “I mean, two of you would’ve been a bit too much to handle, but you’re always welcome here, Rimmer. Always.”

Satisfied, Rimmer nodded. “And I suppose it’s good that you replaced me,” he said. “Because then I could replace Ace. If there hadn’t been another me here, it would’ve meant the chair was broken.” He shrugged. “Not that that’s exactly a tragedy though. Does the universe really need some smug git in a wig flying around being heroic? Really?”

“I didn’t replace you,” Lister insisted. “And I think the universe probably does need an Ace. Just like it needs an endless ouroboros cycle of List…” he stopped, then smiled. “Okay, my turn,” he said. “While you were off being a smug git in a wig, I found out who my parents were.”

Rimmer stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. And you’ll never guess who they are.”

Rimmer resisted the urge to groan. “It’s going to be something ridiculous, isn’t it?” he said. “Like you’re actually related to royalty or something.” He was never going to hear the end of it; Lister was going to be constantly lording it over him. “You’re the illegitimate son of some King or Queen, dumped in a pub by a jealous relative whose claim to the throne your birth put at risk.”

Lister grinned and shook his head. “Er, no. Not exactly,” he said.

Rimmer breathed a silent sigh of relief. The only thing worse than finding out something like that would be… oh smeg. “You’re my brother, aren’t you? Like in that reality we hallucinated when we encountered the despair squid.” Oh, that was all he needed, just when he was beginning to come to terms with the idea that he might like Lister. It was typical, and so in-keeping with his luck that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out sooner. “How the smeg did that happen?” He rested his head in his hands. “I didn’t even know my mum had been to Liverpool.”

Lister laughed and shook his head. “I have to give you this much, Rimmer, you’ve got a good imagination.”

“So we’re not brothers?”

“No, of course we’re not.”

Rimmer began to breathe a sigh of relief, then hesitated. “And not half brothers? Or cousins? Second cousins once removed?”

“We’re no relation at all. Well, at least as far as I know.”

Rimmer exhaled slowly. “Right. Good.”

“It’s even weirder than that, actually.” Lister paused, either for effect or to make sure Rimmer was listening, Rimmer wasn’t sure. “It turns out I’m my own dad.”

Rimmer frowned. That couldn’t be right. He looked at Lister, searching for any hint that this was some kind of a joke, but he couldn’t see any. Finally, he shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. But it’s true. Me and Krissie had a baby, and it was me. Then I…”

“Wait,” Rimmer interrupted. “You and Kochanski?” He tried to ignore the stab of jealousy that came with that particular revelation, and failed. “I thought you said you never got back together with her. You said she was too hung up on the other Lister. You said…”

“Hey.” Lister stopped his words with a gentle hand on his arm. “Relax. She was still too into the other Lister, and I can’t really blame her either. I mean, they were together a long time; as long as me and you. And over that time she’d moulded him into some kinda weird, opera-loving anti-Lister. I mean, I was never going to live up to that, and I didn’t want to either. All I had to do was make a… uh, a genetic donation, and she was planning on raising the baby with him.”

“Oh,” Rimmer said. “Well, good. Not that I care, of course.”

“Nah, ‘course you don’t,” Lister agreed. “Anyway, it’s probably for the best that she wasn’t into me; I was a bit too hung up on somebody else myself too, if I’m honest.”

Rimmer wondered who it could have been. Lister’s own Kochanski, he supposed. After all, the one that had ended up aboard Starbug with them had been a different Kochanski from a different dimension. If the years they had spent together had changed the other Lister to the point where he was almost unrecognisable. Maybe there had been differences between the two Kochanskis that Lister hadn’t been able to see past.

“Anyway, that doesn’t matter,” Lister continued. “So when the baby was born, we raised him for a couple of months until he was about the same age I’d been when they found me, then I went back in time and left him under that pool table so that he could be found, grow up, get stranded three million years in the future, work this all out for himself and then do the same thing to his own kid." He paused, then frowned. “Who will be me as well.”

Rimmer pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head slowly from side to side as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. Of all the nonsensical things that they had encountered during their time in space, this had to be one of the most improbable, for so many reasons. “Lister, before I dignify this with an answer, tell me, are you being serious?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. Of course I am. You don’t think I could just make up a story like that, do you?”

He probably could but it didn’t sound like something he would do. For all he had always pretended not to mind, Rimmer knew how much not knowing the truth about where he came from had bothered Lister. He also knew how much it had hurt him having to give up the twins; he wouldn’t joke about giving another child away.

“So, if you’re your own dad,” he said in an attempt to break the tension, “that makes Kochanski your mum, right? So is that why you never got together?”

“What?” Lister pulled a face. “No. Why would it be?”

“Well, because she’s your mum,” Rimmer repeated. “I mean, you’ve got to admit it would be a bit weird.”

Lister folded his arms. “It’s not like that though, is it? She’s the kid’s mum, not mine.” Even as he said it, he didn’t sound convinced.

“But the kid is you.”

“Yeah, but…” Lister shook his head.

“Technically, it sounds like she’s your grandmother too,” Rimmer added, with a smile to show that he was joking. He wasn’t, actually, but Lister didn’t need to know that. “And your great grandmother.”

Lister folded his arms and rolled his eyes. “Smeg off,” he said. “You’re just happy because you think you’ve got a chance with me now, like that other Rimmer did.”

Rimmer sat back in his seat. He genuinely hadn’t thought he was being that obvious. He looked at Lister, trying to decide whether he was joking, or whether he was feeling particularly empathic today. “No I’m not,” he lied.

“Oh,” said Lister. “Well that’s too bad.”

Rimmer blinked.

“So, did you ever figure out where the universes diverged?” Lister said.

It was such an abrupt change of subject that it took him a moment or two to realise that Lister was talking about the other him again. “More or less, yes. It was around the time I got my hard light drive. Remember that night we stayed up all night drinking and talking about things?”

Lister nodded. “I remember you talking for hours about different textures and temperatures, trying to make me understand why it was so great to be able to feel for the first time in years.” He smiled. “Must’ve been amazing.”

It had been. It still was, even if he sometimes took it for granted now. “Well, from what I can gather, that night played out a little differently in that universe, and ended up with the two of us… well, the two of them…”

“Gotcha.”

“What I couldn’t figure out is why that happened. There must have been something before that that changed things enough that we felt able to do that, but whatever it was, it must have been so small that the other Lister and I couldn’t figure it out.”

Lister shrugged. “Might be because there wasn’t anything,” he said. “Sometimes things just happen, you know. I bet I can guess exactly how the whole thing started out; Rimmer put his hand on Lister’s, to feel it I mean, and Lister grabbed hold of it, pulled him in closer and kissed him. Right?”

Rimmer blinked. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never asked for a play-by-play. Why?”

“Because that’s what happens, isn’t it? When realities split. You have a choice, you make it, and the other version of you makes the opposite choice.”

Rimmer nodded. “More or less.”

“So here’s the thing,” Lister told him. He picked up the pile of unplayed cards on the table and ran his fingernail down the side of the stack. “In this reality, when you touched my hand I was… well, I was kinda tempted to pull you closer and kiss you, but I chickened out.”

Rimmer stared at him, trying to process what he was hearing. “Why?”

“Because you were talking about all these different sensations you’d been missing out on, and how amazing it was, and I thought you might want to experience another one.”

“Not why did you want to, you gimboid. I meant why didn’t you?”

“Oh…” Lister hesitated. “Well, like I said, I chickened out. I thought you might not like it, or you’d turn me down. And maybe you would have. I mean, if anything that could happen did happen in one universe or another, there must also be a universe where I kissed you, but instead of whatever happened in the dimension you landed in, you freaked out over it and things got really weird between us. So I mean, maybe I dodged a bullet.”

Rimmer pursed his lips. He wanted to insist that wouldn’t have happened, and maybe he was right, but there was a good chance he wasn’t. After all, he already knew that theirs wasn’t the reality where they had ended up together. Not then anyway. He sighed. “You’re probably right.”

A shadow of disappointment fell over Lister’s face.

“No, I mean, it was different then,” Rimmer stammered. “It was a long time ago. Just because I might have reacted badly then, doesn't mean I’d do the same thing now, does it?”

“I dunno.” Lister looked at him like he was trying to figure out whether Rimmer was serious, and if so, how serious. “Does it?”

Lister put down the playing cards and rested his hand on the surface of the table. Not breaking eye contact with Lister, Rimmer slowly slid his hand across until the tips of their fingers touched. He kept going, until his hand rested on top of Lister’s. As he moved, he tried to remember how he had felt that night, when everything had been so new and every touch had felt amplified a hundredfold. He concentrated on the warmth of Lister’s skin in comparison to the cool air of their quarters, the difference between the texture of the soft back of his hand and the rougher skin of his knuckles.

He had been so afraid that night, convinced that the hard light drive wouldn’t last; that his bad luck would kick in and he would revert to his usual, soft light form, deprived once again of the ability to feel. He remembered thinking how much worse it was going to be, having experienced touch only to have it snatched away again, and he remembered how desperate he had been to cram as much sensation as he could into every second, before it was too late.

He had become complacent, he realised, as he pressed the tips of his fingers a little harder into the back of Lister’s hand, feeling the bones and tendons beneath the skin. He had become too used to it; started to take it for granted. He closed his eyes and savoured the sensation in a way that he hadn’t done in years.

After a moment, Lister placed his own free hand on top of Rimmer’s and simply held him for a while, Rimmer’s hand encased in Listers, feeling the warmth of his skin. Then, gently, he turned it over. When his hand lay palm upward on top of Lister’s, Lister began to trace the lines of Rimmer’s palm with his fingertips, then, when that was done, began to move his finger in slow, lazy circles. It felt good. It felt incredible, but it wasn’t what he had been expecting. He opened his eyes and looked at Lister, questioning.

“What? I wasn’t just going to grab you and go for a snog,” Lister told him. “I’m a bit more subtle than that. I mean, not much, but a bit.”

Slowly, he pulled Rimmer’s hand a little closer to him, lifting it from the table and toward his lips, then gently kissed his fingertips one at a time. Finally, he moved his grip further up Rimmer’s arm. Holding tightly at his arm at the elbow, he tugged gently. His grip was firm enough that he could lead Rimmer closer to him, but not so firm that Rimmer wouldn’t be able to back off if he wanted to. Rimmer didn’t want to.

Lister pulled him closer until he leaned far enough across the table that Lister could easily close the distance between them, then he touched his lips to Rimmer’s. Their lips brushed gently together, barely a kiss, barely even a touch. It left him wanting more. Rimmer leaned closer, trying to get more sensation, but Lister moved further back. He smiled and shook his head. “Wait for it,” he whispered. Rimmer felt his breath on his skin.

He moved a little closer, a fraction of a centimetre, and allowed Rimmer to feel the warmth of his skin and the softness of his lips as they pressed, slightly open, against his own. Lister’s hand snaked slowly around the back of his head, his fingers parting Rimmer’s curls as they worked their way through his hair. At the same time, Lister’s tongue teased Rimmer’s and Rimmer felt himself respond in kind.

For a moment, everything around then faded away. The living quarters, the ship, the years that they had been apart, everything but the moment. Rimmer was lost in sensation; drowning in it.

And then, it was over. All concept of time had abandoned him, and Rimmer had no idea how long it had been before they finally came up for air. At some point, he didn’t know when, he had closed his eyes. He opened them now to find himself staring directly into Lister’s eyes. Lister smiled nervously, and shrugged. “So, it’d have probably been a bit like that,” he said. “If I hadn’t chickened out that night, I mean.”

“Right,” Rimer said. He nodded, and sat back down again, unsure what he was supposed to do or say now. His game of patience was ruined, the cards scattered over the tabletop and on the floor. He tugged on the bottom of his uniform tunic, straightening any creases that might have appeared, and quickly ran his fingers through his hair in a futile effort to undo any damage Lister might have done to it. “Right,” he said again.

He could feel his own simulated heartbeat pounding in the hard light projection of his chest. His skin tingled everywhere that Lister had touched him, and he wanted more.

“Right,” he said, for a third time. He realised that he really should think of something else to say, but for some reason he was drawing a complete blank. He opened his mouth to speak again, and this time, closed it again.

“Well?” Lister asked. Rimmer could hear the apprehension in his voice, and see it on his face.

Rimmer took a slow, deep breath and tried to force his mind to regain the ability to speak. “That was…” he began, then faltered. He didn’t have the words to describe what that had been. Anything he might say would pale into insignificance in comparison to the real thing. He took another breath, slowly in and out. He needed to say something or it was going to start to get weird. “Lister, if you’d done that the day after I first got my hard light drive, you’d probably have shorted the damn thing out,” he said.

“What’s that mean?” Lister asked, appearing worried now.

Rimmer reached for him again. He grabbed clumsily at his hand before intertwining his fingers with Lister’s. “It means it was incredible,” he said. “But it would have been too much for me then. When I hadn’t been able to feel for all those years, suddenly experiencing something like that… it would have been overwhelming.” It was almost still too much for him now, but at the same time it hadn’t been enough. He wanted more. If Lister could do that with a few gentle touches, Rimmer wanted to know what else he could do.

“I mean, I’ve had a bit of time to think about it, so maybe it wouldn’t have been exactly like that,” Lister told him.

“So you’ve been thinking about it?”

“No.” Lister said, far too quickly. Then he shrugged and glanced away. “Well, you know, just now and then. Not all the time or anything like that. Just when I had nothing to do and my mind wandered.”

In other words, he had been daydreaming about it. About him. Of all the things Lister had told him about the things he had missed while he had been away, the deadly virus, the resurrection of the crew, finding out that Lister was his own father, somehow the revelation that Dave Lister had been daydreaming about him was the most unexpected. And the most wonderful.

“So,” Lister said. “It might have been too much for you then, but what about now? You’ve had a couple of years to get used to touch again, and I bet you had more than a couple of kisses while you were off being a hero, so…” his question tailed off, leaving it hanging in the air between them.

Rimmer thought about it. “It was still overwhelming,” he said honestly. “But I think…” he hesitated. “I think being overwhelmed now and then might be a good thing.”

“Want to try again?”

Rimmer nodded.

Lister got to his feet and pressed the manual lock on the door to their quarters. He offered a hand to Rimmer as he walked back past him, and when Rimmer accepted, steered him in the direction of the sofa. “Might be a bit comfier over here than leaning across a table,” he said.

He sat down and Rimmer sat next to him. He glanced down at his hands awkwardly, not sure what he was supposed to do.

“Hey, by the way,” Lister said as he edged himself a little closer and snaked a hand around Rimmer’s shoulders and then up into his hair again. “Don’t you think this gets you out of telling me stories. I still want to know everything you got up to when you were out there being Ace.”

Thank you to @coney-island-blitz for the beta on this!

[nobodyfamousposts]

Hey Nobody! 👋 Do you do short requests if someone has an interesting prompt? Or do you know any writers that would? I have an idea for some angsty Alya Salt that I can’t get out of my head, but unfortunately I suck at writing. *Where Alya goes to a journalism 101 lecture and they happen to use her interview with Lila as an example of what not to do. “Always check your sources!”*

Alya was excited. She had been looking forward to this web seminar on journalism for weeks now. After all her efforts, she had finally managed to score access to the live lecture being run by Victoria Berger, one of her role models in the field! It had taken quite a bit of effort and she still owed Marinette her soul and a date with Adrien for using her connection to Nadja to get this chance, but it was worth it! It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the day and she should be in class right now. She wasn’t going to miss an opportunity like this.

By the time she had managed to sneak away and get the laptop set up, the lecture had already started. Luckily, she hadn’t missed too much. There was Victoria already at the stand and beginning her lecture for those who were able to attend in person. Lucky! Maybe someday Alya would be able to get there.

She grinned. She could already see it now.

“But there is one thing that can make or break any reporter.”

Alya felt her skin tingle in excitement, pen at the ready to take notes.

“Facts.” The speaker stated, continuing her lecture. “You need to have facts and information that can be verified. It’s a form of science of its own, if you think about it. Much like any scientific experiment, it has to have two things—reliability and validity. Is the information you are trying to share valid—is it true? And is the information reliable—can other people investigating the information come to same conclusion?”

How true! She nodded, jotting the notes. But of course, she knew all this already. That was why she was already so successful.

“These two things are vital, and make all the difference between your work being a legitimate news source such as Le Monde or Le Figaro…or a tabloid like the Ladyblog.”

Alya froze as a tightness started in her throat.

It was an open forum, so viewers were allowed to ask questions. And naturally, one such question came up asking for clarification on this statement about the Ladyblog. Alya felt some relief that it didn’t have to be—that someone else clearly thought highly enough of the blog to question the statement. Because…she did such great work! How could her own idol see her blog as a tabloid?

“Misinformation is actually more dangerous than people not getting information in the first place. Thanks to the Internet, misinformation is much more widespread, and reports such as the Ladyblog can spread false information with widespread consequences before accurate information can be made available.”

Wait—consequences?

“Due to reports from the Ladyblog, there have been at least three separate instances requiring documented increased police presence around the François-Dupont school.”

Wait—police? Alya gasped, feeling her stomach drop at that. But…she hadn’t noticed anything…

“The first, was when the admin of the blog accused one Chloe Bourgeois of being the city’s resident super hero. However, this was disregarding previous and well known footage of the superhero in question rescuing that very victim in the first attack. Something that was widely available, and should have been checked first before making such a claim. Rather than do so, the blogger instead chose to violate boundaries of a private citizen’s for information that was already available.”

But…that had been Chloe. And she had been expelled unfairly over it. The truth had come out in the end anyway, hadn’t it?

“The second was when the blogger made the claim that the hero might be a student at the school. This was based entirely on circumstantial evidence of a book that was obtained during an active crisis. By all counts, the book could’ve belonged to anyone and ladybug might have simply been returning it, and by taking it to use for information rather than try to return it, what the young lady did was legally theft. Perhaps even blackmail.”

That…that was just journalism! She had been seeking the truth. It…wouldn’t have really caused legal trouble, would it?

“Both of these instances involved the blogger violating privacy and ethics in order to find information that at best would be considered circumstantial and far from accurate. In order to get the information she wanted, she jumped to conclusions, went to extreme lengths, and ignored risks not only to the validity of the information she was trying to seek, but the people it could hurt, and even her own life.”

It hadn’t hurt anyone, though! It wasn’t like anything could have happened!

“What if she did find out Ladybug’s identity? People would then know who to accost. This would open up our hero to threats, violence, and harm not only from the very villain she has been attempting to protect us all from, but even criminals and regular civilians looking to gain something from it. She could have been attacked by anyone seeking this Miraculous of hers for themselves, and then not only would a young woman be grievously injured over an avoidable matter, but the city would be down a hero—if not gain another supervillain. There are risks to what we do. Consequences to what information we share. And it’s not just for ourselves. Part of being a reporter is not just knowing when to put out information, it’s knowing when not to.”

A cold feeling of dread climbed up Alya’s spine. She…she hadn’t even considered…

“Which brings us to the third incident, an interview with a student by the name of Lila Rossi. Miss Rossi is the daughter of a diplomat and a frequent traveler. To the blogger’s credit, the interview was made with the student’s permission. But that doesn’t change the fact that the interview consisted almost entirely of lies.”

If she thought her heart was in her stomach before, it had surely dropped to her knees now as she watched how they systematically disproved every single one of Lila’s claims through contradictions in her own story, contradictions when comparing her other stories, and public information that Alya could easily have found had she even tried at any point to look.

And the worst part? After having her site and her work criticized, dissected, and discredited for the world to see, it was hearing that one line. That last thing before she couldn’t take anymore and exited the web seminar, tossing the laptop to the other side of the hall she had been holed up in. That same line she had previously told Marinette when she was still so sure of herself. The one thing she hadn’t done when it came to her stance on that very issue.

“A good journalist always checks their sources.”

[mikauzoran]

Adrienette: Serendipity: Fifty Marichat and Adrienette Kisses: Kiss Two

Serendipity: Fifty Marichat and Adrienette Kisses: ...goodnight.

“That…took a lot longer than expected,” Nino sighed, stretching as he came to a stop at the top of the school steps.

“Projects shouldn’t be allowed to be that long and boring,” Alya groaned, coming up alongside him.

“To be fair,” Adrien added as he held the door open for Marinette, “we shouldn’t have waited until the last minute.”

Alya rolled her eyes. “And whose father’s fault is it that we couldn’t get together to work on this project until the last minute?”

Adrien’s eyes dropped to the pavement. “Sorry.”

“Alya!” Marinette scolded, coming over to smack her best friend’s arm.

Alya deflected the blow, laughing, “Relax, Girl. He knows I’m just kidding.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Marinette protested. “Just look at his face.”

Alya did so and immediately blanched. “Oh, Sunshine. Hey,” she cooed, going over to clap Adrien on the back. “No. I was just kidding. We would have waited until the last minute anyway, even if you had been available earlier. We’re a bunch of procrastinators. I was just kidding. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“Oh,” Adrien forced a sheepish laugh. “Good. It’s okay. No worries. …I’m just really glad because I know I’m a huge pain to be partnered with for projects because my schedule is so crazy, so—”

“—Mec, no,” Nino jumped in, coming to rest a supportive hand on Adrien’s shoulder. “You’re an awesome partner. You always do all kinds of research ahead of time or just magically happen to know stuff already.”

“You’re a huge asset,” Alya assured.

“We would have been at this until midnight if not for all the work you did on your own before our meeting,” Marinette added with an encouraging smile. “We’re so lucky to have you in our group, Adrien.”

Adrien could feel his cheeks coloring in pleasure as he reached up to rub at the back of his neck. “You think so?”

Marinette nodded enthusiastically. “Mmhm. Definitely. I was really glad when Madame drew your name for our group.”

“Oh,” he chuckled, feeling deliriously happy. “Good. It’s good to be wanted.”

“Oh, trust me,” Alya snickered, clapping him on the back again, “you’re wanted.”

Marinette gave Alya a look that Adrien couldn’t quite decipher, but before he could ask about the exchange or what Alya had meant, Nino cut in.

“How about we go get dinner together to celebrate a successful end to our arduous ordeal?” he suggested.

“I’m pretty sure I can bribe my bodyguard to let me go if I buy him dinner too,” Adrien responded eagerly.

“All right!” Alya cheered, punching the air with her fist. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Actually…” Marinette winced. “I told my parents I’d be home soon. They’re waiting for me to eat.”

Adrien’s face fell. He couldn’t very well fantasize that this was a double date if Marinette wasn’t there.

“Call them and tell them you’re coming out with us,” Alya urged. “Girl, your parents are super chill. They’d completely understand you wanting to spend time with your friends.”

Hope swelled in Adrien’s chest only to be dashed on the rocks as Marinette sadly shook her head.

“No. I really need to get home.” She didn’t know when Chat Noir would be able to sneak out to visit that evening, and she didn’t want to miss him or keep him waiting. “Sorry guys.”

“Maybe next time,” Nino responded, noting the disappointment evident on his best friend’s face.

Marinette nodded, echoing, “Maybe next time. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“See ya,” Alya replied as Nino tipped his hat.

“Let me walk you home,” Adrien hurried to offer as Marinette began to turn away.

She blinked thrice in succession. “You don’t have to. It’s just across the street.”

Behind Adrien’s back, Alya mouthed, “what are you doing?!”, completely exasperated at the new and unusual ways Marinette was sabotaging herself.

“I insist,” Adrien countered. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t properly escort a lady home after dark?” He turned back to Nino and Alya. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Have a nice date.”

Marinette frowned. “You’re not going with them?”

“Not without you. Shall we?” Adrien held out his arm for her to take.

Looking stricken, Marinette glanced back and forth between Nino, Alya, and Adrien. “But…you shouldn’t scrap your plans just because I can’t go. Adrien, I know you don’t get to spend time with friends often. You should take advantage of the opportunity.”

He shook his head, smiling disarmingly. “Nah. It wouldn’t be any fun without you. Alya and Nino get all couple-y when you’re not around, and I feel like such a third wheel.” He looked back and their friends. “No offence, guys.”

Alya and Nino shrugged.

“None taken, Mec.”

Adrien held out his arm to Marinette again. “So…shall we?”

Marinette frowned, looping her arm through his. “Okay, but I feel really terrible. I’m sorry, Adrien.”

“Please don’t feel bad,” he entreated, trying to reassure her as he carefully led her down the school steps and towards the bakery. “It’s completely fine. I promise.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Marinette insisted. “We’ll all go out to eat together sometime soon. In the meantime, I’ll bring pastries to school tomorrow. You like the pain au chocolat best, yes?”

“You know, I was about to say that no making it up to me was required, but I’d be a fool to turn down Tom and Sabine’s,” he chuckled, mouth already salivating at the thought of flakey pastries and bittersweet chocolate. “Pain au chocolat is my favourite, but I will happily inhale anything you bring.”

“I’ll be sure to include at least one pain au chocolat,” she promised, giving his arm a squeeze.

“You’re the best,” he hummed, making Marinette chuckle as she remembered Chat Noir telling her the same thing in the early hours of the morning.

“I am pretty great, aren’t I?” she laughed softly.

“Phenomenal,” he affirmed.

They paused at the crosswalk to wait for the light, and a comfortable silence settled between them as they each drifted off into their own thoughts.

Marinette daydreamed of another blonde boy while Adrien lost himself in fantasies of revealing his identity and having Marinette embrace the truth. Dating Marinette on both sides of the mask, not having to hide or hold back anything from her… Never having to doubt that she loved him for him, for the dorky, insecure guy behind the famous model and not just his money and influence…

By the time they reached the side door to the residence above the bakery, Adrien had mentally created a whole future for them where Marinette knew his identity and loved him anyway complete with first dates and first kisses, anniversaries and engagements, marriage and children.

When they stopped and Marinette turned to thank him for the escort, it seemed so natural to whisper, “Goodnight, Princess” and lean in for a kiss.

His lips had barely brushed her cheek when she jumped back with a squawk.

Adrien blinked, trying to understand why his wife had reacted so drastically to a simple kiss on the cheek…but then it hit him that none of the events filling his head had actually happened yet. He was not currently Chat Noir, and Marinette and Adrien did not exchange cheek kisses of that sort. Calling her “Princess” in that breathy, sensual way and kissing her on the cheek like that as Adrien had been crossing a line.

He backpedaled, holding up his hands in a placating gesture as he tried to do damage control. “I-I’m so sorry! I—”

“—I have a boyfriend!” Marinette squeaked, looking horrified.

Adrien’s mouth dropped open. “…You… What?” His voice sounded tight and strained.

She cleared her throat, arms wrapping around her torso as if to hold herself together. “There-There’s someone else. I’m sorry. I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh?” He tried to swallow, but his mouth was unexpectedly arid. “Oh.”

So he really had misread things between Marinette and Chat Noir. He’d thought she seemed fond of him. They flirted and teased and snuggled and…but he supposed that she’d only seen him as a friend. Marinette wasn’t the type to lie or cheat. If she had a boyfriend, she wouldn’t be fooling around with Chat Noir.

He’d misunderstood. It had all been wishful thinking on his part.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, not looking at him. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I mean, I do like you—I did like you, Adrien.”

“Oh?” he got out in a brittle voice.

He noted the aggressive use of past tense and wondered what he’d done to screw that up.

She shook her head and then finally met his gaze. Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. “I’m sorry. I’m seeing someone else, and I care about him so, so much. He’s really important to me, so…you and I can only be friends, okay?”

It looked like the words physically pained her.

He nodded, trying to cobble together some semblance of a smile, trying not to look like his world was caving in on him.

He wondered how he was going to get over yet another amazing young woman telling him she didn’t want him. It had been hard enough to let go of his feelings for Ladybug and accept that he was interested in Marinette romantically. How could he possibly get over Marinette? How was he supposed to put himself out there again when being told that he wasn’t what these women wanted had hurt so much the first two times? Maybe he was the problem and there wasn’t anyone out there who could love him as he was.

Adrien kept smiling and nodding. “Of course. Friends.”

He tried to chuckle, to sound light and carefree and fine, but the laugh came out strangled.

Marinette winced. “I’m sorry. I did like you.”

He wished she’d stop saying that like that was supposed to make him feel better. He wished she’d tell him what he’d done wrong to make her stop liking him. Maybe then he could fix it and she’d like him again.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, unsure of what else to say. He was obviously taking this hard, and she felt horrible. She knew she’d been sending him mixed signals over the years. She hadn’t meant to lead him on, but she obviously had. Adrien wouldn’t have tried to kiss her unless he was certain that she wanted him to. Her leftover feelings for him must have been obvious, but she’d decided recently to commit to Chat Noir, and she couldn’t go back now.

She wished there were something she could do to soften the blow.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, holding back tears.

He shook his head, holding up his hands a little higher. “It’s okay. I understand. My mistake.”

And then there was agonizingly awkward silence.

Marinette thought about apologizing again, but she feared that the words already meant less than nothing to him. She wasn’t even sure that bringing him baked goods in the morning would be appreciated. It was all too clear that she’d hurt him badly. He was trying to hide it, but…

She had to wonder when Adrien had developed feelings for her and why she hadn’t noticed. Perhaps because he was always so sweet to everyone.

“Are you going to be okay?” She looked and spotted his bodyguard Victor parked out front of the bakery watching them. It was a relief knowing that she didn’t have to worry about him getting home safely.

He nodded robotically. “Yeah. I’m…I’m fine. Thanks. Sorry. I just…” He took a step back and motioned vaguely over his shoulder. “I should go now.”

She nodded, shrinking back towards the door. “Okay. Goodnight, Adrien. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Mmhm,” was all he managed as a response.

She quickly unlocked the door and hurried inside, trying to give him as much privacy as possible for a celebrity in the middle of Paris.

He watched her disappear as the door shut behind her, and then he stood there for a moment, trying to keep it together.

Somehow, he ended up across the street at the park, sitting on one of the benches with his head in his hands.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he was suddenly aware of Plagg’s voice. “—mistake. I’m certain she likes you as Chat Noir. Maybe you’re freaking out over nothing. Maybe she was talking about you—Chat Noir you.”

“…But…” Adrien had to swallow twice to return some moisture to his mouth before he could continue. “Chat Noir isn’t her boyfriend, Plagg,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “She’s never asked me out, and I haven’t asked her either.”

Plagg pursed his lips. “Would you feel better if she’d just made up a boyfriend as an excuse to let Adrien down gently?”

Adrien groaned. “Strangely enough, having someone make up a boyfriend because they don’t want to date me does not make me feel better.”

Plagg sighed, sinking back down into his hiding spot in Adrien’s left shoulder. “Kid, maybe you should call someone. I don’t think you should be shut up alone in your room right now.”

Exhaling slowly, Adrien considered his kwami’s advice. Part of him really did just want to go back home and sob into a pillow, but the logical part of his brain knew that that way lay akumatization.

He took his phone from his pocket and reluctantly dialed Nino.

“What’s up, mon pote?”

“Did everyone but me know that Marinette had a boyfriend?” Adrien couldn’t help the accusing tone that slipped into his voice. “Because it would have been really nice if someone had told me before I tried to kiss her.”

On the other end of the line, Adrien heard Nino curse before pulling the phone away from his ear to whisper-hiss at Alya.

Alya’s “WHAT?!” could be heard loud and clear along with her detailed plans to tie Marinette down and interrogate her.

Then Nino was back. “Apparently this is news to everyone. You okay, Mec?”

“No,” Adrien answered frankly, too tired to put on a brave, socially acceptable face. “I need to be put on akuma watch. Is it too late to crash your date with Alya?”

“Dude, stay where you are. We’ll be there to get you in five.”

Adrien could tell from the edge in Nino’s voice that Adrien was in for an evening of crushing hugs and noogies. Nino was a fiercely protective older brother, and it was always nice when he extended that intensity to include Adrien.

Adrien closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on happy thoughts and the sound of Plagg purring until Nino got there.

[transthaumaturge]

trans asks: 3, 19, 40

and bonus chosen without looking at the question: 27

--- Sorry I was a few days late to answer this, @foxoftheasterisk! I just re-reblogged the ask game as of the middle of the day on 12/24 so that it’s easier to see what I’m responding to. Responses under the cut so that this doesn’t dominate anybody’s dashboard.

Ask 3: Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria? I’d say probably more social dysphoria. I have enough bottom dysphoria that I don’t like looking at myself in the mirror while I’m in the bathroom, but the biggest source of trans-related discomfort for me is not knowing whether I look or sound feminine to other people when I’m interacting with them in public. I’ve learned two important things from having a lot of social dysphoria: 1) You probably notice the nuances of your voice and appearance much more than any random person you’ll meet on the street--especially when it comes to cis people. I spend a lot of time thinking that my voice doesn’t sound natural, or that my face isn’t “feminine enough” (whatever that means), but people notice a lot less in general than I think they will. If you’re trying to pass, whatever that entails, you’re already doing a great job ^_^* 2) Passing is a shit metric for trans people to be judged on, and a shit metric for us to judge ourselves on. I’m just as much a lady now as when I had a full beard shadow two years ago, and I’m much happier with my no-makeup appearance nowadays than I was when I tried to dress hyperfeminine every day in my first year as myself. Give yourself a break. I still get anxious over my voice and appearance, but I don’t let it convince myself that I’m “failing at being a woman” anymore. I am a woman. If some rando on the street thinks otherwise, it’s their right to have terrible opinions. Ask 19: Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth? I’m fully out in my day-to-day life, and that includes in my job as a high-school science teacher where I have a trans pride flag on my desk and co-advise the school GSA as an “LGBTeacher”. I like being visibly trans, especially to the kids that I work with, because it makes me a “possibility model.” It shows trans kids that they’re safe being themselves around me, and that there’s a real possibility that they’ll grow up happy as their true selves. But would I ever go stealth? I suppose I would if I felt like it was a matter of safety, and I’ve done so in the past for that reason. In the summer that I was interviewing for teaching jobs back in 2018, I had been out to myself as trans for several months but made the choice to pretend to be a cis man for all of those interviews and also for a full year into my teaching career. I knew that if I came to my interviews in a dress, I stood less of a chance of being hired and couldn’t afford to be jobless. And I knew that if I presented as a woman in my first year of teaching, it might introduce an element of danger into my life that I didn’t need while I was still working on coming out to those around me and building a support network. I took a calculated risk to go from being stealth to being out in my daily life because after a while, it was just too painful to not be my authentic self. But that took a lot of work. I spent a lot of time working with the local teacher’s union to make sure that I had someone to protect me when coming out to the district and school administration. And in my personal life, I waited until I had my own health insurance, my own car, and a handful of other things before I came out to the dad who threatened to take all of these things away from me if I wore women’s clothes in public again. If anybody reading this is trying to make that same decision of “when to go full-time”, I would strongly suggest that you do what you can to make sure that you have resources available to you if the worst happens afterward. You may not be as lucky as I was with the timing of my coming-out, but make sure that you have something to steady yourself with. A place to go if things get ugly at home, some money or possessions stashed away where the people who want to control you can’t get to them. At the same time, don’t let family manipulate you into waiting and making yourself miserable for years and years because “it’s just not safe right now”. My dad tried to do that once he realized he had nothing on me anymore, and I saw it for what it was. Nowadays, if I went stealth, it would be to pretend to be a cis woman rather than a cis man. I think that I could do that, but only if I was in an interaction where people knowing I was trans would put me in danger. It would particularly suck because I wear a kippah wherever I go, but I would even take that off if I needed to. I’m not so self-sure that I don’t realize there are places in my own country, some not too far from me, where there are people who want me dead. My goal is to make sure that I never end up in those places if I can help it, and if I do, to fake it until I make it. Ask 40: How did/do you manage waiting to transition? In this respect, I was luckier than most because I slowly came out to myself over the five years that I was in college and away from my parents, and wasn’t fully out to myself until I was 23 and about to get a job that I could use to support myself. I know that it’s not that easy for a lot of people, especially because my relative privilege helped me to get into a stable, independent living situation after school. But even with all of that, I still spent an entire year pretending to be a man while I taught my first year of high school science and waited to complete my full social transition. It was really hard. On the days that I wore a button-down shirt and dress pants to school, I felt trapped; on the days that I wore a school t-shirt and loose jeans, I felt like I was falling apart. Using my “guy voice” made me flinch almost constantly, because it didn’t feel like mine. I had to constantly remind myself that I was a woman, and that I would get through this. It’s difficult, when everyone around you is using your deadname and misgendering you. Here are the three things that helped me the most: 1) I built a support network for myself in my personal life. When I was looking for a house to move into, I made sure that my housemates were okay with me being trans and that they wouldn’t be uncomfortable with me being myself at home. Coming out to strangers like that was difficult, but I couldn’t bear another year of only being myself when I was in a locked bedroom. I was also lucky enough to have a queer community center in my town where I attended weekly trans support group meetings, which gave me a way to dress authentically and be seen and affirmed. I’m not lying when I say that I looked forward to those support meetings every second that I wasn’t in them. If you’re in a pre-coming-out situation and don’t have a physical queer community space right now (or that space is closed because of quarantine), online spaces are also amazing places to seek out affirmation and be seen. Discord, Reddit...just make sure that any Facebook groups you join aren’t marked public or everyone you’re friends with will be able to see your posts and comments from that group on their feeds. I learned that the hard way, thankfully long after I came out. Many queer community centers, if you live relatively close to them, are also doing weekly online support meetings right now to try and keep those affirming spaces alive during covid. 2) I started saying daily self-affirmations. Mine went “My name is Rachel Tikvah [Lastname], and I am a woman. I am a sister, I am a daughter, and I am enough.” I set phone alarms to say it in the morning before work, in the afternoon after work, and I also whispered it under my breath anytime that I felt like I just couldn’t take pretending any longer. Not only did it help me in the moment, it helped me to get used to my new name while my deadname was still being regularly used. If the above affirmation doesn’t feel like it would work for you, I have no doubt that there are plenty of trans self-affirmations that you can look up online and choose from. 3) I focused on the approaching milestones. I got through my first autumn by building my wardrobe and picking out my new first and middle names. By then, I had decided that I would start hormones on my birthday in February and counted down the days until then. Starting hormones brought a bunch of early transition milestones with them that I could focus on, and I worked out a deal with school administration that I would come out over the summer and start my second school year as a woman. That gave me an ultimate goal to work towards. Every step I took, every accomplishment I made, brought me closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. Knowing that kept me strong, and it kept me hopeful for the day when I would never have to worry about pretending to be a man ever again. If you’re currently in a dark place and not sure when you’ll be able to transition medically or socially, figure out what those milestones are for you and focus on what steps and amount of time it will take before they’ll come true. If you don’t have any milestones to look forward to, try to create some for yourself. Order some trans gear to start wearing if you have a safe way to do so! Work towards choosing a new name for yourself if you want a new one! Celebrate the anniversary of coming out to yourself with your friends each year! Whatever you can think of, put it on your mental calendar and look forward to it while you wait. Bonus Ask 27: What do you do to validate yourself? The self-affirmations that I mentioned in ask 40 really helped, and I still say them almost daily now that I’m out. They’re especially helpful when I’m feeling particularly dysphoric. As someone who is also very proud of my Jewish identity, I also say the blessing “thank you god for creating me as a woman” when I take my hormones or when looking at my body makes me smile. Those are beautiful moments that I thought for the longest time would never happen, and I want to sanctify every one of them. The Hebrew for this modified blessing can be found on this blog post: https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2012/03/on-bodies-blood-and-blessings.html Apart from that, one of my big refuges is clothing. I have a wardrobe full of cute clothes (there’s something beautiful about coming out of the closet and then filling it with dresses) that I’ll wear if I need to feel extra-feminine or sure of myself. I’ll put on makeup before going outside, and if I need it, I’ll take a picture of myself and post it to one of the queer discord servers I’m part of with a request for positive affirmations about my femininity. Knowing that I’m being seen by people that I care about and that they think I’m beautiful always means a lot and helps me feel better if I’m having trouble chasing the dysphoria away on my own. Between positive self-affirmations and being seen and cheered on by friends, I’m usually able to make myself feel better if I need that extra boost of validation. I should also mention that while it doesn’t come up a lot now that I’m not being regularly deadnamed, I used to ask friends to use my chosen name more in conversation than they would otherwise. Hearing it more chased away the intrusive thoughts, most of which at the time were my brain saying my deadname to me whenever there was a moment of silence. My brain was quieter when my friends were using my real name regularly. Okay, I hope that that gave you a little bit more insight into me and my transition! I am living proof that trans people can come out to themselves in adulthood and turn out alright. Gender is a galaxy, and I’ve remade myself out of the stardust. I hope that any trans people reading this have been/are able to transition safely as well. You’re all amazing, and you deserve happiness.

[ohcoolnice]

Late

It’s a full story, I swear it’s just...I can’t figure out a title so we’re gonna just title each chapter. Also, each chapter’s title may seem like it connects to an insignificant detail, but it has deeper meaning. I’m known for my especially angsty works. MWAHAHAHAHA. 

SUMMARY: 

Marinette seriously just cannot afford mistakes, so, naturally, there are so, so, so many. First, four of their models call in sick, thanks to the lovely flu going around, meaning they don’t have anyone to model for most of their women’s pieces. Then, Adrien’s bright idea to have Marinette model her own pieces gets approved by Gabriel, and, obviously, it all backfires spectacularly-on him.***This is set in the future, The character’s are 19 and 20-ish. it’s all messed up tho bc i can’t figure out timelines so whatever. 

(THIS  CHAPTER IS A BIT BAcKSTORY, But also plot yay :) 

-----

Marinette could not afford to have anything go wrong today.

The new Gabriel HERO™ Collection was going to launch in two days, and with the delay she’d experienced last week with the fit models, she’d only gotten Gabriel’s approval on the final designs three days ago, stayed up all night to do the flats and came in the next day, sleep deprived and sure she’d have a heart attack with the amount of caffeine she’d consumed.

The department had been a great help. Ellie had agreed to touch up some small errors Marinette had made will working on the flats at four in the morning, enlisting Jonah, who was a wizard with Illustrator, to help her.

Samantha was great with construction, she knew every single stitch, and Marinette was sure she’d invented at least twenty of her own. She could work fast without making any errors, all the while making the rounds and helping anyone and everyone.

Marinette oversaw everything. Technically, on paper, she was an Intern. But she had been working with Gabriel for three years now, and not even out of Fashion School yet. At seventeen she’d begun interning, still surprised she’d got it, though she suspected guiltily that Adrien Agreste may have had some influence over the matter once he’d congratulated her when she’d never told him in the first place. They barely even spoke. Every so often she had nights where she felt so bad, maybe taking some other more talented girl’s spot only because she had gone to school with the designer’s son, that she would cry and sob until she passed out from exhaustion. It didn’t help she heard it often.

She learned to ignore comments and overtime the public perception of her grew more positive as people began to see her designs once Gabriel became her Mentor and put her in charge of design for several collections. She knew people knew her name as she often accompanied Gabriel to shows, taking notes on the pieces but also making notes on every work that came from Gabriel’s mouth, but she didn’t want to be too known. Even in fashion school, most of her classmates, obsessed with knowing everything about the fashion world, didn’t know who she was, just that she interned with Gabriel, perhaps. Marinette liked it that way. She wasn’t a big fan of too much attention. She preferred if she could wait until she graduated to make a name for herself.

Gabriel had admitted, in an awkward moment once two years ago, that he wasn’t overly sure as to why he decided to become a mentor to the baker’s daughter, but he remarked on the similarities he saw in his younger self and her.

She didn’t really believe him. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him smile, not once, even when she knew he was kind of proud of the work she was doing. Over the years she’d come to notice it wasn’t hard to read his expressions- okay, it was hard, just not impossible- once you’d spent enough time studying him. And Marinette took note of everything he did. Alya often wondered aloud how the designer wasn’t creeped out by her.

Marinette didn’t know how she could possibly be like Gabriel. He showed no emotion on most occasion, but she was the complete opposite. Another reason why the media often wondered what it was he saw in a seventeen-year-old intern. He knew her designing and construction skills from the competition she’d won three years prior, but that was really all he’d seen up until her portfolio, which she’d snuck onto one night before the leaving on what was supposed to be the last day of her internship. The eight days after that where she’d heard nothing had been the most depressing days of her life. Then she’d gotten a call from Nathalie, Gabriel’s assistant, asking her to come in, and she almost passed out. She’d cried so hard after that Alya had thought Marinette’s parents had died. Sometimes she wondered how Alya came up with the conclusions she did.

Everything afterwards hadn’t been smooth sailing, but it was all incredible. Every stressful task was worth it. She was being paid as an intern, since there weren’t technically any positions available at the time. There since had been some, but she didn’t dare ask for a raise. She liked being able to do everything without being confined to the title of “designer” or “dressmaker” or whatnot. She liked doing all of it. The customer service, the finances in accounting (she was terrible at it, but overly grateful), and obviously out of everything, the hands-on fashion was her favorite, but she was getting to experience working in every single aspect of one of the most successful Fashion Companies in the entire world, under the tutelage of Gabriel Agreste himself. She really didn’t think she deserved to be that lucky.

Of course, there were times where she’d broken down at two in the morning, struggling to finish an assignment while balancing school as well. Gabriel had the sort of connections where she was able to miss classes and take them at home thanks to a recording of the class, and while she utilized it, she didn’t really prefer it. She liked being in the class and learning hands on, in an environment electrified by the excitement of young adults itching to get out there and create art. She also knew she did tend to do the work for Gabriel before her studies, and it often resulted in stress and a rush the complete assignments and projects.

If she’d ever felt stress before, it was nothing in relation to the stress of the last two years. And even that was nothing in comparison to the stress of being late to a photo shoot that needed to be perfect because the entire goddamn collection would be public in two days and if she wasn’t ready, no amount of fondness Gabriel had come to feel for the girl would be able to save her job. This was a HUGE deal.

Her car pulled into her spot and she grabbed her things and breakfast for the crew. Next to her, Alya, who had taken the day off to help her best friend, took the trays and boxes from her hand and pushed her towards the entrance. “You’re already late girl, get out of here!”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She pressed her hands together, blessing her friend for being so helpful, before rushing inside, hands full with the last pieces she’d finished last night before, thankfully, getting a good night’s sleep. She was glad the people from Vogue wouldn’t have to see her when she looked as if she’d been attacked by a bear and hit by a train. She didn’t want to wear makeup and risk the chance of feeling anything uncomfortable enough to distract her from her work.

She struggled with the door, grateful when she saw a glimpse of Adrien walking past inside from behind the garment bags covering her view. She knocked on the glass and the door opened a few seconds later.

“Thank ymph.” Her voice muffled behind the garment bags were met with a chuckle from Adrien as she felt the weight in her arms lessen a bit.

“Let me help you, Marinette, you look like you’ve got your hands full.” She gave him a blank look.

“That wasn’t even good. I don’t even know if that can be counted as a pun.” They were almost at the dressing station now, people rushed about, voices mixing as people rushed to prepare the stations and models. Chloe Bourgeois was the only superhero who had shared her identity, so, unfortunately, she would be modeling for the Queen Bee themed women’s pieces. Thankfully that was not until later.

“It can so be counted as a pun. But I’ll spare you because you’re so busy today. I’ll just have to write down my puns and attack you with them later.” She laughed softly, shaking her head as she gently let the bags rest on a table, hanging them up one by one as she took them out of the bags. Adrien’s eyes widened. “Oh wow. These are incredible Marinette. This is- wow.” He looked at her, his eyes sparking with…admiration? She wasn’t sure, but either way she didn’t understand his reaction. She was proud of her work, yes, but she hadn’t expected Adrien of all people to be so impressed by them.

“Thank you.” She replied, ducking her head to hide her blush. No, she had work to do. Focus, Marinette.

“So y-” She shushed him, placing a finger to his lips as he widened his eyes, face warming as he stared, cross-eyed at the finger on his lips.

“Nope, no talking. Let’s go, Hair and Makeup Chat Noir.” His face paled and he stammered and she raised a brow. “Adrien! Your father wants you as Chat Noir, so please don’t make me tell him you can’t do it and we have to find someone else because we really don’t have the time and I really don’t want to have that conversation with him.” He seemed to relax ever so slightly, the color returning to his face. Odd.

“Yeah, sorry, sure. I’ll go be Pat- I mean Chat!” He huffed in frustration and dragged a hand over his face tiredly, emerging with a weak smile that, despite getting over her crush ages ago, still sent her stomach into a frenzy. She pushed down the feeling and giggled. “Sorry, I’m tired.”

“We all are don’t worry. You’re just lucky it doesn’t show because this only can be done today. Now go before I kill you because I am very busy.” She scolded him and pushed him off as he tried to speak, hitting him with the papers in her hand. He laughed and stumbled out, turning to watch her walk back to her station, lost in her work, with a smile on his face.

As he turned to make his way to Hair and Makeup, he narrowly dogged Alya and she ran her way to Marinette, calling, “Hey, Blondie!” as she ran past.

“Who am I to you, Rapunzel?” He called back, eyes following her and landing back on Marinette, smiling with relief as her best friend arrived with food for the crew and Marinette’s purse. 

She’d really seemed to come into her own skin these last few years. For at least three years it was so hard for them to hang out. She was so awkward and stumbled over her words around him. Slowly it began to change and improve, and he found himself spending more time with her and his own mood began to improve as he did. He’d spent lots of time with her before, wearing the mask. He would steal her food and they would talk, laugh, play video games, board games. He loved watching her design and sketch. It was peaceful for him, hanging out with her as Chat Noir. It never was as Adrien. It bore down on him, kept him awake at night, not that he realized that until things changed, and he found himself able to hang out with her both in and out of costume. He realized how awful it was when he wasn’t sure if Marinette hated him or not. She was so different with him in his different personalities that he’d worried about it constantly, without even knowing it. It was all so confusing.

Looking at Marinette now, he felt a smile tug at his lips and a flutter in his heart.

She really was special. He couldn’t ask for a better friend.

[fic-xation]

Motel Walls Are Made To Be Soundproof - a GEAH fanfic

Welp. I've officially fallen down the rabbit hole of Netflix's Green Eggs and Ham series. C'est la vie. Because we were ROBBED of this classic shipping scenario towards the beginning of episode ten, I took it upon myself to correct that fatal blunder. Hope you enjoy~! ❤️️❤️️

Archive

"Uh-oh! Sorry, but I've only got one room left. You'll have to share."

"Perfect! Slumber party!"

If Guy's extensive, miserable life has taught him anything, it's that the universe loves throwing him a curve ball whenever possible. And the clerk, (why did he look so familiar?) seemed only too pleased to oblige.

~~

The motel room was nothing short of standard. Beige, unassuming walls, mass-produced inoffensive factory artwork, a television, and twin, bland lamps framing a -

"... Single bed," grumbled Guy, letting his briefcase topple to the hardwood floor. "Figures."

His travel companion, however, approached the subject with his usual flair of obnoxious optimism.

"Hey! Single bed, double the snuzzles, amiright?" Gleefully, Sam elbowed at Guy's belly, before turning his attention to the warbling attaché. "What say we let you stretch your feathers, huh, buddy?"

"Sam, wait-!"

Too late.

Before Guy could get another word in edgewise, Sam flicked at the double latches, and with a caw of delight, Jenkins exploded into the room like a firecracker, crowing and bouncing with all limbs a-gaggle.

“Gyah-!” Guy yelped, stumbling onto his backside. Lucky for him, there was little in the room that could warrant an outrageous destruction fee…

… The noise on the other hand…

“Yeaa-aaah, Mistah J!” Sam whooped, bounding atop the lone bed like the sugar-addled child he was. “Talk about a party animal!”

Guy, however, was far from impressed.

"WILL you two keep it DOWN?!" he hissed, making a mad swipe for the Chikaraffe’s leg. With a playful squawk, however, the bird merely hoisted the elder Knox into the air, before catching him roughly by the scruff of his collar.

"What's got your wockets in a bunch?" Sam sneered, already making himself comfortable against the freshly laundered pillows. Guy, meanwhile, could only dangle helplessly from the smiling beak as he glared towards the wannabe bon vivant.

Thrashing his arms, he managed to free himself before collapsing to the mattress like a sack of cement.

"I don't know if you've noticed, or you're just too crazy to care-" Guy snarled, rising to his knees. "But we are up to our eyebrows in witnesses! Do the words noise complaint mean anything to you?! Or, better yet, search warrant?”

Valid concerns to be sure, but naturally, Sam shot him down with no more than a shrug.

"Chill-AX, my S.O.O.M.D.B... Stressed-Out-Over-Minor-Details-Buddy!” Reaching into the bedside drawer, he began to poke about curiously, evidently looking for something. “Motel walls are made to be soundproof! I mean, heaven forbid ya let the whole building know you n’ your partner are havin’ sweet, wonderful-”

“SAM!” Flushed and flabbergasted, Guy clapped his hands to Jenkins’ ears. (Or, at least, where he assumed ears would be.)

Innocently, Sam tilted his head to one side. “… What? I’m just sayin’, no one wants to have cereal with everyone listening in. Call me old fashioned, but I think slurping and crunching should be done behind closed doors only… Ooh! Speaking of which-”

Unsurprisingly, Sam was quick to find the room service menu. Wasting no time, he began to rifle through the cardboard pages, feigning a look of pseudo-concentration.

“… Let’s see…” he murmured, scratching his chin.

Guy, dumbstruck, could do nothing more than release Jenkins’ head with an aggravated grumph of embarrassment, clumsily shifting his hands into the pockets of his fur.

Why did he get the feeling Sam's… suggestive phrasing was all too deliberate?

"… Look-" he said at last, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just do me a favor, and keep the nonsense to a minimum tonight, okay?"

"Roger-dodger, Captain Cantankerous!" Sam proclaimed, posing his hand in a jolly salute. "Me n' Mr. J'll be the very models of good behavior! ... Won't we, boy? Huh?"

Jenkins, with an excitable gobble, swiftly rolled onto his back.

"Ooooh-” Sam cooed. “Looks like someone is croakin’ for a strokin’!”

With reckless abandon, he launched himself towards the bird, eagerly combing his hands along the soft, feathery belly. “We're gonna be good, wholesome tenants for this good, wholesome establishment. Aren't we? Aren't we, ya silly-willy-nilly-boy...!"

Even Guy couldn’t help but smile slightly, quietly succumbing to a gentle pet along the downy fuzz of the Chikaraffe’s neck.

The power of Sam’s smugness, though, was certainly enough to ruin the moment. With a jerk of his hand, Guy hastily withdrew, and crossed over to the phone atop the T.V mantle.

“Ah, gettin’ the midnight munchies, are we?” Sam smirked, flopping onto his stomach.

“… Sam, it’s seven-thirty.”

“You say tomato, I say ketchup.” He shrugged, propping himself against his elbows. “Oh, but ya know what tastes great in a motel room paid for by identity theft? Couple a’-!”

"If you say the words, 'eggs,' or 'ham,' or 'green,' in any particular order, I'm dumping you off at the diner where I found you." Guy warned, his brows derisively furrowed.

"... Questioned rescinded!" Sam chirped, though something in his expression seemed to have faltered a bit.

... Or, maybe it was just Guy's imagination.

"In any case-" Guy's furry finger trailed the length of the rotary dial. "I'm not callin' room service. I'm just gonna ask the front desk to send up a cot."

Sam chuckled, impishly turning to his back as he kicked at the air. "A cot? … Honestly, Guy, you spoil this bird silly! But there's really no need, I mean, this goofball should be fine with just a sheet or two-"

"It's not for Jenkins." Guy said stoutly. "It's for me."

… Sam’s feet ceased their flexing. Pouncing back to his knees, he stared at Guy with eyes like saucers.

"... For you?" He repeated dumbly. "Ya mean you're not-"          

"No." Guy huffed. "I'm not." Shifting his shoulders, he fidgeted slightly with the coil of the phone. "... It... It’s just for comfort's sake. I-I'd feel better if we weren't... If I-" He cut himself off, practically tangling the cord between his awkward joints.

Sam observed his friend for a moment or two, before smiling easily with a flash of his hand. "Say no more, Pally O'Malley. You need your sleep-space, and I respect that. So!” He leapt to his feet. “What d'ya say we pull the ol' switcheroonie, and trade spots, huh? Let ME take the cot, and you can help yourself to the king-size!"

He then made an exaggerated gesture across the bedspread, like a gameshow host parading a new car. Needless to say, Guy was a little more than surprised.

"... Are... are you sure?"

"Of course! A lil' guy like me doesn't need this much room, anyway. Besides-” Slowly, Sam tucked his hands behind his back, sheepishly shuffling at his feet. “… After all the confuzzlement I've put ya through, this only seems fair."

… Sam was certainly a lot of things, (the words 'dope,' and 'nimrod' generally came to mind,) but every once in a while, he showed a certain level of autonomy Guy didn't think was possible. Briefly lost for words, Guy stared, slightly slack-jawed, before inevitably coming to his senses with a shake of his head.

"... Er... Thank you." He mumbled quietly.

~~

After everything that Guy’d gone through within the last two days, (ranging from breakneck bean-recovery, to adversarial avalanches,) he would’ve happily sacrificed his own appendix for a good night’s rest.

Unfortunately, (but not unsurprisingly,) he had no such luck.

At first, it’d been Jenkins vying for his attention, whining softly as he prodded his beak to Guy’s shoulder.

“… Mr. Jenkins… No… It’s sleep-time…” Guy murmured drowsily, his face half-hidden behind the mound of pillow. If Guy had to guess, he’d wager the big fella was just restless, or hungry… But there was something to his chirping that felt more… desperate. Like he was actively pleading for Guy’s attention. Against his better judgement, Guy finally arose with a groggy grouse, rubbing his palm to the grittiness of his sleep-starved eyes.

“Alright, buddy, wassa matter?” he mumbled with a yawn. Looking over to the creature, Guy expected him to be pecking at the windows, or, (heaven forbid,) scratching at the door… But, to his surprise, Jenkins’ attention was not pointed at the room…

But to Sam.

Sam, who was curled like a boiled shrimp against the suspended canvas of the lightweight cot, quivering pitifully…

… Oh, Dillikins, is he sick?!

Frantically, Guy flicked at the adjoining lamp, scrambling to Sam’s side.

“Sam! Sam, what-”

“… M’sorry…”

Sam’s voice came in feebly; so feebly, in fact, that Guy wasn’t even sure he’d really heard it. Brow furrowed, he gingerly knelt to the floor.

Sam was… sorry?

… Sorry for what?

It was then that Guy realized – Sam wasn’t sick, he was dreaming… Then again, judging by the violent twitches, maybe nightmare would be the better word…

"Sam... Sam, c'mon, wake up-" Guy whispered, hopelessly jostling at his partner’s shoulders… but to no avail.

"... M'sorry..." Sam mumbled again. Guy couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but something about his voice was... unnerving. It lacked his devil-may-care smoothness and bravado... It sounded weaker, smaller... younger, even. “I… I promise I'll be good... I won't be a burden, Mom, please-"

Without warning, Sam’s rubbery arms twisted themselves around Guy’s unsuspecting midsection like a snake. He reeled, flustered and shocked, but there was no prying the little man from the surprise embrace. He seemed glued to Guy’s stomach, murmuring pathetically all the while,

“Don’t leave… Don’t leave, I’ll be good… I swear I’ll be good…”

It was not the monstrous storm of a boisterous sob, but instead, something quieter... and, all together sadder. It rattled in Sam's ribcage, shaking him from the inside-out. Against his friend, he shivered like a pup, huffing and panting and gulping for air, as his tears dampened the weathered, oak-colored coat.

Guy was all too familiar with the type of nightmare Sam was having, even if the specific context was lost on him. More than once, he’d woken up to an exhausted morning after a fit of grief-filled sleep; his face so ludicrously wet with tears, one would think it'd been raining indoors.

"SAM!" Guy hissed, rustling at his partner’s arms like a maraca. Still murmuring his ghostly pleas, Sam head merely bobbed lifelessly.

“What is he, comatose?!" Guy seethed, shooting Jenkins a thunderstruck look. "I can't get him up!"

Mr. Jenkins whimpered helplessly, glancing between his two adopted papas dads like a frightened toddler. Just then, his face lit up, and, (in what Sam would no doubt classify as a lightbulb moment,) he snapped his powerful jaws at the little man's leg.

… Sam was certainly awake then. His eyes popped open like two jack-in-the-boxes, and with an exaggerated breath, Guy knew a scream was bound to follow. Reeling, he hastily clapped his hands to his partner's open mouth, but not even that was enough to stifle the shriek of pain.

"Shh- be quiet, just be quiet!" he urged, not troubling to temper his own volume as he wrestled the writhing Sam. It proved to be more difficult than one would think, (after all, he was no bigger than their luggage to begin with,) but in his twisting arms, Sam squirmed and thrashed a weasel.

“You're fine, you're okay, just be quiet, please!"

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

There came a harsh hammering from the opposite wall, rattling the headboard and lamps in its wake.

“Hey-!” cried a muffled, male voice. “Put a cork in it over there!”

“Yeah!” resounded a second, unfamiliar, (but equally masculine,) voice. “Some of us are tryin’ to eat cereal here!”

Red-faced with effort as well as embarrassment, Guy bit at his lip.

… So much for soundproof walls…

“S-sorry!” he stammered, hurriedly gesturing for Jenkins to hush. “My, uh… my buddy here just stubbed his toe! … We – we promise to keep it down!”

“Yeah, you better!” growled the first voice. “Cause if I hear one more peep outta either a’ you, I’m filin’ a complaint!”

Guy swallowed. “… D-duly noted…” Briefly, he paused, wondering what else to say. “Er… Sleep tight!” he added, with a gawky sort of grin.

“I wouldn’t count on it!” giggled the second voice.

Finally, after a moment of strained silence, Guy let out a breath.

“You know, those two sound so cute together.”

With a strangled yap, Guy glanced down towards Sam. He’d all but forgotten about his partner, now perfectly conscious as he lounged within the incidental cradle.

“I gotta say-” Sam continued, casually resting his hands behind his head. “In spite of the blinding pain in my leg, this is a pretty nice way to wake up.”

With a noise of disgust, Guy hastily tossed Sam to the bed like one unloading a bag of trash.

“For your information-” he snapped. “I was trying to wake you up before you got us thrown out on our furry duffs! You were caterwauling like a Pandog with a Spork in its spleen!”

… Okay, so, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. Even Jenkins shot Guy an accusatorial glare.

Sam’s smile, however, was dropped almost at once. “… You… You heard all that?”

Guy blinked, a little stunned. He’d been expecting a laugh, or a dismissive hand-wave, but… Sam looked almost afraid, sitting back against his knees as he anxiously wrung at his hands.

“… Er… Not too much-” Guy mumbled, suddenly feeling as fretful as Sam looked. There was something so off-putting about seeing such a plucky spirit look so apprehensive… Sheepishly, he rubbed at his arm, glancing towards the ground. “… I-I mean… You mentioned your mom once, but-”

Guy looked up, suddenly noting the subtle twitch in Sam’s seemingly blank eyes.

“… Sam…?” he ventured cautiously.

All at once, Sam’s voice broke out in a crooked sort of chortle.

“BOY-!” he proclaimed, in an unsettling parody of his usual swagger as he hopped to the floor. “I sure could go for a swim right now! Did ya know this place even had a pool? I was shocked, I mean, talk about luxury! Did I remember to pack my swim-trunks? Ah, I guess it doesn’t matter; I mean, I only got the one shirt anyway, right? Do ya think they got pool floaties? Gee, I hope they got pool flo-”

“Sam.”

The little vagabond was already halfway towards the door when Guy’s hand came to rest at his shoulder. Visibly cringing, Sam risked a glimpse, and found his partner’s expression rather… uncharacteristically compassionate.

"... Heh... No beatin' around the bush with you, huh?” Chewing his lip, Sam looked back down.  “… L-look, it... it's nothing! We all have our weird dreams, it's nothin' to get all flibberty-gibbet about!"

Guy groaned, wearily massaging at the corner of his eye. "Sam, a dream about two countries warring over butter is weird. You were having a sleep-paralyzing nightmare. It was…” He paused, suddenly feeling considerably warm. “… Disconcerting.”

"... Oh, Guy-" Sam's eyes wobbled with hyperbolic affection. "You do care!"

He lunged for a hug, but, per the norm, Guy was quick to rebuff.

"I just wanna get this resolved so I can get some sleep, okay?" he spat, shoving the Who to one side. Nevertheless, Sam remained as misty-eyed as a child coveting a Valentine's Day card.

"Okaaaay... ya big ol' softie-pants."

With an amorous giggle, he lightly tapped at Guy's knee, who just rolled his eyes.

“… Alright, c’mon you.” Decisively, Guy headed back towards the bed, helping himself to a seat along the edge. Turning his eyes, he tapped at the open space beside him, to which Sam gave his usual melodramatic gasp.

"You... you mean it?"

Reddening slightly, Guy scowled heavily. "Don’t go gettin’ mushy on me; my legs were just gettin' tired, and..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "Look, just get over here before I change my mind."

With a hoot, and a tap of his heels, Sam was already in, burrowing beneath the blankets like a rabid Groundgopher. As tightly wound as a burrito, he poked his face out from the folds, and giggled huskily.

"I always say, heart-to-heart talks are always better when you're all snuzzled up under a blanket! Ooh, ya know what would make this even better? Hot choco-late!" Dreamily, he sighed, and smacked at his lips. "What do ya say we order ourselves a round to get started, and-"

“Sam, stop trying to change the subject and talk to me.” Guy interjected, swiveling in place as he crossed his legs. “… Is talking about your mother that much of a sudden sore spot for you?”

Even before the sentence was out, Guy knew he’d said the wrong thing. Sam lost all trace of mirth in his expression, slowly staring out towards the opposite wall like a man in mourning.

It then occurred to Guy this was probably the first Sam was ever reluctant to speak.

"... Look-" Guy sighed, resting his arms to his raised knees. "... I'm probably the last Guy to be givin' advice about family stuff, but... whatever the deal is, it seems to me like your mom really loved you... And I mean, look at you now. A certified wildlife protector-! A hero, risking life and limb to protect a helpless animal-"

With every word of praise, Sam seemed to sink further and further into the blankets. Sensing the obvious discomfort, Guy quickly switched gears.

"... Look, bottom line is, you got a lot for a mom to be proud of. That..." he glanced over his shoulder towards the briefcase housing his dismantled self-flyer, and sighed. "... That's more than a lot of people can say."

Despite the gentle words, Sam continued to stew in his self-imposed silence. Warbling softly, Jenkins reached out across the bed, and nudged his nose to Sam's shoulder invitingly. With a resigned sort of smile, Sam naturally obliged, stroking his hand along the bird's mop of magenta hair.

"... I can't say any of that, though..." he said quietly. More quietly, in fact, than Guy'd ever heard him. "My mom wouldn't be proud, ‘cause... she never knew me."

Silently, Jenkins withdrew his head, as Guy could only stare. "... What did you say?"

Surely he'd heard wrong.

"... I made it all up." Sam mumbled after a moment. "Everything I said about my mom... was a lie."

... Then... All those stories-

"But... But what about the juice incident?" Guy reasoned. "Or the stuffed animals, or - or-" briefly, he snapped at his fingers, desperately wracking his brain for any other examples. "Or your imaginary friend, Reggie? Who she pretended was real?"

Beneath the thick veneer of shame and guilt, Sam couldn't help but feel a soft pat of fondness for his gruffy companion.

... He really had been listening...

"Made up... Pretend... Non-existaroo." he listed hoarsely, staring up towards the ceiling. "I never told anybody this before, but... when I was very little my mom-" Sam's voice broke slightly, and he swallowed. "... Left me at an orphanage... It's always just been me. I mean-" he paused, smiling ever so faintly. "At least until I met you."

... Guy was stupefied. Practically since the beginning, he'd pegged his fellow felon as a fool; a clingy buffoon born with an undeserved silver spoon in his mouth... And now, come to find out... he'd been abandoned?

"... Do you remember anything about your parents?" Guy ventured softly.

Sam looked away. "... I remember my mom... a little. Just... one thing."

"What?"

Even in the darkness, Guy could catch the faintest hue of rose blooming through Sam's pearly fur. Shuffling deeper under the covers, he mumbled sheepishly, "It's not important..."

Guy found himself leaning forward.

"Go ahead," he whispered encouragingly.

Though something told him he already knew what it was. Whimpering shyly, Sam drew the brim of his sleep cap over his eyes.

"... It's silly..."

"... Sam..."

Sam jolted slightly, looking out from under his hat. He'd known from the get-go that Guy was not a touchy-feely sort of Knox, and yet... he'd made a gentle reach for his partner's trembling hand, as seamlessly as though he'd been practicing for years. And even more puzzling, he showed no sign of regret, or awkwardness... He just stared with those lined, tired eyes, and squeezed.

Sam’s face went from white to pink… Then, smiling in defeat, he relaxed, and gazed up towards the ceiling.

"... She made me breakfast."

... Guy'd known it, without really knowing it... And even still, he couldn't think of what to say. How many times had Sam ordered that dish in their shared existence? ... And how many times did Guy gag, and shudder, and turn his nose up at it?

... How many times did he turn his nose up to her memory?

The guilt suddenly sagged in his stomach like a stone.

"... I bet hers-" he said after a beat. "... Were really good."

Sam chuckled sadly, finally turning onto his side, though he still avoided eye contact. With his free hand, he mournfully traced the swirling pattern of the bed sheet. "The best... Really green... Super eggy... I've been trying to find her all these years, so I could ask... why, ya know?" He blinked, and a tear lazily trailed along his fur. "... Why she gave me up..."

Guy wanted to say something... anything... but a saddened, desperate chuckle quickly interrupted.

"I-I'm sure it's a good reason, I just-" Sam's voice seem to thicken with grief, as his grip on Guy's hand only tightened. One by one, tear after tear splashed against the bedspread, but Sam was determined to carry on. "... I really wanna know... So I keep ordering them, and I keep trying them... But they're..." he struggled to swallow the burgeoning lump in his throat. "... Never hers..."

Sam I-Am and Guy Am-I had not been together for very long, but in their time together, there seemed to be one hard and fast rule.

Sam was always the first to instigate a hug.

Tonight, Guy broke that rule.

“… Keep trying, Sam …” he whispered, gently cupping Sam’s head to his chest. The gesture and confession proved to be too much for Sam, as he quickly dissolved into snuffles of catharsis, desperately clasping his Guy like a life preserver. Purring softly, Jenkins curled his elastic neck around the pair of them, encircling the two like a wreath of pure warmth.

"Here, blow." Guy said after a minute, plucking a tissue from the box atop the bedside drawers, and gingerly held it to Sam's button nose.

Unfortunately, the moment of tactile tenderness was quickly squelched, as, with a nasally Bronx cheer, Sam's thunderous mucus rocketed a stream of slime as green as his eggs. Quickly suppressing the urge to retch, Guy snagged at a fistful of tissues, hastily smothering them to Sam's sticky face.

"... Better?" he asked, swiftly tossing the snotty clump to one side.

Sam gave a shuttering sniffle, nodding weakly.

“… Y-yeah… Th-thanks, Guy…” Smiling wetly, he dragged his knuckles across his swimming eye before casting the discarded cot a look of drained submission. “I… I guess I oughta be gettin’ back to bed…”

He made to move, but was suddenly pulled back in by Guy.

“… You don’t have to leave…” he muttered, squaring his shoulders with a great show of shyness. Lowering his gaze, he buried his twisted mouth against the fluff of his tawny neckline. “… N-not… not if you don’t want to, I mean…”

“... For real?” Sam gawked. “… But… but what about your sleep-space?”

“Eh,” Guy shrugged, finally sliding in under the comforter, as Jenkins dutifully uncoiled. “I always sleep alone… So, maybe…” Shyly, he fluffed at his pillow. “… I could try it with a companion, for once… Who knows?”

Without realizing it, he’d shuffled in closer, making a second clasp for Sam’s feeble hand.

“… I might wind up liking it.”

[livefrompittsburgh]

Happy House / Garbitch / YGSLRHSTFUT

11.22.19 // Los Angeles 

This post is a little late and a little unconventional for this blog. 

For starters, I was far from home. I had found myself in Burbank for an animation convention and managed to make my way to LA to check out the local punk scene. 

And the LA punks did NOT let me down in the slightest. 

My getting into the venue was interesting. The Smell’s entrance is in an ally which I didn’t know about until 10 minutes after I was standing in front of the very back of the place waiting for doors to open. Rookie mistake I bet. 

The show was a lot more than just the bands too. The first person to take the stage was Braxton. He talked about his time in the punk and metal scene as a black man and all of the racism that he faced and still faces. It’s a very important perspective to keep in mind. Punk is hailed as something inclusive and has had many incredible and iconic black musicians to rise to popularity in the scene, however a majority of punk and metal is still incredibly white. It was a lot to think about, especially coming from a scene myself where I’m mainly surrounded by white men. I was lucky enough to talk to Braxton too before I left, he was super down to earth and chill and I hightly recommend his hardcore band, Shred Bundy.

The next act was the first band up, Happy House. To my absolute delight, the mosh pit started almost instantly (Braxton actually shoved me right into the pit getting everything started. What a dude.). Happy House went hard as hell and made my heart so happy that someone so cute with cherries in their hair can get up on stage and absolutely fuck it up. Not that appearances matter, but I’m still so used to mediocre 30+ year old white guys it was so refreshing to see someone of that caliber up there.

The next speaker was J, a non binary Asian sex worker. They were giving tips on how to stay safe in the world of online sex work as well as how to get started. A big conversation was what sites to go on for work, how to protect your identity, and most of all make sure you’re getting paid right for your services. Another big point they made was how much less work/retweets you will get a someone who’s non-white with a different body type in the industry. 

The next band up was Garbitch. They brought it all to the stage. The head vocalist had a pink dildo on them at the beginning of their set and I just knew it was gonna be magical. They threw out plastic pig masks into the crowd and encouraged us to wear and destroy them to our hearts content as they sang a song about beating up cops. There were also a lot of teens present in the audience. The vocalist called them out, happy that their message is reaching and influencing the younger generation. One of the teens even asked me and some others to help her crowd surf. Near the end of their set, in the spirit of the classic riot grrrl movement, Garbitch made a call for all non-binary and trans people to come to the front. It was in that second that I felt truly a part of something. I felt seen for who I was, despite no one there knowing me. Garbitch is not only an incredible queercore band, they represent a community and a call to action. They make trans people feel safe and free to let out their emotions and frustrations in that pit. 

Then there was the fashion show. I was stunned. I was spoiled rotten. A mother fucking fashion show. They had brought in a local fashion designer, Audey Thunders (who is on Etsy), to showcase her newest works. The models came in all shapes, sizes, colors, and genders. The clothes were made out of old 90′s bedsheets turned into outfits. There were even some available for sale after the show. Unfortunately I didn’t get any of the clothes but I did snag a cool studded choker made from zippers. 

Last but most definitely not least was You Guys Suck Like Real Hard Shut The Fuck Up Thanks (or YGSLRHSTFUT for short). You Guys Suck had a way of commanding attention from the audience. They let everyone know that they would be heard and we would listen to every word. The very first song was called Fat, Black, and Trans which was a testament to the lead vocalist. She sat in the chair the whole time but that didn’t diminish the power of the set. You don’t have to thrash everywhere about the stage to be a punk. She talked and sang about everything. About her blackness, her transness, her homelessness. She told us all how LA is funneling more money into police than into taking care of the exceedingly large homeless population. The overall message and sound of You Guys Suck was the most powerful and impactful I’ve ever heard. Their final song had us chant along with them names of black women unjustly murdered by the hands of police. The loud and just fury of every single person in that room was so fucking powerful. Everyone was sent out with a call to action to combat the injustice that runs rampant in our streets killing our black population. 

There was one more act that night that I only caught a small glimpse of, a burlesque dancer. Unfortunately I had to dip because it was late and I had to catch an Uber back to Burbank. Had I stayed longer, I know I would have nothing but good things to say.

That night was hands down the best punk show I had ever been to. It opened my eyes and showed me that punk isn’t just white. Punk isn’t straight, or cis. Punk is so much more than the stuff that lies on the surface of the scene. That night I got to be a part of something. I got to be around people who are making an impact and causing change in the scene. I hope that some day I get to see anyone from that night again. I encourage every single person out there to check out these bands if you have the means. 

And to anyone who may have read this the whole way through: I love you. Thank you. 

[mideastsoccer]

A bird’s eye view of Asia: A continental landscape of minorities in peril

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Patreon, Podbean and Castbox.

Many in Asia look at the Middle East with a mixture of expectation of stable energy supplies, hope for economic opportunity and concern about a potential fallout of the region’s multiple violent conflicts that are often cloaked in ethnic, religious and sectarian terms.

Yet, a host of Asian nations led by men and women, who redefine identity as concepts of exclusionary civilization, ethnicity, and religious primacy rather than inclusive pluralism and multiculturalism, risk sowing the seeds of radicalization rooted in the despair of population groups that are increasingly persecuted, disenfranchised and marginalized.

Leaders like China’s Xi Jingping, India’s Narendra Modi, and Myanmar’s Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi, alongside nationalist and supremacist religious figures ignore the fact that crisis in the Middle East is rooted in autocratic and authoritarian survival strategies that rely on debilitating manipulation of national identity on the basis of sectarianism, ethnicity and faith-based nationalism.

A bird’s eye view of Asia produces a picture of a continental landscape strewn with minorities on the defensive whose positioning as full-fledged members of society with equal rights and opportunities is either being eroded or severely curtailed.

It also highlights a pattern of responses by governments and regional associations that opt for a focus on pre-emptive security, kicking the can down the road and/or silent acquiescence rather than addressing a wound head-on that can only fester, making cures ever more difficult.

To be sure, multiple Asian states, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India have at various times opened their doors to refugees.

Similarly, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) disaster management unit has focused on facilitating and streamlining repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

But a leaked report by the unit, AHA Centre, in advance of last June’s ASEAN summit was criticized for evading a discussion on creating an environment in which Rohingya would be willing to return.

The criticism went to the core of the problem: Civilizationalist policies, including cultural genocide, isolating communities from the outside world, and discrimination will at best produce simmering anger, frustration and despair and at worst mass migration, militancy and/or political violence.

A Uyghur member of the Communist Party for 30 years who did not practice his religion, Ainiwa Niyazi, would seem to be the picture-perfect model of a Chinese citizen hailing from the north-western province of Xinjiang.

Yet, Mr Niyazi was targeted in April of last year for re-education, one of at least a million Turkic Muslims interned in detention facilities where they are forced to internalize Xi Jinping thought and repudiate religious norms and practices in what constitutes the most frontal assault on a faith in recent history.

If past efforts, including an attempt to turn Kurds into Turks by banning use of Kurdish as a language that sparked a still ongoing low level insurgency, is anything to go by, China’s ability to achieve a similar goal with greater brutality is questionable.

“Most Uyghur young men my age are psychologically damaged. When I was in elementary school surrounded by other Uyghurs, I was very outgoing and active. Now I feel like I have been broken… Quality of life is now about feeling safe,” said Alim, a young Uyghur, describing to Adam Hunerven, a writer who focuses on the Uyghurs, arrests of his friends and people trekking south to evade the repression in Xinjiang cities.

Travelling in the region in 2014, an era in which China was cracking down on Uyghurs but that predated the institutionalization of the re-education camps, Mr. Hunerven saw that “the trauma people experienced in the rural Uyghur homeland was acute. It followed them into the city, hung over their heads and affected the comportment of their bodies. It made people tentative, looking over their shoulders, keeping their heads down. It made them tremble and cry.”

There is little reason to assume that anything has since changed for the better. On the contrary, not only has the crackdown intensified, fear and uncertainty has spread to those lucky enough to live beyond the borders of China. Increasingly, they risk being targeted by the long arm of the Chinese state that has pressured their host countries to repatriate them.

Born and raised in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, Rahima Akter, one of the few women to get an education among the hundreds of thousands who fled what the United Nations described as ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, saw her dreams and potential as a role model smashed when she was this month expelled from university after recounting her story publicly.

Ms. Akter gained admission to Cox’s Bazar International University (CBIU) on the strength of graduating from a Bangladeshi high school, a feat she could only achieve by sneaking past the camp's checkpoints, hiding her Rohingya identity, speaking only Bengali, dressing like a Bangladeshi, and bribing Bangladeshi public school officials for a placement.

Ms Akter was determined to escape the dire warnings of UNICEF, the United Nations’ children agency, that Rohingya refugee children risked becoming “a lost generation.”

Ms. Akter’s case is not an isolated incident but part of a refugee policy in an environment of mounting anti-refugee sentiment that threatens to deprive Rohingya refugees who refuse to return to Myanmar unless they are guaranteed full citizenship of any prospects.

In a move that is likely to deepen a widespread sense of abandonment and despair, Bangladeshi authorities, citing security reasons, this month ordered the shutting down of mobile services and a halt to the sale of SIM cards in Rohingya refugee camps and restricted Internet access. The measures significantly add to the isolation of a population that is barred from travelling outside the camps.

Not without reason, Bangladeshi foreign minister Abul Kalam Abdul Momen, has blamed the international community for not putting enough pressure on Myanmar to take the Rohingyas back.

The UN “should go to Myanmar, especially to Rakhine state, to create conditions that could help these refugees to go back to their country. The UN is not doing the job that we expect them to do,” Mr. Abdul Momen said.

The harsh measures are unlikely to quell increased violence in the camps and continuous attempts by refugees to flee in search of better pastures.

Suspected Rohingya gunmen last month killed a youth wing official of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League party. Two refugees were killed in a subsequent shootout with police.

The plight of the Uyghurs and the Rohingya repeats itself in countries like India with its stepped up number of mob killings that particularly target Muslims, threatened stripping of citizenship of close to two million people in the state of Assam, and unilateral cancellation of self-rule in Kashmir.

Shiite Muslims bear the brunt of violent sectarian attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Malaysia, Shiites, who are a miniscule minority, face continued religious discrimination.

The Islamic Religious Department in Selangor, Malaysia’s richest state, this week issued a sermon that amounts to a mandatory guideline for sermons in mosques warning against “the spread of Shia deviant teachings in this nation… The Muslim ummah (community of the faithful) must become the eyes and the ears for the religious authorities when stumbling upon activities that are suspicious, disguising under the pretext of Islam,” the sermon said.

Malaysia, one state where discriminatory policies are unlikely to spark turmoil and political violence, may be the exception that confirms the rule.

Ethnic and religious supremacism in major Asian states threatens to create breeding grounds for violence and extremism. The absence of effective attempts to lessen victims’ suffering by ensuring that they can rebuild their lives and safeguard their identities in a safe and secure environment, allows wounds to fester.

Permitting Ms. Akter, the Rohingya university student, to pursue her dream, would have been a low-cost, low risk way of offering Rohingya youth an alternative prospect and at the very least a reason to look for constructive ways of reversing what is a future with little hope.

Bangladeshi efforts to cut off opportunities in the hope that Rohingya will opt for repatriation have so far backfired. And repatriation under circumstances that do not safeguard their rights is little else than kicking the can down the road.

Said human rights advocate Ewelina U. Ochab: “It is easy to turn a blind eye when the atrocities do not happen under our nose. However, we cannot forget that religious persecution anywhere in the world is a security threat to everyone, everywhere.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture

[captainofthetidesbreath]

A couple hours late but I just saw you saying how Jesse and Fareeha are more inverses of each other and I completely agree! I personally see Sombra and Jesse as more paralleled, and would be interested in hearing your thoughts on that idea? You tend to be very well-spoken and are good at analyzing concepts, I've come to notice.

EDIT - NOVEMBER 3, 2018: With the release of “Reunion” and Ashe’s hero reveal, the majority of what I wrote about Deadlock in the first three sections—Sign of the Skull, Those Left Behind, Revolutionaries and Rebels—is incorrect. Despite this, I maintain that the socioeconomic context outlines in Those Left Behind remains relevant to the American Southwest in-universe and maintain my belief that it is applicable to McCree specifically, even if it does not apply to Deadlock. I will be writing a new post on Sombra and McCree soon. Stay tuned.

in reference to this post… from months ago

Lucky for you, I was thinking about Jesse and Sombra the night before you sent this! Deadlock and Los Muertos, actually, but I’ll get to that. I absolutely agree that the two of them make much more direct parallels than Jesse and Fareeha, who are interesting as a pair in their own right but they aren’t direct parallels.

I often joke that Gabe adopted the same child twice: smart-talking, hyper-competent Latine who tote around skull logos and are from gangs with the word “dead” in their names. It’s a joke—I don’t consider Gabe’s relationship with Sombra to be that of a parent-child, for one thing—but I believe that Jesse and Sombra are very similar regardless.

They both have similar backgrounds: joined local gangs at a very young age and earned later membership into a high-level covert organization through resourcefulness and an admirable natural aptitude in a specific desired skillset. Although both at first look to be unserious and overly laid-back, they prove themselves to be precision operators who indeed execute plans and achieve goals with immense gravity. They’re both supremely confident in their abilities, to the point that one can accuse them of having too high an opinion of themselves and being overconfident.

They come from similar backgrounds, having been orphaned during the Crisis and suffered under economic disparity driven by infrastructure changes in the rebuilding period. They both similarly drop off the map and resurface under new identities. They both have a deep concern in seeing done a justice that is beyond the reach of the law—or when the law refuses to deliver it.

All this, and more, under the cut. The post is very long.

I would also like to thank @segadores-y-soldados for all he’s written, especially on Sombra and especially recently. I make heavy reference to his writing on Sombra in certain portions of this post. I also must admit that reading his posts on Arturito has motivated me to finish this after three months of slow progress, though I still have a nagging feeling I’m forgetting a point.

Sign of the Skull

To make a quick run-through on Los Muertos and Deadlock Gang themselves before moving onto how these organizations inform Sombra and Jesse specifically. Sort of a section to outline basic things about the gangs that doesn’t neatly fit into other points. It’s mostly to establish their context, and some similarities between their structures and presentation.

Screenshot from the Sombra Origin showing members of Los Muertos. Each member has painted skeletons onto themselves with phosphorescent paint in varying colors.

Los Muertos is a Mexican gang with apparent regional influence with members in both Dorado and the nearby Castillo, and it even has some international reach judging from the Los Muertos graffiti on the Hollywood map. Little is known to us about their structure besides this, and even in-universe they are noted to be mysterious with little information publicly available about them.

However, Los Muertos openly broadcasts their intentions: to right the wrongs committed by the wealthy and powerful against the disadvantaged of Mexico. They position themselves as transgressors of the law specifically to disrupt the lives of the “vipers” in power. More on that later.

The name translates to “The Dead”, and they are identified by skull motifs, specifically the calaveras associated with the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead. Individual members openly identify themselves and indicate their membership by painting skulls and bones on their bodies with phosphorescent paint.

Screenshot from the Route 66 map of five motorcycles parked in front of The High Side bar. The Deadlock emblem is spray-painted by the entrance.

Deadlock Gang is an American motorcycle club and organized crime ring occupying a Southwestern town on an abandoned stretch of Route 66 running across Deadlock Gorge. It’s unclear where exactly the Gorge is, and the Visual Source Book’s pin for the map is highly unspecific, but I tend to believe it’s in somewhere in northern New Mexico because Jesse’s base of operations is listed as Santa Fe, NM.

In one lore piece, Deadlock is holding a national rally, suggesting they’ve got chapters nationwide and the founding chapter is in Deadlock Gorge. While it’s unclear what their reach is, there is a possibility of international chapters. (Torbjorn’s motorcycle-themed Deadlock skin may suggest this, but it does not have any Deadlock iconography, notably showing a bear where one expects the Deadlock emblem.)

This does not necessarily mean all of the Deadlock Rebels Motorcycle Club is a criminal organization, nor every single member a criminal, but… y’know, the founding chapter is a weapons trafficking racket. They’re a one-percenter outlaw motorcycle club, and there’s a quick and easy comparison in the real-life Hells Angels, whom the show Sons of Anarchy models itself after.

Deadlock, besides naming itself after the concept of death like Los Muertos does, also uses a skull in its emblem. We haven’t seen any member of Deadlock pictured, but extrapolating from the typical behavior of motorcycle clubs, they likely openly identify themselves and indicate their membership by wearing standardized jackets or most likely vests. Members likely have tattoos indicating membership as well, seeing as Jesse has a tattoo of the Deadlock emblem on his inner arm in his Blackwatch skin.

Those Left Behind

Sombra, orphaned during the Omnic Crisis, was taken in by Los Muertos, a gang that positioned themselves as champions of the underclass ignored during the post-Crisis rebuilding process. They’ve done this most notably by opposing the CEO of LumériCo Guillermo Portero, who they’ve described as having exercised his social influence to have many wrongfully imprisoned and who we know is working with the not-as-noble-as-they-put-forward Vishkar. 

The social context of Los Muertos and Sombra is very directly told to us. From Sombra’s official bio:

After ░░░░░░ was taken in by Mexico’s Los Muertos gang, she aided it in its self-styled revolution against the government. Los Muertos believed that the rebuilding of Mexico had primarily benefited the rich and the influential, leaving behind those who were most in need of assistance.

From a lore post published to the website:

…its members style themselves as revolutionaries who represent those left behind by the government after the widespread devastation of the Omnic Crisis.

And Michael Chu on Los Muertos at Blizzcon 2016 (transcript):

Mexico really suffered a lot at the hands of the Omnic Crisis. The war destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. […] They claim to be kind of revolutionaries fighting for people who were left behind during the rebuilding of Mexico after the war.

Despite their noble stated goal, they seemingly also cross a line in their illicit activity enough to earn the ire of Jack, who isn’t exactly on the straight and narrow himself but still seeks the right side of things. As Chu added:

Whether or not that’s really what they are up to, because they’re also engaged in a lot of other shady activities. It is up to you decide.

Given a lot of other suspect activity they engage in, that noble work might not be the only story to be had on them—especially depending on where you’re standing. Saviors with their thumbs in certain pies not meant for them, possibly.

The social context that Sombra rises out of is made very plain for us. But what does it have to do with Jesse?

While we know few specifics about his circumstances growing up, other than he also lived through the Crisis and was likely similarly orphaned during it, the description and in-game environment of the Route 66 map suggest the area is one of difficult social and economic circumstances, emphasis mine:

Though the travelers and road trippers who used to cross the US on historic Route 66 are gone, the Main Street of America still stands, a testament to a simpler time. The gas stations, roadside shops, and cafes have gone into disuse, and the fabled Deadlock Gorge is mostly seen from the comfort of transcontinental train cars. But amid the fading monuments of that earlier era, the outlaws of the Deadlock Gang are planning their biggest heist yet.

Concept art of The High Side, showing the abandoned bar in disrepair with boarded windows and faded paint.

At least one building, the Cave Inn (ba dum tsh) in the streets portion of the map, is visibly abandoned, and the theme of disrepair and long-gone halcyon days is especially prevalent in the concept art for the map. This all paints a portrait of a Deadlock Gang that operates out of an area that suffered immense economic hardship in recent years, likely particularly after the introduction of the transcontinental train cars, one of which is featured in “Train Hopper”, a comic which takes the time to emphasize the wealth of the passengers traveling on them. So, the Deadlock chapter is localized within a region that suffered economically under infrastructure changes that largely benefit the wealthy and powerful. It’s possible that these infrastructure changes were made possible because of efforts to rebuild after the physical devastation of the Crisis.

Without going off on a tangent about it, there’s a bit of a difference between “Deadlock comes out of the lower class in a geographic region beset by poverty” and “Deadlock gang itself currently has no money”. Apparently, well after the effects of financial misfortune set in, Deadlock was and is making enough money to maintain long-distance shipping, as suggested by their semi-trailer truck, and keep an entire town functioning well enough as a cover for their criminal enterprise. Also, missiles don’t sell for cheap. Deadlock might be financially comfortable now, but their context still involves deep socioeconomic disparity.

This is especially poignant against the Route’s invoked nickname, Main Street of America, which conjures images of the average American person. Those average people who owned gas stations, cafes, diners, roadside trinket shops, dive bars are the ones who are forgotten while the more affluent folks pass them over, traveling in style. There’s also a historical precedent in poverty and social disparity as driven by infrastructure changes specifically affecting the way people travel across regions and the country, specifically in the history of the freeway.

To sort of make the clarification, Jesse’s tattoo states that Deadlock was established in 1976—happy centennial, Deadlock—so they’ve certainly changed a lot as their social context and membership make-up changed. There’s much to be said about social non-conformity, outlaw motorcycle gangs, one-percenters, community integration, and how these intersect with both the politics and economics of the local communities along Route 66, especially given how the Route was recently listed as one of the country’s most endangered historic places, even in Deadlock’s apparent founding in a period of American social unease after the Vietnam War and during the late Cold War, and extrapolate a lot about Deadlock from all that, and even about Jesse himself from some of it, but that’s for a different post.

Revolutionaries and Rebels

In that context, it’s worthwhile to note that in their insignia, seen in the graffiti all over the Route 66 map and in Jesse’s tattoo in his Blackwatch skin, they calls themselves the Deadlock Rebels. Generally, outlaw motorcycle clubs are also known for their contempt for social convention and disdain for status quo.

Screenshot of the Deadlock Gang hideout with their insignia, which includes the words Deadlock Rebels, spray-painted onto a wall.

Deadlock is quite the opposite of Los Muertos, though. Deadlock maintains a law-abiding public face—holding innocuous and even advertised national rallies and hiding their illicit activity under numerous cover businesses—and are more discreet in their disrespect of law. One can double down on this by looking to how successfully real-life one-percenter clubs maintain their public image: openly contemptuous of social norms but keeping public knowledge of any legal transgressions to only the small indiscretions while hiding the major ones.

Taking a look at Deadlock’s primary targets, military installations: the train cars on the map are military-related, the gang traffics military hardware and weapons including missiles. Although Deadlock comes from a similar social context as Los Muertos, these aren’t targets seeking to effect a change in society like how Los Muertos seeks to. Deadlock appears largely self-interested, with little interest in changing the fortunes of anyone else in the American lower class. Los Muertos bills itself as other-interested, seeking to change the fortunes of the Mexican underclass as a whole.

Archetypically, Los Muertos are revolutionaries, Deadlock are rebels. While they both groups reject the status quo, the revolutionary seeks sweeping social change but the rebel rejects the status quo on a personal level. The revolutionary wants society to change to suit their vision of what it ought to be while the rebel positions themselves outside of society and will redefine themselves as society changes.

The difference is apparent in their choice of targets. Los Muertos targets institutions and people who directly have a hand in the building of their social context, and attacking those targets will potentially affect a social change. Deadlock targets institutions and people who may have a hand in their social context, but such targets are chosen primarily for the gang’s financial gain.

Los Muertos is politically motivated. Deadlock is financially motivated.

Admirers in the Shadows

Sombra and Jesse don’t remain in their gangs. They both end up joining shadow organizations with global reach, the terrorist organization Talon and the covert ops organization Blackwatch, respectively. Both organizations were wooed by their specific skillsets.

Sombra launched an even more audacious string of hacks, and her exploits earned her no shortage of admirers, including Talon. She joined the organization’s ranks…

With his expert marksmanship and resourcefulness, he was given the choice between rotting in a maximum-security lockup and joining Blackwatch, Overwatch’s covert ops division. He chose the latter.

A young Jesse McCree was recruited into Blackwatch after Gabriel Reyes saw his potential and gave him a choice: join Blackwatch, or rot in prison.

The difference here is that Sombra was offered a place, but she did not necessarily need that offer to continue on with her life. She takes it because Talon resources allow her to more effectively pursue her goals. If McCree did not take the offer to join Blackwatch, his life effectively ended. (There’s a whole thing to be said about this offer, why it was the best offer that could have been made to him at the same, and criminal rehabilitation—but that’s another post.) McCree’s decision to join Blackwatch isn’t motivated by pursuit of a specific goal. He just didn’t want his life to be over before it started. In that regard, his entire life is shaped very directly by his relationship to Overwatch as an individual and Blackwatch, even more than simply its role in ending the Crisis and overseeing the rebuilding efforts.

Sombra, as someone who survived the Crisis, similarly has that more distanced influence of Overwatch in her life, but there’s the possibility she may have a more direct one.

With the recent spawn interaction between Sombra and Hammond showing a sentimentality for her stuffed Overwatch bear, seen in her den in Castillo, there is a possible picture to paint of a Sombra who may have some sentimentality toward Overwatch and might be aiding individual members on the sly not only because she wants to uncover the Grand Conspiracy they’re caught up in but also because she has a personal motivation.

segadores-y-soldados has a lot of good and very recent speculation on what this could mean for Sombra, either working with the room in her background for her to have worked with Blackwatch or having her as never having worked with Overwatch. If she worked with Blackwatch, which is admittedly a shakier theory, it creates a direct and clear mirror with Jesse: given a second chance at life through working with Overwatch and Blackwatch. If she did not and the influence is only the distant one, and she simply remained on the edges of society and making use of the space available, it is an inverse of Jesse. I recommend reading these two posts on the idea: one, two, three.

Name: REDACTED

One could compare Sombra attempting to eradicate her identity as Olivia Colomar and later returning as Sombra to Jesse going underground after leaving Blackwatch and later resurfacing to work as a bounty hunter. Their decisions to drop off the map have different motivations and different degrees of extreme, and there is a different tenor in how one disappears as Olivia and returns as Sombra and the other disappears as McCree and makes a resurfaces in a return to that identity.

Sombra accidentally stumbled onto a massive conspiracy that controlled the world and drew their attention, compromising her security and forcing her to destroy all trace of Olivia Colomar to go into hiding. She came back as a completely new person with no trails to her old identity, a transformation so complete that it took years to connect the two.

It is possible to draw a stronger parallel between them here. Jesse similarly has parts of his identity that he’s hiding (but which Sombra knows about):

Sombra: Pleasure working with you, McCree… if that is your real name.McCree: Don’t know what you heard, but my name’s not Joel. Best remember that.

There’s a strong case for the Jesse is the journalist Joel Morricone theory: at some point in his life, he created a second identity for himself and is working to keep the two separate. It’s currently unclear exactly what the details of the arrangement is or why he goes to these lengths. Given that he disappeared for “several years” after quitting and before reappearing again as Jesse McCree, gunslinger for hire, it stands to reason he spent the intervening years living quietly under the Morricone identity. 

We don’t really know much about the specifics of what motivated Jesse to go to ground, but based on his official bio, it seems related to the infighting following the Talon infiltration at Overwatch and Blackwatch that also drove him to quit. It could likely be motivated by security reasons—in a similar but less drastic way that Sombra burned her old identity to protect herself.

Justice Against Law

One of the building blocks of McCree’s character is his stance on justice. He makes it very clear: he is concerned primarily in dispensing justice to the point that he only accepts jobs as a bounty hunter if he believes the cause just and constantly gets involved in vigilantism, putting a stop to crimes both petty and serious.

Through this dogged pursuit of seeing justice done, he seeks a self-redemption for the wrongs he committed early in his life: “he came to believe that he could make amends for his past sins by righting the injustices of the world”. At the same time, he makes it clear that he believes justice and law run on different wavelengths. He appreciates Blackwatch for its “flexibility” to move “unhindered by bureaucracy and red tape”. The Morricone article seems to suggest a belief that justice can be defended by law, but everything else about him strongly states that he does not believe justice is exclusively defended by law.

The short version: McCree has a rigid sense of justice and dedicates his life to seeing it carried out, but he does not equate it with the law. Both of those points are amply evidenced and are at the forefront of McCree’s character. 

Edited sequence from the “Searching” comic where Zarya and Lynx-17 go door-to-door, showing everyone a photo of Sombra. Zarya’s internal dialogue in the last panel: “But no one has seen Sombra. Or nobody admits it. They see her like our Stepan Razin—attacking the rich to defy the czar.”

Sombra is (perhaps surprisingly) similar. As stated previously, she was brought in by a gang who billed themselves as seeking a justice for the Mexican underclass that they believed could not be achieved through legal means.

On her own? She holds to those ideals and that goal. She attacks and exposes the CEO of LumériCo, creating an opening to see some justice done for the Mexican people. (The attempt failed, and Portero is reinstated, but that’s besides the point.) Her continuing interest in seeing the Viper Portero removed only makes sense if she continues to have a personal investment in seeing justice for the underclass of her country.

This leads to Sombra being seen as an extrajudicial force of change and good by the Mexican people, particularly those in the Castillo and Dorado region. Zarya compares her to Stepan Razin (Wikipedia), who as I understand it led force composed in part of peasants in uprising and, though he failed, was immortalized as a folklore hero.

Though her methods are different and her goals much more specific, her actions, at least in Mexico, are similarly driven by a search for justice that cannot be delivered by the law.

The Enemies of Talon

I don’t have a lot to say about this, and segadores-y-soldados has summarized it quite better than I have, but it’s important enough to get it’s own section. But, Sombra working against Talon actually puts her technically on the same side as Jesse is—even though Jesse as of “Train Hopper” doesn’t seem that interested in actually ending Talon’s activities or denying them what resources they want, only in preventing them from hurting and killing innocents. (Though, I doubt Jesse is going to remain in that mode for long.)

It is entirely possibly, maybe even likely, that Sombra is aiding Jesse somehow as well as aiding Jack and Ana. I linked a couple of segadores-y-soldados’ relevant posts earlier, but I’ll link them again: linked before, new link.

Miscellanea, Smaller Comparisons 

Sombra is embraced by her old gang Los Muertos, even though she has broken ties with them for her safety, as evidenced by the gang’s enthusiastic and open support of her attacks on LumériCo. Deadlock openly rejects Jesse and is suggested to have a “shoot on sight” policy for him, as evidenced by the numerous photos of him accompanying rifles and his photo pinned to a dartboard; it’s possible that they resent him for having avoided prison and taking the presented opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

Even after leaving their respective gangs, both Jesse and Sombra still make use of variations on the gangs’ symbols in their personal iconographies. Sombra identifies herself through a simplified graphic calaveras. While in Blackwatch, Jesse openly displays his tattoo and wears a buckle of the Deadlock winged skull; after leaving Blackwatch, his prosthetic arm features plating shaped like a skull. (The iconography extends to the game’s UI also, with EMP represented by a calaveras and Deadeye with a skull.)

Both take somewhat similar relationships to Gabriel: Jesse is framed as a surrogate son and a right-hand, Sombra is framed as a young accomplice who takes a more familiar tack and a frequent trusted partner. They’re opinionated and vocal about it, unafraid to talk back to Gabriel and criticize his planning.

Further in the personality vein of things, they’re characterized as deeply confident in their abilities to the point of cockiness and overconfidence, and they can be accused (and have been, by Gabriel, though with dubious sincerity) of having too high an opinion of themselves. But despite the breeziness, they are highly competent, thorough, and conscientious, and although they may appear to have a lot of things to say about other people’s plans, they execute their own plans with precision and utmost gravity. Arguably, both are playing a bit of the fool to mask how sharp, observant, and cunning they really are.

[fucklovepayme]

That’s so great for you! It’s always inspiring when you hear about a fellow baby’s success. It makes you aspire to be just as badass. How do you keep your game so fresh? What are your favorite ways to tease, flirt, charm, or seduce men (aka keep them hooked)? If a baby wanted to up her own game, what kind of pointers would you share with her?

It’s very important to have game when you’re in sex work or trying to be a trophy wife/SGF, hell in the dating world period. Men can’t walk over you or use you and you’ll never be in need for money when you have game. My personal advice on upgrading your game is this (this will be a very long post):

Confidence and high healthy self-esteem - this shit here is number fucking ONE! I can’t stress this enough. You have to look and act confident and teach people how to treat you. Let them know you will not tolerate disrespect and games. Take care about your appearance, never talk down about yourself in front of others, and don’t be afraid to cut somebody off if they don’t treat you right. 

Be honest, but nice - Don’t be afraid to say how you feel, better yet don’t be afraid to say “no”, especially if something makes you uncomfortable. Men aren’t afraid to ask for what they want (sex) so don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. I tell every man I entertain that I like to be taken cared of and that is what I’m accustomed to throughout my whole life and they can take it or leave it. If they leave it, they can have a nice life with the next chick. Don’t be afraid to call him out on anything either. Always try to keep things positive when you’re around him. Don’t reveal that anything is bothering you unless he asks.

Don’t chase a man and don’t come back if he ghosts you - If he goes 2+ weeks without talking to you, move on with your life. I don’t care how much you liked him or how nice, cute, rich, sexy, generous, etc he is, move the fuck on with your life. Way too many men out there to worry about just one who was probably juggling several other women anyway. The man needs to be the one to initiate at least 80% of the conversations you have, he needs to be the one that sets up dates and meeting you, he needs to be the one to first express commitment. 

Don’t make yourself too available to him - Don’t answer every call and don’t always respond right away to texts. Even when I’m at home doing absolutely nothing, I won’t answer the phone. I will call back about an hour or two later and act like I’m just now checking my phone or I was busy. Sometimes wait a day to call him back. Keep phone calls less than an hour depending on whatever you’re talking about. Answer texts between 10-45 minutes after you see it. Don’t talk to them every day, at least every 2 days is fine (it gives you more things to talk about). Be the first to end the conversation most of the time, make an excuse that you have to go or you’re driving. 

Have your own life and identity outside of the relationship - Where a lot of people, especially women, go wrong in relationships is when they are co-dependent with their partner and “can’t live” without them. Don’t ever lose yourself in a relationship and still pursue your goals and dreams. Have your own circle of friends and hobbies. Don’t bring along your boyfriend to everywhere you go. You don’t have to spend every waking moment with them. Women appear a lot more valuable to a man when it appears that she does not have to be with him.

Be mysterious - Don’t reveal everything about yourself so soon. Reveal information about yourself and your life little by little every time you talk. Have deeper conversations periodically, never on dates though. Don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve (have a poker face) and be a good listener. Be interested and engaging when they’re speaking in detail about their personal life or interest, get them to talk about themselves more because we all know men love to talk about themselves. Don’t give them access to your social media until you’re committed to them. Don’t go into too many details of your past relationships if you’re asked about them.

Have sex appeal - Dress to impress every time you see them. Walk like a VS model and act like you’re Elizabeth Taylor. Try to always talk softly and smile. Make subtle and periodic body contact (touching of shoulder or arm) when you’re next to him. Give him pet names like “baby”.

Leave him wondering how you feel about him - Now this can be tied into “being mysterious” as well. I never openly express so soon how much I like the guy, even if I actually do. I let the guy express how much he likes me and I’ll respond in a playfully arrogant like “You better 😜” or “I’m glad to hear that”. I’ll drop occasional hints how I feel about him like “I’m so glad to be here with you right now” or “I’m having a great time”. 

Don’t be intimate so soon - That includes sex, kissing, rubbing, and hugging. I NEVER kiss on the first date, I don’t care how much money the guy spent or what we did. You’re lucky if you get a friendly hug from me at the end of the first date. Depending on how I feel, I’ll kiss by the 4th or 5th date. If a man discusses any intimacy, instead of saying no, I say “maybe later”, “in the future when I see how far this relationship goes”, or “we’ll see”. They won’t see this as rejection. The man will see it as a challenge to get me to do what he wants to do, which he’ll be willing to do just about anything to get it. It shows that he has to work for and earn affection from you, he can’t get it just because he asks. 

Be yourself - And don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t think you have to change who you are or what you like to keep somebody. You might be the creative, artsy type or the “boss chick” type, just own up to it. 

Compliment him - Since men like to tell women what they think we like to hear, why not tell them what they want to hear to stroke their egos. Don’t overdo it though, when you see him say that you like his outfit or he’s so attentive. Compliment him physically and emotionally/mentally. Don’t ass kiss either because it’ll be obvious. 

Make subtle reminders that you’re desired by other men - Never let that man think he’s comfortable and he has no competition. I have no problem making occasional reminders about how much I’m approached by all sorts of men. In the back of his mind he’ll always wonder if he’ll ever lose you to another man so he’ll continue to act right to keep you around. This is different from jealousy, when he controls what you do or wear, that’s not cute and you should leave asap. A man that’s afraid to lose you will not do anything to lose you.

[polyrolemodels]

Poly Role Models: Andy Eye

PolyRoleModels: So welcome to PRM, would you like to introduce yourself?

Andy Izenson: Sure! My name is Andy Izenson. I am a uh mediator and uh attorney. And I live in Brooklyn. Um I’ve been uh practicing polyamory for about 10 years and…

PolyRoleModels: Well that was that was my first question.

Andy Izenson: That’s all I’ve got. I really like…

PolyRoleModels: Well that was my first question. So what does your relationship dynamic look like?

Andy Izenson: Well at the moment, I would say it looks a little bit like- you know those- that uh that non-Newtonian material you make when you mix like corn starch and Elmer’s glue?

PolyRoleModels: Yes I’m-

Andy Izenson: Where like it kinda expands to fill the space available to it and it wiggles and poke it hard, it gets firm, but you push your hands into it gently and it gets kind of soft.

PolyRoleModels: I feel like this is the best explanation I’ve ever gotten for someone’s polyamory.

Andy Izenson: So it’s uh it’s not linear. It’s fluid and it’s complicated and it’s exciting. Uhm I have some partners that I’ve been with for a really long time. I have some that blast into and out of my life intermittently in brief explosions of wonderment. 

I have some that are close by and some that are far away. I have a very broad understanding of what love is and what a relationship is. And I try not to nail things down too much.

PolyRoleModels: Good answer. Um what aspects of polyamory do you feel you excel at?

Andy Izenson: Oh gosh, um, I’m really excited so you know the distinction that some people make is between parallel polyamory and what is called kitchen table polyamory. Where parallel is you have your relationships but they don’t interact with each other.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah.

Andy Izenson: Kitchen table is everyone comes down to the table and has breakfast in the morning.And the latter is the kind that is really more my speed.

PolyRoleModels: Okay.

Andy Izenson: I think if I’m good at anything, it’s that I’m really lucky in the people that I have around me. Um because if uh If they’re such exemplary and incredible and brilliant people, of course they are going to have wonderful relationships with each other as well as with me. 

So it just positions me in this beautiful shifting complicated web of interpersonal relationships you know? That are- that are, some are sexual some are not, some are romantic, some are not, but the important thing is that everyone has each other’s back in whatever way makes senses for those individual people in the web.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah, my polyamory is the same way. So what do you feel like you struggle with?

Andy Izenson: Well I mean feelings are difficult, right? Like having feelings is the worst. Talking about feelings is challenging. Um and I feel like for a lot of us, there’s really a- a pressure to perform like everything is awesome all the time and you never have bad feelings because bad feeling means something is wrong. So lately I’ve been finding myself really challenged not to take bad feelings as a sign of a problem.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah

Andy Izenson: You know, I can feel insecure, I can feel scared, I can feel angry. I can feel um- I can feel anxious and the only thing that’s necessarily evidence is my own feeling. And I can’t deal with that feeling by pretending it’s not there, or by trying to shift the material circumstances of my world to make it go away. I have to actually address my feelings head on and using my words like a grown up.

PolyRoleModels: Got you.

Andy Izenson: And that’s challenging for many people. And it gets exponentially more challenging the more people are involved.

PolyRoleModels: Well the next question is how do you address it, but it sounds like you kind of answered that in there.

Andy Izenson: Well I think the way I address it is by- is with trust. Like if the reason that it’s scary to express a bad feeling or to express a fear or anxiety or you know, or anger. If the reason that it’s scary is because I’m afraid that my relationship isn’t strong enough to hold that negativity, or I’m afraid that you know my partner would only want to be with me if everything was fine and easy, then the tool to address it is trusting my partner, trusting the relationship, trusting the communication the relationship and knowing that it’s strong enough to hold those things even though they’re painful.

PolyRoleModels: Alright in terms of risk aware or safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?

Andy Izenson: Well we uh, everyone’s got their own practice. And so for the relationships that are sexual, um we have-um whenever anyone wants to change a you know, a part of their practice and everything that’s connected in there has to be informed and it’s really about everybody having their own agency in their body and finding ways that everyone’s personal practice and personal agency can fit together in a way that makes everybody- doesn’t push anybody beyond their own acceptable level of risk. 

And it is a complicated practice and sometimes it takes a lot of [adjusting] because safer sex conversations are never just about safer sex. You know, it’s never just about you know what barriers you’re using and what types of relationships you do or don’t want to use barriers with. There’s always more feelings underneath that about trust and safety and bodies, you know about sex and all of that comes in play even if you think that- even if on the surface level you’re just taking about latex.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah. Um what is the worst mistake you’ve made in your polyamory history and how did you rebound from that.

Andy Izenson: I uh I have made this mistake more times that I’m happy about and it���s the mistake of thinking that um that the feeling of love is strong enough to overcome any problem.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah.

Andy Izenson: And typically there’s one problem that I keep finding that to be not true about and it’s the problem of a partner that’s not actually polyamorous.

PolyRoleModels: I see.

Andy Izenson: And I keep, in my history, I have repeatedly thought “this person loves me so much and I love them so much and we’re gonna figure out a way to make it okay” but it just- it always ends up with both partners feeling and having tangible evidence to suggest that they’re not enough. 

Because if my partner wants me to be monogamous with them, then nothing I can give them is enough to make up for the deficit they feel from me giving love to other people and they feel like nothing they can give me nothing you know, nothing about their love for me unless it’s evidenced to be enough by the fact of me becoming monogamous with could possibly be enough. 

And so I’ve- I’ve just followed that feeling of love um when the circumstances were- you know when that misalignment was there, um more than a few times. Because I just you know I was just so idealistic. I just believed in that love so much. But that is that has proved itself for me repeatedly to be a mistake.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah I definitely understand that. I’ve yeah, I know about that one. Um so what self-identities are important to you and how do you feel like being polyamorous intersects with those self-identities?

Andy Izenson: I would say that the first identity I would say is important there is uh that I would self-identify as anit-capitalist. And it’s my belief that capitalism and enforced monogamy are really tied together. Because we get taught by all of the culture and the media and stories that we get told. We get taught that love is finite. That when work and love work in a scarcity economy, there’s only so much to go around and you have to prove yourself to be worthy of it or else there won’t be any for you. 

And it’s completely ridiculous, but capitalism is an orthodoxy. It only works if you believe in it. And so it has to infiltrate every corner of our worldview in order to stay strong. And so of course it infiltrates our understanding of love. But I think we can start to liberate our bodies of capitalism by liberating our hearts from it’s orthodoxies. And if we imagine instead of being scarce that love could be abundant, it changes everything. And um if you think about it, it is completely ridiculous to imagine that love is scarce. 

If you light a candle with another candle, the first candle is not less on fire. And so I think in a practice of living in a way that is resistant to what capitalism tries to teach us, it’s about letting love be abundant and blossom into everything that it can be and not constrain it with the fear that is the substance of capitalism.

PolyRoleModels: Understood.

Andy Izenson: Yeah so I’m also queer and trans. And uh and those things are relevant both by reason of you know I don’t think living in Brooklyn and being queer and trans you really can be monogamous. I don’t think that’s really a thing. But also because both those things involve thinking critically about the stories that I was told when I was growing up about who I was supposed to be and how I was supposed to live. And uh and going through them and taking out the things that I actually wanted. 

That actually made sense to me. And keeping those and throwing away the rest and building something new around them. So in the same way as when I was young, everyone, you know, all of the stories that I was told about what my life was going to be involved monogamy, involved heterosexuality. They involved being a certain gender. They involved living a certain way and once you start, once you get sort of a crow bar in there and open yourself a little bit to the possibility that the stories you were told about who you were supposed to be might not be applicable or might not be real at all. 

They all sort come tumbling down and then you get this glorious opportunity to create the self that you actually want to be. And build yourself up. Um in a way that is critical of and resistant to the way that those blueprints are constraining.

PolyRoleModels: Fair, I’ve had conversations about masculinity with Bex Caputo of the Dildorks saying roughly the same thing.

Andy Izenson: Yeah, I love what Bex has to say.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah, yeah, we both do.

PolyRoleModels: Do you have any groups, projects, websites, blogs, etc. that you’re involved with that you’d like to promote?

Andy Izenson: Uhm, well let’s see. I’m a I have a- there’s a law firm that I work at. It’s Diana Adams law and mediation. We do education and advocacy and representation for people in non-traditional and polyamorous and queer and chosen families. So we do family law but from the perspective of your family is what you make it. And we shift and uh tweak and change the law to fit what our families actually look like instead of trying to change our families to fit the law.

PolyRoleModels: I see. Is that limited to NY?

Andy Izenson: So the direct representation that we can do you know in terms of actually being somebody’s lawyer is limited to NY, but we do education all over and also the mediation and alternative justice stuff that we do is you know, that can go anywhere also. So you know helping families create family agreements and build structures for sustainability and mutual care um no that’s not state specific.

PolyRoleModels: Awesome.

Andy Izenson: The other project that I’m very excited about. It’s called The Res and it’s a queer and trans intentional community and land project in um in upstate NY near Poughkeepsie. I know you may get hate mail for me calling that upstate. It’s in the Hudson valley. Upstate is anywhere north of the Bronx.

PolyRoleModels: That’s how I feel about it. I grew up in the tristate area. So yeah, that’s my take on it to

Andy Izenson: Great and so that is that’s a project that I’m really- I’m really putting my whole heart into. It’s my own poly family that’s starting it and all of the- all of the work that I’ve been doing, learning about alternative justice systems and community building tools and communication tools and all of these things. 

I’m putting all of that towards building a community for us that is strong and resilient and sustainable and builds out of mutual error and trust. Uh and probably by the time this airs, it’s really gonna be up and running. In such a way that people who need to get out of the city can come and stay. You know, we’ll be hosting events. Will be you know, doing- having retreats. And uh I would love for you to see it, Kevin, it’s really beautiful.

PolyRoleModels: That sounds really good. That sounds like somewhere I want to visit.

Andy Izenson: You gotta come visit. It’s worth it.

PolyRoleModels: Awesome awesome. Hey, I really appreciate you taking the time, especially having just hopped off a plane ten seconds ago from Germany, so I appreciate the time

Andy Izenson: My jet lag is starting to fade, but it’s tenacious.

PolyRoleModels: Yeah, Yeah, fair so again thanks for being a part of this. Being a part of PRM.

Andy Izenson: Thank you and good luck with your book tour

PolyRoleModels: Alright, thank you.

---

Support Inclusive Polyamorous Representation at  https://www.patreon.com/PolyRoleModels

[dismirroirnoir]

Cheap wine, cereal and a made-up evil megacorp: The story of Arcade Fire's Juno-nominated album art

Every corporation employs a team. The same goes for the imaginary ones. So when Catherine Lepage and Simon Rivest saw "Money + Love" last week — Arcade Fire's new two-for-one music video — the Montreal art directors could spot their contributions all over it.

The short, directed by David Wilson, stars Toni Collette as the cartoonishly sinister CEO of the Everything Now Corp., a conglomerate that's bought the band's contract, forcing them to shill cars and junk cereal along with the music. That story, plus all the products and packaging associated with EN Corp., have figured in every element of the album's roll-out, from music videos to dummy Twitter accounts — to the album artwork. Designed by Lepage and Rivest, it's up for a Juno Award this year — one of the band's five nominations going into the March 25 show.

The art directors walked CBC Arts through the process.

Arcade Fire calling            

Rewind to 2017. "Exactly a year ago," says Rivest.

"We were approached by the band at the same time they approached JR for the cover installation," he explains. (That French artist, perhaps best known for his global street art project Inside Out, created the trompe l'oeil billboard that's splashed on the cover, but more on that in a minute.)

From first contact, Rivest says that nearly everything about Everything Now was already mapped out by the band, and he and Lepage were supplied with a detailed brief, Win and Régine's wish list for the album package.

"This idea of the Everything Now Corporation owning Arcade Fire" — that was all them. "And having all those songs being products, and having their own logos? They really came up with that idea first," he says.

How'd they land it?

Both art directors are working artists. Lepage is an author and illustrator with an NFB film in development and Rivest is the co-founder of artist collective Doyon-Rivest, but they're also the founders of an award-winning design studio called Ping Pong Ping.

Among their clients is Kanpe, a non-profit co-founded by Arcade Fire's Régine Chassagne to help families in Haiti. Ping Pong Ping designed the foundation's corporate identity. That's their connection to the band, Rivest says. Still, being recruited for the Everything Now assignment was a surprise, he says, though the duo were uniquely suited for the job.

"The briefing for Everything Now was really corporate," says Lepage, and that posed a challenge when it came to representing what the band's about. "They always had a feeling in their artwork that was 'artsy,'" she says, reflecting on every Arcade Fire album that had come before, right back to the scratchy, silkscreened look of Funeral. "I was wondering how we would make that make sense with their legacy."

Both she and Rivest had put in some time at ad agencies back in the early days of their careers, satisfying mega-chain clients. "We can connect to that," she says. "We know how to work that way." Would delivering design work to the totally fictional Everything Now Corp. be any different?

To see how they mixed a little bit of Arcade Fire's DIY-loving character in with Everything Now's commercial vibe, take a closer look at how all song logos are printed — not just throughout the album artwork, but in music videos, merch, you name it. Sometimes, the branding appears hard and clean — just like a regular corporate logo. Other times, it's "distressed" to hint at "the band's universe," says Rivest.

The logos

Is there anything special about designing a logo for a song?

"It's kind of the same, but different," says Rivest.

"Every logo was a different briefing," he continues. There'd be some "vague" notes on the song and the general desired tone — "more commercial, more artsy," says Lepage, by way of example. Plus, there was always a pitch for a tie-in product.

"Creature Comfort" is probably the most recognizable example. The song doubles as an all-marshmallow breakfast cereal, and the band sent fans on a scavenger hunt last June for that particular item. Real boxes were hidden on store shelves as part of a social media campaign for the single.

Part of the brief, though, was to make sure everything seemed just a little bit off. Says Rivest: "We were looking at [making] something corporate, but corporate in a way that's not the coolest."

"We used really shitty fonts, if you look at it," he says, pointing to the logo for "We Don't Deserve Love." On the lyric sheet, which is designed to look like a grocery flyer, "We Don't Deserve Love" is a brand of six dollar plonk.

"It had to look like cheap white wine," says Lepage of the logo.

"We don't get briefings like that very often in real life," laughs Rivest.

"Or sugary cereal!" adds Lepage. "We don't work in that field, you know."

Catherine Lepage (right) works on a prototype for Creature Comfort cereal. Are the Lucky Charms there for inspiration? A snack? Both? Writes Lepage: "[They] were there for reference as I wanted to fake their texture. Now way I would put these in my mouth." The Creature Comfort cereal box was one of the first products created for Everything Now, she says, and Lepage is sculpting with modelling paste in the picture. The finished shapes were photographed then Photoshopped into the box design.

Brief first, music later

But they do work with musicians plenty, and on that front, one thing was unusual about this assignment — at least at first. It was months before they got to hear the record.

"Oh my god! We were too shy to ask!" says Lepage, laughing. "I think it was two months after we started working on the project and at that point I asked, I took all my courage and I asked."

"The pace was so fast at the beginning. We really were in deep right at the beginning, so we didn't really ask because we knew they were in the studio," says Rivest. "We understand the feeling that maybe they're not ready [to share the tracks]."

While they waited, they at least had the lyrics. Says Rivest: "The first time [we listened to Everything Now] we were able to sing every word to every song because we saw the words so much."

"It's a weird way to work but at the same time it was magic to hear the album for the first time," says Lepage. "We were so excited and thrilled to hear it."

What about JR?

Delayed album delivery aside, the duo say they were always in communication with the band — emailing links and images and ideas back and forth. But they say that JR was never part of the thread.

While Rivest and Lepage were fine-tuning the album's graphic design  — and possibly branded coffee mugs and paper clips and lanyards, too  — his team was working on a parallel assignment.

In May 2016, JR unveiled a new outdoor installation at the Louvre, and Arcade Fire's Butler and Chassagne played a show in the nearby Jardin des Tuileries to mark the occasion, wrapping the set by hopping into a park pond with the artist himself. A year later, they'd tap JR for another surprise stunt.

To announce the arrival of Everything Now — plus its eponymous lead single — the band launched a livestream last June. "Live from Death Valley," the feed offered nothing but a live eye on JR's latest installation, a mountain-shaped billboard that blended into the actual hills like a wheatpaste and scaffolding chameleon.

It's also, of course, the picture on the front of the record.

Rivest and Lepage were kept in the loop on the installation's progress, and they were involved in certain details that would be important to the final album design — selecting the font for the billboard's LED ticker, for example.

"This was the at the beginning, maybe somewhere in March 2017," writes Catherine Lepage. "We had chosen Avant Garde as the font to be displayed on the LED sign under the billboard." The same lettering appears throughout the album packaging, as well. Here, it's been photocopied to "degrade the look."

They had no communication with JR himself, they say, but the artist gave them total freedom when it came to how the installation appears in the album artwork.

They were sent "something like 2,000 pictures" of the billboard — raw photos, taken by JR. "I'm not used to that. Most of the time, photographers want to control the image," says Lepage. "I don't know why, but JR sent us the hard drive and trusted whatever the decision would be."

"We didn't meet him. We never had feedback on the Photoshop, or if he didn't like it," she says.

"Maybe he does not exist at all," jokes Rivest.

Choosing the cover...and then another and another and another

With thousands of images to work with, Rivest says "it was hard to make a choice." But then, Everything Now required seemingly endless iterations on its design.

The album is a collector's dream — or nightmare, depending on their budget. If we're just talking about the vinyl offerings alone, there are 20 limited edition "language" versions of the LP available. In each one, the billboard reads "Everything Now" in a different language, from French to Bengali to Vietnamese, and the cover photo is given a unique treatment.

How do you say "GIF" in Portuguese, Hindi and Korean? Everything Now's limited edition "Language" vinyl.(Courtesy of Ping Pong Ping and Sony Music Canada)

Plus, you can find the LP in a "Day" or "Night" variant, with the daytime photo being the "official" look.  According to Rivest, those pressings exist because nobody could choose which one they liked best, tbh.

Infinite Arcade Fire content

Says Rivest: "We have two versions of the vinyl, two versions of the CD and we have a cassette that is different, a different point of view for the billboards. It was, yeah — kind of a challenge to manage."

"And then there's the products, too," he says.

"Cereal! Cereal boxes and energy drink," says Lepage.

"Even wine. We have a bottle right here!" says Rivest.

That arcade game is the same one that appears on the back cover of Everything Now. Writes Lepage: "It was not on the original photo of the billboard, but the band felt like there was something missing there. So on a quick turnaround a photoshoot was set up. Twenty-four hours from idea to shoot. The idea came from the band. I was provided with this old arcade game (don't remember what it was) and we crafted the stencil and spray paint job pretty fast with what we had! (We were working from New Orleans that week, with limited tools.) It didn't have to be perfect as we were setting it on fire in the dark."

"In 2018, it's always much more than an album design. It's more of a platform, let's say, that we need to use in various contexts. This time, honestly, it went beyond what we thought at the beginning because it turned out to [include] merch; it turned out to be onstage design somehow."

"We're nominated for an album, but it's much more than that."

[miranda-postgrad]

Mitski Concert @ Union Transfer 11.18.2018

I had the immense privilege of attending my first Mitski concert last Sunday. After completing a good chunk of homework and suddenly being free after my scheduled dance rehearsal was rescheduled to Friday night instead of Sunday night, I jumped on the last opportunity to buy a ticket off a friend of a friend. My friend had offered me the ticket a week before, but I was so stressed out about nursing school stuff that I had said no at the time. Thankfully, the ticket was still available, and I grabbed it and went to the concert.

If you listen to my music podcast/radio show, then you know I’m a huge fan of Mitski. She ranks among my absolute favorite artists, and her music has been formative throughout my life events. I first followed her when my uncle shared a Pitchfork article about up-and-coming Asian American female artists back in 2014. (As an early fan follower, I’m proud to say that Mitski follows me on Twitter!!!) Ever since then, I’ve enjoyed watching her career and fame quite literally sky rocket. Soon it seemed like if you were any combination of: female, liberal, queer, Asian American, emo, indie rock fan, poetry lover, angsty, chances were high that you loved Mitski too. 

Let me say that a live Mitski concert is not to be missed. I know, I know, I’ve missed plenty of her concerts while in undergrad whether it was my own dance performance or an upcoming exam/project. I think a part of me just wanted to bask in Mitski’s voice alone and away from the millions of other Bryn Mawr students who were also fans. If I’m being completely honest with myself, Mitski music is best enjoyed when alone because a lot of the lyrics are about being alone. Lucky me -- I was alone that night. This was my first concert I paid for that I attended alone. I sang along to all the new and old songs as loud as I wanted and held back emotional tears that no one would care to see anyway. I didn’t have to worry if my companion was having just as much fun as I was and didn’t have to make small talk if I didn’t know my companion that well. All I wanted to do was get up on that stage and join in on Mitski’s interpretive dances.

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

Something else that’s also been on my mind lately is the “Asian American sound.” 

A few weeks ago, I attended the Music of Asian America Conference in Philadelphia (I also performed with my Filipino dance group at this conference). One of the academic papers being presented was by Dan Wang (University of Pittsburgh) on “What is an Asian American style? Superorganism in the Assimilated Public.” Superorganism could justifiably be in its own separate genre, but Wang questioned whether it was possible for Asian American to recognize each other in public without the visual appearance of being Asian American. Was there an “Asian American sound” that could just be heard but not seen? Wang argued that there was not such a sound using Superorganism as the evidence. I wish I remember more about his paper, but I was too caught up in my own thoughts of whether there was an “Asian American sound.” 

I agree that there's no “Asian American sound.”  But there's an "Asian American listening experience." It is not heard, nor seen. It is felt. 

By being made aware of the fact that this music is a product of an Asian American artist, other Asian Americans “recognize” it as their own by projecting their own lived experiences onto that work of art, assuming (perhaps falsely) that the creator also shared those experiences simply by also being Asian American in America. Therefore, it is harder for Asian American artists to cleanly disassociate their identities from their art when their Asian American audience may actually want to make these connections. These associations can be both negative and positive for the artist. Americans supposedly cannot distinguish Asians from other Asians, so where is the uniqueness and due respect/recognition when some other Asian American artist comes along and is by default compared to the next Asian American artist? Ever wonder why Zhu is so hush-hush about his identity?

“Mitski Is Much More Than Another Sad Asian American Girl”

“But in the lead-up to Be The Cowboy, Mitski consistently rejected the notion that she should be elevated as some kind of spokesperson for her race or gender. “My lyrics are about being fucked up,” she told GQ. “I'm not a Power Ranger. I've been stronger than I'm expected to be because I'm a woman. I'm weak and I'm not allowed to be, because then I lose my ability to control my destiny or whatever. Also, I'm Asian so suddenly I also have to be every single Asian woman. Which is half the world.” She seemed to recognize and mistrust the forces that make celebrities and idols and archetypes and role models out of regular people, just because they wrote a song, and the way that those forces would cynically diminish her art and the art of others out of convenience.”

“I don’t assume I’m going to be okay, and maybe that’s who I am because maybe it’s being an Asian woman, but I’m very aware of the fact that my position in the world is not secure,” she says, “I have to secure it for myself.”

It’s okay for music to be interpreted and reclaimed in a way not originally intended by the original creator. It’s not okay for the creator to feel like they must conform to what their listeners want or how they think. Mitski is one of a kind, and she does it wonderfully.