#I know there’s no right or better or correct way to feel grief and pain

[wingslikeiicarus]

.

[nylongenesis]

Here’s the thing about Timothy stoker

here it is the tim post

People who say tim is an asshole are partially correct.

People who say tim is ‘toxic’ are INCORRECT.

I am very strongly about this because. listen to me. okay.

SPOILERS UP TO TMA SEASON 3 AHEAD

Imagine BEING timothy stoker. After whats probaboy the secondmost traumatizing experience of your life in which you almost die if not by the worms then by the MEDICAL EMERGENCY (respiratory acidosis is a medical emergency :3) your body was put into- plagued with nightmares and the pain of your body being covered in holes and your medical issues, you come back to the archives expecting to see your best friend, That will make it all better. It’ll be so worth it once you can see her again.

And then she acts so distant. And you dont know why.

And you have just lost your friendship. The one that’s kept you going this whole time. The one you were starting to believe might have been unbreakable. And you Don’t. Know. Why.

Eventually after many failed attempts to reconnect, you resign yourself to the fact that she just got tired of you. That you were right this whole time. That she just pitied you. You still don’t know what you did wrong and it’s eating you alive, but she won’t tell you, so you have to settle with pretending to be glad that she’s at least alive, All while your boss is literally going insane and STALKING YOU???

Only to find out after a YEAR of believing you were just unlovable that this person? The person youve been trying to ‘reconnect’ with? That isnt your best friend, Your best friend dies and you never noticed. How could you not notice? But when you see the real picture of her she feels like a stranger and you realize you have no fucking escape from your horrible, unforgivable sin of forgetting your friend. Because no matter what you do, trying to look back at your memories, that *thing* is there instead. You can’t even enjoy your memories before she died.

So you sit there, alone and afraid. Angry, grieving, everything else. What are you supposed to do but make the thing that has haunted you since the disappearance of your Brother feel the kind of pain it is making you feel?

Tim isn’t toxic. Hell I wouldn’t even say he’s that much of an asshole.

He’s a hurt child.

Mentally, especially in season three, he’s having the equivalent of a child’s breakdown. The kind they have when they don’t know how to express the emotions they’re feeling. These emotions- this grief, this anger, this pain- it’s so big, it’s so much, and he feels so small, so incapable and weak, and he cannot properly handle it. He cannot cope. Especially since he’s still somewhat trapped in who he was when his brother was taken.

Now im not saying the way he went about this is at all great, but yknow. Everyone forgives reactions to trauma until they’re personally inconvenient or ugly.

Tim lost everything, and honestly i would be pretty damn similar if I was in his position! That’s DEVASTATING.

In the end, there’s such a horrible tragedy to his entire character that goes almost entirely unnoticed unless you’re like me and you’re insane and overanalyze someone based on one word in an extra audio thats not in the podcast.

Anyways, that’s why I love Tim.

[sarahpaulsonsoftie]

Spoiled milk

A/N: Hey guys, pre warning, this fic mentions parental issues, parent with addiction, death, grief.

This fic is completely unedited and was comoketely rushed but i had an idea and i had to write as fast it urgently. In the future, i will probably rewrite and republish but so far here is the fic, in its barest form. I do hope you at least get some enjoyment from it.

-

Melissa Schemmenti X reader.

Spoiled Milk

*

It’s 3am when you get the call. You’re laying next to a sleeping Melissa when your phones vibrations wake you from your slumber. Melissa is still out cold, so you carefully pick up your phone and see your aunt’s name on your phone screen. You pick up the call, moving out of the bed and walking out of the bedroom when you hear your aunts’ soft cries.

“Hello?” You say, hearing the tiredness from your own voice. Your Aunt sniffles down the phone.

“Y/N, your mum—She- She passed an hour ago. I’m so so sorry, sweetheart.” Your Aunt, Carol, says. You nearly drop the phone out of surprise, immediately more alert from your previous sleepiness.

“How?” You manage to whisper out, you hear your aunt sniffle once more. Your heart aches at her pain, even more than hearing the news of hearing about your own mother’s passing. You walk downstairs to Melissa’s kitchen, sitting down at the kitchen island.

“She- She…” Your aunt trails off and you don’t say anything except breath down the phone. Your aunt clears her throat. “It was an overdose.” Your aunt manages to murmur, and your eyes flutter closed as you breathe in.

“Y/N? Did you hear me?” Your aunt asks, and you notice a slight tremor to your hand as you rub your eyes.

“Yeah, I heard you, Carol. I just- Why- I thought- I thought she was getting clean.” You whisper, aware there is still a sleeping Melissa upstairs. You haven’t quite processed the news yet and, but your heart still aches as the pain in your aunt’s voice.

“I thought so too, sweetheart but she.. You know- Knew your mother. She always relapses- relapsed.” Hearing your aunts corrections about your mother brings the harsh reality that your mother, the only mother you had -albeit not perfect in any way- is dead.

“I- uh. Auntie, I must go. Please call me in the morning when uh.” You don’t know what to say and you feel your eyes growing wet.

“Of course, sweetheart. I love you, and your mum, she loved you too, in her own messed up way.” Your aunt states, before ending the call.

You sit at the kitchen counter for a moment before messaging Melissa that you couldn’t sleep and decide to head home to get a couple of hours in before school.

-

You don’t head home, you drive around in your car for a while before pulling out your phone. You notice a message from Ava. You click on it and see her online still. You check the time. 04:06. You sigh, before reading the message Ava has sent

‘Why are you online so late?’ The message reads, you feel your eyes brim again before you tell Ava the truth and ask her not to say anything to anyone. Ava reads the message almost immediately.

‘I won’t. I’m sorry you’re going through this. You can take tomorrow off if you need.”

The response surprises you, Ava never struck you as someone who would be so willing to accommodate staff in that way. You stare at the message for a while before typing your response.

‘It’s fine. I’ll be in tomorrow.’

-

You poured spoiled milk into your coffee. It’s lunch time at Abbot, you don’t remember the events from the morning, other than Melissa asking you if you slept any better at yours. You nodded with a fake smile, and she brought you in for a quick, secretive kiss.

But right now, all you know is that you poured spoiled milk into your coffee. The staff room is too loud from chatter that you can’t concentrate to. And you poured spoiled milk into your coffee.

You hear the staff room door open, and someone walk in, but all you can do is stare at the curdling milk that is in the coffee that you wouldn’t even need if you’d got some sleep last night, instead of driving around town, trying to distract yourself.

You hear someone say your name and you don’t look up because there is spoiled milk in your fucking coffee.

“Y/N!” You hear Melissa’s voice, and you look up to see her and Barb beginning to sit at their usual table.

“Yeah?” You ask, throwing another glance towards your coffee cup. You hear the staff room door open again and walks in is Ava, Jacob, and Janine. Ava spares you a glance of sympathy.

“What’s up with you? Tired or somethin’?” Melissa asks and you breathe in to try to calm yourself.

“I poured spoiled milk into my coffee.” You say, and you realize how stupid it sounds out loud, but if they knew the story behind it. Ava watches you with a look of uncertainty, and Melissa looks slightly confused but she doesn’t respond to you.

“Come on, Y/N. No point in crying over spoiled milk.” Jacob laughs, and you raise your eyes to him as you clench your fists lightly. Ava steps forward, placing a hand on your shoulder.

“Y/N, Girl, if you wanna take a few personal days, you can.” Ava states, almost lightly pushing you back, and for some reason this makes you even angrier. Your mum and you didn’t have a good relationship, you’re not upset about that. You’re angry because you poured spoiled milk into your coffee.

Jacobs seems to retreat to the couch, Janine following quickly. You don’t miss the questioning glance that Barb and Melissa throw you. They know this isn’t like you and Melissa quickly draws it up to your tiredness.

“I don’t need a few personal days, Ava. What I need is someone to put the f—” You don’t manage to finish your sentence before Ava’s hands are pulling you out of the staff room and into the hallway.

“I think you should come to my office, girl. You’re acting like 2008 Brittany.” She says and it’s all you need to hear before you’re following her down the hall down the office.

She sits in her chair, and you allow yourself to sit too.

“Someone left spoiled fucking milk in the fridge, and I poured it into my coffee!” You shout, and Ava put both her hands up in defense.

“Girl, you, and I both know this ain’t about no spoiled milk. Right now, as your boss, which I apparently need to be when you’re acting like this, I am telling you to take a few personal days.” Ava states calmly, all of her usual sass gone. She’s being reasonable, something you’re not used to.

“Your mum died. You need to deal with that. Go to the funeral and then come back to work, when you’ve had actual time to go to the funeral.” Ava says and you shake your head.

“I can’t go to the funeral.” You say, and Ava stands, moving closer to you.

“Why?” she asks, and you look up at her, finally accepting that maybe this isn’t about spoiled milk.

“My stepdad... He doesn’t want me to go cause my mum stopped talking to me before she died.” You say, and it finally hits you that your imperfect mother has passed. “My aunt told me this morning; told me she’d fight it. I told her not to bother. My mum and I didn’t get along.” You say and Ava steps closer bringing you into a hug.

Your eyes water and you accept her hug, before sniffling into her shoulder. You pull back and Ava looks up at you.

“So you’ll take the personal days?” Ava asks and you nod lightly. “Good. Also, in any other circumstances, if you sniffle on me, I will push you to the ground.”

You manage to crack a smile at that.

-

After leaving school early, you crash on your bed. You wake hours after school has finished and check your phone to see you have 5 messages from Melissa. The woman who you had a friend with benefits relationship. The woman who would only kiss you in private. The woman who would not let it be known you two were seeing each other, to anyone other than Barb.

You unlock your phone and click on the messages.

‘you ok?’ 12:47pm

‘Y/N?’ 12:51pm

‘you’re seriously taking a few personal days off over spoiled milk?’ 1:32pm

‘glad your personal day is going good, while the rest of us are suffering with your trying to balance your work load’ 1:57pm

‘ignore me then, Y/N. You’re acting like a child’ 4:37pm.

You look at the messages and check the time. 9:30pm. You knew Melissa would still be awake so you begin to try and type an explanation, before realizing that Melissa wouldn’t care. So, instead you type out,

‘I’m Sorry.’ 9:34pm, Melissa reads the message almost instantly and begins to type her own message.

‘You know, I was gonna ask you if you wanted to make things official but after today, I see how immature and selfish you are. So, don’t contact me again.’ 9:35pm

-

Two days pass and it’s Thursday. Ava has been messaging you to check in but you’ve been holed up in your apartment, not sleeping, not eating and holding yourself in foetal position for most of the time.

‘Hey, gonna need tomorrow off as well please. Funeral day is today and although I’m not there, I kinda just wanna process that shes now officially gone’ 12:20pm

Ava views the message almost instantly and takes and agonising time to respond.

‘take all the time you need, girl.’ 12:47pm

-

It was lunch time at Abbot elementary school, and the staff were all eating their lunch, making their coffees, and having distinctive chatter.

“When do you think Y/N’s gonna be back?” Janine finally has the courage to ask and almost all eyes on her, and Melissa looks up.

“Don’t care.” She grumbles. Barbara furrows her brows at her friend before looking towards Janine.

“I don’t know. But I do know that God sometimes gives us battles to not only test us, but the people around us.” She states, giving a kind smile to Janine. Melissa rolls her eyes and Barbara can’t help the glare that forms.

“She seemed really out of it when she was last in, and then super angry.” Jacob states, looking towards Janine.

“She told me she didn’t sleep well the night before, kinda shrugged it off. Didn’t expect her to take a few personal days because of spoiled milk.” Melissa all but growls, and shrugs lightly, “Anyway, I messaged her and gave her a piece of my mind. All she said was sorry so she probably doesn’t wanna face the fact she took a personal day over spoiled milk.”

Barbara looks at her friend and the looks around the staff room at all of the staff who are either nodding in agreement or pretended not to be part of the conversation. She might have expected the judgement from the other staff but not Melissa, the woman who had confessed to her that she had fallen in love with you.

“You all cannot seriously believe this is just about spoiled milk.” Barbara states in disbelief. Eyes shoot up to look at her, and Janine locks eyes with her before looking down ashamed.

At 12:17pm, Ava waltzes into the staff room and notices the tension but doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t care enough about these people to get involved.

It isn’t until her phone vibrates at 12:20pm and she looks down to her phone, seeing your message.

Barbara notices the look of sympathy on Ava’s face that she asks.

“Was that Y/N?” Is her question and Ava looks up at her. She pours herself a cup of coffee, adding an ungodly amount of sugar before answering.

“She won’t be back this week.” Is all Ava says before trying to leave.

“Over spilled milk? Jesus Christ, that girl needsa reality check.” Melissa states and Ava whips her head around.

“Girl, don’t act all stupid and pretend this is about spoiled milk.” Ava says, and glares at Melissa.

“So, you admit it’s not about spoiled milk?” Barbara asks, and Ava sighs nodding slowly.

“She didn’t want me to say anything but the way you all been bad mouthing that girl, I think you deserve to feel guilty.” Ava says and looks around the room, her gaze lingering on Melissa.

“What do you mean? Whats wrong with Y/N?” Janine asks, and Ava pulls out her phone showing the message to Barbara. All the staff in the room watch as Barbara’s face contorts to sympathy.

“Who?” Barbara asks sadly, and Ava looks at her, beginning to leave the room.

“Her mother.” Ava says before leaving and responding to your message.

“Barb?” Melissa questions, trying to grab her attention.

“I told you! I told you not to message that girl those horrible things and now you have absolutely no idea what you have done.” Barb says, her voice raising with every word.

“What happened?” Janine asks and Barb look towards her.

“Her mother died. I imagine she found out the day she was ‘crying over spoiled milk’” Barbara states, her glare increasing on Jacob who visibly shrinks under her gaze. “Now if you excuse me, I am going to call that girl and check she is okay.”

Barbara leaves the room but not before throwing one last glare to Melissa.

-

At 1:03pm you get a call from Barbra, which throws you off. You answer the call and immediately, Barbara is asking you how you are, who you’re with, if you’ve eaten.

You answer her questions truthfully, and she sighs down the phone.

“Please tell me if you need anything, Y/N. Do not hesitate.”

You’re confused but decided to ignore it and try to get some more sleep.

-

At 8:07pm you receive a message from Melissa.

‘Open the door’

You swallow the lump in your throat and head to your door and open it. On the other side, you see a distressed Melissa, with red bloodshot eyes and messy hair. You’re sure you don’t look any better.

You nod for her to come in and neither of you say anything, you just stare at each other. Melissa’s hands reach out to touch yours and you step back.

Her face is full of hurt as she looks down at her feet. “I’m sorry about your mum”. She says, not meeting your eyes.

“Who told you?” You choke on the words and find yourself bringing your hands to your face in shame.

“Ava.” She says. “Well Barbara, Ava showed her the message you sent, Barbara told us all off for acting the way we did.”

You remove your hands from your face and lock eyes with Melissa.

“Told you off.. for acting the way you did?” You question, and Melissa nods slowly. “Not just you?” She shakes her head shamefully at the question. You look at her in disbelief. “So wait, you all thought I’m the type of person to take off personal days for No reason?”

Melissa looks at you and opens her mouth to speak. “You all thought I am the type of person to just leave you with my workload for no reason?” You reiterate and Melissa looks away from you and nods slowly. “Even you?” You ask, and you move you hands to her face and lightly force her to look at you.

“I didn’t know what to think, Y/N! I thought at first, you were just tired, then I thought you didn’t wanna be with me anymore, and then I thought you were sleeping with Ava.” She admits and you laugh humourlessly, removing you hands from your face.

“You know what? I wish I was sleeping with Ava instead of you! She was the only who reached out when she saw me online, she was the first one to tell me to take the personal days, and then she forced me to take the personal days.” You shout and Melissa says nothing, just watching.

“My mother died, Melissa! I’m sorry I gave you guys my workload! I’m sorry I needed time off! I’m especially sorry that I fell in love with you!” You rant and Melissa seems to react to this, her hands reaching out towards you.

“You’re in love with me?” She asks, and you step back, staring at her.

“Wait hang on, you didn’t know that?” You seem to calm. Looking at her, you see her eyes brim with tears.

“No, I didn’t. I thought it was just sex for you, and that’s why I got so defensive and angry at you and I should have just came here in the first place, instead of being so cruel to you.” She confesses and you don’t say anything, instead you walk out of the hallway and sit down on your couch. Melissa follows and stands in front of you.

“I wouldn’t have told you.” You whisper, eyes brimming. Melissa sits next to you, and she doesn’t say anything. “I wouldn’t have told you.” You repeat.

“I understand why.” She states, and her hands make their way to your head, and she begins to play with your hair.

“No. It’s… My mum and I didn’t have a good relationship. She was an addict. We hadn’t spoken for a while before she passed. My stepdad didn’t let me go to the funeral and uh, I guess I realised that although I didn’t like her, I loved her a lot cause she was my mum, you know? And in all the bad shit she did, she was still my mum.” You say and Melissa’s hand come to a pause, and she readjusts so she’s looking at you.

“Loss is still Loss, sweetheart. And I’m so sorry I didn’t see that there was so much more going on.” She says and you don’t say anything, except pull her in for a kiss. She stops the kiss and looks at you. “As much as I wanna kiss you, I also wanna just take care of you. I meant what I said about wanting to making things official. Didn’t mean the things I said before that though.” She says and you nod.

Melissa pulls you in for a hug and you almost cry when she begins to rub your back.

You weren’t just upset over spoiled milk. Melissa knows that now.

-Fin.

[bibbityboppitybillyharvgrove]

Always There - Chapter Nineteen - S.Snape

Summary: Y/N Potter was left with a baby to care for after her brother and sister-in-law were murdered by Voldemort. One person was there for her, a person she didn’t expect but soon became her comfort person, Severus Snape. During Harry’s third year at Hogwarts and her third year as Herbology professor, a few old friends come around again. Y/N has to handle the feelings of these old friends being around again as well as handle her feelings for a certain potions master all while she tries to hide these things from her godson.

Series Masterlist

My full Masterlist

Pairings: Severus Snape x Female Professor Reader, Potter!Reader x friend!Remus, Sister!Reader x James Potter, Potter!Reader x Friend!Sirius

Chapter Warnings: Female Reader, Potter Reader(No physical description of reader) probably shitty writing, Harry growing up in a loving home, mentions of Voldemort, Sirius' Death, Umbridge, Death, not proofread, Death Eater talk,

Series Warnings: Female Reader, Potter Reader (No physical description of reader) probably shitty writing, OOC Snape, Harry grows up in a loving environment, mentions of death and murder, poorly written angst, Remus is a shitty friend, poorly written pining,

Please let me know how I can improve my writing and being more inclusive to POC as I am whiter than white. Please also let me know if I have to add more to the warnings! My messages are open as well as my asks!

I am starting a taglist so leave either a comment or something in my asks if you would like to be tagged in any of my works or just this series!

Author's Note: I know this is short but I'm trying to get this set up for the end of the series. This is more of a filler than anything. I hope you guys enjoy!

Please let me know how I can improve or if you find any errors! Correct me, don't be afraid to! I want to improve my writing and become a better writer so any feedback or advise is welcomed!

Word Count: 857

dividers are @firefly-graphics

My asks are open for questions, suggestions, requests and feedback!

Feedback is welcomed and encouraged!

Enjoy!

She couldn’t tell who was screaming, everything around her was just moving in slow motion. She hadn’t even realized that Harry had booked it after Bellatrix, too caught up in her grief. The screaming had stopped when Remus grabbed her shoulders, that’s when she realized it was her that was screaming. She saw the lycanthrope’s mouth moving but he sounded under water, she felt weak, like she could collapse at any minute. 

“...Harry!” Her hearing started to clear up, hearing her nephew’s name come out of his mouth made it even more clear. “Voldemort is after Harry! He chased after Bellatrix!” Remus shouted. 

Any sense of weakness had flown out of her body as she took off sprinting towards the entrance of the ministry. She was a panting mess as she skidded to a halt at the sight of the dark lord. “The future Mrs. Snape, how lovely to see the other living Potter. That won’t last long,” The dark lord taunted her before disappearing. She went to run to her nephew who was on the ground by a hand grabbing her shoulder stopped her. 

“He’s not gone, Y/N,” Albus told her, “He’s trying to find his way into Harry’s mind again.”

She watched as her nephew writhed in pain, fighting the dark lord, pushing him out of his mind. She felt defeated as the ministry flocked in, Harry still laying on the floor in pain. It had felt like an eternity before Harry had stood back up and went to his aunt, holding onto her tightly as he cried into her shoulder. “He’s gone,” Harry cried.

“I know, love, I know,” She replied, stroking his hair in an attempt to soothe the boy. She knew that it would be hard for him to recover from this. 

It was now well into the summer, Harry had been spending most of time at the Weasley’s and Y/N spending her time with Remus trying to keep him occupied. Her and Severus had eloped right after the issue at the ministry. He had been working as a double agent the whole summer, continuing into the school year. It had taken time to get used to the routine of it all, it had been a constant go since the discovery that Voldemort was truly back. 

The very first day back at Hogwarts was different to say the least. She had met with Dumbledore early in the morning discussing a plan for her to get information from the death eaters. He thought that if the order had more than one spy, then it would work out in their favor. “Albus, I don’t believe they will accept me. I’m like enemy number 2 to them. My nephew is their number 1 enemy, I don’t want a bigger target on his back, I don’t want him to think I betrayed him,” Y/N explained.

“It’s the only way to make it believable Y/N. It makes Severus a target if he’s married to you, a known member of the order. I don’t think you want Severus to be a target while he’s in the snake’s den, do you?” His tone was condescending, trying to convince her to become a spy against her will. But she couldn’t help but agree, Severus was a target now that he was married to her.

“Fine, but I still don’t like this idea of yours Albus.”

“This is between me, you and Severus. Nobody else knows, understand?”

She left his office right after that, set out to find her husband since they hadn’t seen each other in over 2 weeks. The second she saw him, she went running at him and right into his open arms. His embrace was firm and loving, welcoming her arms around him. He gently grabbed her chin between his thumb and index finger, tilting her chin up and connecting their lips in a loving kiss. “I’ve missed you, my love,” He whispered against her lips.

“I’ve missed you too, my prince,” She whispered back.

“Prince is a new one.”

“Well I remember you used to call yourself the half-blood prince. Since your mum’s surname was Prince, I thought it was a good one.”

“It’s a really good one,” He assured her, kissing her once more before pulling back, “What was your meeting with Albus about?”

“He wants me to be a spy. Join the death eaters. There’s a closer eye on you now that we’re married. I don’t want you to get hurt. I will do anything in my power to protect you.”

“What? No. No, you are not doing that! I don’t want you around those people, they are dangerous Y/N!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me, Severus. I know the risks! I’m not stupid! I’d rather do this than you being discovered and dying, Severus! I can’t lose anyone else! I lost my brother, my best friend, my sister! Who else? You? Harry? Remus?” She nearly shouted at him.

“I don’t like it but if it makes you feel better than fine. I will discuss it with the dark lord at the next meeting that you wish to join.”

taglist

@acupnoodle @chxelsxaa @fluffyrat365 @fanficwriter5 @atanukileaf @jspidey5 @mija-novella @leo4242564 @crazyunsexycool @livillain00 @bigsimperika @nopedefe

[elwenyere]

Kelly Hayes, from "Beyond the Blame: Fighting for Each Other in the Face of Fascism"

Our dependence on social media, which has intensified in harmful ways during the pandemic, has only worsened these divides. While these platforms hold some utility for our movements, we were never meant to live the bulk of our political lives in these realms. Social media has damaged our ability to communicate across difference, rewarding acrimony, sanctimony, and excommunication. Modeling politics has too often replaced the work of doing politics. At some point, many people of conscience lost the ability to engage in principled disagreement—if they ever bothered to learn. For many, persuasion isn’t even an option anymore. Quite often, political discourse is about categorizing people, dividing us into the morally correct and the morally irredeemable, with no middle ground and no plan to change the math. It’s as though many people believe they can simply disqualify the majority of humanity from political life, thereby saving the world.

...

It’s important to remember that our political aspirations have not been vanquished. We are not on the cusp of positive transformation, but that does not mean that all hope is lost or that we cannot breathe new worlds into being. During my four decades on this earth, I have repeatedly witnessed victories and political transitions that I did not believe were possible. I have also experienced losses that reshaped the political terrain, paving the way for future victories. We should never give up on transformation and material change. We are all worth fighting for, no matter how bleak the situation may be and no matter the odds. Determined, organized people have toppled dictators, ended oppressive institutions, including chattel slavery, and freed each other from the clutches of carceral systems. In dark times, people have always found ways to make their own light. That work is now upon us. To undertake it, many of us must face feelings we’d rather avoid. People who cannot self-regulate emotionally or engage in principled disagreement will not create stable, sustainable movements. You can’t organize people you hold in contempt. As I write these words, I can already hear some people justifying their anger. I will not argue with your litany of grievances against your potential allies. I have a lot of justified anger, too. But I try to be selective about expressing it because my political goals matter more to me than the temporary satisfaction of lashing out. If you believe the whole world is at stake, as I do, ask yourself: How much discomfort is the whole world worth? How important is your need to lash out? How can you balance your impulses with what you know must be done? I’m not saying to suppress your anger or hold it inside. It’s important to have outlets. This is a good time to vent the fury we need to express in group chats, with trusted friends, and in therapy. Be intentional about where you put these feelings. If you need to break something, then break something—as safely as you can. Rage rituals are a legitimate form of self-expression. (As Fiona Apple said, “Better that I break the window / Than him or her or me.”)  To everyone hurting right now: please make space for your grief. Don’t let anger shield you from sadness or bury your pain in escapism. Let your heart break over what’s ahead. Accept that, no matter how hard we fight, there are harms we will not halt. If that awareness brings tears to your eyes, then weep. Spend time with your grief, share it, and find comfort in your loved ones. Engage with the land and water, and feel your connection to the biosphere we must defend. Immerse yourself in art, music, and all that remains beautiful in this world. Humanity is flawed, but our capacity for kindness, connection, and transformation is real, too. Take solace in decency—it’s still there. Our capacity to do good can be nurtured. It can grow and flourish, but that cultivation is collective work. We cannot change the world alone. We must learn how to be flawed and human and messy together. We must learn how to forgive and how to do the work of collective survival with people we don’t like or understand. We must recognize that, while principled critiques are often necessary, we have to communicate like people who still need each other–because we do. A lot of people out there are not going to be ready to do the work I’m describing until they make space for their grief and pain and for the grief and pain of others. If you are hurting right now, remember that the pain you are feeling is a natural consequence of your decency. Don't try to bury that. Nurture the tender parts of yourself. Your capacity to feel other people’s pain is inextricably linked to your potential to change the world. Your grief is bound up in your understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all and that all of our fates are connected. Evading your grief will only compound your angst and isolation, or even increase your tolerance for injustice. We cannot afford to let that happen. 

[ellieromanov]

Vanilla, Pine, or cinnamon 

Pairings: r x Natasha

Warnings: angst

Word count: 700

Summary: it’s been years since Natasha has made the sacrifice and memories only linger for so long before you start to forget.

I think I miss her more than I remember her. That terrifies me. I don't really remember what she looks like anymore... I know she had red hair and she had green eyes, but I don't remember the shape of her nose, or the color of her lips.

I don't remember what her laugh sounds like or the pitch of her voice, or you know... like the little phrases she would say. I can't remember what she smells like. I want to say vanilla but maybe she smelt more like pine or maybe  cinnamon.

I kept all her clothes. I never wanted to wash them because I was afraid it would get rid of her smell so they would just sit in my closet. Sometimes I'd pull out one of her old sweaters and and I'd sleep with it on my pillow just so I could pretend like she was there.

Like it was just one of those gloomy days where we wouldn't get out a bed for ages because the comforter was just so warm and the mattress felt just right and the position of the pillows were perfect. And we'd watch old cheesy 90's movies all day long...

I don't do that anymore because her sweaters lost her sent from all the dust they've collected.

It feels like it's been an eternity since she was last here...

There was something my dad would always say to me and my siblings as kids and it went something like;

"you do not know time until you know how to dance. You don't know time until you know how to paint, compose music and have read Shakespeare. Once you know how to do those things only then can you complain about time."

I think about those words often. Since Nat has been gone I fill my days reading the tragedy's of Shakespeare, sitting at the piano, putting on my old ballet pointés, and most recently, painting.

I've been trying to remember her enough to put her on the canvas. I can't seem to get the correct shade of red for her hair, and I've had to repaint her her nose several times.

But I do remember how much Natasha loved the night sky. All the stars just seemed like magic to her. She also loved... daisies? Or were they tulips? I think they were daisies. So I've painted a field of daisies underneath the night sky with Natasha in the middle of the field.

But no matter how many pictures I have of her to use as a reference, they never captured what she really looked like. They never captured that gorgeous smile she had or the freckles on her nose, or the scars that littered her cheek or the depths of green in her eyes. These are all small things that I remember vaguely.

People don't often visit anymore. Clint and Laura stop by once every few months and Yelena once or twice a year maybe. I haven't heard much from anyone on the team since the funeral besides Peter. He's a good kid. Sends me a message once every few weeks to update me on he's life and he always asks how I'm doing. He keeps me up to date on the outside world.

I so often wish that I could go back to that day and trade places with her. I dream about it sometimes. They are the most vivid dreams I have. When I dream, I get to hear her voice again.  But the longer I think about it the more I realize that it's better this way. Deep down, I know that. I know it's better. Because Natasha will never have to know what it's like to lose her other half, she will never have to experience the pain and grief and suffering that comes with losing me. She will never know what it's like to to forget me. And for that I am grateful.

So as I try to fall asleep tonight I just need to remind myself, it's better this way, and one day... one day I'll be with her again. But until that day i just have to accept the fact that the comforter is never warm anymore, the mattress is like a brick and the pillows are old and torn. I will try to remember her scent so I can go find it, try to make the house feel like home again with it and restore some of that comforter but I don't know if she smelt of vanilla, pine, or cinnamon .

[liexwrittesfreely]

Grieving Meaning

(VERYYY long post)

Feelings of despair

Without any profound motive,

Or motive at all.

Of which I must find

Hiding within all the

Sad thoughts I’ve ever had

That no one could refute

Upon me being utterly correct,

Of in exchange they started calling me a realist

Instead of a pessimist.

After all,

What makes me a pessimist

Is that I think about all those real issues

(solely)

Without thinking significantly

At the happiness surrounding me

Which is a part of my real condition of

“the now”.

My real existence

Isn’t solely surrounded by sadness.

Do I need one motive

To feel so much grief

For people who’ve I met

That aren’t dead;

For people I’ve never met

Who died tragically;

For people I’ve known

That died peacefully

Without me by their side?

Out of the blue

Without actively missing them?

With 99% of the time

The grief not being directed towards them

But just me trying to fill the empty spot

Of motive.

When did motive leave?

When did I start feeling grief

Without anything being lost?

When did I start chasing ghosts?

Will my retriever help me

Retrieve these lost ghosts to me

Like how she did with

All these tennis balls,

Lost in the backyard?

I miss you,

However I think you’ve taken a part of me

When you left,

Along, everything escaped from it

Like water in an old bucket.

I’m sorry

I didn’t go through with it,

I think it was for the best though,

Since I’ve also been happy

Even with the leaking

Even with the lack of you. .

Why did I start feeling that way

When I knew you would be gone?

Why did I think it would be all over

Without you?

I cant put anything in my heart now,

And if I do it comes right out.

And I try again.

And it pains me all over

And over again.

I think it's human nature.

I think I’m human.

Or maybe it’s the animal instinct

Of self preservation.

When I encounter

The little white room,

With noisy kids

That seem all too happy

For all the senseless work

Given to us by people

Who barely believe in the world,

Our futures and theirs

Might have been doomed the day

We met the little white room.

For me,

It symbolizes my lack of freedom,

My lack of free will.

Why do I do something so senseless?

So unnatural

As sitting for hours

For no knowledge to be able to entertain me

While my back aches

And the exhaustion becomes unbearable?

I’m tired,

I’m tired!

There’s no physical motive

When I grieve for something I cannot see.

Do I grieve my own freedom?

Do I fear the pain

More than death?

I grieve your loss,

I grieve my loss of humanity.

That is so animalistic

I cannot interpret it rationally

So art becomes the only answer.

Art has meaning without rationality,

Language through personal perception

And not a dictionary.

No formula to follow,

No specific person to impress.

I had forgotten due to the good days

Of rotting in my room

To remember all the pain

Through exhaustion.

Now I know motive.

School has taught me something.

Finally,

Something.

I question the world too hard,

Looking for a answer

For something that might as well be

Simple chemistry.

Still I go to school to study it

Still I keep forgetting.

I can't help but forget how to solve the equation,

How can I make the world a better place?

If they ever make it

A better place

Will people be sad

Now without any real motive

To be so,

Just like me?

Except there won't be anything to blame it on.

Is a land too beautiful to be true,

Not seem like it will ever be something

We are able to touch?

Will reality not seem enough to us all?

What will we chase?

Sadness?

What does that imply for us all?

Motive chases sadness,

Sadness gives motive,

Motive to pass through it to a happier place?

Is there ever an end?

Is there ever an answer?

I will stop thinking so hard

At a meaningless objective

When I have no more time.

[prancingintheshadows]

I’ve been having thoughts on this for awhile, but I think now’s a good point to have a talk about ascending. It is probably the most prevalent aspect of Ever After and it’s seeped into the story regardless of whether or not it’s the actual topic at hand.

I want to start with Jaune. This one’s pretty obvious. Jaune refuses to believe ascension is anything other than death. This is almost certainly due to Penny as well as his experience as the Rusted Knight. He’s conflating Lewis’ lack of appearance in Remnant’s story as yet another death brought about by his incompetence. Hence his obsession with keeping the paper pleasers from ascending. He’s saving them, but if they ascend, he’s failed them.

This next part is where things start getting interesting. Weiss, Blake, and Yang are all outsiders to the Ever After, but during episode 7, they’re more receptive to the idea that ascension is rebirth than Jaune is. However, it’s still important to know they’re outsiders looking in. Ascension is just part of the Afterans life cycle. They accept it as something the Afterans do, but only that. I don’t know if they’ve realized it, but they’ve rejected ascending for themselves during their Herbalist drug trip. That’s precisely why they’re quick to jump to Jaune’s aid when he begins grieving over loss of the paper pleasers. They understand Jaune’s viewpoint as a person from Remnant but understand how the Afterans view ascending. They know the feelings of both sides and can help Jaune come to terms with it. Everyone just needs to help close the gap, Yang, Blake, Weiss, and-

Ruby flipping blows up when she’s counted on to ease Jaune’s worst fears. It’s definitely majorly impacted by the metric shit ton of trauma packed in her tiny frame, but I don’t think Ruby’s the person to not understand someone’s grief over death. I also think she definitely views the Afterans as people, seeing as how well she’s treated Little and that horrified stare when the hawker is sent to hold off the Jabberwalkers. I think, in this moment, Ruby genuinely doesn’t understand Jaune’s viewpoint anymore. Nobody realizes it because they weren’t personally there to see Ruby’s Herbalist vision or her run in with the Blacksmith, but she’s not an outsider looking in anymore. Ascension isn’t some foreign concept to her, it’s that thing this world has been offering her every step of her way. The paper pleasers didn’t just die or anything so tragic. They just moved on, became something else, something resilient, something better. And she wholeheartedly understands the temptation to shed yourself and become someone who can actually do something meaningful.

Which is ironic. She actually is the best person to explain why ascending isn’t bad for the Afterans right now. But because of her experiences, she just can’t relate to Jaune’s pain, so she doesn’t see why she should be push her feelings aside this time to make Jaune feel better that the people he pretended were his friends have moved on.

I want to put my thoughts out now because I’m unsure of where Ruby will go from here. The volume has so far played with whether or not ascension is a good idea. I do think it’s slowly leaned toward positive, but it’s still difficult to say

On the one hand, the volume constantly portrays Ruby losing bits of her as a negative. WBY are concerned when she offers up Penny’s sword and Ruby offering up “a mother’s promise” in the form of her emblem seems... not great considering every character has an emblem. This is compounded with the fact that the Herbalist’s drug trip brought Weiss, Blake, and Yang to the conclusion that they’re comfortable with their current selves, ergo, Ruby staying herself should be the correct answer, right? Even if Jaune is biased in his views, he is right that people from Remnant are not intended to go through ascending. And, while I still think there’s more to Alyx’s story than what Jaune knows, Jaune does claim there was a negative change in Alyx post Herbalist which leads to her poisoning him.

On the other hand, it’s more than clear that Ruby is suffering in her current role. Just because WBY’s drug trip ended with them accepting themselves right now doesn’t necessarily mean Ruby should do the same, especially given the vastly different structure of hers. No attempts at persuasion by offering a tempting life, just past Ruby pointing out all the existing pain. The Blacksmith only shows up for Ruby and Little, characters who are unsure of their purpose in the world and she refers to Ruby as having a burden. The Punderstorm clearly shows Ruby is haunted by the shadow of her mother. Then there’s Crescent Rose which Ruby has developed some sort of PTSD over and it’s the major sign to everyone Ruby isn’t okay.

Similarly, there’s this theme of change surrounding Ruby. The Curious Cat talks about people needing to change when the time comes, and despite the suspicion Jaune’s cast on the cat, they’re upfront not wrong I don’t believe they’re entirely wrong. Then, while Jaune tries to flip the narrative on ascending and portray it as death, the recent episode quickly corrects this and paints it as a form of rebirth. And that’s not even getting into the butterfly imagery that typically follows around, a common symbol for change and transformation. The cat chases butterflies, the herbalist is this mish mash of insects, and the blacksmith is forging a butterfly wing when Ruby meets them, to say nothing of the butterflies that are just around Ever After, which is very notable in how normal they are in contrast to the made up rocking horse flies that are sometimes seen.

The more I talk about it, the more it feels like it’s not “Will Ruby ascend?” but “What will Ruby become?” (This doesn’t necessarily mean she will ascend but she definitely will change and be different) and I’m not entirely sure if it’ll be good or bad and that’ll haunt me until I get an answer

[ashtraythief]

I had a friend that said Sam can live without Dean, but Dean could never live without Sam. Basically also saying that Dean loves Sam more (obviously they both love each other.) do you agree??? Hope ur doing well!

I'm muddling through, anon, hope you're doing okay too!

I think I answered this question a while ago for someone else probably, but to sum it up, I do agree that if Sam was the one to die in the barn (it has to be the barn here, right, because we do know that in earlier seasons, Dean did manage to live without Sam), Dean wouldn't handle it well and probably drink so much and take so many risks, he would get himself killed on a hunt and he'd very consciously do that. He'd never kill himself, but he'd find a way to go out in a blaze of glory very quickly. But I don't at all think that that means Dean loves Sam more than Sam loves him. I just think it shows that they're built differently, that they can find happiness in different things and that grief affects every person differently. And love is a difficult thing to quantify anyway because every person expresses their love differently. There's no one way to love someone.

Over the course of the show we've seen Sam and Dean react to losing each other differently and sometimes quite similarly. Especially in the beginning, there was always an issue of letting the other die/be dead and both of them were willing to cross all sorts of lines to save the other (selling their souls, Sam's whole Doc Brenton idea, etc). Later on, there were points when both accepted the loss and tried to move on with limited amounts of success. (You could argue that Dean had a good life with Lisa and Ben, but by his own admission he was drunk a lot and it wasn't what he wanted. Don't even talk to me about Amelia.)

At the end of supernatural, when they've basically been living in domestic bliss with each other for years and got their happily ever after after 15.19 it's a whole different beast. They keep hunting together, because that is their happily ever after. And I don't think Dean would want to go without that anymore. Especially with the promise of seeing Sam again in heaven (I'm not a fan of the surety of heaven, but I guess we gotta work with the canon we got).

Sam is just built differently. You could argue that Sam always had the dream of a non-hunting life, whether that was because he wanted to escape and needed an alternative, whether he wanted to actively fight the demon blood darkness inside of him when he could already feel it as a teenager, or whether it's because he truly wanted to be a lawyer with a white picket fence. (You could also argue that Sam actually loved Dean more, because instead of following him right behind, he was willing to take the years of painful life without him just because Dean told him to go live, but I don't think that's a good argument, or correct.)

But Sam and Dean have been so different from the start, so they love and live differently. I don't think one of them loves the other "more" (there's also often a fandom argument in there of who loves "better", ergo is the better character that I have no interest in engaging in because that's not what I'm here for (and I'm not saying you or your friend are doing that, nonnie, it's just a general observation)), Sam and Dean are just very different characters.

I think, ultimately, Sam and Dean love each other more than most people love someone. The true fantastical and horrific element of supernatural wasn't the monsters, but Sam and Dean's all-encompassing and in parts destructive relationship. That's, I think, what makes the show so fascinating for so many people and that's certainly what I loved about it.

[thenightlymirror]

What’s your secret to sadness

My secret is that I’m not sad. I rarely feel sadness. It’s very rare for me to cry tears. I think just being presented with this question even freezes up my ability to investigate my feelings about it.

The worst feelings I’ve had since I was hired at the cemetery two years ago have been from wanting to be grateful to the few people who took me in there, and the intense loathing and discomfort I have felt instead. Because they don’t want to know me at all, I’m just a party favor that’s supposed to sit there and enjoy myself. You know this feeling. People grow up and they get sick of being around normies and idiots and just avoid it, but I was trying to be grateful. That has often resulted in me feeling genuinely sad and worthless. Luckily, I have been quietly pushed out of this clique for always being miserable. Correct. And I think I feel a lot better for it.

Thinking about my parents makes me really sad, because they are like children their sadness makes me break down entirely. I feel like I’ve been trying to protect them from the real tragedies of my life, so long as they pay for the minor ones. They are so easy to please now, in their old age, but the sadness of my life is real, and when it cracks through and makes them sad, I just can’t handle the feelings.

My sadness was so severe, I’d say through the age of 24? My sadness was felt so intensely. I can sort of feel those feelings heaving below the surface now. Through a series of intense life shattering stunts, I managed to give myself some kind of buffer between myself and those crippling emotions. Ironic distance saved my life. I still have suicidal episodes 2 or 3 times a year, but nothing like the constant ripping feeling I had from 8-24.

Often now, when I say something is sad, I just mean objectively. Ok. Honestly right now I feel so sad it feels like I’m high. Haha. So much for investigating my feelings. I’m so glad nothing hurts me like it did then. God if it did. There would be so much fuel, that fire would never end. But I think I can endure so many situations which are “sad” because they just don’t make me sad anymore. Life is just mixed. You don’t get anything pure. You’re just a little catfish chewing worm shit on the riverbed. Looking for morsels of happiness. That’s where I live.

I could talk about how I work at a cemetery and interacting with my coworkers is so much sadder than any of the death and grief which passes through the gates all day long. It’s a group of people who all quietly knew other people’s grief wouldn’t really get to them. The people with feelings get weeded out within a week or two. The rest are sociopaths and PTSD. Sales and administration, respectively.

I put my secrets right out there to avoid the worst of it. Truth is, no one wants to know you that well anyway. For the others who can sense deep echoes of themselves in you, Hedgehog’s Dilemma will weed them out. Nobody’s looking to make friends. That’s done. Everyone thinks they’re just killing themselves, but they’re killing each other too. The way you inflict pain on yourself, is how you are going to inadvertently inflict pain on everyone around you. That’s the real secret to sadness. Your solipsism has a body count.

[remyfire]

It sure was Flootz's! Love Is a Sacrament, and god that's another I've reread several times because I just LOVE the dynamic at play there. It also hits so many of my "interests", so to say, and truly is such a good showing for that ship. I also love that even though it's a modern AU, they're still written exactly the same, just with the added bonus of actually being married.

And y e s I can definitely see that! I need BJ to confront the parts of himself he doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of, please and thanks. I know there have got to be things he represses and ignores, and I'm sure Sidney can tell too, but BJ never lets him get close enough to figure out what those things are. But BJ babygirl sometimes you have to talk it out! And truly if you wrote more fics of them I would read every single one.

I could definitely tell something was up in that scene in Eye for a Tooth too, Margaret may get fed up with these boys but she's not outright cruel or vengeful. I was so interested to see where it was going, and BJ's reaction did not disappoint. Admittedly I don't really ship them however I absolutely respect that rarepair, and even platonically I can sooo appreciate that care and softness he showed her! It was all acting and she was in on the plan but it's still so clear that BJ wanted to make absolutely certain she was okay the whole time and god just what a man. Everything he does is underscored with so much love and I love the little moments we can see it like that hand hold and check in!

As for Mulcahy, I definitely see your point about the wanting recognition vs the Catholic teaching of selfless help. I also thought it was interesting that the immediate next episode was Dear Sis, where we see Mulcahy struggling again with feeling useless and unrecognized in the unit. I loved Hawkeye's talk with him and trying to show him he was wanted, I think he really deserved that. And as a former Catholic myself, I find the idea of the dismantling of a belief system you've followed your entire life soooo interesting. And the fact that Mulcahy has managed to hold onto his beliefs for so much of the war tells me that any questioning he does would be painful and long-felt, and that just makes it even better. Any introspection with him would be fascinating and would take so long to dive into, like you said, but damn it if I'm not having some thoughts of my own.

(God bless the MASH writers who decided to give us shower scenes in literally any of the episodes they appear in. Also that chopper pilot is correct, because I too want to blow Mulcahy's back out. I think he deserves it.)

And P.S. please don't apologize for the length or rambling! As you can see, I'm fully able to match your energy in that regard. I love getting the peeks into other peoples' minds like this and also writing obnoxious character studies in tumblr ask boxes. So ramble away!

It's always interesting to see what transposes well into a modern verse and what doesn't carry through, right? I respect authors that can make it work for them so easily because I struggle sometimes to really manifest ideas of what would be the modern equivalent of being trapped in a very small area with a very small group of people to essentially evolve the characters into the ones we come to know and love. Like, they are not the same people when they get there as the ones who leave, and the majority of the reason they become who they are is due to the stress, the constant psychic damage of it all.

I realize ofc this is the autism of it all, really, me making things overly complicated for myself as an author 😂 But it's fine

That being said, justalittlegreen did it in a way I really enjoyed with her "A Full, Rich Day," which is BJ/Hawk/Trap and setting them in a modern verse where they're all in residency together, and having the frantic and sometimes incredibly heavy/grief-stricken moments really pulled it all together for me in a way that just hit. So I'm always turning thoughts like that over and over in my head to figure out what might finally inspire me to possibly try something similar one day in my own work.

(also please, don't worry, you don't have to tell me you don't ship BJ and Margaret. I am the captain of their canoe with roughly four other individuals as passengers, just paddling our way through the ocean. I assume that no one else ships them, trust me 😂 )

If you're not careful, though, you're gonna get me talking about just the sheer husband-coded nature of BJ and how he is constantly looking for ways to microdose on that aspect of himself while being so far away from Peg. It kills me. Man is out here carrying Margaret around any chance he gets, being so respectfully tactile with the nurses—a hand on the shoulder or the arm—his instinct to check in on them when he can tell something's wrong. Like, YES, so much of it is that he is genuinely an incredibly good man, but it's such an interesting part of his character to me, how often he'll go out of his way to do these things and genuinely seeming to get a degree of personal fulfillment out of it, bless his heart.

I am fighting tooth and nail to hold Mulcahy back in my brain right now. Lovely, sweet man, genuinely misguided in many circumstances, fully aware of a lot of the pain that he brings by nature of being a Catholic priest (I have a lot of thoughts about it regarding the S8 episode "Yessir, That's Our Baby" that are always trying to bubble over, so lemme know if you have some yourself when you get there haha) and yet still so keen on his mission all the same, whether it's compassion or conversion. And Dear Sis, fucking Christ, what a whammy of an episode. That conversation between him and Hawk in it lives rent free in my head. God. Did you know this is a good show? /lh

[schrijverr]

Growing Pains [Dick's POV] 4

Chapter 4 out of 6

Dick knows who Barbara is under the mask, Barbara doesn't. This causes some strange interactions as their friendship develops.

In this chapter, Robin and Batgirl slowly become friends, despite their ups and down. Though, Dick doesn't fully realize that until he watches Barbara fall of a roof without her grappler.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: grief (no major character death)

~~~~

Chapter 4: A Friend?

While Robin isn’t fully over his antagonism towards Barbara, he saw her at that table and he wants to be friends. So, when he and Bruce go out on patrol again, finding her, so that they can continue with the three of them, he decides to be the bigger person.

When she greets him – a little tensely still, which doesn’t make him feel a little guilty, no sir – he greets her back as kindly as he can, before adding: “Sorry for calling you a copycat.”

She looks surprised at that and glances at Bruce, which annoys Dick to no end. Can’t he do something nice on his own accord? He totally didn’t need B to tell him to say sorry. Or Alfred for that matter. He did that all by himself.

As the shock wears off, she quickly says: “Oh, I- uhm, sorry for calling you stupid.” And a part of Dick can’t help but be smug about being better at apologizing than her.

However, that’s childish, so he pushes it aside and focuses on the excitement he always feels when out here as he grins: “Great. I think I see a robbery, lets get this show on the road!”

He hates the aftermath of apologies, so he’s a little glad for the distraction in the form of this sorry sucker, who is about to meet Robin: the new kid in town. He even gently tells the lady that she’s all okay now as he ties the guy up, sending her on her way with a smile, before returning back to the roof to see where the hell the other two are.

Dick finds them still on the roof where he left them. Barbara is throwing a pretty good air punch, but his impressed feeling diminishes somewhat when Bruce says: “Yes. You have a better from than Robin when he go here.”

It’s irrational, but he doesn’t want Bruce to think she is better at this than him. So, he loudly exclaims: “Hey! I punched perfectly fine. And I can punch now, did you see how I took out that guy?” pointing to the tied up robber down below.

Barbara sticks her tongue out at him and he finds himself pouting: “She’s making fun of me! B, do something.” He feels like a child the moment it leaves his lips and embarrassment flushes his cheeks.

He’s somewhat grateful for Bruce’s silence, managing to distract from his babyish actions and turn them into a joke as he says: “It’s more fun when you’re not doing the whole silence thing. It’s boring.”

“It’s an intimidation tactic,” Bruce says, a conversation they’ve had before. Dick gets it, but he also thinks it’s a little silly, especially when he continues doing it when there is no one to intimidate around.

So, he corrects: “It’s being dramatic.”

Bruce doesn’t deign that with a reply. Dick starts searching for a new thing to poke at in the hopes of getting a reaction. They can’t be a dynamic duo (or trio, whatever) without a dynamic. Then Barbara slides up next to him and in a quiet voice asks: “How are you so chill doing that?”

“Insulting B?” he asks and it suddenly hits Dick that Barbara still has some awe for Bruce. She doesn’t know the dork that’s underneath there. No wonder she’s a little stuck up, he thinks as he sets out to correct the notion. He shrugs: “It’s easy. Look at him,” gesturing at Bruce, “that’s a dork right there. You have to make fun of him a little bit.”

Barbara cocks her head, studying Bruce as Dick waits. Then she gasps, as if she realizes something big, before she says: “He is dramatic.”

Dick can tell that Bruce is miffed, but he can’t help but cackle loudly. It’s actually quite fun to rag on Bruce together. Maybe they can be the dynamic duo, leave Bruce out of it. That actually doesn’t sound so bad. He should pick Barbara’s side more often, he decides.

However, thinking it and doing it, are not the same thing. And they but heads more often than not at first.

She gets mad every time that he’s in the way, while he’s just trying to be helpful and meanwhile she never seems to want to have his back. Doesn’t she know that the first step of working together is to always catch each other? His dad taught him that (and no it doesn’t still hurt, shut up).

Bruce is getting better at catching him or staying still to land on, but Barbara has a mind of her own and is never there. It’s super rude!

Not to mention how insufferable she is when she gets to take down the low on the ladder thug instead of him. He can totally also take those thugs and she knows it. She doesn’t have to be so smug about it, it’s not like he is.

Okay, maybe he is a little, but still!

Dick refuses to be solely blamed for their rivalry and bickering. He knows Bruce hates it when they bicker, but he’s not really doing much to stop it. Except for that time he had to actually pull them apart. That was embarrassing. Dick got a whole lecture about it. One that Barbara got to miss, he thinks bitterly.

Though, he has to admit that it was a bit of a wake up call. It is actually Alfred who made him realize it, commenting: “You can’t have teamwork without work. That’s effort, Master Dick. It’s not going to come naturally for any of you.”

At first he thinks it’s silly, because he has always worked well in a team, it’s Barbara who can’t work together.

Then he realizes that the trio he had with his parents was build on training every day together and making time for each other. Dick hasn’t been doing that with Barbara. Bruce hasn’t really been doing it either. They’ve been excluding her and expecting her to work with them. He feels a little guilty about it when he thinks about it.

So, next patrol he pays attention to her. He has always gotten annoyed that she lags behind, but he only now notices that she lags behind because she doesn’t have a grappler like they have. He calls out: “B! Slow down!”

Batman lands on a roof and looks back with confusion – Dick is getting better at reading him with the cowl on, so he is pretty sure it’s confusion – he lands next to him and says: “Batgirl is lagging behind. No grappler.” Barbara lands next to them right as he mutters: “Why the hell does she not have one of her own yet?”

The next day, he tells Bruce that they should give one to Barbara, to make patrol easier for all of them. “She has a belt right? She can have a grappler to go with that,” he says, adding: “It should be purple, so we’ll know it’s hers.”

Bruce gives him a curious look that borders on pride, so Dick scowls back at him and gives him a light shove as he goes: “Oh shut up.”

However, despite his embarrassment, he proudly exclaims: “I told him to make it purple to match your outfit. Can’t have him ruin your theme, right?” when Bruce gives it to her on their next patrol.

“Thanks, Robin,” Barbara smiles – actually smiles, they’re getting somewhere – then she even jokes: “For all his drama, Bats doesn’t have a lot of style, does he?”

Dick cackles, especially when Bruce pouts at her joke. It’s great to have someone on his side against Bruce, that rarely happens. So, he saves the information in his brain for later, before setting off to make Gotham unsafe- well, actually, to make Gotham safe.

It feels like a step in the right direction. They’re all working more smoothly together, even Bruce is making an effort. He’s not that good at the whole being a mentor thing, so Dick has been showing him some trapeze moves, coaching him so he can catch on and coach them in turn.

Everything is still a work in progress, but there is progress and the three of them are starting to feel more like an actual team. Yes, he’s even bold enough to include Barbara that.

Now that some of his jealousy has left, since Bruce didn’t drop him or some other shit that his brain can come up with, he’s kind of happy to have her there. Patrols are always less boring with her there, since she’s less likely to be all serious like Bruce – Bruce being serious is the worst – even if she tries to be professional.

Example A: They’re exchanging information with Commissioner Gordon. Well, Batman is, they’re lounging around and waiting for them to be done. Barbara is looking down at her dad a little absentmindedly. So he gets her attention. “Hey, Batgirl.”

“What?” she asks, turning to look at him.

Dick is prepared, doing the impersonation of B he’s been working on, dramatic cape and voice, as well as ears (because why the ears). “I have gathered some information through my super secret ways that are scaring the shit out of random hooligans. Marvel before me.”

A satisfied feeling curls up in his chest as Barbara giggles and he doesn’t care about Bruce’s glare as he drops the hands and innocently smiles: “Hi, B.”

The happy atmosphere is broken by the Commissioner, who says: “I don’t know how you do it, Batman. Or why for that matter. Kids aren’t my idea of great backup. But they’re effective at least, half of Gotham’s underbelly is scared of a child giggling, the other thinks you can multiply. Where did you even find these kids?”

Barbara shrinks into herself and Dick is offended on behalf of himself, her and B. Then he’s surprised to find that he knows Barbara well enough to see guilt on her face. Huh, it’s still her dad, who doesn’t want her to be out here. Maybe she wouldn’t want him to get mad at her dad.

But Robin isn’t an angry type of person, he’s a little shit. So, he lands on Bruce’s shoulders, happy that the man can catch him now, and gets up in Commissioner Gordon’s face as he grins: “Don’t worry, Commish. We just stack on top of each other, practically an adult.”

The man startles back at his grin – a reaction he’s gotten used to – who knew so many adults were uncomfortable with a grinning child in their face? Not Dick.

With his mission accomplished, he moves on the phase two, tugging on B’s cowl ears as he asks: “Did you get what we’re here for, B? I wanna go now.” Happy when Bruce agrees to get out, maybe even catching on to Barbara’s discomfort like he had.

Dick wonders when he started caring about that, then decides to push the thought away by challenging Barbara: “Last one to meeting spot B3 is a dunce face,” laughing when she yells at him, as she follows behind.

The interaction with her dad sets Dick thinking. He obviously is against kids running around in costumes, probably why Barbara isn’t shadowing him, like Dick thought she would have. That makes sense. She wants to make him proud, do what he does, but she can’t.

He still thinks it’s weird that she would put herself in danger like this over that, but he has mostly let go of his suspicions of her by now.

Which is why he’s feeling betrayed as fuck when she suddenly starts holding back when they’re up against Poison Ivy. Their first big threat since Killer Croc. And he knows that she’s holding back, because he knows her by now. Or thought he did.

What the hell is she thinking? Is she scared? No, she’s faced her before, Bruce said so when he put her on Poison Ivy duty and him on plant duty (totally rude, by the way). So, what the hell is her deal then?

Fuck, was he right when he didn’t trust her? Did he make a mistake in getting her equipment? In making Bruce train her too? In trusting her? Is she not the kind of person he made her-

The world screeches to a halt. Last thing Dick saw was Barbara pinning Poison Ivy. Now she’s falling.

He looked away for two seconds to cut down one of those plants and now she’s falling.

Dick hates how he freezes again. It’s only for a second, but he freezes and if he’d been a little further away, he might have been too late to catch her because of it. He became Robin to be better, to never feel like he did when his parents fell.

Yet here he is.

He hates that he only realizes that Barbara is his friend, that he cares about her, when she’s falling like they did.

If asked, Dick can’t describe the feeling of relief that overwhelms him when his hand closes around her arm before she goes smack into the ground. And he can’t explain why he isn’t happy when they land safely.

No, because he’s angry. He’s so mad. It almost feels like he’s just discovered Bruce is Batman and going after Tony Zucco again. The emotions just whirling about as he yells at Barbara: “What the fuck is wrong with you, Batgirl? You had her! I saw you. You had her. What the hell were you thinking?”

She still looks a little dazed, but Dick is too mad to feel pity. He wants answers. Now.

And answers he gets, because Barbara blinks, then is screaming back: “That she was my friend, Robin. That she’s a fucking kid, like you. Like me. That I’m the reason she’s like that now. That I can never fucking save her. And now I was hurting her. I hurt her. I never want to fucking hurt her, but I keep having to.”

Dick now curses himself for not reading up more on Poison Ivy, because Barbara obviously has history with her. She is the reason she’s in that mask across from him. She’s like him. But he doesn’t know the details.

Still, emotions are not so easily dismissed, so he still snaps: “You could have watched your fucking step,” because he’s not over watching her drop, grappler nowhere in sight.

“You try watching your step, dickface,” Barbara says, voice venomous. Her anger isn’t gone either and her voice accusing. “Why are you so fucking upset anyway. I was fine.”

Again anger rears its ugly head, because anger is easier than that overwhelming fear he felt back there. So, he starts another angry tirade: “Well, you almost weren’t. Alright? You almost died back there. You started falling and I- I-” he suddenly finds himself unable to continue being mad, everything catching up to him.

Barbara is looking at him with a shocked face, but he can’t stop his voice from wobbling as he continues, words pouring out, despite his mind screaming at him to shut up. “I had to watch you fall. And I- I wasn’t sure that I could catch you. I don’t- I can’t- Fuck, I can’t watch you fall.”

It’s embarrassing how close to tears he is, but he can’t help it. As he looks at Barbara, he hopes she’s as a much of a mess as he is.

He doesn’t have to wonder for long, because suddenly Barbara is pulling him into a hug, holding him tightly pressed to her as the tension of tonight bleeds out of her.

As he holds her just as tight, he can’t bring himself to give a fuck about the building being overtaken by plants behind them. He has Barbara in his arms right now. She’s safe. She didn’t fall to her death. He saved her. He saved her.

“Thank you for saving me, Robs,” Barbara whispers in a choked up voice, as if reading his mind.

Without his permission the tears start to actually fall and he’s glad that Barbara doesn’t comment on it as he replies: “I’m glad you’re okay. So glad.”

Bruce returns to take out Poison Ivy and Dick is glad, because he’s too drained to fight on, more than happy to collapse on the roof with Barbara. If Bruce needed their help, he’s sure they would have managed to get up again, but for anything other than a major threat, they’re are done.

Dick doesn’t know if Bruce knows what happened, both between them and to Barbara, but he probably does, because when get joins them, he hands them one of Alfred’s cookies. Dick doesn’t know how he knew to bring those, but he’s too tired to question it.

Right now, he’s feeling drained and he just wants B and Barbara to sit there with him and make him feel grounded. As much as he loves flying, he’s done a little too much of that today.

Sitting there with them is what he needs and they collectively watch the police take Poison Ivy away, Barbara hiding her face in Dick’s side, while Dick gets support from Bruce. It’s like they’re an actual unit now, instead of three people trying to work together.

[77-fxes]

WF: Reflections of Shuri

In the ancestral plane, Shuri's conversation with Killmonger is easy to flatten out to 'Shuri confronts her grief and desire for vengeance and, momentarily, chooses vengeance.' But as with any Coogler film, I believe that the dialogue between characters is communicating a bit more than that. Furthermore, I think there's some insight into the reading that the ancestral plane is both a physical plane where you meet the spirits of real people and a conversation with one's own subconscious or conscious (I first heard it on NewRockstars)

I think the scene can be separated into three conversations. The first part of the conversation centers on why Shuri took the herb in the first place. At first, she tries to say that she took it to see her family, but Killmonger calls that out and we as the audience already knows that he's right due to her earlier conversation with Ramonda about T'Challa's spirit. So eventually, she drops that and admits that she wants power and doesn't correct her cousin when he suggests it's for revenge. This essentially is the first time that Shuri outright admits her rage, pain, and desire for revenge unreservedly.

The next phase starts with her denying that she's like him, calling him an unworthy king to which he retorts that he and T'Challa did what was needed to open Wakanda up in such a way that they would have protected Riri in the first place. No argument there, but she goes on to blame his burning of the heart-shaped herb for not only T'Challa's death, but in many ways, the predicament that Wakanda finds itself in, which he denies. I feel like as an internal conversation, this is Shuri reconciling the benefits of having opened up Wakanda to the outside world with the dangers, suggesting that she's been more ambivalent about this issue than she's let on.

In the final piece, the conversation turns to the kinds of rulers that her family members were. Ramonda's bravery, T'Chaka's hypocrisy, T'Challa's nobility, and N'Jadika's ruthlesness. This is, to me, the crux of the matter. Having come to grips with her own desire for revenge and the inevitable precariousness of Wakanda's situation in the world in order to do what's right, Shuri is now confronted with the uncomfortable truth of how she feels about her departed family members. All three of these people (maybe even her cousin in a way) are people that she's mourned in what to her is about a two year period (minus the blip). In the glow of mourning, it's comforting to beatify our departed loved ones; it's a way of insulating us from our own feelings of anger, loss, even betrayal of the death of a loved one. But now, each in turn, Shuri is left to confront the fact that even though she loved her mother, father, and brother, she also knew their various strengths and flaws. This can be a painful revelation to accept, the hardest of all probably that deep down, she really does feel like T'Challa was too noble, or at least too short-sighted with his nobility. Moreover, the guilt of finding common ground with Killmonger, not just about the revenge aspect (for a short time), but more pointedly, in the need for ruthless, pragmatic decision-making is jarring. Though for someone so science-minded, someone always looking for the better solution, someone who is not bound by sentimental attachment to tradition, it does make quite a bit of sense. Killmonger was able to do what he did because he had no attachment to the traditions of Wakanda, hated them even. To him, Wakanda was a means to an end, a way to gain power for both personal and political reasons.

To me, this last part is what informs Shuri's approach to taking up the mantle and her eventual truce with Namor. These are matters of practicality. She knows M'Baku is right about the consequences of killing him, both for Wakanda and Talocan, who she knows to just be people living their lives. In that moment, Shuri does show us who she is, a compassionate but ruthlessly pragmatic person. If a truce is what keeps oblivion at bay today, then it's a truce. I don't believe that someone as unsentimental as Shuri believes that this means that Namor is a changed man, nor will it stop her from designing countermeasures to his army after she gets back, or turning her attention to the world and it's desires for vibranium. In these matters, I expect Shuri to take a realistic look at the world, Wakanda's situation, and strike ruthlessly when the time comes for action.

[foggyparadisecandy]

I used to be a sarcastic prick when I was younger. I've really tried to shake it in favor of a more authentic version of myself.

I believe strongly that the only way life really works, the only way to have truly deep and meaningful relationships, is to be open and authentic.

It's why trust is so important to me. It's why RULE 0 of my relationships with partners online is "always speak our truths, even if we feel it will hurt the other person."

I think it's so critical.

It also frames things up so that each party doesn't put the other person in a position where they feel a lie is the best answer.

It's hard shit. It takes work. It takes a leap of faith to be able to speak your truth and feel you will be heard and not shut down.

But it builds deep relationships.

What's my point? Well, I already made it.

I have the advantage of experience and years to know that a hard truth is a better path than a lie or evasion. Maybe not always ... I get that ... but certainly it's true usually.

I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I am ... reserved ... to say the least. But people who know me closely know I am who I say I am. And if I give you my love, you have my love.

It takes a lot for me to pull it back from someone.

I've gotten a lot of grief over this stance but ... life is messy, people are messy, relationships are infinitely complicated things.

When you have someone in your life who is decent, kind, caring, well ... when they fuck up - and ... we're all people ... we ALL fuck up from time to time - well there is an absolute grace in forgiveness.

It's grace for them, yeah. But also for you.

Forgiving someone else is a form of openness and authenticity. You are saying "hey, I'm going to let this thing go because I trust you and your character. I know who you are. I know you made a mistake and it's ok. And I'm truting you to do the same when I fuck up. Now let's go hang out together and put that shit behind us."

Of course, if the damage keeps happening then ... well ... only you can decide when things get to be too much. I think forgiveness is still essential but there isn't much point in keeping someone around who keeps fucking you over the same way again and again.

And let's face it ... some people seem to be addicted to feeling bad about themselves and saying "I'm sorry" to beat themselves up.

Only you can decide how much you are going to give of yourself to help them grow and get over that shit.

I still believe in my four principles (in order of importance): FORGIVE YOURSELF LOVE YOURSELF FORGIVE OTHERS LOVE OTHERS

I think they are a solid bedrock for good living.

Personally I've always lived them backwards even though I preach them in the order above. My recent breakup has lit a fire under my ass to finally embrace the philosophy in the correct order.

It's hard shit but we'll see where it goes.

I forgive myself for anything I screwed up with my recent partner. It certainly wasn't intentional and I know I did my best.

I love myself and have stopped beating myself up and feeling miserable over things. Even though I am desperately concerned for her well-being and miss her horribly, I'm taking care of myself now. I need to resume living ... without her, which sucks but is what it is.

I forgive her. This is extremely easy for me. I honestly appreciate everything we shared. Even the lessons here at the end ... painful as they have been have taught me some great things. I owe her gratitude. And I wish her the best.

I love her deeply. It's backed away from the dangerous, overly hot insane love but at my core, I have a deep abiding love for her. I hope some day she remembers who I am and my character and realizes that I would be a good person in her life. But in the end, it doesn't change my feelings for her.

Anyway ... life goes on, right? What can you do but your best.

I'm here. Doing my best. Adjusting to something a bit dimmer than it was before her presence but hope springs eternal. There is more to life than her and what we had together.

I do admit that I ... am ... very concerned for her. I just need to put it away though.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Lots of trances queued up over the next three weeks. Hope you all enjoy them.

[ardentperfidy]

Most of our internal disagreements center on the correct container for our grief. Our staff is not unlike the rest of the Jewish world in that many of us are only a matter of degrees from someone who died or was taken hostage. How can we publicly grieve the death and suffering of Israelis without these feelings being politically metabolized against Palestinians? ... In this way, Jewish grief is routed back into the violence of a merciless system of Palestinian subjugation that reigns from the river to the sea. ... ... “I do not rejoice over death. I rejoice over the possibility to live,” [writer and reporter Hebh Jamal] writes, and as such “I cannot condemn the militants if I believe even for a second that there might be a possibility of all of this finally coming to an end.” Hebh describes the sense of possibility that many Palestinians have felt in these events, as they have disturbed—perhaps only momentarily, it remains to be seen—the dominant paradigm in which they are condemned to die waiting for their freedom, as so many other nonviolent avenues to liberation have been punished or ignored. Hebh’s reaction appears common to so many of the Palestinians I know and trust that I must try to feel my way into it. ... But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life. As the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” We are seeing the ways that Jews as the agents of apartheid will not be spared—even those of us who have devoted our lives to the work of ending it. (I am thinking of Hayim Katsman, zichrono l’vracha, killed by Hamas, an activist against the expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, and Vivian Silver, a hostage in Gaza, who is known to many of its residents as the person they meet at the Erez Crossing who advocates for and facilitates their transfers to Israeli hospitals for treatment.) ... One of the most terrible things about this event is the sense of its inevitability. The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straightjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace. I am reminding myself that it was from Palestinians, many of them writing and speaking in these pages, that I learned to think of Palestine as a site of possibility—a place where the very idea of the nation-state, which has so harmed both peoples, could be remade or destroyed entirely. And it was Palestinians who opened my thinking to multiple visions of sharing the land. On the left, I hope we do not mistake the inevitability of the violence for an inescapable limit on our work or the quality of our thought. Even if our dreams for better have failed, they must accompany us through this moment to the other side.

Full text:

This has been the hardest week we’ve ever had to weather as a staff at Jewish Currents. Events are moving so fast that there seems no hope of apprehending any of it fully, of saying the thing that will feel right for the moment which is already gone. With great effort, we finish a section of our explainer only for new information to surface and invalidate it. And it’s not just about the facts. Feelings and positions are in flux. There are political questions and fault lines that have been simmering under the surface in our organization—in the Jewish left, and I suspect the left generally—exploding to the fore, gumming up the works at a time when urgency feels paramount. Staff members are periodically bursting into tears, fighting with their families or with their friends, running on fitful sleep. A contributor’s son is a hostage. A contributor in Gaza texts: “Still alive. They are bombing everywhere. Nowhere is safe.”

Most of our internal disagreements center on the correct container for our grief. Our staff is not unlike the rest of the Jewish world in that many of us are only a matter of degrees from someone who died or was taken hostage. How can we publicly grieve the death and suffering of Israelis without these feelings being politically metabolized against Palestinians?

We have good reason to worry about this: As Israelis count their dead, politicians in Israel and the US call for Palestinian blood in direct, genocidal language. “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant yesterday. “Finish them, Netanyahu,” said former Ambassador to the United Nations and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. “Neutraliz[e] the terrorists,” said Democratic senator John Fetterman. Jews share memes about the highest number of Jewish casualties since the Holocaust, not bothering to ask who, right now, is being ethnically cleansed, or how many massacres of this size Gaza has seen in the last dozen years. This language deploys the bombs that fall on Gazans from the sky, leveling whole neighborhoods, wiping out families without warning, huddled in their homes because they have nowhere to flee. “There are body parts scattered everywhere. There are still people missing,” one man north of Gaza City told CNN. “We’re still looking for our brothers, our children. It’s like we’re stuck living in a nightmare.” We will likely soon see this genocidal impulse spread, as the Israeli government hands out automatic weapons to West Bank settlers, many of whom were already armed eliminationists. In this way, Jewish grief is routed back into the violence of a merciless system of Palestinian subjugation that reigns from the river to the sea. It is mobilized by US politicians who support Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government, which has intensified Palestinian death and displacement and disappeared any hope of a diplomatic solution. It is marshaled to drum up support for sending weapons to Israel, even as we know that, as Haggai Mattar wrote in +972 Magazine, “there is no military solution to Israel’s problem with Gaza, nor to the resistance that naturally emerges as a response to violent apartheid.”

We can’t let our grief be bent to these purposes, but it’s not clear where else to put it. Anyone who has been working in this space knows that our movements are not prepared to manage the emotional and political fallout. We watch as Jewish people and groups we thought we had pulled into our struggle, or at least begun to move politically, suddenly close ranks, profess support for the IDF, retreat into despair. Already complex and fragile relationships between Palestinian and left-wing Jewish activists—as well as factions within both of these groups—are being challenged as we struggle to derive the same meaning from the images coming across our screens. Friends and colleagues on all sides find themselves hurt by one another’s public reactions, or by their silence. A veteran anti-Zionist activist I spoke to wondered if a “chasm” was opening up between Palestinian and Jewish activists, especially as the current moment has made visible diaspora Jews’ tangible connections to that place and those people that are, inconveniently, not just the stuff of Israeli propaganda. Over the weekend, many avowed anti-Zionist Jews found they could not join solidarity protests because they needed something the protests could not provide: a space to grieve the Israeli dead, to struggle with their own place in the coming political process. It is a situation none of us have ever before confronted in earnest, amid a long history of vastly disproportionate death tolls. And now, when we need it most, we find ourselves struggling with a lack of emotional and political vocabulary.

On October 7th, my own feelings fluctuated wildly. My first feeling was fear. To listen closely to the genocidal language of this Israeli government over the past year has been to live in terror of the day they would find the excuse to pursue it. Writing in n+1, Jewish Currents contributing editor David Klion recounts the words of a campus activist in the wake of 9/11: “They’re already dead,” he’d said on the day Bush declared war on Iraqis, their fates sealed. I felt these words in my body, sobbing loudly in front of the screen. There were also bursts, very early on, of awe. I watched the image of the bulldozer destroying the Gaza fence again and again and cried tears of hope. I watched Palestinian teenagers seemingly out joyriding in a place half a mile away that they’d never been; a Gazan blogger suddenly reporting from Israel. But these images were quickly joined by others—the image of a woman’s body, mostly naked and bent unnaturally in the back of a truck; rooms full of families lying in piles, the walls spattered in blood. I wanted desperately to keep these images separate—to hold close the liberatory metaphor and banish the violent reality. By the time I began to accept that these were pictures of the same event, I was distraught, and contending with a rising alienation from those who did not seem to share my grief, especially as the scope of the massacre came into view.

“I have anti-Zionist Jewish friends who are rightfully scared,” writer and reporter Hebh Jamal wrote in a recent Mondoweiss article. She observes how, despite all their sympathy for Palestinian suffering, this may be the first moment such allies are tasting the fear—and the state of mourning—that has been real for Palestinians for decades. She has also lost someone this week—a cousin, 20 years old. “I do not rejoice over death. I rejoice over the possibility to live,” she writes, and as such “I cannot condemn the militants if I believe even for a second that there might be a possibility of all of this finally coming to an end.” Hebh describes the sense of possibility that many Palestinians have felt in these events, as they have disturbed—perhaps only momentarily, it remains to be seen—the dominant paradigm in which they are condemned to die waiting for their freedom, as so many other nonviolent avenues to liberation have been punished or ignored. Hebh’s reaction appears common to so many of the Palestinians I know and trust that I must try to feel my way into it.

As I watched people online debate the models of anti-colonial struggle, raising comparisons to Algeria and North America and South Africa, I found myself returning to the foundational Jewish liberation myth: the Exodus. It was hard not to think about the moment in the Passover seder when we lessen the wine in our full cups with our pinkies as we recite the plagues. This ritual has materialized as an indispensable touchstone, insisting that to hold onto our humanity we must grieve all violence, even against the oppressor.

But I also thought of the plagues themselves, particularly the final one, the slaying of the first born—children, adults, the elderly. It seems that hiding in our liberation myth is a recognition that violence will visit the oppressor society indiscriminately. I know that I have many friends, and that Currents has many readers, who are asking themselves how they can be part of a left that seems to treat Israeli deaths as a necessary, if not desirable, part of Palestinian liberation. But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life. As the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” We are seeing the ways that Jews as the agents of apartheid will not be spared—even those of us who have devoted our lives to the work of ending it. (I am thinking of Hayim Katsman, zichrono l’vracha, killed by Hamas, an activist against the expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, and Vivian Silver, a hostage in Gaza, who is known to many of its residents as the person they meet at the Erez Crossing who advocates for and facilitates their transfers to Israeli hospitals for treatment.)

That question of how we recuperate this humanity is ultimately an organizing question. People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you “cannot tell Palestinians how to resist.” To me, it seems there is a very literal dimension to this axiom: They are not asking. Part of what has made the experience of this event feel so different from the status quo—and so different to Palestinians and Jews—comes from the fact that Palestinians were undeniably the actors, for once, not the acted upon. The protagonists of the story. I consider it an enormous failure of our movements that we have not been able to build a vehicle for that kind of reversal in any other way thus far. Our Jewish movements for Palestine were not powerful enough to stop other Jews from gunning down Palestinians in peaceful marches at the Gazan border fence, or to keep Palestinians from being fired, harassed, and sued for speaking the truth about their experience or—God forbid—advocating the nonviolent tactic of boycott. And now, we do not have a shared struggle able to credibly respond to these massacres of Israelis and Palestinians. With all of the work that many Jews and Palestinians have done to reach toward each other over the years, I believe at heart it is this failure that is now driving us apart. There is no formidable political formation that I know of that can hold the political subjectivity of both Jews and Palestinians in this moment without simply attempting to assimilate one into the other. No place where Jews and Palestinians who agree on the basics of Palestinian liberation—right of return, equality, and reparations—are poised to turn the synthesis of these two subjectivities into a coherent strategy.

One of the most terrible things about this event is the sense of its inevitability. The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straightjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace. I am reminding myself that it was from Palestinians, many of them writing and speaking in these pages, that I learned to think of Palestine as a site of possibility—a place where the very idea of the nation-state, which has so harmed both peoples, could be remade or destroyed entirely. And it was Palestinians who opened my thinking to multiple visions of sharing the land. On the left, I hope we do not mistake the inevitability of the violence for an inescapable limit on our work or the quality of our thought. Even if our dreams for better have failed, they must accompany us through this moment to the other side. We need to imagine a movement for liberation better even than the Exodus—an exodus where neither people has to leave. Where people stay to pick up the pieces, rearranging themselves not just as Jews or Palestinians but as antifascists and workers and artists. I want what Puerto Rican Jewish poet and activist Aurora Levins Morales describes in her poem “Red Sea”:

We cannot cross until we carry each other, all of us refugees, all of us prophets. No more taking turns on history’s wheel, trying to collect old debts no-one can pay. The sea will not open that way.

This time that country is what we promise each other, our rage pressed cheek to cheek until tears flood the space between, until there are no enemies left, because this time no one will be left to drown and all of us must be chosen. This time it’s all of us or none.

[rivilu]

Aand it's here! An intro to Orion. Takes place on the way to Ostagar, don't know what else to say so here you go! Enjoy.

The fire cracks as it burns next to him. Leaves rustle in the breeze. That, and the small slicing sound of his blade against his bow. That’s three. Breathe in, Breathe out Strange how that feels like a lot. Breathe in, breathe out Unsure if the terrible cloud of numbness looming over him is from the grief wreaking his heart, or the blight coursing through his veins. The next moment, his knife is buried in the grass, fingers now pressed firm against the bridge of his nose. No, no this can’t work. If he doesn’t deal with these emotions now he’s going to be far too vulnerable in the battles to come. If he lives that far. He has to live that far. A deep breath, and his head turns up to the night sky. There’s far too much at stake. Death a luxury he’s far from able to afford. Think of it, deal with it now. While time is still on your side. Breathe in, breathe out. He knows Tamlen would not want him to wallow. But how is he to think of that day with any lens other than sorrow? It feels as though he aged a decade between the morning he set out to track him, and the moment Duncan told him that the cause was lost. That he was gone. How can fate be so cruel? That a single day, one that starts out so mundane, can take a turn for the worse so sharp that it instantly, permanently severs all pretense of normalcy that had held this part of his life together for so long. One moment they are bantering as they always did. “I’ve never known anyone so eager to wander. I bet you’ll end up a flat-ear some day, living in the cities like a shem’’ Tamlen had said, met with a huff of laughter from him, and a flick to his ear. If only you knew. “Ow!” “I’ve told you before. Being better than the shemlen may not be a high bar to clear, but calling city elves by a phrase only a word away from what they use to degrade all of us? Don’t make yourself a hypocrite. You’re better than that.” And the moment following, he’s waking up in an aravel, barely breaking through a fever. Alone. Would you have listened? Would you have heeded my warnings, had I been more a friend to you than a brother? Did my worry, my instinct to protect you, feel like it was smothering you? Was it the cause of your undoing? Stop. Breathe again, don’t choke from the shock it brings since you forgot it. No, no. That is your mind telling you these things. Tamlen wouldn’t want you to think this. He would never- Don’t taint his memory that way. He was not the poison that you are. Stop. What had he said? He’d asked him hadn’t he? Why he wanted to stay in the cave. “Aren’t you curious? We could be discovering our history. Minstrels would write songs about us!” “Tamlen.” “..If i were to bring some valuable ancestral artifact back to the keeper, she might forgive me for.. well, you know” Ah. Of course. A long winded sigh, and he takes the blade back in his hand. Goes back to carving. Two decades of resentment creeping back into the edges of his mind. The futile, unending quest for the keeper’s approval. Of course. Blind trust in her. What she wants. Expects. She is right, she knows best. She is infallible. Like walking into a fire. Of course. Do you you feel vindicated? No. That what you read between the lines of her behavior, That what drove you away from them all in the first place, you were correct about? No, no stop it. Are you happy? knowing that what doomed him is something you predicted? No. This was never what he wanted. Not at his expense. Never at his expense. Stop, pause, breathe. It is done. In the past. You cannot change it. You failed him. The one person you wanted to protect more than anything. The pain, the guilt will linger. That is the way of loss. How can you expect to save anyone else? But it will pass. Worthless It will pass.

He puts the knife down a final time, sheathes it. Blows the dust and shavings off the finished carving, turns it in his hands. A bear, for Dirthamen. The Creator he revered. He stands up, walks closer to the fire. Holds the bow from top to middle. A longbow; his mother’s weapon of choice, as he’s been told. One he was always expected to inherit. A role he was meant to fulfill, since that of his father was not meant to be. And he did. A tighter grip, and the snap of wood. Did. But no longer. His hands move lower, to the other end of it. “You belong to more than just yourself” were Hahren Paivel’s words. But did he ever even belong to himself? The only choices he ever made that truly were his own, were when he was away. All else was lies. Placations. A second snap. And he brings the two broken ends above the fire. He’s done living for them. It was only a matter of time. They are swallowed by the flames as they fall, and all he’s left with is the middle piece. The carving. He will not follow his parent’s footsteps. He will not let his legacy be a tragedy. He may never be able to bring Tamlen back, but he will avenge him. He will see to it that the blight is ended. “Falon'Din guide you safely brother. I will make it up to you”